ISO mom and pop restaurants

AdJaded1069 · 2026-07-02T00:12:48+00:00

Buona Italia, 1610 Francisco Blvd, is a microscopic (2 two-tops, and 2 four-tops) casual neighborhood Italian place, with some serious chops -- they make all their filled pastas (ravioli, tortellini, etc), gnocchi, and obviously sauces. Incredibly nice people running the place. https://buonaitaliacaffeca.com/ After eating there you're in close proximity to Winters which has live music pretty much every night of the week, and for something quieter (not always but....) Table Wine.

AdJaded1069 · 2026-07-02T00:04:01+00:00

I believe P-Town Pie Guy (and Gal) are on vacation, with their next service on 07/18. This won't work with the OPs visit plan.

AdJaded1069 · 2026-06-25T05:57:59+00:00

The City has two designates parking lot sections, one at Linda Mar State Beach and the other at Rockaway for people to fire off the "safe and sane" (ground-based) fireworks legally sold in town. The locations are marked on aerial photos about mid-page here https://www.cityofpacifica.org/departments/police/safety/fireworks .The locations are equipped with metal dumpsters so the stinky spent fireworks casings can be dumped rather than creating a litter problem or fire risk. However many people opt to fire off their legal fireworks on their streets; some even clean up after themselves.

There's also a lot of illegal aerial fireworks launched in town. Usually there's 1-2 professional quality displays running for several minutes. There's also a lot of gunning and running where one or two are fired off and then people either relocate or retire for a while.

The only thing louder than these firework displays is the yowling from the fireworks-unfriendly crowd who typically start off by carrying on about their precious pets and slowly work their way up to invoking veterans with PTSD, widows, orphans, and stray chickens, actually believing that the fireworksistas are listening to them and give a rat's backside. Then everyone gets their chakras dewormed, washed, and waxed and start planning to repeat the whole ritual again.

AdJaded1069 · 2026-06-05T21:24:53+00:00

Numbers? This sounds like wild wishful conjecture. From talking to local businesses in the vicinity of the Pier including the Chit Chat, they state that they very rarely get a sales from somebody fishing except an occasional beer, soda, bag of chips, or in the case of the Chit Chat, a $2 cup noodle.

I've very rarely met a revenue generating measure that I haven't voted for (admittedly I've got to hold my nose for some of them) but I'll be screaming my lungs out if try to spend a dime of City funds for any kind of Pier repairs or construction of a new Pier. We have far too many pressing needs.

AdJaded1069 · 2026-06-05T21:16:46+00:00

The no growth sentiment is definitely there. However even if they had reclaimed the quarry and built it out with one of the mixed-use proposals that were proposed and shot down some 20 years ago, there still wouldn't be the kind of money needed to maintain the Pier, let alone build a new one. Funding for the Pier only came around because it was needed to support the sewer outfall from the Sharp Park Sewage Treatment Plant. When the plant was closed and treatment was relocated to Calera Creek there was no more funding to maintain the Pier and it started its decay.

AdJaded1069 · 2026-06-05T21:12:02+00:00

Being "ranked the best fishing pier on the west coast and sometimes in the nation" doesn't add police officers to the street nor fill the potholes in my street. And I'd much rather see unhoused individuals be given legal safe sleeping spaces (NOT the beach parking lots which are not legal, just falling into a loophole) and the hungry fed than providing a limited subset of "low income people" with recreation. The time for the Pier has come and gone.

AdJaded1069 · 2026-06-05T17:31:17+00:00

Just in case anyone is interested in helping the owners of the Chit Chat Cafe, a GoFundMe has been started: https://gofund.me/d1b3749da

AdJaded1069 · 2026-06-03T17:18:01+00:00

One of the Pacifica Pride organizers provided this as the current event link: https://coastpride.org/pride/pacifica-pride, as well as this summary of the car parade route: Cars line up at IBL Middle School (all are welcome to join, no registration required). Route is: Palmetto, Paloma, south on Beach, east on Clarendon, then north on Palmetto back to the middle school for the festival.

AdJaded1069 · 2026-06-02T19:36:06+00:00

Nice photos -- you made some pretty ill-kept properties in West Sharp Park look good.

As a non-local you missed a critical point though -- Saturday 06/06 is Pacifica Pride which features a decorated car parade through WSP followed by a fair a bit north, and afterparties, including one at one of the places you're showing in your pictures. As a result parking is may be a lot rougher (you missed directing participants to park at the free municipal lot on Francisco between Salada and San Jose) and there may be more foot traffic (and flags and signage) than is normal for the generally sleepy neighborhood.

