wanugee "Chillin with Gillian!" N.'s Profile

This is a relatively new Cost Plus World Market. It seems that many are newer, as they take a strategy to be an anchor to many Big Box, outer suburban mall locations where there are newer suburbs and growing communities.

They are bringing the World's tchotskies to Suburbia, sort of like how Trader Joe's is bringing $2 Buck Chuck to the same Soccer Moms!

Actually, you'll often find TJ's near a Barnes and Noble, with a Cost Plus World Market nearby, with the ubiquitous Starbucks and Jamba Juice lingering on the corner. This is true in Riverside County, in the suburbs of Seattle, Phoenix, Denver, or the Bay Area. You'll find them in all those suburban big box strip malls that are painted in high desert colors of Sienna, Ochre and Sagebrush.

So it isn't surprising to find this one here in the big box strip mall across Gateway Boulevard from the newish Westfield Solano Mall in Fairfield just off I-80 at Travis Boulevard.

Unlike many Cost Plus, which are overstuffed with interesting goodies you really don't need from far off lands, making it hard to navigate through (which is the idea in their merchandising!), this one is simply a large rectangle, clean and straightforward. Great large signage announcing the key departments on each wall, a clear visual and walking path around and out.

It actually felt a little too organized. I think the merchandising concept of Cost Plus is to make the place feel like a bazaar in Istanbul, with trinkets hanging, items draping, and baskets cluttering the aisles to mimic that "I am going to find an exotic bargain" sensation.

Maybe that didn't go over well with the military families that populate much of this area, who grew up on 6am inspections, painting whatever doesn't move, saluting whatever does,  and following orders.

Still, I think this place can let its hair down a little more and junk it up a bit, not quite like a Berkeley Flea Market, but hang some baskets from the rafters or something! Just sayin!

aka "At ease, or as you were!"

Fairfield, CA: This 24 Hour Fitness "Sport" is a lot different than most of the huge fitness chain's other locations. What makes it different?

New construction, new machines!

Yup, this isn't some old, tired, 30+ year old reworked racquet ball center, this is new construction from the ground up! It is more like the newer ones in San Ramon (corporate Flagship location near HQ), or perhaps like Arcadia, or Altadena. New building, two stories, with a mezzanine like second floor for weights and an open atrium first floor for CV equipment.

The lockers are clean, new, have that Faux wood cover panel look, like Walnut Creek or San Ramon, and don't have loose t-shirts and swim trunks and shampoo bottles kicked around in the corners and on top of the lockers like Concord, Antioch, Capitol San Jose, and so many other old locations!. How unique and special!

The first floor's Cardio area is huge and well stocked with machines! There are about 80, count 'em, 80 treadmills, stairmasters, bikes, and other CV machines in 4 rows of 20, split into groups of 10. No high-end personal TV units like San Ramon, but plenty of big screens for all to see.

The upstair weights areas is nicely spaced, with many of your typical 24Hr selections, like Life Fitness, Hammer Strength, and the new Hoist series. They do not have any of the older blue and yellow Nautilus here. They do have a new stretching cage contraption, though.

There is one Group X/Spin room combo, with a pretty complete schedule of the usual offerings of classes, with something unique that is a Hula based workout!  

You have a 3 lane pool, Steam, Sauna and Whirlpool, too. Large kiddie area, for the rug rats!

Bottom line: New and clean compared to 80% of the 24 Hour Fitness Clubs I've been to (and that is over 20 and counting!)

Wow, people out here in Far-A-Field, Solongo County, I mean Fairfield, Solano County love their TJ's, don't they? Who can blame them?

After shopping at the BX (Base Exchange) commissary, or picking over FoodMaxx or the Mexican Meat Market on North Texas, TJ's is a great change of pace!  It gives you unique, great items without pinching your retired military pay budget!

This TJ's is rather unique and off template. Most TJ's are stand alone rectangular, brick sided buildings with a certain square footage and measurements to a certain formula. This one isn't quite like that, and only has 5 check out stands.  People are real friendly and efficient, though! (It's that military discipline! But they won't salute you at the check-out stand, well maybe if you're in uniform with "scrambled eggs" on your hat's visor!)

This one, however, is in the middle of a strip mall, with glass windows, narrow front, and deep length. It makes the set up a little different, but they have most of the basic TJ's items you've come to know and love.

However, being near Travis AFB, and it's military families and retired military, it is a little different. No, they don't stock K-Rations on the shelves, but they do have plenty of ready-to-eat meals, albeit not in olive plastic pouches.

Unlike many Bay Area TJ's, the free coffee in the back only offers Half and Half as a creamer. No 2%, no Skim, no Soy.

