Category: Traveling

No, really. Where ARE we?

Rome, Italy this is not – as maybe the license plate gives away. Strangely enough this is a hundred year old exhibition grounds in San Francisco. Where? Hmmm. I’m turned around again, but think it is near the big park south of the bridge.


WHERE ARE WE? NUMERO UNO.
Is this the Golden Gate Bridge? Holland West? Well I don’t know if you trust me now after the previous bridge debacle, but yes this windmill is in sight of a big rock carved with the inscription: Golden Gate Park. The good wooden shoe wearing folks had a spare wind mill years ago and sent it to San Francisco. Did you know there was a windmill at the gate to the Golden Gate park? Well, neither did I. Let alone two of them. There is this one, The Dutch Windmill and evidently The Murphy Windmill at another gate. Did not see that one. Was it folded back into a wall like a Murphy Bed mayhaps?

WHERE ARE WE? NUMERO DUE.
We all know ‘There is No Place Like Rome’. But Rome, Italy this is not – as maybe the license plate gives away. Strangely enough this is a hundred year old exhibition grounds in San Francisco. Where? Hmmm. I’m turned around again, but think it is near the big park south of the bridge. OK, just Googled it. Palace of Fine Arts on Richardson Street at the end of North Point. In my mind it is not too far from the jaw dropping Pacific Heights. I thought I’d seen everything till I saw Pacific Heights with its extreme hillside stacked straight up to the sky with gazillion dollar mansions bigger than embassies – one on top of the other. Never ever seen such amazing opulence go on and on. Miles and miles of million and billionaires I suspect because really tiny bungalows in Berkley seem to routinely sell way over their half a million dollars asking price, so who on earth knows what these beauties run here in Pacific Heights. Yes, we did look in real estate offices windows. No, we’re not moving unless that Power Ball thing kicks in. All I could think was ‘Shaazaam would you look at those buildings, Sarge?’

WHERE ARE WE? NUMERO TRE.
San Francisco is also justly famous for its streets of Victorian ‘Painted Ladies’ and we saw boodles of them in every part of town I could just sit and look at them for ages but we were flying by and most of my shooting was drive by. OK, but this is a test. Which one of these random houses was in San Francisco and which one was in Iowa? Answer in next issue.

ATTENTION CONE HEADS: BEWARE BERKLEY SCOOP

The idea of sitting in the warm California sun and getting in a few licks had certain appeal, so one afternoon when we saw a nice looking Gelateria on Fourth Ave in Berkley we thought Italian Ice Cream! and went for it.

The idea of sitting in the warm California sun and getting in a few licks had certain appeal, so one afternoon when we saw a nice looking Gelateria on Fourth Ave in Berkley we thought Italian Ice Cream! and went for it. I’m going to be kind here and not use the name of the place. This being California they had esoteric flavors like Green Tea and maybe that should have been a warning but we pressed on. Now, I have to digress for a minute and make sure you know I really like California and California people. I think they are all fun and cool. Well, all except the boyfriend girlfriend running this wannbe chic but sketchy place. I’ve blanked out what flavor I ordered (not Green Tea) but the young man asked me which size cup I wanted, pointing at an assortment of plastic cups. I’m not a cup kind of guy so I said “Cone”. And that’s when he got up on his back legs, looked down his nose and said “This IS a cone-free zone”. He really truly said that. I have witnesses. And he said it like eating a cone was akin to eating live baby harp seals on a stick. “Wait” I said “You’d rather have me throw away plastic than eat a cone?” Blank look back at me, so I took another tact, pointing at a handy visual aid with pictures of ice cream posing in a variety of tasty ways “What is this? ” “Oh, that is a crepe. We can give you the ice cream in a crepe. Which we present in a conical delivery system”

So we waited for Babs and Chip to deliver said conical delivery system (their names were on the tip jar which was Babs and Chips Honeymoon Tip Jar according to the sign). I do not actually remember their actual monikers. Anyway, while we were waiting, Paulette took a picture of a row of ice cream scoops they had mounted on a blank white wall. Oh, no. No picture taking. “For our protection” Dear God in Heaven if anyone on planet earth was ever closer to, or more deserving of, a wedgie. With optional swirly. I stepped back onto the public sidewalk and took another picture. So there.

