My favorite day in Dolores Park, ever. Went down dressed as Zombie Cold Beer! Cold Water!. For those of you not from San Francisco, “Cold Beer! Cold Water!” is a man who walks around Dolores Park with a cooler bag selling, well, yeah…. cans of PBR (sometimes Simple Times) and water. Here are some photos of him. And while he’s not wearing this outfit in any of those shots, I promise this is pretty damn close to what he wore most days this summer.

I can do a pretty good impression of his call, and he kind of sounds like a zombie anyway, so I went with it. I had my zombie walk on, and set out hollering… over and over and over… “Cold beer! Cold Water!” Some people had no idea what was going on, but most people recognized who I was supposed to be. And THREE different people mistook me for the man himself, all saying something like, “Oh, my god! He dressed up for Halloween!” One man was convinced I stole CBCW’s shirt. Ganja Treats took my photo! I sold twelve beers and four waters (though I gave away like half of them). But where was the OG CBCW?

I got up to leave after a couple hours, carrying my cooler, continuing the zombie walk and yelling his call, when suddenly, I heard him. He was only fifty feet or so away from me. “Cold Beer!” he yelled. “Cold Water!” I responded. People were cracking up, and one woman came running after me demanding I go after him and take a photo. I was on my way out though and having never talked to dude in my life didn’t know if he’d really appreciate my costume and I chickened out. Still, I had a blast. 

Photos by Erin Steach.

I hate this band The National. So while the flannel set were droning to their supremely unexciting set at Treasure Island Music Festival, I decided to keep my negativity to myself by browsing the vendors. That's where I met Mary Weather, aka Judy Elkan, a local screen printer who lets you buy your favorite free Mission landmarks in clothing form. She takes photos, sometimes collages them together as she did for this Dolores Park number, and applies them to [vertically integrated apparel brand] t-shirts and tank tops. 

Now you can be surrounded by the Sutro Trident of Hope, mafia-organized ice cream vendors, and piles of bicycles regardless of where you spend your Saturdays.  

Judy says the cops told her to get permit last year, but when she found out that only allowed her to sell at the Ferry Building, she defiantly raised a fist and set up her blanket/storefront at Dolores Park. Apparently the po po haven't given her any guff this year.

Sucks for Blue Bottle because the park is apparently a very lucrative spot. “My best day I made $400 in 3 hours” says Elkan.

Where do we draw the line on commercializing public spaces? Is Mary Weather eroding the fabric of the neighborhood by selling water-based fabric ink hand prints? Is this the first step on the road towards Mission souvenir shops and mass produced “I ♥ Dolores Park” mugs?

Or is this Count Chocula shirt cool enough to make you forget your morals?

Here In San Francisco, a fantastic blog about being lesbian and making dog food and other such tomfoolery, spotted this unfortunate scene during the last crushing heatwave.  Considering tomorrow is going to be on the warmer side, I'd like to present this national tragedy as a kind reminder of what not to wear on your Tecate and Rhea's lunchbreak.

In other news, Here In SF recently got invited to a lunch with group of rowdy retired Irish and Italian boxers and baseball players in the Excelsior.  Needless to say, it sounds like a fantastic place to squander a Friday afternoon while shooting the shit with people who spend the better part of their life getting punch in the head.

The debate surrounding the commercialization of Dolores Park sure has been heating up lately.  Earlier this week, Stephen Elliot, the man largely responsible for preventing American Apparel from opening up shop on Valencia Street in 2009, took up the cause and launched “Stop the Trailer.”  Stephen easily has the capability to see some success on this issue given his network of businesses and track-record of victory.  He even has devoted himself to undermine Blue Bottle's business by standing in front of their trailer and offering free coffee to all their patrons.

The general campaign against these trailers makes many good points: Dolores Park is already used to its max, the trailers, generators and accompanying lines will be a visual and audible blight and, most importantly, parks are meant to be for leisure, sport and unfettered drinking.

However, Stephen and other neighbor's campaign is being subverted by Chicken John.  He defends his use of the “McDonald's is coming!“ hyperbole in his straw-man petition because it was successful, “time was short and we needed knee-jerk reactions. Which we got.”  He spends his time trying to paint local business Blue Bottle as a corporate monster, but completely ignores that La Cocina will be operating a similar truck, all while parading around Ritual Roaster's trailer on federal land.  Worst of all, Chicken John is a man with previously no visibility on park matters.  Of the half dozen or so community meetings I've been to over the past year, he never once showed his face or rallied his crew of Laughing Squid fanboys.  This guy doesn't care about “Dolores Park's soul;” he is, yet again, merely using this controversy as a tool for self-promotion.

Time is poorly spent defining what types of businesses should be allowed to vend on public land.  More importantly, it's hard to fault Blue Bottle or La Cocina for taking this offer—Rec. & Park truly offered an incredible deal.  As anyone who has ever tried to open a business in San Francisco can tell you, the costs and red tape are outstanding.  One small Valencia St. retail outlet (no food or drink) that I know of spent $60,000 just to open the door and dealt with countless setbacks (ADA compliance, fire etc).  Serving food and drink makes it even more costly.  Yet Blue Bottle has only sunk $25,000 into their venture and La Cocina has reportedly spent $30,000.  To be granted a retail space with access 1.2 million patrons a year for such a staggeringly low start-up cost and, worst, only $1,000/month in rent is what is so disgusting.  As Blue Bottle's James Freeman told 7x7 Magazine, “It was less expensive than building out a cafe.”

And this is the problem with the deal.  Rather than fill up one of the dozen storefronts on Valencia or Mission with a business, we have incentivized businesses to plant 12-foot trucks in the middle of a park that is already pressed for space.  Even if Blue Bottle or La Cocina had to get a Dolores location, the storefront on the corner of 18th and Dolores next to Bi-Rite Cremery is up for rent.  Rec & Park should have recognized that if they were going to whore out one of our national treasures, they should have at least demanded more money per month than what I pay in rent.

Given all this, I recognize booting the trucks out of Dolores Park is an unwinnable war.  The contracts are in place, the permits have been drawn up and the trucks have been built.  Short of Chicken John taking a liter of gas and a match to the trucks, they'll be in The Park later this fall.  But kicking them out is not a war worth pursuing: it would be unfair to for these two groups, who are largely innocent in the whole ordeal, to eat the cost of the city's blunder.  Instead, Rec & Park should realize this was a grave mistake and when the permits are up in two years, not renew them and have Rec & Park head Phil Ginsburg assure us that this will never happen again.