Four.something stars don’t lie:
As seen in the Western Addition / NoPA / DivCo
Posts Tagged ‘yelp’
Eddie’s is Forever, Timeless
Friday, July 1st, 2016UPDATE: Ferry Building Taco Parlour Charges a SECRET 15% Surcharge – Tourists Outraged
Thursday, June 16th, 2016Get up to speed here:
“Celebrity Chef” Traci Des Jardins Goes Beyond the Pale with a 15% “Surcharge”
So here’s the old sign, from three months ago…
And here’s how things stand today:
See that? The notice about the 15% surcharge is gone.
So what’s up with that? Oh, our poor tourists are supposed to find out when and if they scrutineer their receipt after they’ve already been charged?
WTF to that. I mean, is this kosher, Bouboule?
So that’s my beef.
I’ll note that the printed receipts now just say “15% surcharge,” which is a big improvement over any reference to taxes, which could get you in big big twubble with our big big CA State BOE.
Let’s see, what else… oh, our tourists fucking hate this BS. Take a look:
Stale food. Added 15% surcharge over the posted prices. Rude staff.
Dishonest pricing with a bogus 15% surcharge. They should add this to the stated price of food instead of adding this to the bill.
Fundamentally dishonest. Their menu quotes a price, then sales tax, and then a surcharge of 15% – and no tip worthy service. Plus, why 15% of the sales tax?
Mucho rippo offo!!! Food was mediocre at best. And to add insult to injury they add an extra 15% surcharge?!?! Six tiny Tacos, a small basket of nachos, a kids quesadilla and a carne sandwich for over $80 is obscene!!!
Are some street tacos for happy hour! They seem to nickel and dime you, on top of adding a 15% surcharge to every order (they don’t accept tips), which it thought was interesting.
Food was decent, disappointed with the customer service. There was no explanation about the 15% surcharge until after she swiped our card, a heads up would have been nice.
If you’re willing to spend $40+ for chips and salsa, tacos and a bean burrito, this is the place for you.
Illegal labeling practice and should be shut down! The restaurant illegally labels “tips” as part of taxes on the receipt and enforces customers to pay tips. When I asked the staff why the taxes are so high (23%) out of the total bill, her answer was ” we consolidate city, state and surcharge taxes into one and it shows as taxes on the receipt”. I replied:” the surcharge is tips in this case?” She said yes. The question is how could tips be labeled as taxes? Absolutely sneaky! Absolutely illegal!
Mijita – San Francisco, CA, United States. Illegal labeling practice and should be shut down! The restaurant illegally labels “tips” as part of taxes on the receipt.
The 15% surcharge is absolutely absurd. Almost an entire extra $5 for tax and bs fees. Future patrons beware.
We just wanted to sit out in the sun and enjoy some kind of food. I didn’t know about the 15% surcharge tax they tack on, in addition to the regular tax till I looked at my bill! My tortilla soup for $8.50 turned out to be $10.83. I wouldn’t bitch so much if the soup was good. Which it wasn’t. Lukewarm and more like a stew. There were carrots in there. yuck. I won’t be back. Plus all those damn pigeons outside picking at leftovers. Can people please read the fricken signs to bus your own dishes? Jesus! Not Mjjita’s fault but still .. I am just irritated.
Beware!! A 15% Surcharge?? when asked about what the charge was for the cashier said it was their tip. TIP?? really!? Yeah it’s already over priced and not that great; and they’re charging this ridiculous 15% charge? yeah, straight bananas. I didn’t even realize the charge since the cashier didn’t give me the receipt until my friend noticed it on her order. (He was too busy trying to fix the paper on the machine). Fool me once and that’s enough, not worth coming back.
Pretty bad food (bland and tiny portions) for about 2x the cost of the fantastic Mexican food found elsewhere in the city. Then again, this restaurant probably gets enough business from tourists that accountability for their bad food doesn’t matter because repeat business is not common. Oh, and LOL: 15% surcharge “to help with employer’s rising costs”? That is just embarrassing for so many reasons. Go elsewhere.
So IDK, man.
Hey, are there any other businesses at the Ferry Building with a low low 2.5 star Yelp rating?
Why is Appointed Mayor Ed Lee So Unpopular, Ch. LXXVI: Owner of Popular Cassava Restaurant in the Richmond Questions Twitter Tax Break
Friday, April 8th, 2016Let’s see if I can pay off on that headline here. So yeah, Ed Lee’s not popular these days, for a host of reasons. Look it up. And I believe this person could be described as an owner, of Cassava, which certainly is popular
And Twitter Tax Break, well that’s a term people use. Here’s how things* got started, but we’re not only subsidizing Twitter in the Twitterloin area – there are other outfits too. It’s complicated.
