Displaced

The day our young landlady’s wild-haired and insane parents told me and my ex-boyfriend that we could not have our dog or any plants whatsoever on the half acre deck was the day we suspected we were doomed to leave our newly rented apartment in the tony Marina neighborhood. They were ‘concerned about the weight’ of my ficus and, apparently, window boxes. I lived resentfully with the barren expanse for three months before I left both the apartment and the boyfriend. When I drove by a year later, after the crazies had reclaimed the apartment for themselves, I saw that they had installed a large stone fountain on the deck. I’m sure it didn’t weigh nearly as much as my ficus.

Since then, things have been looking up. My next place was owned by the wonderful Jose and Bob. Bob is an all-American George Clooney type with a superhero profile and Jose is a gentle, smiling and boyish Asian. The two of them handed over their beautifully renovated Victorian flat to me and two friends and cheerfully made improvements at the slightest suggestion over the next three years. They didn’t even blanch when they saw the state of their pristine palace under the reign of my roommates.

The current living situation is even better. The studio is too small for two people but R and I stay for the deck and the landlady. The building is owned and managed by a woman who a.) knows how to build and fix things, and b.) does. Since R moved in and I joined him a year later, she’s put in a dishwasher, a new garden downstairs complete with goldfish, and built our deck, which is now a redwood expanse home to flourishing roses, lavender, iris, herbs and the happy ficus tree. Her boyfriend is an electrician, which is very handy. He blows leaves, washes our cars and has installed prison-grade floodlights that discourage the scary vagrants who used to sleep in the doorways.

Also, a big plus, she only rents to interesting people, like the photographer in the studio downstairs who specializes in pregnancy portraits. The other live-work space is rented to another photographer and his slim, Rollerderbying writer girlfriend. In the storefront, there’s a quiet and accommodating guy who repairs guitars and racing bicycles. The apartment across from us has seen more turnover. Amanda and her beautiful photographs used to live there in splendid organization. When she left – we were very sad – we got a recent divorcee who lasted three months before retreating back to the suburbs. Now, we have a hip and private technology girl who has a cool job at a travel site that takes her off to Belize and other places extraordinary.

It’s all very trendy and integrated into the community. Which is to say, I guess, Californian. Right?

My grandmother spent about a billion hours a year mulching, hydrating, feeding, clipping and worrying over several spiky rose plants. In return, she got back six or seven blooms per summer. I, on the other hand, have profusions of blossoms that appear as early as April and continue into the fall. I spend about 15 minutes every two weeks cutting them back and watering them.

There is no killing a rose bush in San Francisco. They will bloom no matter what horrible mold or evil bug attacks them. As far as I can tell, roses will thrive even if you only water them once a week in the summer and not at all in the winter.

The difference between me and my grandmother is zones. I am in Zone 9. She is in Zone 4. Apparently, so the web tells me, the country is divided into gardening zones. Greenhouses categorize and sell plants by zone. Much like raising children, it is bad form to compare them and worse to imply that one is superior to another, but it is impossible not to notice that Zone 9 supports the flowering plants that everyone wants in the garden and Zone 4 supports mostly fir trees.

So, this week, thorny points go to San Francisco. Keep up the good work.

Amendment: Since this review was published, I have been asked by the owner not to use some of the tables during lunchtime. As there were other readers/writers at similar tables, I assume this has to do with the frequency with which I visit the cafe and the duration of my visits (usually around two hours). I stand by my general comments below but retract my recommendation of the place as friendly to writers and hanging out. They are clearly more concerned about one-time spenders on busy days than steady repeat business, so I’m striking Momi’s from my list of regular haunts.

The most hospitable café in the Hayes Valley neighborhood for a warm cup of tea, low-end food and a place to take your laptop or the Sunday paper. There are other cafes but they are on busier corners or have odd clientele that make me nervous or annoyed. (Prime example, the otherwise serviceable café on the corner of Page and Laguna where you are likely to be overwhelmed by a crowd who have just had to sit quietly at the Zen Center across the street for God only knows how many hours. Beware.)

Momi Tobys serves excellent bagels (for San Francisco) which are toasted right up to the edge of burning and are not swamped by cream cheese (see Noah’s Bagels). Try onion or multi-seed, both happily salty. Their coffee is pretty bad, sitting in pots on burners as it does, but they have espresso drinks and a great selection of teas, some juices and both wine and beer, nice options in the evening. The menu is basic lunch stuff – chicken Caesar, soup, baguette crostini with pesto and a small selection of sandwiches – none of it superb but all of it solid. (If a tasty lunch is your sole object, head around the corner to Frjtz or a couple blocks down Hayes to Arlequin. Neither place is conducive to hanging out, but the food is superior to Momi’s.)

The main reason to stop by Momi Toby’s is to read for a while, to write for a bit or to hook up with friends for a coffee. (Don’t go overboard with the friends: none of the tables will accommodate more than three people comfortably.) Depending on who’s working, the music varies in quality and volume, but it’s generally interestingly circus-y alternative. (The chick who used to crank up the insane metal-meets-Muzak tunes has disappeared from the staff rotation, thank God.)

