Hi. I'm Josh.

Hey ho!  Nice marketing, Olympus. (via spieri)

Super Twiddler (£1.79)
One to watch: (currently only available in US) With a tagline of ‘Don’t Twiddle your thumbs, twiddle your iPhone’ this app can’t fail to impress. Massively fun to use with a spin and shake interface, Super Twiddler suggests up-to-date activities based on your mood, location and how much time you have to play with. (via whichbudget.com)

Thanks guys!

fuckyeahglobetrotters:

fyeahafrica:

thisismebeingnice:

Renee Loth has some salient points about storytelling, getting lost, and giving travel directions in this digital age:

I became a lifelong fan of the Lonely Planet travel guides 20 years ago on a solo trip to Hawaii, when I stopped along a scenic highway to look for a hidden waterfall and found the trailhead just where the guide said it would be, 200 yards past the chain-link fence after the mile-marker sign on the right. There is nothing like an accurate, lucid narrative to help fight insecurity and alienation — the very definition of being lost.

Writing good directions is not unlike poetry: an exercise in awareness, requiring an eye for detail and succinct but evocative language. It’s a delight to read something like “Travel over the old stone bridge — built in 1764! — until you see the brick library and Odd Fellows Hall on your right. Turn right there and go down the hill to the water.’’ Isn’t that so much better than “Head NW on S Main St/MA 1A N .5 miles toward Market Street,’’ or some similar digital version?

Bravo - technology should complement humanity, not supersede it.

dalasverdugo:

azspot

(via technipol)

From Dot Earth:

Federal researchers have published work concluding that a particular variant of the periodic El Niño warmups of the tropical Pacific Ocean is becoming more frequent and stronger. The pattern appears to fit what is expected from human-driven warming of the global climate

What no one is talking about is the utter irresponsible way in which we approach our world — it’s resources, climate and balance.  Our asses are on a ticking time bomb that will explode in the next decade; the shrapnel will be failing infrastructure, water shortage and food shortage. Mix that in with overpopulation and let’s see how well we play nice with each other.  

What do these recent stories have in common besides being glossed over by our Fourth Estate?

• The Arctic isn’t so arctic any more
• Amtrak breaks down
• Subway tickets are going up .. again
• There’s some sort of drought in Russia
• .. And some water problem in Pakistan
• Georgia has a water supply issue.. and so does Mexico
• Record highs this year
• etc.

And yet we’re all talking about a fucking ‘mosque’.  Serves us right. And for all the guys who follow Beck and Plain and all the other nutsos.. don’t take me down with you.  I’m getting out while you wave your anti-fag placards with your Cheetos stained paws and debate Obama’s religion with your 17th century education.  New Zealand sounds pretty good.

Holy shit 1962 .. before the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1963?

From pinktentacle.com:

Japanese artist Isao Hashimoto’s “1945-1998” is an animated map showing the 2,053 nuclear explosions that took place around the world during the 20th century, from the detonations at Alamogordo, Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 to the tests conducted by India and Pakistan in 1998.

Skip to the 12 minute mark for a summary and fallout map.. but the video shows you each month of each year since 1945.

Related to the last post - how fucking awesome is Japan?  These Japanese vintage subway posters just made my Friday. (via EC)

The three annoying train monsters shown in the poster are Nesshii (the sleeping monster), Asshii (the leg-crossing monster), and Shinbunshii (the newspaper-reading monster).

Great series of London’s underground posters from this Flickr set. I especially like some of the older ones that references the wars.  Slideshow starts here. (via echan)

This is pretty awesome. Viva Mexico!

superwell:

Please watch this ! If you´re in love with the water the wave great images & great words you have to !!!

www.mickeysmith.co.uk

Lucky enough to do what I love.

Web favicons, size by traffic. (via NYTimes Bits)

david:

Colbert finally mentioned Tumblr on air! My life is complete.

And Flickr! Hilarious episode.. “Tell them you were beta testing!” Ha!

Autotune greatness. Background of story here.

Why do I care that you’re having brunch at some hotel?  Why do I care that you just planted some strawberries? Or that you had an idea while you’re on the toilet?

I only care if I’m participating in those activities somehow with you.  If I’m thinking about brunch, too.  Or if I’m playing Farm the Strawberries with you.  Or talking to you on the phone while you’re having the genius idea on the toilet.

