Neighbor John reports from a seasonal horror show currently on display in Bernal Heights:
For the past few Halloweens, a few of us on Gladys Street have been collaborating, carving upwards of 20 pumpkins in and afternoon and then creating the “Grisly Picket Fence of Death” to display ’em. We know other houses are also getting into the … ahem … spirit, so we wondered if you’d want to post shots of Bernal’s holiday pride.
Bwwwwwaaaaaahahahahahahahaha!
PHOTOS: Neighbor John
Neighbor Brian just filed a Found Feline Report with the Bernalwood Office of Animal Repatriation. He says:
This black kitty showed up in our back yard on Moultrie near Tompkins about two weeks ago, and it hasn’t left. Every day since then, the kitty has been in our yard meowing and looking for some love. He doesn’t seem to be a stray and is very affectionate, loves to be pet, and will even let you pick him up and hold him. He doesn’t have a collar, but seems to be pretty healthy. I’ve kept my eyes open around town for ‘lost cat’ signs but haven’t seen any. We’d love to reunite this pretty black kitty with its owner if possible or give him a home if we can’t find his owner. Unfortunately we’ve got a couple cats already, and can’t really take in another. Hopefully, if we can’t his owner, a fellow Bernalwoodian would want to take him in.
It’s been some time since we last heard of a case of succulent theft, but Neighbor Brian reports that the horticultural bandits have struck his home… again!
We’ve written to you before and were very appreciative when you posted about the succulent thieves who hit the planter in front of our house. Unfortunately, the eight months since the original theft, we’ve have a few more cacti and succulents lifted from our planter. It sucks. It make us angry and, worst of all, suspicious of everyone who walks down our street. The previous thefts seemed at least ‘respectable’ in that only a small plant was lifted, but this latest theft is just ridiculous. Half the f**king planter is gone! I’m pissed and am very close to knocking out the entire planter and replanting everything that is left in our back yard. At least in the back yard, I’ve only got to worry about the family of raccoons living nearby — and they’re just so damn cute!
PHOTO: Neighbor Brian
This should not come as a surprise, but it is very sad nevertheless: The much-loved Four Star Video on Cortland has announced plans to close-up shop. In an email today headlined “The end of the movie,” owners Ken and Amy Shelf write:
Dear Neighbors,
It is with heavy hearts that we announce that Four Star Video is closed, effective September 26, 2012. We are no longer renting movies.
Succulence continues to operate, and will be moving into the whole store over the next bunch of weeks. See the bottom of this letter for more details.
When we bought Four Star, in March of 2007, we projected that the business probably had 3-5 years of life left in it. We also optimistically committed ourselves to keeping it open for as long as we could. Dashing our hopes but exceeding our expectations, we made it 5 ½ years. But now, we must move on.
For quite a while Four Star has existed to pay its employees and serve the neighborhood, but it has not been a profitable enterprise. We’ve hit other dips in the road and have made (sometimes difficult) adjustments that have kept Four Star open. We shortened our hours, we changed our staffing schedules, we offered a membership plan for customers, and we stopped paying for health insurance for our employees. That one really felt terrible. Of course, we also opened Succulence. That has added growth and new dimensions to the store and to our lives. The two businesses together have worked in amazing cooperation. But it does take a lot to run them both – one is growing while the other is shrinking, and the combination has often made us feel as though we are simultaneously running our hardest and staying in place. That has been exhausting and discouraging.
It recently became clear that a change at Four Star was required, and we just don’t feel as though hiking the prices or reducing our ordering of new films or any other approach to keep Four Star afloat is likely to serve any long term goal, and maybe not any short term goal either. There is a quality of experience that we’ve offered at Four Star that we don’t want to compromise, and we can’t maintain that quality and continue to reduce expenses.
We love Four Star Video and we know many, many of you do, too – you tell us all the time! That makes us so proud, and makes this decision so scary.
