Royal Ground Coffee

Living in a crazy town like San Francisco, you find yourself surrounded by caffeine addicts. Being the drinking town of the west, a hub of finance, and well land of the weird insomniacs, coffee is our lifeline. We are Seattle's best friend, which is probably why Seattle and San Francisco have the same vibe. In any case, coffee is our brown gold and we crave it like zombies crave brains, we're coffee zombies.

Royal Ground Coffee is a coffee zombie's friend. Coffee, breakfast, hot and cold sandwiches for vegetarians and meatagetarians, wi-fi, and a laundromat. It's not a beatnik place, or a place for suits, it's just a neighborhood coffee shop, the place you go to relax in before and after you get wasted. It's like the snuggie of coffee shops.

Walking into the place, it has a very open feeling from the high ceilings, it doesn't feel cramped, nor does it feel yuppy-like. The menus are done in chalk, a sign of any good establishment, and there's a lot of good options for beverages and deli sandwiches. I highly recommend the Cafe Mocha due to it tasting more chocolatey than most mocha coffees your's truly has had in a while. The Chai is also nice, even though I think there's no such thing as bad chai unless it's made from asses and dirt.

As for other amenities, there's free wifi, which gets ridiculously heavy use; a laundromat directly connected to the joint; and the crown jewel of any establishment, a crazyish owner and a sweet and sassy barista. It's as homey as D clown.

Royal Ground Coffee is located on the corner of Fillmore and Pine St. You are encouraged to tip heavily, TIP HEAVILY.

The Frag Dolls: Heartbreakers and Lifetakers

If I could describe the Frag Dolls as anything, I would use the term Badass Chicks. Employed by Ubisoft, the Frag Dolls are a group of female gamers who compete professionally in tournaments, market and promote Ubisoft games, and are at the forefront of promoting female gamers as a whole. Easy on the eyes, busier than a bee, and deadly with the controller, these girls do it all including earning the distinction of being the first all female team to win a pro circuit tournament when they won first place in the Rainbow Six: Vegas tournament at CPL (Cyberathlete Professional League) 2006.

The Frag Dolls circa 2008

I recently had the opportunity to interview Brookelyn of the Frag Dolls. Brookelyn was one of the original members of the team and continues to promote women in the gaming industry today as part of the team. I thank Brookelyn and the rest of the Frag Dolls for the opportunity.

The lovely Brookelyn

#1 - The Frag Dolls have the leader of Clan PMS as one of their members. Does that ensure a very close relationship with the members of Clan PMS (i.e. when recruiting new dolls, promotion, etc.)

Not necessarily with PMS alone, every girl that supports us and tends to be more active in our forums will definitely outshine over candidates. I would consider spending time at our events and around our forums an advantage. It allows us to get to know the girl in more depth. We have the opportunity to see her skills and personality vs. a girl we know nothing about, other than her application herself. With that said, this by no means determines the outcome. Example: Former Frag Doll Calyber- we knew nothing about her, but fell in love with her resume, video and gaming skills. We disappointed a lot of our friends, but we knew in our hearts Calyber was a perfect match for us.

#2 - As employees of Ubisoft is there more demand and pressures to be great at the "company product" when competing in tournaments with Ubisoft games in them? (I.e. if you're not good at Rainbow Six Vegas 2, you're fired!)

Ubisoft has always been great in supporting us, win or lose. They would never fire us for not being the best, especially because they know how much hard work we put into training for these tournaments.

#3 - The Frag Dolls have been around for several years, do you feel it's easier to for people to accept a female professional gamer now that there are more female gamers in general, or harder because of the perception that most female gamers are casual gamers?

So much easier! Each year that goes by, I see more and more women becoming competitive in gaming. I remember my first year playing competitively for MLG, it seemed like the girls that did attend the event were just there to support/watch their boyfriends compete. It blows my mind how much girls in gaming have grown. When I first started with PMS (Pandora Might Soldier’s) there was only 10 members- 4 ½ years later, it’s over 500. Crazy huh? I’m really close with a lot of the girls in PMS and I have been competing with them for years. I know firsthand how competitive they are.

#4 - The Frag Dolls seem to combine a gaming team, with a marketing team, with a community management team. Which of those aspects seem the hardest?

