BEST PLACES IN THE WORLD (PART 34: #2 San Francisco)

The following continues the serialization of my final chapter from SIMPLE SOLUTIONS for Humanity:

#2: San Francisco and the Bay Area

Next to Hawaii, I enjoy the area around San Francisco most. Having spent four years at Stanford University, several assignments at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Ames Research Center, and regular forays through the wine country of Napa, Sonoma and down south all the way to Santa Barbara, there is a lot of variety in this region. BART, culture, Chinatown, SoMa, cable cars, the Golden Gate Bridge, Union Square, Nob Hill, Silicon Valley, genome hotspots, outstanding colleges, all the professional sports you might want and generally acceptable weather, a case can be made for this area being #1.

There are earthquakes and the western side of the San Andreas Fault could fall into the sea someday (note that SFO is on the wrong side of the fault). My most memorable trip ever with regard to natural disasters occurred in October 1989 when I participated in an engineering conference in New Orleans, but left town a bit early to avoid a hurricane heading towards Texas or Louisiana. I flew to San Francisco, then on to Tokyo for another meeting, where I felt an earthquake. I then needed to testify in Congress, so I stopped off in San Francisco and stayed at the AmFac Hotel at the airport. The next day I flew to Dulles. The first scene I saw on my room TV was the elevator shaft of the AmFac Hotel, which had caved in from the Loma Prieta earthquake that postponed the World Series. My room that previous night was next to the elevator.

But, in 2007, for the 18^th consecutive year, San Francisco was named by Conde Nast as the number one U.S. city. (In 2010, San Francisco was, still, #1, but the best city in Asia was, amazingly enough, considering their problems, Bangkok--#1 in Europe was Florence). Even if home and rental prices are higher in San Francisco and vicinity than anywhere else (Honolulu is only #9) there are very good reasons for picking this area. I was that close to leaning in this direction, but, perhaps, for the second edition of Book 2.  (Even though I show what is iconically SFO, it would have been more memorable and representative if the bridge was painted in gold instead International Orange.)

My most recent stop was for the Singularity Summit, where one of my meals was at Gary Danko's, perhaps the #1 restarurant today in SFO.

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The Dow Jones Industrials snuck up 7 to 12,240, with world markets all declining.  Gold edged down a buck to $1362/toz and petroleum is $87/barrel in New York, but $102/barrel in London.  I've never seen a $15/barrel difference.  It must be that revolution in that part of the world that trades in Europe.

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THE WORLD SERIES BEGINS TOMORROW

Actually, I'm not a big fan of the World Series, and if you're totally out of it, this is the Major League Baseball Championship, the first to win four games.  I don't recall watching an entire game of the World Series in my life.  However, this is the first time players from Hawaii are opposing each other:  Shane Victorino (left) of the Boston Red Sox and Kolten Wong of the St. Louis Cardinals.  The Red Sox are the home team (meaning, if the series goes 7 games, it will be played at Fenway Park--below) because the American League beat the National League in the July All-Star Game.

Game One begins on FOX in Boston at 8:07 PM EDT (5:07 Hawaii time).  All games start at 8:08 EDT, except for Sunday...8:15 PM EDT.  Why?  That's because this is baseball.  Some things cannot be adequately explained.

What to look for?  Cardinal pitching and Red Sox hitting.  

Fenway park only sits 37,400, while Busch Stadium can handle 49,000, including tickets for standing.

I don't tend to agree much with the Wall Street Journal, but I do like their "Ten Things" series.  Here is an offering from Charles Passey (one or both is/are Charles):

• Baseball is losing appeal.  The audience last year for the San Francisco Giants and Detroit Tigers games averaged only 12.7 million viewers, a modern day low.
• The average resale price for the Super Bowl was $2,479, while both the NBA (basketball) and NHL (hockey) averaged $623.  The World Series last year was $614, which is also out of my range.

• Those 8PM starts had everything to do with accommodating television.
• The fans for the winning team usually show immature post game behavior--last year, 30 were arrested in San Francisco.
• While the 2000 Subway Series between the New York Yankees and New York Mets might have boosted the New York  City economy by a quarter billion dollars, the average is only around $6.8 million/game.
• This Fall Classic will almost surely feel like a Winter Classic.  The final game could occur on October 31 in Boston at 43 F. 
• This is not the WORLD Series, for the USA has never won the World Baseball Classic (best was 4th place in 2009).
• The means of getting to the World Series seems to constantly change.
• Over the past decade, only one game went 7 games, while seven ended up 4-0 or 4-1.
• There is generally some distraction.  There was an earthquake in 1989.  I stayed at a San Francisco Airport hotel the night before this 7.0 shake, which delayed the series.

