Your Guide to the Coolest Neighborhoods in North America Read online

Your Guide to the Coolest Neighborhoods in North America

  By Nate Molino

  Copyright 2013 Nate Molino

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1 - SAN FRANCISCO: The Olive District

  Chapter 2 - NEW YORK CITY: Van Damn-it

  Chapter 3 - NEW ORLEANS: Belle Grieve

  Chapter 4 -WASHINGTON, DC: Buchanan's Bog

  Chapter 5 - LOS ANGELES: Los Pajaros

  Chapter 6 - VANCOUVER: Patchouli

  Chapter 7 - ATLANTA: Pantaloon Corners

  Chapter 8 - BOSTON: Wrestling Hill

  Chapter 9 - CHICAGO: West Signal Park

  Endnotes: More About the Author

  Chapter 1 - SAN FRANCISCO: The Olive District

  Stuffed With Hotness

  A cold Pacific wind strafed the darkened San Francisco street I hurriedly transited, as the resident meteorological transvestite, called Summer here, blew her customary cold kiss to The City, giving me goose-bumps, which, even if they weren’t artisanal, were certainly special.

  But that wasn’t the only system-shock. I had counted on a meal at the under-the-GPS foodie boite du moment—Drusus Nero. Yet, here in its home quarter—the Olive District—smartly-dressed San Franciscans were draped like wilted kale around the restaurant’s door. A seating looked unlikely.

  Police tape ringed Drusus Nero, (431 Nido Alley, near Geysers St.) the echt-Roman Empire small-plates restaurant that had even inspired Silicon Valley elites to run the district's gauntlet of double-parked Bentleys, medical marijuana carts (MediExx Help Cart, Geyser St. and Leland Ave., no phone) and prostitutes, just to taste the menu, anchored in a Roman imperial family’s second-century A.D. diet.

  I had hoped to stop in for a bite, this being one of the iconic eateries that led to revival of the Olive District’s fortunes. It’s in a former olive-oil and pistachio packing house, hard by the Olive District Biennale Canal and Water Feature (formerly Smelly Industrial Inlet No. 2). But, like other gentrifying San Francisco districts, this once once-working-class, stone-fruit-centric area- had been struck by the latest Guerilla Cuisine Attack—a sort of gastronomic performance art-piece for the unsuspecting (and unwilling). Although no physical harm came to diners, survivors reported being re-traumatized when making reservations.

  Not sure whether I’d get seated that evening, I stepped back to take in the skyline. Above me loomed the latest starchitecture—the lighted hulk of Celebrity California Architect Hank Fiery’s avant-garde city courts building, the Reginald C.B. Yotsuya Courthouse (Romualdo and Alden Sts.), meant to evoke a sea lion rookery on rocky islets outside the Golden Gate. To me, the metallic edifice looked like a large pile of lustrous dog poop. The building is said to leak, but rumor has it the leaks are being converted to kinetic water sculpture. Drivers have crashed because of reflections from its shiny façade, costing the city millions in settlements. Sixth-grade education has been suspended to pay for the legal fights. No worries: parents are encouraged to substitute class with museum visits.

  Apparently the attacked happened like this: with Drusus Nero full of patrons prostrate and sprawling on floor cushions, a la a Roman villa, the kitchen shock-troops of so-called "Sub-Commandante Fischbein," entered the restaurant waving Wusthoff knives, ordering everyone to drop their silverware. A radical sous-chef who broke with Slow Food to create Neanderthal Food, an even slower food movement, Fischbein is wanted by police in several cities for creating out-sized dining expectations and traffic-blocking queues. Here, he’d barred exits, tied up the staff, sent cell phones through the dishwasher, and then whipped up the typical meal of a poor family living on the margins of Julio-Claudian society (cornmeal heated on warm pebbles, charred goat, fermenting root vegetables). Diners were ordered to eat the meal, learn Roman coinage, and calculate a tip, to be left in dollars. Shocking as this was for the city, it was not the first time—and many feared it wouldn't be the last—for these frightening culinary-inflected assaults.

