Candy bars are meant to be consumed during your walk from the liquor store to your apartment's front door. Typically after having too many beers. But what about an $11 candy bar? When we came across Coracoa's Caramel Bar (81% raw cacao, if you're an asshole) at Small Foods in South Park, we couldn't resist.

First, we know that, according to many, our first reaction at that price should've been disgust. Anger. We should have shook our head at the over San Francisco's twisted relationship with food. But we didn't. We felt neither horror nor ire. If anything, the $11 price tag—sitting there nonchalantly, acting like it didn't do anything—intrigued us. "I bet that's what'll finally make us happy," we thought. Bullshit's siren song. It's like the clothing items up on the wall at Crossroads. We're drawn to those pieces, leaving behind the pit-stained Banana Republic and Diesel for you. Things that cost more are better and thus make you a better person, or so we'd like to believe.

Anyway, we bought it. Ate it. Enjoyed it pretty damn quick. Did not savor it. (Savoring chocolate is for women in Dove Chocolate commercials.) And we can report that, alas, it didn't taste like $11. The candy bar, made by Emeryville's Coraco Confections, boasts organic raw cacao, cashew butter, organic coconut palm sugar, "wild-crafted vanilla bean," yacon syrup, and Himalayan crystal salt. The candy bar was pleasant. Gritty but smooth caramel, with a deep chocolate taste. It tasted like sustainability. It tasted like Caramello's wealthy cousin that goes to UCSC.

According to an employee at Small Foods, Coracoa's Caramel Bar does sell pretty well. Makes sense, we suppose, since the quaint neighborhood turns into a tech-industry feeding frenzy at lunch hour. So if you've got money to burn, buy it. Just make sure people see you eating it. Otherwise, what's the point?

Previously: Would You Pay $11 for a Pint of Juice?

It's been about a week since San Francisco's newest Whole Foods, its seventh location, opened on Market and Dolores. Located directly across Market Street from Safeway, which is in turn located across Church Street from mom-and-pop outfit Golden Produce and Golden Natural Foods, the new opening will be a most dramatic case study for what happens when a neighborhood's grocery options hit the high water mark.

As a Lower Haight resident for almost six years, this reporter has always found our neighborhood options pretty top-notch. The Safeway is, after all, open 24 hours, and you have not truly experienced the many textures of human existence until you've grocery-shopped there at 3am. For the most part, though, Safeway is best suited to quotidian needs like toilet paper, stamps and booze. Golden Produce and Golden Natural Foods have always been a go-to for general groceries: they have fresh produce at good prices, a solid selection of even the most arcane ingredients and a family-owned vibe that gives me a warm fuzzy feeling.

With all that being said, it was with some trepidation that I checked out the new Whole Foods yesterday. The reason? Stepping into a WF is like entering a lifestyle commercial where unicorns are real and it's totally okay to spend $80 on probiotic supplements. The soothing design! The helpful staff! The fresh guacamole! Everything at Whole Foods is designed to give you a sense of plenty, and of entitlement, and no matter how hard I try to resist, I'm a total sucker for all of it. So much so that the sudden proximity of this particular Whole Foods doesn't just make me worry about other shoppers swarming away from more cost-effective and family-owned options: I'm worried that I'll be the one unable to resist.

The newest WF isn't the largest nor is it the best designed. (The gold-on-white aisle signs are super hard to read, and the cords attaching the salad tongs to the cases? Come on.) The vibe was not one of unbridled excitement at the opening (except, it should be said, for the charming and enthusiastic staff). The inexplicable and out-of-place shoeshine stand stood empty. And the vaguely zombified shoppers circulating the floor had an air less of joy than of quiet, self-assured entitlement. Their demeanor telegrammed, "We deserve nothing less." Were they neighborhood shoppers I'd seen at Golden or on dawn patrol at Safeway, or were they coming from farther afield and bringing their cash monies with them?

As I tried to think clearly about the economics benefits and community drawbacks to the new store, I felt my eyes glazing over at the ample prepared foods section and my fingers reaching for my wallet. I ended up buying some dried cranberries, a butternut squash and some sour cream, all of which I could've gotten elsewhere but here felt somehow more aspirational, as if the soup I was about to make would be featured in a glossy magazine spread (for which I'd be amply paid, of course). I left the store feeling good, but as I walked home past Golden Natural Foods and saw Sally working the register like always, I was cut down by guilt.

Of course, it's up to market forces to determine which grocery options stay and which go. It'll be interesting to watch this and other cases across the city. For example, how will new foodie outpost Local Mission Market fare on Harrison and 23rd Streets, for instance, and what of the many nearby Mexican markets? How is Green Earth Natural Foods holding up since Bi-Rite moved to Divisadero?