MIDGE AND STEW DID NOT STARVE IN SAN FRANCISCO

san francisco. We basically ate our way across this town. Stopping only occasionally to shoot the food.

We basically ate our way across this town. Stopping only occasionally to shoot the food. We ate AND took pictures in Chez Panisse and Boulevard and Rose Pistola (the Pink Pistol seems to almost be its Italian name, though I saw nothing in the way of firearms motifs, pastel colored or otherwise) and ate twice at a really high art kind of RetroTechno Japanese restaurant named Ozumo

Some times we think we’ve done it all. You know, the blase yeah, yeah been there done that sort of thing. Travel Note: You haven’t really done it all until you’ve chopsticked your way thru a Bento Box full of sushi and wasabi while watching Godzilla vs Mothra on a big flat screen TV. A small thing maybe, but you really know you aren’t on duty when you’re doing this in the middle of the afternoon. Great food, great casual but attentive service. And classy as they were they didn’t mind me taking a few snaps. I do try to be subtle.

But yet. We got our subtle shutter bug knuckles wrapped in a dippy ice cream shop in the middle of otherwise perfect sunny afternoon in Berkley? Sigh. I may do that story next. We’ll see.

But back to the Boulevard. Boulevard Restaurant was right next to our fun (BAY Bridge view) Harbor Court Hotel. Swell, chic fun to eat food, at Boulevard, amazing really. We dropped in about 10 pm and said Food Please. They shrewedly isolated our roudy late arrivals away from their regular customers in a private room. That room was a barrel valuted and floor to ceiling mirrored wine cellar two steps off the main dining room. The barrel vault appears to be ancient, ancient brick. All very slick and grown up, but still lighthearted. Doesn’t take itself desperately seriously. Food, yes, self, not so much. I don’t know about you but I’m willing to pay more to not be stuffy. Is it just me?

Rose Pistola rocked too. We had so many good Italian appetizers there including tiny zucchinis razor thin sliced and fried like potato chips but green edged and dime sized. Shredded artichoke and parmesan cheese on the next plate over. Aces as a salad, served room temp. And wood oven pizzas. Oh, my. Did we really eat all that? The crowd was somewhat dressy like a lot of people had just ditched the office and forgotten to go home yet. The jazz was cool. The food, like we implied, was to die for.

In the photos at the top here: Desserts, Dates and Clementines at Alice’s, Prosecco with Paulette at Rose Pistola, and appetizers from the deep blue sea at Boulevard shot by our friend Steve, with Martin doing the forklifting.

SIENA COMES TO LOS ANGELES AND SAN FRANCISCO

Siena did come to the West Coast for a few days. And it was good. The Spannocchia parties were a great success with the LA event even getting mentions in the LA Times.

ALICE’S RESTAURANT. AND EDIBLE SCHOOLYARD

Siena did come to the West Coast for a few days. And it was good. The Spannocchia parties were a great success with the LA event even getting mentions in the LA Times. Blizzard-bound Mainers, noses pressed to the windows of the Portland Jetport trying to see even a hint of the runway — well, we didn’t have a snowball’s chance of making that party. But we were all present and accounted for in San Francisco. We met up with Randall Stratton, from Siena, Italy and Gail Cinelli and Erin Cinelli, both from Maine at Alice Water’s famous CHEZ PANISSE in Berkley. How famous is it? Someone just gave me the book “1,000 Things to See Before You Die ”. (Morbid-ish title, if you ask me, which they didn’t) Anyway, under “San Francisco” in the book, there are basically two entries: Cable Cars and Chez Panisse. What a fine and legendary place that is. Oh my. That was a wonder. Freshest ingredients, freshest presentation, nicest people running it. And the building is so fun. Like a tree house for grown ups. Very funky, even for fun Berkley.

