The Prolific Oven, a small chain of great bakeries in Silicon Valley for nearly 40 years, is closing. I haven’t been to one in a couple years, but it makes me sad. sf.eater.com/2019/8/16…
@chipotle And well it should! I noticed the Cliff House tenant is bailing as well. We left California after 50 years in 2017 and we're now thiving in the real world of the Midwest.
@Ron another slightly longer bit elsewhere about the Cliff House describes the lease as a standard part of the way NPS concessions work—the current operators will be bidding again, and will likely stay put. I suspect I'll personally end up leaving California in a few years for family reasons, but I'm holding on as long as possible; I love a lot about the area despite its craziness. (Although if I moved back to CA, it'd likely be to Sacramento, not the SF Bay Area.)
@chipotle I moved to California in 1967 with the fantasy that I was moving to the Promised Land. I had the very good fortune of living in SF in the early 1970's and during that era, the city felt quite magical to me. I rode a BMW motorcycle so parking was never an issue and made a living selling my handmade leather belts in Aquatic Park across the street from Ghirardelli Square. I was a tourist attraction and the tourists were lots of fun. Those were very very good times.
@Ron And here I was thinking that you were just a tax accountant who liked Dylan, but there’s a whole other dimension, too 😃 (And certainly more dimensions after that one, too 👍)
@smokey I've been very fortunate to directly witness some important events. In college, MLK came to speak at one of our Thurs noon assemblies. Our artist in residence was Igor Stravinsky one year and Aaron Copeland the next. I arrived in the SF Bay Area the year after the Summer of Love when mainstream media first started writing about it. At UC Berkeley I walked over to the student union to get a sandwich for lunch, listened to anti-war speeches from the steps of Sproul Plaza while I ate, then got chased across the campus by Oakland police with tear gas canisters falling near my feet as we ran. The local paper was the Berkeley Barb, not the NYT. I've always preferred to draw conclusions by directly observing events, rather than reading what commentators or politicians say we should do or think. When I was a street artist, the store owners didn't want us there, but we were so popular with the tourists that the SF supervisors, including Dianne Feinstein, didn't have the nerve to kick us off the streets.
@JohnPhilpin That was a very difficult time in Berkeley to try to learn anything, especially with the police running after you as they shot toward your back. Just one of the advantages of a public education in those days, no extra charge.
@Ron education in street smarts .. who knew that could be found in Berkeley ... certainly can’t today ☹️