St. Francis Fountain All week long I have been waking Vida up by quietly whispering in her ear that it was almost her birthday. As soon as I say “birthday” her little eyes start to flicker and open. The day before her birthday I wanted to do something that would get the celebration started. I picked her up at school and headed to the St Francis Fountain on 24th and York. I had always meant to go to the St. Francis, known for its ice cream and candy but never got around to it. As I read about the history of the restaurant I found that original owners had sold the business to some hipsters fairly recently. I was glad that it wasn’t disappearing anytime soon but regretful that I wouldn’t get to experience it in its original form.

As we walked in Vida immediately took a seat at the counter and refused to even consider the old wooden booths. Pieces of the original St. Francis seemed to be in place with plenty of old menus, signs and fixtures but it seemed a bit ascetic for a place with such a colorful history. Maybe it was the two overly thin girls with choppy haircuts or the Iron and Wine playing in the background. I couldn’t decide if I was visiting a thriving piece of San Francisco history or a museum. Some of the other customers seemed comfortable like they had been going there since they were children and things were about the same. Others were self-aware cool kids talking too loud.

Vida had never had a milkshake before so I was excited to order one. She however was unconvinced and begged for a soda instead. It wasn’t until they started making the chocolate malted shake in front of her and topping it with whipped cream that she gave up on the soda. I hadn’t had a milk shake in 15 years. I think my last one was either at Hot and Hunky or maybe at its “we lost our name in the divorce” second location, Hot and Chunky. When the milkshake came across the counter she threw the maraschino cherry into my glass and started to dig into the whipped cream. I ordered a chicken club sandwich and a hamburger for her. The sandwiches were quite good. My club had lots of bacon, lots of mayo and thinly shredded iceburg lettuce. Vida’s hamburger meat was seasoned and she ate it ravenously. The fries were excellent as well.

As we ate my eyes kept being drawn to the display case behind us offering vintage candy and packages of various collectable cards and stickers. The Garbage Patch Kids and Super Girl stickers were interesting but I only had eyes for the Wacky Packages. When I was about 9 or 10 I was obsessed with Wacky Packages—satires of popular products such as “Swiss Mess” Cocoa and “Gadzooka”. I didn’t start collecting them until the 5th series and I always longed for 1st series Wacky Packages—the holy grail of collectables as far as I was concerned. I spent every spare dollar on them—I went as far as stealing money from my mom’s purse. My friend DT never had any pocket money so I would share everything I had with her—mostly out of guilt for having stolen money in the first place. They were often out of stock at our neighborhood drug store, Katterman’s so we walked down there almost every day to check if they had come in. We would hear rumors that Condie’s, the drug store just beyond our neighborhood had them and without permission would walk over there.

After buying our Wacky Packages we would sit around and trade them. My cousin A and I would play endless games with selected Wacky Packages going to the winner. After months of this A suddenly decided that he wanted to collect baseball cards instead and gave me all his Wacky Packages—I thought I had won the lottery. Eventually our Wacky Packages made it to scrap books—the long decline of my friendship with DT could probably be linked to the fact that she removed the back and actually used them as stickers. I knew then that we were very different.

At the St. Francis I couldn’t wait for Vida to pick out something from the case but she really only wanted a licorice rope. When I realized that I didn’t have enough money with me to actually buy a Wacky Package I was transported back to 1973—I still didn’t have enough money to buy the Wacky Packages I wanted.

Restaurant Total: 173  ¶ 8:56 PM

  Casa Sanchez "Chip Wars" Vida seems to be a bit more excited about going out for dinner these days—at least she’s not saying she wants to go home instead. Last Thursday I picked her up and decided to drive down 24th Street towards the Mission and see what we could find. I drive up 24th Street constantly and it always seems that there are a lot of great restaurants but once I’m looking with any real seriousness the pickings look slimmer. I drove the entire length of 24th Street and didn’t see anything that really appealed to me but I did notice a 60’s style storefront with large metal letters spelling “Sanchez”. It didn’t really dawn on me that it was the home of Casa Sanchez the famous (or infamous) chips and salsa company until I turned around and drove back.

