San Francisco vs. Portland

While waiting in line at the Rooftop Coffee Bar at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art earlier this week, I couldn't help but overhear a young lady nearby ranting about -- of all things -- how pretentious Stumptown Coffee is. She was talking to a somewhat older gentleman -- her father? her art professor? -- and seemed particularly offended that Stumptown's cafes serve French-pressed coffee instead of drip coffee. "Of course," she added with disgust, "Stumptown is from the most pretentious city I've ever been in: Portland."

Interesting.  She's enjoying a visit to a museum that currently exhibits not just one rectangular painting of a uniform gray but also a second such work, yet she thinks coffee presses are pretentious. Not to mention the fact that the Blue Bottle cafe we were standing in serves an espresso drink designed by kitsch-meister Jeff Koons, whose porcelain Michael Jackson is also on display at SFMOMA. I mean no disrespect to the museum or the art world, but isn't irony delicious? As I stood there pretentiously sporting my Hawthorne Bridge T-shirt, I turned to ask the Stumptown hater, "Portland is more pretentious than San Francisco?". "Well," she replied, "it certainly has a higher ratio of pretentious to non-pretentious people."

Oh well, Portland will always have its detractors. In fact, the girl at the art museum reminded me in a way of cranky Portland beer blogger Dr. Wort, though instead of finding us too pretentious, he thinks things are too sloppy here, and he pines for the more refined San Francisco beer scene he experienced as a lucky denizen of the Bay Area. Though conceding that SF has a relatively small number of breweries and brewpubs, the Doc fondly remembers them as places where -- this is a quote -- "the gastronomic delights abound". It's tempting to pick apart the doctor's fawning over some California places that he would excoriate for their blandness if they magically appeared here in Portland, but I think I better get on with my own report of this week's trip to San Francisco.

It was a family vacation, so there weren't any late nights or beer-soaked days, but Carla and I made it out to a few beer places. Sunday evening we swooped down on our San Fran man Andy, who hiked us from his apartment to Zeitgeist and then Toronado, neither of which I had been to before. Toronado was smashing -- an interesting, well-rounded selection of draft beers, reasonably priced. It's got a little bit of a dive bar feel to it, in the sense that you could sit there in the dark and be perfectly at ease. The place is famed for bartenders with attitude, but I thought the service was good, and they even forgave me a faux pas when I accidentally slammed my empty glass down on the zinc bar with a loud bang. The delicious cheap sausages from Rosamunde's next door were the icing on the cake. Kind of ridiculous I'd never been to Toronado; now I'll make sure and get there every time I'm in the city.

On the other hand, Zeitgeist was a disappointment. In his recent report on San Francisco, Ezra said Zeitgeist has about 40 taps, but Sunday at least 25 of those were blown -- the Sierra Nevada Imperial Stout blew with my order. My wife only gets IPAs anymore, and there wasn't a single IPA or even Pale Ale left when we were there. She ended up with a so-so amber called Poppy Jasper from El Toro. The Zeitgeist beer garden is set up pretty nicely, but it was way too crowded. We found a vacant place to sit, but had to wait awhile for the empties from the previous occupants to be bussed, and forget about a rag to wipe the table. Of the 500 people in the yard, 350 were smoking cigarettes and another 25 were openly smoking pot. I've got no particular beef with those activities, but it wasn't our scene.

On other nights we made it out to 21st Amendment and the Thirsty Bear, both walkable from our Market Street hotel. It had been a few years since I'd been to 21A, so I was glad to get the chance, but the taplist was a little disappointing -- IPA, Amber, Red, Light Golden, Watermelon Wheat... ho hum. The Smoked Imperial Porter was the standout, though it bore a cruel California price tag of $7 for 10 ounces, plus tax. Of course Carla went with the IPA, and it was very tasty -- the hop aroma would remind you of orange blossoms or apricots. The food we tried was quite decent, if a little spendy for what it was -- a brick-oven pizza and a loaded cheeseburger (no tater tots).

We didn't try any entrees at the Thirsty Bear, but the oysters with avocado granita and sea salt were brilliant. I enjoyed the abbey-style Belgian ales (one golden, one "amber") that were on as seasonals, although we found the cask IPA to be a little humdrum. It's an odd place -- they get a lot more business from the convention center nearby than from any kind of regular local crowd. It's worth a visit if you're in the area.

I realize that this post meandered around quite a bit, and might not have all that much to do with the headline. For me the main beer lessons of this trip were: first, Toronado goes a long way toward redeeming the sparsity of San Francisco's beer scene; second, be it ever so pretentious, there's no place like home.