Your Guide to the Coolest Neighborhoods in North America

By Nate Molino

If Charles Dicken's Pickwick vacationed with the writers of "Portlandia" they might pen this hilarious exploration of North America's undiscovered gentrifying 'hoods. From a magical stew in DC to Atlanta's artisanal cola, from San Francisco's weird starchitecture to NY's off-putting pop-up and New Orleans' gator-friendly hostelry, escape and laugh with intrepid gay travel writer Nate Molino

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nate Molino
• Release date: Jul 25, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301594221

Nate Molino

Thanks for reading my page. I'm an American journalist, editor and author, writing mostly fact-based articles. The books I'm publishing here represent my humorous take on life, under my pen-name, Nate Molino. Click on the blog and/or website off this page to find out more about me, and my work.

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Your Guide to the Coolest Neighborhoods in North America

By Nate Molino

Copyright 2013 Nate Molino

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Smashwords Edition, License Notes

Thank you for downloading this free ebook. Although this is a free book, it remains the copyrighted property of the author, and may not be reproduced, copied and distributed for commercial or non-commercial purposes. If you enjoyed this book, please encourage your friends to download their own copy at Smashwords.com, where they can also soon discover other works by this author.Thank you for your support.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 - SAN FRANCISCO: The Olive District

Chapter 2 - NEW YORK CITY: Van Damn-it

Chapter 3 - NEW ORLEANS: Belle Grieve

Chapter 4 -WASHINGTON, DC: Buchanan's Bog

Chapter 5 - LOS ANGELES: Los Pajaros

Chapter 6 - VANCOUVER: Patchouli

Chapter 7 - ATLANTA: Pantaloon Corners

Chapter 8 - BOSTON: Wrestling Hill

Chapter 9 - CHICAGO: West Signal Park

Endnotes: More About the Author

Chapter 1 - SAN FRANCISCO: The Olive District

Stuffed With Hotness

A cold Pacific wind strafed the darkened San Francisco street I hurriedly transited, as the resident meteorological transvestite, called Summer here, blew her customary cold kiss to The City, giving me goose-bumps, which, even if they weren’t artisanal, were certainly special.

But that wasn’t the only system-shock. I had counted on a meal at the under-the-GPS foodie boite du moment—Drusus Nero. Yet, here in its home quarter—the Olive District—smartly-dressed San Franciscans were draped like wilted kale around the restaurant’s door. A seating looked unlikely.

Police tape ringed Drusus Nero, (431 Nido Alley, near Geysers St.) the echt-Roman Empire small-plates restaurant that had even inspired Silicon Valley elites to run the district's gauntlet of double-parked Bentleys, medical marijuana carts (MediExx Help Cart, Geyser St. and Leland Ave., no phone) and prostitutes, just to taste the menu, anchored in a Roman imperial family’s second-century A.D. diet.

I had hoped to stop in for a bite, this being one of the iconic eateries that led to revival of the Olive District’s fortunes. It’s in a former olive-oil and pistachio packing house, hard by the Olive District Biennale Canal and Water Feature (formerly Smelly Industrial Inlet No. 2). But, like other gentrifying San Francisco districts, this once once-working-class, stone-fruit-centric area- had been struck by the latest Guerilla Cuisine Attack—a sort of gastronomic performance art-piece for the unsuspecting (and unwilling). Although no physical harm came to diners, survivors reported being re-traumatized when making reservations.

Not sure whether I’d get seated that evening, I stepped back to take in the skyline. Above me loomed the latest starchitecture—the lighted hulk of Celebrity California Architect Hank Fiery’s avant-garde city courts building, the Reginald C.B. Yotsuya Courthouse (Romualdo and Alden Sts.), meant to evoke a sea lion rookery on rocky islets outside the Golden Gate. To me, the metallic edifice looked like a large pile of lustrous dog poop. The building is said to leak, but rumor has it the leaks are being converted to kinetic water sculpture. Drivers have crashed because of reflections from its shiny façade, costing the city millions in settlements. Sixth-grade education has been suspended to pay for the legal fights. No worries: parents are encouraged to substitute class with museum visits.

Apparently the attacked happened like this: with Drusus Nero full of patrons prostrate and sprawling on floor cushions, a la a Roman villa, the kitchen shock-troops of so-called Sub-Commandante Fischbein, entered the restaurant waving Wusthoff knives, ordering everyone to drop their silverware. A radical sous-chef who broke with Slow Food to create Neanderthal Food, an even slower food movement, Fischbein is wanted by police in several cities for creating out-sized dining expectations and traffic-blocking queues. Here, he’d barred exits, tied up the staff, sent cell phones through the dishwasher, and then whipped up the typical meal of a poor family living on the margins of Julio-Claudian society (cornmeal heated on warm pebbles, charred goat, fermenting root vegetables). Diners were ordered to eat the meal, learn Roman coinage, and calculate a tip, to be left in dollars. Shocking as this was for the city, it was not the first time—and many feared it wouldn't be the last—for these frightening culinary-inflected assaults.

I spoke outside the restaurant with Kari Darwin, a Los Gatos health-care executive. She said she had just taken a few mouthfuls of her Smoked Toy Eastern Provinces Squab, presented in a Tiny Frigidarium of Root Vegetable Puree, when the attack commenced.

I'm still picking things out of my teeth, she told me. It was frightening at first, with all the guerilla chefs wearing ski-masks. Most of their stuff tasted like hummus or tapenade, if you ask me, but it had a very rough texture, kind of gritty. And, then there was that goat. They made one poor fellow chase it down and then kill it.

