Club Chaos Agents - All Things Hollish, Wacked, and Jacked

I'm not one of those agents who carts around a bucket list in her head or on paper. That's probably because concerning most things, if I want to do them, I do them. I've been that way my entire life. I have a unique ability. I say "unique" because I know a lot of people who can't do it. That unique ability is to grab a thought and act on it. I can grab A and intuitively can map out a plan to get to Z. Then, off I go.

Maybe that's part of what makes me a good Sacramento short sale agent. I have no problem putting together a plan of action for a client. Every short sale is different. Because every client is different, their lenders are different, their types of loans are different, and there are a bazillion combinations that could result in varying outcomes. You can take something simple like a Bank of America short sale and, depending on the type of loan, you could choose from 32 different options.

I like to work really really hard and then get away for a day or two. Take a weekend trip somewhere. Focus on something else. That way, when I return to work on Monday, I'm fresh and roaring to go. I don't get burned out. Because doing Sacramento short sales is an intense profession.

My husband had an urge to catch the final leg of the Twilight Singers tour. We were close to front row and center at the Twilight Singers' Portland tour a few months ago. Their last show for this year was at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco. It's almost impossible to turn down a travel opportunity to visit the Greatest City in the Country. I live in California so I favor the West Coast over the East, it's a given.

I figured as long as we were going to the show, we should include another activity. We had never been to Alcatraz. Couple of friends of ours who used to live in the City had never been there, either. So, we met up to go to the show and tour Alcatraz. There is one tour and one tour only that is the official place to get tickets, Alcatraz Cruises. Ferries leave every 30 minutes from Pier 33.

Alcatraz was a federal maximum security prison from 1934 to 1963. Photos of celebrity inmates line the entrance to the ferry. Let me tell you, Machine Gun Kelly was not a bad looking guy. Once on the island, you get an audio tour, which comes with the cost of your ticket. The tour has actual recordings of inmates, and it tells stories, points out bullet holes in the walls and the floor from famous escape attempts and brings the experience to life. You also get the opportunity to walk into a Block D treatment room. These cells have no light. I stood inside for a while to try to get a feeling of what it would be like to be a prisoner. Apart from being really cold in the winter, I could probably survive being thrown into the hole for 3 weeks.

Heck, I'm a Sacramento short sale agent. I can survive anything.

Photos: Elizabeth Weintraub

The Weintraubs enjoyed a very green Fourth of July. We left Sacramento. Yup, did a last-minute getaway on Amtrak. You can park right in front of the train station on 5th and prepay your parking. Then, go inside to scan the printout bar code from your online reservations and hop right on that train. The Capitol Corridor drops you off in Richmond, where you can prepay a RT to the City on BART, to the most fabulous city in America, and next thing you know, you realize the Redline doesn't run on Sunday, so you have to transfer in Oakland, but who cares? It's SAN FRANCISCO!!!

I had checked out some of the getaways published in the Sacramento Bee last Thursday. Sustainable Relaxation, the Bee called it. I first looked at the Bardessono Hotel and Spa in Yountville. I like Yountville. My buddy Myrl Jeffcoat and I went to Bouchon for a spring lunch not too long ago. Bouchon is in Yountville. But yowza. The rates for Bardessono were $1,500 to $1,800 per couple for a wine tour and room. You know they're luring suckers from LA. Not Sacramento.

The Orchard Garden Hotel is the first newly built hotel in California to earn LEED approval. And it's in Union Square just a few blocks from the Chinatown Gate. That was $300 for a junior King suite on the top floor. Much more reasonable, and there is just so much to do in San Francisco -- I swear, we never run out of things to do. And did I mention it was 70 degrees? It was more than 100 in Sacramento.

So we didn't drive and we stayed in a LEED approved hotel. We took the Muni about town and over to Ocean Beach. I dragged my husband to the The Cliff House because I wanted to show him the fortune teller and the exhibit. Except, guess what? It's been moved our to Pier 45, and it's no longer there. But Sunday was a beautiful day for the beach. High 70s.

For dinner, we checked out a somewhat newer restaurant not too far from our hotel. It's called Sons and Daughters. I wish I had more time right now to write about this place, so I'll just say if you're in San Francisco, go there. You're foolish if you don't. I started with the local raw halibut ( above) with caviar and golden berry. Chose the wine pairings. Followed the halibut with fennel soup, paired with a Cremant D'Jura -- I am ordering a case of this wine! We Googled this wine at the table, it is that spectacular. It has its own little volcano action going on in the center of the glass. Crisp. Curt. It slaps your face. Oh, kiss me, again.

My husband urged me to get the squab. I hesitated. No, no, no, you like it, he says, and if you don't, I'll trade you for the lamb. Is it? I asked, glancing back and forth, nodding my head toward the sidewalk?  No, no, no, it's not a pigeon from the street, you'll like it. Then, they served it with an actual pigeon's foot. Nope. I'm a wimp. No can do. I did taste the squab, though. But that part of me that won't let me pick up slithering snakes would not let me eat a second bite of squab. If they just hadn't included the foot -- but the foot is part of the creativity, so they shouldn't change it. This restaurant is brave, daring, adventurous, and I wish it were in Sacramento because I'd dine there with every menu change!

But a Sacramento restaurant owner whom I will not name expressed to me in private that he thinks Sacramento is still a cow town. I doubt we'll ever see a place like this in Sacramento. Sons and Daughters, I'm telling you, go there.

On Monday we went to the Picasso exhibit at the de Young Museum at Golden Gate Park. My husband says the pitcher with apples is not really a still life, regardless of the title. He says it's a woman. He would know, I suppose. And I could swear we visited the Musee National Picasso in Paris, but he doesn't recall. You'd think I would remember the bronzed goat, but I don't. There are so many artists who paint goats. Especially contemporaries. And Picasso will always be a contemporary to me, even if the kids at Berkeley were not yet born when he died.

