Month: June 2021

22 June 2021

Now that we’ve made it to the summer solstice, my thoughts have turned to those lazy summer days as a kid in Mississippi. One thing stands out (more than the lack of air conditioning) and that was homemade ice cream. It comes pretty close to being a religious experience in my mind. Or at least Nirvana.

I most often remember making homemade ice cream at Aunt Buleah and Uncle Milton’s house in Forest, Mississippi, eight miles to the east of Morton where I mostly grew up in between moves to other places in the state. Mother and Dad made it on occasion but it was pretty much an every Sunday thing with Aunt Buleah and Uncle Milton.

Forest was a bigger town than Morton, a little over double in size. Morton was the poor cousin to Forest. Forest had a public swimming pool. It had more than one restaurant, it had a classier movie theater than Morton. It also had a larger school system with, often times, the better football team. Morton’s year would be made whenever the football team beat Forest.

Both Forest and Morton were big in the chicken industry (feeding, raising, and slaughtering chickens) so whoever won the football game (always the last game of the season) was presented the golden chicken (rooster) trophy for the year. Although smaller and with less of a student population to draw from, Morton Panthers more than held its own against the Forest Bearcats.

Aunt Buleah was my grandmother Ruby’s sister. She and Uncle Milton had three daughters: Hilda, the oldest, Sandra, the middle and Ann the youngest. All three were older than me but I was closest to Ann. Ann took a shine to me and would ride me around Forest where she would flirt with boys of her age – I guess I was the chaperone. The big deal was to go to the Forest drive-in on the edge of town (already in iffy territory) and order cherry cokes – like they were something illicit. It was actually nerve-wracking to even order one.

She would fill me in on who was dating who in Forest, who was a snob, and who got to first base, second base, and who hit a home run.

For a while, all three daughters were around and Ruby and I would go over for the day after church and in the late afternoon, we would crank out the homemade ice cream.

If you’ve never seen the old ice cream makers, they were interesting in their design. The container that held the potential ice cream was a metal column. Inside that fit the wooden paddles that would scrape up against the side of the metal to scrape the frozen ice cream to the interior. A metal lid fit on top of that and a square piece of metal from the paddle would fit up through the metal lid. A hand crank locked into place over the square piece of metal from the paddles and when you turned the crank, both the metal column and the wooden paddles would rotate but in opposite directions.

There was a hole in the wooden bucket to allow water from the melted ice to escape. Once you filled the metal column a few inches from the top with your ice cream mixture – never to the top – ice expands – and put everything into place, you filled the wooden bucket with ice from the ice house (at first you had to chip it from a single block of ice but modern times soon provided ice in bags from the local fast food store). As you layered the ice into the bucket, you salted each layer with ice cream salt which was simply larger crystals of salt. Salt lowers the freezing point of water and as a consequence, as you turned the handle, the ice would melt.

Every so often you would carefully tip the wooden bucket to allow water to drain out. You had to be careful because if you tipped it too far, then the liquid ice cream would also spill out.

It seems contradictory to add ice and then make it melt but by having water mixed with the ice, the water and ice temperature were both 32°F. If you didn’t melt the ice, there would be air spaces between pieces of ice and the air temperature would be higher than 32°F and you wouldn’t get ice cream to freeze. With water at 32°F and ice at 32°F, you were in equilibrium and at a constant freezing temperature with no warmer spaces between the ice.

Woe be unto you if you let the drain hole plug up. That meant the salt water level got too high and the salt water would seep into the ice cream mixture and ruin it. I’ve only heard my Aunt Buleah curse once in my life and that was when a batch of ice cream was spoiled by the salt. I was shocked! She took the top off and had a taste of the ice cream and said “shit.” It wasn’t that I hadn’t heard my parents and grandparents use that word before – just not Aunt Buleah.

The reason that was such a big deal was the cost of making homemade ice cream. First, there’s a lot of milk involved – whole milk and condensed milk – which was expensive. Mother’s recipe called for something like a eight eggs. All of this had to be carefully cooked on the stove. If it didn’t cook correctly, you ended up with scrambled eggs. This was one rich mixture for ice cream.

The other reason ruining a batch was bad was the time it took to freeze the ice cream. Someone had to constantly turn the crank and someone had to frequently add ice and salt. As the mixture started to freeze, turning the crank became more and more of an effort. Usually, us small kids were made to either turn the crank early on or as it got more difficult, sit on the top of the churn to hold it down while and adult turned the crank. Even though Aunt Buleah put towels on top of the churn you still got a very chilly ass.