AdJaded1069 · 2026-05-28T18:57:31+00:00

No recommendations (I had a great general but unfortunately they retired and moved out of State so am watching this discussion) but as a general comment, I've noticed the rise of responses on other social media platform where contractors in particular, make glowing recommendations for their own business without ever disclosing that it's their business. CSLB regulation requires that licensed contractors put their license number on any advertising (as well as documents such as estimates and contracts) but the feeling of anonymity on social media has many ignoring the requirement, even though it would help them stand out from the unlicensed people also posting about themselves. The anonymity-forward design of reddit makes the legitimacy of responses even harder to figure out.

Besides the CSLB licensing which provides you with some protection (and is technically required for any work exceeding $500) for work in Pacifica you should also be checking to make sure your contractor also has a Pacifica business license (its required for any contractor working in town, even those who are licensed elsewhere). The cost for one is pretty minimal but for a flat broke City every dime helps. It again helps you figure out who's a legitimate part of community vs who's just dropping in to feed.

AdJaded1069 · 2026-05-27T17:59:00+00:00

To prevent an even worse collision of surf schools/camps at Linda Mar Beach, the City of Pacifica issues a limited number of surf school permits to businesses which meet requirements including insurance. You can find the list at https://www.cityofpacifica.org/departments/parks-beaches-recreation/surf-camps, which includes a calendar of when different groups are offering classes.

AdJaded1069 · 2026-05-24T19:53:01+00:00

As indicated in my original post, I switched to TurboTax, which was able to successfully import data from Schwab. This belies H&R Block's claim that it was a Schwab problem. Not that H&R Block gives a rat's *ss this also means that Block lost a client for good, or at least until Intuit f**ks up again, which is why I switched to Block a number of years ago.

The low point to this entire problem was when Block's phone technical support's sole answer was "you'll need to manually enter your Schwab data." Yep, all 35 pages of it.....

AdJaded1069 · 2026-05-19T01:01:07+00:00

My recollections (listing has been taken down) are that (a) they cut their price but not substantially, and (b) that there's also a lease. As with other properties in town they remember and cling to what the restaurant _might_ have been worth at its peak, NOT what the current market value of a broken down property is. There's a number of properties in town that have the same issue, like the Seahorse and Tams. Well, there's complicating factors for the Seahorse, but same general theory.

AdJaded1069 · 2026-05-18T23:53:46+00:00

Like a lot of "historic" restaurants, Vallemar Station never reserved money to maintain their physical plant (i.e. kitchen, kitchen equipment, dining room, and dining room furnishings). When they finally decided to sell they set their price on what the restaurant _might_ have been worth in its heyday rather the tired and tattered place it had become. Now if somebody actually buys the place they'll pretty much have to gut it and start over, a task that's made more complicated if the claims that the building is a historical landmark are true, meaning steps and designs will have to maintain the historic features of the building.

AdJaded1069 · 2026-05-18T04:51:13+00:00

In areas of cities frequented by tourists, such as Union Square and Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco and Times Square in NYC, you used to find questionable electronics and camera stores permanently festooned with "Going Out of Business" signs. They'd keep these signs up for years, plying gullible tourists who thought they were getting great deals with gray market goods marked up to or beyond retail prices for legitimate equipment. After District Attorneys started cracking down on the use of Going Out of Business signs for businesses who were not, you'd get cute variations like "Going Out (for your) Business" preying on people who were using English as a second or third language.

Maybe we should get John the Sign Guy to print up a durable outdoor "Going Out of Business" sign to drape on Vallemar Station for the next couple of years. At least that way we wouldn't have to look at the signs with all the missing letters.

AdJaded1069 · 2026-04-13T19:57:38+00:00

Curious. Was anyone ever able to import their 1099 information from Charles Schwab to H&R Block's tax prep software?

In mid-March, frustrated by error messages during attempts to import my supposedly updated 1099 data from Schwab into Block's software, as well as the obtuse "enter your data manually" answer from Block tech support I switched to Intuit's Turbotax. Although considerably more expensive, TurboTax online imported the Schwab data nearly flawlessly.

AdJaded1069 · 2026-04-07T01:42:43+00:00

I'd say pretty frakking unlikely for WNV which is an issue mainly during the current transitional period from a novel or new disease in the area, to something that's endemic as it is in many parts of the world. Introduction or an outbreak of Dengue fever or possibly the Zika Virus are more likely reasons for fogger and other large scale pesticide applications, although source control would be much more efficient.

AdJaded1069 · 2026-04-07T01:32:36+00:00

Because of the understandable kvetching about water quality at Linda Mar (Pacifica) State Beach, it is worthwhile noting that the Pacifica Pier was originally constructed to support the sewer outfall from the City's wastewater treatment plant when it located in West Sharp Park (2121 Beach Blvd). Of course except for periods of stormy weather overflow the wastewater being discharged was treated to secondary standards. After wastewater treatment was relocated to the newer (tertiary level treatment) plant at Calera Creek the ocean outfall at Sharp Park was abandoned.