Happy Fourth of July, everybody. I'm not back at work tomorrow. Even a Sacramento short sale agent like me has to take an extra day of vacation every now then. Check back tomorrow to find out where I am going.

Photos: Elizabeth Weintraub, BlackBerry camera

One of the things I really enjoy about Golden Gate Park is that you see stuff in San Francisco that you'll rarely come across in, say, Land Park in Sacramento. For example, during our six-block stroll from the N Line to the de Young Museum at Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive, I spotted guys like those Party Down dudes (love that show), dressed in bow ties and black suits, carefully removing and stacking bottles of champagne from the back of a black sedan.

Across the street, a wedding Limo decorated like Hello Kitty. Then, a nearly naked guy jogging. A Cyndi Lauper look-a-like smacking gum, photographers carrying tri-pods, kids toting skateboards, an old woman wrapped up like a mummy and asleep in her wheelchair, a tuba player, a hooker, a lost kid playing drums on the sidewalk with a tree branch, Daddy Warbucks screaming on his cell, and a greyhound pulling a kid in a wagon. You've gotta love the diversity.

My husband and I woke sleepy-eyed yesterday due to the trains roaring by all night, stashed our luggage at The Waterfront Hotel at Jack London Square and walked around back to the Oakland Ferry. It's a 30-minute ride to San Francisco from this spot. No sitting in traffic on the Bay Bridge or taking the B.A.R.T. under the water. Best views of the Bay.

A somber group of people sat together at port side. This guy with a hat and scarf wrapped around his neck held a velvet-covered box, and we overheard them discussing the 23rd Psalm. I suspect it's not legal to dump a person's ashes in the Bay, but that wouldn't stop me if I were in their shoes.

It was a short 3-minute walk from the ferry landing in San Francisco to our favorite dim sum restaurant in the Rincon Center, Yank Sing, which was already hopping by 10:30 AM. We started out with an order of Peking Duck, followed by dishes of scallion prawns, Hau Gau, sugar-snap peas, sticky rice in banana leaves, chicken-stuffed mushrooms, and pretty much crammed dumplings into our faces to the point where I didn't leave enough room to finish off with a sesame ball.

The weather was much more cooperative yesterday than it had been on Friday. Sunny, with a light breeze and no rain. The question was did we want to take a street car or the muni to Golden Gate Park. Or were cable cars the best direct route? We opted for the muni, but the N Line stopped at Church and Duboce, where we transferred to a bus. The bus driver told us she's never seen King Tut, even though she's a San Francisco native.

She didn't drive a bus very well. At the first stop, she almost left a baby at the curb because the parents couldn't open the back door of the bus to get out. At the next, she passed up a stop and 2 passengers screamed that they needed to get off. It was a fun ride up Haight Street. Also, somehow fitting that Ben and Jerry's scored the corner location at Haight and Ashbury.

When we arrived at the de Young Museum, it was readily apparent that VIP tickets were the way to go. Otherwise, we would have stood in this crowd of visitors for hours, but a VIP ticket let us bypass the long lines. There are 10 chambers that comprise the King Tutankhamun exhibit. I learned that King Tut married his half-sister. Among the many 3,000-year-old burial treasures are religious pieces such as an ankh, which is the Egyptian symbol of life, and lots of jewelery, including tiny coffins that housed King Tut's internal organs. Probably the best thing was this painted wooden torso of King Tut, or maybe the pectoral with lunar and solar emblems and a glass scarab.

After the tour, we visited the gift shop because no tour is complete without a gift shop. There, you can buy mummy magnets, rubber mummies that squeak and mummy pencils, among other trinkets. I think it's important to support museums, so I bought a pearl jewelery box for my sister and an alabaster cat figurine made in Egypt.

We spent our last hour in San Francisco at the Ferry Building, gorging ourselves on gourmet chocolate, Point Reyes cheese from the Cowgirl Creamery and salami from Tasty Salted Pig Parts, before heading back to Oakland to hop the Capitol Corrider train to Sacramento. Below are a few photos I hope you enjoy:

Oakland Ferry to San Francisco, left and Yank Sing, right

de Young Museum King Tut Exhibit, left and Cowgirl Creamery, right

Photos: Elizabeth Weintraub

Click here for Day 1: The Swell Season in Oakland

Tomorrow's Real Estate Technology Today

One of my favorite things to do at Inman Connect is to see all the new Real Estate Technology that's being introduced to the industry.  While I was wondering around the EXPO checking out the vendor booths and different products, I came across one vendor that really got me excited.  They are called Infusion.com providing Location Intelligence Services.  I was fortunate to have a meeting with Kayla Spiess, their Marketing and Communications Manager, and Tyler Davey the General Manager.  When I saw the demo I'm about to share with you, I was blown away. 

Real Estate Technology is something we know is always changing.  We are constantly trying to adapt to the changes.  Most often I find myself struggling just to keep up with it all.  Last week I wrote a post about Google Maps and Google Earth regarding the missing link to click on the front door of a property and to go inside, or the lack thereof.  Infusion is already ahead of the curve.   Using Microsoft Surface technology, they have taken this idea and incorporated INFUSED ways to use it into today's Real Estate Market and Industry.

Here's a Video Preview of Infusions Falcon Eye Application

The Surface Touch Table you see in this video costs around $12,000 dollars and though you might not find one of these in the entry way of your local Real Estate office or Brokerage, this product is available for certain computers meeting specific Hardware and Software requirements.  The future of Real Estate Technology may at some point include the requirement to purchase one of the coffee table type touch screens for your Real Estate Office.

Don't laugh, they said the fax machine would never make it as a modern day Business tool either.