There is Still Hope for Us

The rest of the country may consider Northern Californians irredeemable, but this shows there is still hope for us. [bold added]

The weekend before the opening of the Bay Area’s newest Costco [in Pleasanton] brought a now-familiar sight: crowds of people camping out to secure their place in line on opening day. A similar encampment had formed in advance of the opening of the Napa Costco in October — though that hadn’t fallen during an atmospheric river.

These campers descend on new Costco stores largely in search of one item: booze, particularly rare bottles of bourbon.

The devoted drinkers have been eagerly speculating online about whether the Pleasanton Costco, which opens Wednesday at 7200 Johnson Drive, might carry bourbons that have been present at other Costco grand openings like Buffalo Trace Antique Collection, Russell’s Reserve 15 Year and, most coveted of all, Pappy Van Winkle, which notoriously goes for thousands of dollars a bottle from online resellers.

I prefer scotch, but if someone offers me a sip of any of the aforementioned bourbons, I wouldn't turn it down.

A Price I Have to Pay

Your smartphone can't do everything. Its map programs can still point users to the wrong location. Service in the mountains can be non-existent, as hikers in extremis have found to their detriment.

Left: Phone ID No.   Right: Physical ID Yes. (Chron photo)

And smartphones with photo IDs won't get young adults into nightclubs. [bold added]

Bars across the Bay Area are reporting an uptick in these attempted entries during the last three years, and it’s left their owners scratching their heads in disbelief. “It’s a ridiculous concept,” said Michael Valladares, co-owner of the Hotsy Totsy Club in Albany.

People attempting to show a photo of their ID, he said, might as well “just draw a picture of your face and write your name next to it.”

Valladares’ theory is that the early-pandemic practice of showing vaccination cards on phones instilled bad habits in bargoers — especially younger people who may have turned 21 during the pandemic and never knew differently. It has “definitely been happening more, and quite honestly it’s really annoying,” said Alicia Walton, co-owner of the Sea Star in Dogpatch.

We're not at the point where the cellphone can completely eliminate the need for identification documents, cash, and old-fashioned credit cards.

This boomer still treats the smartphone as a device that enhances but is not essential to the ability to perform tasks. The too-thick wallet that I always carry in the pants pocket ruins my sleek silhouette, but that is a price I have to pay.

Gout's Silver Lining

Probenecid has an unexpected benefit

The first and only gout attack occurred in my 40's when I began drinking a glass of red wine every day for health reasons. After a month of this regimen my left foot hurt so much I couldn't walk. The diagnosis was gout, which my father and brothers all suffer from. I thought I had avoided gout, but alas, I had the gene after all.

Gout is caused by high concentrations of uric acid that crystallize in joints, resulting in painful inflammation. Known triggers include organ meats, shellfish, and alcohol. Drinking plenty of water to dilute and flush the uric acid out of one's system is the way to avoid gout, and probenecid is often prescribed to aid in uric-acid reduction. Your humble blogger has been on probenecid for over 20 years.

Researchers have discovered that probenecid may be an effective treatment for COVID-19:

[Georgia professor of infectious diseases Ralph] Tripp found probenecid blocks the virus from replicating and infecting individual cells, a major discovery.

“Because it works on the whole cell, not the virus, you can’t get resistance to the drug,” Tripp said.

Tested on ten individuals in Florida with COVID-19, researchers found after the individuals were given probenecid symptoms eased in three days instead of weeks.

Funding for large clinical trials must follow, but the outlook is that a drug that has helped with gout for four decades may be what’s needed to stop the suffering from COVID-19.

I've been upping a daily supplement of Vitamin D to help ward off the coronavirus, and now it just may be that I have been regularly taking a drug that affords additional protection. Maybe I did luck out genetically with gout, just not in the way that I thought.

Another silver lining: High uric-acid levels of gout sufferers may afford protection against Alzheimer's disease.

Now That It's Gone I Want It

(Esquire photo)

Your humble blogger has never watched an episode of The Sopranos and was unfamiliar with, much less tasted, "gabagool", which is

basically a "cross between prosciutto and sausage" ... is seasoned with a variety of flavors like wine, garlic, and paprika, stuffed into a meat-based casing, then smoked, slow-roasted, or in most cases, "hung for up to six months to cure."

