John S.'s Profile

Yea for incredibly efficient, tolerant, and forceful-when-needed bartenders.  Doc's Clock has at least one of them, and she's worth probably more than she makes.

Yea for cute greyhounds that put up with annoying people who patronize Mission bars and just want to pet greyhounds when said perpetually sad-looking dogs are just trying to rest.  Double yea for said cute greyhounds that occasionally jump and rest their forepaws on the edge of the bar.

Boo for patrons of Doc's Clock.  Most of you suck.  Yes, I'm talking about you.  And you.  And you too; don't think I didn't see you trying to dance on the bar.  Yes, you were drunk, but this doesn't give you the right to almost ruin the efficient bartender's night.

Sometimes, I hate the Mission.

I saw Mortified here with Alyssa G. and company on her birthday.  The show was really good even though we had the farthest possible booth from the stage.  They have a kind of ridiculous online-sales policy; they sell out online, but you can still buy tickets at the door.  How does that work exactly?

I like the vibe, though, and this is one of those large bars that makes good use of its ample space.  So many big places in San Francisco try really hard to pretend they're intimate, which just makes them feel crowded.  This place doesn't feel crowded even when it is crowded, at least near the dance floor.

I came here a couple of times when I was dog- and house-sitting in Larkspur.

The store is clean and pretty well stocked, especially the produce section.  Both times I came, though, there weren't enough checkout lines open, and the workers seemed especially slow.  I was really surprised that they didn't have a lot of the organic and meatless items I regularly find at most Safeways in San Francisco.  I realize that people's shopping habits vary in different places, but do the residents of Marin County really care less about organic and vegetarian food than San Francisco residents?  Really?

They recently changed their format.  While it looks a lot better, it's still full of horrible writing.  It's pathetic how bad it is.  Their football statistics often contain errors.

They've thankfully learned the difference between parentheses and a brackets, but that doesn't mean they're consistent yet about when to use either.

I would actually love to raise their rating to three stars, but I pay extra for the first-class delivery, and it comes even later now than it did before, and they've supposedly taken steps to improve delivery time.  Hey guys, it's not working.

When I was a little kid, I was terrified of roller coasters.  It wasn't that I thought I would fall off or even that I was afraid of heights; what terrified me was the thought of throwing up.  I had a very sensitive stomach, and I absolutely hated vomiting.  And yet every time I rode the Log Ride at Knott's Berry Farm, I got that feeling at the bottom of my stomach.  So I avoided most big rides.  I could do anything at Disneyland, but I wouldn't go on Montezuma's Revenge or Corkscrew (RIP) at Knott's.

This fear, probably natural for a child, lasted inordinately long.  I came to Magic Mountain a couple of times before I was a teenager, but I never dared any of the big rides--which was basically all of them.  Then I came here with some friends when I was in college, and guess what?  Big roller coasters with big drops didn't make my stomach feel that way anymore.

Since my late-'90s discovery, I haven't really been making up for lost time, but I have returned to Magic Mountain a few times.  And despite the fact that I get terrified before every big drop, I still go on most of the rides.

I now avoid Magic Mountain because of other fears.  They are

(1) the fear of passing out due to ridiculous heat and ridiculous hills to traverse;

(2) the fear of being punched, stabbed, or shot at an amusement park because this place seems to attract rowdy teenagers and almost no other age group; and

(3) the fear of death by BO.

OK, this last one isn't Magic Mountain's fault, but I once rode one of the big rides (Goliath?) behind a coworker who wasn't wearing a shirt and who refuses to wear deodorant.  Let's just say that when he raised his arms for the first drop, I almost did pass out.  That smell flying up your nose at 70 mph is not pleasant.

In all seriousness, get some security.  And try to appeal to families, whole families that include small children and responsible parents.  And have better food options.

It's OK.  I didn't realize before I ordered from here that Cybelle's is a local megachain, but the quality is better than Mr. Pizza Man.  I know; that's not saying much, but when you're a local megachain, you're going to be compared to other local megachains.

I'd really love to know how to say it, and since I ordered online, I still don't know.

My most recent focus-group adventure had me traveling to 1199 Bush Street.  Having taken the 31 and walked up a steep hill through the Tenderloin to get there, I didn't really want to repeat the trip.  Plus, I had to move my car, and it was parked on Central Avenue near Oak Street.  I had seen the stop for the 3-Jackson on my way up the hill, so I figured I'd give the bus ten minutes, and if it didn't arrive, I would walk to Van Ness.

The bus came almost right away, and I was surprised by how many people were on it.  In my mind the 2, 3, and 4 bus lines were all kind of lame because they basically mirrored the 1-California.  But during my short stay on the 3, I realized that this bus serves a vital need.  About four blocks after I boarded, literally fifteen teenage ballet students boarded the bus.  I work with teenagers at my job, so I was really annoyed that I would have to endure them while on the bus as well.  But instead of being completely annoyed by their, like, conversations, I was fascinated by the clear social hierarchy at play.  I was also saddened by all the eating disorders I saw already in full force.

I was kind of surprised and dismayed when the bus turned on Fillmore; I knew it had to reach Jackson Street at some point, but I was hoping to get to Presidio Avenue as directly as possible.  Almost all of the dancers got off the bus at the same stop, and they seemed to go into the same huge house--is there a teenage ballet boarding school in San Francisco?--so the interesting part of my ride was over.  Before I knew it, though, we were at Presidio Avenue, and I got off the bus.

It took forever for the 43-Masonic to come, and during this time, I saw three more 3-Jacksons pass by in the same direction I had ridden it.  The 3 does serve a useful purpose, and at least in the afternoon, it runs often.  Good for it!