I think the marketing side was more of a challenge for me. I was very anti-social before becoming a Frag Doll. Having to do interviews, press, and TV were all very scary for me at first. The marketing side of Frag Dolls has given me the tools to grow in this industry. I have learned so much! It has made me more confident, knowledgeable and strong.

#5 - Valkyrie and former doll Calyber are both on WCG Ultimate Gamer. Does this mean we'll see more Dolls in the future installments of that show?

You're not going to get any spoiler’s outta me. I will say…I love the show! Finally, a well produced gaming show that allows the main stream audience to see all aspect of competitive gaming. Did you watch episode 2 yet, when Valkyrie went head to head with Kelly Kelley (Ms. Violence)? It was so intense!

#6 - How would you feel about competing against your teammates in a tournament if it was nothing but singles matches?

We do it all the time in practice. It is way more challenging, because we have played together for so long; we know exactly what they’re going to do before they do it. As far as competing against them on a professional level, I would hate every moment of it! We have to compete against PMS all the time during Major League Gaming tournaments. It’s always sad when you have to knock out your friends.

#7 - With the number of lady gamers in the world growing each year, do you think Ubisoft would ever turn your team coed if we reached a point where the gamer population was half women or more?

I personally don’t think it will ever go co-ed, but I do think people will be seeing us sub in players for upcoming tournaments. Frag Dolls is a part-time job, and sometimes we have different events happening in our life that doesn’t allow us to compete with the team at the moment. To ensure the remaining of the girls get to compete, we will and have subbed players in, boy or girl. It just depends who works best with us as a team.

#8 - The UK Fragdolls and the French Fragdolls were recently disbanded, any word on why Ubi decided that?

I’m not sure about why the UK and France Ubisoft offices decided to disband the team. From what I read in their farewell blog, it seemed that they were headed off to exciting new adventures. That is one great thing about being a Frag Doll; so many opportunities come our way. I wouldn’t be surprised if one of them was working for NASA now. :P

#9 - Any fun stories you'd like to share from traveling around the country competing and promoting?

There is just too many to share them all. I’m very easy when it comes to being entertained. I’m originally from Wichita, Kansas, so even going somewhere like Kentucky or North Carolina was fun for me. I did get invited to attend the Golden Globes this year. I got to teach celebrities how to play Ubisoft titles. It was amazing!

#10 - (The Fluff Question) As a group of fairly attractive gamer girls travelling around the country, how often do people ask you guys out/propose to you guys?

Not as much anymore. In the beginning it seemed like all the time, but now that more and more girls are gaming we aren’t considered rare treasures as much anymore. This is fine for me; I get shy with that type of attention.

M4 Airsoft Assault Rifle

"What's it like having a gun?"
"It's like having two cocks, if one of your cocks could kill someone."
-Mclovin and Officer Michaels in Superbad


Much like the classic Christmas movie, A Christmas Story, I spent my holidays trying to obtain a BB gun. Much like A Christmas Story, I feared shooting my eye out. However, unlike A Christmas Story I am not a young child, and the following product is not a Red Ryder BB Gun but an M4 Airsoft Rifle from Thinkgeek.com. Why would I buy an airsoft rifle you ask? The official reason I give, to chase seagulls away from my home, but the truth is the same as why anyone gets a gun or gun like product, to shoot things.

For the low price of 24.99 off Thinkgeek.com, the M4 is a bargain basement level entry gun. It's accurately scaled and detailed enough that you could scare your roommates with it if you wanted to. The gun itself comes with a multitude of accessories such as a laser sight, blue LED flashlight, tactical harness, speed loader, and for those who fear shooting their eyes out, safety goggles. In short, if you have the burning need to shoot something but don't want to deal with things like waiting periods and the law and the temptation to go postal with nerd rage, an M4 Airsoft Rifle is a good alternative.

The only bad thing is that for such a low price, you kind of get what you paid for. The picatinny rail is a pain to slide things onto and the assembly instructions are in terrible engrish. The three point harness comes disassembled and going off the diagrams it's almost impossible to assemble it at all. But overall, if you wanna shoot and are on a budget, this is your gun. I give it a solid 3 1/2 gun toting Gomorrahs.