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Hurricane Raymond, now at 120 MPH, could go anywhere, but computer models generally show movement west, away from Acapulco:

However, cruise ships beware, as things could change.

In the West Pacific, Typhoon Francisco is at 85 MPH, but will weaken and only brush Japan as a tropical storm.  Typhoon Lekima is now at 145 MPH, but will strengthen into a Category 4, becoming  a super typhoon, before also weakening and passing Japan even further east than Francisco:

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THE NEW ALCOHOL-VEGETABLE DIET

The last time I featured cuisine was a month ago with SPAM, WAGYU MATSUTAKE AND BREAD.  My recent eating pattern featured tailgates (though I used a table in front of my TV set), for it began during the World Series, carried me throughout the presidential election period, and included those football/golf games this past weekend.  

So with all that, here is what I ate, beginning with an artichoke with three sauces, radicchio, onions, avocado and potato chips, with beer and a glass of a Stanford Cabernet:

Tonkatsu, Hirame sashimi, miso soup and a lot of vegetables, with beer and hot sake:

Then an Irish whiskey tasting during the World Series watching the Dodgers beat the Devil Rays.  Incidentally, while I thought I had totally lost all the money I invested in my fantasy teams, one actually won $50.

On the eve of election day, I gathered an assortment to imbibe through November 3.  In the back is a cognac within a crystal dragon, as I was born in that year.

Ham and eggs, tsukemono (Japanese pickles) and tofu with hot sake and tea, and cold beer and tea:

Sticking with Japanese, chazuke with salmon, tsukemono and hirame sashimi, with hot sake and cold beer:

15 Craigside provided a pizza supreme, so I fried it in butter and heated the top in a toaster oven.  Then I added some of my own Basil with tomatoes.  A large salad, beer and white wine (I was storing it in the beer bottle):

I want to note that my basil patch growing just few feet from this table has really grown only in one month.  I have a supply for the whole building:

I continued Italian when 15 Craigside provided spaghetti with meat sauce, so I enhanced it by frying some garlic into which the meat sauce was added, then some mushrooms and onions:

This tailgate only had a vegetable salad, topped with some leftover spaghetti sauce and piece of chicken, so I thought I would splurge with a cinnabon.

I cut a sliver of the cinnabon and fried it in butter, to have my first dessert in a month.  I then had my second splurge of an anpan prepared by a close friend, a day later.  I also first fried it in butter.  It was heavenly.

I once loved tacos.  More recently, I have stopped frying the tortilla in a pan to make it crispy, for that is too much work, for then everything falls out of the shell anyway.  So I now start with a large salad, add the ingredients provided for the tacos, add some Fritos, then the sauce, which I fry in some wagyu fat first:

My new tacos with beer and margarita.

My final tailgate was Chinese.  Steamed fish from the dining room, beer and some Johnny Walker Black Label.  I might have eaten maybe two grains of that rice.  However, that Bloody Mary was effectively a salad with tomato soup, horseradish, basil, cut onions and asparagus.

Why scotch?  There was a time when Chinese banquets in Hawaii had a bottle of this brew on the table to share.

I do use the wellness center at 15 Craigside for cross- and weight-training.  Plus, on TuThSat go through  a personally supervised knee therapy session.  Sunday I rest.

The result is that I just weighed myself, and saw 154.8, the lowest in maybe 25 years.  More than eleven years ago when my wife passed away, I spent a month visiting her in intensive care at Kuakini Hospital, where I must have gone back and forth 3-6 times daily, a one way walk of about a mile.  After it was all over I found out I had lost 11 pounds, from 167 to 156.  I gained most it back since then, but only in lockdown made a purposeful attempt to lower my Body-Mass Index.  I was becoming a Donald Trump, and reduced myself more towards Barack Obama.

But back to the focus of this posting, usually tailgates feature hot dog, hamburger, and in Hawaii, poke (marinated tuna).  As I hardly walk on a golf course anymore, I have had to significantly alter my eating habits.  You have noticed above, for example, an emphasis on alcohol and vegetable, with two dessert splurges.

Essentially, I have developed an alcohol-vegetable diet.  I eat and drink all I want, am satiated at the end of the meal, and feel full for many hours that I don't want to snack.

So I went to the internet to see if anyone else has proposed such a diet.  NOTHING!  The closest thing to my mine is the Mediterranean Diet.  But their link with alcohol is that the food they eat battles the side effects of alcohol.

