Archive for July 5th, 2007

July 4th: Time for Canadian Beer

Thursday, July 5th, 2007

Beer!

Ah, the 4th of July. Nothing like the hot sun (a rarity in San Francisco) and the cold taste of shitty American beer served in a can. Budweiser made the day even more special this year by cross-branding their beer with NASCAR, covering each tasty beer with the image of car #8 (Dale Earnhardt Jr.). Luckily, Andy and I started off the day with some huge cans of Labatt Blue. While many people in California are not familiar with this beer, I’m from Buffalo and people there drink it like water, which explains why it comes in such a large can. As you can see, I really enjoyed myself:

Labatt Blue: that's a big can

I mentioned drinking Labatt’s to my friend Chris, who directed me to a website for people who want to buy Canadian food.  Unfortunately, they can’t ship beer but they will ship Tim Horton’s Coffee.

Oh, and if you are interested in Dale Earnhardt Jr. products, I recommend the “Future Star Girls Pink Watch” shown here.

Don’t sign the parking petition

Thursday, July 5th, 2007

I have a post I will be publishing about the 4th of July soon, but in the meantime I thought I would suggest to San Francisco readers that they refrain from signing the petitions circulating right now to support the “Parking for Neighborhoods” ballot initiative. It would undo decades of urban planning work and create significant traffic problems in the most dense parts of the city as developers would be allowed to build 3x as much parking in residential buildings as is currently allowed in the downtown district. In addition, the city would be required to allow building owners to put in driveways even in places that conflict with existing bus stops, street furniture or pedestrian crossings. The petition is being circulated by paid signature gatherers who don’t care one way or the other about the issue (but want you to sign it so they get paid), and don’t actually know anything about it. They usually don’t explain what you are signing in more than a sentence so read carefully. Read more about it at the Guardian.