Outlander (2009)

As a rule, Vikings are some of the toughest people to walk the Earth. Their no nonsense courage in the name of Odin have lead them to explore America and create Ikea and those are some ballsy achievements. So it's rather surprising that there aren't many movies about vikings out there. Despite recent films like Pathfinder and Beowulf, the big screen has been rather Norse free and the Norse we see were not as engaging. It seemed like something was lacking, a mysterious ingredient of success that eluded the viking movie's path towards badassery. The answer was simple, aliens.

Outlander is a mashup of genres. It's the spawn of Beowulf and Aliens with a heaping spoonful of character depth and for good measure, Ron Perlman. It's the tale of how Kainan aka Passion of the Christ Jesus, crash lands his spaceship onto our planet circa Viking times. Stuck on a primitive planet he finds he didn't make it off his ship alone. See, our spaceman Kainan was transporting a beast, and not just any beast, but one made from glowy lights, teeth, and the best bloodthirsty ferocity CGI can come up with. This isn't just an alien monster, it's an ALIEN MONSTER AHHHH RUN type of monster. And even worse, without his fancy ship and it's technology he has to rely on the help of vikings when it gets loose and starts snacking.

Cue the vikings, and they really are vikings. There's the old viking king who wants to protect his people from the monster. There's his spirited daughter who doesn't try to be this female Rambo feminist cliche even though she can wield a sword. There's the viking champion who covets the throne but isn't quite a douche but isn't quite a hero either and his alcoholic warrior buddy. They see the world as vikings do, hunting, pillaging, eating and drinking. It's a good life for them till the spaceman shows up and the monster begins to eat people including a rival village, giving the vikings the double threat of being eaten and being hacked to death in reprisal. But with the help of our hero and his intergalactic know how, they start forming ideas on how to stop said beasty.

In the end, Outlander is just a fun movie with surprising depth to it. It never tries to be more serious than it is, and it's got a lot more polish than typical B movie fare. The acting itself is pretty good and the characters actually have some growth to them so they aren't one dimensional throwaways to be eaten. I give Outlander four viking Gomorrahs, at least until I implement the 80's Robot Scale of Awesome (TM).

Fallout 3

Nuclear war sucks, that much is obvious. In fact it's pretty much agreed that not much good comes from nuclear weapons except post nuclear apocalyptic fiction. Which brings us to Fallout 3, Bethesda's entry into the Fallout series of games. If you never picked up a Fallout game in your life, imagine playing a game set in the world of Mad Max 2 where you're trying to eek out an existence in the post apocalyptic wastelands of the world, that's Fallout.

The game starts out with the character being born, literally born, from their mother's womb. From there, a series of very clever character creation processes are laced into the introduction and the game begins. The story starts out in Vault 101, an underground fallout shelter that's survived the nuclear holocaust that devastated the world around you. Mr. Vault 101 as you'll be known as through most of the game is awoken one night and told his father has left the Vault and journeyed into the world outside. It's up to you to travel outside of the only home you've known and find him.

Upon stepping outside of the Vault, you'll find yourself in the wastelands of Washington DC, and I mean Wastelands. The "beauty" of the game's graphics is that when you look at the vast expanse of what use to be our nation's capital you see a scarred and ruined land littered with the decaying skeletons of our nation's monuments. The entire environment of the game is delicately crafted to look like a couple hundred years have passed after the world went to ruin. Debris is everywhere, skeletons posed in the position they were in life lay in beds and bathtubs, and the world is in a perpetual fog of war. As the player ventures further out into the rather expansive environment, they find all the things one would find after a nuclear holocaust. Bands of marauders raiding and pillaging, settlements of survivors of varying degrees of prosperity, aggressive genetic mutants of all kinds, and lingering radioactive areas of nuclear fallout. In short, it's a harsh unforgiving world.

Gameplay wise, Fallout is an interesting mix of Roleplaying Game and First Person Shooter. In a lot of ways it plays like Elder Scrolls, another Bethesda game. The game does follow a linear story, but with the vast expanse of Post Apocalyptic Washington DC and the many side quests and locations coupled with the sandbox environment of the game, a person could be playing for hours and not even advance the storyline one bit. Combat can be traditional first person shooter, or resolved through Vault Tec Assisted Tactical Situations (V.A.T.S.) where a player can select actions and hit locations they're targeting and let the computer resolve the probability they hit or miss. It's very useful for those with poor first person shooter skills. You can also switch from first person to third person mode, however the nature of the camera and the player's position almost virtually ensures you'll always play in first person mode. You also look like you're moving very stiffly in third person and that detracts from the game. The only other complaint I could find with the gameplay is that the game is prone to crashing, despite a patch being out that supposedly fixes that issue.

