As I mentioned, there is a commenter here who works with someone I know. And oddly enough, the only story she told me about that person involves him/her/it bringing up Rice-A-Roni when she said she used to live in SF.
I'm getting mixed up. Did the commenter here used to live in SF or the person you know?
Absolutely Appropos, AC. And it amazes me that someone your age should have a clear memory of those ads--I encountered them in the mid-sixties; I had no idea they ran long enough to make an impression on you. Every single image, from the ringing of the cable car bell to the Ghirodelli(sp?) sign to the implied Italianness and American exoticism were completely new concepts to me then. Ineradicable.
The ads were still running into the early 80s, at least, so more than one generation was corrupted. But my bet is that what we're seeing is not some kind of East Coast insularity but rather a good jingle's awesome ability to remain close to consciousness.
In this case I would only use the word corrupted light-heartedly. I don't think they were misleading or did any harm. Our minds are stocked with advertising images, some of them very good images.
A good contemporary example is the Cialis ads. I don't use the product and my wife laughs because I always pronounce the name as if it were Italian. There are, of course, issues about the mis-use of that product category. On the other hand, the images of mature lovemaking in those ads is genuinely tender and affecting. Where else do you see that? What else should take its place in my imagination?
My strongest association with the words "San Francisco" is also edible/musical:
You can eat if you are in the mood
Shark fin soup, bean cake fish
And the girl who serves you all your food
Is another tasty dish!
You know you
Can't have a new way of living
Till you're living all the way
On Grant Avenue. --Where is that?--
San Francisco, That's where's that!
California U.S.A.
I was but a mere child in the 80's, and I remember those ads.
Never could stand the stuff, though. I liked my food plain when I was young. White rice, regular potato chips, sandwiches consisting only of meat and bread, etc. I was a picky kid.
Come back from San Francisco.
It can't be all that pretty,
when all of New York City misses you.
Should pretty boys in discos distract you from your novel,
remember I'm awful in love with you.
You need me like the wind needs the trees to blow in.
Like the moon needs poetry, you need me.
Come back from San Francisco and kiss me; I've quit smoking.
I miss doing the wild thing with you.
Will you stay? I don't think so,
but all I do is worry, pack bags, call cabs, and hurry home to me.
You need me like the wind needs the trees to blow in.
Like the moon needs poetry, you need me.
When you betray me, betray me with a kiss.
Damn you. I've never stayed up as late as this.
Did you just make that up on the spur?
Are you talking to me, John Tingley? It's a Magnetic Fields song.
My memory of Rice-A-Roni is that the headlights on the streetcar in the picture on the back of the box had some weird texture that made them look fake. Bizarre memory.
I'm going to assume that the only reason the Bay Area readers aren't jumping at this awesome opportunity yet is that they're still asleep. I think I can keep up that delusion until around 1 PM EST or so.
Oh he met her at a disco
In a dive in San Francisco
And it all might have been different if he'd seen her in daylight
She was painted, she was scented
But she drove your man demented
If he'd gone and asked is father
I'm sure he'd set him right
I don't even know what Rice-A-Roni is, but I know it's the San Francisco Treat. And I know the jingle, which I suspect is the reason I remember the slogan. That and the 'flowers in your hair' song.
I hate advertising. It's too powerful. Once, I was in a dollar store that sold knockoffs of all the main shampoo and conditioner brands. None of them could use the companies' names or logo, so all of the containers and packaging mimicked the color scheme. And it bothered me that I knew which major brands they were imitated solely by the color of the bottle.
Yeah, SF is just chock full of Rice-A-Roni joints that would be perfect for the meetup. My favorite is Sushi-A-Roni in Japantown.
No longer in the bay area myself. I migrated in and migrated out, and my lasting impression of the place is that most of the people I met weren't from there.
Is Sushi-A-Roni isn't for real, I might just have to move there and open it. I'm envisioning inside-out Spam rolls with Rice-A-Roni rice.
It's not real yet. I get to eat at your restaurant for free if you run with it. Vienna Sausages would work well too.
I think I can keep up that delusion until around 1 PM EST or so.
33 minutes to go!
w-lfs-n, you should be ashamed. Becks, I'm sorry to say I don't think I can make it. Also, that Rice-a-Roni assocation is weak. So is all that other stuff. What about the Silicon Valley boom and bust, for heaven's sake? Speaking of heaven, what about,
Heaven is a city much like San Francisco,
House upon house depended from Hillside,
From Crest down to Dockside,
The green Mirroring Bay
SF always makes me think of this, apo-approved, song:
What's there to live for?
Who needs the peace corps?