  I spoke outside the restaurant with Kari Darwin, a Los Gatos health-care executive. She said she had just taken a few mouthfuls of her Smoked Toy Eastern Provinces Squab, presented in a Tiny Frigidarium of Root Vegetable Puree, when the attack commenced.

  "I'm still picking things out of my teeth," she told me." It was frightening at first, with all the guerilla chefs wearing ski-masks. Most of their stuff tasted like hummus or tapenade, if you ask me, but it had a very rough texture, kind of gritty. And, then there was that goat. They made one poor fellow chase it down and then kill it.”

  Without dinner, I made haste for the district’s new hostelry, called Digs (345 South Alcalde St.). Created by famously brilliant, bored Silicon Valley software engineer, Gupta Chang, a Hong Kong-born Indian, who has since moved to his own island in the Sea of Cortez, the hotel incorporates many inventions of his technology incubator, Notional. One reason Digs is also under the radar, is that it's composed partially of holograms, which takes some getting used to when you're turning over in bed and your hand goes through a wall. The good news is that you can never damage anything, or scuff the walls. The bad news is you can see into the room next to you. Hence, only half the rooms are booked, to give everyone, if not privacy, then a sense of space separating themselves from their neighbor. The four-figure per-night tabs reflect the inability to fill half the rooms, but as the young concierge opined, "so totally worth it.”

  At Digs, I slept like a baby under a bio-degradable blanket made out of bamboo thread. Once worn out, they’re thrown into the hotel’s kitchen brazier, where they impart a delicate, clean-smoked, Asian essence to whatever the chef is cooking.

  The next morning, I explored the ‘hood, using time-tested methods: sussing out independent coffee houses, music clubs that do not appear to be open, and combination gallery-and-hardware stores. Hotness markers in an up-and-coming 'hood usually adhere first to lofts—old factory floors lived in by loft developers, their children, and cranky writers and artists, trying to re-create their early, singular success with little luck. The only such property in the Olive District that fit this description was the aptly-named Pittery Lofts (34 Romualdo St.), (now being re-named by new mortgagees as The Pittery Centre to distance it from recessionary vacancies). The former early twentieth-century focus of olive de-pitting, rail-cars and freighters had off-loaded their bitter produce here, to be processed and shipped out.

  As with all urban lofts, there are rumblings of celebrity purchases in the offing—but as yet, the truth hadn't surfaced. Was it acting legend Al Pacino who had bought a 17,000 square-foot space, complete with vintage auto-sized de-pitting tubs (one is used as an indoor hot-tub, and the other filled up with pebbles and sand to form a Zen garden)? Or, was the buyer actually Alvin Peppiccino, head coach for the league-trouncing Southeastern Utah State University women’s basketball team?

  Next up: The Stone Fruit Building and Curing Works (451 Amoy Pl.) was the headquarters of the Pacific Coast Health-Full Fruit & Nut Co. (“established 1879”). After a brief stint warehousing San Francisco County Supervisor archives before they were sent for composting, it now houses The Nuthouse Museum, honoring the legacy of Pacific Coast chairman, and legendary stone fruit and legume magnate, G. Henry Truaxe. The current owners mostly gutted the interior, save for a few architectural flourishes from the 19th century, like a 10-hole outhouse—now cleverly restored as rooftop meditation cabanas. Here are Truaxe’s baby shoes, a christening gown, a Stanford fraternity paddle, and voluminous notes about his passion: the Truaxe health regime that took America by storm for a brief period, before its fate was sealed by the rampant diarrhea it caused.

  In the late 1890s,
Truaxe’s Stone Fruit Cure came into vogue. Clearing several hundred acres he owned outside the rough Sierra Nevada Mountains hamlet of Diabloville, Truaxe sited his Stone Fruit Lodge–a paean to wellness. As originally conceived, the cure involved eating stone fruit and water, while nude, for three weeks; the last requirement was later dropped.

  I took in a framed “welcome” letter to lodge guests, from May, 1898, now preserved under glass:

  Memorandum of Expectation & Assurance to Health Regimen Subscribers

  Dear Friends and Lodgers,

  We anticipate your arrival with 'health-full’ ease. Please bring to the quest for renewal, garments suitable for the exercise of one’s person in private surroundings, as well as appropriate evening wear, and clothing of an informal nature, such as for 'break-fasting' in mixed company.