No leading dietician, doctor or government promotes alcohol.  There is something in the Hippocratic Oath they take that considers ethanol as dangerous to anyone's health.  There is that red wine aura that a limited amounts of this potion might enhance your longevity.  Then, of course, there are those national loyalty thrusts like in Ireland, where "new scientific research shows that drinking whiskey will make you live a longer, healthier life, and be more creative."  Come on now, how can this be true.  Well:

• 
  This 15-year study was presented to the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2018 promoting moderate alcohol consumption for a longer lifespan.
• Presented by University of California Irvine neurologist Claudia Kawas and her team studying lifestyle habits of people who live until their 90's.  Those who drank two units of alcohol every day were less likely to die prematurely.

• 
  What is moderate?  Two units.  What is a unit?
• 750 ml bottle of wine at 13.5% ethanol contains 10 units.
• single shot  (1.2 ounces) of spirits (40% ethanol) = 1 unit
• bottle of beer (5%) = 1.7 units
• Why?  Whiskey contains ellagic acid, a powerful antioxidant that can eliminate harmful, cancerous free radicals in the body.  Whiskey contains more than red wine.

The analogy I use has to do with beef and fat.  In the USA and most of the world, this combination needs to be limited at all costs.  Not so in Japan.  I've read several medical studies from Japan indicating that Japanese wagyu beef fat is actually good for your health.  Here is a Japan-Korea summary.

The point is that conventional belief is difficult to adjust in medical science, especially when applied to the elderly.  At my age, heck with standards anymore.  I eat what I want.  

• 
  But I want to remain in the normal portion of my Body-Mass Index, even though science has shown that overweight people live longer than normal human beings.  You don't want to be underweight, for that is the group that dies off first.
• Thus, as much as going on a diet is antithetical to my way of life, I've found that an alcohol-vegetable diet might actually be fine for me.  
• A huge benefit, it has turned out, is that the high blood sugar level I have lived with the past couple of decades has actually dropped closer to normality.  I worry some about my liver and kidneys, but they seem to be functioning okay, as verified by regular blood tests.

I'm not advocating that you subscribe to my alcohol-vegetable diet.  This might only apply to me.  But check with your doctor, and keep abreast of any breaking news that might hint about this new diet pathway for a more enjoyable life.

The finalists for song #49 are:

• Blue Tango:  Leroy Anderson
• San Francisco:  Jeanette MacDonald

Leroy Anderson had a long Harvard education, led the Harvard University Band and became fluent in English, Danish, Norwegian, Icelandic, German, French, Italian and Portuguese.  His first composition was Jazz Pizzicato in 1938.  During World War II he was in counterintelligence.  While on duty in 1945 he wrote The Syncopated Clock.  He was recalled to active duty for the Korean War, and again while in the service wrote Blue Tango in 1951.  Recorded by Hugo Winterhalter and his orchestra in 1952, the song reached #1 and named by Billboard as the top song of the year.  This was the first instrumental to sell 1 million records.  He had follow on hits like Sleigh Ride,  Fiddle Faddle, The Typewriter and A Trumpeter's Lullaby.

Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy had more hits than I can count, but the one song that sticks in my mind is her San Francisco.  The song was specifically written by Bronislaw Kaper, Walter Jurmann and Gus Kahn for the 1936 film about the 1906 earthquake, and sung a half-dozen different times.  Also starring were Clarke Gable and Spencer Tracy.  In many ways, it has become the anthem for earthquake survivors.  The film, rated 100/70 by Rotten Tomatoes, was the top grosser for the year.

I guess I identify most with it because I lived in the Bay Area several times, and actually missed the devastating 1989 San Francisco earthquake only by a few hours.  So much damage from only a 6.9 scale earthquake, for the 1906 version was measured at a moment magnitude of 7.9, or thirty-two times more severe.  Thus, San Francisco is my #49.

Tropical Storm Eta could re-gain hurricane strength, then over the next few days weaken, with land fall anywhere from New Orleans to Tampa on Sunday:

Tropical Storm Theta formed in the Caribbean, and that close-by disturbance could well become Iota:

In the West Pacific, Typhoon Vamco (Ulysses) will threaten the Philippines.

I close with a Nuuanu Valley rainbow and my water lily:

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MY EXPERIENCE WITH HURRICANES

Day 113, or the beginning of week 17, of the Lower Puna Eruption, and the USGS has not yet said that activity here has ceased.