Here's what I do know: it'll take time before Safeway and Golden feel the effects of the new arrival, but feel it they will. And try as I might to continue supporting Golden Produce, and I will try, I can't help but be afraid that we'll see another locally-owned business bite the dust. So I've devised a simple plan for what I'm allowing myself to buy at WF: yes to fancy body oils, grab-and-go sushi, and SooFoo (grain medley of the gods!); no to anything I can buy at Golden, which is closer, cheaper, and way less glamorous.

Arrigo Boito's opera Mefistofele is an odd duck to open the season. It clocks at three and a half hours (thus an eternity before getting to the post-performance opening-night parties). It's not a beloved war horse. It's a weird blend of the German and Italian musical styles of the late 19th century. Its non-linear plot takes meditative turns and makes sense only if you have read an annotated synopsis or better, the two volumes of Goethe's Faust. Opening night calls for an opera speedy and light to celebrate the new season. Mefistofele is anything but.

And yet the Opera's gamble paid off, thanks to an inspired staging full of invention by Robert Carsen (from 1989, revived this time by Laurie Feldman), a set design (by Michael Levine) richer than a flourless chocolate cake, a phenomenal performance by bass Ildar Abdrazakov, and a clearly joyous opera chorus.

Here's the first thing you should know about Fort Point after dark: even if you've been sweating like porcine on one of San Francisco's hottest weekends, come nightfall you will still be shrouded in freezing mist, whipped by cyclonic winds and dripped on by condensation from the Golden Gate Bridge towering overhead. Do not, as I did, wear a thin (but cute!) chambray shirt and sandals, but rather take your cues from the better-informed visitors getting jealous stares all evening: fleece gloves, knit hats, and mountain-ready outerwear are a must when attending the theatrical troupe We Players' immersive performance of Macbeth.

I didn't quite realize this when I checked in at the imposing gates of the fort(ress). "Do you have something warmer to wear?" asked the concerned Shakespearean clipboard-holder. "Oh yes!" I lied, panicking. "Do you have to use the bathroom? There are no bathrooms inside the Fort, and we'll be locked in for three hours." "Nope, I'm good" I lied again. And so it was underclothed and over-hydrated that I was herded into the fort and the doors closed ominously behind us.

Luckily, creature discomforts suit this play. After seeing We Players' production, it's almost hard to imagine watching MacBeth's murderous rise and fall from cushy indoor seat. Macbeth is a creepy, tragic play, and here those themes are echoed in every dimly lit corner, freezing stone surface and winding staircase. The setting is the star in this production, which enacts Shakespeare's infamous "Scottish play" throughout the courtyard, passageways and corners of the Civil War-era fort, punctuated by a persistent fog horn and the crashing of waves.

We Players is the company that staged Hamlet on Alcatraz, Twelfth Night at the Hyde Street Pier and The Odyssey on Angel Island, and their use of open spaces is inspired. Don't expect an interactive experience on par with Punchdrunk's Macbethian 'Sleep No More', however: this is much more straightforward theater, albeit creatively staged. The audience is split into two group that are guided by captains around the fort, sometimes watching a scene together, sometimes in separate groups. Watching an intimate, candlelit scene in one of the fort's dark corners while hearing the screams and shouts of a concurrently unfolding scene is one of the production's pleasures

Mackenszie Drae plays a youthful, handsome Macbeth, credibly devolving into wide-eyed paranoia and homicidal mania, and Artistic Director Ava Roy is a hardened Lady Macbeth with whom it's hard to find much sympathy (but why would you want to?). A mustachioed Benjamin Stowe plays Macduff, whose fight with Macbeth takes on cinematic excitement as the two battle against railings, race up stairways and duel with swords and daggers across a fog-swept roof. The Weird Sisters, played by Julie Douglas, Caroline Parsons and Maria Leigh, were wonderfully creepy and their infamous "double, double, toil and trouble" scene was elevated from witchy cliches by truly skincrawling staging.

Another affecting moment was during the banquet scene, where audience members crowd a long table and snack on bread, fruit and cheese. Macbeth, haunted by the bloody ghost of Banquo (played by Nikolas Strubbe), advances down the tabletop, gibbering and raving. As Banquo's ghost hovers at the far end of the table, the foghorn moans and the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. I forgot all about being cold and needing to pee: at Fort Point, ghosts have never felt more real.

MacBeth at Fort Point
Thursdays-Sundays at 6 p.m., until October 6
Note: We Player's Saturday shows are sold out.