It's red and white, not as spicy as soppressata, but also not as creamy-tasting and mild as, say, mortadella.

Gabagool is the subject of a legal kerfuffle between San Francisco sausage-maker P.J. Molinari & Sons and brewer Seven Stills Brewery & Distillery.

Molinari owns trade dress rights to a distinctive look and feel of its gabagool packaging and claims that Seven Stills' new gabagool beer (!) cans had a design too close to Molinari's.

Gabagool beer (Chron photo)

The dispute was resolved amicably when the brewer backed down. [bold added]

Seven Stills owner Tim Obert said they “weren’t trying to blatantly rip them off,” but acknowledged the playful beer design looked very much like the salami packaging...They’re going to stop making the gabagool beer.

That's too bad. Drinking a meat beer is one thing I didn't know I needed until it was brought to my attention.

St. Patrick's Day: It Really Was Better Back Then

Front and Sacramento, St. Patrick's Day 2006.

St. Patrick's Day used to be an unofficial holiday in San Francisco.

The City would close Front Street to traffic, and Harrington's Bar and Grill was the center of the milling about.

Last fall Harrington's shut down rather than gut it out to the re-opening.

Harrington’s Bar and Grill will permanently close after an 85-year run in San Francisco. Michael Harrington, its third-generation owner, shared the news in a short message posted on the business' website...

“The decision was very difficult to make but with everything we have to do regarding reopening in an unsafe environment for each of us,” Harrington wrote. “To wait out this pandemic was financially unreasonable.”

Some of what we have lost is permanent.

Beer, Conversation, and God

(Syracuse Diocese)

Before the coronavirus people had already begun finding their faith outside of churches.

“pub theology” meetings...have grown increasingly popular in recent years. The modern trend began in 1981, when a group of Catholic priests in Illinois began holding gatherings to talk about God over beer. They called it “Theology on Tap.” The concept soon gained popularity in the U.K., where it picked up the “pub theology” name...

Over the past decade, the pub theology movement has grown to more than 200 weekly gatherings across the U.S. Average attendance can reach around two dozen people. Over the phone, [Pastor Bryan] Berghoef describes a regular pub-theology night in Western Michigan. Scripture from any of the major world religions is read and discussed, as are current events.

A current topic of discussion could be Halloween, which remains contentious for some of the faithful because of its pagan roots. Most Christian denominations are present every week. Jews and Muslims often attend. The occasional Hindu, Buddhist and Baha’i comes by, along with a few atheists and agnostics

The sharing of food goes back to Christianity's founding. The Lord's Supper was a real meal:

It was meant to satisfy the participants' hunger. In principle the idea was that the more well-to-do members of the community would share food with poorer members. This sharing of food gave the Lord's Supper, inter alia, the function of a charity meal.

I suspect that pubs and bars will bounce back more quickly than churches will as America re-opens. Pastors, priests, and rabbis would do well to have conversations about God, with beer, in a place where the younger crowd feels more comfortable.

As Willie Sutton might have said, that's where the people are.

Belated Finding

Four weeks ago I was relieved that our hand sanitizer purchase from Costco was not on the list of nine that the FDA had warned against. They had contained methyl alcohol that is harmful to humans and can be absorbed through the skin.

On Tuesday the FDA added dozens more to the list, which now included our recent purchase as I discovered this morning. At 12:45 pm PDT Costco advised us of the recall via telephone. We've stopped using the sanitizer and will soon return it.

Comments:

Powerful inventory control systems permit sellers to match buyers and products, which can each number in the many thousands, even millions. Such tracking is understandably feared for privacy reasons, but in this case provided a substantial benefit.

Partial recalls can mistakenly cause consumers to believe that products not on the list are safe. After the first announcement on July 3rd we used the sanitizer liberally, to our possible detriment as it turned out.

Would it have been better to have halted all sanitizer sales until more could be known? That would have been consistent with the policy we seem to be following for COVID-19, that is, stop everything until we figure out more.

Such decisions are way above my pay grade but I often wonder if we could have trusted people to make their own decisions by putting all of the incomplete and sometimes contradictory information out there rather than make them act or not act "for their own good". Some people will make unwise choices, which are indeed costly, but taking away their choice has costs, too.