*Part of the problem the tech bros had was a law signed into law in 2004 by Gavin Newsom, which was designed to close a “loophole” in the payroll tax having to do with IPOs. Anyway, the loophole’s back.
It’s SANDWICH MANIA at 5017 Geary near Park Presidio – Long Lines at Lou’s Cafe – 4.5 Yelp Stars Don’t Lie – The Richmond’s Best Lunch
Monday, April 4th, 2016
You know, for every small business person who’s mad at Yelp, there’s another who complains not a whit. Little wonder owners of not-so-hot bidnesses want to suspend the First Amendment and ban Yelp…
Would You Believe WOULD YOU BELIEVE?? on Geary – A Dive Bar for Christians? – That’s What I Thought
Thursday, March 31st, 2016But, upon further review, I see that WOULD YOU BELIEVE refers to the kind of shaggy dog story/joke/anecdote that you might hear at a dive bar called “Would You Believe?”
I get it now!
“Odd name for a dive bar. The sign says cocktails but this is a beer and shots joint.
Very divey…think pool and dice. Unlike most dives, place is clean including the bathrooms and the clientele is non menacing. We love this place.”
Fooling Frisco’s Tourists: CLIFF HOUSE CHART HOUSE, CHART HOUSE CLIFF HOUSE, CLIFF HOUSE CHART HOUSE
Tuesday, March 29th, 2016Now even I’m confused, after that copy pasting.
At first, I saw the word HOUSE and I read the cursive writing as CLIFF. But oh, CHART HOUSE, Pier 39. Two stars on Yelp, even with your possible shill reviews thrown in:
And oh yes, bring your money. Lots and lots of money…
“Celebrity Chef” Traci Des Jardins Goes Beyond the Pale with a 15% “Surcharge” – Mijita at the Ferry Building – Our Poor Tourists!
Thursday, March 17th, 2016Via Reddit comes news to me:
Can someone please explain to me this SF specific tax?
And here it is:
“A 15% surcharge has been added to your bill to help offset rising employer costs in SF”
The degredients are listed so it wasn’t hard to see that this is poorly-rated Mijita Cocina Mexicana (1 Ferry Bldg, Ste 44, San Francisco, CA 94111, Embarcadero, SoMa, South Beach) we’re talking about here.
SO, I’m familiar with the high costs of doing business in San Francisco.
AND, I know aboot bogus 4% surcharges already, eh?
But FIFTEEN (15!) PERCENT? That’s beyond the pale.
Now let’s here from the horse’s mouth (or whatever), you know, herself: From Fast Company: “Educate customers about cost increases, and find creative ways to pass them on.”
An excerpt:
When the health-care mandate was passed three years ago, Des Jardins was already paying half of her employee’s health care, so as a line on her P&L, the costs were already significant. The change made them “unsustainable,” she says, and even then they didn’t impose cost increases for customers for six months. Today, each bill at Jardiniére comes with a 4% line-item surcharge labeled “Stay healthy, San Francisco.” “We tried to build the cost into [the menu], but you’ve got different trends in what sells and what doesn’t, so it didn’t work to cover the cost,” she says. “It was rough in the beginning, but local people have gotten used to it—they realize that they voted it in. It’s harder for people from out of town, but it’s a lot like staying in a hotel—you get the hotel price, and then 20% later, you’ve paid your bill.”
So, this was back in the day, and at another joint (the not poorly rated Jardinere), but it shows the mindset. Let’s go:
1. So, there are “creative ways” to pass on cost increases and there are HONEST ways, right?
2. It “didn’t work to cover the cost?” What does this mean? Does it mean that you couldn’t simply raise prices? But oh yes you could!
3. “They voted it in?” IDTS! First of all, the “voters” in this case were the eleven members of the Board of Supervisors, not your typical customer of Traci Des Jardins. Second of all, they didn’t vote to impose a surcharge, which is simply something that some local restaurateurs decided to do on their own.
4. And it’s “harder for people from out of town” because, because some of them realize, only too late, that they’ve been led down le chemin de [Traci] Jardin[s], or led down the garden path, right?
Now I’ve seen gas stations do the same thing, do the same kind of pouting, but, similarly, it’s tout a fait inapproprie, amiright?
And, speaking of which, what if a gas station advertised on its big signs the price per gallon BEFORE a random “15% surcharge” gets added in – would we tolerate that?
