I recently made the move up to the city and have been enjoying my extra hour of sleep every day tremendously. Unfortunately, this also means I have a lot less time each day built in to my commute for reading. I think I may go back to blogging in greater detail about one book at a time (which was my original intention for this blog anyway).
So, let's begin with the recently finished, "The Cheap Bastard's Guide to San Francisco". My boss, who also recently moved to SF, highly recommended it, and a used copy off Amazon was a steal at $6. Now I know why...
The thing about travel/recommendation books is that restaurants come and go, prices change, things become overrun by tourists and less fun, etc.. I was excited to try a restaurant the book mentions several times called Home. The other day I walked by and it no longer exists :-( Same with several of the other restaurants, bars, etc... that I looked up. Also, I don't really care that all these great bars have $2 drinks on Tuesday. I don't want to go out on Tuesday nights! The same way I feel about sitting around at a hair salon from 10-2 on Thursday hoping to get a free cut in exchange for letting a student practice on my head. Really, there's only a $1 entrance fee to the zoo on the 3rd Wednesday of months ending in Z between 3 and 5pm?!
Enough criticism, some of the ideas for entertainment are really good and he has a whole section on festivals/parades/other community happenings. (Though I could probably find this info on sfgate, yelp, or other community websites. Just saying!)
In the end, I can't help but wonder if sites like Groupon, Living Social, Goldstar, etc... have made this book a lot less useful? These days I can pretty much get a bargain massage, facial, dinner, theater tickets, and more for half price any time I want.
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