Think I'll just DROP OUT
I'll go to Frisco
Buy a wig & sleep
On Owsley's floor
Walked past the wig store
Danced at the Fillmore
I'm completely stoned
I'm hippy & I'm trippy
I'm a gypsy on my own
I'll stay a week & get the crabs &
Take a bus back home
I'm really just a phony
But forgive me
'Cause I'm stoned
Every town must have a place
Where phony hippies meet
Psychedelic dungeons
Popping up every street
GO TO SAN FRANCISCO
How I love ya, How I love ya
How I love ya, How I love ya Frisco!
How I love ya, How I love ya
How I love ya, How I love ya
Oh, my hair is getting good in the back! Every town must have a place
Where phony hippies meet
Psychedelic dungeons
Popping up on every street
GO TO SAN FRANCISCO...
Hotcha!
First I'll buy some beads
And then perhaps a leather band
To go around my head
Some feathers and bells
And a book of Indian lure
I will ask the Chamber Of Commerce
How to get to Height Street
And smoke an awful lot of dope
I will wander around barefoot
I will have a psychedelic gleam in my eye at all times
I will love everyone
I will love the police as they kick the shit out of me on the street
I will sleep...
I will, I will go to a house
That's, that's what I will do
I will go to a house
Where there's a rock roll band
'Cause the groups all live together
And I will join a rock & roll band
I will be their road manager
And I will stay there with them
And I will get the crabs
But I won't care
most of the people I met weren't from there.
True of most major cities.
Oof, TMK, now you're hurting my inherited, Sacatomato bay-jealousy. We're major too, kinda, in a way, um, go Kings! Most people here were born here and will die here.
But you put me in mind of another song. James McMurtry.
I'm not from herebut people tell me
it's not like it used to be
they say I should have been here
back about ten years
before it got ruined by folks like me
I'd be more impressed if you said you were going to Berkeley and everyone suddenly mentioned "Farms?...In Berkeley? Mooo." Anyway, I won't be able to make it, sorry. I'm somewhat amazed by the lack of Bay Area commenters, however.
Possibly, but probably "in transition." I need to start planning stuff better.
Thanks eb and Slol. Too bad you can't make it. Oh well. Looks like the readership has moved eastward since the last poll. That, or I am far less popular than Ben.
As soon as I hit "post", I realized that my phrasing meant that Ben would probably chime in point out that my "or" could be inclusive. But you, eb?
I'd be happy for an excuse to go here.
ATM:The District would be happy to welcome you out for a happy hour, eb, if you have some free time while you're here.
Oh and I remember a Rice-a-Roni ad making fun of GHWB for not liking broccoli, so it probably ran in the late 80s/early 90s. I don't think I've ever eaten Rice-a-Roni. But I'm not from San Francisco.
26: Hell Becks, we've never met but I'd join you for the concert(s?) and a beer/whatever if I was closer....
33: Thanks, I'm sure I'll take you up on the invitation.
Becks, if I still lived in the Bay Area, I'd come to your meetup. It's conceivable that I'll be traveling there in May or June, but given the luck you're having...
Becks, if I still lived in Modesto I would drive out to Frisco to see you. Alas those days are long past. Maybe we can get Idealist's auntie to drive out.
Actually come to think of it I will be in Modesto 10 days after you are in the Bay Area. If you could jiggle your sked a little...
It should go without saying that plenty of people would like to meet you. Perhaps you should ask S-K to reschedule?
Thanks everyone! In an alternate universe where all of you were close to SF, I'm sure we would have had much fun meeting up. I do, however, find it funny that just yesterday I was saying in an email to one of y'all commenters that the cool thing about Unfogged is that a person could probably go anywhere in the country and know someone who would want to meet up for a beer. Ha!
(Not an indiscretion error because I'm quoting myself.)
Really sorry that you're not going to be able to make it out to Turkey as soon as you might've liked.
Huh. I might actually be in the area right around that time. Of course, I'll be be-birkenstocked and Petes'd in the East Bay, but I hear there some Rapid Transit out to the big city.
42 - Yeah, bummer! I'm sure looking at your pictures is going to make me want to go even more, too. I correctly predicted that my friend from grad school would be a bit of a flake about getting travel plans pinned down promptly, but her personality is what would make her a fun person to go there with so I still want to try to make it work. Summertime would be a hard time to go so I figure if I shoot for the fall, I'll have plenty of time to make her focus and get organized.
Not sure if you're a fan of Sleater-Kinney, JM, but I've got an extra ticket to Tuesday's show if you're interested.
That's Peet'sed (sorry to be picky, but I used to work in the roasting plant, and no, this is not a Fark cliche), and the BART is a great way to get into the city without having to park. Particularly the McArthur station around 40th & Telegraph in Oakland, as 2 of 3 trains go there before splitting off down their various routes.