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By the way, my brother Archie has told me many times that his idea of hell is to have to sit on a block of ice and work algebra problems. I never saw him sit on the ice cream churn.

It must have taken at least one hour or maybe two to get it to the right frozen consistency.

The absolute best of the best of homemade ice cream occurred in peach season. You would search out ripened or over ripened peaches to put in the ice cream mixture. There is absolutely nothing better in the world than homemade peach ice cream on a hot summer day. Somehow I seemed to always end up being assigned to peel the peaches and cut them into small pieces.

Aunt Buleah and Uncle Milton had a large oak tree in the back yard and everyone sat around in the shade of the oak. We often had left over fried chicken to snack on while waiting for the ice cream to freeze.

Kids ran and played in the yard, dogs ran and barked with abandon while the adults sat in the shade and talked politics and gossiped. Trust me, there was plenty of gossip. It’s amazing what you learn when adults don’t think you are listening.

Uncle Milton never held a job for very long. He was always changing jobs for one reason or another but Aunt Buleah worked for many years for the Forest school cafeteria. She was an expert baker. She could pretty much cook anything but she shone when baking pies and cakes and doughnuts. My first ever doughnuts were her homemade doughnuts. She made them a day in advance (yeast dough) and refrigerated them over night. When cooked in oil, she would take them out and immediately dust them with cinnamon and sugar. I figure, over the years, I must have eaten three times my (adult) weight in her doughnuts.

She always, always, always made me a birthday cake. For years, my favorite was caramel cake. It was sugary goodness. Later, my tastes changed and it was German chocolate cake. No one could make caramel cake or German chocolate as good as Aunt Buleah.

When I say she was a good cook, I mean chef quality. I know because of all the Sunday dinners I had over there and can compare to what chefs turn out today. It was from her I learned about hominy. She actually made her own hominy by boiling the corn grains in a lye solution to remove the seed coat and then rinsing, rinsing, rinsing to get rid of the lye. Once the seed coat is removed, the endosperm layer puffs up and out. That’s what makes it hominy. If you dry the hominy and grind it, it becomes grits (thus the name hominy grits – as we redundant Southerns say). If you grind it finer, it becomes corn meal. I’ve never had hominy since Aunt Buleah that tasted as good as hers.

She also made her own sauerkraut. She often had chickens in the yard and for Sunday dinner would go out and kill the chicken. I would help pluck feathers and then she would hold the carcass over the gas stove burner to singe off the pin feathers.

Sunday dinners (what Yankees call lunch) was a table full of food. There was always fried chicken, fried okra, mashed potatoes, roast beef, beets, turnips or collards when in season, green beans, and Aunt Buleah’s home made dinner rolls. There were at least three deserts. Usually she made one cake and two different kinds of pies. Oh, and ice tea so sweet it would give you a toothache. I think I’ve had so much sweet tea over my life that I never had to sweeten tea again. The sugar fix has lasted that long.

It was usually about dusk when the ice cream was ready and Aunt Buleah would pull out a mixed set of bowls and spoons and she would serve it up from the column. By the time it hit your bowl with the summer heat, it was already melting and by the time you got close to finishing it, it was ice cream soup. The you simply tilted the bowl to your mouth and finished it off.

There was Ruby, Aunt Buleah and Uncle Milton, me, sometimes Archie, Hilda, Sandra and Ann, and often a neighbor or two or three or four.

After it was all eaten, Ruby and I would get in her 1956 Buick and head back to Morton with leftovers from dinner – but no ice cream. It was made and eaten in one sitting.

19 June 2021

Note: this is a very long blog so you may wish to skip to the video. For the video, click here. Warning: this is a gigabyte video so it takes a while to load!

Only if you’ve lived in a very small town can you appreciate the enticement and energy of a fairly large city. Don’t get me wrong, I think growing up in a small town was beneficial – to me. However, I assume almost every kid wants to get out of their “hick” town for the bright lights of any city. My first big city experience was Meridian, Mississippi, at one time the largest population-wise in the state. I was just too young to get excited about it. My next experience was the capital city of Jackson.