Please Don't Poison the Customer

The above hand sanitizers contain harmful methanol, not ethanol. (AARP image)

American consumers, including your humble blogger, generally trust the safety of branded products.

However, the coronavirus has disrupted supply chains, and unfamiliar labels have popped up on retail shelves,

New suppliers, for example liquor manufacturers, are helping to meet the demand for hand sanitizers.

I've been using an unknown-brand one-liter bottle from Costco for the past two weeks. When the FDA issued a recall of certain hand sanitizers made in Mexico, which this one was, I immediately checked the label. It wasn't on the list (above), and it didn't contain methanol.

It's one thing for a product not to work, it's quite another to make a consumer (a lot) worse off than if he didn't use it.

Please Don’t Encourage Death from Stupidity

The sad state of American education---Clorox should
replace tiny "if swallowed" instruction with
Warning! Poison! Do Not Drink! in front and back.

President Trump is used to tweeting and thinking out loud. While it's both refreshing and alarming to have such unfiltered access to a President's brain, extended unscripted discussions carry risks: [bold added]

During his coronavirus briefing Thursday night, Mr. Trump pondered whether treatments involving light or disinfectants should be studied.

“So, supposing we hit the body with a tremendous—whether it’s ultraviolet or just very powerful light—and I think you said that that hasn’t been checked, but you’re going to test it,” he said. “And then I said, supposing you brought the light inside the body.”

Mr. Trump added: “And then I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in a minute. One minute. And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning. Because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs.”

Dr. Deborah Birx, the administration’s coronavirus response coordinator, watched quietly with an impassive expression on her face as the president spoke. At one point, Mr. Trump asked her if she had heard that heat and light could work as a treatment for the virus. She replied: “Not as a treatment, no.”

The result is what one might expect of an opposition media--a continuous loop of the President appearing to say that the coronavirus could be treated by "injecting" disinfectants. To this humble blogger the President was voicing thoughts that flitted from the surface-cleaning capability of Clorox or Lysol to the desire for a miraculous substance that could similarly clean the lungs. His follow-up question to Dr. Birx indicated that the President was thinking about high temperature and ultraviolet treatments and not swallowing bleach.

If the media keeps repeating the misinterpretation that President Trump recommended disinfectants for internal use, then they're being deliberately obtuse. Worse, if Trump supporters are as ignorant and blindly obedient as the media thinks they are, some of them will act on the repeated false reports and drink poison.

Let's hope that no one is that stupid.

Homelessness Initiative: Not Perfect But A Step Forward

Mike Gatto (Chron photo) 

A former Democratic assemblyman is organizing a November ballot initiative that will address the worst aspects of the California homelessness problem. The California Compassionate Intervention Act [bold added]

would call for the strict enforcement of “quality of life” laws, which deal with behavior such as public drunkenness or drug use and defecating in public. Offenders would be to be sent to special courts, where they could be sentenced to shelter programs or mandatory rehab.

Mike Gatto's measure would arrest individuals evincing those behaviors but not criminalize them:

Offenders would be to be sent to special courts, where they could be sentenced to shelter programs or mandatory rehab....Once a defendant has completed his sentence, his conviction would be expunged, so he would have no criminal record that might hinder him from getting a job, housing or public benefits.

Open drug use is a common sight on the streets of
San Francisco (Daily Mail)

Homeless advocates oppose the measure because of possible "mass institutionalization" and "racial and class disparities." The use of scare slogans indicates that, if the initiative qualifies for the ballot with at least 620,000 signatures, it is likely to pass:

A recent statewide poll by 3M Research found that 90% of the voters surveyed listed homelessness as the No. 1 problem facing the state — 87% of the voters in the Bay Area listed it as the top problem....The poll also found 73% of the voters support Gatto’s measure.

The devil is in the details and there will be unintended negative consequences. At the same time I am sure that passing this initiative will produce something better than what we've got.

The Goose

Seven years after my last visit, we met for lunch again at the Dutch Goose.

This wouldn't have happened 30 years ago: the kids from the nearby private school (K-5) took over the joint. The racket was such that neither retirees, grad students, or venture capitalists could hear themselves think.

