What are your Panhandler Rules?

If you're like me (and there is almost no chance of this, I realize that, it's just an expression), on your daily perambulations through the City, you encounter a variety of panhandlers, homeless and otherwise. As with most things in my life, I'm often perplexed about how to handle this fraught situation and so I'm croudsourcing this issue to find out what it is you do.



As I work in the Civic Center area, which is part of/maybe just immediately adjacent the Tenderloin, I see some of the same panhandlers every day.



There is the oddly well-put-together woman who I've written about before who posts up at the corner of Grove and Larkin during commute hours (she's there roughly 7:30-9 am and then 4 to about 6 pm) silently holding a sheaf of Street Sheets and who doesn't look homeless or even really troubled in any way; in fact, she would not be out of place waiting on you in a diner or something. NOT HOLDING THAT AGAINST HER; I'm just saying, it's kinda weird.



(I wrote that prior post about her in 2009. She's still out there, basically every day. I continue to be really curious about what her deal is but I really don't want to stop and talk to her because I pass her every day, usually twice a day, and I don't want to set up a thing where I have to stop and talk to her every day. It has nothing to do with her being homeless; I don't want to stop and talk to anyone twice a day. I'm not one of those people who hangs around their corner store trading neighborhood gossip or that kind of thing.)



(OH SNAP I just looked at the Google Street View for Grove & Larkin and thought I saw her but it's just some chick with a coffee. Goes to show how normal she looks.)



There's the Bearded Disheveled Guy Who's Always Reading a Paperback Book. He can be found in Civic Center Station pretty much all the time. I've actually given him money before.



There's a whole crowd that hangs out around the Main Library. One of them is a guy who wears Rollerblades all the time and skates around passing a football back and forth with one of his comrades. In all fairness, I've never seen him ask anyone for money, so maybe he just likes to wear Rollerblades and throw the rock around and hang out by the library.



UNRELATED: Check out the cool Street View Dog on the corner of Larkin and Golden Gate! AWWWWW, PUPPY!!!!



And so on. My point is, when you see your Regular Panhandlers, what do you do? Do you give them money?



Or I guess, what are your usual Giving Money to Panhandler Rules? I mean, in SF, you probably get hit up for money 5 to 12 times a day unless you're Richie Rich and live in Pacific Heights and drive your Volvo to work and your secretary brings lunch to you. So what are your giving money rules? When do you toss a buck at a panhandler?



(RELATED STORY - I remember reading somewhere years ago about an invitation to some fancy-ass party in a part of town where there were obviously panhandlers and the invitation asked guests to not give money to the "outdoorsmen." Outdoorsmen! FAVORITE HOMELESS EUPHEMISM.)



Have a nice holiday weekend at Burning Man or whatever it is you do. I guess if you're at Burning Man you're not reading this anyway.



Also, I'm still on jury duty but hopefully only for another week and then everything will be back to normal.



Also, we're trying out Boxing Room tonight and I'll totally tell you if it's good or what. Smoked Chicken & Andouille Gumbo! FUCK YEAH. Speaking of restaurant websites, THANK YOU FOR NOT AUTOPLAYING DIXIELAND JAZZ ON YOUR WEBSITE BOXING ROOM. I KNOW THAT MUST HAVE BEEN NEARLY IMPOSSIBLE TO RESIST.



OK, I'm done now.

Trip Report: Los Cabos

At my advanced age, I could give a shit about adventure tourism. You and William T. Vollmann can go dodge mortar fire in Tripoli or live amongst the whores of Bangladesh. Fuck that noise, my chief concern is how long it takes to get a drink and why the fucking pool closes at 8:00 pm instead of 10:00.



Well, not entirely. When I go to places like New York or London or some shit like that, I'm super into running around and going to museums and all that jazz. I guess I'm talking about the kind of vacation where you just lay around in the sun and drink. Do kids like to do that still? Oh, I guess everyone has to make it extra difficult and do it on a beach in India (NOT GOA, THAT SHIT IS SO PLAYED, I KNOW) or Bali or Madagascar or some place. I know that the harder it is to get to and the more primitive the conditions the better, right?