Actually, I'm surprised they don't have the old trick of egg shells boiling with the coffee grounds to attract them away from the drinkable coffee in a metal canteen cup.

They do have 3 layer Hummus though, $3.49, just like all the other TJ's.

Against the storm of "guilt free" FroYo choices exploding across the land, stands the Cold Stone Creamery franchise.

It's both new school and old school all at once, with loads of old school sugar and calories galore, with new school design and decadence in portions and ingredients.

It's obliquely sort of a Baskin & Robbins meets Benihana.

Your creamery "chef" stands chopping and mixing your creamy concoction with two paddles on a cold mix counter in front of you, much like a Benihana Chef making fried rice Teppanyaki style, armed with his two instruments of knife and fork on a hot grill! They both scoop it up and plop it into your personal bowl (or waffle cone).

Out here in Solano county, the analogy might be better served with Stone Cold Steve Austin, a la WWE wrestling, rather than Benihana. Fits the demographics more in Far-a-Field.

And you have to decipher the premade specialty "Signature Creations", named provocatively, but somewhat obscurely, kind of like those bulky female wrestlers or those Amazons that used to be on American Gladiators. For example:

"All Lovin', No Oven"
"Mud Pie Mojo"
"Our Strawberry Blonde"
"That's How I Roll"
"The Pie Who Loved Me"

See what I mean? These could be straight out of a Pay-per-view tag team World Champion Female Wrestling Extravaganza, hosted by Stone Cold himself!

This MultiPlex from AMC is similar to their others, like the Mercado in Sunnyvale, the Fashion Valley one in San Diego, and the one in the former Valco mall in Cupertino. This one is actually more like the one in Cupertino because you buy the tickets downstairs and then go upstairs to see the movie.

It's in the Bay Street Mall in Emeryville, a city within a city development very much like Santana Row in San Jose. But unlike Santana Row, you have to pay for parking here. There is a large lot and you pay in machines before you go to your car.

I used to live in Emeryville for over 5 years from 97 to 2002.  Bay Street  wasn't here then. Emeryville never saw a development they didn't like, is what I say. I hope they spend all the tax revenues on the schools, because they are pitiful and had to be talken over by the state a fews ago due to its mismanagement and failures.

Inside the AMC complex, there is a very large concessions stand, with perhaps 16 or more cash register stations. If you are hungry when you come to the theater and didn't have time to eat at one of the many establishments in Bay Street, they can take care of you here. It's almost like a fast food concession inside a Cineplex, except for the prices!

Besides the usual popocorn, candy and sodas, you can have Icees, Large Pretzels, Hotdogs, Nachos, and even Pizza!

My favorite relative and I went to see Avatar, her second time, my first. We bought  tickets on-line. Total with service charge? $29.50! Wow!
Maybe some of you remember $10 would be a movie for 2? Long gone!

We hadn't eaten dinner either. So a Regular Soda (32oz), Regular Icee (32oz), Medium Popcorn, Hot Dog, and Cheese Pizza totalled........
$27.75! Wow!

Movie and food for two: $57.50? Plus 3 dollars parking? Yikes! Over $60 for going to a movie for two?

That was an expensive date with a teenager!  

Of course, it isn't easy (and rarely cheap) keeping a teen safe, quiet and happy for 3 hours on a Saturday night!

For my 1000th review on Yelp in just over 2 and half years, I will make it unique.

It is a Photo Essay review of the PLEY event at Children's Discovery Museum. This is the fun reward for contributing many countless hours on this website that I have enjoyed thoroughly, and taking the virtual entertainment and putting it toward great friends and experiences in the real world.  

It is an apropo 1000th review.

Enjoy.

The Old Brit, or "The Brit" as it likes to call itself, is the Britannia Arms in downtown San Jose.

There is nothing particularly Brit about it. No warm beer from the tap like in a Brit Pub. I didn't try the food, so I am not sure (but seriously doubt) if they have Bangers and Mash, Ploughman's Lunch, Sheppard's Pie, Toad-in-the-Hole, or a Spotted Dick. They probably have Fish and Chips, and maybe Yorkshire Pudding, but probably not Popovers.

The dance floor is on the left, right after entry from Santa Clara street, and it is pretty small, with a DJ mixing from a small corner stage, with a large Bouncer standing guard in front of him all night. The main bar is on the right, with seating on the left. Go to the back and it opens up to another bar room, and then a patio area for smoking and getting air.

This place is popular with the San Jose Sharks crowd, but when we went, the opposing Minnesota jerseys were all over the back room, with few Sharkies. You add the Yelp PLEY after party crowd and some regulars, and it got pretty crowded, and the 2 doormen were metering entry at a very controlled pace after 11 pm.