I asked one kid if they always came here. "It's a minimum day." Note to self: avoid the place on Tuesdays.

The Goose has added healthier fare, for example, the turkey burger which one friend had. I went with a hot pastrami. We all had beers, though. There's a limit to how much any of us are willing to change.

The Sweep of History

These 20th century events all occurred in 1919: [bold added]

(Image from historycooperative.org)

The year 1919 began with catastrophe, a disastrous flood of raw molasses that swept through Boston’s North End on Jan. 15 when a huge tank of the stuff gave way. In a metaphorical sense, too, 1919 seemed to represent the turn of a colossal tide. It marked the end of World War I and the culmination of contentious campaigns for Prohibition and women’s suffrage. (The 18th Amendment was ratified in January and the 19th approved by Congress in June.) It was a year of labor unrest and massive strikes, of race riots and mob violence, of anarchist bombings and the Red Scare, and a baseball scandal that shocked the country, when the Chicago White Sox deliberately threw the World Series.

So far in 2019 the headlines scream excitedly every day about what the stock market or personalities have done. But really, are any of them important enough to be remembered 100 years from now?

New Law Greatly Needed

Los Angeles National Cemetery

As expected, new California laws in 2019 expand progressive ideals and the regulatory state ("non-binary" can be the sex on driver's licenses, no pets from "breeding mills", at least one woman on public companies' boards, sexual harassment training required of 5-employee businesses, no plastic straws, etc.), but there's one new law that enlarges freedom:

Los Angeles cemeteries that meet certain conditions can sell alcohol: [bold added]

This bill would authorize the department to issue a special on-sale general license to the operator of a for-profit cemetery with specified characteristics, including that it be more than 100 years old, be located in, and designated a Historic-Cultural Monument by, the City of Los Angeles, and have an endowment care fund and a memorial care fund that are exempt from the payment of income taxes, as specified.

The law's specificity may cause one to think that an LA cemetery must have bribed contributed to some legislators' re-election fund.

It's easy to eliminate such suspicions: just grant liquor licenses to Northern California memorial parks, where a "stiff" drink is often greatly needed.

Sober Outlook

Now that I'm back in California, fun time is over. There are cards to write, gifts to buy, taxes to plan, and donations to make.

My sober outlook was reinforced by the first sobriety checkpoint that I've ever gone through.

Heading east one evening on San Bruno Avenue toward SFO, traffic was narrowed to a single lane. I held up my driver's license to the window; the friendly cop handed me a MADD flyer (right) so I wouldn't be stopped by another officer 50 feet ahead. No such luck.

Another cop asked me to roll down the window. "Where are you going?" Home, while he inspected my driver's license. "Have you been drinking tonight?" No, I said truthfully, while he gazed intently at my non-reddened eyes and listened to my clearly enunciated one-word answers. He waved me through.

Afterwards, looking at the flyer, I was taken aback by the $15,000 cost of an infraction, $10,000 of which is increased insurance costs.

Mind, we are not talking about causing an accident, just being caught driving under the influence.

Contrast the DUI penalties with those of texting while driving:

With assessments and fees, convicted drivers face a first-time ticket costing at least $159, with a second offense climbing to $279. Hardly pocket change, but far below the penalties for first-time adult DUI offenders, which include fines up to $1,000, plus a minimum four-month license suspension and up to six months in jail.

The LA Times article quoted above stated that national DUI deaths were about 10,000 per year while "distracted driving crashes caused 3,500 fatalities and close to 400,000 injuries", not as bad but clearly in the same league. Whether one believes DUIs are treated appropriately, it's clear that the penalty for texting-and-driving is not proportionate when we look at the consequences of each.

Self-driving cars can't come soon enough.

We've Come a Long Way

Just a few of the beers on tap at Growler

On the last night in Hawaii my brother took me out to dinner. The destination was a sushi place at Hee Hing Plaza in Kapahulu.

(Digression: Hee Hing was the name of a Cantonese restaurant that had operated for 50 years at the site. The Lee family owned the building and restaurant, and my guess is that there was no one in the younger generation who had enthusiasm for continuing the original business.)

Patron with $4 pupus

We parked the car at 4:30, but the Japanese restaurant wouldn't be open until 5. We decided to pass the time at the Growler brew-pub on the second floor. We never left.

