Words - SFist - San Francisco News, Restaurants, Events, & Sports

78 Food Writing Words That Are Out

Brock Keeling — Wed, 20 Jul 2011 16:05:28 GMT

The remarkable and remarkably talented Joyce Slaton of CHOW complied a list of the 78 most annoying words to read in a restaurant review. Among them? "Gastro pub," "sustainable," "toothsome," "meltingly tender," "slurp," "most unique," "redolent," "redolent," "died and gone to heaven," "local," "mouthfeel," and "yummo." Missing from the list? "Artisanal," "walnuts" and "pop-up," the latter of which we totally use in a headline today! But still. Stop using "pop-up," loony food writers. It's almost as bad as "hyperlocal," "blogosphere" or "the Mission."

Can you think of any other food writing words that need nixing?

[CHOW]

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Year Announced

Brock Keeling — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 10:40:04 GMT

Merriam-Webster announced the 'Word of the 2009 ' today: admonish.

Admonish (ad-ˈmä-nish)
transitive verb
Etymology: Middle English admonesten, from Anglo-French amonester, from Vulgar Latin admonestare, alteration of Latin admonēre to warn, from ad- + monēre to warn
Date: 14th century

1 a : to indicate duties or obligations to b : to express warning or disapproval to especially in a gentle, earnest, or solicitous manner
2 : to give friendly earnest advice or encouragement to
3: duty of SFist commenters

"Admonish" was the most frequently looked up word in 2009. Runners up include emaciated,
empathy, furlough, and inaugurate.

SFist Tonight

Brock Keeling — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 14:05:05 GMT

DISCUSSION/THEATER: Before Michael Bennett and Bob Fosse rose to fame with shocking original choreography, directorial genius, and having a penchent for abusing dancers, we had Jerome Robbins. The mastermind of steps behind such famous works as Gypsy, West Side Story, and Fiddler on the Roof, just to name a few, will be discussed in length tonight at "Words on Dance Celebrates the Life and Career of Jerome Robbins." The panel discussion will be hosted by "Robbins expert" Amanda Vaill, dancers Grover Dale and Sondra Lee, lyricist Sheldon Harnick, and Oakland's always way cool Rita Moreno (who effortlessly won the Academy Award winner in West Side Story for playing "Anita".)

7:30 p.m. // Herbst Theatre [2170 Market] // $25

FILM: Check out My Name Is Albert Ayler, the 2005 documentary about the life of avant-garde saxophonist Albert Ayler, the Cleveland-born jazz artist who moved to Sweden in the halcyon days of the '60s "in pursuit of musical freedom."

7:30 p.m. // The Red Vic [1727 Haight] // $5-8.50

MUSIC: Buxter Hoot'n is a relatively young band, an outfit that uses both acoustic and electric sounds, has gone from relative obscurity to gaining underground buzz in record time. While all to easy to dismiss them as a jam band, Relix Magazine claims that they have the "independent rawness and creative brilliance that leads to a cult classic." And you just can't argue with rawness of the independent variety, folks. Campo Bravo and the Blank Tapes open for Buxter Hoot'n.

7:15p.m., 9:15 p.m. // Cafe Du Nord [2170 Market] // $8

COMEDY: Although he was born in Alabama, Reggie Steele honed his storytelling form of stand-up comedy right here in the Bay Area. The former Last Comic Standing finalist performs tonight.

9 p.m. // Cub Deluxe [1511 Haight] // $5-10

The listed events were chosen by the editors of SFist and brought to you by the .

Fiddler on the Roof

Culpepper- He's the Man, the Man with the Midas Touch

Jon — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 10:45:58 GMT

he Raiders have a new QB, at least for the moment. That QB is Daunte Culpepper, Randy Moss' ex-ball chucker. He had a little tryout for the team yesterday and it went so well, he was signed. Which is one way of looking at it. The other way of looking at it is that a deep connection was made between two desperate entities as Culpepper came in overweight and was said to be "spotty" with his passes. Culpepper is a pretty good fit as current Raiders QBs Josh McNown or Andrew Walter kinda suck. He's expected to keep the chair warm until first round draft pick JaMarcus Russell is ready to go.

And speaking of Russell, he's still holding out for more money and the negotiations aren't really going well. The problem seems to be that nobody with the Raiders is in charge of negotiating contracts. Words being thrown around to describe the whole thing include "bizarre" and "embarrassing." Mentioned as people involved include the Raiders Boy ~~Blunder~~ Wonder of a coach; finance administrator Marc Badain, the teams lawyer, Jeff Birren, and the new director of football development, Mark Jackson. And while Jackson didn't run a bed-and-breakfast recently, his major accomplishments recently include being the assistant athletic director at USC and working for a boxing organization. The final say, however, as always, is Al Davis who has yet to weigh, probably because he has yet to be defrosted from his cryogenic chamber. We would like to point out too that most teams who have the #1 pick in the draft start negotiating with their pick ahead of time. The Raiders, apparently, did not.

