Some Buzz About Buzzy Donahue On KPTZ Radio

Buzzy Donahue ca. 1965 and 2016. Her hair's grown a bit.

I hang out in a lively Facebook group called "San Francisco Remembered" where recently there were some musings about a North Beach institution from the Beat days onward, Clown Alley, noted for peerless charcoal grilled burgers and after hours celebrity crushes. (I once found myself waiting in line for a proletarian priced burger between Flip Wilson and Ahmad Jamal.) For nostalgia's sake, I decided to fish some snapshots taken at Clown Alley 50+ years ago from a shoebox for posting to the group. Among the ones I posted was of a woman in her late teens with a Clown Alley cheeseburger in her hand. There was no notation on the photo, but her identity was etched in my mind, because her girl companion had wasted no time in informing me that she was Buzzy Donahue, daughter of "Big Daddy" Tom Donahue. On the spot I decided I needed to immortalize her and the burger.

Tom Donahue?  If you are too young or unread to know the name or remember the booming voice, you can bet your sweet patootie that you owe him a debt if you listen to popular music today . He is considered nothing less than "The father of Progressive Radio" for it was he who freed pop music from the shackles of Top 40 AM radio and moved it to the greener pastures of FM radio (which also owes him big time), instituting the "album cut format" with accompanying erudite banter. He was also a record producer (the Beau Brummels, Bobby Freeman and the Great Society) and a concert promoter (the Rolling Stones at the Cow Palace and the Beatles at Candlestick Park). If you can find it, read his 1967 Rolling Stone article "AM Radio Is Dead and Its Rotting Corpse Is Stinking Up the Airwaves." He died far too young.  You can read about "Big Daddy" on Wikipedia, or here or here.

I was a little hesitant about posting the picture of Buzzy Donahue. In it she is looking into the camera with a displeased mien, somewhere between teen sullenness and an ur-"Don't bother me, I'm eating" take. Would she be pissed at the posting of the image if she saw it? Au contraire! She saw it, and not only did she not lecture me, she reposted the image on her own Facebook page and "Friended" me. Thanks to her jumping into my news stream, I found out she now hosts a weekly broadcast "The Buzzy Donahue Show" on KPTZ Public Radio in Port Townsend WA, just in time for me to hook into it. I found Buzzy's program a lovely and (mostly) soothing mix of Hawaiian (no, not Aloha Oe), jazz, folk, soft rock, and, for good measure, Buffalo Springfield's anthem for our time (and yours!), For What it's Worth. (Hey, how about a Phil Ochs cut next time, Buzzy?)

Check out Buzzy's sweet voice and sweeter playlists, Fridays from 9:30 to 11:00 on KPTZ-FM.

Port freaking Townsend, Washington, you say?

I once saw a poster on a phone pole about an upcoming "Psychic Fair" in San Francisco, upon which someone had scrawled "You don't have to be there to attend." It's 2018, dude, and so it is with radio. You don't need to be there physically or culturally to listen. For me, it was as simple as "Hey Google, Play KPTZ radio." If  Siri or Alexa don't understand that, fire them and stream Buzzy live from KPTZ's website.

And throw her a posie. It's lonely in a small market FM radio station broadcast booth.

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Cashless Food Trucks: Class-based Discrimination?

Long ago I became a booster of the Señor Sisig Filipino-Mexican fusion food truck's pioneering mission of promoting an under-represented cuisine, even though,unlike its nearest competitor, it did little cooking on-board but made its mark by finding novel ways of serving reheated food prepared off-site. I never begrudged bros Kidera and Payuma their cult following or the "Best Food Tuck" kudos their "more palatable" (read"no offal") sisig concoctions earned them. After all, they were flying the Filipino food flag high, and were part of a movement to gain Pinoy cuisine the respect it sorely lacked.

