San Francisco

Incomplete,never finished, and probably completely out of date after the aftermath of coronavirus. Check out my foodie map instead (although most likely just as out of date).

1. The caramelized onion and sesame baguette at Noe Valley Bakery
2. The chocolate-cherry breakfast bread at Noe Valley Bakery
3. The combination seafood salad at Swan’s Oyster Bar
4. The clam chowder at Ferry Plaza Seafood
5. The mushroom pizza at Delarosa
6. The salted caramel ice cream at Bi-Rite Creamery
7. The “crunchy sticks” (sesame-poppyseed-cheese twists) at Esther’s German Bakery (available at Rainbow Grocery and on Thursdays at the Crocker Galleria)
8. The El Rey chocolate toffee semifreddo at Bix (seasonal)
9. The pistachio macaroons at Boulette’s Larder
10. The burnt caramel and chocolate covered hazelnuts at Michael Recchiuti
11. The chocolate feuilletine cake at Miette
12. The belly buster burger at Mo’s Grille
13. The hazelnut hot chocolate at Christopher Elbow
14. The princess cake at Schubert’s Bakery
15. The ricciarellis (soft bitter-almond macaroons) at Arizmendi
16. The Charlemagne chocolate feuilletine cake and chocolate chip financiers at Charles Chocolates, when they have them
17. The chocolate hazelnut tarts at Tartine
18. The croissant at Tartine
19. The caramelized hazelnut financier at Craftsman and Wolves
20. The bordeaux cherry ice cream at Swensen’s, in a cone and dipped in chocolate (the ice cream itself, not the cone)
21. The flatbread at Universal Café
22. The Umami truffle burger
23. Captain Mike’s smoked tuna (Ferry Plaza farmer’s market)
24. The mushroom empañadas at El Porteño
25. The Tcho chocolate liquid nitrogen ice cream at Smitten
26. The macarons at Chantal Guillon
27. Pine nut Bacetti (Howard & 9th)
28. The Atomica pizza at Gialina’s
29. The salted hazelnut and chocolate shortbread at Batter Bakery
30. The chocolate velvet cupcake at Kara’s Cupcakes
31. The lobster roll at Woodhouse Fish Co.
32. The gianduja and pistachio at Coletta Gelato
33. The croissants and pains au chocolat at Arsicault (Arguello & Clement)
34. The lasagna served bubbling hot from the oven at Pazzia
35. The wild mushroom benedict at Mission Beach Café
36. The farm egg ravioli at Cotogna
37. The cioppino (spicy tomato-fish stew) at The Tadich Grill
38. The sada (plain) dosa at Dosa Fillmore
39. The French and Fries burger at Roam Artisan Burgers
40. The lasagna at Trattoria di Vittorio
41. The oyster fish & chips at Pacific Catch
42. The croissants and kouingn amann at B Pâtisserie
43. The Gianduja (chocolate hazelnut mousse) cake at Café Madeleine
44. The funghi misti (wild mushroom) pizza at Beretta
45. The pistachio ice-cream at Marco Polo
46. The crab cioppino at Sotto Mare
47. The foccacia at Liguria Bakery
48. The almond cookies at Victoria Pastry Co.
49. The Grandma Mary’s pizza at Slice House
50. Pretty much everything at Hook Fish Co.
51. Hand-made pasta at A Mano
52. Hand-made pasta at Barzotto, specially the pappardelle with braised beef ragu if they have it
53. The Belgian fries with dips, served in a cone, at Frjtz
54. The daily ice cream flavors at Mr & Mrs. Miscellaneous
55. The deli sandwiches at Cheese Plus
56. The deli sandwiches at Blue Fog Market
57. The deli sandwiches at Canyon Market
58. The deli sandwiches at Le Beau Mob Hill
59. The deli sandwiches at The Sentinel
60. Brunch at Petit Crenn
61. The sandwiches at B To Go, offshoot of B Pâtisserie
62. The sandwiches at Rhea’s, on Valencia
63. The quiches and pot pies at Café Madeleine
64. The ice cream at Humphry Slocombe

I live 1.2km away from Sutro Tower in San Francisco. At my wife’s request I was trying to calculate the safe radius at which emissions from the transmitters at Sutro Tower are of the same power as a cell phone held a meter away, with back-of-the-envelope calculations using the inverse square law and Wikipedia’s table of radio powers.