I'd come out, if there was enough of a critical mass of folks to lurk on the antisocial periphery of.
My pictures of Istanbul depict an inexplicably dark and blurry city—go despite my record of the city!
What, didn't I say that like you do in Frisco?
the BART is hardly a pinnacle of mass transportation.
sure beats the houston metro though :(
Did I miss the proposed DC meetup? When's that?
"Advice to out-of-state fugitives who want to hide here: Don't call it Frisco.
Two escapees from a Utah prison did just that, each telling two rookie UC-Berkeley cops, "I'm from Frisco."
Busted.
After referring to The City by the one word sure to identify them as tourists or rubes, the two fugitives are in Alameda County Jail, awaiting extradition back to Utah. "
Some of us lurkers are just slow, is all - at home, I'd have checked Unfogged several times by now, but visiting Berkeley this semester I never seem to get around to checking until evening time.
Anyway, despite my lack of commenting, I've enjoyed innumerable hours of Unfogged-based procrastination over the last coupla years, so I'd definitely meet up for a beer. Hopefully I'm not the only slow and lazy lurker out here...
Incidentally Becks, Deceptacon is now just a few songs from reaching my 25 most played tracks. Though I'm worried it will never make it - I tend to listen to one or two CD's at a time repetetively, and my current obsession with The Joggers are about to push them up there...
Hopefully I'm not the only slow and lazy lurker out here...
Nope. I'd be down for a meetup too. (And Jackmormon, for shame! misspelling Peet's. Especially given the location of the original Peet's...)
On the unlikely theory that it is a popularity disparity operating here, let it be known that I will be in attendance at this function.
my current obsession with The Joggers are about to push them up there...
Ziggurat Traffic!
Resolved:
1. There will be a meetup of some sort in the Bay Area on Monday, May 1.
2. Lurkers are more than welcome.
3. If a bunch of people start changing their mind and posting "Well, if Ben's coming..." comments, asses will be kicked.
47 - So that I don't look like a dumbass, what does one call it if not the BART?
You just call it BART. I'm taking BART. I have to go catch BART. I'll take BART over there.
I tend to hear people just calling it BART. As in "BART sucks, but at least it's not Caltrain.".
BART is late. BART broke down. BART is on strike. Why the hell couldn't they have built something better than BART?
Also, if you're driving in California, at some point the freeways change from [number] to "the [number]" (in southern California, maybe elsewhere) but I've never figured out where, for example, 101 becomes "the 101."
OK, so it's the "the" that is problematic. Gotcha. As someone who has lived in a number of destination cities, I am fully aware that everybody hates a tourist and strive to be as inoffensive to the locals as possible.
A guy I know distinguishes between interstates and state highways for definite article preposition. "101", but "the 280". Or something like that. All I know is that I, a committed article prepender, found it baffling.
As a noncomittal nonprepender I, too, find that baffling.
I also overheard teenagers using the word "hella" a few weeks ago. I had thought northern Californians had stopped saying that.
I just heard someone say "hella" today. Took my by surprise.
Damn, I must be out of touch with slang. That probably goes without saying.
I thought everyone had stopped saying "hella."
Though I'm less surprised by "hella" than this fuss over articles, which is just plain baffling.
You try leaving a world where people refer to freeways sensically and entering one in which they talk of taking 80 to 210 to 1 to whatever—taking 80 of what, I'd like to know!
Even weirder are the people who use the destination-names of the freeways. "Take the San Jose freeway to …" What? I've only known one such person, my high school calculus teacher, but really, one's enough.
Ziggurat Traffic!
Indeed. But what I'm currently more interested in is their first album Solid Guild, which was evidently influenced by shapenote singing - which I don't know much about, but a few of my friends at Chicago (one of whom we discussed in one of my brief flirtations with non-lurkerdom) were way into it. I'm not sure I buy it - my ears are only advanced to notice it except for their brief a capella bit.
My sister's husband says he used to go by the destination names when he was growing up in Southern California.
The only people who refer to highways by their names (rather than their numeric designations) around here are the traffic reporters. Southern California, as eb's sister's husband attests, is a different story entirely.
69: Don't move to New York. I don't even think anyone knows the numbers there. It's all "GW, LIE, Major Deegan, Triboro," what have you.