Like so many others, we have been thinking about technology, the economy, our changing society and what it all means. The opportunity to put on your shoes and jacket, walk to Cortland, and rent a DVD was a rare privilege and a wonderful feature to our neighborhood. We are saddened and disappointed to see that go, but we are not surprised. Certain ways we live our lives are changed forever, making some wonderful things obsolete. That is not happening but has already happened. It is indeed full of a lot of loss.
Change is a must, that much is clear. The goodness or badness of change is sometimes just not the point. The inevitability of change, however, carries the lessons to us: we cannot hold onto what is simply because we know it and love it; we cannot remain bitter about the inevitable, because then we are just left with bitterness; we cannot know what good will come!
Let us also heed this reminder not to take the things we love and value for granted. Enjoy them while you can! Take responsibility for their survival! We do have some ability to decide what we will support, where we will compromise, and how we spend our money. More here than most places – that is a privilege we haven’t yet lost. Each of us plays a part in determining where value lies in our world.
Thank you, thank you, wonderful Bernal Heights, for supporting Four Star for so long. Thank you to all of the previous owners of Four Star Video, who gave us such a gem. Thank you to the probably hundreds of people who have worked at the store over the years. And continuing thanks to you, dear customers, for coming in, hanging out, talking film, talking life, and changing and growing with us and the times.
We love bringing you art and plants and things that add to your quality of life, and we are grateful for the opportunity to keep doing it. We will be selling movies in the store for a least two – and probably more like four – more weeks. Our transition plan is a work in progress, but we have a lot of movies and need to get them to loving homes. Maybe you want to own a piece of Bernal History or want to get some stocking-stuffers in advance. Stock up on some TV series you haven’t watched yet? Prepare for the collapse of the internet and global infrastructure by making sure you have entertainment stashed away in your survival bunker?
Kids’ movies are $4, library DVDs are $5, Library BluRays are $8, Criterion, foreign and documentary films are $10. New Releases are $12 and Series are sold by the season for $10 – $15. 10% discount if you buy 10 or more movies, and a 20% discount if you buy 20 or more movies. If you want more, let’s talk. If you want VHS tapes you are a super hero. Also, effective immediately, store hours are 10am to 8pm. We’d love to give you store credit (at Succulence or to purchase films) for any unused blocks or KenFlix days if you are interested in that. Your continued support means a lot to us.
We are sorry we couldn’t keep Four Star Video open forever.
With love, Amy and Ken Shelf
PHOTO: Telstar Logistics
Neighbor Eric, co-owner of the fashionable Lucky Horseshoe bar on Cortland, invites wannabe barflies to perform as extras in a movie that’s being filmed on location at the bar today, tomorrow, and Friday:
A local film production company is shooting a movie in the Lucky Horseshoe called “Bar America,” and the producers need extras as barflies in the movie. Want to be a star?!?
I thought you’d like to be in the know, and if you feel like posting about the opportunity for neighborhood folks to be extras in this film, please let them know to email patrick@gorockbridge.com or text Patrick on 925-719-4648 about the interest. They’ll be looking for roughly 20 people on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday.
The movie stars John Candy’s son, Chris in his first motion picture role and some other great talent as well. They’ll be filming all week and wrapping at the bar on Saturday afternoon.
Bernal’s finest artisanal pickle merchant is savoring a moment in the media spotlight.
Neighbor Paul from the fabulous Paulie’s Pickling inside the 331 Cortland marketplace tells Bernalwood that his shop will be featured as part of Ryan Scott’s “Food Rush” show on the Live Well Network (Comcast channel 195, broadcast channel 7.2 or 7.3) on Saturday, September 8 at 4pm and 930 pm.
However, if you want just can’t wait to see our local pickle celebrities strut their stuff (and hear Neighbor Paul say lots of nice things about our neighborhood), check out the online clip:
Ryan [Scott] heads to Paulie’s Pickling in San Francisco’s Bernal Heights neighborhood to explore the place where he gets the pickles for his corn flake crusted fried chicken sandwich. While in the pickling kitchen, Ryan gets some pickling 101.
Congratulations to Paulie’s! Also: YUM! Here’s to many more celebrity accolades in the future.
