Capitalism

Bi-Rite Market Makes More Money Than Your Startup

— By Kevin Montgomery (@kevinmonty) |

Bi-Rite and their new weekend bouncer.

San Francisco Magazine, a 7x7 for people who read good, published a gushing review of Bi-Rite Market's business model.  Everything in there makes it sound great: owner Sam Mogannam is hands-on and willing to jump in to do menial work, he'll financially bail out his suppliers when they hit rough patches, he closely observes customer demand to tweak the product offering, and the market is uncompromising on the quality of their goods.  However, the real kicker is business has grown by roughly $1 million/year since it opened, with sales of $13.8 million in 2010, eight times the sales per square foot of a Safeway.

Business aside, the best part of the entire article was its brief focus on Sam's early days at Bi-Rite, prior to owning and operating it:

When Mogannam was 15 years old, the market was owned by his father and uncle. The Mission district hadn’t yet been discovered by a generation of tattooed 25-year-olds happy to stand in line for a $3 latte. Just up the street, Mission Dolores Park was popular with unemployed men who spent their days drinking fortified wine, some of which they bought at Bi-Rite. Though he was not yet old enough to drink, in 1983 Mogannam asked his father if he could remerchandise the wine department. He got rid of the Night Train Express, MD 20/20, and Ripple, and on the advice of the store’s wine reps brought in their strongest sellers—Sebastiani, Robert Mondavi, and Beaulieu Vineyard. The drunks found someplace else to shop, and Bi-Rite’s wine sales soared.

On that note, the other day I was sitting in the park near the balding wino casually known as “the Hunter S. Thompson of Dolores” (as he's always drunk, can be generally found yelling like a lunatic, and consistently dons a white bucket hat) and he was doing his usual wasted stumble and scream around the park.  A passing girl, clearly struck with disbelieve that this man can afford to be drunk again, let out a big sigh and scolds, “I want to know who your wine supplier is.  Who the hell is giving this to you, because you sure as fuck cannot afford it yourself?”

The man stood there erect for a view seconds, his head cocked to the side as he desperately tried to focus his vision.  “I just steal it from Bi-Rite!” (Two seconds pause) “Wait, are you a cop?!”

Previously on Uptown Almanac: 

Santa And The BART Card That Changed 'Everything'

— By Zach Perkins |

Ever wonder what happened to the Christmas gifts of yore? The wooden train sets, Red Ryder BB guns, and dolls hand crafted with the care and love of 'Ol St. Nick'? Why did it seem, that in the later half of the 20th century, that Santa had just given up?… It's because he had. 

In the 1950s, with the rise of manufactured consumerism, mass-marketed toys with national ad campaigns, and TV and film toy tie-ins, Santa's small family run workshop was struggling stay afloat.  His interest in toy manufacturing and distribution had been waining for years, but according to a 2004 interview with the now ex-Mrs. Clause, “Everything changed in 1969”; Santa discovered acid and the 'hippie' movement.  After several years spent lost in the counter-culture movement and “going Kerouc on everyone's ass,” Santa finally settled down in a Mission District single resident occupancy 'hotel'. And he's been there ever since.

After 'the lost years' of 1969 to 1973, Santa emerged from his four year acid trip with a newly invigorated sense of purpose. “Fuck Middle American kids!”, Santa said when our reporters caught up with him over the weekend. “With their Chinese-produced and Walmart-sold plastic tripe! American brats don't appreciate shit that doesn't take batteries and charge you a subscription fee”.  With his new network of artisan craftsman and locally sourced toy manufacturing boutiques, Santa decided to try again, but this time on a smaller scale in his newfound community.  More importantly, his old methods of delivery seemed outdated, and with the rise of NORAD and the threats of foreign nuclear strike, it was now far too dangerous for him to take to the skies.  When BART opened to the public in November 1973, he had found his new sleigh. 

Concerned about the carbon foot print of his former reindeer colleagues and sleigh, Santa has turned to BART for his commute since its opening day. When we asked him about the difficulties of delivering toys to children outside of the greater Bay Area, Santa remarked that non-Bay Area children were a “bunch of assholes anyway.”  

Santa is currently in talks with SOMA start-up eCoal and former BDSM site NaughtyList.net to establish a network of distribution outside of the Bay Area.  When asked about the recent BART Police shootings, Santa refused to comment and ended the interiew, stating that he had a “#OpBART strategic planning meeting to get to”. 

[photo by Bhautik Joshi]

Eulogy for a bicycle

— By Alan Fineberg |

Before its gutting by opportunistic scavengers, this bike was useful and wanted. It had a drivetrain and wheels and it was free.

But the bicycle exists in a hostile world, and at some point it became necessary for it to seek security. Unfortunately for the bicycle, it was not true security; only the illusion of such. And not so temporary.

While technically the bicycle remains, it is only bones. And they are not secured so much as shackled.

This bicycle did emerge victorious against the attack of the desperate: the screwdriver. But it was no match for the other forces which otherwise eroded its worth and dignity.

A captive of its own short-sightedness, it bears a stamp of shame and lies naked beside refuse in an indifferent universe.

Bi-Rite Market Hires Bouncer, Institutes One-In-One-Out Policy

— By Kevin Montgomery (@kevinmonty) |

The very nice bouncer, who didn't size up my wardrobe or pat me down in search of concealed weapons, informed me that this has started happening on busy weekends lately in response to the fire marshal enforcing capacity limits.  He acknowledged the whole situation was “kinda embarrassing.”  Why? “Because, you know, we're a grocery store.”