Without dinner, I made haste for the district’s new hostelry, called Digs (345 South Alcalde St.). Created by famously brilliant, bored Silicon Valley software engineer, Gupta Chang, a Hong Kong-born Indian, who has since moved to his own island in the Sea of Cortez, the hotel incorporates many inventions of his technology incubator, Notional. One reason Digs is also under the radar, is that it's composed partially of holograms, which takes some getting used to when you're turning over in bed and your hand goes through a wall. The good news is that you can never damage anything, or scuff the walls. The bad news is you can see into the room next to you. Hence, only half the rooms are booked, to give everyone, if not privacy, then a sense of space separating themselves from their neighbor. The four-figure per-night tabs reflect the inability to fill half the rooms, but as the young concierge opined, so totally worth it.

At Digs, I slept like a baby under a bio-degradable blanket made out of bamboo thread. Once worn out, they’re thrown into the hotel’s kitchen brazier, where they impart a delicate, clean-smoked, Asian essence to whatever the chef is cooking.

The next morning, I explored the ‘hood, using time-tested methods: sussing out independent coffee houses, music clubs that do not appear to be open, and combination gallery-and-hardware stores. Hotness markers in an up-and-coming 'hood usually adhere first to lofts—old factory floors lived in by loft developers, their children, and cranky writers and artists, trying to re-create their early, singular success with little luck. The only such property in the Olive District that fit this description was the aptly-named Pittery Lofts (34 Romualdo St.), (now being re-named by new mortgagees as The Pittery Centre to distance it from recessionary vacancies). The former early twentieth-century focus of olive de-pitting, rail-cars and freighters had off-loaded their bitter produce here, to be processed and shipped out.

As with all urban lofts, there are rumblings of celebrity purchases in the offing—but as yet, the truth hadn't surfaced. Was it acting legend Al Pacino who had bought a 17,000 square-foot space, complete with vintage auto-sized de-pitting tubs (one is used as an indoor hot-tub, and the other filled up with pebbles and sand to form a Zen garden)? Or, was the buyer actually Alvin Peppiccino, head coach for the league-trouncing Southeastern Utah State University women’s basketball team?

Next up: The Stone Fruit Building and Curing Works (451 Amoy Pl.) was the headquarters of the Pacific Coast Health-Full Fruit & Nut Co. (established 1879). After a brief stint warehousing San Francisco County Supervisor archives before they were sent for composting, it now houses The Nuthouse Museum, honoring the legacy of Pacific Coast chairman, and legendary stone fruit and legume magnate, G. Henry Truaxe. The current owners mostly gutted the interior, save for a few architectural flourishes from the 19th century, like a 10-hole outhouse—now cleverly restored as rooftop meditation cabanas. Here are Truaxe’s baby shoes, a christening gown, a Stanford fraternity paddle, and voluminous notes about his passion: the Truaxe health regime that took America by storm for a brief period, before its fate was sealed by the rampant diarrhea it caused.

In the late 1890s, Truaxe’s Stone Fruit Cure came into vogue. Clearing several hundred acres he owned outside the rough Sierra Nevada Mountains hamlet of Diabloville, Truaxe sited his Stone Fruit Lodge–a paean to wellness. As originally conceived, the cure involved eating stone fruit and water, while nude, for three weeks; the last requirement was later dropped.

I took in a framed welcome letter to lodge guests, from May, 1898, now preserved under glass:

Memorandum of Expectation & Assurance to Health Regimen Subscribers

Dear Friends and Lodgers,

We anticipate your arrival with 'health-full’ ease. Please bring to the quest for renewal, garments suitable for the exercise of one’s person in private surroundings, as well as appropriate evening wear, and clothing of an informal nature, such as for 'break-fasting' in mixed company.

Exercise may include strenuous arm movements, billiards, pond swimming, legal card games of a family type, jaw exercises, deep-breathing, frog-style jumping, exercise a la crab and medicine ball-throwing. Smoking of tobacco, corn husks, twine, or ‘Mexican cigarettes’ is strongly discouraged, and herewise held in low esteem. As well, the ingestion of liquors, brandies, ales, and wines is considered unhelpful.

Do befriend your fellow lodgers, as they are come from near and afar to partake of the self-same regime. For our ‘locals,’ the escape from unhealthful City mists, and richly-layered foods encouraged thusly, is but a sailing vessel, three train journeys, and a carriage-ride away.

Yours, Respectfully

G. Henry Truaxe, Owner

Belle Winters, Lodge Manager

W. Harmon Lightly, Director of Health Regimentation

Then, I read a brief letter from 320-pound businessman Herman P. Stanislaus, who took the cure, and wrote back to his wife:

July 25, 1899

Diabloville, Calif.

Stone Fruit Lodge

Mrs. Herman P. Stanislaus

42 Segovia Ave.

Los Finos, Calif. 23

Dear Minnie,

Godforsaken place with a ‘49er as old as Methuselah running the post office. The detritus street-side tells me of bovine visitations from ranchos hereabouts. You will not be surprised to learn the air is of a temperature fit for Satan’s home place, and moreover, a steak might cook to tenderness on the roof. This Truaxe regimen disports itself favorably upon first recognition, but gradually is replaced with a tedious sensation amidships, matched by pronounced and nettlesome looseness in the bowels.

With affection,

Herman

—Courtesy, Trustees of the Nuthouse Museum, San Francisco, Calif.

On an unusually crisp, sunny day, with the wind snapping flagpoles to attention, I headed for what I will call, for the purposes of this book, "Cacao," a private artisanal chocolate club on the fourth floor of the landmark Thermal & Woolens Building (451 Yerba Mate St. at Obispo Way). One needs a sponsor to be admitted, and after locating the concierge at Digs, my hotel, (who pronounced the club so totally worth it) I was able to gain admittance. The décor is Thirties Captains of Industry with a splash of contemporary London sushi bar. Gargoyles on the building provide a medieval look; the architect reportedly based them on