An Activist Community
There are some ads that have been running on TV here in the run up to voting in November on the subject of California being an activist state, where people speak out on subjects that exercise them, and I think it’s particularly true of San Francisco.
The reason I mention this is, believe it or not, a restaurant.
During my temporary sojourn in the delightfully named Cow Hollow, I had occasion to check out a newish Italian wine bar/restaurant on Union Street. Dave and I went and had an interesting and very pleasant bottle of wine, then we went back a few nights later to add food to the package. Both times we had good service, the wine was very acceptable and the food above average.
Then, as has become my wont since I went native, I checked it out on Yelp (seriously, I Yelp everything these days) and discovered references to the establishment’s owner, one Luisa Hanson, and several comments about what was clearly a storied history in the San Francisco restaurant community. Intrigued, I did a little more digging and found a wealth of material suggesting a history of legal wranglings, environmental health closures and run-ins with the owners and patrons of establishments she’s bought and then either left unused or reopened with very short term ventures. Campaigns to keep her purchases open have fallen on deaf ears. Much of this seems to be properly documented, particularly the legal cases and the closure of her namesake restaurant on health grounds, so it doesn’t seem to be just a single case of sour grapes.
But still, if you’re not a huge multinational, it’s quite impressive that someone will go to the trouble of establishing a site solely and specifically for the purposes of tracking your business activity. Meet Luisa Confidential.