Working in a grocery store I have first hand experience with the cutthroat nature of the chips and salsa business or “chip wars.” Casa Sanchez has served markets all over the city for years and the service and product is basically good but there is always a fly by night element in dealing with them. When I worked at 24th Street we switched from Casa Sanchez to Casa Chicas for a while and then back to Casa Sanchez. At Stanyan a company Casa Loca came in with organic chips and swayed us into kicking Casa Sanchez out and bringing them in. It was painful when I had to make that phone call to Casa Sanchez telling them we no longer needed their services—he argued and cajoled and implied that things were not what they seemed at Casa Loca.

Casa Loca talked a good line. They explained that they (and Casa Chicas) used to work for Casa Sanchez but they had been squeezed out or ripped off or belonged to the wrong side of the family—I could never really get the story straight. But, they rarely showed up to stock their shelves and when they did they just threw boxes randomly into the garage. There was constantly expired product salsa on the shelf and they had a problem with the cellophane bags the chips came in—they were kind of opaque—and the chips looked dull and unappealing. After a couple of months of frustration I kicked them out—now that was a satisfying phone call—and invited Casa Sanchez back in. After all this chip drama I was very curious about Casa Sanchez’s restaurant. This was obviously a fairly old family business and I wanted to go to the source.

Vida and I walked into Casa Sanchez’s burrito joint and I couldn’t have been more disappointed. A sketchy character with a hairnet was behind the steam table talking to his co-worker who was sniffing her nose between words. The tables were of random shapes and sizes, covered with plastic with an oversized Casa Sanchez logo beneath. They all had crumbs or smudges of some kind on them. We ordered a couple of burritos and went to pay. The cashier stood behind an under-used glass display case with a couple of T-shirts and some dusty key chains. On the counter was a plastic container with two pieces of wrapped candy at the bottom. Vida looked at them like she wanted one and I cringed as the cashier gave her permission to take one. There was a health inspection report posted on a pillar behind her that I was curious but I was afraid to read it. Both the workers seemed surprised when I said we would eat there instead of taking it to go. They flipped the burritos into a couple of yellow plastic bowls and we sat down.

The best part of the place was the all you can eat chips and salsa bar in the back. We wandered back there around cardboard boxes of chips, old display racks and assorted supplies and filled up some bowls. The cashier had sat down and was working on putting Casa Sanchez salsa labels on plastic containers. Before we could eat Vida had to take a trip to the bathroom. We were directed outside through a patio seating area that looked like it hadn’t been inhabited for years. A dripping plastic tent covered the grimy tables. The bathroom was no worse than expected. Afterward we sat down and started to eat. I had a chile relleno burrito and Vida had her usual rice and bean burrito with no salsa. The food was for the most part edible but Vida immediately commented, “Eating at home is better than this”. I had to agree. But we at as many chips as possible in order to get our moneys worth and quickly left.

Going to Casa Sanchez was more like visiting an archeological site than a functioning restaurant. It makes no sense to me why a food manufacturing business would maintain such a poor storefront but “chip wars” seemed a logical extension of such a dysfunctional operation.

Restaurant Total: 171  ¶ 7:05 AM

  Essence Of India If I had known it would be such a momentous statement I would have tried harder to remember the exact words . . . Vida just up and decided that she wanted to sleep alone and I can’t for the life of me remember how it came about. All I remember is that she said that she wanted to sleep in the other room because she needed some “space”. I indulged her thinking that she couldn’t possibly be serious after nearly five years of sleeping in bed with her mama, and diligently pulled out the trundle bed so she could experiment with the concept.

The trundle had the old brown and black wool blankets that Anne’s mom made years ago. I save them for emergencies and out of nostalgia even though they are ugly—I still wish I had a few of those bean filled snakes to catch the air coming from windows too. Vida asked if she could read to herself to I turned a lamp on and quietly left to go sleep by myself. I could hear her “reading” and playing with her horses. After about 10 minutes she yelled to ask if she could come sleep with me. Of course I said yes and we spent another night fighting for space. I always thought it was amicable when I moved her bodily from my sliver of the bed to the middle but maybe she woke up a few times and wondered what the heck was going on. I also needed my space but I didn’t want to force her to sleep separately. During that day the idea of her sleeping away from me was an amusing diversion