I was shocked to find out the total power from the transmitters is about 8 megawatts, not in the kilowatt range I was expecting, and once reached 29MW. For comparison, the power of France’s first-generation PWR nuclear reactors is 900MW, and a typical cellular tower is 100W to 500W. If I use 2W as the reference, this yields a “safe” radius of 2km, which excludes many desirable San Francisco neighborhoods like Twin Peaks, Forest Hill or Noe Valley (click on the map to expand).

I looked up the most recent Environmental Impact Report following the DTV transition, and it mentions a FCC maximum allowed flux level of 0.2mW/cm², and the measured levels in the Midtown Terrace neighborhood immediately adjacent to Sutro Tower reach 4% of this max level.

On further investigation, this is not one of those situations where US standards are significantly more lax than those in Europe, as France or the UK have the same level, derived from an international NGO called the ICNIRP. Interestingly, according to the WHO the maximum allowed emissions in such environmental paragons as Russia and China are one hundredth as high as those in the US or Europe and are just as science-based as those from ICNIRP (remember, for all its faults, the Soviet Union ranked very highly in maths and physics education & research, and in health care).

The ICNIRP/FCC standard is equivalent to a 25W isotropic emitter within a 1 meter radius, or 12x 2G GSM cell phones. Anyone who has experienced the squeal of unshielded and unpowered speakers next to an actively transmitting GSM phone will be skeptical about their claims that this is a safe level. Their methodology is based solely on the thermal effects of non-ionizing radiation, as if this were a mere microwave oven shielding exercise, and assumes that cells are otherwise unaffected by electromagnetism or cumulative exposure. This seems unwarrantedly optimistic.

People worry about cancer risks associated with radio frequency emissions from cell phone towers and cell phones themselves, but the real risk comes from overlooked obsolete technologies like TV and FM radio.

What to do? Getting a site survey from a Professional Engineer using calibrated equipment costs $1,500, which is something you would only do as part of a final inspection while buying a house. Most RF power meters sold on places like Amazon, usually in the $300 range, are pieces of junk with suggested applications like detecting paranormal activity and ghosts. Most likely solid engineering and metrology are optional given their application domain. Professional T&M gear like an Agilent V3500A or a Wandel & Goltermann/Narda EMR-300 cost $2,000 and $6,000 respectively, so the DIY route is also expensive.

Update (2014-03-08):

My father worked on some projects in the Soviet Union in the Seventies. He told me their workplace safety standards were much more stringent than the ones in the West. Workers were not allowed to lift weights above 25kg, for instance.

Update (2014-08-01):

We moved to a house across from Parkside Square (in the lower left corner of the map), well beyond the 2km limit.

San Francisco sweeps streets twice a month in residential neighborhoods, and you will be fined if your car is parked on a street being swept. On my street, the schedule is the first and third Monday of each month, between 9am and 11am. I was trying to create reminders to myself in my calendar. Unfortunately, iCal does not have the ability to specify a recurring event with that definition.

No matter, Python to the rescue, the script below generates a year’s worth of reminders 12 hours before the event, in iCal vCalendar format. It does not correct for holidays, you will have to remove those yourself.

#!/usr/bin/python
"""Idora street sweeping calendar - 1st and 3rd Mondays of the month 9am-11am"""
import datetime
Monday = 0
one_day = datetime.timedelta(1)
today = datetime.date.today()
year = today.year
month = today.month

def output(day):
  print """
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTEND:%(end)s
SUMMARY:Idora street sweeping
DTSTART:%(start)s
BEGIN:VALARM
TRIGGER:-PT12H
ATTACH;VALUE=URI:Basso
ACTION:AUDIO
END:VALARM
END:VEVENT
""" % {
    'end': day.strftime('%Y%m%dT110000'),
    'start': day.strftime('%Y%m%dT090000')
    }

print """BEGIN:VCALENDAR
CALSCALE:GREGORIAN
VERSION:2.0"""

for i in range(12):
  day = datetime.date(year, month, 1)
  while day.weekday() != Monday:
    day += one_day
  output(day)
  output(day + 14 * one_day)
  month += 1
  if month > 12:
    month = 1
    year += 1

print "END:VCALENDAR"

Two years after the Staceycide, the spot is still vacant. At a reported rent of $65,000 a month, that adds up to a cool $1.8M loss for the greedy landlords who pushed them out of business.

It seems they finally found a new tenant: a CVS pharmacy occupies the premises now.