Well, fuck that. I'm all about it being easy and that's why we just went to this all-inclusive resort in Los Cabos called the Riu Santa Fe. We got a total deal on this place - like $200 a night, which includes all the food and alcohol you want.



That's right. ALL THE DRINKS YOU WANT. INCLUDED. That means they essentially gave us the room. I've run up $200 bar tabs on vacation in 45 minutes, so you can see why the Riu Santa Fe probably lost money on our visit.



The crowd was interesting. It was basically 50-50 Mexicans (well, I assume they were Mexicans; they were Spanish-speaking and darker-skinned; I mean, they could have been Honduran or whatever but I just got the Mexican vibe from them) and Americans. Seemed like a place where Mexicans go to vacation, too. The line at the Los Cabos airport for the Mexico City flight was longer than for the Phoenix flight, anyway. But I digress. Of the Americans, it tended towards a bit younger and, for whatever reason, sort of Jersey Shore-ish. I mean, a lot of elaborate tattoos and backwards baseball caps and gold chains and chicks who dressed for dinner by putting on skintight electric blue dresses that ended just below crotch level and 6" heels. Interesting. There were also a smattering of older couples and families with kids, and also some Australians.







The resort was huge and loosely organized around this central plaza area that was clearly meant to evoke the plaza in a Mexican town but without any stray dogs or non-English-speaking Mexicans. Instead, there were a couple of outdoor bars and a stage where they had some form of live entertainment every night. Entertainment beyond the bartenders - who, make no mistake, were unflailingly cheerful and incredibly fast - making odd rainbow-layered shooters for the assembled blockheads to enjoy. The entertainment veered from Resort Cheesy to Really Weird, but hey, it was something to look at whilst enjoying as many rounds of free drinks as you could put down before passing out.





Speaking of "free," it's nice to bring a stack of ones if you're coming to one of these places and tip frequently and with gusto. They really appreciate it and it makes you feel like less of a dick for watching someone make your drinks and then just saying "gracias" and walking away with them.









Oh, that brings up the Spanish Problem, which is, how much Spanish do you attempt if you don't really speak Spanish? Everyone who works there speaks enough English to get by, so is it weird or insulting to say "Dos pinas coladas, por favor" instead of "Two pina coladas, please"? I mean, does it seem kinda condescending? I could never figure it out. Also, why did the guy at the restaurant door say "Hola" to Americans but "Buenos dias" to Mexicans? I ended up usually ordering in English and then saying "Gracias" and walking away quickly, oddly ashamed. These are the kinds of things I worry about.



Anyway, the whole thing was a complete success, from a Morning Drinking and Total Relaxation standpoint. The food was actually really good, and the weather was nice and hot, and on the second day we found the quiet pool away from the thumping disco music and Vinnies whooping at each other and so forth. After a few days, though, I couldn't really handle the all-day all-night drinking any more and it was time to split.



The only other thing of note was the HUGE DOUCHEBAG who sat next to The Wife on the flight home. He got on in Phoenix and started braying at her immediately (she was one row ahead of me but I could hear his booming asshole voice from the back of the plane if I wanted) and I learned, involuntarily, that he lives in the Marina and had been in Scottsdale for some reason and had bought 3 bottles of champagne already earlier that day for "Sunday Funday" and just bought a place in "Pac Heights," although oddly it turned out to be near "Washington Square Park, I guess," which is, of course, nowhere near "Pac Heights" and I was trying to read and he blared on and on and on at her and finally I had to put in my headphones and turn up the music so loud it was almost painful just to drown out his piercing drunk voice. OK whew I'm alright now just had to get that out of my system.



(She also said that he showed her "every picture on his phone," and that they were mostly of him.)

The creeping problem of ISWNOCHFS

Found on Twitter earlier today:





Oh, please. Get over yourself. This is a prime example of what I call the If Something's Wrong No One Can Have Fun Syndrome (ISWNOCHFS). You see this kind of thing pretty regularly. Like "There are babies starving and you're still watching Toddlers and Tiaras" or "How can Adam Sandler keep making movies when the world is like this?" Actually that last one is kinda true and I do wish Adam Sandler would stop making movies.



