Author: Todd_Lappin

Cortland’s Vega Gets Love from “Check Please Bay Area”

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The folks from KQED’s “Check Please, Bay Area” visited Vega on Cortland recently, and they really liked the homestyle Italian fare. The reviewers all loved, loved, LOVED the Gnocci alla Boscaiola, and one reviewer said she liked Vega so much she visited the restaurant twice. Bravissimo!

Here are the summary comments from the three “Check Please” foodies:

1) “If you’re looking for really great Italian food that’s authentic and homemade, you want to stop at Vega on Cortland.”

2) “Cozy, and definitely the gnocchi in the cream sauce is phenomenal.”

3) “To all my east coast–especially New York Brooklyn — fans, you do not have to go home anymore for good Italian food. You have found it here.”

Watch for yourself:

Tasty Bernal Cooking Class Could Make You a Master Chef

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Neighbor Jillian wrote in to Bernalwood to talk about a tasty new cooking class available here in our tasty little neighborhood:

We are lucky to have a culinary talent living next to us who just started offering cooking classes on Elsie Street in Bernal Heights.

Our neighbor and Bernal resident of 24 years, Douglas Leach (the guy in the grey coat), has opened his own cooking school, called Home Cooking San Francisco. Douglas wants to teach folks who don’t cook often or at all how to make delicious meals at home. He thinks that cooking should be fun and getting dinner on table should be within reach for the average non-cook.

Douglas trained with the founders of the French Laundry restaurant, Sally and Don Schmidt, at their Apple Farm Cooking School in Philo, CA. For ten years he made annual pilgrimages there to learn the art of getting dinner on the table. There is nothing that Douglas loves more than the conviviality of cooking, learning, and eating together.

I took his October 13th class, a Fall menu, on a warm early evening: Chicken braised with Olives, Oranges, Onions and Rosemary, Creamy Polenta with Fontina, Zucchini Noodles, Green Salad with Crostini & Cheese, Fall Fruit Clafouti

Personally, I find cooking intimidating — especially with meat. I can handle a salad, but a whole chicken? Ugh. Doug reviewed the menu with us, and guided us through the process of preparing the meal, talking us through all the details. We started the chicken first since that had to braise in the oven while we prepared the side dishes. I thought “to braise” meant pan frying — nope! It is actually a simple technique: first sear the meat, then bake it in covered pot with liquid. In this case, chicken with chicken broth, olives, onions, oranges and rosemary. Much easier that I’d imagined.

And the results? Normally I never, ever eat legs or thighs (dark meat and tendons, ew!). But after braising in those flavors for 1.5 hours, it was divine. The meat fell off the bone, and the infusion of olives/oranges/onions/rosemary was absolutely delicious. We served the chicken over polenta, with creamy fontina cheese.

Before this class, I would have never attempted this at home, but I now consider this a must repeat recipe.

Douglas loves flavorful hearty, home style cooking, but knows how to do it in healthful way. Like the zucchini noodles, they are literally zucchini cut into thin strips with a mandoline and sauteed with olive oil and salt. Super simple, unexpected and delicious. Fruit Clafouti was also easy, low fat and delicious.

He also covered simple techniques: knife safety & cutting techniques, meal planning, when to substitute ingredients, or how to flip roasting pumpkin seeds for the salad. Check out a video I took for a quick tip.

Douglas’s classes have only 8 students per class. It is very hands-on, so you pick up a lot of learning. It’s suitable for a posse of friends to reserve one night of cooking class together, or ideal for worker bees who live in Bernal and are too knackered to attend a typical weeknight class, because they can just walk on over! No need to drive to the Ferry Building or elsewhere. I had a fun time, and Douglas has great personality. I think his Home Cooking SF is a real Bernal gem.

PHOTOS: Collage, Jillian Moffett. All others, Joha Evans

ABC7 News Team Makes Bernal Heights Sinkhole Disappear

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Dan Noyes is the Chief Investigative Reporter at ABC7News, and he’s probably feeling pretty good about himself right now. That’s because he decided to unleash his investigative kung-fu on a nasty Bernal Heights sinkhole, and he made it go away.

No, we’re not talking about that expanding sinkhole on Ellert that has recently been under repair. This is a different one: There was another sinkhole on Holladay and Costa, and it was making the neighbors on the east side of Bernal rather unhappy. Luckily, the ABC7News uFixIt crew swooped in to embrace the cause:

We have the story of a sink hole that’s been sinking for years and people in the neighborhood are fed up with the inaction over getting it repaired, but when the ABC7News I-Team showed up things got rolling.

