The Official Re-Birth of the Barbary Coast. Sort of.

by David Farley on
Certain travel magazines and newspaper travel sections like to proclaim that cities and neighborhood’s have been re-born. I remember seeing an article in a travel magazine several years ago that claimed Stockholm had achieved this seemingly other-worldly status. Oh really? I thought. It seems such an enlightened incarnation of an entire city would have been more newsworthy.

Aside from travel writing’s sometimes proclivity for exaggeration, the once legendary and long disappeared Barbary Coast neighborhood has been re-born. Well, sort of. I’ve spent the month of August looking for remnants of it and until I met a man named William Sauro I had no idea that the neighborhood is officially back.


But, you’re probably thinking right now, I thought the Barbary Coast was long gone since 1917?

I met Mr. Sauro at the Old Ship Saloon, fittingly enough, since the bar – on Pacific and Battery Streets, right in the heart of the Barbary Coast – is constructed from an old ship that had brought miners from New York to get in on the potential riches of the Gold Rush. I wanted to ask him the same question about this supposed resurrection of the Barbary Coast.
Mr. Sauro, who is retired, told me he’s the president of the Barbary Coast Neighborhood Association. Such associations, he said, have a lot of power in San Francisco. The infamous and longtime Telegraph Hill Dwellers are the most powerful neighborhood association in the city. And so, in 2005, some of the denizens of the area formerly known as the Barbary Coast decided to create their own association. “It’s mostly so we can have a say in land development and quality of life issues,” he told me as I sipped a glass of pisco punch. “Someone needs to represent the residents here and that’s what the neighborhood association does.”

But why, I asked, did they choose the name Barbary Coast? After all, it’s a bit ironic that a bunch of well-off city dwellers would take a name known for crime and poverty (adding an extra dose of the irony is that the San Francisco Board of Realtors endorsed the name change).


“The Financial District Neighborhood Association just doesn’t sound very cool,” Sauro said. I agreed.

Sauro did make an interesting connection between the current neighborhood and the legendary one, noting the expensive restaurants that have popped up along the nearby Embarcadero. “They’re great restaurants,” Sauro said. “But so expensive that people in the neighborhood are still being shanghaied–just in a totally different way.”

And so, as such, the Barbary Coast is re-born. That sounds newsworthy to me.

David’s Discoveries: Rome’s most charming neighborhood — Garbatella

by David Downie on

Say “Rome” and like Pavlov’s dog, millions worldwide will bark “Colosseum,” “Forum” or “Vatican.”

Ask even an intrepid traveler with an insider’s track on the Eternal City and you still probably won’t get “Garbatella” in reply.

Yet these days Garbatella is among Rome’s hippest, most charming and atmospheric neighborhoods, with one of my favorite authentic, throw-back trattorias anywhere.

First, no tourists: Garbatella is south of the historic sites wrapped by Rome’s Seven Hills, south of the Pyramid of Cestius, south even of the Ostiense train station and the daily commuter scrum.

But it’s easy to get to: Look for the towering old “gasometro” gas storage facility. Then keep going south another half mile toward the unsung Catacombs of Commodilla. Or take a direct metro to Garbatella and walk southeast five minutes. You’ve arrived when the streets climb and twist and turn, when sidewalk gardens and trees appear between strange, seemingly postmodern palazzi.Garbatella isn’t postmodern, it’s pre-modernist, a planned “garden suburb” for the working classes in the bad old days of Fascism, from the 1920s to 1940s. Its bizarre urbanism merges faux ancient Roman and Mussolini Modern. It may well have inspired American postmodern architects. Robert Venturi spent time in Rome and came back as the apostle of the movement.

Like those of postwar American suburbs, the streets are contoured in Garbatella. They lead from odd-shaped squares to pocket-sized public gardens. Curving stairways or vaulted passages join shady courtyards that double as outdoor living rooms. Alleys are lined by the kind of wisteria-draped cottages you don’t associate with Italy. Most of the neighborhood has been gentrified but still looks delightfully down at the heel.

Contrasts abound. Shrines to the Madonna perch below forgotten, tattered flags bearing the hammer-and-sickle. Marble balconies jut out of peeling pink or red façades. Both are reminders of Garbatella’s recent radical past.

My favorite starting point is Piazza Benedetto Brin. In good weather one side of it is taken over by the tables of Dar Moschino, the archetypal Roman trattoria. A fountain splashes out front. Umbrella pines sway. White paper lies top the red-and-white checked, plastified tablecloths.

Inside are wooden tables and brick vaults. The vintage black-and-white photos show horse races, the passion of the place’s owner since the ’70s. That’s when Franco “the fly” Perugini took over.

You don’t have to order Dar Moschino’s specialty – inner organs, cooked up in a dozen ways. The pasta is classic and delicious: cacio e pepe– fresh ribbons dusted with black pepper and heaped with grated pecorino. Or dressed with sugo di coda– piquant oxtail sauce.

Like the neighborhood, the meaty main courses and desserts – sour cherry or ricotta crostata, for instance – aren’t lovely to look at. But they have Roman flavor and texture, and they’re housemade. I wouldn’t soak dentures in the house wines. But they don’t seem dangerous when swallowed. They still come by the barrel from Rome’s suburban vineyards. And, as in the days of blue collars and red flags, your espresso kicker comes in a glass that burns your fingertips. Delightful.

Dar Moschino: Piazza Benedetto Brin 5, Tel: +39 06 513 9473. Closed Sunday and August. About $30-$40 per person, house wine included.

David Downie’s latest books are the critically acclaimed “Paris, Paris: Journey into the City of Light” and “Quiet Corners of Rome.” His websites are www.davidddownie.comand www.parisparistours.com.

