Amidst all the Fourth of July action, we missed all the controversy around the Chronicle's Top 100 Bars in the Bay list.  Let's summarize: every once in a while, publications publish a best-of list to boost readership—after all, people like nothing more than seeing how their tastes match up to that of their local editorial board.  So the Chronicle, ever wishing to reclaim the glory days when people with color in their hair and swagger in their step read their rag, published a list that the lubricated youths could rally behind.  But they blew it—oh, how they blew it.

The list largely consisted of restaurants that serve booze (Nopa, Beretta, Hog & Rocks), rather than bars themselves (as local wit TK put it, “I personally think if there are more people eating than just drinking in your place at any given time, you're a restaurant and not a bar”).  And the only dive within the Mission, TL, or Lower Haight was Zeitgeist, whose Top 100 review reads like a pitch for a Totally Zany! sitcom pilot:

Dive bars don't get much better than Zeitgeist. Here you'll find one of the best Bloody Marys in town, dozens of craft beers on tap, not to mention a darn good cheeseburger - all served up with no-nonsense attitude. Add the large, sunny beer garden out back and you have what might well be the quintessential Mission bar experience. Treat the bar and its staff with respect, follow the rules, and you'll do just fine.

Anyway, a darn good attempt from the Chronicle.  Darn good.

[Screencap by Ariel]

SF Chronicle blogger and alleged fan of the entire The Darkness discography C.W. Nevius is my favorite blogger who's not a Mission blogger.  Why?  Because he always writes incendiary slime about the controversy of the day.  And what fun it is!

Recently, the target of C.Dubs polemics have been the thundering menace of a cyclist scorned.  In Nevius's world, these aggro two-wheeled executioners are violent hazards running stop signs in the Wiggle and berating Nice Old Ladies in the crosswalks.  What's worse? These thugs want rights!  They want more bike lanes.  They want Idaho stops.  They want bikes lanes all to themselves.  Judging by the sheer frequency Nevius writes about “sanctimonious bike types,” you would think the 3.5% have replaced gang violence, homelessness, and corruption in City Hall as San Francisco's biggest issues.

Yesterday, the blogging got a bit better.  In a piece titled “The aggro bike rider and me”, Nevius detailed a horrible incident in which was yelled at for nearly driving 3,000 pounds of grease and metal into a sanctimonious bike type:

A BMW driver — and do not get me started on BMW drivers — cut me off in my car and I swerved to get around him. Immediately I heard a guy on a bike yelling. “Check both mirrors before you change lanes.”

Fair enough. I cut him off. My bad. And I would have said so except what followed was an unbelievable string of F-bombs and insults. It went on and on. Holy crap. My first instinct was to roll down the window and say, “Hey, that guy cut me off. It was an accident.” But one look at the guy told me that was a bad idea. He was spoiling for a fight.

So, agreeing again that it was my fault, I don’t get it. There are lots of things that trigger irrational hate — religion, race, politics, and national origin. But bikes? C’mon.

This is a supercharged discussion. We’re talking about the bike jerks who ran down, and even killed, pedestrians. It feeds into the perception of the self-entitled bike riders who think they own the road. And, in some cases that apparently leads to the opposing view that automobile drivers are clueless, malicious twits who are intentionally running two-wheel riders off the road.

Ah yes, those two cyclists who killed two pedestrians (while motorists have splattered hundreds) obviously represent the entire cycling populace.  What was this dude thinking?! When you were making a “bad” and hurling your vehicle into a biker, he clearly should have been thinking about the perception of cyclists held by maddened lunatics who think their vehicles own the road.

We really should ban bicycles from the road.  We don't want C.W. Nevius's fragile sensibilities to be further damaged.

[Photo by dumbeast]

Crime in San Francisco's many parks is a Big! problem.  And with all the hoodlums running amok and SFPD understaffed, Rec. & Park is looking towards the good citizens of San Francisco to reclaim their rightful public spaces (via food trucks).

From an editorial in today's Chronicle:

Dolores Park, in what should be a bucolic, family-oriented neighborhood, is being attacked by vandals who damage play structures and buildings and deface them with graffiti.

This is not new, of course. The very thing that attracts people to parks - wide-open spaces - also seems to attract unwelcome visitors.

Can this be stopped - ever?

Can it?  CAN IT?  However will we be saved?!

The Recreation and Park Department hopes to “activate” many parks - to encourage daytime and nighttime activities, such as farmers' markets, sporting events, food-truck days and expanded skateboarding programs like a popular one at Waller and Stanyan streets. The department also plans bike-rental programs to generate activity around parks and to plant trees and ornamental flower beds to inspire residents to take pride in their neighborhoods.

The idea is to encourage law-abiding citizens to use their own parks more - for their own enjoyment and to discourage undesirable elements from taking over space that belongs to everybody.

Apparently they are also calling for a “zero-tolerance” policy towards drugs and, with SFPD slated to hire 2,000 more officers to protect the citizenry from harming their own livers and lungs, increased “aggressive patrolling of the parks.”  And while I'm sure this is all fine and dandy, let's just call this what it is: a call for families to use the parks.

While this article is talking about all of San Francisco's parks, the example of Dolores Park is an interesting one. Dolores Park is quite obviously one of the highest trafficked parks in the city and surely 95+% of its users are law-abiding (unless you're boring and recognize the legitimacy of open-container laws, in which case 5% of the park is law-abiding), yet the very vandalism and crime the Chronicle detests persists.  Pumping more people into the parks obviously won't clean it up in any meaningful way, unless actions are taken to change the very relaxed atmosphere of the public space—by extension, making it less public. 

Can't the city just recognize that people want to drink in public and understand shitheads will be shitheads?  This noise is getting old.

Good news everyone! The Chronicle wrote an eye-opening expose about fixed gear bikes and culture, which has never happened before. EVER! I don't want to give away the ending, but here's an excerpt from the riviting article:

The only thing harder to stop than fixed-gear bikes might be their rise in popularity. Next time you walk by your neighborhood coffee shop, take a closer look at the bikes locked outside. You're sure to notice a fixie or two among them.

Read on to learn a brief history about fixed gear bikes, and find out answers to those buring fixie questions you've been dying to ask: Do you need ironic facial hair to ride a fixie? Does the bike have brakes, and if not, how do you stop? How many times can one news source write the same story over and over again before anyone notices? What will C.W. Nevius have to say about all this #fixiefamous hype? All this and more to come, I'm sure.