  Exercise may include strenuous arm movements, billiards, pond swimming, legal card games of a family type, jaw exercises, deep-breathing, frog-style jumping, exercise a la crab and medicine ball-throwing. Smoking of tobacco, corn husks, twine, or ‘Mexican cigarettes’ is strongly discouraged, and herewise held in low esteem. As well, the ingestion of liquors, brandies, ales, and wines is considered unhelpful.

  Do befriend your fellow lodgers, as they are come from near and afar to partake of the self-same regime. For our ‘locals,’ the escape from unhealthful City mists, and richly-layered foods encouraged thusly, is but a sailing vessel, three train journeys, and a carriage-ride away.

  Yours, Respectfully

  G. Henry Truaxe, Owner

  Belle Winters, Lodge Manager

  W. Harmon Lightly, Director of Health Regimentation

  Then, I read a brief letter from 320-pound businessman Herman P. Stanislaus, who took the cure, and wrote back to his wife:

  July 25, 1899

  Diabloville, Calif.

  Stone Fruit Lodge

  Mrs. Herman P. Stanislaus

  42 Segovia Ave.

  Los Finos, Calif. 23

  Dear Minnie,

  Godforsaken place with a ‘49er as old as Methuselah running the post office. The detritus street-side tells me of bovine visitations from ranchos hereabouts. You will not be surprised to learn the air is of a temperature fit for Satan’s home place, and moreover, a steak might cook to tenderness on the roof. This Truaxe regimen disports itself favorably upon first recognition, but gradually is replaced with a tedious sensation amidships, matched by pronounced and nettlesome looseness in the bowels.

  With affection,

  Herman

  —Courtesy, Trustees of the Nuthouse Museum, San Francisco, Calif.

  On an unusually crisp, sunny day, with the wind snapping flagpoles to attention, I headed for what I will call, for the purposes of this book, “Cacao,” a private artisanal chocolate club on the fourth floor of the landmark Thermal & Woolens Building (451 Yerba Mate St. at Obispo Way). One needs a sponsor to be admitted, and after locating the concierge at Digs, my hotel, (who pronounced the club “so totally worth it”) I was able to gain admittance. The décor is “Thirties Captains of Industry” with a splash of “contemporary London sushi bar.” Gargoyles on the building provide a medieval look; the architect reportedly based them on her ex-husband.

  The club host on duty, a severe-looking young man with a shaved head, tattoos and a monocle, welcomed me, sternly advising, “the first rule of Cacao Club is, you don’t talk about Cacao Club (the address is above in the Thermal & Woolens Bldg., take the freight elevator).” Well, he didn’t say "cacao," obviously, or I wouldn’t be writing this. But you get the idea.

  Cacao overlooks the Ampitheatron (Yerba Maté Park, Alcalde and Obispo), a state-of-the-art outdoor amphitheatre built by a one-time stock-market darling lost to the initial dot-com bust; it was later bought by Iowa’s public pension fund for $5.95. The theatre is a flat plaza with a fountain that sinks with a flip of a switch into a fully-realized twenty-tier amphitheatre.

  I took a look at the chocolate menu, and chose the 98% cacao mocha with free-range chicken tenders and a mole of Anaheim chilies and Columbian chocolate. Essentially, it can power you for more than a week without sleep or much to eat. Think of it as a way to visit San Francisco, lose weight and save on hotel bills.

  Try the Magic Pot Cooking School (567 Zocalo St., at Pig Iron Alley). I’ll let them tell it: “We’re not actually a cooking school… you buy the set of pots and it comes with a cook…all your dishes turn out wonderfully. What happens is a pan-Asian family comes to visit you, prepares your meals, teaches you the secrets of Asian cooking, and then lives with you for a month. Then, you return the favor, by moving into their house for a month, and re-creating those dishes.” If this doesn’t bother you, ask about their Shanxi Province home-swaps; they’re surprisingly affordable.

