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Chick N Coop

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Time Dilation, Hof Brau, & Boomer Salad Chamaca is staring at my wife, motioning with her spoon towards the jello in the small plastic cup on the table. My wife reaches for the jello and from the corner of my eye I see Chamaca quickly lean forward and start to undo the shoulder straps in the stroller, she’s itching to get out. My wife and I survey the dining room and then look at each other and shrug, thinking, “meh, why not let her out to roam?” Chamaca takes one last bite of jello as we put her shoes on. As soon as the harness buckle snaps loose she slithers her way out of the stroller and stands up, takes a beat, and then poof , she’s off to the races. I guzzle my beer and my wife motions for me to stay seated, she’s on chase duty for now. I lean back and return to the conversation with my in-laws. The owner of the restaurant comes out of the kitchen with a large tray of salad and brings it over to the serving line. On his way back, he stops to chat with my in-laws, who have...
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Go Go Kare

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Japanese Curry, Christmas Lights  Understanding Ichi-go-Ichi-e        Something in my gut told me not to leave the bigger baby shower gifts behind, so I made a few trips to my truck in the parking garage and loaded everything up. My coworkers had thrown me an excellent baby shower and we feasted on Hawaiian BBQ to celebrate. I took one last look at my desk, conducting a mental inventory to make sure nothing was forgotten for the day. I grabbed my thermos and started saying good night to everyone just like all the days before that one. I didn’t know it, but that would be the last time I set foot inside of SpaceX. That was 640 days ago. That night, in the produce aisle at a grocery store, with a bag of salad in my hand, my wife called my name and when I turned to her she told me her water just broke. I calmly put the salad back on the shelf. I never said goodbye to my friends at work. There is a tradition at SpaceX that when someone on the team leaves, they receiv...
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Galinette

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Finding Style Charles Bukowski once said,  “To do a dull thing with style is preferable to doing a dangerous thing without it. To do a dangerous thing with style is what I call art.” I think about that quote a lot while I eat my french fries and sip a crisp blonde ale by the window. Sheets of rain continue to storm down as street corners begin to flood with ankle deep water. Chamaca is hypnotized by the rain too, and without looking at me she says, “ french fry”. I maintain my gaze out of the window and blindly hand her another fry. We sit there together, entranced by the San Francisco rain and the sounds of a busy restaurant. There is a strange dance happening between the wind and the trees, Chamaca and I are both stuck in the rhythm of this rainy November day. I sip my beer and glance at my watch. 11:30am on a Friday on the corner of 46th Avenue and Taraval and peace washes over me in a warm embrace. Galinette is the kind of restaurant that feels like an escape, a rip cord on a...
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Turo Cafe and Grill

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  If You Know, You Know  I’m watching Chamaca run around her room with a black wire wastebasket over her head, bouncing off the walls and furniture with no obvious impairment to her stride. She looks like the Black Knight from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. I want to hear her say, “Tis but a scratch.”   But instead she is repeatedly saying, “A cracker! A cracker! A cracker!”   This is her indication that she is hungry, and in a few minutes, she will be hangry . It’s 8am on a Saturday in early November in San Francisco. There was light rain overnight, the ground is wet but the sky is clear and it’s 54 degrees, sun rays creeping over the rooftops. This is my favorite time to be outside, the cold air feels oxygen dense and jump starts my brain. Still in her pajamas, I wrap Chamaca in a sweater and we leave the comfort of our warm apartment behind. We are headed to a small enclave south of Balboa Park called Cayuga Terrace. Surrounded by Muni rail yards, situated on ...
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Smokin D's BBQ SF

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  Zen & the Art of Barbeque, Baking & Babies Near the corner of 23rd Avenue and Irving Street sits a small unassuming storefront with butcher paper in the windows. A weekly schedule is written in sharpie with promises of a full menu coming soon. I parked around the corner in the loading zone and carried Chamaca here in the car seat. This is supposed to be a quick food pickup on our way to the playground in the Richmond District. I can’t let her out of the car seat until our next activity or it’ll be hell to get her back in. I rather lug 30lbs of baby + carseat weight around than try and wrestle a 22lbs baby back into the truck. Although Smokin D's BBQ has been a staple at farmers markets in San Francisco for a while now, their actual storefront is yet to open with a full menu. I can respect the soft opening, only serving buns at this point. Barbecue is not an easy thing to scale up because it takes lots of skill and precious time.  Barbecue pitmasters are like the ...
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Burnout

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    Burnout is drinking a 16oz cup of coffee with a double espresso shot in it and then falling asleep There undoubtedly comes a time in every parent's life when storm clouds are visible on the horizon. The world starts to turn gray, the volume decreases, and you catch yourself staring into the void of nothingness for increasingly longer periods. Mental exhaustion sets in. Combine that with child, partner, and life demands, you begin to neglect your own needs in favor of keeping the ship afloat. In an effort to maintain some semblance of peace, you do all that is required without complaint. Then, suddenly, you find yourself alone and quietly crying, so as to not wake your child from their nap. Even crying, which should allow you some form of release, has to be done quietly and on someone else’s terms. Buckle in, Paternal Burnout has arrived.  Now, before you start dialing the mental health hotline, let's walk through this like adults. Realistically, every parent out there...
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