Achewood's Creator, Chris Onstad

Name
Chris Onstad

Introduce yourself in one sentence
Have you ever tried to answer this one yourself? It’s a nasty thing to do to somebody right out of the gates. Let’s just move on.

Age and Occupation
30, writer/cartoonist

Home Town
San Carlos, CA

How long have you lived in the Bay Area
I grew up in Danville, spent ten years in Tuolumne County, and have lived on the peninsula since ’93 when I started college.

Favorite website
Google

Favorite local business
Devil’s Canyon Brewery, Belmont, CA -- started by another guy like myself who ditched “dot coms” to do something interesting.

What I'm currently Reading
”Blink” by Malcolm Gladwell
“Garlic and Sapphires” by Ruth Reichl

Best Deal in San Francisco
Coriya Hot Pot City on Clement. Grill and boil your own from the bizarre raw bar, all you can eat, for like $15. I go there with friends a few times a year and always feel horrid afterwards.

Favorite mode of transportation
Walking

Best Band or Musician to come out of the Bay Area
Currently, Sid Luscious and Communiqué. Historically, however, I’ve always liked the Dead Kennedys, Op Ivy, and Depeche Mode (from England, may not qualify).

Favorite local hangout
My favorite local place to hang out, if I’m in a good mood, and I just want to dabble the lights fantastic, is...oh, goodness. I guess the Whole Foods at Hillsdale.

SF has the BEST:
Pale girls

You've never lived in SF until:
You have paid an extortionate amount to live in someone’s basement in Ingleside.

Favorite Bay area politician of past or present:
Mayor Gavin, of course.

Now that Mayor Gavin is single, who are you going to set him up with?
He doesn’t need my help impressing women. I feel I would only be a terrible third wheel if I were in the same room as him and a beautiful lady.

You can tell someone is a local here IF:
They have a goatee and they are laid off.

SF would be soooo much better if only:
You could f***ing park anywhere at all, ever

Best Burrito:
La Azteca in Redwood City makes a burrito that will cause your sensations to come alive.

Best Restaurant:
My local, Ciao Amore on Laurel Street in San Carlos. It’s not all about balancing a trembling sliver of foie gras on a poached peach quenelle. You probably wouldn’t see it in Zagat’s. It’s well-made, simple, reliable Italian food, and they don’t charge corkage, and I feel at home there. I can walk there. I can order things that aren’t on the menu. That’s more important than a pickled Belon oyster wearing a steamed chive that has been knotted in a full-windsor by Hubert Keller.

Best movie scene filmed in or about SF:
I think there’s some famous scene where Steve McQueen drives a fast car off a jump or something. That is the one people usually talk about.

Favorite artist to come out of the bay area:
I’m drawing a blank. Sorry, local art scene. Where were you when I needed you most?

Favorite author to come out of the bay area:
I suppose Michael Chabon? Isn’t he local? He has an incredible sense of language. His paragraphs are like important days at the museum.

Place you always tell visitors to check out:
Frytz, either down by Davies or in Ghiradelli.

Favorite Bridge in the area:
The Eugene Doran bridge, on 280 around Hillsboro. When you’re driving down the highway and you cross it you have no idea how high up you are, but when you’re out for a backroads Sunday drive and discover yourself beneath it, it’s terrifying. It’s like being shown a video of all the times you were close to death and were completely unaware. I always switch into the middle lane when I cross it now, in case of high wind. I have a family to think about.

You have two hours and $15 to kill in SF, what are you going to do?
Get $40 more out of the ATM and have dinner at Café Kati, in the Fillmore. Kirk Webber does fantastic Pacific rim seafood, and is a genius with his fry-daddy. We went there on our first date in May 1998, and have gone back every year on the same day.

I have found/sold/bought the following on craigslist:
Nothing. By the time I would have used craigslist, I already had an apartment, a used car, and a discreet extramarital affair.

I want all the SFists out there to know:
The peninsula suburbs are really a much more pleasant place to live than your cold, overpriced city. 92 is the southern cutoff for your fog and mugginess. There’s a reason Leland Stanford and Anton LaVey bought in their respective locations.

Tell us a San Francisco Story:
I went to see Kraftwerk at the Warfield in like 1998, and there were all these ponytailed, Indiana-Jones-hat-having, aviator-glasses, pot-bellied UNIX programmers openly weeping during “Radioactivity” while their mortified ten year-old sons stood dutifully beside them.

Question you'd ask if you were doing this interview:
How embarrassed are you for humanity, having lived in the heart of silicon valley during the days of Flooz, Beenz, and VA Linux?