  Later, I stopped in at the Olive District’s community meeting for an update on the cuisine attacks. A panel was discussing the topic de jour, Dining Terrorism: Friend or Foe? In front of them were cards made of yam starch, bearing their names and titles.

  Community activist Helen Dove: “I don’t believe in a totally raw food culture. But, this Fischbein had a vision, apparently. Let’s understand him, let’s learn from him."

  Professor Angela Fatuosi, Associate Professor of Social Gastronomy, University of California, Berkeley: “This is a teachable moment, dare I say? As one of the first people to use the phrase, ‘teachable moment’ and, as a Buddhist with a medical marijuana card, it’s an imperfect example of how we’re destined to suffer, and make others suffer.”

  Rafael P., Attack Victim: “You're idiots. I’m disabled now! My sense of taste is irrevocably changed; everything tastes like crushed white beans with an overlay of garlic, summer savory and olive oil—even my breakfast!”

  A gentleman in a shiny suit stepped forward. “I’m State Assemblyman Ron Pescadero, and I’m doing two things to address this horrific crime. First, I’m introducing Nero’s Law, which makes it a crime to cook something in a restaurant that is not on the menu, and not within the chef’s oeuvre of cooking; we're creating a state database for that. Second, with People For a Guerilla-Free Dining Experience, I'm putting a referendum on the November ballot prohibiting crazy people from taking over kitchens."

  The crowd surged forward to throw coffee cup sleeves and half-eaten wraps at Pescadero; he ducked the buffet-sourced ordnance, and hurried out.

  On my last day in San Francisco, police released portions of a note, written partially in Cantonese, which Sub-Commandante Fischbein, had posted on the Internet. A translation is:

  To the Soul-Sick People of the Bay Area, There are only two kinds of people in the world, those whose urine smells funny after eating asparagus and those who are not so afflicted. Water is a scarce resource. Why do we flush so many times each day? Cooking slower questions the answers.Your trans-fat government can’t stop the carcinogenic eating-habits of the masses, while money buys organic Stilton for the precious few.

  From the San Francisco Police Department:

  Karl Marx Fischbein is wanted by the police for confusing palates, inappropriately spicing food and introducing gamey notes of earth and Ordovician Era Schist into a range of food, without permission or consent of the chefs—or the food—and terrorizing diners. Fischbein and his gang are believed to be traveling around the area chiefly via bicycle, pedi-cab, Muni tram and dug-out canoe. They should be considered expensively-knifed and dangerous.

  Onward: Virtuositie (112 Romualdo Ave.) is simply a room with big flat screens surrounding you and ear phones connected to them. It’s a cool concept: the owner auditions musicians from the around the country, rotates the best through his video screens, and you go in and buy the download. He also has a website, but serves free tastes of coffee from Gentle Java, next door. Gentle Java is run by disaffected baristas who used to work at nearby Rough Roast (see farther down); they’re fruitarians who collect only coffee berries that have fallen on the ground – it takes about one week for one person traveling through Central and South Am
erican terrain to find enough berries for one cup of coffee—that’s why it’s $12 a cup, but also why food critics have knighted Gentle Java’s coffee as the best in the Bay Area, and possibly anywhere else that might matter as much as the Bay Area—which, to them, is basically nowhere (341 Zocalo St. at Eucalypt Alley).

  I made my way to a quick lunch at a white-hot restaurant called, Goople (415 Carquinez St. at Sap Ave.), where the food is pureed, pulverized, crushed, liquefied or some combintaion of those. Owner Hari Kenilworth, a blonde lady clad in a colorful Vietnamese Ao Dai gown over corduroy slacks, greeted me at the door, and I was seated immediately. The unusual bill of fare is heavy on soups and meal-like sauces, with a gentle refrain of Ethiopian dishes. I complimented her creativity.

  “Everything is masticated!” Kenilworth happily responded.

