Eats and Beers

Little Wings and Royal Baths hold it down this Saturday at Regional Bias

— By Kevin Montgomery (@kevinmonty) |

Nicole over at The Bay Bridged let's us know what's up:

This Saturday we're throwing a show / our fifth birthday party at the Verdi Club, Regional Bias.

It's officially Royal Baths' last SF show before moving to NY, all the other bands are local, too. Like the last few shows, we'll have a pop up gallery with local artists, and food this year comes from Rosamunde and Rocky's Fry Bread. We're raffling off Treasure Island tickets. It's a pretty fun event, which typically breaks out into a dance party after the live music ends. We'll have a few local guys DJing as well - Kevin Meenan (of epicsauce) and Peter Arko (Ears of the Beholder).

Local music, dancing, and sausages?  Oh yes.

For the unfamiliar, TBB has a sampling of what you can expect to hear.  Ticket's are also up for grabs with a $10-$20 donation.

New Pop-Up Bar Coming to the Mission

— By Alan Fineberg |

Skinner's is a new, ultra-exclusive pop up bar that's made a couple of appearances in the Mission.

JD Read, pop-up visionary

The brainchild of fledging barowner JD Read, Skinner's strips the bar experience down to “its purest form.” Since there are legal gray areas involved, information about the bar is restricted. You'll need to request an invite here with the subject line: “Requesting Invite to Skinner's Box”.

Skinner's

Just thinking about this place makes me salivate.

Palace Family Steak House Reopening?

— By Kevin Montgomery (@kevinmonty) |

I had noticed the door to the defunct Palace Family Steak House wide open a few weeks back, with three guys inside cleaning out two years worth of dust and grime.  Whle I wasn't able to swing in to figure out what was going on at the time, Todd from Bernalwood was able to poke his head around and snap these pics:

Though from the outside it looks pretty much the same as it has since it closed in 2009, there’s lots happening behind the sheets of brown paper that cover the windows of the venerable Palace Steak House at the corner of Mission and Cesar Chavez. Four decades worth of accumulated kitch and grunge have been removed, and based on these exclusive photographs captured by the Bernalwood Spybot, it seems the interior of the Palace Steak House has been thoroughly remodeled to look retro-shabby-chic.

Unfortunately, no one has been able to contact the owners to figure out what exactly is going on (Is it still a steak house? Will it keep the same menu? Will there be hella vegan options?), but the exterior signage suggests they are keeping the “Palace Family Steak House” name and could be open as soon as next week.

Read on to see additional pics and give the restaurant's theme song (that's right) a listen.

The Make-Out Room is Streaming Video of You Getting Wasted (Brought to You by The Silver Bullet)

— By Kevin Montgomery (@kevinmonty) |

Jake from the SF Weekly brings to our attention a story from The East Bay Express about BarSpace.tv, the new iPhone app that lets you creep on people getting their drink on while you furiously masturbate in your iPhone-equipped fetish dungeon.  From EB Express:

Founded by a handful of Sonoma County entrepreneurs, the app, BarSpace, and its related Website, BarSpace.tv, employ a simple concept: Install cameras in bars and nightclubs and then streams that video live through a free iPhone app, as well as through the company's Website. The cameras are installed and paid for by BarSpace; each bar decided the hours between which they'd like to transmit a video stream.

The idea, according to the company's CEO, Mike Deignan, is that people can use the app to see whether bars are full or empty — or even whether their favorite bartender is working that night or what the dress code is. Essentially, BarSpace makes it possible to find out what you're getting into, in real time and straight from the source — to gauge a bar's atmosphere against your own expectations and inclinations, without ever leaving your home (or, in some cases, paying a cover). […]

But according to Chris Conley, a technology and civil liberties attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union's Northern California chapter, BarSpace — and technology like it — raises serious questions about personal freedom in the digital age. “Broadly speaking, we would be concerned as a civil liberties issue,” he said, emphasizing that he wasn't familiar with BarSpace itself and thus couldn't speak about it specifically. “The concerns that we would have are, first, that people are actually aware of what's going on — that people know they're being filmed and that picture is being sent across the Internet to who-knows-where. The bottom line is, people need to be part of the equation.”