Otherwise, it’s just spam.  Empty brain carbs.

Here’s an example of a daily thought I have:  

“Great, I get 50% off for a high end massage services that I don’t need. But it’s such a good deal so I should spend the money that I wouldn’t have budgeted anyways! Thanks Groupon!”

When are we, as users, going to start self-curating ourselves?  Because these products aren’t going to do it.  Facebook and Twitter and Google and Groupon aren’t going to build tools that will allow you to slow down and think more and publish and use stuff that are actually worthwhile. The Internet model is based on sharing.  And sharing in tech means more data.  The more data is out there, the more machines can do something useful or interesting with it.. or just new.  Machines, people, technology and new products have to justify their existence. Getting you to input new things and publish new data is what the model is concerned about because all they’re concerned about is growth.  It doesn’t matter if those things are useful or good or relevant.

The old assumption is that growth justifies the value of something.  If something is good, it evolves and survives and grow.  That simply isn’t true.  Lots of bad shit grows too - look at Big Oil.  And worse, lots of not-bad-but-not-good stuff sees high growth too.. it’s these kinds of things, the vapid, useless things, that clogs up our systems and damages the growth of the good stuff.

On a larger scale, that’s how human civilization has operated for millenniums.   We’re a productivity-based race - we borrow so that we can not deal with that tricky problem of resource scarcity in the present, so that we can invest in capital expenditures for new projects, new research and findings.  But the model isn’t sustainable because essentially we’re borrowing from the future to spend on the present, and when the things we create aren’t useful, aren’t relevant any longer, the model goes to shit.  We track GDP but we don’t really track if all the things we’re producing are useful.

So I’m going to try something.  I’m going to disconnect my Tumblr feed from Facebook, disconnect Twitter from Facebook, turn off Places, Farmville and all the other types of things that I can publish… I’m going to experiment with using Facebook as if they had stripped it down to what it really ought to be, a place for real friends to hang out and have conversations.  Conversations that are human and two way and about the things we’re actually doing offline, things that we find are interesting and useful. So what’s important?  Photos. Announcements. Direct messages. Perhaps links as references for actual conversations. 

But that’s it.  I’m going to self-edit and curate my own stream, clean up the people that I actually want to have conversations with on Facebook and see what happens.  I’m going to see if you can have a sustainable media model online. Oh hello user-generated content — meet user-curated content.

merlin:

Cee-Lo - “FUCK YOU!”

Yeah, I’m sorry,
I can’t afford a Ferrari…

I guess he’s an Xbox
And I’m more Atari

[via Neven]

Oh I so love maps. (via fuckyeahglobetrotters)

True. Excellent comic: Huxley vs Orwell — Huxley wins. (via recombinant records)

pdx503:

fuckyeahtattoos:

I’m sure you all know, but tumblr is totally fucked right now. We have stuff in queue that somehow has notes on it, we have posts getting deleted without our ever touching it, and we have posts that keep multiplying before being accepted. We’ve already emailed tumblr staff about it (they’re “working” on it), so maybe if you wish real hard, they’ll actually do something about it. Until then, thanks for sticking with us while we try to get it all sorted out.

Hey man I really dig your blog, but you need to cut Tumblr some slack. If you’re aware of the issue, they are aware of the issue. No need to get snippy bout the response you’re given from them that they’re looking into it. You are not the only person thats has been having trouble. As soon as they get this issue resolved, you can start posting owl tattoos and shit.

Peace.

dennis101:

Bruce Lees? SHIT, BADASS!

(via fuckyeahnikes)

Sean O’Neill, theorizing on the future of travel media on Gadling.

It would be really super if this turns out to be true and the market demand can support these ‘zines.

(via paulbrady)

Fucking awesome (via @cynk) mashup of Brubeck and Radiohead.

Ok - this review does a much better job than my own rant about this stupid story.

christenduong:

Chop Suey = Linux

Great talk about the origins, hybridization and spread of some popular American Chinese food.  Love the history and the contrast between centralized vs open distribution systems.  Would argue that for open systems (like Chinese food and Linux) — the core culture of developers have to be really strong and in sync.

aznnerd:

Creep - Scala & Kolacny Brothers (Radiohead cover)

Oh hell. Played out but it’s a dammed good cover.

Comfortable, Comparable - Hooray for Earth

Happy Friday!