Anyway, if you can get over the public shaming of patiently and nonchalantly standing behind a red rope for organic peaches and cruelty-free cheeses, Monday afternoon's line was only 2 minutes and 34 seconds long (I timed it, for journalism) and you're treated to a sampling of free tomatoes once you make it to the top of the list.

U.S. Bank Building Morphs Into a Skewed Absolut SF Vodka Ad

— By Kevin Montgomery (@kevinmonty) |

Thursday night found the Mission's tallest and particularly windowless facade slapped with a projected Absolut SF vodka ad (visible above, kind of), which brings up an important question: why doesn't the neighborhood rally behind doing something interesting to this wall?  It'd make a great home to an homage to the “Lilli Ann” mural, or perhaps another Hendrix Gin ad.

Previously on Uptown Almanac: 

City Announces Approval of New Folsom St. Park, Waits 15 Minutes to Reveal it "May" Require a Food Court

— By Kevin Montgomery (@kevinmonty) |

Fantastic news, guys: the “controversal” proposal to convert a parking lot at 17th and Folsom to a public park has been approved by Rec & Park, according to Mission Local:

This week, the San Francisco Recreation and Park Commission approved the purchase of the property for $2.42 million. The park proposal is expected to go before the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission next month and before the Board of Supervisors by early October, but the Recreation and Park Commission’s approval typically makes it a deal, according to groups involved with the project.

All the funding for the park, including purchasing the land, constructing the park, and maintaining it for three years, has been raised by private entities.  That's right, the city won't have to spend a dime on this project.  Of course, the Rec & Park Department is already seeing green:

Rec and Park, already notoriously cash-strapped, may wind up incorporating concessions into the park to offset maintenance costs after the initial funding runs out, added [Karen Mauney-Brodek, deputy director for park planning at the Recreation and Park Department].

Nice.

[Mission Loc@l]

Previously on Uptown Almanac: 

Hey 7X7 SHUT THE FUCK UP pt. 2

— By Kevin Montgomery (@kevinmonty) |

Reader Adam sent us his thoughts about the latest issue of 7x7 Magazine:

you read this article?  the whole thing warrants derision, but read these two paragraphs in particular:

I hadn’t considered the synergy between SF’s two biggest cultural pillars until recently. It took dining at Bar Tartine with a friend who wishes to go unnamed—a tech venture capitalist invested in some of the city’s top restaurants. That night, when I started talking in wonderment about the surge of restaurant openings in SF, recession be damned, he politely suggested I get my head out of my dinner. “What boils my blood,” he said, between bites of duck leg cabbage roll stuffed with liver, house-made sauerkraut, and dried cherries, “is that people in the artist community have never understood the connection between capital and the arts. And they take it massively for granted.”

Gesticulating with a curried, pickled carrot, he broke it down historically. “Look at the rise of Florence. During the Renaissance, you had the combination of wealthy patrons and artists. The wealthy patrons allowed the artists to take risks that they’d never have been able to take if they weren’t provided for.” While sommelier Alex Fox poured us some Von Buhl Riesling, he continued, “And it’s no different today in San Francisco, where food has crossed over into an artistic experience. Chefs and bartenders here consider themselves artists.” I had a disconcerting flash of Bar Agricole’s acclaimed bartender Thad Vogler posing naked like Michelangelo’s David, shaker instead of stone in hand. “Even farmers have artistic status here,” my friend astutely observed. “Today in San Francisco, the wealth gets poured back into our modern-day values: the church of food.”

What pretentious cock suckers, not that there's anything wrong with that. Cock sucking I mean. But com'on. For fuck sake, their sense of self importance is so utterly baseless, it's astounding. Florence during the Renaissance? Really? They're talking pop-up restaurants and food trucks and they're comparing it to Michelangelo, Leonardo Da Vinci, and the Renaissance. Wow. That makes this little venture capitalist parasite what, one of the Medicis? OK, right, that make sense. Good thing he broke it down “historically” for the dumb fuck author. Except he neglected to mentioned one major difference, the Medici's descendants probably still run most of Italy and large parts of the world while this guy's descendants are most likely going to be working at McDonalds when all his lottery money runs out.

I feel better now. Tx.

No, thank you.

[Sightglass Coffeee photo by Niall Kennedy]

Previously on Uptown Almanac: 

Mike's Bikes Bans Pennies

— By Kevin Montgomery (@kevinmonty) |

Don't get me wrong, I'd miss having that giant Skippy peanut butter jar full of worthless zinc and cooper on my desk if we banned pennies outright, but it's about time someone started rounding out pennies.  And for good reasons too!  From Mike's Bikes laundry list of reasons for ditching the coin:

Pennies are 3% copper, and 97% zinc and are primarily made from virgin ore. Making pennies from zinc means and copper means mining for those materials. Red Dog Mine, which is the largest zinc mine in the US is by far the #1 polluter on the EPA's list, because of large quantities of heavy-metal and lead rich mining tailings. The process of refining both metals can release sulfur dioxide (SO2), lead and zinc into the environment.

And:

Pennies are so worthless now that it doesn't even pay the California Minimum Wage of $8/hour to pick them up off the street.

Of course, this isn't going to make a huge dent in the problem (especially considering the zinc industry lobbyists crushing related US legislation / the fact I never shop at Mike's Bikes), but perhaps the Board of Sups can take Mike's lead and make this the next San Francisco environmental cause du jour.

[pic via reddit] (Thanks Tony!)

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