I write there regularly. The crowd’s there studying or reading themselves, so you get the friendly atmosphere without a lot of distracting, jerks who have something to prove on cellphones, the reason for abandoning a café closer to my apartment.

This town encourages defection, at least of my high-powered, ambitious friends. In the last three years, I have lost two friends to Dallas, one to Florida, one to L.A. and, as of this morning, two to London. They have all left to move on with their lives, lives which were in sleepy limbo while in San Francisco.

I know that there are many defenders of San Francisco, but none that I have met are ambitious. Some are opportunistic (there is money here, after all, if you are willing to wait for it) and some are energetic, but none are ambitious. This city is the geographical equivalent of molasses. If you are seeking a place away from the madding crowd because you want to recover, raise a family, write a book without interruption or are a student, a stoner or a surfer, or even because you are famous and want to hide out, this is the place for you.

Nothing will push you here. The customer service is slow. The traffic is cautious. Even the ubiquitous homeless are slow-moving and under-motivated. It is a city that hopes for sun, basking when it’s out, huddling in restaurants when it’s not. It hikes and hangs out, it skis and sips wine, but it does not drive for the finish line. It’s about changing the world through hemp rather than heft. It encourages contemplation – yoga, therapy, knitting, Buddhism, hallucinogenic drugs – but it does not have any particular aim in mind besides live and let live, man.

It is a city of slow principles and slow growth and slow change. This is no place for those on a mission and moving fast. Hence the defectors. Someday, I will be among them. This town is no place for a New Yorker. For now, I’m running as lightly as I can over the surface of the molasses. Come visit for the views but don’t stay for the ambition.

Cole Valley Bakery, corner of Cole and Parnassus, open 7-7, closed Monday

Cole Valley Bakery has a full range of tarts and pastries and breads for breakfast or pick-up. They also serve sandwiches, salads and soups to a lunchtime crowd.

Their croissants are, in all respects, real French croissants. This means that they are light, flaky and NOT the size of my head. They have a slightly crunchy exterior and plenty of room between the million interior layers of butter and magic dough. This would be reason enough to head to Cole Valley, but it’s not the only one. Their coffee is first-rate. It’s not stale or boiled or overheated or pumped full of Starbucks steroids. It is rich, straightforward coffee and the perfect base for their perfect café au lait.

Other highlights include their canelés, which I have seen nowhere else, and their panniers (or elephant ears, as we American’s have thuddingly dubbed them) put all others to shame.

Lunches are bigger than you would expect, so don’t over-order. Even their small garden salad is sufficient for a light lunch. The only flaw in their superior bakery line-up is their baguettes, which are tough. The mini-baguettes are the base for their numerous, pre-wrapped sandwiches, which are still worth getting. Be prepared to chew fiercely. Selections include Gruyere and ham, saucisson and cornichon, aoili turkey and cranberry and a superb tuna salad complete with bits of apple.

Their soups range from the very bland to the truly excellent, so make sure to ask for a sample before ordering.

I went early, eager to get to the produce and beat a retreat before the yuppies had strapped their offspring into their Audis and started their weekend errands. I didn’t beat anyone. Yuppies are early risers. I was going for oranges and tomatoes and lobster, oh my. Little did I know that even Whole Foods does not stock cooked lobster meat. Crab, yes. Shrimp, yes. But their pincered brethren are kept alive in a tank and you have to buy them as such. I am a Boston born and bred hypocrite as far as lobster is concerned: I’ll eat ’em but I won’t kill ’em.

Saturday was my day: the bearded young fellow behind the counter said that not only would they steam one for me, they’d crack it and pack up the meat as if the nasty murder had never happened. Excellent. We made an appointment that I’d be back for my magic in two hours and I trotted home to brag of my good fortune to R.

Skip to three and half hours later. I approach. The bearded guy goes into the back and returns to say that he, “Hadn’t gotten to it yet.” What could he have possibly been checking on? His crack team of lobster gnomes?

At this point, I should have cut my losses and left the shellfish slaughter for a less busy day but Beardy says if I can wait fifteen minutes, he’ll do it immediately. Fifteen minutes is no big deal, so I go get some sushi and read the paper. I return in twenty minutes. Nothing doing. I return twenty minutes after that. Still nothing doing. I would leave but I’ve already paid for the lobster, by the pound, pre-steaming.

A full hour after I arrived, the lobster appears. I am furious and Beardy can tell. Perhaps it’s the foam at the corners of my mouth. He looks scared. I open my mouth to say that I will take it and crack it myself but Beardy starts his work. Three hours after it was supposed to be done, I am at home with, as far as I can judge, half the meat the lobster should have yielded for the bargain price of $26. The handful of fresh shrimp he has thrown in and his assurance that this is a “bad day” do little to make me feel better about the chunk of my Saturday that will not be recovered.