I probably have better knowledge of Jackson than any other city with the exception of one. Every year there was the State Fair. Our Boy Scout troop ushered at the football games at the Jackson Memorial Stadium (now Mississippi Veterans Memorial Stadium). We did Scout Expos at the fairgrounds. I lived in the city twice in my life – once in the 7th grade and once while in graduate school at the medical center. Ruby, my grandmother, took me to movies at the Paramount and Lamar theaters and restaurants like in the one in the Heidelburg Hotel every other Sunday and our Scout troop learned to live off Crystal hamburgers on Capitol Street.

When I was a counselor at Camp Kickapoo in Clinton, our “days” off were often spent at the Shoney’s at Westland Plaza on Ellis Avenue. A couple of nights our group almost got into some fights with local high school boys.

I rode my first escalator in a Sears & Roebuck (both names were used back then) on North State Street. I was scared to death the thing would eat my feet. It was really hard to pass the roasted nut kiosk right by the escalator on the first floor without drooling.

New Orleans probably holds as many memories for me as Jackson – my first Mardi Gras, my second Mardi Gras, my third Mardi Gras and even my fourth Mardi Gras (I was stationed for two of those at Communications Station New Orleans at Belle Chase and for one while aboard dry dock in New Orleans aboard the CGC Reliance). The first Mardi Gras was by choice. NOLA was also the site of my first hurricane from Pat O’Briens – and many more. I’ve returned to the city again and again enjoying its food, its nightlife, and the smell from the Godchaux Sugar company near the Vieux Carré.

You can’t beat the Shrimp Arnaud at Arnaud’s, Oysters Rockefeller at Antoinnes, Bananas Foster at Brennans, beignets at Cafe du Monde, and anything at The Court of Two Sisters. The city has, hands down, some of the best cuisine in the world all within a few blocks of the French Quarter.

As I got draft age, I was sent to Alameda, California for Coast Guard boot camp and then New York, New York for radio school. I never found much attraction to Alameda and New York was wonderful albeit smelly. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed free broadway shows compliments of the USO and getting to leave Manhattan every night to go back to base at Governors Island and away from the madness. Times Square was very, very iffy back in the 70’s.

I’ve seen cities in Canada (Edmonton and Calgary), in Mexico (Vera Cruz – and that’s another story), and Freeport in the Bahamas. In Europe, I’ve seen London, Edinburgh, Amsterdam, Brussels, Madrid, Seville, and, of course, Paris. And Paris. And Paris. I would still love to see Paris again.

But of all the cities this small town boy has been exposed to, I love San Francisco the most.

My first exposure to the city was in 1970 when granted leave from boot camp. We had to wear our dress blues and we stuck out like a sore thumb, particularly since this was the time when military personnel weren’t looked upon too fondly. Fortunately, the Coastie uniform of that period made us look like foreign military so we were treated very nicely, particularly by the single women in bars. My first views of the city were from the Oakland Bay Bridge and I knew I needed to get back there sometime. Little did I know that it would be some 37 or more years before I got the chance.

I returned to attend the National Education Association Representative Assembly (the largest in the world) in San Francisco in 1997 as a delegate from the United Faculty of Florida, my college union. I think, unbeknownst to the NEA, it was also Gay Pride week. I saw my first gay pride parade that year.

The parade was down Market Street and passed right in front of our hotel.

It was also my first visit to the Castro. I had heard and read about the Castro and had always wanted to visit. San Francisco can be confusing at first, but all you had to do is remember where everything is in relation to Market Street. Even locals give directions like “south of Market” or “north of Market.” Market Street runs southwest to northeast through the heart of the city. The Castro district is in the southwest section, immediately off Market Street.

The Castro has been the hub of the gay community in San Francisco for many years. The area was originally name Eureka Valley and had ranchos run by Mexican barons by the name of Castro and Noe. Later, it was the site of settlement of Germans and Scandinavians. In the 1950’s when many people left for the suburbs, gays began to move into the area attracted by the Victorian houses.

I made my first visit to the Castro on my first day at the NEA Representative Assembly in San Francisco in 1997.

Later in the week, I remember a bunch of us Broward College delegates had the afternoon off and Tom Green wanted to visit Mission Delores (the oldest surviving structure in San Francisco). After touring the mission, several of us wanted to walk around a bit more and I think everyone was a little surprised when I suggested we head to the Castro. Tom especially.

The Castro has so many historical places. One significant place is Harvey Milk’s old photography shop. He was a photographer before he became a gay activist.

There are two other landmarks in the Castro that pretty much defy destruction: the Castro Theater and Twin Peaks Bar.