Neighbor Yatima and I recently spent some time looking at this photo, which was taken last weekend atop Bernal Hill by a Bernalwood reporter. Savvy Bernalese will immediately recognize this as the southwest corner of the hill; it’s the area that the local skiiers call Rock Quarry.
But there’s another reason why this terrain looks so familiar, and Neighbor Yatima put her finger on it:
Can’t believe we landed a nuclear rover right there. Awesome.
She’s referring to the glamorous Curiosity Rover that landed recently on the surface of Mars. Sure enough, Curiosity’s photos of the Martian terrain sure do look an awful lot like this cozy corner of Bernal Hill. So that got me wondering. What if…
I decided to see if the original Bernal photo had been doctored. Sure enough, when I examined the digital file, I noticed some odd fragmentation along the edges of the image that would be consistent with a photo that had been cropped to narrow the perspective. Hmmm…
If the image had been cropped, what parts of the photo had been removed? The next step was to restore the image to it’s original size and perspective. Using vectored antipixel algorithms, Bernalwood was able to reconstruct and enhance the base image.
What we found was rather shocking:
That’s right. A full reconstruction of the original image reveals the Curiosity rover perched atop Bernal Hill. But how? How can Curiosity be sitting on Bernal Hill, when we all know that right now it is parked inside a crater on Mars?
Fellow Citizens of Bernalwood, it seems we may have a Capricorn One situation on our hands. Indeed, our investigation suggests that the Curiosity rover has been atop Bernal Hill this entire time, and that the whole “mission to Mars” is little more than an elaborate ruse.
But who would perpetrate such a hoax? And who has the technological capacity to pull it off? As I studied the reconstructed image, I noticed a blue insignia on the rover’s nuclear battery pack:
It wasn’t clear enough to read, so I tried to zoom and enhance it. That’s when the last piece of the puzzle finally fell into place:
The truth really is out there.
A few days ago, Neighbor David took this wonderful photo from the top of Bernal Hill. In it, we see our own Sutrito Tower playing peekaboo with its fog-shrouded big brother, Sutro Tower. Spectacular!
PHOTO: dhmspector on Instgram
I’m pleased to report that the swarm of raccoons that recently attempted to invade my home has retreated back into the jungles of Bernal Heights. For the moment. I hope.
Yet wild animals are still active here in our Wild Kingdom, with two critter sightings this week that are worthy of note.
Yesterday Neighbor Christin captured the above photo of the Dissident Parrots of Bernal Heights while the birds were having a meeting in a tree on Prentiss Street, just below the hill. Bernalwood’s sources tell us the birds had gathered to discuss the planned downtown development at 8 Washington Street, and one parrot was overheard saying, “If Aaron Peskin is against it, then we must be in favor of it!”
Meanwhile, elsewhere in Bernal…
Neighbor Catherine sent in this report from Treat Avenue:
Evidently a Bernal native, this opossum has been making daily house calls to us on the north slope.
Eeeek!
PHOTOS: Above, Neighbor Christin, below, Neighbor Catherine
Neighbor Jean says:
I was walking our dog and 7am down Cortland this morning and started seeing all the garbage tossed out of the city garbage cans and random poop bags all around. Then I saw the broken, taped and cardboarded window at Liberty, and a big dump of garbage in front of the New Wheel. Kind of like someone went on a mini rampage last night.
Ew! I anyone has any information about this incident, please contact the SFPD’s Ingleside precinct tip line at (415) 575-4444.
UPDATE: Neighbor Jean follows up: “Looks like some random drunk guy did it all at 3am…they caught him on surveillance, so karma is a bitch, we hope!”
PHOTO: Telstar Logistics
Just a quick reminder that deadlines are fast approaching for your opportunity to win a pair of tickets to the Noisette festival as part of Bernalwood’s air guitar photo contest.
So far, photo submissions have been sparse. Which is to say, non-existent. Frankly, I worry this may mean Bernal Heights is full of old farts who would rather sit at home watching DVD re-runs of Lawrence Welk than spend two minutes taking a goofy photo that could win free tickets to a glamorous music and food festival. And that would be shattering to our collective self-image. You know I’m right.