I dog-sat for my cousin last weekend, and she helpfully left me a bunch of food and coupons for delivery places.  One of these coupons was for Stefano's, and it seemed like a great deal:  $6 off any extra-large pizza.  I noticed that there was a $2 delivery charge, but $4 off was $4 off, and after doing online research and finding out that very few places deliver to Larkspur, I called up Stefano's.

About a half-hour after I had ordered, they called me back and told me my credit card had been rejected.  I repeated the number to them, but they said it wasn't working.  I gave them another credit-card number, and the guy said this one was rejected too.  I began to grow suspicious, as this second time it didn't seem physically possible for him to have entered the number and found out it was rejected as quickly as he did.  I told him I would pay with cash, and he seemed pretty happy about this.

A half-hour later, I saw a car driving slowly down my cousin's street.  It was clearly a delivery guy, as my cousin lives in a really quiet, dead neighborhood.  But after examining every address, he continued on up the street.  I waited another fifteen minutes, and just as I was about to call Stefano's, I got a call from the delivery guy.  He asked for the address, and when I gave it to him, he said he was a minute away.  Ten minutes later, he arrived.  It was, indeed, the same guy who had driven up the street almost forty-five minutes before.  

The pizza didn't look extra large, but I was famished at this point, so I just paid and ate some of it right away.  I didn't specifically order thin-crust pizza, and nowhere on the coupon did it indicate that Stefano's specialized in thin-crust pizza, so I was very disappointed by the crust.  The rest of the pizza was all right, but it's definitely not something I'll give another try.

To summarize, poor service, slow delivery, small pizza, thin crust when you don't request it.

Oh, and this week, I got a call from my credit-card company.  Apparently, Stefano's trying to run my first card so many times opened up an automatic fraud alert.  Thankfully, they didn't deactivate my card, but this place is shady.

I grew up a short walk from the Whittwood Mall, so it's almost predetermined that I would hate the Quad.  Now, you might say, "But, John S., the Quad and the Whittwood Town Center (as it's now called) are totally different."  That would be true, and they always have been different in many ways, but at one time, both were enclosed malls, each with their own pros and cons.  (Sorry for the Amazing Race reference.)

I could go into how weird the cafeteria place at the Quad was, or how strange it was to walk around in a mall that wasn't Whittwood, but I won't.  Instead, I'll just explain that the 1987 Whittier Narrows earthquake, which destroyed many lovely old buildings in Whittier and which terrified me because I was ten at the time and had never experienced an earthquake, changed the Quad forever.  The Quad used to have a parking structure next to Gold's Gym.  The earthquake destroyed the parking structure, and eventually, they decided to raze the entire mall and start from scratch.  So they turned it into a glorified strip mall.

Two of my favorite junior-high highlights are shopping for a ring at Service Merchandise for the girl I had a crush on and having my eighth-grade graduation at the Olive Garden here.  (It was the first time I had ever been to an Olive Garden.)  I also enjoyed protesting outside the Old Navy and getting Thrifty ice cream from the place that used to be Thrifty.  My dad used to swear by the OSH that was located here, but it closed down almost a decade ago.

So the Quad doesn't have much going for it anymore.  But I almost like it better than Whittwood now, and here's why.  Whereas I have far more positive childhood memories that involve Whittwood, what they've done to that place has made it literally impossible for me to relive those memories--I can't go to the food court or watch kids play on the cool wooden animals or run my hand along the weird metal handrails that made that hollow sound when you thumped them--the Quad maintains its late-'80s-early-'90s persona.  No, it's not completely the same, but it feels the same.  And I can still go to Olive Garden and wonder why the heck they put the entrance so far from where people actually park.

The Montebello Town Center is spectacularly horrible, which means that some people might actually love it.  OK, maybe not love it, but like it a lot.  I'm one of those people.

When this place opened in the late '80s (or maybe even early '90s), it was a big deal.  Seriously.  I remember the local commercials for it, and they included a helicopter landing in the parking lot.  And there was a big sign for it on the 60 so that you knew where to get off the freeway.  (If you went one exit too far, you were going to a dump--literally.)

I came here a few times with my grandma, and I didn't like it much.  Then something magical happened.  I got my license at the end of my sophomore year of high school.  This meant that I was able to drive the carpool that I had been merely an inconvenienced passenger in for almost two years.  It also meant that I could do whatever I wanted after school.  During finals week at the end of my sophomore year, my friends and I would come to the Montebello Town Center after our half days, eat the food court, and play video games.  What a difference a year made.  Only a year earlier, I had been crammed into the back seat of Honda Prelude behind a guy who was 6'4" and insisted on putting his seat all the way back.  He and the other junior carpool driver smoke incessantly, and when it rained, they kept the windows down.  Often, when we got to school, I could no longer feel my legs.  So instead of undergoing that torture, I was able to eat whatever junk I wanted and play video games when I had finals the next day.  How cool is that?

This was also the first place I ever saw a touchscreen ordering system.  Amazingly, this was in 1993.  The Arby's in the food court allowed you to order this way.  It's a stupid idea, and it didn't work well then, but I thought it was so cool.

Other Montebello Town Center highlights:  I used to drop one of my carpoolers off here, and I knew an interesting shortcut through the parking lot.  They replaced the sign on the freeway earlier this decade.  It now looks more dated than the original one would have.  A little less than half of the mall is actually located within the boundaries of the City of Rosemead.  If you look at a map, you'll see that the boundary between Montebello and Rosemead runs straight through the mall, so while you think you're shopping in Montebello, you're actually shopping Rosemead.  This must cause annoyances for sales-tax collection and police jurisdiction, but it's pretty cool to me.