I’ve only been in the theater once and that was with a walking tour of the Castro conducted by an expat Mississippian. The interior had been renovated and it reminded me of many of the ornate theaters in New Orleans.

There are several things significant about Twin Peaks. It’s named for the twin mountain peaks southwest of the bar. The peaks are famous for the Sutro tower landmark. The bar is currently owned by a lesbian couple yet it is most often occupied by gay men.

The bar has windows that open up to Castro and 17th Street and that was very unusual for a gay bar back in the day. Most gay bars were totally enclosed so no one could see into the bar and identify the patrons.

It started out as a bar and cigar shop in 1883, converted over the years into different store fronts and back into a bar in 1935. It finally was purchased and turned into its current iteration in 1971. It was the first gay bar in the city (and probably the country) that you could see into the bar.

Every visit to San Francisco I make a pilgrimage to the Twin Peaks and have a drink. It was were I met Tom and Burt at the urging of Nancy. Burt always came into the bar with a bag of candy that he distributed to the patrons. Tom owned a rival bar on Market and 17th but he loved Twin Peaks as much as Burt (who owned his own gay bar).

You can sit at the bar and people watch for hours and you’d be surprised and was passes the windows. The bar itself is massive. It was either built on site or they built the building around it. It’s one of the most ornate bars I’ve ever seen. It reminds me of something out of Bavaria – perhaps significantly so since early non-Hispanic settlers to the area were German.

That same first visit in 1997 was also the year that I discovered I liked opera. I had seen televised productions from The Met in New York but back then sound quality was mono and television quality was iffy. I saw “Madama Butterfly” in Jackson in the 80’s but was not impressed. I had the afternoon off from the NEA conference and walked past an imposing building. I wanted to know what it was. It was the War Memorial Building, home of the San Francisco Opera. I walked into the ticket office and asked if there were any tickets available for that night. The opera was “Rigoletto.”

I was blown away by the male and female leads whose voices were a perfect match. I was hooked. By my count, I’ve seen 44 operas at the War Memorial.

I eventually got season tickets and would fly out every summer for a series of three operas. As a season ticket holder, I was afforded some amenities, one of which was a tour of the back of the opera house.

One of the greatest things is during intermission, you can stroll the balconies of the opera house and see downtown lit up.

The opera house is famous for more than opera. It was the site for the United Nations Conference on International Organization that created the charter for the United Nations and the International Court of Justice. There’s a plaque commemorating the event in the lobby.

Located next to the War Memorial Opera House is the Louise M. Davies Symphony Hall, home of the San Francisco Symphony, and until this year, under the directorship of Michael Tilson-Thomas. He retired this year. He is also the creator of the New World Symphony in Miami Beach. The few times I’ve been to the San Francisco Symphony, I realized I had heard the exact same performance at the New World. It seems Michael smartly tries out the piece with the New World before bringing it to the San Francisco Symphony. It’s interesting to hear the same piece performed by a young symphony and then by a mature symphony.

Even though he retired from the San Francisco Symphony, he has kept his role at New World – the only position he’s keeping in retirement.

Speaking of Twin Peaks (the mountain tops) I was looking for something new to do one year during one of my opera trips. Bill Choisser put out a guide to hike to How to Walk to the top of Twin Peaks. I’ve now done that hike twice. I got to meet Bill and his partner one year but sadly, Bill has since passed away. The hike is strenuous and completely uphill from the Castro but it provides the best view of the city in its entirety.

You start the hike in the Castro. As you walk down the Castro, you’ll come to 18th Street. Take a right and start walking uphill. The entire hike, one way, is two miles. One of the first things you will pass is the Harvey Milk Civil Rights Academy, one of the first schools for LGBTQ youth in the country.

The “hike” starts by following city streets ever higher. Then you start a series of stairs unlike any others I’ve been on.

This is a challenging hike but worth it for the view.

Be sure to take a lunch with you and plenty of water. You can actually catch a bus down but it’s more fun (and easier) to retrace your steps. On the way, look for the house that has been crashed into by more cars than any other in the city.

Oh course, my favorite place to stay in San Francisco is the Parker House. It’s like a home away from home. The owners no longer live on the premises – they’ve opted for the Russian River area – but still stop by weekly to check on the place. Staff are very friendly and are always willing to help.

The house is just a few blocks from Market and the Castro with Muni stops all along the way. I can get anywhere in the city by bus within a few steps of the Parker.

One great side trip is to the Painted Ladies. The best view is from Alamo Square Park.

