SHOOT THE BREEZE #7: Things to Talk About
Hi Friends!
Thanks for joining us after a very long Holiday weekend for most. I hope it was joyful and you could spend time with your family and friends.
Today, I want to share a few posts worth "shooting the breeze over" with family and friends.
As always, thanks for supporting our work; we greatly appreciate that.
Enjoy today's posts!
Mark & Patti
In a perfect world, I don’t think most restaurants can always be perfect, but they do try and this story about Bubba Gump Shrimp is worth a read.
Pier 39 chain restaurant serves subpar food but some of SF's best views
by Madeline Wells, SF Gate
Fried shrimp, coconut shrimp, tempura shrimp, steamed shrimp, shrimp rolls, a Bloody Mary festooned with a decorative shrimp. You guessed it: I’m at Bubba Gump Shrimp Co., the world-famous restaurant dedicated to the fruit of the sea.
The San Francisco location of the cheesy restaurant chain inspired by the 1994 film “Forrest Gump” is tucked at the tail end of Pier 39. When I visited for lunch on a recent federal holiday, it was teeming with tourists and teenagers who had the day off from school. I wondered if any of the teenagers had actually seen the Tom Hanks movie, or if they were just there because it sounded funny.
Yosemite's failed bid to become the 'Switzerland of the West
by Eric Brooks, SF Gate
Some transformational projects never came to fruition, like a gondola running from Yosemite Valleyto Glacier Point or a railroad built through the heart of the park. Others, like an airstrip for small planes constructed in a meadow just west of Yosemite Lodge, did happen despite the outrageous logistics of landing an aircraft in the Sierra Nevada. However, none sound more ridiculous and farfetched than the idea that Yosemite could host the Olympic Games.
The history of California's 'Kill Bill' church
by Timothy Karoff, SF Gate
Sanctuary Adventist Church sits in an area that Castañeda describes as “the middle of nowhere”: a dusty, Joshua Tree-strewn stretch of California’s Mojave Desert. The church falls just outside the city of Lancaster, in an area called Hi Vista. Empty stretches of shrub-lined roads are intermittently punctuated by clusters of low-slung houses.