Daily Archives: April 28, 2015

Competition With My Free Chocolate Room?

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I recently toured Varsity Berkeley Apartments in downtown Berkeley. This is a huge complex. The building runs across an entire block. The building is still under construction, bu they are signing leases now for occupancy in late July. The rent on 2 bedroom apartments ranges from $3,750 to $4,200 a month. Parking is extra. They are advertising these apartments as rentals for college students, hence the name ‘Varsity Berkeley’, but I wonder – how many college students can really afford to pay $4,000 a month for a 2 bedroom apartment?

What is a ‘luxury apartment’? The sales brochure says that you will ‘live in luxury’ at Varsity Berkeley. It seems like every new apartment house in Berkeley uses the word ‘luxury’ to describe their apartments, but what exactly does that mean? ‘Luxury apartment’ could mean almost anything and based on my observations, it usually just means ‘expensive.’ If there is a legal definition of the word ‘luxury’, I would like to know what it is. To be fair, Varsity Berkeley has some very nice amenities, including a spacious rooftop garden. They will also have valet garbage collection. That means they will pick up your garbage at your apartment. You won’t have to carry your garbage to a garbage can or a garbage chute. That is not a service that I provide. I do not pick up my tenants’ garbage and put it in their garbage cans for them.

varsityapartmentsVarsity Berkeley has some interesting swag at their rental office. They have free bags of gumballs with the name ‘Varsity Berkeley’ printed on the bag, but I wonder if that is enough to get people to sign leases. I always keep my eye on Berkeley landlords who give free candy to their tenants; however, I am not convinced that bags of gumballs are real competition with my free chocolate room. You know, you can buy a lot of gumballs for $4,000 a month!

In Defense Of Fisherman’s Wharf

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Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco is often called a tourist trap, but I don’t think that’s fair or true. The term ‘tourist trap’ implies that a place was created to attract tourists and rip them off, selling them tacky souvenirs and terrible, overpriced food. Well Yes, there are a lot of silly attractions and tacky souvenirs for sale at Fisherman’s Wharf, but there are also a lot of really great things to see and do there, and many of the best things are either cheap or free.pier39
  • Sea lions. On some days, especially in summer, there can be 500 to 1,000 sea lions at Pier 39. Even though I’ve seen the sea lions at Pier 39 a hundred times, I can still spend an hour watching them without getting bored. I think they are fascinating. From the size of the crowds at Pier 39, it seems like a lot of other people think so too. They are not trained sea lions. They don’t do tricks. They spend their time sleeping, barking at each other, quarreling for control of choice real estate, scratching their heads with their flippers, and yawning. They yawn a lot. I think that watching sea lions is the best thing to do at Fisherman’s Wharf, and it’s free.
  • ‘F’ streetcars. The ‘F’ line antique streetcars run along the Embarcadero from downtown to Fisherman’s Wharf. It is one of 3 great ways to get there. Some tourists wonder if these streetcars are really be as old as the city says they are. They are. These are not reproductions of old streetcars. They are just very well maintained. Riding an ‘F’ streetcar to Fisherman’s Wharf costs only $2.
  • Oakland ferry. The second great way to get to Fisherman’s Wharf is on the Oakland ferry. On the ride to Pier 41 from Oakland, you get to see wonderful views of San Francisco, the Golden Gate Bridge, Alcatraz, and you get to pass under the Bay Bridge. The ferry costs around $5.
  • Cable car. The third great way to get to Fisherman’s Wharf is by cable car. Although 2 cable car lines go to Fisherman’s Wharf, the Hyde Street line is the most interesting. It goes up and down the steepest hills and ends at Ghirardelli Square.
  • Boudin’s Bakery. Boudin makes the best sourdough bread in San Francisco, and they make a lot of it. You can watch the bakers making sourdough bread shaped like alligators, crabs, turtles, etc. It’s one of many good places to have lunch at Fisherman’s Wharf. Not all the restaurants at Fisherman’s Wharf are lousy and overpriced, although the number of bad restaurants there admittedly exceeds the number of good ones. But – isn’t that true everywhere?
  • Ghirardelli Square ice cream parlor. If there is a better ice cream parlor in San Francisco, I don’t know where it is. They serve ice cream they way it should be served, with generous portions of high quality ice cream in old-fashioned glass ice cream dishes, not styrofoam cups, and covered with whipped cream, not ‘whipped topping.’
  • Interesting stores. Some of the stores on Pier 39 are really quite interesting. They are not all tourist junk shops. Among the stores I like are the Houdini magic shop, Chocolate Heaven, Puppets on the Pier, and the NFL / College Shop, which has an astonishingly large selection of sports team clothing. In addition, some of the places on the pier that sell food products make them in their windows, which can be very interesting to watch. Frankly, I have picked up some of my best chocolate-making ideas by watching people making candy in the windows of chocolate stores around Fisherman’s Wharf.