BUT ANYWAY. Point being that this scold above would have you be ashamed for watching Jersey Shore (as long as you're in the "western world," apparently. If you're in Japan or Soouth Africa, enjoy Jersey Shore at your leisure! You're fine!) because there are Problems in the World and watching Jersey Shore doesn't help.



Let's take a look at some different possible outcomes:



Millions watch Jersey Shore ----------> Syria nightmare

No one watches Jersey Shore ---------> Syria nightmare





Millions watch Jersey Shore ----------> Economy in shambles



You and your stupid brother

watch Jersey Shore; no one

else watches Jersey Shore ------------> Economy in shambles



Your cat and Eric Cantor

watch Jersey Shore while

eating In N Out burgers --------------> Economy in shambles; cat and Eric Cantor happy



You see? The number of people and/or animals and/or members of Congress who watch or don't watch Jersey Shore has exactly zero impact on whether or not the World's Crises are ameliorated in any way. The real point of this kind of faux-shaming technique is to say "Look at me! I'm so superior that I would never deign to watch that crap, especially when there are World Crises for me to be Very Upset about! Shame on you for pursuing such a lowbrow entertainment whilst I monitor the BBC feed 24/7!"



THIS IS NOT TO SAY, of course, that we shouldn't all be appropriately concerned about riots in London and the DJIA falling 600 points and starvation in Somalia. OF COURSE you should care about those things. But watching Jersey Shore isn't really going to affect them one way or another. So don't be ashamed. Well, you should be a little ashamed, but just because you're watching Jersey Shore in the fourth season. It all went downhill after Season 1. Duh.

I am going to Arizona

I should be there around 10:30 tonight.

"Are you going to spring training, TK? That's totally rad!!!!"

No. I am not going to spring training. Yes, that would be totally rad, but that is not why I'm going to Arizona. Normally I would be loath to contribute financially in any way to that Godforsaken Tea Party paradise, but unfortunately my Mom lives there and I ran out of reasons why I couldn't come visit her. So off we go. That lunatic already has our days planned out to the minute and I assure you that little or no relaxation is on the sched.

ANYWAY. At least it's in the 70's during the day and NOT FUCKING RAINING. I don't know whether or not I'll be blogging, but I'm sure I'll be dropping my usual bon mots via Twitter. Have a good weekend.

And now, the Winner of the 6-Word Memoir Contest

First off, I would be remiss if I didn't give a shout-out to SMITH Magazine, the originators of the Six-Word Memoir thing. Good job, SMITH Magazine!

OK, we got a lot of good entries here. I carefully considered each one, but, in the end, there can be only one winner. Just like life!

Here are some I liked:

Allan's "Never got to see the Ramones" is a poignant reminder of the fleeting nature of life, not to mention punk rock.

Bob sent me "Daddy isn't coming back, is he?" which has its own sad power. (Incidentally, Bob has some very nice photos, which you can see here.)

Jessica's sentiment, "Fuck it, let's just watch TV" rings true and reflects a life philosophy I can get behind.

I paused at Daisy's "I am not who I say," in light of her admitted history of prevarication, and it added fuel to my theory that Daisy is actually a composite character created by a team of writers.

But I liked my fave right off the bat and the more I thought about it, the more I realized that it really is a life story in 6 words. Ladies and Gentlemen, the Winner is:

Leslie's "Sorry I called you an asshole"

So, Leslie, email me with your mailing address and Social Security Number and whatever other kind of info would be helpful and I will rush the incredible prize package worth $5.02 out to you posthaste. Congratulations, and thanks, everyone, for playing!

Here are two activities you should do if you live anywhere near SF

So last night The Wife and I had Grown-Up Night, which means we went to dinner and the theater. They were both great.

