Decoding a Two-Year-Old: Part 2

Elliot surprised me today with another new phrase. We were playing in the living room when he suddenly remembered something he wanted from his room. It took me a second to interpret.

WHAT IT SOUNDED LIKE: "Henan"



WHAT HE MEANT: "Hang on"

Are Hip-Hop Cup Cakes Offensive?

Since I'm a fan of hip-hop and cup cakes, I feel like I should weigh in on this. Duncan Hines is under fire for ads promoting "hip-hop cupcakes" that look like they're wearing black face. (Thanks for the tip, BuboBlog Mission District correspondent Dave.)

The company took down the commercial from YouTube, but you can see it if you click over to the Eater site.

Having watched the clip, I don't think it's that scandalous. The cupcakes don't even rap — it's more like electronica (maybe the real problem is Dunan Hines labeling them as "hip-hop" when they aren't).

As a chocolate lover, I think it would be a shame if the company is forced to make the cup cakes vanilla. (Plus, what would they sing...Billy Joel?).

Decoding a Two-Year-Old

Elliot's vocabulary is growing quickly, but his enunciation can't quite keep up. In fact, it's pretty much impossible to understand what he's saying half the time. He makes Lou Ferrigno sound like Laurence Olivier.

"Heh-row."

Here's a sampling of some his favorite phrases. Go ahead and see if you can translate them (I've heard them in context enough times to be able to provide the answers).

1. WHAT IT SOUNDS LIKE: "Keane"



WHAT HE ACTUALLY MEANS: "Train"



2. WHAT IT SOUNDS LIKE: "Hobby"



WHAT HE MEANS: "Help, please"



3. WHAT IT SOUNDS LIKE: "Foo wall"



WHAT HE MEANS: "Football"



4. WHAT IT SOUNDS LIKE: "Pekar"



WHAT HE MEANS: "Police car"



5. WHAT IT SOUNDS LIKE: "Heat dare"



WHAT HE MEANS: "Sit there."



6. WHAT IT SOUNDS LIKE: "Mopey"



WHAT HE MEANS: "More, please"



I'm not sure if he gets credit for saying "please" when it's completely unintelligible, but I admire the effort.

Is This Some Kind of Trap?

We went to our new house in Berkeley and found they had already begun delivering the Chronicle to our doorstep.



The real surprise: The newspaper must have been sitting there for hours, and nobody stole it!

Either the new neighborhood has less crime than our old street, or no one in this part of town is able to read.

Using San Francisco's Name in Vain

There's another hotel here in Emeryville called the "Four Points San Francisco Bay Bridge."



It seems like a shameless attempt to trick people into thinking it's closer to San Francisco than it is. Because even if the hotel is arguably named after the bridge and not the city, the span's true name is the "San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge."

Ironically, there's a motel in our old neighborhood in SoMa called the Bay Bridge Inn.

If you walk to the front of the Bay Bridge Inn and look straight down Harrison Street (and there are no buses blocking your view), you can just see the Bay Bridge. But it seems like a pretty tenuous link to the landmark.

Based on the view, it might make more sense to name it the One Rincon Hill Inn (or the Ionic Breeze Inn)?



But note that they didn't call it the "Oakland Bay Bridge Inn."

The Itinerant San Franciscan: Week Four

I guess this installment should be called the "Itinerant Emeryvillian," because that's where we are now — the final stop before we move into our home in Berkeley. We're staying at a place called the Woodfin Suites, overlooking Emeryville from the 10th floor.

Yesterday Kelly took the car, so Elliot and I had to negotiate Emeryville on foot. We made the mistake of trying to make it all the way to the marina (the lady at the front desk told us it was a short walk — it's not), then got caught in a downpour.

At least Emeryville offers plenty of freeway overpasses for shelter, with cool sculptures to boot.





The Emeryville Public Market also is nearby. It's hard not to love a food court with everything from cheesesteaks to Afghan food.



The restaurant inside our hotel is called Emery Grille (get it?). I feel like we should try it out, if only because that kind of bold wordplay needs to be rewarded.

My Muni Bucket List

One of the sad parts of leaving San Francisco is I won't be riding Muni anymore. I feel like I've spent much of the past 13 years mastering the intricacies of this wondrous-yet-fickle transit system, and now all this knowledge will go to waste. Then there's Elliot, who has spent the majority of his young life riding Muni (and no one gets more excited by buses than him). I only hope AC Transit can live up to his standards (they do seem to have more exciting fights).

Fortunately, I managed to spend this week trying to soak up as much Muni as possible. Every day I've taken a different line to work. For instance, I had never commuted to work on a cable car before (though I have taken them during off hours), so I set out to experience that.

Here are the crossed-out items from my Muni "bucket list."

MONDAY: CABLE CAR
I walked down to California and Van Ness, and boarded a downtown-bound cable car.

Amazing: Hardly any tourists (maybe because it would never occur to them to come to this part of town to find a cable car). Most of the riders were well-dressed businesspeople, who fixated on their BlackBerrys. I handed my Clipper card to the gripman, who couldn't manage to scan it. It apparently happens a lot because he just gave up and handed the card back to me.

Before reaching the end of the line, the car came grinding to a halt. The driver announced that he had "run out of cable" and that he had "given it every inch." Then we all had to get out and walk the rest of the way. Is this a common occurrence? If so, it's maybe not an ideal commuting choice — even with few tourists and no fare collection.

TUESDAY: 1-CALIFORNIA
I've taken the 1-California many times, but never to work in the morning. So I was excited to try this out. But finding where to pick it up isn't the most intuitive process.

Despite the name, it doesn't run on California for much of its route, and I neglected to look up the map on my computer before leaving the hotel.

So I found someone who offered directions: I had to walk up to where Gough becomes a two-way road and Sacramento becomes one-way. It almost seemed like a riddle, or a line from "Lord of the Rings." But I managed to find the stop on Gough and hopped on. The bus then turned down Clay and took that route downtown.

To me, the 1-California has always represented the life of luxury — how the other half of Muni lives. It seems like a fast, reliable bus line that serves the city's wealthy and powerful neighborhoods.

In real life, the bus gets a little too crowded to be glamorous. And it's only fast if you get the express. But it is filled with young, good-looking professionals having conversations about their exciting lives. One woman talked about how she recently went on a business trip in Beijing and got food poisoning from a Starbucks (not sure if that's irony or karma).

WEDNESDAY: 2-CLEMENT
I was late to work the first two days, so I thought maybe the 2-Clement would be speedier. It wasn't.

The 2 is just as crowded as the 1 (if not more so), and yet it runs through the Tenderloin and Union Square. In other words, you get both the crazy/homeless/drug-addict crowd AND tourists. Not a good combination.

THURSDAY: 38-GEARY
Ah, the 38. You don't get much more crowded than this. And because it's usually a double bus, it's pretty much the Wild West by the time you get to the rear. Livestock, dice games, pole dancing — you name it. I was too crammed in to be able to observe much of anything, sadly.

FRIDAY: ???
Not sure what I'll do tomorrow...maybe just take a cab.