We all know that El Rio has been serving $1 PBRs and $2 well on Mondays since the Spanish built Mission Dolores, but now they're also offering up 'free' Rocky's Frybread on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday nights.  While Rocky, who cooks the frybread in the Diné tradition he learned growing up outside of Shiprock, NM, accepts donations for his wares, the suggested donation ends up being cheaper than most else you can eat in this town.  Plus, being able to chow down on a fried dinner while hanging out on El Rio's back patio on a warm day like today?  Can't get much better than that.

We mentioned six months ago that margarita destination/diarrhea factory La Rondalla planned to reopen around Christmas.  Clearly that never happened, but now it looks like the restaurant-who-called-wolf is actually getting serious about openning up their doors for the first time in years.  They've obtained a 3 month permit for reserved street space for renovations and it appears a bunch of work is going on inside:

No word as to when they will actually reopen, but count on it happening some time around the competition of the Bay Bridge Replacement.

The darker the line, the more DUIs.  Pins represent police stations.

Data cartologist Doug McClure recently published a bunch of maps of San Francisco DUI arrests over the past two years.  No big surprises there: most of the DUIs occur around bars (16th and Mission, Castro and 18th, Columbus, Divis in the Lower Haight, and most of the TL/Nob Hill) and major thoroughfares (Geary, Broadway, Great Highway, San Jose Ave.), while industrial areas such as Potrero Hill are relatively DUI-free.  However, comparing the DUI map to Eric Fischer's map of cab locations from 8pm-midnight reveal an odd enforcement pattern:

In theory, these two maps would match up pretty well; as cabs hover around the city's bars and nightlife and chauffeur people home, the density of cabs and DUIs should be fairly similar.  For the most part they do, but overlaying the two directly exposes a few key differences:

The popular cab route along Polk, Broadway, and in the Marina has very few DUIs.  In the Mission, there are far more DUIs around 16th than around 24th, despite the cab volume being virtually the same.  24th and Castro in Noe are practically DUI free.  And there's an explosion of DUIs in along Geary approaching Richmond Station, despite cab traffic falling off.

In a few of these locations, the high concentration of DUI arrests correlate with a nearby police station (represented by a red pin):

Does this data mean that SFPD does a poor job of enforcing drunk driving laws outside the immediate vicinity of their stations?  Probably not; there's going to be more cruisers returning to and leaving from stations than cars patrolling 10 blocks away, so the likelihood of the police nabbing a drunk driver is much higher near a station.  That said, if you're biking home late at night, you're probably safest from drunk drivers if you're riding near police stations than, say, riding down 17th on the way home from Retox Lounge.

[More maps and analysis over at Doug McCune's blog]

I found myself in Santa Cruz the other weekend, eating a fat bowl of Marianne's ice cream at 11 in the morning when it hit me: San Francisco ice cream sucks.  In fact, whenever I dive into a waffle cone in other cities, I find myself wondering where San Francisco went wrong.

That's not to say San Francisco doesn't have any good ice cream.  Anyone who claims Mitchell's sucks, especially when it's done up as a sundae at St. Francis, is a damn fool.  Berkeley Farms is pretty legit for an ice cream that's stored next to frozen pizzas in- Safeway.  And It's-Its are the retired jersey of ice cream sandwiches: untouchable.  But the bulk of the ice creameries in SF just don't cut it.

Let's consider this graph:

In short: most SF ice cream is pretentious, some of it is good, much of it is only marginally better than dog feces, and I have too much time on my hands.

I don't mean SF ice cream is pretentious as in you see people gripping their cones with their pinky sticking out in the air and holding a monocle to their eye.  Rather, it's more about how needlessly 'weird' our ice creameries are.  Would a 6-year-old eat Humphry Slocombe's balsamic vinaigrette ice cream?  No, because it tastes like ass.  This is the beauty of children: they come with absolutely no pretenses.  Kids won't eat something because it was 'creative' or challenging to make; they eat what tastes rad.  Any child that finds themself tugging at their mom's hips for a scoop of “Boccalone Prosciutto” has clearly lived in this town for far too long.

So what the fuck is up? Why is San Francisco a decent ice cream black hole?  I'm no expert on this subject, I cannot help but feel the Straus base is to blame.  Something about locally-sourced, organic ingredients appears to make ice cream makers lose their goddamn mind and start filling their scoops with shit that just doesn't belong in ice cream.  Whereas Mitchell's and Marianne's is just a delicious concoction of sugar mixed with candy and other flavoring agents, Humphry Slocombe, Bi-Rite and Xanath mix goose liver and olive oil into their ice cream and caters to people who think eating food on the sidewalk is a “movement.”

Why can't I just find a place that will serve me 5 scoops of moose tracks in this town?  It's keeping me up at night.

(Marianne's photo by Liralen Li)