These brewpubs can be pricey. Conveniently, we arrived during Happy Hour, which had a half-dozen choices of beer and appetizers for four dollars. We stuck to the value menu for about an hour, but as often happens, discipline eventually went out the window. Well, my brother can afford it. He's come a long way from Everybody's Supermarket.

Another San Francisco Brand Gets Bought

Iconic San Francisco company Anchor Steam will be acquired by Sapporo:

Anchor Brewing Co. is considered the leading pioneer of the craft beer movement, and is credited with reviving and modernizing some of today's most popular American beer styles. The price of the deal was not disclosed....

Anchor Brewing has proven itself as a company of firsts. Established in 1896, it bills itself as America’s “first and oldest” craft brewery and has long been San Francisco’s homegrown pride. It weathered the 1906 earthquake and is the inventor of the California common style of beer, which it trademarked as steam beer.

Tasting Anchor Steam during the 1970's was a revelation. American beers, e.g., Bud, Miller, Coors, were okay (in those days your humble blogger didn't regard any beer as bad). European beers were complex, had character, and were costly. Anchor Steam had a sharper taste than American bland; I liked it--didn't love it--but it was nice to have a choice that wasn't too expensive.

Both companies say that Anchor will retain its distinctiveness. We've heard that before, but here's hoping.

Reporting is Necessary

From 2013: $15 beer in a Waikiki bar.

From the Sunday Chronicle: Hawaii: The next craft beer paradise?

With "fake news" widespread, I'll have to head back to the Islands soon to check out this information first hand.

Having been over-exposed to the fruit from a two-summers stint in the now-defunct Dole Cannery, I'll skip the Pineapple Mana Wheat beer, however.

Kirkland

Kiplinger Personal Finance says Costco's store brand has three "best bets". We already buy the Kirkland Organic Extra-Virgin Olive Oil.

Bacon. In a taste test of bacon brands, Consumer Reports bestowed an “excellent” rating on just one product: Kirkland Signature Bacon ($10.99 for four 1-pound packages).

Liquor. You’ll get a lot of bang for your buck with the Kirkland Signature Tequila Añejo ($19.99 for 1 liter) and the Egg Nog Liqueur ($9.99 for 1.75 liters),

Clearly we need to expand our sights beyond the healthy-food aisle.

At $2.75 a pound, how could I say no?

Bob McCue (1925-2016)

I knew Bob McCue through business and in recent years visited him only around Christmastime, when I would drop off some scotch. Bob had been suffering for a long time--and I am sure booze was against doctor's orders with the medications he had been taking--but his eyes would always light up when he saw the Johnny Walker or Seagram's bottle. His nephew, Tim, said that he would always break out what Bob called the "good scotch" when Tim came over.

At his funeral Mass on Tuesday his nephews and nieces spoke about how he had looked after them after their parents died. His caregiver spoke about how Bob never treated him as an employee but as a close friend. It was good to learn, however tardily, that he was much more than the World War II veteran and owner of a construction business that he presented to outsiders. R.I.P. and cheers, my friend.

But What's My Motivation?

(Image from hswc.ca)

The reasons we diet are selfish--health, vanity, work and social advantages--but vegetarians have been regarded as a noble exception because of their selfless motivation. The vegetarian diet is much friendlier to the environment, and the killing of animals, while not (yet) immoral, has made some uncomfortable.

It turns out that vegetarians may not be that morally superior. Alcohol apparently reveals their true nature. [bold added]

A new study from the U.K finds that 30 percent of vegetarians crave flesh during wild nights of partying and 40 percent always eat meat while intoxicated. Providing even more insight into the psychology of vegetarians, the survey revealed 69 percent of those who break their diets keep it a secret. After all, they have to keep up their sanctimonious and ascetic reputations.

I don't share the writer's low opinion. While I have met a few vegetarians who are loud and proud of their meatless virtue, most keep quiet about it and certainly don't impose their views on others.

“When you fast, do not look somber as the hypocrites do, for they disfigure their faces to show others they are fasting. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, so that it will not be obvious to others that you are fasting, but only to your Father, who is unseen; and your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you."-----Matthew 6:16-18