Most of the bars on the list shouldn't impact the readers of the this blog, and the chaotic lighting of The Make-Out Room and the speeding phallis of Red State intoxication blurs the faces of many of its patrons (although the view of the stage is looking mighty fine).  Even so, who wants to be the lone guy singing karaoke in The Mint while there's still daylight?

Zeitgeist Ditches Iconic Backyard Portapotties

— By Kevin Montgomery (@kevinmonty) |

…and replaced them with additional seating for a caucasian tamale lady.

But seriously, there are new wood, concrete, and sheet metal bathrooms that look more like Dr. Teeth than scrappy motorcycle dive that seats 290 drunks.  But as a former Zeitgeist bartender reminded me when talking about the changes, Zeitgeist translates from German as “the spirit of the times.”  Valencia has been repaved, sidewalks widened, and made safe for valet parking.  The motorcycle, messenger, and gearhead clientele has been pushed away and the bar's “surly” bartenders and bouncers is seen more as a cute, if not kitschy feature than a legitimate force of disgust.

Maybe Zeitgeist is just getting with the times.

Previously on Uptown Almanac: 

Discolandia to Become Pig n' Pie Place

— By Kevin Montgomery (@kevinmonty) |

Grub Street got the news:

A former Mission record shop looks to be on its way to becoming a restaurant called Pig and Pie, Grub Street discovers today. Partners Nathan Overstreet and Miles Pickering have put in for a liquor license at 2962 24th Street, the former Discolandia, which went out of business earlier this year.

It's been said before, and I'm going to say it again: they should just name joints like this “food.”

The Future of Mexican-American Cuisine

— By Kevin Montgomery (@kevinmonty) |

I don't even know what I can say about Tapatío Ruffles other than I don't want to eat them.  It's an unholy, 99-cent union between Jalisco's revered flavor culture and a cheap bag of vegetable oil generally paired with microwavable dip.  Couldn't we have at least brought some Hostess Ding Dongs to the table, America?

Mission Street Food Cookbook Unveiled

— By Kevin Montgomery (@kevinmonty) |

While on the topic of local authors, The Bold Italic got a sneak peak of Mission Street Food's new cookbook, set to be released later this month (and potentially available now at Mission Chinese Food):

Mission Street Food is more than your average cookbook. It chronicles the development of Myint and Leibowitz's journey through food, starting from their days of operating a food cart, to their days of hosting Mission Street Food with guest chefs on Tuesdays and Sundays, and finally, to the present, of running Mission Chinese Food.

Read on.

A Look Inside Dr. Teeth and The Electric Mayhem

— By Kevin Montgomery (@kevinmonty) |

The newly opened Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem is certainly shaping up to be an interesting bar.  Early reviewers on Yelp hate it, so they're probably doing something right.  The food's good, the beer prices are within the margin, and they're currently building out a giant outdoor patio with terraced seating so you can spend lazy Sunday's drinking outdoors and watching a Giants game. But beyond the bar's name and signage, this place has nothing to do with The Muppets, which apparently some people take issue with.

The bar's owner, Mark, says it's mainly a legal thing.  Disney sued some 80 businesses last year for infringing on the Muppets trademark.  So rather risk a lawsuit by having an unsanctioned Muppet bar, the interior is literally a bunch of dental office artifacts (down to the bucket of lollipops and toys) and electrical mayhem [pictured above].  And while that may bum a bunch of people out, at least they're being clever about it.

But really, anyone who is coming here for the interior is severely missing the point: the food is the jam.  The sweet potato tater tots are reason enough to eat here over other Mission bar n' grills, but they have plenty other options.  Waffle fries, a house-made veggie burger (which is on the level of Bender's black bean burger and far better than Zeitgeist's), various sandwiches and salads, and an entire tater tot menu that includes tatchos.  That's right, a goddamn tater tot nacho plate.  And for those of you interested in burning your mouth and crying while you eat, they even have a ghost pepper hot sauce that they make you sign a waiver to eat:

The final highlight is the bar's reverse happy hour, which is a free pony Pacifico with every shot ordered after 10pm on Thursdays thru Sundays.  And perhaps that's what makes this place tick: doing things differently.  It's by no means a typical Mission dive bar, and never claims to be.  Sure, the place is modern; but it does a few things right, namely feeding you and getting you drunk.  If that's what's most important, then this place will do you right.

Previously on Uptown Almanac: 

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