  One concession Kenilworth makes to eating such soft food is to offer a profusion of flatbreads to “scoop the goop,” as she aptly put it. In keeping with her philosophy of degustation, Kenilworth doesn’t make the bread within the restaurant, owing to bread's solidity. Instead, she sources it from the exclusive Dry Food Movement collective, known as Mohenjo-Daro, based in an Oakland warehouse. The bread is rowed across the bay each morning, starting at 3 a.m., in order to reduce the carbon-footprint.

  “We lost a shipment to a wayward Korean freighter last year, but we’ve rigged the dory with GPS and better lights so I think we’ve solved the problem, and, in any case, seasonal drops in trade keep the shipping lanes a little less busy.”

  “We also sell carbon-neutral coffee (the crop is bicycled up from Nicaragua). It actually keeps my marriage fresh. We’re each gone three months out of the year on the bikes,” she added.

  The Transportation Center (One Eelgrass Plaza), the newest building of Important Argentinean Architect, Domingo Cantilever, is at the edge of the district, abutting Mission Lorena, an historic California landmark. It’s designed to look like a Seagull eating bits of garbage from the bell-tower of Mission Lorena. The fight over the building took decades to resolve, owing to the insistence of preservationists that nothing in the neighborhood be taller than the bell-tower's spire. But that was resolved when the Loma Prieta Quake dropped the entire Mission by 18 inches, settling the fight.

  Mission Lorena is not as famous as Mission Dolores, a well-known San Francisco landmark, and just half the latter's size. Lorena de Hidalgo is the patron saint of a village in central Mexico—Lorena's husband, a Spanish conquistador accompanying mission-founding friars northward, repeatedly got drunk on Mescal, and ultimately fell off his horse-- tragically crushing Lorena, who was walking beside him. The Vatican beatified her in the 1830s—calling it a miracle that she stayed with her husband as long as she did.

  Later, I coaxed Sub-Commandante Fischbein’s mother, now a retired psychiatric nurse, over to the Olive District for coffee at Rough Roast (216 S. Alcalde St.), which reputedly serves the strongest shade-grown, Fair Trade java, anywhere, or your money back. Bismuth tablets are free to paying customers. Marie Fischbein was sanguine about her son’s crusade. I had seen her on TV and wanted to chat further to gain some insights.

  “What can I say? I was a smart-alecky Jewish-Italian girl from Long Island," began Marie. "It was the Summer of Love. I came out in a van to make the scene, and that’s when Karl was conceived. Unfortunately, after that came the Fall of Vomiting," she said, un-self-consciously. Not that I could tell.

  Marie took a sip of her coffee, and her eyes pooled with tears, obviously moved by her son’s plight.

  “Jesus, you could clear rust with this stuff," she commented. "But, that’s the Olive District for you, I guess."

  “Look, Karl's father… he split, as they used to say. So, I sent Karl to Montessori; he seemed to like it. But, there was an accident with some mice. Karl was always big on skewers--you know, shish-kebabs, as a meal,” she said, smiling wanly. We didn’t pursue it further.

  “Anyways, he went off to culinary school and I thought he was really happy, but 9/11 changed all that for him. And who can blame him, really? I hope they’re not too hard on him when they find him. You know, I hear the prison kitchens in California are top-notch, so maybe he’ll work in one of those for a while…”

  After exchanging some recipes, we said our good-byes, and, once on the street, I looked back through Rough Roast’s big, bright picture window to glimpse the radical chef’s mother dipping a q-tip into her coffee, and using it to remove some nail-polish.

  On my way back to Digs, I ran into Reggie Yotsuya (Trust me, travel writers who focus on hot neighborhoods always find out who these people are, how to run into them, and how to get them to say stuff that is perfect for their pieces). The federal courts building namesake, retired federal judge, and it turned out, irreverent author of a cookbook marking the ascendancy of Asian noodle cuisine in San Francisco (“Farewell to Manicotti: Nouvelle Soba Now”), was exiting the Pittery. Yotsuya had bought a loft there and was directing the painters with some difficulty.

  “You don’t ask for ‘just white’ in San Francisco. They want to know, ‘Menorca white,’ or ‘garlic white’ or ‘Zendo white.’ I mean, for Pete’s sake, just paint it white.”

