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RE: Flamenco: no es un show!
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Richard Jernigan
Posts: 3430
Joined: Jan. 20 2004
From: Austin, Texas USA
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 RE: Flamenco: no es un show! (in reply to Escribano)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Escribano
You could visit Amalfi and sit outside a cafe without getting your feet stamped on when the boats came in.
The last time we were in Amalfi was 7 years ago. We didn't get stamped on, but we weren't sure we could sit down at a table for coffee in the piazza in front of the Cathedral.
We spent a few days at Positano four years ago. We didn't feel crowded at all. I didn't see any boats disgorging mobs. We came on a boat from Capri, but it held only a hundred or so passengers.
Perhaps the cruise ships are deterred by the difficulty of access. At the boat dock there are little trains of carts, drawn by mini-tractors, which will take your luggage all the way to your hotel. But people must climb a very long and very steep path to a little square, which is the first place you can get a taxi. I found it tiring and most of the rest of the boat passengers seemed to as well.
Our hotel wasn't crowded, breakfast on the terrace was pleasant, and there were enough restaurants within walking distance for a little variety. Any walking in Positano will be pretty hilly.
We didn't go out onto the coast road which passes above the town, because we didn't have a car. We didn't get a car, since there appeared to be a permanent traffic jam on it.
When we left we hired a car to take us to the train station in Naples. The driver knew enough back roads and short cuts to avoid getting stuck in traffic. I didn't follow our track on Google Maps, but Larisa nodded in approval a few times. She had been over the whole area years before on her motorcycle.
RNJ
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Date Jun. 3 2019 3:48:21
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Mark2
Posts: 1868
Joined: Jul. 12 2004
From: San Francisco
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RE: Flamenco: no es un show! (in reply to RobF)
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I work in San Francisco so I know what effect tourists can have on a city. But, I can easily avoid them-I don't drive down Lombard st. , don't hang out at pier 39, and rarely go to fisherman's wharf. Being a small businessman, I appreciate the revenue they bring to the town, and although I don't directly benefit, businesses, as well as local government, spend that money all over town, and a piece of it ends up in my account.
Parts of this thread sound like old guys bemoaning the fact that everything was better thirty years ago, and I tend to agree. Costa Rica was better the first time I went, and so was Kauai. Venice was magic thirty-five years ago. Housing was way cheaper in SF, and hell, I was younger and better looking too! I miss the city that I grew up in, and hate the current trends, but the past isn't coming back. I don't HAVE to fight the hordes to see Granada, I can garden in my backyard while listening to great flamenco artists.
As to the "show", my feeling is that the guitarist who is employed in the tourist trap tablo, is able to stay home and practice instead of working a day gig. Sure he'd rather be playing elsewhere, but he's playing for a living, and should appreciate at least the revenue from the tourist, if not the tourist himself.
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Date Jun. 3 2019 17:13:15
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Mark2
Posts: 1868
Joined: Jul. 12 2004
From: San Francisco
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RE: Flamenco: no es un show! (in reply to Escribano)
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SF has changed so much since I grew up. It's not just tech-the politicos have been working on changing it for decades. They are the ones who gave tax breaks to tech firms to re-locate here, and in doing so drove out the lower income folks like musicians, artists, etc who gave the city some of the character it had.
Recently it was reported that the city has more homeless folks than high school students. There are many many people shooting up, passing out, defecating, and camping on the sidewalks. The police are impotent, castrated by excessively liberal politics.
AirbnB, uber, and lyft have done their part to lower the quality of life as well. 40k ride share drivers enter the city every day, a city that measures 7 miles x 7 miles. It's a cluster u know what. And yet, in driving around the state, and reading about Seattle and Portland, it seems that many of the same issues are prevalent elsewhere as well.
They have ruined SF IMO. Sky high prices, horrendous traffic, self serving politicians, and city department heads who think social engineering is part of their job. It's hard to watch.
I know a fellow who is an artist-second generation craftsman of fine furniture and antique restoration. I've seen articles about his expertise and artistry. Last week he told me he could no longer afford the rent on his work space, which was high by most standards, but not at market. He said his peers have all had to leave the city. He grew up here. So messed up. My musician buddies have almost all fled to the east bay, or even further out, in order to survive.