Dinner was at The Corner, 18th and Mission. I gotta warn you ahead of time, the menu is somewhat unconventional, but trust me, this is a good thing. Like, there's not the usual beef short rib and flatiron steak and roasted chicken that everyone has. Instead, there's shit like rabbit or sole w/ fennel sausage or chicken thighs, interesting stuff like that. The waitress (who was just as much of a hipster as you'd imagine for a restaurant at 18th and Mission - in fact, the whole staff looked like Vice Magazine) totally tipped us off that the apps were huge, so we just got a couple of those. The Wife had poutine with beef cheeks and some kind of cheese that starts with an "h" like "hourumi" or "hurami" or something like that. It was fucking killer. Poutine's like the national dish of Canada or something and I can see why because it's basically like this thick gravy and meat poured over french fries and it's a good cold weather dish and as you know, it's always about 20 below in Canada.

I got the pork shank over cheesy hashbrowns with some kind of wilted green in the middle and a poached egg on top. THAT'S NOT A LOW FAT FOOD. But man, was it good. Not so good was burping up pork the rest of the night but that's kind of my fault for eating too fast.

Both the apps we got (which were entree-sized, at least for us) were like $11 or $12. 2 glasses of outstanding pinot for $10 each. I almost went for the PBR tallboy for $2 but that's too predictable. 7 out of 10 stars WILL DO BUSINESS AGAIN.

(Confidential to the Corner - do something about your fucking website. The "menu" pages are all blank and it hasn't been updated since May. Seriously, this is SF and your web game has to be on point. Really, I'm not kidding, deal with it.)

Then (after a brief stop at the Latin-American for some whiskey for me and some Stoli for her) we hied ourselves over to The Marsh for Dan Hoyle's show "The Real Americans." The show is based on Hoyle's travels in, for the lack of a better word, the "heartland" and he does a ton of characters based on the people he met. Now, of course you're thinking it's going to be smug and condescending but it's actually not. I mean, I don't think he had to invent the fact that people think Obama is a Muslim or whatever. And people in SF get treated just as badly, or worse, than people everywhere else. As you can tell, it caused a great deal of liberal urban coastal angst in me because we coastal urban liberals worry a lot about this kind of thing. Anyway, it's way more complicated than I can sum up here but we both loved it and it is totally worth seeing.

Then we went home and watched the Giants almost fuck it up in the 9th inning (and shouldn't Bautista be throwing BP or something until he can find the strike zone?). Exhausting.

What Would You Do?: Muni Edition

Let's play ABC Primetime's "What Would You Do?" for a second.

(Incidentally, ABC, what's up with the "go.com" domain names? ESPN, too. Stuck in 1997, are we?)

OK, so let's say you're on the, oh, I don't know, 48 Quintara at around 5:30 yesterday (or the L Taraval or, fuck, the 6 train to the Bronx for all I care) and you take a seat near the back and then realize you're sitting in the middle of a group of baggy-white-t-shirted skateboard-holding kids. Like 4 or 5 of them, maybe 13 years old, maybe 14. The first thing you notice is the heartwarming (for a San Franciscan) multicultiness of this group - there's a white kid, and a vaguely Hispanic kid, and a black kid, and man, it's like MLK's "I Have a Dream" speech brought to life.

Then the next thing you notice is that the Bieber-haired white kid is very slowly and deliberately carving something into the seat with some kind of implement. Like, obviously defacing the bus seat with whatever kind of graffiti 13-year-old white kids are motivated to write these days.

Or let's take another (also actually true) example that also happened on the 48 Quintara on another day with a different Pack O'Yoots (though older, maybe mid to late teens) and one of them is using a fat black magic marker or whatever to mark one of the windows with a big, looping tag.

What do you do?

I'm serious. I never know how to react in these situations. I know that Muni Belongs To All Of Us and that We As Citizens must stand up to protect out property, but I also know that people get killed trying to stop this kind of thing. Yeah, yeah, I know, it's rare for that to happen and blah blah blah but IT ONLY TAKES ONCE when it's happening to you.

So what's the call here? What do you do? Say, "Hey, you damn kids, stop messing up my bus!" or whip out the cell and call 911 or go up and talk to the driver or what? Furthermore, what's most likely to avoid me getting hit in the back of the skull with a skateboard?