I’ve extended the deadline until Monday, July 30. Send your pics to win two free tix! Dammit!
PHOTO: Air Guitar… So What, by Mia Takahara
Though they look glamorous, this is not another Bernalwood fashion shoot. Instead, here we see Laura (8), Hanna (11), Max (1), and mother Lene waiting for the Bernal Heights Branch Library to open, so they can check out a Family Pass and get complimentary admission (for the whole kit and caboodle!) to the California Academy of Sciences.
Any San Francisco resident who has a library card and kids in their family can do this, at any branch library. Individual branches have passes for a rotating selection of 15 “Participating Attractions,” which include SFMOMA and the zoo, at different times. A single pass is good for one or two adults accompanied by up to four children under 18.
Check out SFKids.org or the S.F. Public Library’s website for more information.
Recent visitors to the Harvest Hills Market on the southwest corner of Precita Park may have noticed an odd sign in the window.
The sign shows a picture of Charlie, the vintage tuna mascot, along with Starkist’s venerable motto, “Sorry Charlie.” The text then goes on to explain that Harvest Hills no longer sells produce to “some local cafe owners and store owners,” to ensure that nearby merchants do not buy-out Harvest Hills’s inventory of low-priced produce.
Of course, the Starkist allusion can only be a reference to Charlie’s Cafe, located just a few doors north on Folsom Street. It would appear there are some unresolved issues between the two merchants. We suspect it isn’t only about produce sales.
*Awkward!*
Neighbor Dan wrote to Bernalwood with this comment:
Not sure if you’ve heard about the ongoing feud between Harvest Hills and Charlies, but it appears to have gotten worse, judging from the pictured sign that was posted recently to the store window. It confirms what Charlie has told me, namely that Harvest Hills employees are refusing to sell produce to employees of Charlies Cafe.
I should start off by saying I probably don’t have all the facts. That means it’s possible Harvest Hills has good reasons for turning away Charlies’ employees when they want to purchase bananas or onions. And even if Harvest Hills doesn’t have a good reason, the store owners are probably well within their rights to decide who they do business with. That said, Charlie tells me he’s attempted to buy food fewer than 15 times in the two years that Harvest Hills has been in business, and then only when food he purchased ahead of time has run out or unexpectedly gone bad. If true, that doesn’t sound like Charlie’s is “buying all of one or two produce products that we have.”
Harvest Hills should know that when I (a customer of both establishments) can’t get avocado on my sandwich because the batch Charlie purchased earlier that morning went bad, the refusal to sell Charlie a single avocado affects me negatively. So forgive me if I don’t buy the notion that Harvest Hills is putting its customers first. More to the point, the “Sorry Charlie” title and image seem unnecessarily rude. Is this really the way fellow business people should treat each other?
An Anonymous Bernal Tuna harpooned a metaphor to make a larger point:
I’ve heard it all before. Chicken of the Sea. I always wanted to be that; sure, who didn’t? Have your bulging salmon torso spinning out of control, like a marlin on a can of tuna. Now I’ve accepted myself for who I am, a scrawny tuna. I lead a pretty quiet existence now, swimming up a private stream near Precita Park. While munching on some flies yesterday, I overhead some humans chatting about the sign at the Harvest Hills Market that said “Sorry Charlie”. It brought up all that stuff up again – too thin, too small, not pink enough, eyes too wide-set like a halibut. I pooped so damn much in the stream even the frogs stopped croaking. So, can I just ask just once, “Can we all try to get along?”
As a factual matter, Bernalwood will merely add that Harvest Hills does indeed have low prices on high-quality produce. Two examples caught our eye last weekend: sugar snap peas for $1.25 a pound, and fresh shitake mushrooms for $2.95 a pound. Get ’em while they last.
UPDATE: Neighbors report that the Sorry Charlie signs have now been removed from the windows of Harvest Hills
UPDATE 2: In the comments, a reader directs us to some backstory on the controversy, which has also spilled out onto Yelp.
PHOTO: Telstar Logistics
Bernalwood 
