There’s both an art and a science to making the perfect mixed drink—it’s not just the stiffness of the drink but also the flashiness of the pour. At the 2013 Barbot event last weekend, guests were treated to an evening of mechanical bartenders that put Brian Flanagan’s bottle-flipping skills to shame.
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After an odd but engrossing CNET story last week, everybody’s wondering what the strange barge with ties to Google is doing docked near San Francisco. At first, it looked like the 25-foot-long structure was a next generation data center in-the-making, but CBS and CNET sources now say it’s a floating Google Glass store. Weird huh?
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Do you have an exit strategy for you and yours in place, should a major earthquake, terrorist attack, or similar large scale disaster occur? You should. And with the help of San Francisco’s new social emergency preparation website, you will.
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Crime! Cars! Lululemon! There’s always something trying to bring your neighborhood down, right? Each week, we’ll round up the stories about what exactly you think is ruining our cities. See a story we missed? Drop it in the comments.
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In the lead-up to Litquake, the annual city-wide literary festival that kicks off this Friday, the San Francisco Chronicle just launched a seriously impressive online map marking some of the Bay Area’s most iconic moments in print.
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In the 1880s, San Francisco’s Chinatown was a den of thieves, sin, and debauchery—at least according to the police. To that end, the SFPD set about creating a comprehensive map of the neighborhood’s vices. But was this effort genuine public service or was it merely an attempt to villainize a rapidly growing minority population?
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When you live in a city for a while, it begins to feel—for better or for worse—like every block is completely familiar. But there’s a heck of a lot of invisible history inherent in even the most recognizable sites. This month, San Francisco is celebrating its own unrealized gems; Unbuilt is the theme of the AIA’s monthlong Architecture and the City festival, with a series of special exhibitions showing bizarro SF.
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As mind-blowing as science is these days, it’s probably safe to say that we’re not going to invent a time machine within the next century. Through the magic of code, though, there is an entertaining alternative in the world of interactive maps. Obviously, The Smithsonian is on it
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Do you ever wish you lived in a video game? But not like a fancy Xbox game or anything like that. Do you ever wish you lived in Legend of Zelda except with all the comforts of home? If yes, then Brett Camper’s 8-bit city maps are for you.
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If you love the idea of playing classic arcade games, but don’t want to be tied down to just a single machine, you could always build a MAME cabinet. But that doesn’t give you the exact controls and screen of the original machine. If you’re an arcade purist, you need to play on the actual machines.
But if you’re like me, you don’t have the money or space to dedicate to dozens of arcade machines in your home. Well, assuming this new service takes off, you may soon be able to play different arcade machines all the time, using a model similar to Netflix or GameFly.
With All You Can Arcade, you can keep arcade machines in your house for a rental fee of $75 a month each, or you can trade them in whenever you feel like it for another machine. Renters can select to keep 1, 2 or 3 games at a time. The site provides not only geotargeted listings of available machines, but tools for arcade machine owners to manage their rentals and deliveries.
The site charges no delivery or pickup fees to renters. Arcade machine owners keep 75% of all rental fees to cover the cost of the machines and their costs. While I’m not certain there’s a ton of money to be made, there’s definitely an opportunity for arcade machine owners to earn a little extra money from their machines – as long as they can handle the local pick-ups and deliveries without too much expense.
At this point, the service is launching with a number of games available for delivery and pick-up in the San Francisco and Sacramento, California areas, but hopes to expand to other areas in the future.
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
