The San Francisco Citizen

ProtectPlace.com is a little outfit being promoted by Washington D.C.-based PR firm Chlopak Leonard Schechter & Associates, which does work for the confusingly-named Office of Champagne, USA. This unholy alliance is once again trying to manipulate Bay Area consumers through online advertising.

They are now pushing the Declaration to Protect Wine Place and Origin, which promotes concepts thoroughly debunked here and here.

But, there’s more trouble: 

“Trouble is, the Office of Champagne USA isn’t the federal government, which permits winemakers to use the word “Champagne” on wine labels as sort of a generic term, but only as long as they note where the wine was actually made. Hence “California Champagne,” or almost as famously, “California Chablis” and “California Burgundy.”

Let’s think back to happier times, before the French hired flacks to manipulate us:

You see? French Champagne is made in France and American Champagne is made in America. Some terms have become “semi-generic” in the Home of the Brave and the Land of the Freedom Fries. Should the French wine industry have the only say in how wines made and sold in California should be labelled?

You should certainly be wary of what our European corporate overlords have to say. Don’t listen to the apologists for the troubled French wine industry, which has so much oversupply sometimes they turn wine into industrial alcohol. And does the Champagne region still have a nuclear waste dump? Yes. How’s that for terroir?

So, when the experts tell you to stock up on $100+ bottles of French Champagne, as they did last year, sit back and watch prices fall. And when they tell you to worry:

“People are really worried about the next six months when they should worry about the next 10 to 15 years,” says Charles Curtis, product management development director with Moët Hennessy USA.

You shouldn’t worry.

The Victory Garden at San Francisco’s Civic Center has a new lease on life due to today’s mayoral reprieve:

“Today Mayor Gavin Newsom announced his intention to keep the Slow Food Nation Victory Garden at Civic Center Plaza in place until November. The garden was originally scheduled to be disassembled and moved to a more permanent location on September 21, three weeks after the conclusion of Slow Food Nation.”

Now the whole idea of this garden smacked of Marie Antoinette’s L’Hameau de la Reine from the get-go and the fact it was supposed to be undone in September was met with some criticism, but having this thing around for another three months seems like a good idea.

Of course SFN was well-attended, with lots of coverage from the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, SFGate and Eater SF.

Now on with the show.

This voter registerer got cuffed by a Park Ranger right next to the Civic Center Windmill. Some rich hippies took offense and questioned the necessity of this detention. Apparently, the very same man was asked to leave SFN just the day before.

People, people, people, have you no respect for the DPT? Just one Parking Control Officer had the opportunity to issue scores of tickets to those in too much of a hurry to get to Slow Food Nation. It’s as easy as (slow) pie to park for free all day in this area.

See you next year!

It was on this morning at the OFFICIAL 2008 NorCal Region SMART RALLY & Lombard St. Photoshoot in San Francisco. The whole thing was just like critical mass, but for cars instead of bikes.

How many Smart Cars can fit into one block of Lombard Street in scenic Russian Hill? This many, or about a hundred-something as long as you park them six inches apart and side-by-side, as if they are loading onto Noah’s Ark. Kiltbear ably captured the mise-en-scene.

Click to expand:

Photo taken by drdrtsai - check out the entire set on Flickr.

The Obamamobile was there - could this have been an opportunity for Obama to campaign? No matter, look for Smarts all over the Bay Area today.

Proposed Agenda:
-7:00 to 8am staging area (address released to registered smarties)
-8:30 line up at Lombard street
-10:30-11:30am start scenic cruise Fort Point
-12:00am meet and greet (East parking lot of Spinnikers in Sausalito)
-12:01-2:30pm lunch and/or continued meet and greet
-3pm *Optional drive down highway 1