Author: Austin Vegas

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A touch of SF

You Know You’re From San Francisco When:

1. You’ve been carrying on an affair of “intense eye-contact”for two years with a person who rides home on the same bus and gets off one stop before you. You do not know their name.

2. You bitch constantly about how hard it is to meet people in the city.

3. You take a bus and are shocked that 2 people are carrying on a conversation in English.

4. Someone says TENDERLOIN – you don’t think of steak.

5. You never bother looking at the MUNI line schedule because you know the drivers have never seen it.

6. A really great parking space can move you to tears.

7. You know that anyone wearing shorts in July must be visiting from Ohio.

8. You were born somewhere else. (Ohio?)

9. You assume every company offers domestic partner benefits.

10. You experience “commitment issues” when deciding who to hang out with next weekend.

11. You feel prudish for never having had a threesome. . .

12. You’re tan in spring and fall, pale in summer.

13. You’d like to spend more time exploring Berkeley, but its just so damn far away.

14. You found your current apartment, car, couch, running pals, book group, girlfriend/boyfriend, and booty call all on Craigslist.com

15. Your boss runs in “The Bay to Breakers”….and it’s not the first time you have seen him/her nude.

16. You are thinking of taking an adult class but you can’t decide between yoga, aroma therapy, conversational Mandarin or a building your own web site class.

17. You haven’t been to Fisherman’s Wharf since the first month you moved to SF and you couldn’t figure out how to drive to Coit Tower if your life depended on it.

18. Left is right and right is WRONG.

19. Your monthly house payments exceed your annual income.

20. You dive under a desk whenever a large truck goes by.

21. You can’t find your other earring because your son is wearing it.

22. Your family tree contains “significant others.”

23. Your cat has its own psychiatrist.

24. Smoking in your office is not optional.

25. You pack shorts and a T-shirt for skiing in the snow, and a sweater and a wetsuit for the beach.

26. Rainstorms or thunder are the lead story for the local news.

27. Gas costs $1.00 per gallon more than anywhere else in the US

28. A man gets on the bus in full leather regalia and crotchless chaps. You don’t even notice.

29. Your car insurance costs as much as your house payment.

30. You give a “thumbs up” gesture to a car with a “Free Tibet” bumper sticker – and you mean it.

31. When you drive under an underpass – for one moment you think “earthquake”.

32. You realize the only Republicans you know are your Aunt and Uncle in Texas.

33. You realize there are far more Rainbow flags in the city than California State Flags.

34. You go to your office manager’s baby shower – the parent’s are named Judy and Becky.

35. When your church elects a new Bishop who abandoned his family and two young daughters to fulfill his sexual urges with another man.

36. You’ve lived in the Marina for three and a half years and you’ve been to the Mission once for drinks. You’re main impression is that it’s “dirty”. You won’t go back.

37. You’ve lived in the Mission for three and a half years and you’ve never been to the Marina.

38. You consider “Tom Kha Gai” a staple food.

39. You consider hamburgers a “rare treat”.

40. Through years of practice, you have perfected the art of the helpless looking “sorry, i’m broke” shrug that you use when someone asks you for change.

41. Despite number 5, you still manage to pay $20 each week in “street tax”.

42. You wear foam trucker caps and cowboy hats out regularly in San Francisco, but you wouldn’t be caught dead wearing one in Stockton.

43. At any given time, you are carrying three or more tiny electronic devices, some of which emit noises and/or buzzing at different frequencies, and all of which “simplify” your life.

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McCarthy’s Faithful!

With St.Patrick’s Day just around the corner, I thought I would post some news about one of my favorite bars in SLO…. This is not at all surprising, and if you haven’t had a Car Bomb or a Coors n Whiskey back at McCarthy’s you just ain’t doin it right

Reported in the San Luis Obispio Tribune

Setting the bar

Closing time at MCarthy's: You don' have to go home but you can't stay hereMcCarthy’s Irish Pub in San Luis Obispo serves more Jameson whiskey

In a single room tucked away on a downtown alley, a San Luis Obispo institution sells more Jameson Irish Whiskey than any other bar in the nation.