As many times as I’ve been to San Fancisco, I never made it to Lombard Street so on my last trip, I made a point to walk down the street. I had no intention of driving down Lombard because traffic down the street is a nightmare. Movies where you see cars driving down Lombard only work if they close off the street to the public so they can get the movie shot. Honestly, it’s like a traffic jam on that street. I pity the owners of the homes along the street trying to back out of their garage.

If you keep heading north from Lombard, you eventually get to Fisherman’s Wharf. If you go west from Fisherman’s Wharf, you’ll reach the Municipal Pier and Aquatic Cove.

Next to the Pier is the San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park which preserves significant maritime history of the San Francisco area in the Maritime Museum.

Next, if you head eastward along Jefferson Street, you’ll run into Fisherman’s Wharf. It’s always a good idea to get a “bowl” of sourdough bread with clam chowder in the bowl along with a cup of coffee. In reality, it’s hard to pass by the bakeries in the area because of the aroma of baking sourdough. By the way, Ghiradelli’s is very close by!

As you continue eastward on Jefferson, it becomes Embarcadero. You begin to see the numbered piers radiating out into the bay and realize the importance of San Francisco as a port city. Many of the piers have fallen into disuse and some have been taken over by harbor seals and are protected from tourists. However, pier 31 is where you board the tour to Alcatraz. The boat departs from a slip next to pier 31.

Be sure to get your tickets well in advance to Alcatraz. And I mean well in advance. I suggest 6 months before you intend to be in the city. Trust me, the Alcatraz tour is worth it and I suggest you take the last cruise of the day. You get to see the sun set over the island and also get the bonus of seeing San Francisco light up at night from the bay.

On another day, you may wish to continue to explore east along the Embarcadero towards Market Street and actually make it to the Exploratorium. The idea of the Exploratorium was Frank Oppenheimer‘s, world renown nuclear physicist and brother of Robert Oppenheimer. It was originally located at the Palace of Fine Arts but moved in 2013 to the current location at piers 15 and 17 on the Embarcadero.

As you continue up Embarcadero, you will finally reach the intersection with Market Street. There you will see the tower of the Ferry Building which serves as the terminals for most of the ferries that cross back and forth across the bay. In addition, there is an extensive market in the building along with numerous restaurants. It’s a significant part of the heart of San Francisco and a great place to meet the locals.

I’m not sure when I got up enough nerve to head to Golden Gate Park. It was probably on my fifth or sixth visit to the city. The reason I was so hesitant was it took several bus transfers to make it to the park and it took me a while to realize which was the best stop to exit to get where I wanted to go. Eventually, I just gave in and learned to enjoy the ride and take in the view and simply walk all over the garden.

The park consists of over a thousand acres in the shape of an elongated rectangle with a western terminus of the Pacific Ocean. At one time it was nothing but a bunch of sand dunes. It was John McLauren that converted the sand dunes into what is now one of the worlds most amazing parks. It’s also the home to the San Francisco AIDS Memorial, the de Young Museum of Art, the California Academy of Sciences, several specialized botanical gardens, a polo field and Kezar Stadium. You could spend your entire trip in Golden Gate Park and never see it all nor get bored.

One special place to me is the de Young Museum. The museum has been around since 1895 but at its current site, the building was severely damaged in the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. That building was demolished and the new building was completed in 2005. It’s a magnificent structure. If you ever get there, be sure to go to the top of the observation room and get a spectacular view of the park and the city.

Directly across from the de Young is the California Academy of Sciences. I have to admit the first time I visited I was disappointed but it was very soon after they opened. I’ve been back and have since been impressed. There’s the aquarium combined with a rain forest, and you can actually walk into a room and experience an earthquake.

Between the de Young and the Academy is a large garden bounded by the Music Concourse on one end. Every time I’ve been there have been several classes of Tai Chi going on the grounds.

A sister museum (one ticket gets entry to both) is the Legion of Honor at Lands End, southwest of the Golden Gate Bridge. Where the de Young houses numerous ethnic collections, the Legion houses the fine art. The building is eye catching to say the least.

It is especially noted for its Rodin collection including one of Rodin’s casts of “The Thinker.” The museum also has one of the best rated restaurants for any museum in the country. I never visit San Francisco without a trip to both the de Young and the Legion.

By the way, Lands End is also the terminus for the Lincoln Highway that runs from Times Square in New York to Lincoln Park at Lands End. It was the first transcontinental highways in the United States and Dwight David Eisenhower led a convoy along the highway in 1919 when a lot of the road was just muddy ruts.