People who live near the sink hole tell us the ongoing patch job is a quick fix that’s not safe and it’s a waste of tax dollars. They wanted the sink hole in San Francisco’s Bernal Heights fixed the right way, once and for all, so they contacted uFixIt for help.

Voila!

In other news, a baby was born in Bernal Heights, and ABC7News UFixIt Team made it happen. Elsewhere, Little Timmy on Tompkins Avenue used to walk only with the aid of leg braces, but thanks to the ABC7News UFixIt Team, Timmy just finished in the top 10 during last weekend’s New York City Marathon. And when the sun rose this morning, bringing light where formerly there was only darkness, did you think that was just a coincidence? Ha! As if! Please send your cards and thank-you notes to the ABC7News UFixIt Team.

Reporting live from Bernal Heights, this is Bernalwood Action News.

Bernalwood Action News

Sutrito Tower Now Available for Google Earth

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Sutrito Tower, the microwave antenna array atop Bernal Hill, has been an icon of our neighborhood for generations. Now now you can add a digital model of it to Google Earth to make the virtual 3D map of Bernal Heights even more realistic.

For this we must give a nod to Joe Thomas, aka Jobius, the neighborhood gentleman who also gave the tower its quasi-official name. As Joe explains:

It’s possible to create models in Google Earth using photo textures with an “alpha channel,” so you can see through parts of the building.  That’s exactly what we want here, so I went out to take a few pictures on this beautiful blue-sky weekend. The blue made it easy to “chroma-key” out the background. I only had a good angle on the southwest-facing side of the tower, so I cloned that onto the other sides. I think this exaggerates the number of antennas, but I’m okay with that.

You can see the results above. Slick!

Want a digital model of Sutrito Tower of your very own so you can zoom about like a virtual red-tailed hawk over Bernal Hill and Cortland dale? Just download a copy of the .kmz file, fire up Google Earth, and away you go.

Autumn Light in the La Lengua Liminal Zone

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Autumn Light

I drove down Mission Street last weekend, tracing the path of the Liminal Zone boundary that unites the Dominion of Bernalwood with the upstart La Lengua Autonomous Region.

Prickly geopolitics aside, what I noticed most was the gorgeous hue of the early evening light, and how it so clearly screamed AUTUMN! There’s something about it that felt so primal, so seasonal, and so right, which may also explain why I suddenly found myself craving hot cider.

PHOTO: Telstar Logistics

The Sights and Sounds of Pavement Progress on Precita

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There was some big excitement happening on Precita Avenue this morning, as I awoke to the thrilling spectacle of an asphalt scraper-flume thingy doing its asphalt-launching trick right outside my home.

At long last and after many months, it seems the Precita sewer replacement and repaving project is finally nearing completion.

The asphalt scraper-flume thingy is a real monster. Properly speaking, it’s called an asphalt milling machine. It’s a giant beast on tank-like tracks that looks as if it should be operated by Jawas, and it makes a throaty roaring sound that says “Your Tax Dollars at Work!”

All motorists, cyclists, and skateboarders who regularly traverse the Precitaville Administrative Region are excited for our namesake roadway receive its final layer of fresh asphalt. Smooth at last! Smooth at last! Yay, infrastructure!

PHOTOS: Telstar Logistics

Star Sighting: Bernal Photographer Adrian Mendoza

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I had a few minutes of free time on Sunday afternoon, so I decided to check out the reception for the Bernal artists whose work is currently on display at the Inclusions Gallery on Cortand. I’m glad I did because a) the collection on display is terrific, and b) I had the pleasure of meeting Adrian Mendoza for the first time.

As you may recall, Adrian is a recent addition to the Bernal Heights community, but in a few short months his photographs have appeared in this blog many times, and I have been very grateful for his photographic skill, journalistic instincts, and unfettered generosity. Meeting Adrian was a pleasure, and if you happen to see him while he’s out and about, I encourage you to smile and say “cheese.” He’ll make you look fabulous.

Also, I’ll publicly say something here that I’ve said in private many times: One of my favorite things about editing Bernalwood is that I get to meet so many of the people whose stories grace these pages. The pattern usually works something like this: I hear about a story through the grapevine, then publish it on Bernalwood. Then, not too long after the story appears, I meet the subject out and about in the neighborhood.

I love that pattern, and the conversations that take place when it occurs. To me it feels like the best of both words: a virtual community that fosters meaningful real-world connections close to home. So thank you, Bernal Heights, for sharing your stories with us, and for just being you.