Drive-Through Trees. A Real Tourist Trap.

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DriveThroughTreeIf you want to visit a real tourist trap, you can’t beat a drive-through tree. I have never been to a drive-through tree myself, so maybe I am prejudiced about this. There are a number of drive-through trees in northern California. All of these trees are either giant redwoods or sequoias. There used to be a famous drive-through sequoia in Yosemite National Park, but that tree fell over in 1969. They didn’t replace it so there are no more drive-through trees in state or national parks. My father told me that he thought that the Yosemite drive-through tree was the stupidest tourist attraction in California. All the drive-through trees in California are now on private land, and all of them are in remote locations. None of them is near a big city. Cutting a hole in a tree big enough for a car to drive through will eventually kill the tree, so places with drive-through trees have to periodically change the tree that people drive through. The way these places work is pretty simple – you pay a fee and then drive through a tree. After you drive through the tree, you done. That’s it. You’re finished. There is usually nothing else to do at these places, aside from buying souvenirs at the gift shop, and there is always a gift shop next to a drive-through tree. Now if that isn’t a tourist trap, what is?! If you decide to visit a drive-through tree, be prepared to wait. In summer, you might have to wait for up to an hour to drive your car through the tree. That is because everyone who drives through a drive-through tree stops their car inside the tree to take photos.
 

Whatever Happened To World’s Fairs?

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I miss world’s fairs. It has been decades since they had a world’s fair in the United States or Canada. There was supposed to be a world’s fair in Chicago in 1992, but it was canceled. They still have world’s fairs, but now they are at places that I don’t want to go to. In 2017, there will be a world’s fair in Astana, Kazakhstan, but I’m not going there. I don’t travel to places that that end with ‘stan’, like Pakistan, Afghanistan, or Uzbekistan. The last world’s fair I went to was Expo 67 in Montreal. It was a wonderful world’s fair. Montreal is a beautiful city. The west side of Montreal is English. That’s where you went to get cheap English imports. The east side of the city is French. Predictably, that’s where the best restaurants are located. Why don’t they have world’s fairs anymore in places like Montreal? French Canadians don’t hijack airplanes and crash them into skyscrapers or behead infidels. At least none of the French Canadians I’ve ever met did stuff like that. If there was another world’s fair in Montreal, I would go!

Charles de Gaulle’s Plan To Ship The Eiffel Tower To Montreal. This story is incredible, but true. Charles De Gaulle was frequently criticized in both America and France for grandiosity – and with good reason. France used to be the wealthiest and most powerful country in the world, and the French language was the international language of government, science, and business. Charles De Gaulle never really accepted the idea that those days were over and would never return. De Gaulle wanted France to be the most influential country in Europe again and a first-tier world military power in its own right. Most people, even in France, thought this was unrealistic.

De Gaulle hoped that someday the people of Quebec would break away from the rest of Canada and become an independent French-speaking country politically tied to France. When the World’s Fair came to Montreal in 1967, de Gaulle wanted the French exhibit to be spectacular. He proposed disassembling the Eiffel Tower and shipping it to Montreal for the fair, then shipping it back to Paris after the fair was over. At first, many people in France thought this proposal was a joke, but de Gaulle was serious. The French government did a cost estimate for the proposal. When de Gaulle saw how much it would cost, he dropped the idea. Charles de Gaulle was grandiose, but not insane. De Gaulle attended the Montreal World’s Fair, where he created a international incident when he made an off-the-cuff statement to a large crowd. He said: “Vive le Quebec. Vive le Quebec libre!” (with emphasis on the word ‘libre.’) He was supposed to just say “Vive le Quebec”, but he got carried away and added the rest. The Canadian government was furious. The prime minister of Canada said: “Canada does not need to be liberated.” He told President de Gaulle that he was no longer welcome in Canada. De Gaulle was forced to cut his trip short and go back to France. He never returned to Canada. I came to Expo 67 after the ‘Vive le Quebec libre” incident, but it was still the hot topic of conversation.