Ironically, the Raiders were rumored to be pursuing Culpepper in the off-season and wanted to trade with the Dolphins to get him, the plan being to sign Culpepper and then make WR draft stud Calvin Johnson their first pick. The plan didn't go through because the Chiefs putzed around with trading Trent Green to the Dolphins and because the Raiders were never sure they could get him, drafted Russell.

Go Raiders.

Pedestrian Killed on Valencia Street by Asshole Driver

Jon — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 15:27:05 GMT

From what we understand, the Quentin Tarantino portion of his Grindhouse movie is about a stunt driver who goes a little crazy and starts running over people. Which sounds kind of dumb and makes us wish Quentin would stop slumming around and get back to making great movies again. But in reading about the below story, we're starting to think Quentin might be into something because this story, about a pedestrian being killed in anger by a car driver on Valencia Street, is darn right awful.

The story goes that around 2 last night, while SFist was sound asleep nearby, a car tried to make a left turn from Valencia onto 16th Street when he encountered two people trying to cross. Words were exchanged and the driver got out to continue the confrontation. He got back into the car and started driving after the two pedestrians. When one of them hit the car in anger, the driver proceeded to drive up and onto the sidewalk, killing one of the two people.

That, as they say, is insane.

The driver has been arrested and is awaiting charges.

Your Commute: Fight!

rita — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 14:39:17 GMT

We can't decide if we're sorry we missed this, or if we're extremely grateful that we take BART to work in the mornings.

So around 7:30 a.m. this morning, an SUV ran into a pickup truck on the upper deck of the Bay Bridge. Words were exchanged, tempers flared, the fight turned into a "physical altercation," and then all of a sudden the driver of the pickup truck jumped onto the hood of the SUV to stop the SUV driver from leaving the scene. Unfortunately, the driver of the pickup truck then fell off the hood and slammed into the ground, injuring his elbow.

Everyone was taken to the hospital and traffic was cleared by 8:15 a.m. The CHP officer said that while fights aren't unheard of, "rarely does someone jump onto the hood of a car."

Picture from the highway fight scene from the Matrix Reloaded.

Stage Fog: Your Pre-Halloween Party

Karen — Tue, 25 Oct 2005 13:13:18 GMT

Hey, the party's not till Monday, so check out some crazy characters hitting SF stages this weekend. Sure, go ahead and dress up: They've got bandits, Hollywood stars, a boy that looks like a bat (the animal, in case you were actually watching the World Series and got confused), and of course, the Halloween staple Judy Garland herself.

at Intersection for the Arts
Long before gentrification was the Mission District's biggest crime story, a Latino Bonnie and Clyde made headlines, robbing bars and nightclubs until they were caught. Words of advice: Cabs are ineffective getaway cars. San Francisco playwright Octavio Solis departs radically from his brutally poetic work to immortalize the couple in this new musical comedy. Yeah, we can't quite imagine a musical comedy on Intersection for the Arts' stage either, but damn are we looking forward to it. With some of resident company Campo Santo's best actors, live music composed by Beth Custer and movement by the astounding Erika Chong Shuch, this musical is our best bet for the week. What's more, Intersection hosts a Ballad of Pancho & Lucy Bar Crawl on November 9, which sold out so fast they added new dates: November 6, 13 and 20. Drink in some of the Mission's best ungentrified bars and enjoy the show. Reserve soon because shows at Intersection always sell out.
Playing October 26 through November 21

The Ballad of Pancho & Lucy

Heeyyy Batta Batta

rita — Wed, 15 Sep 2004 15:47:22 GMT

The story of the heckler out of Oakland Coliseum just keeps getting better and better. Today, Craig and Jennifer Bueno gave a press conference to announce that they would be pursuing both civil and criminal penalties against Texas Rangers pitcher Frank Francisco for throwing a chair into the stands last night. (Say what you will about Francisco, when you play the video, he does appear to have a pretty good arm.) Craig, a Hayward firefighter, freely admits he was the taunter in the incident in question and defended his right as an American baseball fan to heckle the other side.

To be fair, Craig says he restricted his commentary simply to the usual fan trash talk ("Who's going to get the win tonight? Who's going to blow it? I saw your mama the other night," etc.), and witnesses confirm that he wasn't engaging in any racial or sexual taunting -- but others at the game also say that they heard Craig repeatedly calling Rangers pitcher Brocail fat throughout most of the game. For some reason, this reminds SFist of the Simpsons episode where Darryl Strawberry cries a single tear after Bart and Lisa make fun of him at the nuclear plant baseball game. Words can hurt, Mr. Bueno!