Cool Kid Causes: Alcoholics for Music Education

— By Zach Perkins |

Every child deserves a crack at the cliche “one time at band camp” line.  But for those of us who went to public schools, we know all to well that music and arts programs are always the first to get cut when the district's budget runs dry.  

But there's one thing that never seems to run dry around here: ALCOHOL.  The good folks at Education Through Music - Bay Area, knowing that San Francisco's most renewable resource may very well be its insatiable appetite for booze, have assembled a crack team of ETM Young Associates (we're talking 21+ volunteers, not Elementary School Kids as hilarious as that would be) to guest bartend at Elixir tonight.

From 9pm to 2am tonight, you can harass some people I know while they feebly try to apply white-collar job skills to bartending (with the best intentions).  Be sure to give the asian one extra shit (and tips) because she thinks she's too cool for SF and plans to move later this week.  Feel free to tell her that I sent you.

Facebook event thingy is here.

Crafternoon Delight?

— By Jenny Wilson |

 Illustration by Kate Sutton

 Illustration by Kate Sutton

Like handmade stuff but (like me) are too lazy to actually DIY? Want to buy some hand-crafted goods and impress your Etsy loving friends? Want to support some waspy chicks that turn garbage into art? Need some DIY tips from over 225 vendors from all across the nation? If you said yes to any of these, then this weekend you're in luck! Starting this Saturday July 31st, San Francisco's 3rd annual Renegade Craft Fair will be taking place at Fort Mason Center Festival Pavilion. You can get crafty from 11am to 7pm and hyphy until 2am at any local bar! Just don't forget to impress all your new friends with the beanie baby earrings you made at the Accessorize with Toys! Workshop.

David Choe Book Signing Tomorrow

— By Kevin Montgomery (@kevinmonty) |

Tomorrow at 6:30, David Choe will be at SFMOMA's Haus Atrium signing copies of his awesome street art coffee table book*:

This dynamic monograph captures the frenetic raw energy and gorgeous, intense work of gallery and street artist David Choe. From dropping out of art school to a stint in Japanese prison to representation by the Lazarides Gallery alongside Banksy, Choe's wild ride through the art world is represented by a major selection of images, and narrated throughout by Choe himself. Graffiti, murals, paintings, sketchbook pages, photographs, toys, t-shirts, collages, artwork created with blood, and more fill the kinetic pages — all annotated by the artist in a voice that matches the funny, frantic, daredevil nature of the work itself. Join us and meet as David Choe signs copies of his new book. (link)

The book's highlights include an entire page of iPhone sexts, a Korean bodega owner with a pitbull and a TEC-9, and matzo getting wasted off of Manischewitz.  You can buy the book for $45 tomorrow at SFMOMA or get it on Amazon $30.

* I know “coffee table book” can be insulting, but it's a hardcover book of street art, tits, iPhone text messages and blood.  What the fuck did you expect?

Previously on Uptown Almanac: 

WELL THAT WOULD HAVE BEEN FUN

— By Kevin Montgomery (@kevinmonty) |

Imagine this: a grassy bike ride all the way to work*, the neighborhood name NOPA doesn't exist and SFPD wouldn't be able to ticket cyclists at the ARCO station.  Well, apparently back in distant year of 1928, the city could have made this a reality.  The plan was to extend the panhandle all the way to Market st. along The Wiggle.  The plan called for demolishing housing along the route, indicating our politicians of years past actually had a spine.

I have no idea why it never happened, but I bet that Great Depression thing had something to do with it.

(via Wikipedia)

* a grassy bike ride to work for people who actually live in the western part of the city… and work.

Previously on Uptown Almanac: 

Ken Ken Can't Can't

— By Kevin Montgomery (@kevinmonty) |

I was walking by 22nd and Capp around 6 o'clock and noticed that there was a pop-up ramen restaurant in the normally abandoned Panchitas #3.  By 6:30, there was a line out the door for Ken Ken Ramen's $11 bowl of soup.  Seeing the line, I was totally pumped to check out what all these fools were standing in line for.  At 7:15, I jumped in line with my roommates to get a taste of ramen that costs 44 times the price of Top Ramen.  After 45 minutes of waiting patiently, tragedy struck: the WASPy individual who was set to serve me authy Japanese food walked out into the line to inform us that they were “out of food.”

Preteen girls who run lemonade stands are more apt to run a business than this dude.  This individual, who I will not call a Rice Queen, was literally so clueless about how to run a business, he didn't have a waitlist for seating, he had no idea about how many people he could serve and he was under the delusion that “this is our first time” (the opened last Monday).  Customers who waited 45 minutes in line were turned away with nary a condolence.  To piss in our freshly opened wounds, they tweeted 45 minutes later to boast about their last two bowls served.

Cold, hungry, empty handed and miffed, we rolled to Cha-Ya, a restaurant that actually can serve people soup, for a delicious bowl of Udon:

Note: not Ken Ken.

Long story short, just ignore Ken Ken Ramen, just like they ignore their customers.

The SF Half Marathon: 13 Beers in 13 Miles

— By Kevin Montgomery (@kevinmonty) |

My personal hero, Exercising While Intoxicated, just ran the SF half marathon while drinking a beer every mile, finishing in an earth-shattering 5hr, 7min:

Several of you told me that I was “going to die” if I drank 13 beers while running the San Francisco Half Marathon. I did not die.

I puked three times, blacked out for miles 11 and 12, and needed five hours to finish. This is my story.

Read on.

Are There Too Many SF Food Blogs?

— By Kevin Montgomery (@kevinmonty) |

7x7 actually published a piece I liked last week talking about the absurd amount of foodie coverage in the SF bloggernets.  I couldn't agree more.  Take today's BREAKING NEWS:

  1. Sunday at 3:54pm, Mission Mission mentions that Arinell pizza is now open until 3am on weekends.  Recognizing the relative unimportance of this news, Andrew labels it “breaking news.”
  2. 5:14pm - Mission Loc@l covers the story in “Today's Mission.”
  3. Monday 9:30 AM - Eater SF runs the story as a headline.
  4. 2:45pm - SFist runs the story as a headline.

This isn't even counting sites like 7x7, SFoodie, Urban Daddy, Inside Scoop or any of the other countless sites in the SF blogging echo chamber that I don't read anymore due to redundancy.  And, of course, this was really the most trivial of all SF dining news (if you really want to look at the absurd, look at the blogger circle jerk regarding Mission Chinese Food).

So, dearest Uptown Almanac readers, please ignore the irony of reblogging 7x7 and tell me:

  1. Are there too many SF blogs? Alright, we already know the answer to this one.
  2. Is #Team_UppyAlmy doing a good job of avoiding the blogger circle jerk?
  3. Do we post  too much street art?
  4. Do you want to see more news/BREAKING FOOD coverage?
  5. Should we just abandon the SF blogging ship and let people who live in Ann Arbor blog about the Mission?
  6. Should we start writing about cool kid culture/technology/the flickrnets in general and abandon our regional focus?
  7. Are hyperlocal blogs dead?