Appalling, stoned-out San Francisco customer service strikes again.

1. No snow. Seriously, it’s Christmas people. Where’s the weather???

2. Union Square. (SF, not NYC.) Always crowded. Mostly tourists. Like the Times Square of San Francisco except it’s dark and doesn’t even have a Dunkin’ Donuts. I would never go there if I could avoid it. And while we’re on it…

3….SF has the highest pedestrian death rate of any American city. It’s not hard to see why: a combination of the poor drivers and poor planning. Why doesn’t this city get it together (like New York did in the 60s) to make their main thoroughfares one way so you can make a left when you need to and, while they’re sorting that out, time the crosswalk lights so that drivers can actually turn onto those streets sometimes without waiting on the herds of slow-moving out-of-towners and backing traffic up for ages? The drivers here are already operating at some subterranean levels of skill and intelligence and the poor transit planning only makes it worse. It took me 20 minutes to drive around one block the other day in the middle of a weekday. 20 minutes.

Home. And a damn hot home it is too. It’s a testament to this city that, as much as I hate heat, and I do, I love New York more. When I was a kid, I had heatstroke three times, all of them terrifying, so I kind of lost interest in all things hot, including beach vacations (which also tax my patience with lying still – I would have made a really bad Victorian bride) and summer in general. Give me spring or autumn.

Living in San Francisco has changed – or at least moved – my opinion of hot weather. The uniformity of the weather in California freaks me out. Endless days of the same half sunshine/half overcast weather grate on my nerves the way I imagine endless daylight drags on the Scandinavians. It’s like eating the same thing day after day: no matter how pleasant it seemed in the beginning, after 300 times, it’s lost all appeal.

New York in August is usually about 85 degrees and 70% humidity which make it feel like a warm bath. With your clothes on. Oddly, this adversity rarely bothers me. It’s inconvenient and you have to plan around it – don’t wear a suit to work, plan on being sticky – but I prefer it to the suffocating uniformity of San Francisco’s non-seasons which make me feel like I’m being pacified for nefarious alien purpose. (If they come, they could take California without a glitch. Seriously. No one out there?s paying any attention. Go for it.)

Not to be religious, but I think there’s something about the adversity of seasons that keeps you alert. Snow for a few months, sweltering for a little while, a few thunderstorms, falling leaves, budding leaves. They remind you that mobility and rejuvenation are essential. Mild heat and clear skies convey a sense of suspicious well-being, encouraging you to believe that all?s well, that there’s no need to press forward. Blech.

1. Fog. Again. F’ing freezing cold and fog again this morning. I keep saying it: it’s August. What is wrong with this place?

2. Lines at Tartine. Their croissants bear about as much resemblance to French croissants as an H3 does to a Mini, but they’re still the best bakery in town. If it weighs more than 2 lbs. with its clothes off, it’s not from France.

3. Gravity.

Circolo had every chance of success with us. It had cool lights and an, um, water feature outside and it’s in our neighborhood. “What more could you want?” we thought and off we tripped in our Saturday finest to drop $140 on dinner and 2 drinks each. What we want is a decent chef and Circolo’s not the place to find one. Before we get to the sad food though, let’s discuss the ambience. They’re doing a club/restaurant thing that is only moderately successful, although I’ll admit that my frustration with the surroundings was likely enhanced by the dismal food. The dining area clearly converts to a dancefloor and while they’ve done a tasteful job of masking this fact and separating it from a lounge area in the forward part of the room, the space is not intimate.

We started with the dumplings, a predictable but almost inevitable choice for me. They were crispy and yummy, as were the mojito and a specialty margerita that accompanied them. So far so good. R. had the most expensive item on the menu, Kobe beef and foie gras, because he loves the combination and is willing to risk his arteries for it. I had the special, a whole, semi-pre-cracked crab, with parsley and lemon marinade. It was awful, awful, awful. It was a strange, offputting temperature, not chilled, not warm. It turns out that “marinade” means absolutely sodden. The crab was overwhelmed with an ultra-sweet broth that seemed to be made up of liquid nastiness and masses of diced parsley which wholly obscured any flavor the crab would have brought to the table and almost obscured the crab itself. The helpful idea of pre-cracking it was also poorly executed and saved no trouble. It was accompanied by “garlic toasts” which were equally cheaply over-flavored and half of which were inedible, having become saturated with the crab’s unfortunate parsley soak. R. fared slightly better with his dish but only because it wasn’t entirely unacceptable. The pairing of the interesting texture of Kobe beef and foie gras is a mistake. Foie gras smooth, rich density should be reserved for pairing with only the finest meat of like nature. That is clearly not Kobe beef, which has a unique, masculine flavor all its own which was ill-matched to the liver. To round out the meal, our second round of mojitos was overloaded with mint, one of them to the point of being almost undrinkable. Must have been the same guy who came up the parsley marinade.

Circolo: full of promise but very disappointing and expensively so.