San Francisco

aka The City by the Bay, City of Love, S.F., Frisco, Golden Gate City

Art in the Age

Patrick | October 25th, 2012

Although not usually one for alcohol brand-loyalty, I was recently introduced (by a very excited bartender) to the life-changing distillery/high-concept, Walter Benjamin-worshiping art collective Art in the Age. More specifically, I was introduced to Art in the Age’s Root Liquor, a long-lost recipe passed down from Native Americans to Settlers and eventually forgotten during prohibition. Made with Sassafras, Sarsaparilla, and Birch Bark, it is essentially 80-proof root beer, and tastes just like it sounds (perfect. it tastes perfect). Read More

Adventures in Advanced Jukebox Curation

Patrick | September 5th, 2012

Jukeboxes are one of the few forms of technology where I remain a staunch conservative – nothing ruins a good dive like those glowing neon digital jukeboxes with wireless access to an internet’s worth of MP3′s. Read More

iPhone iDefense for…. iDiots?

Patrick | September 3rd, 2012

I keep on going back and forth with this one.  I’m sure that everyone can get behind an iPhone case that provides 20 additional hours of battery life.  More controversial – an iPhone case that provides 20 additional hours of battery life as well as a 650,000-volt stun gun. Read More

The Perfect Speaker

Patrick | August 30th, 2012

Audio fetishism can be a bit exhausting, and getting the perfect stereo/amplifier/speakers/headphones can feel like a lifelong search for the holy grail. Read More

Janka Nabay, Bubu King

Patrick | August 29th, 2012

Janka Nabay’s life story is an incredible one -  he revived the near-extinct genre of “bubu” music in Sierra Leone as a youth, before being driven into exile by civil war, ending up in America where he’s worked flipping burgers at fast food restaurants and food trucks. Read More

Cubed Music

Patrick | August 8th, 2012

The “Tape Revival” has always rubbed me the wrong way – it lacks the nostalgia and audio quality of vinyl, and feels more exclusive and willfully inconvenient than anything else. That being said, I’m all for alternative means of disseminating music. Read More

Bleep: A Guide to Electronic Music

Patrick | August 7th, 2012

Music compilations can be hard to swing – they might point you towards a few interesting artists, but rarely hold together as cohesive albums. Read More

Our Tubes

Patrick | August 7th, 2012

MyTube60 is a dumb, perfect idea: a simple, bare-bones interface which lets you search through YouTube, and then organize your own video playlist, selecting the start and end points within each video for maximum entertainment/deficit disorder.

Although the creators seem to think the site is best used for organizing “power hours” (where you drink a shot of beer every time a new song/video comes on – and where a new song/video comes on every freaking minute – for an hour), it obviously also has potential as a simple tool for curating compilations of people falling over, and compilations of pugs tilting their heads, and compilations of highly competent and precious but somehow  unsatisfying covers of pop songs. Enjoy your power hour though!

HBO’s The Newsroom

Patrick | July 19th, 2012

I’ve never given Aaron Sorkin much of a chance, although I’ve been consistently surprised by the number of my friends who secretly own the entirety of the West Wing on DVD. Read More

Burial’s Latest Headphone-Ready Downer

Patrick | June 12th, 2012

I’ve given up on ever really wrapping my head around the constantly evolving sub-sub-genres which make up most of the UK electronic music scene – once I read the words ‘aqua-step’ I knew it was all over. Fortunately, many of the artists inhabiting those same sub-sub-genres are paying much closer attention than I am, and the best of them manage to stay on top of, if not ahead of all these constantly evolving trends. Read More

Raising the Ice Cream Bar

Patrick | April 17th, 2012

 

SF’s gourmet ice cream scene feels ridiculously over-crowded at this point, so it’s nice to see a new addition doing something more interesting than just taking a flavor that you’d “never think could be an ice cream flavor” and making ice cream with it. Read More

Your Move, Bourbon

Patrick | March 9th, 2012

I can’t imagine ”Scotch Whisky in a can” lasting much longer than 4 Loko did, but it might be fun to have around while it lasts. I’d never heard of Scottish Spirits before, so credit to them for finding a way to get my attention – 8 shots to a can for $5! Read More

Retrode, USB-Based Nostalgia

Patrick | March 7th, 2012

While the entire corpus of classic 8-bit video games may be available to anyone with the basic computer know-how to install a video-game emulator on their laptop and download a few torrents, the experience of re-playing a favorite video game on a computer is never quite the same as the original – the software can be buggy, and something always feels slightly off when you’re mashing buttons on a keyboard instead of an old-school controller. Read More

San Francisco Beer Week

Patrick | February 27th, 2012


Though not usually one for beer snobbery, or dark, fancy beers, or even large gatherings of like-minded people,  S.F. Beer Week appeals to me on a few different levels. For one, I’m a sucker for any beer so strange that it couldn’t possibly be sold in stores, and Beer Week is an opportunity for bay area brewers to break out their personal stock of more ‘experimental’ beers.

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Miyazaki’s Latest Masterpiece (hopefully)

Patrick | February 24th, 2012

Is this ok? Am I allowed to love it? What will my friends say? These are the questions I must ask myself every time Hayao Miyazaki releases a new film. Read More