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How many of you have been in a real hurricane/typhoon/cyclone?  Here is my experience:

• I was born and grew up in Hawaii.  Nothing in my youth.
• Went to Stanford and spent most of the next four years in California.  Nothing.
• Came back home to work in the sugar industry for six years.  Nothing.
• Went on to LSU in Baton Rouge for four years.  Nothing.
• Came back home for seven years.  Nothing.
• Went on to DC to work in the U.S. Senate for three years.  Nothing.

• Finally, in October of 1989 I took a memorable trip (indicating why I am now heading for 3 million miles on Star Alliance):
• I was chairman of the Energy Committee for the American Society of Civil Engineers, and participated in a national conference in New Orleans.  However, Hurricane Jerry began to approach Louisiana and Texas, so I left early and flew to Tokyo for another meeting.
• While in Tokyo my bed was jarred by an earthquake.

• My next event was to testify at a hearing in the U.S. Congress, so I flew from Tokyo to San Francisco, and spent a night at the AMFAC Hotel at the airport.  
• Left the next morning for Washington, D.C., where I sat next to my old physics professor at Stanford, Wolfgang Panofsky.  He told me what he could about what he was doing, which was negotiating with the Soviet Union on what to do with nuclear warheads when the Cold War ended.

• Arrived at my hotel in DC, turned on the TV set and the first scene was of the AMFAC Hotel, where the structure had caved in at the elevator.  My room was next to that elevator.  That hotel never opened again.  This was the Loma Prieta Earthquake which postponed the World Series being held in San Francisco.
• Thus, still, I had not personally experienced a hurricane, and I was then 49 years of age.

• My next encounter was around 1990 when, in Japan, I had to catch a train from Tokyo to Izu Peninsula.  A typhoon was coming, but the train left on schedule.  The eye went right over my train, and nothing bad happened. So that was my first hurricane.  A lot of anxiety, for nothing.

• In 1992 Pearl and I found our way to Eugene, Oregon, where we met up with my brother and his wife, who had driven from Las Vegas.  We won 24-21, and on the way to the next game against the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, we stopped for the night in Salt Lake City.  Turned on the TV and there was Hurricane Iniki heading what looked like straight to Honolulu.  Could not reach anyone on the phone.  Iniki devastated Kauai, but I missed it all.

• In August of 2009, to celebrate Pearl's life on the Big Island, after her ash scattering on the slopes of Mauna Kea, I was unsure about continuing on to the Mauna Kea Beach Hotel, Four Seasons Hualalai and Volcano House, to also lay her ashes, because Hurricane Felicia was bearing down on the island.  I thought it would be best to be at home if Felicia hit Oahu.  Turned out that she weakened, but the eye went right over my apartment in Honolulu.

So we come to Hurricane Lane, who I thought was a male, but TV newscasters a couple of times referred to the storm as she.  Anyway, note the current projected track.  How comfortable would you be if that arrow pointed straight at you, with a computer projection showing a left turn just before getting to you?  

That best guess is just the average of various computer models which considerably vary.  Hurricanes are supposed to move along a fairly straight path.  Here in Hawaii we have wind shear and high mountains that both protect us and make things complicated.  Here are the factors affecting the path of Lane:

• Tradewinds and other weather patterns push hurricanes in the Pacific mostly west.
• However, high level winds, this shear, come from the southwest.
• This is good because the hurricane is sheared and weakened.  As expected, Lane has dropped from Category 5 to now 4 status with a 3 rating soon expected, I hope.
• However, the counter-clockwise twist, when faced with this shear, means that the storm begins to shift north.  Yet, if the storm is really strong, as is Lane, this northern direction continues to prevail.  THE KEY QUESTION IS:  WILL THIS SHEAR, SAID TO BE AT 50 MPH, DOMINATE OVER THE HURRICANE, WITH WINDS OF 130 MPH???

My Manoa Campus office at the University of Hawaii is in the adjacent building to the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration office of the Central Pacific Hurricane Center.  All the information you see on TV comes from here. If not in Hawaii, watch the Weather Channel, which has been around since 1982.  Just about 90 million households in the USA can access this station.

So what will happen?  This is a photo I just took.  24 hours from now, that left turn will need to occur over that horizon, else Hurricane Lane will continue on right over my apartment.  If Category 3 status dominated and continues, Honolulu will be in really big trouble.

Well, heck, all is not gloom and doom in Purgatory.  The Honolulu Little League team yesterday torched New York 10-0, and will play the winner of either Georgia or New York, on ESPN at 1:30PM Hawaii time today, on Saturday for the national championship.  South Korea will take-on the winner of Japan-Puerto Rico, then the final two victors will vie on Sunday for the world little league championship.  It's becoming clear that those teams with their best pitchers still available will most probably win.

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