GINGER'S TOO bar on 6th Street This fine booze-shuckin' establishment, dominated by black gay men, is a decent sleazy place to get a smashing hell-drink for about $2.50 if you can swat the stoned stinky lonely guys off your hunky boyfriend. The gentlemen step (I mean strut) outside for their smokes, so the only threat to your health might be of the amorous type. Hunky straight guys might be asking for trouble in here. Don't stay too long. This is a last-stand, even for 6th Street... there are no 'yuppies' in this bar. No regular people.

PHONG LAN=10 Vietnamese food (Turk Street off Market and 5th) = Rumor says it was founded by a Tu Lan defector. This place must be some kind of freaky culinary holodeck, complete with Vietnamese music videos and Karaoke. Every time I go there, the following details force me to question whether this is, in fact, a real restaurant... or a front for the Asian mafia.

1. $3.75 for a huge plate of food (veggies & fu on rice). Prices have not gone up for the New Year, unlike PG&E and the post office.

2. The food is always perfectly fresh and perfectly cooked. Even the water tastes good.

3. I always get full and I never get sick.

4. The service is instant, because there is never anyone else in there (a pretty big place), yet somehow they stay in business.

5. Food is as good (maybe better) and cheaper than Tu Lan on 6th Street, but no cockroaches.

FARLEY'S Farley's coffee sucks. It's usually luke-warm and always has a film of scum on the surface. And they have never changed their lame assortment of muffins and shit in all my years of patronage. It might be a cool place to see-and-be-seen, but the coffee sucks. sorry.

BRAINWASH - ZERO (demolition recommended) As their wall plaque braggs so unbelievably: "voted best laundrymat" how many years in a row? Or, how many years ago was that? Well Bonk hereby votes it most overpriced & uncomfortable laundrymat, WORST CAFE and WORST MUSIC (live and DJ) of anywhere in the frikkin world. First, your laundry takes so long to dry you're there all night, and there is no place to sit down (unless you can endure the cafe). Numerous bums invariably bug you for change, try to sell you clothes with blood stains, or read you their insane crappy poetry or have a toothless one-way conversation about something they just read in the SF Weekly. Next, world's crappiest over-priced food, including "world's greasiest fries"... "world's nastiest hummus" with the flavor and consistency of fresh mixed Fix-All... "pasta cream sauce that is the most like play-dough in the world" (and they tell you it's not too thick, even when you ask)... all ordered from the cheapest restaurant supplier in the world... even the protein powder is mixed with baby powder (takes one to know one, buddy) for extra profit. Next, how many heinous off-key sophomoric smarmy self-indulgent Bob Dylan wanna-be's can you book in one month??? Lemme tell ya, by the time my clothes are dry (what with the new six-minute rip-off dryers takes about an hour and a half per load) I'm ready to take those world's-soggiest-fries (dunked in their "world's stinkiest toilet") and stuff em down that simpering sissy bitch's throat so i don't have to listen to one more goddamn song about her frikkin feelings, her ex-lovers who did this and said that and made her whine in deep, pathetic introspection. That's material to bitch about, not write sissy-ass songs about. Go back to your room and put on that Ani DiFranco album, and keep dreaming. And stay away from the 'open mike' or you will get your ass beat up. Finally, world's skankyest and stupidest clientele: Aside from being Grand Central Station for bums and tweekers, there are the paying customers. These dipshits never notice that the burgers are made of the ground-up soles of recycled Birkenstocks. They just keep coming back for more... they sit there slurping down 2000 grams of cholesterol and nodding their heads to the worst music in the history of sound. Yeah, groove out! You wouldn't know bad music if it crapped on your fork. The cafe DJ managed to find the only techno-rave record that is more tasteless and monotonous than everything spewed forth by the Burning Man Rave DJ, and s/he plays this record over and over, so loud you can't even hear the *hunky laundrymat manager* yelling at the bums. *Only reason Brainwash doesn't get less than a zero: world's hunkiest laundrymat manager.