When I retire I could move away, but I have a daughter and a grandchild here. I live in a small town 20 minutes from the city and five minutes from the beach. Hard to upgrade when you've got it good. But I'm in the minority-one of the lucky ones.
quote:
ORIGINAL: Escribano
quote:
Parts of this thread sound like old guys bemoaning the fact that everything was better thirty years ago
Without doubt it was, at least in this aspect. I worked in Cupertino/San Jose in the early 90s and hung out in SF a lot. It's changed beyond recognition by all accounts. But that is tech. not tourism so much. Another bête noire of mine and I work in that 
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Date Jun. 3 2019 21:40:25
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BarkellWH
Posts: 3458
Joined: Jul. 12 2009
From: Washington, DC
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RE: Flamenco: no es un show! (in reply to Mark2)
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quote:
SF has changed so much since I grew up. It's not just tech-the politicos have been working on changing it for decades. They are the ones who gave tax breaks to tech firms to re-locate here, and in doing so drove out the lower income folks like musicians, artists, etc who gave the city some of the character it had.
Recently it was reported that the city has more homeless folks than high school students. There are many many people shooting up, passing out, defecating, and camping on the sidewalks. The police are impotent, castrated by excessively liberal politics.
Although I have never lived in San Francisco, I have spent countless stays of three or four days at a time in the city over the past 50 years, usually on my way to and from the Far East or Pacific Islands. It has definitely changed its character from the earlier days thirty or so years ago. I think the extremely liberal politics have been a double-edged sword.
In the early days, as you note in the quote above, the liberal atmosphere attracted musicians, artists, writers, and others, beginning with the Beats--Jack kerouac, Neal Cassidy, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and others--in the 1950s. But that liberal atmosphere also attracts grifters, panhandlers, drugged out scum, and other assorted low-lifers who detract from life. Yet San Francisco cannot bring itself to tighten up.
Nevertheless, I still enjoy a short visit to San Francisco and always make it a point to drop in on City Lights Book Store on Columbus Avenue (Lawrence Ferlinghetti still owns it and still shows up once in a while), and have dinner at Scoma's Seafood Restaurant at Pier 47. I love to enter Scoma's, proceed to the bar up the stairs on the right and have a couple of beers with the big plate glass window looking out on the water, followed by a wonderful dinner of sole almandine or flounder perfectly prepared.
Bill
_____________________________
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white,
With the name of the late deceased,
And the epitaph drear, "A fool lies here,
Who tried to hustle the East."
--Rudyard Kipling
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Date Jun. 3 2019 22:51:54
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Richard Jernigan
Posts: 3430
Joined: Jan. 20 2004
From: Austin, Texas USA
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RE: Flamenco: no es un show! (in reply to Escribano)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Escribano
Capri gets around 20,000 a day in the Summer and is under a lot of pressure from boat trippers.
Larisa came through once again when she showed me what to do at Capri. As soon as you step off the boat from Naples, get into a taxi and go over the mountain to Anacapri. Very few tourists do. When we arrived one early afternoon the town of Capri was being thoroughly trampled by day trippers, but Anacapri was uncrowded, quiet and peaceful.
We checked in to the hotel that billed itself as the oldest in Anacapri. It was run by a beautiful, stylish and well dressed woman who told us her grandmother had started the business by renting out rooms in her house. The staff were attentive, helpful and friendly. The outdoor dining area was in a lemon grove. At lunchtime you were shaded from the sun by an overhead trellis with espaliered branches of lemon trees bearing plentiful fruit. A gentle breeze wafted through. The food was delicious, made from local ingredients.
Larisa loves the beach. I can take it or leave it. She reported so favorably on swimming at the Marina Piccola on the Mediterranean side of the island that I went back with her. Wonderful cool, clear water, a shaded pavilion with chaises longues, cool drinks on order.
On the western edge of the island there is a restaurant with good food and wine and a marvelous distant view of the island of Ischia in the sunset. The waiter told us that most people in the service industry on Capri show up for the tourist season, but spend the rest of the year elsewhere. His preference was Buenos Aires.
On our last evening on the island Larisa suggested we eat dinner on the main square in the town of Capri, after the last boat had left for Naples. The tables in the square were still pretty full, but without waiting we got a balcony table in the restaurant in the clock tower overlooking the square.
