Greg "Keep Calm & Carry On" Q.'s Profile

Best Buy seldom is. They lure you in with great deals on DVDs and other low-end media, earn your trust by selling you a copy of "Batman Returns" for only $9.99 and then make a killing on seemingly innocuous other purchases.

Case in point: the cheapest HDMI cables they have in stock are $29.99. Or, the Blu Ray player I was interested in was available elsewhere in town for $20 less. Or the big TV I spent months researching was available many other places for up to $300 less than Best Buy's "sale" price.

Don't get me started on the customer service lines when you have to return something.

Bottom line: Best Buy is best for when you need a gadget but fully intend to return it. Like that time we bought a portable DVD player in Miami just to make sure that the flight home with LittleQ was smooth sailing - and then returned it as soon as we got back to SF.

Ok, all of you would-be hipsters who insist on wearing baseball hats everywhere you go, here's a tip: GO TO GOORIN. It's time you grew up, and stopped sporting that worn out Boston Red Sox hat every time you left the house. Goorin can help.

And if you have discovered that there is a world beyond ball caps, Goorin will rock that world for you. Goorin Brothers make hats. Nothing but hats. Oh, and some bags, right. But their hats are what will flabbergast you and make you spend more than you ever wanted to when you first walked in the door.

Their hats are well made, uniquely designed, and come in a wide variety of styles and prices. Can't stand the thought of more than 25 other people on the planet having the same hat as you? There's a hat and price range for you.

Like Kangol, but tired of the way their driving caps *don't* fit very well? Goorin, my friend. MamaQ has been snapping up Goorin hats for LittleQ every time she sees one on sale at some other store, and recently mentioned the fact that "that hat company I love has a store of their own." We'll never shop anywhere else for lids.

I consider the fact that we managed to walk out of there with just one hat for me and one for LittleQ to be a major accomplishment. There were easily four or five other hats I would have loved to have owned. And the guy working the counter is knowledgeable about fit and style.

And if you *must* wear a ballcap everywhere, at least make it a hand-made, locally-crafted, completely freakin' unique ballcap. Yo.

After a morning of paddling a canoe on Lake Tahoe the whole Q family was hungry, and yet not ready to head inside to find food. Enter Jason's Beachside Grille on the Lake - a little reduntly named, but perfect for a sunny lunch on a deck overlooking a beach on a lake.

The food was excellent grill food. I had a BBQ pork quesadilla that was on the special menu for the day. The guacamole had a little kick to it, and the pork was succulent and juicy (hey, I can be redundant too). LittleQ loved his chicken strips (big kid's menu), and MamaQ dug the salad bar - that's a big deal, MamaQ is not easily swayed by pedestrian salad bars.

My only complaint were the umbrellas. For a nice sunny afternoon, it was a shame that everyone wanted to sit outside in the shade. The whole deck was covered in umbrellas. You want shade? Sit inside, heliophobe.

We wanted to rent a canoe for a paddle on Lake Tahoe. There are a lot of places on North shore that rent kayaks and the like, but only Tahoe Paddle & Oar rents kayaks, paddle boards* and* canoes.

With LittleQ in tow, we knew we wanted a canoe - kayaks are too tippy for a 3yr old - and we wanted his first trip paddling on the lake to be enjoyable. Only chance at a first impression and all.

Other shops tried to push various kayaks on us, assuring us it'd be fine. They also encouraged us to go out in wind & chop.

We went down to TPO on Monday afternoon as the wind was just picking up on the lake. The guy in charge of putting boats out actually talked us out of going out on the lake, pointing to the chop and assuring us there would be a better day in our future, preferably near to 10am.

We waited a couple of days and came back on Thursday morning at 10am. The lake was glassy, the canoe was perfect, and the whole family had a great time - especially LittleQ. Any time you hear your family start saying, "We should do this every year!" you know you've hit gold.

And any business that is willing to turn away a sale because it's not ideal conditions is a place worth supporting. Every year. Hell, every weekend, if I could.

Any BBQ place named Babe's that has big, bronze pig statues out front deserves a chance in my book. Especially in a trendy mall where your options are limited.

I caught a meal at Babe's between busy times, and had the outdoor patio almost completely to myself. The waitress was extremely friendly, and the menu delivers on the promise of grilled meat. The options for sides are well paired with the dishes, and the sandwich I got came on a few small sized buns. Perfect for making your way through a good sized serving of meat without having to grab the whole messy spread all at once.

Babe's also has lots of their own in-house BBQ sauces, and I wish I'd looked a little harder at the selection on the table before I placed my order. Their spicy BBQ was delicious, and I wish I'd ordered my sandwich with it instead of the sweet normal sauce.

The beans were good, the cornbread solid, and my iced tea was never empty. Babe's is a little slice of down home BBQ heaven in the land of Prada and Gucci.

