Bernal Supper Club Morphs into Tasty Pop-Up Restaurant

/ Todd_Lappin / 10 Comments

Check this out: A trio of very dedicated amateur chefs from Bernal Heights have decided to go semi-pro. Called the Bernal Supper Club, they’re taking their kitchen game up a notch by launching a pop-up restaurant that will be open just one night a week. Their pal Theresa brings the deets:

Bernal Supper Club started out as a group of friends who got together at least once a week for dinner. The menu was usually decided around 1 pm, depending on who was inspired to cook and what was fresh. The guest list was never finalized until all the food was gone. People gathered through shouts over the back fence, word of mouth, and last minute calls. The core group all lived in Bernal Heights and, like the neighborhood, they included young and old, professionals and artists, gay and straight, and a whole heck of a lot of dogs.

Miles Carnahan gradually became the focal point of the group as he developed as a chef and introduced a farmer’s market focus. The festivities deserved commemoration, so Tamara Radler became the archivist and created the name Bernal Supper Club. She posted photos of the food and “framily” (friends who are family and family who are friends) recording the culinary development of the event.

What started as a framily affair has now entered a new era. The next generation, the children of our friends (and now an integral part of the framily), Tony Ferrari, Jonathan Sutton, and their foody friends, are phenomenal chefs. They’ve brought Bernal Supper Club to a level we never imagined– Bernal Supper Club is going pop-up!

Every Monday night in August, Bernal Supper Club will be serving farmer’s market inspired cuisine at The Corner (18th & Mission) from 5:30 – 10:00. Branching out to the larger community, our dream is to keep the framily spirit, embrace the larger community, and eat amazing, seasonal food. We hope to see you there.

Check out the menu from the first installment of the Bernal Supper Club, last weekend:

Yum. The only obvious flaw here is that the Bernal Supper Club is actually happening in The Mission. (WTF?!) Happily, Bernalwood has been assured that an effort to find a suitable Bernal location is in the works. So the meantime, get your visa renewed for a Monday night visit to The Mission this month, park your fixie outside, and check out the Bernal Supper Club at The Corner during a Monday night in August.

Find out more on the Bernal Supper Club blog or on the Facebook.

PHOTOS: Top, Bernal Supper Club Chefs. Bottom, Corn Tortellini from the August 1 BSC. Photos courtesy of Jon Hope

Instrument-Headed Mutants Invade South Bernal

/ Todd_Lappin / 3 Comments

Instrument Heads

I spied these two instrument-headed mutants strolling down the street in South Bernal last weekend. Let’s call them Mr. Keyboard and Mr. Peavey. They seemed harmless enough, but it’s just fortunate they weren’t plugged in. I half-expected to see someone with a Stratocaster or hi-hat head walking right behind them.

And for all you videogame-addicted kiddies out there, let this serve as a warning: Step away from Rock Band and Guitar Hero, or you could end up just like these people.

PHOTO: Telstar Logistics

Poultry Alert!! Did You Lose This Chicken? A Neighbor Found It.

/ Todd_Lappin / 10 Comments

This one definitely goes in the “Oh-So Bernalwood” file. Just moments ago the Bernalwood newsroom received an email from Reader Penny, who writes…

I would appreciate it if you could post something about a lost chicken which my husband found early this morning on the North side of Bernal Hill. Above Waltham. We have it in our care. Looks to be a Rhode Island Red.

If this chicken is yours, please chime in with a comment below, and we will gladly put you in touch with Penny. Note also: The photo above is just a generic photo of a Rhode Island Red, and NOT the actual found chicken. UPDATE: Penny sent in a photo of the chicken she found, and it now appears above.

PHOTO: Found chicken, by Reader Penny

True Crime! Video Shows Bernal Bandit Stealing Succulent

/ Todd_Lappin / 4 Comments

Ever wonder how those sneaky succulent thieves operate? How DO they abscond with plants from the front yards of green-thumbed Bernal residents? Wonder no more, because Bernalwood has obtained footage that shows exactly how one such theft unfolded.

[Insert Drudge-like **Exclusive!! Must Credit Bernalwood!!** stipulations here]

Yesterday a tipster sent Bernalwood a security camera video that shows a guy stealing succulents from the front of a house on Prospect Avenue. (Thank you!) In the video, the theft was a drive-by; The perp parked at the corner, captured the unsuspecting plant, then sped away with the stolen goods in his getaway car.