The night before we took the boat to Capri we stayed at a fancy hotel in Naples next to the yacht harbor and the fortress. The room was nice, the view was impressive, the food was good, but I got the impression that the staff thought their job was to kiss our asses. This is not a comfortable posture. There are better and more famous hotels where the staff are professional, attentive and helpful without pretending to be obsequious. We didn't run into this anywhere else in Italy.
As a really old guy bemoaning the passing of the good old days, I will say that San Francisco seems to have been changing steadily throughout its history.
I lived in Palo Alto for a while. My girlfriend at the time lived on the ground floor of a triplex on Twin Peaks, with a view down Market Street to the Ferry Building. She owns the building now, but lives in Larkspur across the Golden Gate. She was born and raised in Tokyo until she was 14, and used to joke that San Francisco was a hick town that rolled up its sidewalks at midnight.
We parted amicably in 1991 when I left for Kwajalein. We still see one another once in a while. As a sort of farewell, we went to Acapulco for a couple of weeks. Speaking of change, Acapulco has now been utterly destroyed by gangster extortion, violence and murder, but then it was still vibrant and prospering. She had suggested we go, since her family vacationed there while she was growing up in Tokyo. We stayed at the Ritz, an old respectable place on the beach, not overly expensive, where they had stayed when she was a girl.
In high school in San Francisco my girlfriend's boyfriend was the quarterback of the St. Francis High football team. They were still friends. Occasionally she wore his class ring on a slender chain around her neck. On the plane from Acapulco back to Mexico City a middle aged couple recognized the ring and introduced themselves. They reminisced about growing up in San Francisco, but said they had been displaced by "the others coming in." It's been going on one way or another for quite a while.
A little further back, my father had a liking for the City, developed during a number of visits. I don't think my mother had ever been there. When Dad was 75 in 1979, they spent a week or two in San Francisco. Dad always liked to dress well. When they got back to Texas, he complained that nobody in San Francisco wore a suit any more to go out in the evening. I said I should have warned him that styles had changed in the '60s, the Top of the Mark was pretty much a gay bar, and the roof garden of the Sir Francis Drake was no longer the height of fashion.
Ah, for the good old days... 
RNJ
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Date Jun. 4 2019 2:21:27
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Richard Jernigan
Posts: 3430
Joined: Jan. 20 2004
From: Austin, Texas USA
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RE: Flamenco: no es un show! (in reply to BarkellWH)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: BarkellWH
I still enjoy a short visit to San Francisco and always make it a point to drop in on City Lights Book Store (Lawrence Ferlinghetti still owns it and still shows up once in a while), and have dinner at Scoma's Seafood Restaurant at Pier 47. I love to enter Scoma's, proceed to the bar up the stairs on the right and have a couple of beers, followed by a wonderful dinner of flounder perfectly cooked.
Bill
Bill--I am still looking forward to dinner at Scoma's with you and Stephen Faulk.
My favorite recollection of cioppino, the Sicilian seafood stew, is from Duarte's Tavern in Pescadero. It's a tiny fishing village a mile back from the sand dunes and bluffs of the coast, 15 or 20 miles south of Half Moon Bay. Their sourdough bread and anchovy salad are great, too.
But a very close second, if not its equal is the cioppino at Scoma's. I was there by myself one mid-afternoon. Few others were in the place. Four or five women from out of town came in, and were seated at the next table. One of them asked me what I was eating. I told her, and recommended it.
Some of them ordered cioppino. It was served in a deep dish, almost like a little bucket, the top of the stew well down from its lip. When the first woman looked in and saw the great variety of critters half submerged in the delicious sauce, she made a small exclamation, and seemed a little fearful of digging in. I reassured her, and they ended by proclaiming it excellent.
Before I discovered Scoma's I used to eat at Alioto's on Fisherman's Wharf. It's not as good as Scoma's, but it's pretty good when it's not overrun by tourists. My sixteen-year old son visited from Texas, where I lived half the time, and I took him to Alioto's.
We ordered. The waiter asked Mark whether he would share the wine. Mark looked a little uncomfortable, so I said he was only sixteen--though by then he was 6'2" tall (1.9m). "I wouldn't like to get you in trouble with the authorities."
"It's OK," the San Francisco Sicilian waiter replied. "You're around the corner from the door, and I can watch for the alcohol cops for you."
"Bring him a glass."
RNJ
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Date Jun. 4 2019 2:59:43
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