Just got an email from Lark in the Morning:
“The Lark In The Morning San Francisco store is alive and well. I am sending this notice out to let everyone know because of incorrect reporting in the national media. There was a big fire in a building next to the complex the Cannery where our San Francisco store is located but our store is fine. Please come see us when you are in San Francisco.”
It (the fire) was interesting for us local lovers of that store. I was freaked out when I heard that the Cannery was burning, but as usual, they had it just a little bit wrong at first. It was a neighboring brick building (that has been the backdrop of the outdoor stage that has had many good performances of Celtic and other music on high tourist days) that actually caught fire while being renovated for a fancy hotel. On our TV news they showed Mickey (the owner) vacuuming water up from the spillover of the fire hoses. There were all those precious instruments on TV (including my next bouzouki, maybe), fortunately most hang or are on shelves.
I have bought almost all of my whistles there as well as music, percussion instruments, even my son’s ocarina.It is a wonderful experience but you can’t have a headache when you go in because there are just so many people hammering away on everything. Please visit if you ever come to SF. Accompanying the news broadcast was a report on how the hotel that would have been where the fire was was supposed to revitalize the area. I was scratchin’ my head a little at that. We are talking tourist central there, right at the edge of Fisherman’s Wharf and the merchants were saying that business was down.
Without spinning OT into politics, I just have to say that SF has needed to deal with the homeless etc if they are not to lose the tourists, not blame the loss of a single swanky hotel. SF still can be a beautiful place, but for many of us native Bay Area people, we carry a memory of what it was when we go there. I know there are other subscribers who are near me but I don;t know how native they are (to remember older times, that is). I actually think its gotten a little better in the last few years but there is a delayed reaction to peoples experiences there and we had a period where some of the local criminals savaged tourists. A German was killed, some girls were abducted and even comedian Larry Miller was mugged. So even if things are better, people remember perhaps in the back of their mind and maybe that accounts for tourist reduction. Frankly we need a Rudy in SF, not a Willie but it will be a hard sell for the radicalized locals.
One of the collateral attractions in this area is the Hyde Street Pier where there is an annual Festival of the Sea (a la Mystic,CT) and there are sea chantey sings monthly. For a while, they were filmin’ that awful Nash Bridges show (yes, I know its an opinion) on an old Ferry Boat at the Pier. And people walk right across the street, up a block and visit Ghirardelli Square and the Chocolate Factory. Nothin’ like it.
Since I read that the new Feadogs have unglued mouthpieces I have been itchin to go buy one. I saw the new ones there two weeks ago but they do the thing of covering them with plastic and I just won’t buy a whistle I can’t play first. Had I not selected decent ones out of the crowd in the first place, I probably would not have the enthusiasm for the instrument at all.And hey, after reading all of your reviews about the various premium models, I have new reasons to try them out in their echoey little lesson rooms (where no whistle sounds bad, a real “trick” whether it was intentional or not).
Long live Lark In the Morning.