  He recalled: “my grandfather used to bring me down here when I was a kid to buy pistachios and whatnot. It was a real dump. Now look at it—galleries, some bars. Maybe one day, a supermarket. You think? We can’t all eat small-plates for dinner every night.”

  "We’ll get sixth-grade back in San Francisco, don’t you worry. And it will be better than ever,” said Yotsuya, waving good-bye.

  Finally, as if by accident—but not really, because I need this narrative to end in a nice tight package—I not-really happened to walk by Drusus Nero, the restaurant. I darted inside, hoping for a meal. It was the lull before dinner, and the restaurant was ostensibly closed.

  A tall person came over to me and introduced himself as Zeke Wrangell, the owner. We chit-chatted about the Guerilla Cuisine Attack; Wrangell was just emailing the police some information they’d requested. He said he would make free meals available to the guerilla attack victims, but had also posted a notice on a local food blog offering to turn over the kitchen once a week to Fischbein.

  “I’m not frightened of him. I know what it’s like,” Zeke said.

  “To be a jobless chef?” I asked.

  Zeke gave me a look. “No! To be an outsider. I’m transitional FTM. You know, going female-to-male,” he said, while I leaned in, hoping for a story of emigration to the Olive District for my final few lines.

  “I always tell people ‘for now, just think of me as a hybrid car.’ I’ve got some of both sets of equipment, so to speak. I was born in Alaska, actually, just outside Ketchikan. Xena Rankowski, the strongest girl in physical education glass. They actually had me operating the harbor’s ice-cutter at 15 years-old. Loved it! But, I knew from early on I was meant to be a Zeke. Or a Zach. Something. Just not Xena.”

  A busboy brought us over some Truaxe Springs water, while I digested Zeke’s intriguing story.

  Did I know any FTMs? I thought about it: “So you’re really like the Mercedes-Benz ‘manu-matic’ automatic transmission with manual controls,” I offered.

  Zeke narrowed his eyes, seemingly unable to assent to the analogy.

  “I’m not sure. You lost me, “responded Zeke. “Do you know the card game, Euchre? There’s a group of cards you drop from the deck when you play, so it’s like an abbreviated… Zeke’s voice trailed off, as a sous-chef came over and whispered something in his ear.

  “I have to go,” said Zeke.”Stay for dinner, OK? It’s on me.”

  A waiter brought me over a small hibachi-like Roman table-stove, in which my rolls, he explained, were actually still rising. I thought about analogies that might apply to Zeke, as my replica first-century bread expanded in its little classical box, and wondered if Fischbein would ever take Zeke up on his offer to work there. I could see, now, ever so clearly, a line from pioneering Henry Truaxe, to t
he equally-original Zeke, a recent immigrant, hoping for success in this woolly frontier of gentrification. And even if there wasn’t a clear line, I would pencil it in.

  I was ending my Olive District sojourn where it had begun. The cotton of the marine layer had already begun to move over the area, blotting out the sun, sending the temperature plunging, as it was wont to do in the City by the Bay. And, along with my rolls, my hopes for an excellent meal only grew, and I knew it would be one-of-a-kind—regardless of who showed up to cook it. The Olive District was an exceptionally hot neighborhood, and I was lucky enough to be on the cusp of a free meal at a much-discussed eatery within said district.

  From my street-side table next to a picture window—full of bubbles created, Wrangell told me, by Turkish artisans, specializing in early first millennium vitreous work, I could make out wisps of fog dipping down to wreath the Yotsuya Building’s upper floors; the day’s light moved along the color spectrum from a—sort of—Hacienda Summer Kitchen Orange-Mustard to a—kind of—Farallon Islands Wet Pebbles Gray.

  Just then, a pungent smell wafted past my nostrils, a smell that bespoke a simpler time—of leather sandals, and leather belts, and sometimes eating leather, if food was tight.

  It was a gamey smell, kind of like…goat. I got up from the table and poked my head in the kitchen, and there, looking very much like his police mug-shot, was Karl Marx Fischbein, stirring his pot, with aggressive motions that clearly bespoke his commitment to kitchen authenticity, if not to The Olive District itself.

  Back to top.

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