This Week In Noe Valley: Free Beer, Get Your Wax On, And The Google Bus Presages Dystopia

News from, about and for Noe Valley from around the interwebs:

• What? There's a Game this weekend? [Caterina]
• La Tira now open for your waxing needs [La Tira]
• Free beer: local brewers open their homes during Beer Week [Barrel Walk]
• Essay: the significance of the Google Bus [Rebecca Solnit]
• Turn your Victorian into a sanitarium [Remodelista]
• Four bedrooms, $3.6M, and a possible new comp [Socketsite]
• Buy this house and you can name-drop Coppola [Curbed SF]

[Photo: kslatz312]

Elizabeth Street Brewery: Free Beer Gets Famous

What's better than free beer? Famous free beer! One of Noe Valley's best-kept secrets is not quite so secret anymore. Elizabeth Street Brewery was picked as the Microbrewery of the Year by SF Weekly in May - and the latest issue of San Francisco Magazine also gives it a rave. Of particular interest to fans:

Brewer-Hay realizes that the time for his brewery to become a real business is drawing nigh. “We’ve taken this so far that it seems inevitable,” he says. After flying to watch a series of Giants games in St. Louis, Missouri, in late August, he gave himself a week to return to San Francisco by rail. “I wasn’t allowed to come home until I finished the business plan,” he says, having spent 62 hours on a train to get back. Now, with that document in hand, Brewer-Hay has started to see his dream take shape.

Here's hoping the City allows a new Conditional Use permit for Noe Valley's first brew pub. Congrats, ESB!

[SFM: Free beer]
[NVSF: Elizabeth Street Brewery Snags Best Microbrewery Without Selling A Single Beer]
[NVSF: Update: Planning Commission Allows More Restaurants In Noe Valley]

Elizabeth Street Brewery Snags Best Microbrewery Without Selling A Single Beer

Via ESB's blog: "That’s right folks, our little homebrewpub in our basement managed to snag Best Microbrewery of 2010 in SF Weekly. A true honor for us considering we’re not selling any beer yet."

[SFW: Best Microbrewery 2010]

Growing Pains: ESB Ale

The recent press and success of Elizabeth Street Brewery has apparently ticked off a neighbor who filed a formal (and anonymous) complaint. Rather than stopping by to talk about their issues over a cold pint of free beer, said neighbor called the police. "As some of you already know by now, my wife returned home on Tuesday afternoon to be greeted by Officer Miguel Granados and Deputy City Attorney Michael Weiss."

Find out how it all turned out on ESB's blog.

[NVV: The Elizabeth Street Brewery: From Chocolate Milk to Firecracker Red]
[NVSF: Operation ESB Super Bowl]

St. Philip Festival 2008: Food, Fun & Free Beer

It was a bright sunny day Saturday at the 70th Annual St. Philip Festival. People of all ages gathered to eat, drink, play and hang on a velcro wall.

The Velcro Wall