I haven’t seen the movie. I haven’t read the book. But I hate the premise.  I also really hate A. O. Scott’s review. Here’s a rebuttal / rant, of sorts:

… but it can be refreshing, now and then, to see something different in the multiplex: a movie that takes seriously (or for that matter has fun with) a woman’s autonomy, her creativity, her desire for something other than a mate.

Clever moving of the goalpost.  The movie is still about a woman’s reaction to a divorce.  It’s the divorce, and the lack of a relationship with a man, that spurs her on this ‘journey’. It’s still about men, or the absence thereof, that defines women.  I’d love to see a movie that shows authentic travel by women just for the thrill of it.  We often see men explorers off in faraway lands and not question their motives — they’re adventurers, after all, seeking whatever it is that men seek.  But here, this pretense of a liberating movie puts women and traveling together because a divorce opened her eyes. Ok.

… the film offers an easygoing and generous blend of wish fulfillment, vicarious luxury, wry humor and spiritual uplift…

In other words: what white people want.  Or more specifically, what bored, out of their minds corporate zombies want — a virtual escape from their dead end lives.

So many people in this world confront much graver threats to their well-being: violence, poverty, oppression. This woman has nothing but good luck! True enough, but the kind of class consciousness that would blame Liz for feeling bad about her life and then taking a year abroad to cure what ails her strikes me as a bit disingenuous — a way of trivializing her trouble on the grounds of gender without having to come out and say so.

Really the objection has nothing to do with gender. I’d have the same objection if it was a man. There’s no shame in taking off if you don’t like how your life is going. But the fact is.. the 1st world troubles that most of us have is trivial compared to the problems that we’ll see when we travel to other parts of the world.  We take it for granted that the American dream of a house, lawn, car, job, education is within grasp. It’s a symptom of a culture of entitlement that’s striking.

What “Eat Pray Love” has — what the superficial “Sex and the City 2” notably lacked — is a sense of authenticity [my emphasis]… Reflecting on her earlier life, she observes that for most of it she was either with a man or in the process of leaving one, and so in the first stages of her journey she experiments with singleness.  

The three themes enumerated in the title are explored with a cheerful tact unlikely to trouble any tastes or sensibilities. The food is not overly spicy or exotic — spaghetti in Rome, pizza in Naples; the religion not uncomfortably, you know, religious; and the sex discreet almost to the point of invisibility.

I cringe at how authneticity is treated.  Pizza in Italy, yoga in Bali?  She’s experimenting with singleness?

“Eat Pray Love” is unlikely to change anybody’s life or even to provoke emotions anywhere near as intense as those experienced, early and late, by its intrepid heroine. Its span may be global, but its scope is modest, and it accepts a certain superficiality as the price of useful insight. Watch. Smile. Go home and dream of Brazilians in Bali.

So after watching this movie - go home and dream about it.  Stay in your cubicles and your well worn relationships and 1st world annoyances and take comfort in the fact that by watching a fluff of a movie you can confront whatever troubles that ails you.

My gripe with movies and books like these is that it gives our entitled selves a false sense of security.  Exploring the world in these constructs mean visiting the tourist trails and ticking off checklists.  Travel instead ought to be about empathy, of understanding different viewpoints and how the world actually is.  Authenticity is not based on your understanding of how Italians behave from movies or Indians believe from books or Indonesians live from postcards — it’s about breaking out of your mindset and being uncomfortable, being challenged and doing stuff.  My gripe is that this movie pretends to address all of these issues when all it is is a big sentimental circle jerk for unhappy people who are unwilling to really change their lifestyle. So yeah, go watch the movie.. and keep on thinking of happily ever after and palm trees while you complain about stuff. 

subcreation:

Hilarious spoof of The Social Network trailer with Twitter transposed for Facebook.

(via gilgul)

photojojo:

Sergey Larenkov takes the Michael Hughes concept one step further!

He seamlessly drops photos from WWII Vienna, Berlin, and Prague into their modern-day counterpart for beautiful collages of what once was.

Sergey Larenkov’s Past/Present Photographs

via Jad Abumrad

What Happened to Yahoo, Paul Graham (via mihasya)

We’re still fighting the good fight at Flickr… — there’s a blog post (or a book) somewhere in here.