Music wise, the game comes supplied with in game radio stations that play a mix of propaganda for various factions, patriotic tunes, and old songs from the 1950's. It's a strange juxtaposition when you're shooting mutants with a missile launcher to old timey jazz. The voice acting in the game is very top notch, with celebrity voices such as Malcolm McDowell as President John Henry Eden and Liam Neeson as the voice of your father.

Overall, Fallout 3 is a top notch game that will threaten to suck your time and productivity away for hours on end. With a game environment that's huge, and dozens of side quests and ways you could play the game, a person could go through the story several times and have it end differently each time. I give Fallout 3 four irradiated Gomorrahs. They're like regular Gomorrahs but may mutate and grow extra limbs.

Kennedy's Irish Pub & Curry

As a rule, there's no such thing as Irish Indians. In fact ask most Irishmen and they'll have no idea what the fuck Curry or Naan is. Yet in a melting pot like San Francisco, a place such as Kennedy's Irish Curry can exist as this magical place of Indian food and Irish beer.

The place is, as best as I can describe it, Chuck E Cheese for adults. Like a place that has all the things adults like to do, but in one building. Booze? This place has over 100 types of beer and wine to chose from. Cheap prices for food and drink, yup they got that too. Pool tables and fooseball, check. Hookah, yes there's Hookah, that magical incense smelling smoke thats just as bad for you as cigarettes but has more aesthetic appeal. Wifi, a Big Buck arcade game, and an air hockey table round things out. Plus the place is cavernous, large enough to hold any huge group that invades it's premises. So at a glance, this place kicks ass and after spending time here, I have to agree.

The bar and games area form a donut around the restaurant part, giving the place an odd juxtaposition of families eating Indian food being surrounded by drunk weirdos on the fringes. The food itself is actually pretty damn good. It's no place like Shalimar (another restaurant I should review), but it's several levels above a typical Naan and Curry disaster restaurant. I highly recommend the dosa and the stuffed naan, but be careful, their hot stuff is ridiculously hot.

If there were any real complaints to be had about this place, it would be it's location. Located on the border of North Beach and the Marina district, this place is not easy to get to. The parking is iffy, especially if there's a show going on at Bimbos, which is across the street. The major road leading to the place is Columbus, which anyone who has ever driven on knows is a nightmare. And there's no easy Freeway access. Furthermore, it's proximity to the Marina District makes it a popular haunt for the now infamous Marina douchebags.

Kennedy's Irish Pub & Curry is located on the corner of Columbus and Chestnut across from Bimbos at the tail end of North Beach. They take cash and credit card and are a great venue for large groups. Definitely a solid 4 1/2 Gomorrahs.

Bacon Salt

Bacon, we love it. In fact it's a known fact that bacon is the most beloved food on the planet. Proof of this bold statement you ask? Bacos, Fakeon Bacon, and the other dozen bacon substitutes. Bacon is so beloved that vegetarians, people who cannot enjoy the beauty of such food, go to great lengths of science to invent a substitute for this divine meat. Hence we've come a long long way when here in the 21st century the scientists of our world brought us Bacon Salt, combining the essence of bacon with the practicality of salt.

According to the makers of bacon salt, "Bacon Salt is a zero calorie, zero fat, vegetarian and kosher seasoning that makes everything taste like bacon." So in short, bacon salt is to be enjoyed by all, and is probably good on it's own. Seriously, it makes things smell like bacon, a scent scientifically proven to be an aphrodisiac for men. Imagine if people salted icy roads with bacon salt, the streets would taste like bacon and children would be drawn outside to play all the time. It'd be a utopia on earth. Now, if technology could go further and crossbreed a vegetable with bacon, then we'd know we reached the epoch of human achievement. But until then, bacon salt shall save us from ourselves.

P.S. Do not bacon salt a can of PBR, despite what you may think, it's a half cocked idea.