Visitors to McCarthy’s Irish Pub are greeted by a sign in the doorway — “maximum occupancy 49.”

They’re also greeted by friendly bartenders and regulars toasting with — what else — shots of Jameson.

“It is almost the house drink,” said Dan Donait, who works for Jameson distributor Young’s Market. “You have to get one when you’re there.”

That must not be the case at bigger bars in places like Boston, New York and Chicago, which can’t compete when it comes to selling the popular brand of whiskey.

In San Francisco, the pub Ireland’s 32 holds 125 people. Manager Brendan Daly said he sells one-tenth the Jameson that McCarthy’s does.

McCarthy’s goes through more than 100 bottles a month.

“Well,” Daly said, “that’s a lot of whiskey.”

And there are a lot of ways they drink it at McCarthy’s.

There’s the Irish Car Bomb, for example. It’s made of Guinness beer, Jameson and Irish cream.

And “they drink it in shots,” said Jim McGuire, a West Coast representative of the French company that imports the whiskey. He’s visited the bar for work. “There are lots of shots.”

The drink is also, McCarthy’s managing partner Bill Hales said, “in our Irish coffee.”

Despite all that, it’s not the house whiskey. A coke and whiskey at McCarthy’s comes with the cheaper well version. A shot of Jameson’s costs a dollar more.

But customers ask for it — about four liters a day, the manager says. That’s about 88 shots a night.

The bartenders have helped increase sales too. Ask for a shot, and one of them might raise an eyebrow and say “Jameson?”

Ever since the bar became the state’s top Jameson seller in November, Hales said, the night shift has been pushing it a little more.

“It is amazing that a little bar like that would be able to sell that much Irish whiskey,” Hales said. “But the bartenders really spearheaded this.”

Through increased advertising in magazines like “Maxim,” Jameson sales had jumped in the United States by 30 percent last year, McGuire said. But he’s not seen anything like McCarthy’s numbers.

ABOUT THREE MONTHS AFTER

McCarthy’s took the lead in the state, officials at importer

Pernod-Ricard announced the pub had surpassed sales at bars throughout the nation.

It shouldn’t be too much of a surprise.

There is a tradition of Irish whiskey at McCarthy’s, Hales said.

Founder Joe McCarthy died recently in his 90s and “he was an Irish whiskey drinker, too,” Hales said.

Somewhere, they think, Joe must be smiling as customers order another round.

More pics of San Luis Obispo posted in the Gallery

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The next move for oil/power domination…Iran? Colombia?

Although this first article is dated news, it still holds true as another source to validate the growing U.S.-British Oil Imperialism movement we are now brainwashed to accept as “the war on terrorism”:

The Real Reasons Why Iran is the Next Target: The Emerging Euro-denominated International Oil Marker

A sample from the above link:

Candidly stated, ‘Operation Iraqi Freedom’ was a war designed to install a pro-U.S. puppet in Iraq, establish multiple U.S military bases before the onset of Peak Oil, and to reconvert Iraq back to petrodollars while hoping to thwart further OPEC momentum towards the euro as an alternative oil transaction currency. [1] In 2003 the global community witnessed a combination of petrodollar warfare and oil depletion warfare. The majority of the world’s governments – especially the E.U., Russia and China – were not amused – and neither are the U.S. soldiers who are currently stationed in Iraq.

Indeed, the author’s original pre-war hypothesis was validated shortly after the war in a Financial Times article dated June 5th, 2003, which confirmed Iraqi oil sales returning to the international markets were once again denominated in US dollars, not euros. Not surprisingly, this detail was never mentioned in the five US major media conglomerates who appear to censor this type of information, but confirmation of this vital fact provides insight into one of the crucial – yet overlooked – rationales for 2003 the Iraq war.

“The tender, for which bids are due by June 10, switches the transaction back to dollars — the international currency of oil sales – despite the greenback’s recent fall in value. Saddam Hussein in 2000 insisted Iraq’s oil be sold for euros, a political move, but one that improved Iraq’s recent earnings thanks to the rise in the value of the euro against the dollar.” [2]

Make sure you read this first to catch up on your history: U.S.-British Oil Imperialism