The Spannocchia estate outside Siena is all about sustainable agriculture, so an interesting side shoot of the visit to Alice’s Restaurant was that the manager encouraged us to make a few block jog in our trip around Berkley to visit a foundation started by Alice Waters called the Edible Schoolyard .

This was really a demonstration of what one person with a good idea can accomplish. With her vision and guidance the people at Martin Luther King Middle School dug up a concrete parking lot and made a one acre kitchen garden. The kids dig this garden. They dig, plant, weed, harvest it. Then they eat their results and compost anything left over. We took a nice tour with the director who had been a student there herself in the early days of the garden. Another fun part of the tour is when Rusty Lamar former Internship Program Operations Manager at Spannocchia biked over to join the tour. He’s traded the good life in Siena for the good life of Architecture School in Berkley. He’s show in the photo here, at the right, with Spannocchia Foundation executive director Erin Cinelli.

At the party later in the Noe Valley part of town near Mission Dolores Park at Incanto Restaurant, we wined we dined most excellently with old friends and new and then Randall Stratton introduced the newly translated book by Delfino Cinelli about life on a large Italian agricultural estate in the 1920s – with many parallels to today’s farm life. Randall is Spannocchia’s General Manager so he was the perfect editor of his wife’s grandfather’s book.

The book’s translator Archie Stone spoke and both he and Randall were signing copies later. They sold every copy they had with them before we could get to them. The books can be ordered by calling the Spannocchia office in Maine (207-871-5158), and they will ship them as they get shipments in from Spannocchia.

Eventually, Erin says they will have an option for ordering online, but not quite there yet. This is the first ever English language edition of the book: “Castiglion che Dio sol sa” – The Castle that only God knows. Midge later pulled the name of the lucky raffle winner out of a hat and announced that Berry Stafford had won a week at the Castello. Good times indeed.

In the photo here we see Gail Cinelli, Randall Stratton, Sarah Chironi and Erin Cinelli. Sarah is a Spannocchia intern program alum. She and Erin were interns together in 1994. Today, Sarah owns an olive oil production company and mail-order business in St. Helena, California called Elixir Olive Oil.

WHAT. A. TOURIST.

I am (was) such an Out Of Towner. OK, NOW we know that the first fantasy bridge outside our lovely (and wired!) Harbor Court Hotel room’s window is the “BAY Bridge”. They have more than the one? Cool. The Golden Gate Bridge is. . . how shall we put this? More Golden.

Ok, hawk-eyed viewers have accurately pointed out that your intrepid reporter was sooo wrong on his former Golden Gate pictures. Looked good to me. But what do I know. I am (was) such an Out Of Towner. OK, NOW we know that the first fantasy bridge outside our lovely (and wired!) Harbor Court Hotel room’s window is the “BAY Bridge”. They have more than the one? Cool. The Golden Gate Bridge is. . . how shall we put this? More Golden. As you can see from this unretouched view of the actual Golden Gate Bridge below right. I was sorely tempted to do a bit of revisionist history and simply change out the wrong photo for the right. Didn’t want to burn my credibility bridges. But really, there is a golden glow to our Bay Bridge, here on the left, no?

We took our floral based shots from a park just before you go over the Golden Gate Bridge. Our fun friend and native San Franciscan, Paulette (she’s also our neighbor in Panicale in Umbria) took us there. And she said she had never in her California life ever been in this park. As you drive up to this park by the toll booths, it looks a bit generic, in a WPA Park Service sort of way with its concrete gift shop etc, but it is a super garden and a great place to check out the bridgework.

And yes, we had to take this picture to show that Midge does “get” Cable. If you are going . . . to San Fran-cisco, you could not go without trying the Cable Cars could you? Who would ever want to have a car here on vacation? Way, way too easy to get around without one. And you say you have a real need for a car, like to go up to Wine Country? Have Lightning Limo carry you around. They cheerfully took us to the airport way before the crack of dawn. I have never seen a towncar polished in and out like this one we had. About the price of the cabs which, by the way, were not all that impressed with our departure time!