I was chagrined, however, when I passed by the Señor Sisig truck parked at its usual Ellis and Powell St. spot recently and noticed a sandwich board sign in its queuing area reading, in large letters, "NO CASH PAYMENTS ACCEPTED." The same signs, with nary a "Sorry" evident, were plastered on the side of the truck: The only explanation offered on the sign was that it was done to allow them to "focus more on the guest experience."

Some further elucidation was provided on SS's Instagram account, primarily related to the burden of counting cash and keeping accounts of it. They also mentioned reducing the possibility of theft, but the pedestrian activity and law enforcement presence are both so high at that location that such an occurrence seems unlikely. All reasons cited related to improving convenience for the vendor, not the customer. It goes without saying, too, that there is a cost to implementing a POS system, which gets passed on to the customers.

Señor Sisig serves an area hard by the Powell St. cable car turntable which has a significant population of street people who have to cobble together small amounts of cash to get a bite to eat, as well as many tourists who are loathe to go through the hassle of having their foreign credit cards vetted to purchase a sisig taco. For these groups, the truck's cashless system is at best an inconvenience, and at worst premeditated discrimination against cash-dependent people. In effect, it creates a two-tier caste system, the tech "haves" and the "have nots," with the latter group completely denied access to its services.

The United States long ago abandoned the Gold Standard and, as of yet, has not adopted the Silicon Standard. The Señor Sisig truck has a franchise to serve food for profit on a public street. As part of its franchise, it should be prohibited from discriminating against people who prefer to pay with coin of the realm. 

The Terrible Coffee in San Francisco's Restaurants (Deja Vu All Over Again)

Half a century ago the San Francisco Chronicle, locked in a titanic struggle for morning newspaper circulation with the San Francisco Examiner, published an eye-catching, week-long front page series on the "terrible" coffee available in San Francisco's restaurants, with the heroic subheading "A Great City's People Forced to Drink Swill" throwing down the gauntlet in the first installment.

I was reminded of this series last week when my daughter, visiting from New York to help me celebrate my birthday (yes, I'm so old I can't even do that by myself) and I had a nearly perfect meal at Mourad end (quite literally) on a sour note. At the end of the meal we ordered a couple of coffees (or "small pour-overs" as they are called on the menu).  I don't know where Mourad Lahlou sources his coffee, but we were served the thinnest of thin, sourest of sour, Third Wave-est of Third Wave coffees. As the late Utah Phillips might say, it was "otter water -- comes out of an otter."

I'm not blaming Mourad for this. By now, there's almost a whole generation of moneyed milllennials who don't know what coffee is supposed to taste like (hint: it should taste like coffee).  To me, when you order coffee and get something that tastes like it was produced by my Melitta Fastbrew when I mistakenly shortchange it a scoop of grounds, it's a big FAIL (and if you want fruity overtones, folks, go stand in line at The Boba Guys).

Restaurants in San Francisco nowadays bend over backwards to accommodate vegetarians, vegans, glutenphobes, kale lovers and all manner of food faddists. They also typically offer a jillion choices of wines. What would be so difficult about offering an alternative coffee selection, like a North Beach or imported Italian roast for those of us who haven't forgotten what coffee has tasted like for the last 350 years?

Why should those of us from the Graffeo ghetto be forced to drink swill?

Villlage House: Northern Chinese For The Western Richmond District

Lamb dumpling and noodle soup

Playing Muni Roulette on Market Street today, I decided to jump on the 31 Balboa to check out Village House (鄉村风味), the Northern Chinese restaurant that recently replaced Jook Time in the far outer Richmond (3398 Balboa at 35th Ave).  I was probably drawn there by the possibility of a roujiamo (a Yelper had mentioned a "Chinese hamburger"), but since it was past 5:00 when I got there I decided to make that the appetizer to  an early dinner. The young woman server was eager to promote the house-made xiaolong bao, dumplings (jiaozi) and noodles, so I ordered a basket of XLB and a lamb dumpling and noodle soup as my mains.

