All Sorts of Bracing

The crew hit it hard last week and completed all the ceiling work and bracing. Cyrick joined the crew for a few and did his best to tap some screws and not fall from the scaffolding. The new guy, Sifu, who joined the party early this week succesfully installed all the conduit and wiring in 5 days. This guys an old salt and knows his way around a construction site. He's got that swagger that says, "hey, give me something challenging. A monkey could do this". Needless to say we're glad he's part of our merry band.


1) We had to pay extra to let Cyrick help. Hey, someone needed to cover the cost of what he screwed up.

Last week we met with a few more wine-peeps from around SF. It's amazing how much wine is out there. I can see why a lot of bar and restaurant owners go with one or two distributors when choosing juice for their menu. It's a whole lot easier to do the one-stop-shop thing than work through 300 wines to find the 20 or so you want. However, we're committed to doing it the hard way. This will insure that every bottle or glass you order has the FA seal of approval. And let's be real, it's not that difficult, really.

1) Jeni from Classic Wines tasted us through a bunch of wines, both local and abroad. A few good ones in the bunch.

Great Wall took the weekend off and came in all fired up and ready to go on Monday. A great start to the week. They put a few more finishing touches on the drop ceiling and started the furring of the exterior wall shortly after. Basically, the recessed wall you see below is getting pushed out 4 inches to become flush with its surroundings. Not a big job but one more thing to check off the list.


1) Tommy, Ricky, and Eddy keeping the ball rolling. 2) The Walrus: So our electrician has been nicknamed The Walrus by Cyrick and I. This guy is priceless. He shows up for the first time last week in a pair of sweats, mustard-stained wife beater, with disheveled hair, and fighting to catch his breath. Not sure what happened to him before he showed up but first impressions are a bitch. The picture above is of him trying to lure a pygmy troll out from inside the electrical box with a piece of squash. More on this guy later.


Today, Tuesday, was a veritable beehive of activity in the space. It was the first day for the HVAC guys who came in to start the kitchen exhaust and air conditioning install. The Fillmore Center was kind enough to help us (read made it possible) get these two systems in our space. Since we have southern exposure, the sun--when it actually makes an appaerance in SF--will pound on our storefront the entire day. With the heat from the equipment, those 850 sf will get stuffy real quick. A big thanks to Dan, Doug, Paul, and Steve for hookin' us up! This will go a long way in creating a comfortable environment to sip a beer or chug a wine.


1 & 2) Installing the blower.


1 & 2) Forget what this was called but it's big and weighs a lot.


1 &2) Billy-Joe and his crew workin' some duct.


1) Me writing another check with lots of zeros. 2) Tommy, happy with my mad check writing skills.


1 & 2) The Great Wall crew! That's Tommy's Mom.


1) The two guys left to run the business--yikes--after GW leaves in a month.



Oh, and we squeezed another tasting in today with Jon from Tesori Wines. An all I-Talian distributor with a tight book of stellar juice. The highlights for us were the Malvasia, Grillo, and the Chianti Classico, oh and the Falanghina was damn tasty too.


1) Di welcoming Jon into her home. Dave and Di have allowed their home to be ground-zero for all wine tastings and recipe testing. Great peeps! 2) Jon slings vino by day and moonlights as the wine director at Range. Two pretty sweet gigs.


1) I'm the official note taker. 2) Di and Cy give me their best stream of conscious.


And the greatest part about today was I become a first-time Uncle!!!!

1) Coleridge is his name and I can't wait to meet him. Freaking awesome!

-JK