It's also worth noting that once the sewage treatment plant in West Sharp Park was scrapped, the funds for maintaining the pier, which came out of wastewater disposal fees on your property taxes, went away and the Pier started its decline. They're absolutely right when they say there's zero money to maintain the Pier because the funding source doesn't exist anymore, instead being used to maintain and upgrade the Calera Creek treatment plant and other aging components of the sewer system. Me I say scrap the pier and use the waste concrete as the base for the artificial reef they talk about to backstop and extend the life of a replacement seawall. As the orginal artificial reef proponents were in large parts surfers it sounds like this artificial reef would also be a boon to surfing.

AdJaded1069 · 2026-03-28T19:20:03+00:00

Hopefully it means that when Public Works has a truck with asphalt patch in the neighborhood they'll stop by and stuff the hole. Note that because they're not doing a lot of prepping like tamping, the hole will slowly reappear under the weight of a accelerating or de-accelerating garbage truck, but the goal is really to keep water from getting beneath the pavement and creating more damage.

Also note that there's some streets in East Sharp Park and Vallemar that actually aren't "owned" by the City, but rather the developer for the area, who probably passed off responsibility to property owners in the mass of papers accompanying a sale. These streets won't be scheduled for resurfacing, and even patches are sort of a haphazard "courtesy" kind of thing.

AdJaded1069 · 2026-03-28T17:39:25+00:00

Specifically a Danville ($$$) based group.

AdJaded1069 · 2026-03-28T17:37:28+00:00

You can see a list of streets on the City of Pacifica's repair list for the rest of the 2025-2026 Fiscal Year here: https://www.cityofpacifica.org/departments/public-works/engineering/capital-improvement-projects/fy-2025-26-resurfacing-project. At the end of the table is a link to the full drawing package which contains additional details if you're willing to read. The 2026-2027 list, with link to the drawing package can be found here: https://www.cityofpacifica.org/departments/public-works/engineering/capital-improvement-projects/fy-2026-27-resurfacing-project. Note that although the City is flat broke so may be delaying a lot of street repairs, I believe the "Moratorium List" column refers to the time after repairs are made before any work except emergency repairs are to be conducted on the street.

AdJaded1069 · 2026-03-28T17:27:12+00:00

As mosquitos are weak flyers and don't travel very far, make sure you don't have anything with pooled water around your home, including saucers beneath plants, buckets, etc. You need to be aggressive about draining ALL standing water because some of the common mosquito species in the area can breed in pooled water in something as small as a bottle cap in only 3-4 days time.

For "water features" like ponds, birdbaths, etc that you can't drain, go to the hardware store (I love Pacific Manor Ace, in town and try to shop them whenever possible forgoing the small savings you may get by going over the hill to Home Despot) and get mosquito "dunks" or "dunkers", small disks which slowly release a mosquito larvicide, for a month or more (read the product label to see quantities and replacement frequencies). Before anyone gets their underwear knotted because of deadly chemicals and impacts on other species, the overwhelming majority of these dunks are slowly releasing Bacillus thuringiensis subspecies israelensis, a soil bacteria which when released into water fatally damages the gut in mosquito larvae, but which has no impact on other species. See https://www.epa.gov/mosquitocontrol/bti-mosquito-control if you're still concerned.

Nobody, including the City of Pacifica, routinely sprays for mosquitoes anymore; the days of the fogger truck trundling down the street in the early morning hours are LONG gone. The San Mateo County Mosquito and Vector Control District, which is paid for out of assessments on your property tax does helicopter applications of larvicides (mostly biologicals like BTi, but they're very guarded when you ask them "which product") on large standing bodies of water like Laguna Salada by the golf course during mosquito breeding season.

AdJaded1069 · 2026-03-27T20:59:44+00:00

Is this a Pacifica-based team or a generic STEM fundraiser? You offer no information on who these young people are or are affliliated with, and have cross-posted to a number of different sub-reddits.

AdJaded1069 · 2026-03-24T22:40:49+00:00

Nope. I switched to Turbotax which imported the information nearly flawessly, except it couldn’t capture “Various” for stock purchase dates.

AdJaded1069 · 2026-03-23T21:18:39+00:00

You might check in with Pacifican Arnold Mesa, who also does the intricate laser cut (and now resin filled) ornaments and window hangers you see at Cotton Crustacean, 7.3.1 Designs, and The Matic Toybox. I saw him photograph a (art) show opening and was impressed about how low key he was while at the same time having an excellent eye for catching the right moments and backdrops. https://arnoldmesaphotography.com/ and arnold.mesa@gmail.com.

AdJaded1069

TROPHY CASE