The next night I crawled into the trundle bed with her and when she fell asleep I stole into the other room. To my utter disbelief I didn’t hear from her again until about a quarter to six when she called for me. My amusement turned into a serious consideration of what this would mean for her. I quickly made decisions about what kind of new bedding she would need—Hello Kitty whatever—and about moving my desk into the bedroom in order to open up the room. The last thing I want is to turn the “day room” into a kid’s room. As selfish as it may seem, its hard enough living in three rooms without compromising my need to feel like an adult in an adult space. Some kind of give and take would be necessary but not at the expense of my sanity.

The following night was a little more difficult. She woke up at three and wanted me to come sleep with her. I came in until she fell asleep and left again. I couldn’t sleep well because I kept anticipating her calling for me. Since then she has twice put herself to sleep entirely.

I’m so excited for Vida and amazed that she came to this decision completely and so decisively on her own but I’m sad too. I can’t really believe its true and I feel a little lost. My whole world has been rocked. I couldn’t really see it coming and that’s frightening too—a world of thoughts and decisions suddenly happening without me and a terrible insight that this is how its going to be with her—when she moves on or into something that’s going to be it.

It’s been a big week—tomorrow is the last official day of KMS. She heads to their summer program on Monday complete with her bag lunch. No more taco day, mashed potato day, soup day, macaroni and cheese or pasta with red sauce day. No bowls of fruit and raisins with a dozen grimy hands clamoring. No more rice cakes “to go”. I’m in a panic about how to feed her as well as Anka’s fantastic organic food.

Things have been so busy and exhausting that Dinner with Vida has been on hiatus. I miss it but Vida is often so tired after school that she falls asleep by 6 p.m. Today I decided to make an attempt to have dinner out. I drove three blocks from KMS and found parking around the corner from Essence of India. H had already pretty much warned me away from its mediocrity but I have a fascination with all the restaurants on Guerrero between 22nd and 23rd. ever since our experience with the ill fated La Focaccia. Nobody ever makes it for very long. For months I drove by Essence of India after it opened and rarely saw anybody in there. I thought for sure it would disappear in a matter of weeks. It stuck around and eventually there was the ubiquitous SF Weekly restaurant review in the window. Good, bad or indifferent as long as they have something to put in the window people will come.

The host was very friendly and gave my “queen of the alphabet” a little pop quiz. She passed but not very enthusiastically. She started in eating the ice from both of our waters and playing with the large potted plant next to our table. There was a bottle of unopened wine on each table as if to invite people to say “hey, wine, that sounds good” It just got strange as each bottle of wine was removed soon after each customer sat down. The décor was pleasant with comfortable and colorful red and gold banquettes.

I ordered some vegetable pakoras and our server brought us some pappadum to eat while we waited. The pappadum was too spicy for Vida even with the sweet tamarind or mint yogurt dip. She proceeded to crumble some bits of cracker into her water and add strands of shredded romaine lettuce. When the pakoras came she tried one bite but didn’t care for it. I thought it was pretty good. She was beginning to get demoralized about the food so I let her continue to play with her water. When the rice came it was bland and dry. I couldn’t blame her for not being thrilled. A few bits of chicken tikka made it in her mouth but I found it to be very bland and poorly textured. But being hungry I tried to keep her calm for a couple of minutes while a shoveled in the food.

We took a bathroom break and Vida loved the décor. She stood at the open window and looked out into the yard below singing Cielito Lindo at the top of her lungs. We left soon before any serious meltdown could happen.

As we drove home I took a short detour up 24th Street to Douglas. We drove by the small park on the corner that we used to go to. We stopped going because she was getting too big for the miniscule play structure and the swings. As we drove by she talked about it being “her” park and that she wanted to go there again. She used to go there quite often as a baby and I remember stopping there quite a few times after she first started KMS, playing basketball and falling into the potholes made by all the sprinting dogs on its muddy grass. “That park was good to me” she said and added that it was “the park of her heart”. Maybe all the changes that we have been through lately have left her with an unexpressed longing for simpler days as well.

Restaurant Total: 170  ¶ 8:19 PM