RT @sfhockeydude: …the SF Bulls free shirt you get with season tix looks like it says "Balls Hockey" http://t.co/JV9qFW5l—
shanners (@oshanada) October 04, 2011

This of course immediately sparked new cheers by my new Twitter friends:

The design of the "Balls Hockey" shirt would best be described as "Wannabe Ed Hardy" the Affliction shirt wearing douche crowd will love it.—
ryan (@sfhockeydude) October 04, 2011

@burritojustice @oshanada I see my future-self double-fisting at a game, yelling "LET'S GO, BALLS!"—
ryan (@sfhockeydude) October 04, 2011

(I think we all see where this is headed.)

Anyway, I have created a poll to get a feel for which of these alternate names shall replace the tragedy of the San Francisco Bulls.  Please read Peter’s finely crafted article to understand the nuances of each choice before voting, along with my original post. And of course, gazing upon the glory of the San Francisco Sutros:

Ahhhh. Oh yeah, the poll.  In the spirit of Ranked Choice Voting, you can pick up to three names (though you can’t actually rank them, sorry…) And of course a write-in option.

And a note to Pat Curcio – please take all this as constructive criticism.  We really want hockey to work here.

Oh, Free Marketing Idea:

Have REALLY good food and beer during games at the Cow Palace.  Seriously.  While renaming the team the San Francisco Food Trucks is admittedly a stretch, you should seriously consider doing a weekly Off The Grid food truck extravaganza and get local/regional brewers like Anchor, Speakeasy, Trumer and Almanac to be partners.

And the obligatory 180 panorama (click to zoom):

Hmm, these houses look familiar. Like they are historical or something.

Wait a minute:

Oh, that’s right, it was next to the old Recreation Park baseball grounds from 1880. Looking west from what’s now Treat, between 25th and 26th. I am officially naming these houses “The Folsom Ladies”.

You were eating on the GHOSTS OF BASEBALL PAST! (But that’s cool, given they were eating and drinking on that spot before your great-great grandparents were born.)

If this intrigues you, please do click on this post.

I enjoy tacoing under billowing clouds with moments of brilliant sun.

My Jarritos was GLOWING. Is that normal?

I had the breaded halibut taco which were MOST excellent. It’s called Dia de Pescao Mex Sí Food and is well worth a visit next time you’re in San Jose. (55 N. Bascom Ave. at W. San Carlos Street.)

Earlier in the day, our new “Plywood Diaries” reporter had observed that construction workers had removed an entire window, noting that “in broken English, they said that the same restaurant is coming back.”

Our Valencia St agent remarks: “I only hope they also renovate the food quality”.

Oh, and 901 Valencia used to be a saloon.

(1899 Sanborn map — 20th on the top, Valencia on the left, Lexington on the right.)

And because you know I am going to look up what it was… From the 1898 city directory:

“Hark, Gertrude!  Let us acquire beverages!”

“But dearest Wilbur, I really do feel like consuming raw mollusks.”

“Well, let us do both at Mr Lauterwasser’s Liquor and Oyster Emporium on 20th and Valencia!”

Sometime after 1904, In 1909, the bar was taken over by Frank Lemoine.

And then John and Katherine Hill:

Prohibition turned it into a soda fountain run by H.I. Buckman, as we see in the 1927 city directory.

By 1938, it was home to the “Uneeda Coffee” Shop.

(It is good to see that horrid coffee puns know no historical limits.)

• Is street food a positive byproduct of an underdeveloped infrastructure?
• Are we too civilized for a decent street food culture?

I am afraid the answer is yes, especially as he notes that “We’ll never have a legitimate street food culture in America so long as people are afraid of puking.” This is on top of the city permit impossibilities and turf wars between established vendors and upstart food carts.

He concludes:

Alas, I fear a complete socioeconomic collapse and reset might be the only road to American street food.

I guess this discussion is forced by the emergence of the fancy pants street cart, which some complain is itself an impediment to real street food culture. But I feel like the nuisance of the designer cupcake cart resolves itself in post-apocalyptal Street Food America, as the novelty of eating fancy food in non-fancy places fades away when there are no fancy places.

As we well may be on our way, it will be a good idea to make friends with your local street food vendors, neighborhood grocer and corner fruit dudes.  (God knows Safeway will be completely useless. Hopefully Twitter will stay up or we will all starve to death.)

But not all news coming from Plebiscite is dire!  His “inverted nachos” — parmesan crisp, roasted corn, jalapeño sour cream — will be making an appearance this Saturday at Mission Street Food.

Anyway, when the food-pocalypse arrives, I’ll be serving up the tomatoes, arugula and plums growing my yard (presuming I keep the animals at bay) and will be ready to trade as per historical precedent, as the Mission used to be the vegetable garden for San Francisco.

This account from 1859 gives an idea of the food traffic on the “Old Mission Road”.