Cause I'll tell you what actually happened: nothing. I didn't do anything. The lady next to me didn't do anything. The semi-yuppie guy reading The Economist didn't do anything. Now I feel vaguely bad about it! I don't know.

The Bachelorette: Froggy Went a-Courtin'

Ali Fedotowsky is a beautiful, willowy creature with bad extensions and a dress that looks like it has a pie plate attached to the ass. Instead of finding love like the rest of us do - over shots of Wild Turkey at last call or on Adultfriendfinder.com - she has become the Bachelorette, which means that she has a future making $1000 appearances at Tao Las Vegas or hosting a video game show on G4. She's from San Francisco in the sense that she's one of those chicks that moves here after college, fucks an I-Banker, throws up in the bathroom at City Tavern, and talks about how much she loooooooooves San Francisco until she moves back East 2 years later and starts having kids and voting Republican.

So in last night's premiere (amongst the obligatory shots of Al sitting at Crissy Field and staring REAL HARD into middle distance), we got the recap of how she found True Love with Jake on the Bachelor only to fall victim to that quintessential 21st Century illness, My Job Comes First, and take off only to realize she had made a terrible error after Facebook gave her extra vacation time and said they wouldn't fire her but by then it was too late and Jake had moved on to Fetal Alcohol Syndrome Vienna, who, to get a little tangential, is a hot mess who took all her ex's money for a boob job, and BOY AM I SURPRISED.

SO ANYWAY. We meet the guys. Do all guys except for me have terrible hair now or what happened here? The majority of them are just generic douches, like you couldn't see that coming. Lots of dead relatives this year! There was Phil, who spends his time staring at a picture of his dead brother. His ideal date would be visiting his dead brother's grave and talking about his dead brother. No, I'm shitting you, it would be "dinner on the deck of a yacht at sea followed by swimming, then soaking in a hot tub, looking at the stars while drinking champagne." Obvi!

Then there was Chris L. He moved back to Cape Cod to help his Dad out when his Mom was dying. Awwww. Then his Mom died. That's sad! Then Ali asked him if his parents were still together and he said "Yes," which I take to mean that his father sleeps next to his mother's mummified corpse. What?

I would be remiss if I didn't mention Jay, who obviously watchesd old episodes of "Three's Company" for cues on his look, which is the only way to explain the feathered-back hair. All he needs is a cop 'stache and a Camaro and he could clean up in 1976.

I don't even want to get into Rated R at this stage.

No, we need to devote all our attention now to Kasey.



Kasey looks pretty normal, no? In fact, he was identified by the women on our panel as maybe the best-looking one. And then it happened. He opened his mouth and spoke.

zOMG WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK!!11!1!!!one!!1!. He sounds like a frog trapped inside the body of a deaf person trapped inside the Well of Souls. I have never heard a sound like that. Admirably, Ali refrained from screaming or going "What the fuck is up with your voice" and even kept a straight face when he opened with "My Dad cheated on my Mom," like Is that really what you say to someone you just met? (Although I guess overshare was the order of the day, what with "Shooter's" little tale of premature ejaculation earning him a quick trip to the door, DUH.) So Ali and the Frog Prince bonded over their shared history of Broken Homes and I just can't wait to hear him talk some more.

What else? Oh, she kept Frank, who popped out of the roof of the limo like he was on his way to prom and in fact probably was like last year because he appears to be about 19 and also jacked up on the methamphetamines. And that douchey guy with the Wall of Hair. He's gonna be fun.

TK's Guide to TV Tonight

That's catchy, huh?

The Bachelorette, tonight, 9-11, ABC.

Man, that snuck up fast! They must have jetted Ali off right after Jake broke her heart and then went on to be on some dance show and appear even gayer, like that's possible. Anyway, she's a "beautiful, energetic and charismatic career-oriented woman from San Francisco," JUST LIKE MY READERS, so you'll all totally relate. Plus, you won't be able to understand all the references in my recap unless you watch. This is it, folks. The one we've all been training for.

Google Image Search result for "Ali Fedotowsky," I shit you not.