There are 2nd hand stores, and then there is vintage. I'm not talking vintage merely as in, "sold before you were born, child of the 80's". I'm talking *vintage*: clothes older - and cooler - than your parents.

La Rosa is the place to go when you need to dress like an adult, and you want to look better - and more authentic - than everyone else in the room. When in need of tails for my tuxedo, I visited a couple of the typical spots before checking in with La Rosa.

1928 'After Six' Tuxedo tails, in excellent condition and for 25% less than the crap that passes for new today? Sold. Excellent cuff links, women's cocktail dresses, vintage hand bags and more? Check, check and check.

"Groovy tops, pants and sweaters"? Good god, girl: go down the street to Aardvark. They have your outfit in the window. Come back to La Rosa when you've figured out the difference between "vintage" and "trend".

LittleQ has finally hit that age where I can really start reliving my childhood through his toys, and none better than Legos. Back when I was a kid, we didn't have no fancy Legos. We had bricks.

If you wanted to build an airplane, you used bricks. If you wanted that airplane to have angled wings, you angled the bricks. There were no windshields in our bin. No axles with wheels. Don't even talk to me about steering wheels and the like.

Now, you can find all of these parts and more in the "Pick A Brick" wall at the Lego store. $14 gets you a cup with a lid, and it's up to you to choose how you fill it. Here's a tip: the tiny little pieces fit around the bottom edge of the cup nicely.

LittleQ and I headed down to the Lego Store to do a little recon, and wound up spending $80. Easy to do. They have most every kit on the market, Pick A Brick, and a bunch of Lego stuff I didn't know I needed so badly (Lego ice cube tray, anyone?).

We spent the first hour in the store simply looking at every kit. We pulled the Death Star box down and oohed and aahed over the size of the thing. We pulled the Millennium Falcon box down, and gazed lovingly at it for a long time. While there, we heard the same conversation repeated over and over and over: "Can I see that one daddy? How much is it? Is that a lot? Well how much do I have? Will it buy this?"

LittleQ is lucky, he's still running on my dime. We picked a kit for him, found some good valentine's day presents for MamaQ, spent 30 minutes at Pick A Brick, and then headed home.

That was on our first visit. We've since been back. The Lego store rules. Absolutely rules.

I'm not sure what is most extreme about Extreme Pizza anymore. The pricing is pretty extreme. The time we had to wait for the pizza was pretty extreme. And once it arrived, it was extremely un-hot.

There should be some sort of price to temperature ratio - like a PE ratio for stock performance - that one could apply to pizza parlors. The price for the largest pie ($28) divided by the temperature (hardly warm to the touch) = meh.

And what is with the sweet crust and sweet tomato sauce? What, 9 out of 10 stoners prefer their pizza to taste as sweet as their Ben and Jerry's New York Super Fudge Chunk?

This place is a great backup if you need a pie and have to order it and can't think of a good pizza parlor to order from.

Schat's is a great find in Ukiah, a haven tucked in across from the court house. Their selection of baked goods is varied and delicious. They obviously are a bakery first and foremost, a restaurant second.

The line situation is sub-optimal, but not completely suckworthy. At least it gives you time to figure out what you want. The staff was completely friendly, and even helped us order off-menu for LittleQ (he wanted meatloaf, but not a meatloaf sandwich).

In fact, Schat's is completely kid-friendly. They have a shelf full of toys, books, crayons and coloring books that kids can choose from and take back to their table.

Be forewarned: the old photos of the Tour De France in the men's room will add at least two minutes to your first trip in there.

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UPDATE: 4/29/09:

Ohmygod! Got a loaf of Schat's bread last time I was in Ukiah. Pushed the rating up to 5 stars. If I lived within 20 minutes of this place I'd buy all of my bread from them. Seriously, I was looking for excuses to make sandwiches all week long. MamaQ even ate the end (she hates ends). Saddest day of the month, when that loaf disappeared.

The true measure of any Mexican restaurant is its carnitas. Most anyone can fake their way through some spicy chicken and carne asada dishes, but a good carnitas plate is a work of art.

Mi Cocina was a recommendation from a friend in Ukiah. The atmosphere is not 5-star, mind you. In fact, I would never have stepped foot in Mi Cocina based on appearance alone.

But the waitress/hostess/(owner?) was extremely friendly, the seating comfortable, and the carnitas was some of the best I've ever had: in California or Mexico. Other dishes were delicious as well. MamaQ had chicken tacos - they were "tender and tasty."  Mi Cocina lacks a kid's menu, but she readily created a special plate for LittleQ.

We'll be back. Many times. And if You are ever driving through Ukiah on 101 take the Perkins Street exit West bound to State Street. You won't be sorry.