Roujiamo

The roujiamo ("Chinese Hamberger" on the menu) was on the small side, but heck, it was a whole $2.95. The panbread bun was about the right thickness, browned but not greasy,  though a bit less dense than some. The meat filling was appropriately porky and salty in flavor, though the texture seemed wrong because  it was coarsely chopped (loin?) instead of stewed, so the sandwich was a bit dry as well.

I don't know if they knew what they were getting into, boasting about their house-made xiaolong bao in earshot of both Shanghai Dumpling King and Shanghai House, but they didn't embarrass themselves.  Their XLB is probably better than the last I had at SDK, but not as good as I remember Shanghai House's to be (though I haven't been to either of these places in a long time). The wrappers wee delicate, and the soup ample, though they need to push the needle away from the salty side of the dial a bit toward the sweet side. But then, those were Beijingese voices floating around the room, not Shanghainese.

Xiao long bao

The soup was hearty, with six lamb dumplings and a long ton of noodles.  The dumplings were meaty but not paticularly lamb-y (but I'd like try them again, outside of soup, to be fair). The noodles were springy and fresh, if not hand pulled. The broth seemed under-seasoned, particularly lacking salt, of all things. Since there was no salt shaker of the condiment tray, I used a bit of soy sauce along with chili paste to sex it up.

The menu at Village House is what I've come to recognize as typically eclectic Northern Chinese restaurant fare, with a slim stock of indigenous dishes augmented with a smattering of Shandong, Shanghainese, Xi'an, Sichuan and Xinjiang offerings.

High-End Cal-Mex At Loló (Don't Duck The Whiteboard)

Duck Chimichangas!

It was my daughter, visiting from New York, who suggested Loló, a place that would never have crossed my mind (perhaps because it is on Valencia St.) Our original plan was to cool our heels at In Situ after a grueling afternoon at the new SFMOMA, but she remembered someone in her yoga class had recommended Loló. It was Thursday night, which meant my friend Nite Yun's Cambodian Noodle popup Nyum Bai would be happening at Mission Mercado, a mere block from Loló, and that sealed the deal for me: a Kuy Teav appetizer (we split a bowl) followed by some toney Mexican small plates.

Loló is wildly popular for its "modern" Cal-Mex ("Jaliscan Californian Inspired Cuisine" says their website), but I don't consider myself sufficiently grounded in Mexican cuisine to judge if it's worth the tariff; nonetheless, Loló immediately endeared itself to me by presenting me with options for my two favorite animal proteins: lamb and duck, perhaps the last thing I expected to find at a Mexican restaurant. You may not be as lucky as me: while lamb, in the form of lamb sliders, is on the regular menu, the whiteboard's come-hither was a daily special, duck chimichangas. DUCK CHIMICHANGAS! In a more conventional vein, we also ordered tuna tacon [sic], empanadas and flautas (the last two being meatless and possibly vegetarian if not vegan).

The lamb sliders were unremarkable, containing ground lamb from whatever part of the animal that doesn't taste lamb-y. (I always wonder about people who don't want their lamb to be lamb-y or their fish to taste fishy, but expect their beef to be beefy and their chicken to be chicken-y). The most exciting part of this dish was the accompanying haystack if crispy potato slivers.

The duck chimis were more interesting; a savory (and ducky) mousse-like filling in shells that appeared to have been baked rather than deep fried. They came with a dipping sauce and a large dab of the house guacamole for garnishing. I'd be lying, though, if I said this was my favorite part of the meal. That honor goes to the tuna tacon, a hearty slab of seared albacore tuna, a spear of avocado and a shellfish-infused aioli on a small flour tortilla, kind of the ultimate fish taco.  It's said to be Loló's signature dish, and rightly so. The two vegetarian dishes, the flautas and the empanadas were well executed if demure (due to the lack of animal flesh?)

Loló looks like a great date place; everything seems to come in two pieces (ideal for sharing) except for the flautas (3) and it's a place where you can show you're not a cheapskate without blowing your inheritance.

Loló
974 Valencia St.
San Francisco