Just east of the Legion of Honor is the trail head for Lands End, one of the more beautiful trails I’ve hiked anywhere. I rate it as one of my top five trails. You walk high above the Pacific Ocean with views of the Golden Gate Bridge.

If you read any of the books of Tales of the City series by Armistead Maupin, you know that MaryAnn watches in horror as a person slips over the side of the cliffs on the trail to their death. Hiking the trail, I can certainly understand how that could happen.

The trail is a four mile loop but I hiked it only until the Cliff House, a famous restaurant overlooking the Pacific. Sadly, due to the pandemic, the company that operates the Cliff House for the park service did not get renewed and the restaurant is currently closed. Hopefully, it will re-open again. There have been several iterations of the Cliff House over the years. It has burned several times but always rises from the ashes.

Not so the Sutro Baths. This was a public salt water pool complex built in 1896 and which burned to the ground in 1966. At one time, the baths were so popular that a separate small rail line ran from the city to Ocean Beach where the baths are located, next to the Cliff House.

When I think of what makes a city a good place to live I think of three things: good health care, good art and culture, and a good transportation system (I getting older and need that). San Francisco has all three. The health care is top notch. There the University of California, San Francisco (USCF Health/Medical Center) which is one of the top ten in the U.S.

I’ve had experience there. While at an Apple Conference, I slipped and fell in a hot tub at a hotel – and yes, I was sober. I asked the desk for a bandaid and went to bed. I woke the next morning to bloody sheets. They suggested I head to USCF emergency room. After being chastised for getting in a hot tub (dirty water as far as doctors are concerned) they stitched me up and sent me on their way. Very professional!

I’ve already talked about the opera. There’s a lot more art and culture in San Francisco.

What really makes the city nice is the transportation system. Locals like to complain about the Muni and BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) but compared to other cities, San Francisco is light years ahead on public transit.

Bus stops typically have a notification system that flashes across a screen telling you when the next bus will arrive. All the system is electric as is evidenced by the overhead cables.

I remember the first time I saw sparks shoot from the wires and connector to the bus. It’s a little startling the first time.

Sometimes the connector pole is dislodged on a turn and the driver has to get out and raise the pole back to the connector in order to continue – no easy task.

The city has also preserved the old forms of vintage trolleys. They mostly run along Market Street for the tourist trade but are also essential in getting around to areas surrounding Market Street. They also run along the Embarcadero.

Of course, the most famous form of transportation is the fabled cable car, particularly along Mason and Powell. Here, the non-electric cable runs underground and the cable car attaches to the continuous running cable through a slit in the road bed.

Never, ever try to catch the cable car on Market and Mason. The line moves fairly quickly but you’ll still wait 30 minutes or more to board a cable car. It’s better to walk up Mason a few stops and catch it there. Likewise, when it reaches the stop just before Fisherman’s Wharf, it’s always best to walk a few stops past to get on.

I always buy a Muni pass at the airport (3 day or 7 day – depending on my stay) and that allows you access on any form of transportation, including cable cars) with the exception of BART. I usually take BART from the airport to a Muni Station and then go from there. A taxi will cost you around $50 from the airport to downtown San Francisco while a BART ticket will cost around $9.65 (one way, $19.30 round trip). The trip takes about the same amount of time.

I think I would add a fourth thing for cities – great food. San Francisco has great food, probably better than any place other than New Orleans and certainly on par with New York.

My favorite restaurant near the Parker Guest House is Frances – named after the chef.

Another favorite place is right on Market Street down from the Castro. It’s the world famous Zuni. Sadly, one of the owners just died and the original chef Judy Rodgers (of Chez Panisse) also died. However, the tradition remains and they have just re-opened after the pandemic. The go-to dish here is the roasted chicken. They cook it in a wood burning oven and it requires at least a 30 minute notice before they can serve it. It’s to die for.

I’ve actually cooked their roast chicken twice at home. It is almost as good as the one at Zuni but you have to get the oven sooooo hot that the chicken fat splatters everywhere, all the smoke detectors go off, and you can’t see the oven for the smoke. I pull this recipe off every five years or so and bite the bullet with cleaning the oven. Be sure to make reservations at Zuni.

My friend Wade (opera buddy extraordinaire) took me to my next two favorite places. Actually, come to think of it, he introduced me to Zuni. Way to go Wade!

