???? Is that true? Are there really pot clubs on every single corner of an intersection like the Starbuckses downtown? Will Starbucks make the next logical move, which would be to buy out all the pot clubs too? Is there really that much freed-up commercial space in the city? Is this true, or is Mr. Elsbernd exaggerating to make a point?

Okay, we've done some research on this. Results after the jump.

So I've got three weddings to go to this summer, and I just picked up a stylin' charcoal grey suit so I'll definitely look the rakish cad. Being single, I've found weddings a great place to meet the ladies. Problem is, the three weddings are for, in order: an old high school paramour, a cousin, and a friend from elementary school, and my parents will probably be at all three. So how do I pick up chicks without being too creepy? Should I simply sublimate any tendencies, or should I not feel guilty at all?

Anotjacksonymous

In the last week I have gone on two dates with a Canadian book artist whose DNA is 100% Frisian, i.e. parents from Friesland, which quite frankly I've never even heard of before. Apparently those Frieslanders are so fricking white Hitler did some kind of horrible research on them. Anyway, I'd hate to think that some last minute romance with a member of an obscure Germanic tribe would keep me from moving back to dear dirty Oakland. Please advise....

Miss Jean Brodie

Firstly, Miss Lonelyhearts, Canada, DNA, Friesland, Hitler, Oakland, and Jean Brodie. All clear?

Now, our advice: dump him. Come on home and make sure you've got unlimited long distance minutes on that little phone of yours. Or a man closer to home. No man is worth another month in Appleton. Even if he's Canadian. Or even an artist. And c'mon, you just bought a freaking house in Oakland. Stop hatin', fer cryin' out loud.

Where should I go to watch a the midnight opening of Episode III now that the Coronet is closed? Where will all the guys dressed up as Stormtroopers and Jedi go to flaunt their knowledge of the ways of the force, their light saber skills, and their sewing ability? Ideally, It should be a big single-screen theater, but the only one I can think of in San Francisco is the Castro and I'm not getting a real strong indication from the force that they'd show a Star Wars movie. What's a fanboy to do?

And, oh, I almost forgot, what is thy bidding, my master?

Bowing to you,

TK421, Cell Block 1138

Oh, no need to bow, TK421. Why aren't you at your post? Get up. Rise, and giveth us instead $7.50, with which to buy some buffalo chicken tenders. Or a movie ticket. We here at SFist, always game to obsess over Star Wars, have publicly lamented the loss of the Coronet and wondered about just this question.

We checked in with a friend at ILM who poked around and told us that the movie will be playing at the Metreon, the AMC theaters, the Century 20, and the Metro, not to mention about 40,000 other screens near you. We asked them about the Cinema, in Corte Madera (where we watched the Star Wars movies as a kid), which isn't too far from ILM itself, and yeah, it'll be playing there. (And they're doing the company screening there.) But she didn't have any of the juicy bits we were looking for about the midnight screening action.

So we went to the mother-lode: the message boards at theforce.net. Specifically, the San Francisco Fanforce message boards. Even more specifically, a thread entitled REVENGE OF THE SITH - SF PREMIERE. Not surprisingly, we found out pretty much everything we needed to know.

Here's a question: what do people do with their dead pets in the City? Or any big city? What's San Francisco's take on burying "Meow Meow Kitty" in Golden Gate Park? Or "Miss Beazley" under her favorite palm tree in the median on Dolores? Or should we venture out of the City? There's always Colma. Or Ocean Beach. What does BART or Muni think about transporting dead animals? We know what they think about the living ones. Although I've seen some interesting heads hanging out of bags on the 30 Stockton bus. How suspicious would I look with a large trash bag and a shovel? Right, better take a taxi...but then do I ask him to wait? I don't have any dead or dying pets...just wondering.

Creepy stream of consciousness, huh George? Jeez. It seems like we could spend all day trying to answer everything you just asked, but we'll make it snappy. We called SF Animal Care and Control and asked them what they thought. Not surprisingly, they said you aren't allowed to bury your pet in the park. And we got the impression that the City frowns on burying your pet in your yard, although it wasn't too clear. But ACC will actually take your dead pet off your hands and dispose of it for you How? Cremation? Incineration? Burnination? Nope. A private company takes the remains and--this is kinda gross--recycles them as agricultural fertilizer. We asked how that happens and didn't get a real clear answer, but we weren't too upset about. You can also pay to get your pet cremated. Talk to the ACC or SFSPCA or your vet about getting that done.