But before you go calling Officer Elton with a hot tip, remember: This video was taken in 2010, which means the trail on this particular caper has likely gone cold. Yet this video is satisfying nevertheless, because it strips some of the mystery from Bernal’s Succulent Stealing Crime Spree.

UPDATE 3 Aug, 2011: Corroborating the “drive-by” plant theft technique shown in the video, a Bernal neighbor emailed a more recent witness report to us this afternoon:

We live on Nevada St. right off of Cortland and a few nights ago my dad while parking our van saw a red car (he could not tell what model and make) that stopped in the middle of our block and dropped a tall male off who proceded to walk down the block where there was a pot with a bougainvillea plant.  My dad said the man picked up the potted plant and the red car drove down to the corner of Cortland and Nevada and picked the guy up.  My dad who was parked in front of our house honked the moment he saw the guy pick up the plant but by the time my dad could yell or something they were gone.

Is Paulie’s Pickling the Best Jewish Deli in San Francisco?

/ Todd_Lappin / 29 Comments

Paulie's Pickles

Lately, one of my favorite things to do is to head over to Cortland just as I’m getting hungry. Once there, I like to wander up and down the street while allowing the fantastic variety of foodie delights to tempt my palate. Recently I find myself gravitating toward Paulie’s Pickling in the gourmet marketplace at 331 Cortland, and for a very good reason: Paulie’s may be the best Jewish deli in San Francisco.

You’d hardly know it from the name, which highlights Paulie’s roots as a glamorous purveyor of fine gourmet pickles. And indeed, the pickles are super-delicious. But since they set up shop on Cortland, Paulie’s menu has expanded to include some of the finest Jewish deli sandwiches and sides one is likely to find this side of Crown Heights.

There are no bagels, mind you. (Not yet, at least.) But the beef brisket sandwich is juicy perfection squeezed between two slices of rye — and you can even get it with chopped liver if you’re feeling extra-adventurous. There’s also corned beef, house-cured lox, and that rarest-of-rare treats on the West Coast: kick-ass whitefish salad.

This was my brisket sandwich, which came stuffed with yummy homemade cole slaw:

Paulie's Pickles

And this was a lox sandwich served open-faced on a baguette:

Paulie's Pickles

They’ll even make you a gen-u-ine old-school egg cream:

Paulie's Pickles

All of it is superb, and it’s a shame that more people aren’t clued in to this hidden gem. My hunch is that name may be part of the problem: Though pickles remain Paulie’s signature product, the business has expanded to become much, much more, as proprietors Paul and Elizabeth Ashby have curated a simple but perfectly executed collection of house-made Jewish foods. Yum!

My advice: Stop calling it Paulie’s Pickling. Start calling it Paulie’s Pickling and Deli, visit often. Savor every bite.

PHOTOS: Telstar Logistics

Let Us Now Appreciate Jackie Jones and Her Dancing Cat

/ Todd_Lappin / 5 Comments

Jackie Jones and Her Dancing Cat

Jackie Jones has been a Saturday fixture at Bernal’s own Alemany Farmer’s Market for as long as I can remember, entertaining foodies — and their kids — with her charming musical act. She was at Alemany last weekend, and — the passage of time being what it is — I confess that each time I see her I always fear it may be the last. She is a Bernal Heights treasure.

Jackie’s instruments include a washboard guitar, a hand saw she plays like a fiddle, and a battered boombox she uses to DJ her backbeats via well-worn cassette tapes. Best of all, however, is Jackie’s feline sidekick — a dancing wooden controlled by a foot pedal.

Now more than 80 years old, Jackie was featured in a 2005 article in the San Francisco Chronicle that described at her musical repertoire:

Since she arrived in San Francisco in March 1952 from New Orleans Jones has played music continuously in dance bands bar bands Latin bands Russian bands stage bands gay bands Hawaiian bands country bands and even with the legendary Cockettes. She’s played at county fairs and strip shows and everywhere in between.

Of course, the only way to really experience Jackie Jones is to see her in action. But if it’s been a little while since you last visited the Alemany Farmer’s Market — San Francisco’s very best, as we all know — this short video may refresh your memory. The really fun stuff starts at around 0:55, when Jackie makes her hand saw sing:

PHOTO: Top, Jackie Jones on July 30, 2011, by Telstar Logistics

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love My New Smart Meter

/ Todd_Lappin / 32 Comments

Smart Meter

Smart Meter

One day, it just happened: I came home from work at the end of a hard-earned day to find a new PG&E Smart Meter blinking at me from the front of my house.

