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No Reservations About Pandering

Photo: Courtesy of Travel Channel

Don’t forget: Tonight is the long-awaited San Francisco episode of No Reservations with Anthony Bourdain. We showed you on Friday how got his head all turned around looking for something to hate at the Ferry Plaza Farmers’ Market and coming up empty. Well, that seems to be the overriding theme of the show. In his blog today, Bourdain exlains his idea of San Francisco’s dualism, and name-checks a couple of musical blasts from the past.

It may be the town of Alice Waters but it’s also home to Dirty Harry. The Grateful Dead? Yes. But also the Dead Kennedys. The excrutiating and treacherous lite FM sounds of the Jefferson Starship? True enough. But also Blue Cheer, the Count Five, Big Brother, Sly and Family Stone and the greatest band that never was: the Brian Jonestown Massacre. None of these entities could have come from–or taken root–anywhere else.

Is that last hipster-baiting reference what SFist was talking about when they called Bourdain “the guy in class who tries too hard to look punk?” Yes. What you won’t see tonight: a visit to St. George’s Spirits (to taste foie-’dka with Chris Cosentino), and Bourdain at his favorite haunt, Swan Oyster Depot — where he says he spent every night.

Previously:
Even Bourdain Can’t Hate SF Farmers’ Market [Grub Street SF]

No Reservations About Pandering