The history of banh mi (via EatingAsia)

These days most baguettes are made with a combination of wheat and rice flours, resulting in a fluffy crumb and exceptionally crackly crust. Some consumers feel this adds a welcome textural dimension to the banh mi, but Vietnamese old enough to remember traditional French-style baguettes don’t always agree.

“I don’t want to hear about the shiitake- or portobello-mushroom banh mi,” says Ms. Truong. “I’m sure there are lovely mushroom sandwiches, but let’s not kid ourselves.”

My favorite part of Christoph Niemann’s latest Abstract City entry, “Red Eye”.  I can never ever find a proper way to sleep in those darned airplane seats.

LOL, what?

He loves lettuce!

Finding myself putting on the Shins on repeat a lot today.  Oh hai, 2005.

Saint Simon - The Shins

I’ll try hard not to give in
Battened down to fair the wind
Read my head, at least pretend
Allow myslef no mock defense
Step into the night…

Mercy’s eyes are blue
When she places them in front of you
Nothing really holds a candle to
The solemn warmth you feel inside of you

• One. I think this is Boston’s Chinatown (Stay classy, Boston)
• Two. I think they were Asian (the dudes causing ruckus)
• Three: Ping. Ping Ping Ping. Ping. Some folks got beat up for being stupid asshats.

yvynyl:

Grandchildren - Saturn Returns

Love seeing Philly bands start taking off. Honestly, there is such a vibrant music scene in this town its almost been hard to keep up with the musicians that are starting to gain traction in the big, bad, broader world. 

This is a track from their forthcoming Green Owl label release Everlasting. Its a fun romp… flamboyant pop meets brash tropicalia wizardry.  Full of joie de vive.  Dig it.

(via Fader)

paulbrady:

This thing (11:48 am) looks like this other thing (8:58 am), which both look like this original thing (“August 10, 2010”).

lickystickypickyme:

this is wrong, right?
(but I laughed. Punish me)

via

Wee Places has a great visualization of your Foursquare Check-Ins. I love that I can see 

• Trends over time
• Directional trends
• Pattern / Size
• Points of interest

On the whole, I can see that my going out behavior in SF is constrained / defined by places accessible to biking — mainly the Market street corridor, places around work, the Mission and Japantown.  It tells me what I already know — I don’t like the Marina or the Haight, I’m a creature of habit, etc.  But while I already know such things, it’s helpful to be shown the data.  It also tells me what I don’t know.. that although I do visit places in the Sunset, Richmond and Golden Gate Park — I’m less likely to check-in to those places.. why?

Could be AT&T’s crappy reception in those areas.

(thanks @timoni!)

lickystickypickyme:

Plane frustrations. read them here.
Gospel by Cristoph Niemann

Airplanes sucks. But that goes without saying since it’s a mass market travel tool now. Screaming kids, overweight passengers, rude attendants, unfathomable schedules, old crafts.. Need an upmarket alternative.

underpaidgenius:

Patterson blocks short-term rentals of apartments and rooms, citing them as ‘illegal hotels.’ Actually, just a way for the hotel industry and the state to make more money.

This ruling is bullshit. Just another way for the state to interject for its own interests. Dirty hands.

Questions about  the eventual contribution to rising sea levels from Greenland’s eroding ice mass (and the West Antarctic Ice Sheet down south) remain hard to answer.  (via dotearth)

More from the Creative Class:

The upshot of all of this is that America is splitting into two distinct kinds of regional economies – a small set of affluent regions with relatively large concentrations of well-paying occupations, and a much larger set of less-advantaged regions with less-skilled, more poorly paying ones. In this kind of world, the ability to achieve the American Dream of economic opportunity and upward socioeconomic mobility increasingly turns on where you live.

This overlays the nation’s worsening income inequality with a glaring geographic dimension. America is becoming increasingly sorted not just by culture and attitudes, political party, or favorite candidate, but by powerful economic  forces - human capital level, skill, type of work, and, ultimately, pay and income. Given this underlying economic geography of work, money, and class, it’s little surprise that America’s politics continues along its current polarized and rancorous path.

Average Wages by metro area (via Creative Class)

The geography of high-paying jobs is strikingly uniform. The highest-paying regions are bi-coastal – dominated by metros in the Bay Area and the Bos-Wash corridor. And the pattern holds not just for the highest-paying metros but for all U.S. metros. Pay levels for the three major occupational groups are closely correlated across the U.S. regions. Creative class pay is closely correlated with both service class pay (.86) and working class pay (.67); and service class and working class pay are also closely correlated (.74).