What's one hundred sixty-two minus six?

Yours,

Shane

What the hell kind of dumb question is that, Shane? You silly thing, everyone knows 162 - 6 = 154. No, wait, uh, 156. Um, hang on, let's just open that handy calculator program in the operating system... yeah, 156. Not 154. 156. Ummmm. Next!

Dear Essefficist:

My parents came out for a visit from Yellow Springs, Ohio, and were admiring the bay windows that grace many buildings in San Francisco. They asked me if the bay window was an invention of the San Francisco Bay Area. Now I am sure that that it's an invention of some Bay area somewhere, (Montego, Chesapeake, Newport, and Tampa jump to mind) but could not swear to them that this invention came from around these parts. What's the deal here? Is the bay window something that we can lay claim to, or is its origin somewhere far away from here?

Scrumbly the Hamster

I am going on vacation for 3 weeks. I have a car. I have no money to pay for SFO parking. Where can I park my car while on vacation? It needs to be free. It needs to be within city limits, but I may be willing to consider someplace close to BART. Someplace where it won't get ticketed or towed, and (very important!!) won't get broken into or stolen. Any ideas?

Thanks! You rock.

- John

Free parking for three weeks? That's a long time, John. Let's see, you gotta find a place where not only is there no street cleaning and absolutely no site-specific length-of-parking restrictions--so that the DPT won't tag or tow your car simply as a matter of course--but also where your car isn't going to be a sitting duck for vandals or thieves. Unfortunately, the City allows cars to stay in one spot on the street for no more than seventy-two hours and in pretty much any neighborhood in town where you might feel safe leaving your car for any amount of time, locals are going to get pissed off watching your car accumulate dust for three weeks. The DPT and it's pink seventy-two hour tags are just one short phone call away. And any place where you aren't going to be subject to street cleaning or parking-jealous neighbors--let's say, maybe, Tunnel Avenue or Cargo Street--probably isn't a good place for your poor little car to hang out on its lonesome for too long.

So unfortunately, John, it seems to us that you're out of luck. Three week's worth of free and safe on-street parking within San Francisco is an unattainable goal. Unless you're the Dalai Lama or something and, um, unattainable goals are strangely attainable. Or something. Maybe someone in the comments will have a bright idea, but we doubt it. That'd be like fessing up about your poker tells. Or their favorite fishing spots. The problem with everyone knowing about something that juicy is that everyone knows about it. Before you know it there are ninety cars driving around the secret spot all the time and it might as well be the House of Nan King.

-MW

Stuff you can order? "How to maintain?" How about a Strunk & White's? Otherwise, did you catch that thing about the almighty It's-It? That's a pretty good orderable thing to bring back fond memories of the City by the Bay. And speaking of which, how about going to your local used record store and buying some Journey vinyl? Ohh-oooowohhhh-ooh-woh-oh-oh? Does that do it for you? Are you more of a traditionalist? Get some Tony Bennett while you're there.

The best thing we can think of is a subscription to Major League Baseball's Game Day Audio so you can listen to Giants broadcasts online. It's the first thing we'd do if we had to leave town. It's only fifteen bucks a season and you get your fill of Jon and Dave and Kruk and Kuip for six (or, if things go really well, seven) months. Another good thing might be some coffee from Caffe Trieste--we hope your sound was turned on when you hit that link--which is easily obtained online. That always seems like the quintessential San Francisco cafe to us.

But what else? Do three things a care package make? We thought we should seek help on this question, so we invited other SFist writers to give their suggestions as well.

For those of you who don't know what Lynn's talking about, Casa Sanchez is a taqueria on 24th Street that also does a bang-up business hawking their delicious chips and salsa at grocery stores. Back in 1999, they got a lot of press for offering to give free lunch for life to anyone who got their logo--a tiny sombreroed gentleman (Jimmy the Corn Man) riding an interstellar cruise missile made of an ear of corn--permanently tattooed on their person. We called up Casa Sanchez to get the scoop and sadly, but not surprisingly, they no longer offer this deal to new tattooees, only to the OG's who got their tattoos done back in the day. So if you got Jimmy on your shoulder in 1999, the deal still stands. Keep on partying, Prince. But otherwise, you'd better not get that tat unless you really love the styles they got at Casa Sanchez. And what about those OG's? Casa Sanchez originally limited the number of participants to fifty and they say that there are about forty people that still actually redeem their body art for free eats.

