Staying 6 feet apart in San Francisco’s Bernal Heights got a lot easier after a pop-up bakery started delivering its fresh bread to customers using a basket and a rope.
It’s the most exciting thing to hit quiet Wright Street in some time.
“Here it comes,” said Ryan Stagg, placing a loaf of sourdough into the wicker basket and lowering it to sidewalk level and into the waiting hands of customer Engin Bumbacher, who said $9 is not too much to pay for a great loaf of bread after all the mediocre ones he has baked on his own. These days everyone may be a baker, but not every baker has got the hang of it.
“A million things can go wrong when you do it at home,” Bumbacher said. “I know.”
Stagg and his fiancee, Daniella Banchero, two furloughed restaurant chefs, got the basket delivery idea from the odd layout of their house — its front yard is 10 feet above the street, propped up by a thick retaining wall.
Nine bucks, Stagg acknowledges, is not cheap, especially with all the locked-down folks who have little else to do right now but put water and flour together. The home baking craze has caused a run on the packaged yeast market, with some online gougers asking $20 and up for a three-pack.
And yet the customers return and small lines form on Wright Street beside the retaining wall. Some neighbors come to see the rope basket in action. Most come for the bread. The delivery system is a novelty, but bread isn’t.
The bakers call their operation Bernal Bakery, and the bread, rolls and cookies are by reservation only, pick up in person. (You can order via Instagram: @Bernal_Bakery.) Right now, the bread is sold out five days in advance. A cookie, for $2.50, may or may not be available on a standby basis.
“This is the coolest thing,” said Daphne Adam, who brought her year-old son, Philo, to watch the bread come down on the rope. Philo was wide-eyed and speechless. Adam said she had tried doing the bread thing herself “and it’s not working.”
Stagg said he and Banchero started the bakery “out of boredom as a way to keep busy” and were as surprised as anyone when the business caught on. They might even keep it going when the pandemic ends and nobody needs to have things lowered in baskets.
“The basket is a silly little thing,” he said, lowering another loaf from on high. “Not the bread.”
Biking up, restrooms down: Better weather is bringing 50% more cyclists to the new bike path on the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge but, as the scouts say, be prepared.
The restrooms are few and far between, and — because of the pandemic — getting farther.
Ridership on the new 4-mile-long trail, which opened in November, has grown to 750 riders a day on weekends. But authorities have closed county park restrooms on the Richmond side. With the virtual absence of restrooms on the San Rafael side, planning is called for.
Coffee bars with restrooms are open in historic Point Richmond, said Bruce Beyaert, chair of the Trails for Richmond Action Committee.
“But don’t drink too much coffee,” he said. “Plan ahead. Or you could have problems.”
On the Marin County side, there is a public restroom at the main gate of San Quentin prison, which has its own shelter-in-place rules.
The world in your living room: Old Faithful is still erupting every 90 minutes, and the water is still tumbling from the top of Yosemite Falls. It’s easy to check and make sure.
Thanks to live webcams, it’s possible during a pandemic to verify in real time that the world is still out there, waiting for the return of paying customers. It’s also possible to see the grand sights without other people getting in the way.
Take Old Faithful. Yellowstone National Park may be closed to visitors, but the webcam (https://ift.tt/29MvEgm) is still broadcasting live pictures of the famous geyser. Waiting in person for Old Faithful to erupt usually involves jostling for position on crowded benches. Waiting at home for Old Faithful to erupt is pleasant, and you can fix yourself a sandwich.
Now Playing:
While waiting, what you see on the webcam is a picture of the utterly empty parking lot next to the geyser. The empty Old Faithful parking lot is a natural wonder, too. It’s a sight even more striking than an eruption of Old Faithful.
Yosemite National Park is also closed, but the webcam (www.yosemite.org) pointing at Yosemite Falls is alive and well. You can follow a ripple of water as it descends — it takes half a minute or so to make it all the way to the valley floor. That’s as long as most TV commercials and easier on the system. Then you can switch to the webcam pointed at Half Dome. The image is refreshed every 60 seconds, but Half Dome at 1:09 p.m. looks much like Half Dome at 1:10 p.m.
You can visit the Colosseum in Rome (https://ift.tt/2yE0cjL) and watch a cop car drive past on the eerily empty street, its blue light flashing. Then drop by the nearby Piazza Navona, where there is no line at the ice cream place under the awning, because it isn’t open.
Share with us the ‘good news’
The news these days can be sobering, even grim. But amid the darkness, there are rays of light. We’d like to know about examples of good news you have witnessed during this time. You can tell us your thoughts online at SFChronicle.com by using our Assignment Editor tool, or send an email (which can include a photo) with the subject line “Good News” to metro@sfchronicle.com.
The South Pole (https://ift.tt/2Lbe081) can be a dark place when you drop by, but the other day there was a ethereal green glow high in the sky above the observatory building that could only have been the Southern Lights. The temperature was minus-74 degrees.
You can visit such empty places as the Farallon Islands (www.calacademy.org), outer space (www.nasa.gov) or Times Square in New York City (www.earthcam.com).
Patience, whether waiting for a webcam stream to buffer or waiting out a pandemic, is always a good idea.
Steve Rubenstein is a staff writer with The San Francisco Chronicle. E-mail: srubenstein@sfchronicle.com
"bread" - Google News
May 07, 2020 at 11:13PM
https://ift.tt/3cpixQ8
On the bright side: Bernal Heights baker delivers bread by lowering a basket - San Francisco Chronicle
"bread" - Google News
https://ift.tt/2pGzbrj
https://ift.tt/2Wle22m
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "On the bright side: Bernal Heights baker delivers bread by lowering a basket - San Francisco Chronicle"
Post a Comment