Everyone had a great time here, but getting a drink at the bar or from the waitress is a bit of a wait, and the DJ pretty much sucked in my opinion. He play the standard popular stuff, but his transitions were awful and amateurish, like he didn't give an Ef. The drunks kept dancing anyway, so why bother to up your rep and work it?

We had a great time here, but it had very little to do with "The Old Brit".

This place must do 50% of their receipts on weekends between 12 am and 3 am!

Since most Vietnamese Restaurants are family run and Vietnamese are very family oriented, most Viet restaurants of any type, even the more convenience types that specialize in Pho, closed by 9 or 9:30pm, especially in San Jose. There are more Pho places in Westminster's Little Saigon in SoCal that are open later, some even 24 hours, but it is rare elsewhere.

So if you come to Lee's between 12am and 3am, you will find it PACKED with drunken party goers needing some grub to smooth out the booze in their system. You may even have to wait for a table! (And this places seats about 50 - 75 people!)

It is such a common weekend thing here, that 2 SJPD squad cars camp out here, just to make sure nothing gets out of hand here on the east side.

With it being so late and so packed, the food is slow to arrive. We had 8 people and it took 15 - 20 minutes after we ordered to get food.

The Pho wasn't bad, with the broth being pretty clear and flavorful, but the bowl was small and the noodles weren't quite right, sort of broken and mushy. Ditto the Cha Gio (egg rolls) and Goi Cuon (spring rolls), as they were tasteless and missing ingredients.  Like for the spring rolls: missing chives, pickled carrots and raddish, and really only consisted of shrimp, romaine lettuce and noodles.  The egg rolls were mostly filler, and lacked key ingredients (and meat) to give it more flavor.

So the food and service is 2 stars at best here, but for being the only Viet restaurant being open well past midnight, add another star!

Even though a lot of people swear by the famous chain of Vietnamese sandwiches by Lee's, I haven't been that much of a fan.

Actually, I have been boycotting Lee's Sandwiches. This is ever since the recall election last year of the first San Jose City Council member of Vietnamese heritage, Madison Nguyen.

That entire brouhaha started over the naming of a Vietnamese business area in San jose. Madison proposed calling it the Saigon Business District. Many Viets in San Jose wanted it to be called Little Saigon. What's the difference?

Many immigrant South Vietnamese who escaped Vietnam at great peril to their lives, via boats and other risky escapes to avoid living under communism, have their former capitol of Saigon held dear to them. Little Saigon is to honor the real Saigon, which there is only one but there are many Little Saigon's like in Westminster), that the communist regime renamed Ho Chi Minh City. Saigon Business district was supported by business developers that many felt  wanted to curry favor to the new Vietnam regime to open more development opportunities for them back in Vietnam.

This became a very contentious issue in the Viet community, and split it. It got so heated, that 2,500 people protested and wanted Madison Nguyen recalled, after the pride of the community of getting her elected. It was reported that Lee's Sandwiches, had created a fake recall signature drive, fooling those that signed it into thinking that it was for the recalled of Madison when it was not. Shady shenanigans.

In any event, getting from the political to the food, Lee's is an expanding chain all over the west coast. They have expanded past sandwiches, adding at this location a yogurt machine, Del Manjoo Custard Pies, and even Croissants and other breakfast items. Unlike some other locations, this one is not open 24 hours.

Most of the customers here are Hispanic, not Vietnamese, as there are more of the former than the latter here in the neighborhood.

I order a #17, which is Jambon (ham) and Pork ($2.75). The price is super cheap, but my sandwich was very dry and not very flavorful. A smoothie was $2.69 plus 25 cents extra for Pearls (Boba/Tapioca).

There are better Viet sandwich shops all around that are more Mom and Pop and much tastier than this, the McDonald's of Viet Sandwiches.

Of the major pizza chains, I probably have frequented Round Table the most. So when I had to host a office lunch at a location I wasn't go to be at in time foe the delivery, I called Round Table.

This is one near the Home Depot shopping mall on La Mirada Boulevard in the Los Angeles suburb of La Mirada, which is due east of LAX on the Imperial Highway about 30 miles.

I ordered delivery for an office across the street: 3 large pizzas, 4 bottles of 2 liter sodas.  Sausage and Mushroom, Combination (Round Table: "King Arthur Supreme"), and Vegetarian (Round Table: "Garden Delight"). I called it in and asked for it to be delivered at 12:15pm.

True to form, they delivered everything at 12:15PM. Even though I gave my credit card over the phone, the delivery man wanted my signature. Fortunately, when the office receptionist called me, I was downstairs in the parking lot, so I came up and signed off.

Pizza was good and the meeting attendees enjoyed their lunch.