PHOTO: Telstar Logistics

Tales from the Bernal Heights Projects, Class of 1971

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Eric Fermon doesn’t live in Bernal Heights anymore.

But when he did, Eric was a young kid from the Bernal Heights Projects on the south side of Bernal, alongside I-280. Richard Nixon was president, and life wasn’t always easy, but Eric remembers it fondly. He wrote to Bernalwood recently to share some of his memories of what it was like here back in 1971:

I remember so many things about Bernal Heights while we lived there between 1967 and 1971, but the sunny days and the vantage point from living near the top of Ellsworth St. on the south side overlooking the 280 as it snakes through the Portola Valley are encompassing memories. We arrived there one sunny afternoon in a rented moving van driven by my cousin Big Mike who couldn’t have been older than 16 or 17 at the time. Pulling up over the crest of Ellsworth St and parking on the right side of the street just a few feet from the apartment entry way is a stark memory. We had a bunch of oranges contained in a red plastic mesh bag and my sister Gladys had been eating oranges all morning and when we got there she was itching like crazy and her skin had broken out with hives.

We moved into 832 Ellsworth that day and as far as I could tell, leaving the Potrero Hill projects and moving to the Bernal Heights projects was a step up.

Here’s some of the things I remember most about living in Bernal Heights:

Climbing Bernal Heights hill on a sunny day or flying kites up there or at Holly Park on a windy day.

Going to the Library and nearby play ground on Cortland Ave.

Throwing dirt bombs on the Muni bus that drove up Ellsworth St.

Walking home with my two sisters and at times with my older brother from the Potrero Hill child care center to Bernal Heights on afternoons when we either didn’t have a ride home or money to take the bus. We would walk down Connecticut St. and cross Army (now Ceasar Chavez Ave) onto Evans Ave., then pick up Toland St. and walk through the host of industrial and construction companies until we got to Industrial St. We’d then make a right on Industrial St. and cross under the 101 overpass then march through Farmers Market and past Sun Valley Dairy before heading up the hill on Crescent Ave. until we got to Ellsworth St.

Attending Paul Revere in the 5th Grade and taking class in the Bungalow that was located in the school yard.

Having races in the school yard at Paul Revere to see who was the fastest in the class and me being second to a girl named Sharon, who incidentally came to Aptos Jr High in my eighth or ninth grade year. I had a brief crush on her at Aptos and didn’t even realize it was the same girl from Paul Revere until she reminded me one day some years later as young adults while helping a family member move.

Fond memories of Claire my very first grade school crush. She was hispanic, had long black hair, a pretty face, beautiful smile, athletic body and happened to be a pretty good kick-ball player.

Making friends with Keith Lewis a basketball prodigy who saved me from Danny the bully and who eventually attended Lowell HS where I had the privilege to play against him in a few varsity basketball games while I attended Lincoln HS.

Watching my older brother Carl run down the hill and return triumphantly riding his 3 speed Schwinn StingRay bike back up Ellsworth St. after telling him a teenager from down the hill took the bike from me while I was riding it out in front of the apt.

Seeing local teenagers sniffing glue out of a paper bag in the bushes right across from our apt. and later while walking back home from the corner store seeing one of those teenagers on the roof of a house crying and whacked-out threatening to jump off the roof, while a group of people tried to talk him down.

Meeting the new next door neighbor Sheldon and eating Mushroom Pizza for the first time with him & listening to him talk about his parents having sex.

Learning how to bowl at Mission Bowl while participating in a Saturday morning youth bowling league and looking forward to eating the best french fries on the planet there, and knowing that with just the right amount of ketchup they were extra-extra special.

I’ve lived in a number of places since then but the time we lived in Bernal Heights was an awakening period of sorts for me because I lived there between the ages of 6 and 10 years old. The few notable memories listed above characterize my stay in the Bernal Heights projects and make me a proud member of it’s Class of ’71.

The Coda? Eric is an Air Force veteran who lives in Seattle. He does information systems work for AT&T, and is currently writing a book.

PHOTO: 832 Ellsworth in 2011, by Telstar Logistics

Fashion Report: Winterish Weather Comes to Bernal Hill

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New neighbor Rally P moved to Bernalwood recently from Boston, and he is justifiably fascinated by local meteorological and sartorial trends:

WINTER HAS HIT THE CITY! How do I know? Everyone is suddenly wearing their winter hats! Check out that sky… that’s not the fog, those are WINTER clouds that have swooped in from the great frigid North plummeting our temps to a bone chilling… 50 degrees :P.

Oh snap!