Alaric - The Mission, San Francisco

Jorgen - from Humboldt, CA

Paul, the Busker. San Francisco, Ferry Building.

J. Financial District, San Francisco.

Claudia. East Village, New York.

Elias.  Hayes Valley, San Francisco.

Amanda.  Ritual Coffee, San Francisco.

Phil.  Office Building, San Francisco.

Kim. Charlotte, NC

Sparky. Financial District, San Francisco.

Yuko. East Village, New York.

Fried chicken wings at Izakaya Sozai in San Mateo, California

Good little joint run by a Japanese couple.  Authentic and clean (although I prefer my izakayas a bit more smoky and cramped).  The yakitori is varied, although there needs to be more beef and seafood options on there — it heavily favored chicken.  The side dishes original.. I loved the eggplant.. and we also tried the cold ramen.  A bit too much mayonnaise but the kimchee balanced it out somewhat. The highlight was the chicken wings - a bit crisped on the edges and the glaze was very very flavorful: sweet, smoky and a bit tangy.   The service was also very good.  

Grilled beef and egg roll on vermicelli at Golden Star, San Francisco

Passable.

If you’re in San Francisco’s Chinatown and have a hunkering for grilled meats on vermicelli, Golden Star is not a bad choice.  It’s not the best bowl of noodles, but it’s filling, the flavors are right and they don’t hold back the fish sauce.  The beef is not the best quality and the slices are a bit thick, but it’s popular with the lunch crowd.

I wouldn’t have the pho here.  They specialize in grilled meats, so opt or one of the many vermicelli dishes or the rice plate (usually with a fried egg).

8 Treasures Claypot, from Chung King in Chinatown, San Francisco

Earthy and gingery.  From my count there were chicken, roast pork, scallops, prawns, squid, bok choy, tofu and.. ginger?  Not the best claypot - since they cooked the ingredients before, add sauce, then heated it up in a clay pot inside an oven, but at $7, you can’t beat the value.  The flavors were approximate enough to the Hong Kong versions I’ve had and it hit the spot on a chilly foggy San Francisco day.  All in all, the place is your basic Chinese diner with decent American-Cantonese fare.

When you go to Malaysia or Singapore and the humidity is making your sweat sweat — cool down with the ubiquitous ABC — shaved ice topped with a variation of corn (yes, it makes sense), beans (also makes sense), grass jelly, condensed milk and other assorted tropical delights.  The texture, flavor and colors is a kind of culinary bomb waiting to explode frozen goodness in your mouth.  

Italian ice? Pfft.  That’s like comparing Rocky VI to the Rocky that made Soviet comrades respect the USA through sheer will (and a wicked soundtrack).

Special of the Day, Pozole, from Los Jarritos - San Francisco

Porky and light — do those two words go together?  Pozole is a one pot dish typical of cultures who love something flavorful, filling and meaty to warm up cold nights. Korea has its jook gae jang, France the daube and so on.  The pozole I had was made with chunks of tenderized pork, corn and herbs.  The broth was likely made from a meat loving, ham tossing, veggie hating cook.  It was a simple back to basics dish — no fuss, and definitely made with lots of experience.

Los Jarritos, a mom & pop joint off the main hipster thoroughfares in San Francisco’s Mission District, is awesome.  Come with an appetite, because the portions are huge. 

Porchetta de Pane from Bar Bambino - San Francisco, CA

First off, let me count the ways that i love Bar Bambino:

1. It’s in a lovely lively area of San Francisco, but still off the beaten path
2. It has a garden
3. It has a great open bar area
4. It has good wines, especially a broad selection of Italian vintages
5. It has thoughtful food, especially at dinnertime
6. The cured meats are awesome

Unfortunately, all the things I love about Bar Bambino couldn’t compensate for the one dish I tried on this very specific day.  The pork was moist and flavorful, but I think it comes down to palate and how much you disagree or agree with the chef’s choice.  I just didn’t care for how the sandwich was put together.  The bread was hard, the rosemary-kumquat marmalade too sweet and the mustard too weak.  The sandwich was put together well as intended, but I like my pork saltier, fattier and more robust.