On the Old Mission road, an omnibus passes and repasses fourteen times daily, with from 1 to 30 passengers, and will average 12 each way; leaving the Plaza on the even hour, from 7 O’clock, A. M., to 8 P. M. The San Jose stage, which leaves the Plaza at 8 A. M., and the Ocean House omnibus, which leaves the Plaza at 10 A. M., passes and repasses daily; the Overland Mail stage, via Los Angeles, which leaves the Plaza every Monday and Friday, at noon; is due, returning on the same day, but it generally arrives three or four days before time; Dorlin’s express runs twice a day to the Mission and back; in addition to these, there are 5 water carts, 10 milk, 12 meat, 18 bread, 40 vegetable, and from 20 to 30 express, or parcel wagons, daily.

This was the same “Old Plank Road” you can see on the 1853 Coast Survey Map, available from David Rumsey’s website. (This and Folsom, and various paths were how you got to the Mission in the 1850s.)

Mission Dolores, farms and a few beer gardens were big in our hood in the 1850s — most of the action was downtown. The 1853 Coast Survey map shows a clearly defined Market Street, with the built up part of the city pretty much stopping at Powell to the west and 5th to the south.  Detail below:

You can see the Plank Road, curving to get through the hills and sand dunes that weren’t yet plowed over. Note the 60 to 80 foot sand dunes where Market St tapers out:

Here’s a view from the Rumsey collection looking south from down Mission at 9th, 1856, dunes aplenty.

So the Plank Road (and thus Mission today) curved to avoid the dunes, whereas Market St just stopped (until they were bulldozed out of the way).  BART curves because of those sand dunes from 150 years ago. And I can jump on it and go to the Thursday Vendors Market at the ferry building to eat Mission based food like chiccarones! Plus ça change…

(That’s a BBQ on the bottom of my inadvertently cropped shot, in case you can’t tell.)

And then there was “Bill” selling his delicious bacon potato chips. Note my totally intentional use of shadow and exposure to protect his identity from the food authorities, never mind the feared Ryan “Chiccarones” Farr).

They were still warm. Mmmm….

The fine folks at Mission Loc@l have come up with a map:

All I can say is that cecina tortas at La Oaxaquéna kick ASS.

I already like these folks. Any website about the Mission is already a good website. Even better when “Taco Troubles” is one of their headline articles.

Now what possible trouble could there be with tacos in the Mission? (This is certainly a problem, but arguably it is in Duboce Triangle. It is still wrong, even more so that I willingly ate at the chain as a child.)

No, our friends at the Berkeley J-school picked up on Los Troubles del Tonayense. Hélène Goupil clearly wore out some shoe leather as she got some great quotes from the protaganists, Benjamin Santana, the owner of the truck, versus Dana Woldow, co-chair of our favorite group, “The Student Nutrition and Physical Activity Committee”:

On a recent Wednesday, no students stopped to buy tacos, but Woldow said she had seen students buying food at the truck, and passing food to students through the fence.

“If they don’t sell to kids then why are they so insistent on staying in that location?” Woldow asked.

That day, Santana received a letter from the police telling him he has to leave. He now plans on appealing and is hopeful about the outcome. The police, he said, have been very nice to him. “They showed up here and gave me a letter from another case in Twin Peaks. They appealed it and they won,” he said.

Good to know it is being appealed, and glad to see the cops being cool about it. Do these things get public hearings? And could you actually pass a taco through a chain link fence? (*Would* any taco eater risk such a manoeuver given the risk of destabilizing the structural integrity of a taco?)

More importantly, I bet Ms. Waldow doesn’t realize there’s a fenced-off garden between the soccer field and the fence.

Quotes from Reasonable People:

• John O’ Connell High School’s principal, Janet Schulze, said she is supportive of the nutrition committee, but added, “The taco truck is so a non-issue for us. It doesn’t take business from the cafeteria.”
• When asked if he thinks El Tonayense means less money for the school cafeteria, Wilinski (a customer) laughed and took another big bite out of his burrito.”… “It’s not like they’re drug dealers,” he said.

Best of all? The Committee doesn’t go after the ice cream trucks that park in front of elementary schools:

Just a few blocks away, right next to another El Tonayense truck owned by Santana’s brother, Esquivel Santana, students from George R. Moscone Elementary School ran out to meet their parents. Ice cream sellers rang their bells tempting children with sweet snacks. The ordinance doesn’t include such vendors.

“That’s a separate battle someone else will have to fight,” Woldow said.

Maybe Santana can buy a bell and fool the the Committee for Student Nutrition and Hypocritical Activity.

Burrito Justice’s Binding Verdict: Repeal the ordinance.

Sadly, Burrito Justice’s jurisdiction decreases at the inverse square of distance. But Santana and his El Tonayense truck of happiness should get grandfathered if this silly ordinance can’t get repealed. Hell, he can promise not to sell to minors and “The Committee” can spend its time posting guards outside El Faro.

Gotta love it when you can walk to get BBQ. And never mind corn bread, mmmm…