FAB PHOTO MONTAGE: Rally P

Bernalmorphism: Why Our Seismologist Draws Bernal Heights as a Dog

/ Todd_Lappin

Great news. Julian Lozos, Bernalwood’s senior seismologist, successfully raised the funds he needed to begin production of the San Franthropomorphism 2012 Calendar. And in a recent email alert to his friends and financiers, Julian explained why he decided to represent Bernal Heights as a dog:

The dog is Bernal Hill. Why? Because I lived in Bernal Heights when I lived in San Francisco, and I want to represent it because I miss it. Bernal’s a dog because, well, you try to keep track of the number of dogs you see on the hill or being walked down Cortland Ave. Bet you need more than four paws worth of fingers! The coloration of his fur is based on the red chert rock that makes up the hill. The underlying curly patterns on the fur represent the folds in the chert. The black patterning is based loosely on the radio tower at the summit of the hill.

Julian says Bernal Doggie will make a cameo appearance on the calendar’s credits page.  We’ll let you know when he finishes work on the project and makes the calendar available for sale.

Toast Bernal Heights Artists at Inclusions Gallery, Sunday

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You probably already know this, but Bernalwood is fat with creative people. We practically grow ’em here. And we’re lucky to have a local gallery that celebrates our neighborhood Art Heroes as local celebrities.

The current show at the Inclusions Gallery on Cortland is devoted exclusively to Bernal Heights artists, and there’s a reception to honor them happening there on Sunday, November 6 from 2 to 6 pm.

It is with great pleasure and excitement that we present, Inclusions 3 – Art From Within Bernal Heights. This year’s annual show features an eclectic array of paintings, sculpture, photographs, assemblage, prints and glasswork from 26 Bernal Heights resident artists.  Each year this show highlights the diverse artistic talent, among us, offering an opportunity to celebrate, and support, the creativity within our local community.

Emperor Norton is Alive and Well and Living in Bernal Heights

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His Imperial Majesty, Emperor Norton I was a nineteenth century San Francisco eccentric who fancied himself Emperor of the United States. Joseph Amster is a twenty-first century Bernal Heights resident who resurrects the spirit and dress of Emperor Norton to lead tourists on downtown historic tours. From his media kit:

Amster, a displaced journalist with an acting background decided he wanted to create a walking tour with a twist, offering his patrons a unique experience. “I decided early on that I wanted to do my tour in character and researched the historical figures from San Francisco’s past,” says Amster. “At first I thought about doing the tour as Mark Twain, but the more I read about Emperor Norton, the more fascinated I became with him.” After completing his research, Amster took on the character of Emperor Norton, complete with uniform, beard and plumed top hat. He now offers his tour to anyone with an interest in history.

A businessman originally from England and South Africa, Joshua Abraham Norton arrived in San Francisco in 1849 with $40,000, which after some shrewd investing, increased to $250,000 (which would be $3 million today). After losing his fortune to a bad rice investment, Norton disappeared, returning to San Francisco in 1859, declaring himself Norton I, Emperor of the United States and Protector of Mexico. In any other city, he would have been dismissed as a madman, but the people of San Francisco embraced his reign. During his lifetime, Norton printed his own currency (which was accepted by San Francisco merchants), was served gratis in the city’s restaurants and always had the best seats at the theater. He also issued numerous proclamations, including calling for a bridge to be built between San Francisco and Oakland, and the founding of a league of nations. Today the Bay Bridge and United Nations stand as testaments to Emperor Norton’s vision.

As part of preserving Emperor Norton’s legacy, Amster is seeking to pay proper tribute to this visionary. “San Francisco has no memorial to Emperor Norton,” says Amster. “No streets are named after him, no statue has been erected, and there is no historical marker. The only plaque dedicated to his memory was on the old Transbay Terminal.” That plaque now rests with the Transbay Joint Powers Authority, and will be part of an interpretive exhibit when the new Transbay Terminal opens. The tributes Amster proposes include naming Commercial Street’s Empire Park (Emperor Norton’s address when the 1870 census listed his occupation as “Emperor”) Emperor Norton Park, and naming the Bay Bridge in Emperor Norton’s honor.

Fine proposals, all. And kudos to Joseph Amster to reviving the spirit of Emperor Norton in high fidelity and grand style. Oh, and if you happen to see him in full Norton I regalia waiting for the bus to take him to work downtown, do not be alarmed. To the contrary, approach him with Bernal pride and admiration, because he is clearly one of our own.

PHOTO: Top, Joseph Amster as Emperor Norton, by  Chris Ellen Montgomery. Below, Emperor Norton I, circa 1880, via Wikimedia Commons