[flickr image via Franco Farina]

The most outrageous state fair foods

by Melanie Renzulli on



Nothing says America like a wholesome state fair. And what’s more wholesome – or American – than filling your gullet with mounds of fried, sticky, salty, and/or sweet junk foods?

Beyond the carnival rides and the livestock judging contests, state fairs have always served as quasi-laboratories for American-style street food. In fact, the now-ubiquitous corn dog was first introduced to the public in the early 1940s at a state fair, though which one is still up for debate. The Texas State Fair, aka the “Fried Food Capital of Texas®”, and the Minnesota State Fair both lay claim to this distinctly American treat.

Each year, state fair food vendors try to outdo each other – and intrigue the crowds – with new belly-busting concoctions, usually inspired by local fare. For instance, dairy state Iowa features a deep-fried stick of butter at the Iowa State Fair, while the Texas State Fair has served up fried cookie dough and fried beer. The bigger and more artery-clogging the better when it comes to state fair foods. Here is just a sampling of some of the state fair foods Gadling found to be truly outrageous.

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Barbary Coast Booze: the Pisco Punch

by David Farley on
The discovery of gold in the hills of San Francisco in 1849 inspired one of the biggest population movements in human history. And today’s San Francisco is a fascinating reminder of that, both in terms of its demographic and architectural diversity. One such people that came in droves were Peruvians. And they brought with them a drink that would change cocktails culture forever: pisco. If you have a mouth and hands to pick up a glass and occasionally drink alcohol, you’ve most certainly heard of one pisco-based drink: The pisco sour, which is currently enjoying a revival among cocktail quaffers.

But in mid and late 19th century San Francisco, particularly at one Barbary Coast saloon, a new, rather potent pisco-laced drink was enjoying its own heyday. Pisco Punch. Which is, like interest in the Barbary Coast itself, enjoying a bit of a resurgence in San Francisco.


The invention of the drink is attributed to Duncan Nicol, who combined pisco, pineapple gum, lime juice and distilled water, while he was the owner of the Bank Exchange saloon where the ’70s-flavored skyscraper, the TransAmerica Building, sits today.

The problem, though, was that when Nicol went to the grave, he took the recipe with him.
But according to Jonny Raglin of Comstock Saloon (who makes a mean pisco punch, by the way), someone figured out the recipe during the last decade and in the last five years the drink has been popping up on cocktail bar menus around the city.

“The revival of pisco punch,” Raglin told me, “is really a classic example of the entire resurgence of the Barbary Coast as a whole.”


One other note of historical importance. According to Daniel Bacon, whose book “Walking San Francisco on the Barbary Coast Trail,” is a bible for this stuff, one frequent pisco punch-drinking regular at the Bank Exchange saloon was Mark Twain. One night over glasses of pisco punch he got to talking to a fire fighter and they became friends. That fireman’s name? Tom Sawyer.

A rural ride through Oxfordshire

by Sean McLachlan on


Yesterday was my birthday, and now that I’m halfway to 84 I figured the best way to spend it was with other decaying leftovers from ages past. I mean medieval buildings, not my travel companions.

Oxfordshire offers plenty of hikes, historic buildings, and good restaurants. To celebrate my increasing decrepitude, some friends drove my wife and I from Oxford to the nearby village of Great Coxwell to see a rare survival from the Middle Ages–the Great Coxwell Barn. While there’s no shortage of medieval churches and castles still standing in England, there aren’t many well-preserved medieval barns. This one was owned by the Cistercian Beaulieu Abbey and was built around 1300 AD. It was part of a grange (farm) owned by the abbey and worked by lay brothers and servants. The barn stored the produce of the grange as well as the tithe of the parish farmers.

The exterior looks remarkably churchlike, while the interior is a vast open space with a slate roof supported by an impressive system of wooden posts, beams and rafters, all connected by pegs or slots and tabs. Metal was expensive back then, and not a single nail was used in the construction of this massive roof.

%Gallery-130852%Great Coxwell also has a small church that’s about a hundred years older than the barn. It’s just up the hill in the middle of a churchyard filled with moss-covered gravestones that centuries of weathering have pushed over into crazy angles. Just the thing to see on your birthday! On a happier note the churchyard is a managed wildlife area with a colorful variety of wildflowers. These folks are pushing up more than just daisies.

The church has been much restored but has some interesting early inscriptions and a tiny winding passageway behind the pulpit that I could barely squeeze into. Sadly it led around a single turn and straight into a wall made of rubble and mortar. My mind conjured up all sorts of legends and ghostly walled-up monks, but the more likely explanation for this barrier is that it’s to keep nosy visitors from going up the steps.

For lunch we visited The White Hart in Fyfield. This restaurant/pub (called a “gastropub” over here) is in the old Hospital of St. John the Baptist, built in the mid-to-late 1400s. The “hospital” was actually an almshouse, housing five poor people as well as a priest whose job it was to say masses for the benefactor. We ate in the main hall beneath old wooden beams. Beyond the bar was a huge medieval fireplace.

The food was as good as the atmosphere. Many of the ingredients are locally sourced, some from as close as their own garden. I had the slow-roasted belly of Kelmscott pork, apple, celeriac puree, carrots, crackling, and cider jus. Utterly delicious. For dessert I had a roast peach with raspberry sorbet, topped with a spider’s web of spun sugary something. Sorry, I’m not a foodie writer, just trust me that it was good. My companions’ meals looked equally good and we washed it down with real ale from the Loose Cannon Brewery from nearby Abingdon.

Not a bad way to grow older!

The number 66 bus runs regularly between Oxford and Fyfield. This bus stops at Faringdon, where you can take the number 61 to Great Coxwell.