I don't know if that's a question you're interested in taking on (actually, I'm not really even sure what the question is), especially since it has nothing to do with SF. But, well, there it is.

Chesh

First off, it looks like the bigoted parade in question is in Boston, not New York. The controversy started in 1992 culminated in a Supreme Court decision in 1995 that basically allows the private organizers of the event, the Allied War Veterans Council of South Boston--a group led by a man named, appropriately enough, John ''Wacko'' Hurley--to ban anyone from the march whom they damn well feel like banning from the march, including the Irish-American Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Group of Boston, who filed the original suit. (This book should tell you all you might want to know about the case. Unfortunately, it sounds like this kind of stuff is still going on in Boston.) As for New York, there's actually an annual St. Paddy's parade in Queens that specifically welcomes any and all groups that want to march.

Thanks,

-jeff

What are we, some sort of repository for information about Treasure Island? Man! We were trying to get a St. Pat's theme going here, you know? How's about some Irish questions? Well. Um. Hello? Anyways.

First off jeff, we should remind you that there's no such thing as a dumb question, only a dumb questioner. But we here at the Essefficist know you're not dumb, you're just frazzled because you have to drive across that bridge twice a day. But anyways, the new bridge will in fact be inserting itself very neatly into the same tunnel as the old bridge. Well, actually, not so neatly, at least not right away, but eventually it should squeeze in there fairly gracefully. That is, of course, if they ever actually come up with the money to finish the thing.

So, about that commuter headache jeff was talking about. You don't know the half of it.

So let us now return to the barren moors of the windswept hamlet of Berkeley, whence hails this pancake:

I once visited the Buena Vista Cafe in San Francisco and they seemed to be laying claim to the invention of the Irish Coffee. I was skeptical, but when I visited Dublin, Ireland and ordered an Irish Coffee, the bartender, muttering something like "a waste of perfectly good whiskey," proceeded to make the drink with Sanka, which is so wrong I can't even begin to describe why. So what's the story? Is the SF version the real deal, or does the Emerald Isle really have a version that predates the Buena Vista's? And if so, did Americans screw up the recipe to make it palatable to Yanks? I'm going to be pouring Baileys into espresso until I know the scoop.

Mr. Drunken Jitters

Hey, Mr. DJ, cap that Baileys, 'cause we've got the lowdown for you. Your Irish bartender seems to have drunken a bit too much whiskey himself; Irish Coffee--hot coffee, sugar, whiskey, and fresh whipped cream in a warm stemmed glass--is in fact Irish, not San Franciscan. While it is true that the Buena Vista Cafe had a lot to do with popularizing the drink, they did not actually invent it (nor do they claim to have done so). Irish Coffee was actually invented around 1942 by a chef named Joe Sheridan at a restaurant in the air terminal in Foynes, a seaport in the west of Ireland and destination and stopover for early transatlantic flights, near the current site of Shannon Airport. Passengers would disembark freezing and miserable after up to eighteen hours in the frigid non-pressurized cabins of the flying boats, or seaplanes, that made the trip in those days. Sheridan concocted the drink to warm them up and settle them down. (It should be noted that even if the idea of mixing coffee and whiskey may not appeal to some, like your surly bartender, DJ, it certainly isn't a waste, especially if you're suffering a stroke.)

So why does everyone think that Irish Coffee was invented here? And why is it associated so strongly with the Buena Vista Cafe?

While you're coming up with a great question for next week's column, let's consider this gem we received from the far reaches of the promised land that is Berkeley:

Dear Essefficist:

What's the deal with that hunk of land in the bay called Treasure Island? Why is it named that? Has pirate booty ever been found on it? Was it named by a city committee with literary pretensions? Or is it one of those "there's-nothing-but-ice-here-but-if-we-call-it-Greenland-maybe-suckers-will-move-here" real estate naming scams?

Curious Buccaneer with Shovel

"Curious Buccaneer with Shovel?" What kind of name is that? How about an indefinite article or two, Blackbeard? "Aarrgg! Avast, ye hardies! Hand me shovel so I can dig hole for tweasure!" It's like Bizarro pirate world around here today.