Sure, I’d been warned that this would occur via some slick mailings produced by the PG&E Propaganda Department. But it all seemed so… sudden. For years I’ve bumped along with one of those old-fashioned meters with spinning dials and complex mechanical innards, and then in a single day I was transported into the 21st century by a new meter with LCD readouts and wireless data transfer capabilities. Oh my!

So how is it going? Admittedly, I have been experiencing some bizarre health effects ever since the Smart Meter was installed. Specifically, I keep having hallucinatory dreams about a Zombie Ed McMahon ringing my doorbell to drop off a gigantic check for $13 million from Publisher’s Clearinghouse Giveaway. But correlation is not causation, so I’m trying to separate the spooky substance of my undead nightmares from the arrival of my Smart Meter.

The same cannot be said for a few nervous souls on the bernalheightsparents mailing list, however. They worry that the new wireless Smart Meters emit radiation, and radiation is bad, so these meters must be bad. Because, you see, they emit radiation. And this radiation can have (as one commenter put it) “toxic effects.”

Now, one can reasonably argue that Smart Meters erode personal privacy. Likewise, it could be argued that Smart Meters are a diabolical high-tech tool that will enable PG&E to jack up your electricity bills. Personally, I don’t think either of those things are true, but on these points at least reasonable people can reasonably disagree.

Yet on the topic of “toxic threats,” the arguments don’t hold up well to rational analysis. Bernal resident Fiid Williams is a member of the bernalheightsparents mailing list, and yesterday he weighed in on the debate with a simple primer about wireless technology and radiation hazards that should be required reading for anyone who has concerns about the safety of Smart Meters, cellphone towers, or any of the other wireless data transmission systems that pervade our contemporary, glamorous, jet-set lives.

Neighbor Fiid’s comments are reprinted in their entirety, by permission:

There are two principles that matter here.

1) Non-Ionizing vs Ionizing Radiation

Ionizing radiation = nuclear reactors, radioactive materials, x-rays. CAUSES CANCER.

Non-ionizing radiation = radios, cell phones, smart meters, wireless routers. There is no currently understood biological pathway for non-ionizing radiation to cause cancer.

2) Inverse Square Law

Say you have a 40 Watt traditional lightbulb in a closet. I’d submit it’s enough light to see.

Put it in a 10 foot square room, and it’s pretty inadequate, correct? This illustrates the inverse square law. As you move away from a transmitter, the power that you get from it goes down the cube square of your distance away from it.

This is why everyone expects cellphones to cause cancer. The transmitter is _RIGHT NEXT TO YOUR HEAD_. Oddly though, the studies that are coming out on cell phones continue to be inconclusive.

As it pertains to Smart Meters, the transmitters are far away from you, so you’re getting minuscule fractions of watts from them, and the radiation they emit they only emit for short periods of time, (because they don’t transmit much information), and it’s the wrong kind of radiation for a provable cancer risk.

If you walk to the Good Life once a week, your traffic accident risk dwarfs this. I was concerned that my bill would go up (which is didn’t), but not at all about the RF element.

Nicely said. Yet if you have further doubts, consider reading this eminently balanced article about the safety of Smart Meters written by the Environmental Defense Fund, which says much the same thing.

All I need now is for someone to tell me how to make these vexing hallucinations about Zombie Ed McMahon go away. A tinfoil beanie, perhaps?

PHOTOS: Telstar Logistics

Bernal’s Best 24 Hour Donut Shop and Cocktail Bar Invades FiDi

/ Todd_Lappin / 26 Comments

Reader Sarah snapped this photo of a painting that hangs inside the lobby of 555 California — aka The Bank of America Building. Perhaps it was put there to remind the suits who work in 555 Cali what life is like on the gritty side of the tracks? Meanwhile, I confess that the Silver Crest is sufficiently gritty that I have yet to cross it off my “Meaning to Try Someday” list. Stay tuned.

