The San Francisco Citizen

Those rumour fighters over at Snopes.com couldn’t believe it at first, but yesterday was National Cheescake Day.

San Francisco celebrated by tempting hundreds to The Cheescake Factory at Union Square Macy’s, where people stood around for hours in hopes of scoring some sweet, sweet cake for just $1.50 a slice.

It was brother against brother. It was insanity.

Waiting room chairs were in short supply last night. Click to enlarge:

Orwell almost had it right:

“If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stomping on a human face, forever hundreds of people standing around waiting for enormous slabs of heavily-discounted cheesecake, forever.  

How many Tesla Roadsters have been delivered to paying customers so far, after a half decade of development and at least four production delays? A handful, so far.

How many Tesla Motors products have suffered accidents already? Well, let’s see, there was that one involving the car of a “Founder,” and then there was that other one that no one’s supposed to know about, and… Pictures or it didn’t happen, right?

Pictures! Now really, is an advanced air bag waiver appropriate for the typical driver of the Tesla Roadster? Is it true this particular car crashed something like ten minutes after delivery? Is it true that Tesla is trying to make the Roadster faster than the somewhat similar gasoline-powered Lotus Elise? Is it true that you could get a Lotus Elise for something like $30K and then have something like almost $100k left over to buy massive carbon offsets? Is it true that you can actually get a Lotus sports car with a manual transmission? So many questions.

Shouldn’t Tesla work on something practical like increasing the Roadster’s abysmal range instead of trying so hard to make it accelerate faster?

Here’s a Tesla in San Francisco that managed not to crash, on a least one day, anyway:

Noblesse oblige is nothing to kill yourself over.

Well here they are, Marian and Vivian (or Vivan and Marian) Brown, the San Francisco Twins. They’re still on patrol in Union Square after all these years.

This duo was recently spied on Stockton Street betwixt Geary and Post, right in front of the new Gucci store. The gigantic ad they’re walking in front of has seen better days, as you can tell by the swaths of white paint. 

Those darn graffiti artists are everywhere, it seems.

From guillermo.d’s photostream on Flickr.

If you want a burger from a cable car in San Francisco (and really, why wouldn’t you?), you’ve got two choices.

Starting with Tony’s Cable Car. It’s a simple old-skool hamburger stand at 2500 Geary perched over the tunnel that goes under Masonic. A portion of the ingredients have been previously frozen, so that’s offputting to some. But if you pay $13 for burgers and fries, the bag they put it in will have some heft and the contents will be well-prepared, hot, and yummy.  

O.K. then.

Now we’re ending with Joe’s Cable Car at 4320 Mission. Did you know that Joe Grinds His Own Fresh Chuck Daily, or something? Lot’s of people know that because this joint has been featured on the Food Network. So you’ll get tourists making pilgramages down to the Outer Mission.

People tend to like the food, but not the high prices (adding 2 oz. more chuck to your burger costs $3.50 - that’s $26/lb!) or the $15 per capita minimum order service charge. All that daily grinding costs money, you see, but some question if Joe has gone too far with his pricing scheme.

The Yelpers seem to prefer Tony’s.

If you’re looking for a tie-breaker, the San Francisco Department of Health’s most recent report has this to say about Joe’s:

Floors, Walls, Ceilings Improperly constructed, in disrepair, not clean   
Improper Storage: Equipment. Utensils, Linens    
Foods not separated or protected

For Tony’s, aka “Geary Drive In”, the DPH simply states:

This location has no violations

So there you have it. You make the call.

(Or you could compromise on the cable car theme and check out Bill’s Place on Clement. Lot’s of people like that joint.)

Or, improvised incendiary weapon, if you prefer.

Not much damage at all. Here’s a detail of the metal door. Click for a better view.

It looks like somebody’s paw prints got onto the door post-fire. Assuming that the video cameras were operational, investigators will have a pretty good idea of what occurred pretty soon.