If you want a lush dining experience, try the Rotunda at Neiman Marcus on Union Square. I think it is currently closed due to the pandemic but it’s too popular not to re-open. Just be sure to make reservations.

You also have to do Sunday brunch at the Palace Hotel with bottomless mimosas. Actually, you can’t ever drain a glass before a waiter is pouring you another. It’s buffet style but the buffets runs around the entire perimeter of the room.

San Francisco is a city of museums. I’ve been to most of them. The Contemporary Jewish Museum is excellent. What’s even nicer is it is close to the Moscone Center and several other museums.

On past visits I have gone to the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) but wasn’t too impressed because it was small and somewhat dated. In 2016 it underwent an expansion and almost tripled the size of the museum. The museum, prior to the expansion, could only display a small fraction of its art. Today it holds 33,000 works in 170,000 square feet of space.

For years, the Presidio was a huge section of the city off limits because it was an active army base. Eventually, the army decommissioned the base and it became the property of the city and the nation. It is 2.4 square miles in size (1664 acres) so it’s like adding one and a half Golden Gate Parks to the city for recreation and entertainment.

It also has one of the best views of the Golden Gate Bridge you can get.

I’ve only recently started to explore the Presidio. Since Dad was in the military and we were at several army bases – Fort Bragg, Fort Rucker, Fort Benning, and Aberdeen Proving Grounds – I have a thing for army bases. A lot of the old military structures are still around (and one barracks has been turned into restaurants). The real problem with the Presidio is that you have to make several Muni transfers to get to the base. It’s only now being fully developed by the city and state and a large part of it is still National Park Service property. There are several hiking trails I want to explore on my next visit to the city.

Like Tony Bennett says, “I left my heart in San Francisco!”

Click here to see a video of my favorite city!

14 June 2021

A few days ago, I got a call from Michel asking if I wanted to go see Lasting Impressions, an immersive art experience. I decided I would do anything to get out of the house and immediately agreed. I didn’t know anything about it but was thinking it might be somewhat akin to the new Van Gogh experience called Beyond Van Gogh where you walk into rooms with the room surrounded by one of Van Gough’s paintings.

Nancy and Michel picked me up at 11:30 am on Saturday and we headed down to Miami to the Arsht Center. It has been a while (over a year) that I’ve been to the Arsht Center and the first problem was the usual exit had been changed due to a new by pass being constructed over I-95. After a couple of wrong turns due to my inadequate directions, we finally found a place to park and made our way to the Ziff Ballet and Opera House of the Arsht complex.

On the way down, Michel tells us it is a 3D experience and we’ll be provided glasses. I hate to admit it but I thought back to those 3D glasses we used as kids with the cardboard red and blue tinted films. I have to admit I started having second thoughts.

As we approached the entrance to Ziff, we were immediately challenged to scan a QR code with our phones before entering the building. QR codes, when they first came out, were not too well utilized. Now they are everywhere. Once you scanned the code you then were directed to a web page that asked you to fill out a health questionnaire about your exposure to Covid and whether or not you had the vaccine.

Once you submitted the questionnaire another page popped up on your phone that directed you to show this to the next person checking people in. Then and only then were you were allowed to enter the building and pass through security.

We were next directed up stairs to the bar area to wait for our performance to begin. We decided we wanted some water. You didn’t order at the bar. You were asked to go to a table widely separated from others. Another QR code was on the table. You scanned that for the menu.

I chose 3 waters and then was asked for credit card information. It was a “no cash” zone. The waters were delivered to our table. Easy peasy!

While waiting for our waters, I noticed a large screen with a projected impressionist painting. We saw one of the employees taking photos of people in front of it. We decided to give it a try and we met Claudia who proceeded to arrange us so that we looked to be a part of the scene.

Claudia insisted we come back after the performance and have our photo taken with the second projected painting.

Five minutes before the performance was to start, an usher took everyone down the stairs and we started weaving our way back into the bowels of the Ziff. On the way we picked up some 3D glasses that were definitely a cut above those I wore as a kid. Our route was confusing until we opened up into a large room with chairs in pairs widely separated from other pairs of chairs.

When I turned around, I noticed what looked like an image of the interior of the opera house. It was not an image – it was the opera house. We were seated on the stage of the Ziff Opera House! I’ve been backstage at the San Francisco Opera House but not the Ziff until Saturday.