Buttermilk Fried Chicken & Cornmeal Waffles from Brown Sugar Kitchen - Oakland, CA

Modern inspired soul food in West Oakland equals win.  The chicken was good: crunchy skin with homey seasons - I tasted saffron and cayenne in there — and the locally sourced meat was moist upon forking.  A bit more disappointing were the waffles; cooked as well as the chef intended cause they were airy and light, but I prefer a heartier, thicker batter to go with my meat.  

I can totally understand why the chef wanted to pair the heavier chicken with lighter waffles, but the Southern boy in me craved that eggy, white flour goodness.

I’d definitely go again to try the oyster po’ boy during lunchtime.

Bánh Cuốn from Saigon Rose - Melbourne, Australia

This was ok.  Vietnamese food can be better and this was one of those clean, better polished and Caucasian-centric place.  First suspicion? The name says nothing about the food but instead is a descriptive phrase evocative of .. something that’s exotic.

This crepe-like dish should have a thinner batter and lighter meat fillings.  As is, Saigon Rose only approximates the Northern Vietnamese breakfast specialty. 

Calamar a la Plancha, from Mancora - East Village, New York

The char was awesome.  Stopped by here really quickly in between visiting friends and having 6 meals for the day.

Artisan Foie Gras Torchon & Duck Proscuitto Sandwich (with tomato, butter lettuce and black truffle salt) from The Naked Lunch, San Francisco, CA.

Artisanal sandwiches are all the rage here in San Francisco now.  It’s cheap (little overhead), locally sourced, open to interpretation across cultures, and carries just a whiff of selectivity to work all the hipsters up in a pant.  Naked Lunch, a spot in SF’s strip club central, rents out daytime space from an Italian restaurant and works it’s magic to perfection.  The result is a decadent approach to lunch — the sandwich here was salty, buttery and heavy.  It could do with a bit more herbs, but that’s the only complaint.

Save your thirst for one of the different coolers available for that day.  The lime coconut is spectacularly accurate to it’s weird combination.

Lookchinpla from Siam Kitchen, San Francisco, CA

I get one of three things here, the Lookchinpla, which is basically a Cantonese-influenced hủ tiếu / broad rice noodle soup with fish cake, shrimp, ground pork and al the usual fixins.  The other dishes Gai Kra Prow / diced chicken with mint leaves and the Pad See Ew / stir fried soy based noodles.  

For a place I go to weekly, the quality has been crazy consistent.  It’s quite hard to churn out good flavorfull dishes for the lunch crowd, but looking at the beaming faces around, all the dishes are spiced well and stick-to-your belly awesome.  This is one of the two most authentic Thai restaurants in SF.

Come after 11:30 am and good luck with the wait.

Izakaya sampler: quali eggs, sausage, chicken gizzard & hearts from Izakaya Nombei, Honolulu, HI.

For the love of God, if you find yourself stuck in tourist hell in Waikiki, Honolulu, hail a cab for a ten minute ride to this very good, very Hawaiian Japanese den.  Tuck down a few of the chilled sake while you wait.  Your stomach and curiosity (but not your wallet) will thank you.

House Cured Bacalao & Oysters from Piperade, San Francisco

The crowd consists of old white men sauntering over with bejeweled ladies and their white coifs,  the occasional young couple celebrating their anniversary, or the earnest foodie eager to sample one of the few places in SF that claims to serve Basque delicacies.

The wine list, extensive.  The bacalao, briny and tasted of the pungent sea; not exactly my thing since my palate apparently groans whenever it’s subjected to the demands of cured food.  The braised seafood and shellfish stew in red pepper sauce was good - but honestly, nothing on the menu screams “I’m different and deserving of the four $ mark”.  The roasted lamb chop was good.

Overall, that was the story: good, but nothing spectacular.  Where are the inky risottos and the pork and olives of simple Basque fare?  I suppose that’s another restaurant waiting to open.

Phở Tái, Gầu, Gân & Sắc at Pho Tan Hoa, San Francisco

The first rule of a good pho place is that somewhere in the name should be the word, pho. The second rule is that along with the bowl of soup, there should be lots — huge, plentiful and overflowing — accompaniments of fresh herbs, bean sprouts and condiments.

Pho Tan Hoa followed both rules and, on days when its meat supply is fresh (a big risk), can compete as the best pho joint in the San Francisco area.  There are better places in San Jose, but if you want to stay in SF, this is the place to go.  Just steer clear of the crackheads in the Tenderloin.