56 -- geez I can't believe you responded to that sentence and did not note the subject-verb disagreement.
strike? you want to talk about BART and strikes?
mwah... we have had police in riot gear for the past 3 weeks here over the CPE, the Sorbonne is barricaded, universities have been shut for weeks, the metro is flooded with pimply high-schoolers from the provinces here to demonstrate in marches against what's probably their own economic interest, while a smaller subset of them set cars on fire, smash windows, and loot a bookshop i really liked on the place de la sorbonne that never did anything to them... destroyed an entire building at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes - literally, giant holes in the walls and computers smashed... and march 28 is the day of the General Strike that all french unions will take part in, with them...
is this getting reported chez vous?
I thought using "the" with freeway numbers was more a Southern California usage.
77: that's the usual usage in the bay area, anyway, if not the rest of northern calif (I don't know). seems to be common in texas too, at least houston, although usage is inconsistent: you live `in the loop' but you `take the 610'. Both refer to the same road.
I will try to come though I have certain caretaking responsibilities these days that might not be gone by then. It's a good time of year to visit.
74 - The California lifestyle must be making him soft.
Though if I comment with any regularity whatsoever, he'll get plenty of opportunities to redeem himself.
Beck, my plans really aren't firm enough for me to lay claim on any extra tickets. I'd love to come to the meetup, though, so I'll make a special effort to get my act together.
In regards to my shocking, shocking! error above, you'll notice I spelled it "Petes'd" rather than the perhaps more genuinely piratical "Pete's'd." And Josh, I'll have you now that as a child I thought all those happy coffee drinkers across the street were sinners, sinners! (Now I've really made myself identifiable, since there were only about 4 children in that ward.)
In other news, I still say "hella," when extra-special relaxed.
Or even "hecka" when talking to relatives.
And mmf!: was it the PUF they destroyed?
The reporting over here has been very bad, very cursory. It's hard to make out how serious the strikes/riots have been or how broad a base of support they have. For my part, I've been sort of assuming that they won't get truly out of control or have real impact until the weather gets warmer.
75: I wasn't talking about BART and strikes. I was talking about usage.
77: Has anything in the thread contradicted that?
78: That doesn't sound right. No one I know from the Bay Area uses "the" with freeway numbers.
There's a state senator from Albuquerque named Cisco McSorley, and I remember hearing about him during what must have been either the 1992 or 1994 election and singing "the San Fran-Cisco McSorley treat" incessantly, which I guess implies that the ads were still going on then. I found it unbelievably hilarious, although I seem to recall that others were not as amused after several repetitions. Keep in mind that I was in elementary school at the time.
84- eb, i wasn't trying to correct what you said, i'm just upset that all this stuff i like is getting smashed up, and the universities are shut down and major streets blocked off.
83- jackmormon, i think they have very broad support. the last i heard was that 68% of the country is against the CPE. villepin is standing firm. dialogue has broken down between the politicans who want to change the rigidity of the system (to lower youth unemployment) and regular people who want their (not so many!) jobs protected. as for me, maybe it's selfish, but i want all parts of the city to be working again including the 5e arr. and for people not to stop movement in the city or put great big giant holes in the walls of buildings i go to conferences in. The stand-off began a month and a half ago, although the tear gas & sorbonne occupations & marching really only began 3 weeks ago.
i think some larger social changes are afoot here. check back on tuesday, the 28th.
PUF + a building of the ecole des hautes etudes
:( :( :(
you have to be careful, because a subset of people take the marches as a free-for-all. a friend of mine got encircled and robbed by 6 kids during the big march on the 23rd - with plenty of people watching and no-one helping. it makes me feel so conservative to be against protests and the "casseurs," but this is really bad as a three-week-and-counting daily problem.
Sorry, multiple misunderstandings. In any case, my sister's currently in Paris - she was in the 5th for a couple of months but her sublet's run out and she's moving to the 7th for another month before coming back to the US - and the protests are worrying me, but she never mentions any of it in her e-mails and doesn't seem concerned.
How sad. I bought a lot of books from PUF, and they sometimes hosted great talks. The public university system is truly problematic, though; I can see students getting furious that their employers could have the right to fire them without cause while the more accessible schools offered no real avenues for qualification or advancement. But is the 5th really unpassable? Wow.
Eb, the 7th would be pretty far from all that and is a fairly bourgeois (and boring) part of town. I used to live there on the pretty much only seedy street in the arrondissement, Rue de la Gaite; my sublet was right above l'Odysexxx.
yeah, eb, your sister might easily not notice anything in the 7th.
the 5th is passable, but not around the sorbonne - there are police barricades. and, lots of people demonstrating frequently.
That would be reassuring, except I just read:
The attacks at the corner of Rue Saint Dominique and Rue Fabert, just a short walk from the Eiffel Tower in Paris's affluent and touristy 7th arrondissement, followed a pattern that has emerged in the last few days of marches.
70: Solid Guild is indeed a good album.