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We chose our seats and one of the ushers immediately came up and suggested we were on the very edge and there were better seats elsewhere. He immediately escorted us to better seats. We were also able to move one chair of the pair over to another pair so we three could sit together.

The program started with an introduction on the origin and history of impressionism and then we were treated to the works of 15 of the worlds most important impressionists. The sequence of artists was Gustave Caillebotte, Paul Cézanne, Edgar Degas, Henri Fantin-Latour, Paul Gaugin, Edouard Manet, Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, Jean Francois Raffaelli, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Henri Rousseau, Georges Seurat, Alfred Sisley, and last but definitely not least, Vincent Van Gogh. To see the program, click here.

It was extremely well done and timed down to the second with appropriate music. When we got to Degas’ ballerinas, they seemed to come out into the audience. The special effects people even had their tutus rustle with movement.

Some of the scenes from the French countryside were especially interesting because they had leaves blow from the trees out into the audience. When Monet’s Water Lilies came up, it was like you were in a boat traveling through the water. In another Monet, you seemingly floated under a bridge in the painting.

I would say at least 25 percent of the program was given over to Van Gogh. They even played Don McLean’s “Starry, Starry Night.”

I have to admit I was impressed. It was not perfect and there was some art that didn’t lend itself to 3D and some of the motions were very jerky. However, I can see where this is going to be a great hit. It was the world premier of the show – that’s the kind of offerings you can get in Miami and no where else.

We returned to the bar area and Claudia photograph us in front of the other projected painting.

Once we left Claudia, we headed to Verde Restaurant at the Perez Art Museum Miami. It’s one of my favorite places to eat in Miami, both for the food and for the view.

Again with the QR codes. Everything was done with scanning the codes. They also didn’t accept cash in any form. It was all done via credit cards. I have to admit I’ve never seen the museum and restaurant so crowded. The parking garage was labeled as full but we cruised the garage long enough to find an empty space. Everyone is desperate to get out of the house. Everyone was pretty good about wearing masks, even outdoors.

It was great to get out and about. I asked Michel, who is even more cautious than me, if she felt comfortable at the performance and at the restaurant and she agreed she was. Everything was handled with Covid in mind and people were easily going along with it.

1 June 2021

In probably the best kept secret in south Florida, in the middle of Coconut Grove, you’ll find the Barnacle House. It was built by yacht designer Commodore Munroe and is the oldest house in Miami-Dade County that still stands on its original site. I’ll venture that 95% of the population of south Florida has never heard of the place nor visited it.

You really have to be looking for the place to find it. It’s pretty much across the street from the extinct Coconut Grove Playhouse and it sits on some of the most valuable land in Miami-Dade County because the back yard backs up to Biscayne Bay.

When the estate became too much of a burden to upkeep for his heirs, they donated the property to the state of Florida for a state park. Entrance fees are on the honor system and it costs $2. To enter, you step down from the sidewalk on Main Street in Coconut Grove and wind your way back through a trail surrounded by native trees to Florida. As you walk the trail, you’ll get a faint scent of skunk. That’s not the mammal. Instead it is skunkwood, common to the area, and it really does have a skunk-like aroma.

Another common tree is the Florida stopper. It was used medicinally to “stop you up” if you had diarrhea.

You approach the house from the rear. It gives you a good idea of how people lived back in the day with the kitchen on the far end of the house to allow the inhabitants to escape the heat from a wood stove. The walls and chimneys are made from coral rock from the area.

The house was designed by Munroe and took advantage of the breezes off Biscayne Bay. All the windows would open and rooms with transoms led to a central stairwell that allowed the flow of air upward and out through the vent. Years ago I went into the house in the middle of summer and it was unbelievably cool. The air flow was very noticeable. It is still not air conditioned.

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As you approach the front of the house, the yard leads down to Biscayne bay and a boat house.

Munroe lived in the boat house while he constructed the main house. The bottom floor was used to design his yachts. By the way, his boat designs won most of the races from Miami to Key West because of the special hull he designed for shallow waters in the Keys.

If you walk past the boathouse, you’ll see a wonderful view of Biscayne Bay. I think you can see why it’s one of the most valuable properties in the state of Florida. On either side of the property are luxury condos and they don’t have half the view this property does.

Due to the pandemic, you can’t currently tour the home. However, I’ve been inside twice before and the house is really interesting. Hopefully they’ll be able to give guided tours before too long.

Like most old houses of the day, the bathroom was an attachment after original construction. It’s surprisingly modern for the time period.