PHOTO: Courtesy of Reader Sarah

Heroic Volunteers Tidy Up the Ugliest Spot In Bernal Heights

/ Todd_Lappin / 10 Comments

Wow. Wow! WOW! If ever there was a story that epitomizes the spirit of Bernalwood (apart from our collective obsession with celebrity, glamour, and haute couture), it is this…

As you may recall, last week Bernalwood published a post about The Ugliest Spot in Bernal Heights, a barren patch of east slope hillside overlooking Highway 101 and the Spaghetti Bowl. Well, upon reading that post, a few of your Bernal neighbors decided to do something about it, and they volunteered to spend time on Saturday cleaning up the hillside mess. Yup, that’s right: They stepped up to clean the mess!

Neighbor Mia talks about the cleanup effort on her blog:

This Saturday, me and Josh headed over to give it a quick clean up, which took about an hour. You can see the rest of the results in my flickr stream.

There was a fair amount of trash strewn around, and a real mess of broken wood and bits of concrete and stone. It looked like most of this junk may have come from a nearby fence renovation project.

First we removed the graffiti from the sign, with a spray cleanerthat worked surprisingly well. We then used the discarded building and fence supplies to make a bench (where one can sit and contemplate “progress”) and couple of cairns/shrines/ompahli (depending on what you like to call a pile of rocks).

Here’s a photo of that ad hoc new bench:

So if you see a tear rolling down my cheek right now, please know that I’m not existentially bummed out like that sad Native American (who was really Italian-American) in the “Keep America Beautiful” commercial. No, these are tears of pride and admiration for the infinite awesomeness of the Citizens of Bernalwood.

THANK YOU to Neighbor Mia and the rest of her Cleanup Crüe for a job well done.

PHOTOS: Neighbor Mia

Effort to Weed Out Succulent Thefts Spreads Like Kudzu

/ Todd_Lappin / 3 Comments

With a little luck, relief may be at hand for public gardeners in Bernal Heights who are fed up with having their drought-resistant plants stolen by botanical bandits. Indeed, the last few days have generated a tidy crop of media coverage about the thievery menace.

Under the headline “Plant thievery in full bloom in San Francisco’s Bernal Heights,” this item ran in yesterday’s San Francisco Examiner:

Watchdog residents in the Bernal Heights area are frustrated with thieves raiding their gardens. They have written about their experiences on Bernalwood, a neighborhood blog. Here are some examples of thefts:

– Man seen cutting agave plants at intersection of Montezuma Street and Coso and Mirabel avenues
– Succulents being stolen all up and down Ripley Street between Folsom and Alabama streets
– Jasmine plant taken from planter on Folsom Street between Precita Avenue and Ripley Street
– Succulents in front-yard planters on Nevada Street and Powhattan Avenue cut
– Succulents and flower cut from front yard on College Avenue in St. Mary’s Park
– Beheaded succulents in pots on Southern part of Bernal–Crescent Avenue
– Small Japanese maple in a pot stolen from front steps at Cortland Avenue and Coleridge Street
– Aeoniums “neatly cut off” along Guerrero medians, Guerrero Park, sidewalk gardens
– Aeoniums twice stolen from home on Anderson Street

Woo hoo! (Thanks for the Hat Tip, SFEx!)

Then this morning, Bernal gardener extraordinaire ChuckB zapped us on the Twitter:

Most helpfully of all, though, an officer from the SFPD reached out to Bernalwood readers via the comments section to solicit help in tracking down the culprits. He wrote:

I am Officer Broderick Elton #320 with San Francisco Police Department. I am investigating the series of plant thefts and damages.

I suggest that anybody who has had their plants stolen or damaged to please file a report online via http://sf-police.org/index.aspx?page=778 , or call 311 to file the report over the phone. I am attempting to consolidate this information and follow leads generated by the community. Please forward any information on possible suspects and report numbers to me.

I have spoken with several residents whom are going to assist in getting the word out to all the community regarding this issue. Flyers similar to this will be delivered to residents and made available at community meetings.

Ingleside Police have been notified of this ongoing issue and are committed to helping resolve it.

I have read the blogs and am currently investigating those leads. […]

I may be contacted via email broderick.elton@sfgov.org

Thanks to Officer Elton for getting on the case, and to all Ye Citizens of Bernalwood, please remember what we said recently about the virtuous benefits of reporting crimes even if the SFPD doesn’t always send a car out to investigate: If you don’t report it, it’s like the crime never happened.

PHOTO ILLUSTRATION: Bernalwood