This is part of a series on the past, present, and future of the taxi, published here. Read parts 1 and 2 of the series. It’s Saturday night, and the drag queens in the back of the car are impossibly young and dewy and imbued with an ostentatious teenage cynicism. They are dressed in a style… Continue reading Homobiles, SF’s queer ride service, is the anti-Uber
Author: hr
How the Bay Area’s Last Slaughterhouse Dodged the Axe
Originally published at Grist. An hour north of San Francisco is where you’ll find the last slaughterhouse in the Bay Area. I drove right by it at first — it’s just a low-slung collection of one-story rectangular buildings and prefab trailers behind a high fence. It was sandwiched between a Bikram yoga franchise, a block… Continue reading How the Bay Area’s Last Slaughterhouse Dodged the Axe
Hello, Stranger.
And welcome to my corner of the internet. The name of this website comes from two things. 1) Once I was trying to describe my job to someone, and decided that at its essence, journalism is about explaining the lives of strangers to other strangers. 2) When you have a common name, you learn fast that every… Continue reading Hello, Stranger.
A Brief History of Bagels & Lox
Originally published in Meatpaper, July 2012 The salmon traveled the farthest. Its oldest known ancestor in the genus Salmonidae swam through the waters of the Eocene, back when Australia was still a part of Antarctica, North America was still a part of Europe, and India was just beginning its long and persistent attempt to hump… Continue reading A Brief History of Bagels & Lox
The Uses of Whale
Originally published in Meatpaper, Issue 19, (aka “The Fissue”) In 2011, Japan killed 266 minke whales and one fin whale during hunting season in the Antarctic. It had hoped for 900, but whaling boats were followed by anti-whaling boats. The anti whaling boats threw ropes into the whaling boats’ propellers. The whaling boats shot at… Continue reading The Uses of Whale
The Story of Bones
Originally published in Meatpaper, Issue 16 Could I interest you in a skeleton? Perhaps you are thinking, being a small, soft-bodied creature, that being blobbish is not so bad. What’s wrong with having the shape and constitution of a piece of cooked spaghetti? Nothing. Honest. We don’t want to make you feel bad about yourself. But… Continue reading The Story of Bones
Slouching Toward Bananapocalypse
Are we still heading toward bananapocalypse? Or has it been cancelled?
Farmworkers Climbing the Organic Food Chain
Published in Grist, January 2011 The strawberries, purchased in November, in a rainy parking lot behind a community clinic, feel like they’ve traveled in time from summer to here. Out of season, strawberries usually taste like rainwater. These have a taste that is sharp and unexpected. The North Oakland farmers market is almost deserted —… Continue reading Farmworkers Climbing the Organic Food Chain
15 Ways of Looking at a Levis’ Workshop
Printing presses labeled like museum exhibits
Hunting Wild, Mission Snails
In the Pleistocene era, if you were a resident of the Mission you would hunt sabercats, dire wolves, sloths, mastodons, bears, mammoths, and prehistoric camels