Oh, and another thing – this, this here is wrong wrong wrong:
Now what if somebody from our CA State Board of Equalization (The Nation’s Second-Largest Tax Agency, I’m srsly) looked inside the four corners of this receipt. S/he would say, “Oh, the owner of this joint has gone stir crazy and is now charging customers a 23.75% sales tax. Ergo, all this money needs to be remitted to the great State of California.” I’m srsly.
So, what “Celebrity Chef” Tracy Des Jardins should do is raise her prices 15%, or whatever she wants – I don’t care, and then ditch the absurd surcharge, which, you know, should be illegal. (Oh what’s that, you’ll go out of bidness? Fine, who cares. Make room for somebody else at Ferry Building Stall #44.)
END OF LINE
Turns Out That the Best Way to Fill Up the Parking Lot at the Horrible LUCKY PENNY Diner was SHUTTING THE PLACE DOWN
Monday, February 22nd, 2016Here’s the lot of our former LUCKY PENNY (“People Hate Us On YELP!”) as it is these days:
Man, the only time I’ve seen as many cars here was that week in December when news got out that the joint was going kaput. (Otherwise, this place was like a ghost town in the daytime…)
So now this parcel of land can fulfill its highest and best purpose – as a parking lot for neighboring Trader Joe’s #100:
Good times.
Hey, are people living inside the Lucky Penny, our Brokedown Palace these days? IDK. But what are the people in there doing?
Oh well.
And Frisco’s Highest-Rated Cake Bakery is Yasukochi’s Sweet Stop on Sutter at Buchanan – And Groove On Its Groovy Logo
Tuesday, December 15th, 2015This is heavy lift – garnering 4.5 Yelp stars at a bakery in the somewhat dreary, windswept Western Addition.
Find it inside the Super Mira Market corner sto’
Le Update: “ALAMO DRAFTHOUSE CINEMA / ANNAPURNA PICTURES TO KEEP LE VIDEO ARCHIVE COLLECTION TOGETHER IN A NEW LOCATION”
Wednesday, December 9th, 2015Just released.
So this is how it ends for Le Video, which, back in the day, managed to fight off a BlockBuster Video what was one week away(!) from opening up less than one block away on 9th Avenue.
But streaming? Nothing beats streaming.
So, it’s come to this.
If you want, read their Yelp reviews from the bottom up, you know, for a laugh.
(I should add that Alamo Drafthouse at the old New Mission is looking awesome, with ticket prices looking surprisingly low to this old-timer.)
“ALAMO DRAFTHOUSE CINEMA AND ANNAPURNA PICTURES JOIN FORCES TO KEEP LE VIDEO ARCHIVE COLLECTION TOGETHER IN A NEW LOCATION
San Francisco, CA – December 9, 2015 – Following the November closing of long-running San Francisco neighborhood video store and archive Le Video, it was announced today that Alamo Drafthouse founder and CEO Tim League, along with Academy Award-nominated producer Megan Ellison and he, has arranged for the preservation of the Le Video collection.
Bay Area residents will soon be able to access portions of the Le Video archive at San Francisco’s new Alamo Drafthouse Cinema. Exact details are still pending, but Alamo Drafthouse will partner with Mission neighborhood video store Lost Weekend to rent selections from the Le Video archive in the spacious lobby of the new theater, along with a deeply curated collection of films from the Lost Weekend archive.
“The experience of going to my local video store when I was young made me the movie fan I am today,” says Drafthouse founder and CEO Tim League. “Despite the fact that great video stores like Le Video are closing all over the country, I am confident that a new iteration of the video store experience can exist, and even thrive today. A passionate video store clerk can do what no algorithm can. They can recommend your new favorite movie, one that can’t be predicted from your past viewing habits.”
The Alamo Drafthouse Cinema will open for Star Wars on the 17th of December. The Lost Weekend lobby video store is slated to begin in January. Subscribe to the Alamo Drafthouse newsletter or follow @drafthouseSF on twitter for news as it happens.”
So tune up your VHS machine and wait for 2016…
When Mephistopheles is just beneath
And he’s reaching up to grab me
And he’s reaching up to grab me
This is one for the good days
And I have it all here
In red blue green
In red blue green
And I have it all here
In red blue green
In red blue green
You are my center when I spin away
Out of control on videotape
On videotape [x6]
Out of control on videotape
On videotape [x6]
This is my way of saying goodbye
Because I can’t do it face to face
So I’m talking to you before it’s too late
Because I can’t do it face to face
So I’m talking to you before it’s too late
No matter what happens now
I shouldn’t be afraid
Because I know today has been the most perfect day I’ve ever seen.
I shouldn’t be afraid
Because I know today has been the most perfect day I’ve ever seen.
