This Week In Noe Valley: An Ode To Plant Thieves, Honoring The Mayor of Church Street, And In Praise Of Aster

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

• The Great Noe Valley Succulent Heist [Left Coast]
• Jiro Lin, the celebrated omakase chef at Saison, was discovered at Hamano Sushi [SF Chronicle]
• New restaurant Aster is the apex of Brett Cooper’s career [SF Weekly]
• Noe Valley: Where families lock their strollers [@zachmelikey]
• Noe Valley Whole Foods still has the highest sales per sq. foot in the U.S. [via @jimcramer]
• Honoring Larry Gutierrez, 70 year Noe Valley resident and "Mayor of Church Street" [@scottwiener]
• ICYMI: Noe Valley Music is closed [NVSF]
• A $5.8 million flip aimed at hipsters? Oy. [Curbed]
• If you can afford a $5.4M house, is fixing the garage really that big a deal? [Socketsite]

[Photo: Portable/Mess]

This Week In Noe Valley: Napa Valley Quake Aftermath, Street Style, And Labor Day In The Hood

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

• Not all Noe Valley residents felt the 6.0 Napa quake last Sunday morning [anthroslug] 
• But most of us did [Engadget]
• A water main broke this week – possibly triggered by the Napa quake [KTVU]
• Some residents lost water for 7 hours – and we all lost 20,000 gallons [SF Weekly]
• 2,000 pounds of Tacolicious cookbooks arrive at their global HQ in Noe Valley [@tacolicious]
• And people are stoked! Too bad it's just an office [katej130]
• Martin Mattox store opening in the former Garage on Sanchez at 24th + behind the scenes [Martin Mattox]
• Labor Day weekend in Noe Valley – Real Foods edition [@F6x]
• A local character [joshkobrin]

[Photo: Embracing Noe Valley style via meeshyp]

Stroller Files: Noe Strolls Disappears

From a reader:

Do you happen to know if the Noe Strolls group was recently disbanded? Their web site is inactive and the e-mail addresses I had on file for the group are bouncing back. My wife and I recently moved to the neighborhood and are due next week, and we were hoping to join. Just curious what the story was.

Anyone know? Have the organizers already moved to the 'burbs?

NVV: We Read It So You Don't Have To

The Noe Valley Voice is published ten times a year and has been a neighborhood fixture since 1977. Here are notable highlights from the latest issue. Links are to stories we've covered here on NVSF or outside sources as the Voice doesn't post stories until the middle of the month.

February 2010

Front Page: The city clears the way for more restaurants on 24^th Street; Officer Lorraine Lombardo on the beat for 20 years with SFPD; Whole Foods and La Boulange are boosting business on 24th Street; a lovebird is weaned.

Letters: If your kids were photographed with Santa, Fima Photography has your free 5x7 photo for you; an alert about car break-ins in Upper Noe; and a bike-to-Marin benefit for multiple sclerosis.

Feature: Circle Bank is opening this spring; Mike Gutierrez of Tuggey's is going for the world record for the largest rubber band ball.

Cost of Living in Noe: Home prices overall saw a 13.8% drop in 2009. Average cost of a home was… $1.3 milion. (Ed.-Translation: It's now 10 degrees cooler on the surface of the sun.) Rents? Still ouch.

Traveling Voice: Cuba, Guatemala, India, Vietnam.

Store Trek: Independent Nature, Old Republic Title Company

Rumors: The Noe Valley Stroller Menace (Oh Noes!); Cover to Cover gets grief for not carrying Sarah Palin's book Going Rogue; SF Gate is looking for a freelance Noe Valley blog after the last one abruptly disappeared; and the NVV mentions Everyblock, and also this blog as a source of information: "while somewhat snarky, it keeps the news coming and has a neighborhood posting wall;" NVV goes on to mention "an interesting item duped on NoeValleySF in January was a 'Reader Rant: Dogs Need Places to Poo Too.'" We're not sure what that means, but you can read the story here. And NVSF (that's this blog again) linked to the NY Times story for the top 10 NetFlix rentals in Noe. That led NVV to poll Video Wave for their top 10 (first was Burn After Reading – pick up an issue of NVV for the full list). Thanks for the shout out, NVV!

Finally, NVV counts 9 vacant spots on 24th Street; the owner of the Artsake building is renting that spot for $3,000 and has fielded calls from a nail salon (noooo!). The 2,500 sq. foot former Mi Lindo Yucatan space should be finished by June and ready to rent – the owner is hoping for a destination restaurant. Cardio-Tone opens; Bill Yenne has another book; farewell Helen Weinschenk, former owner of the Wooden Heel (the shoe repair shop) on 24^th Street.

[The Noe Valley Voice]

The Noe Valley Stroller Menace (Oh Noes!)

The Chronicle cashed in on the (often) entitled Noe Valley stroller set today and the opinions are flying:

...the only reason why Noe gets a bad rap is that unlike most of SF, it actually has kids. I'll agree with other posters that the bigger problem in Noe is dog poop--and the lack of parking spaces at Whole Foods!

...I may not get run over by a stroller, but I swear spending time in Noe is like being somewhere similar to Fresno.

...I don't get the aggressive stroller thing. I am nothing but polite to these folks and am tired of the cell phone yapping meaness of stroller. So, do we look forward to yet another generation of clueness when sharing sharing sharing public space?

...Bad: attempting to drive through the intersection of Noe St & 24th St., baby strollers which nowadays are the size of small SUVs, & hearing the automated-recorded lady-voice on the 24 Divisadero bus pronounce any stop along Noe Street as "no"...

...Noe Valley snobs are nothing compared to the likes of the entitlted brats in the Marina...

...Noe Valley is sort of the Palo Alto of SF neighborhoods. It's cool days are long long behind, now appropriated by unimaginative yups who all paint their houses a tasteful beige.

While this bit from the Chron's post probably sums it up, there's truth in stereotypes:

Some people in love with Noe's centrality, its Victorian splendor, its low crime rate, its warmer micro-climate, its shopping and food, and overall family orientation might take comfort from these data. But it does seem like such people would still have to be doing better than the majority of San Franciscans, a city whose median income doesn't push $80K. Others of us then, forever shut out, will continue to complain (a little enviously-- let's be honest) about stroller accidents with bourgeois soccer moms.

And?

...While all of you hater posters have been ranting on Noe, my property value just shot up another 3%.

[SFGate: Noe Valley: only for strollers made of gold?]

Stroller Parking: Noe Valley Farmer's Market

Yikes!