Thomas Smith, Author at Underscore

In Life and Death, Boichik Bagels Knits Bay Area Jews Together

17Feb

By Thomas Smith2 Comments

Editors' Picks, Food + Drink

In Life and Death, Boichik Bagels Knits Bay Area Jews Together

There's a communal aspect to a plate of handmade, warm carbs from Boichik Bagels that's hard to share in words. But it's a feeling that weaves so many Bay Area Jews together. When the New York Times called Emily Winston’s Berkeley-based Boichik Bagels the best bagel place in America, random New Yorkers started phoning her store to scream at her and call her general manager a bitch. That’s how emotionally salient bagels can be. As a Jew, I know the almost-sacred role that bagels play in my own culture. Bagels are associated with the Ashkenazi side of the Jewish diaspora–the Jews who historically lived in Eastern Europe. My grandfather was a first-generation Polish immigrant, so a love of bagels is practically in my DNA. When I spoke to Winston just after the New York Times’ historic ...

TCHO’s Karl the Nog Bar Will Help You Survive the Holidays

19Dec

By Thomas SmithNo Comments

Food + Drink

TCHO’s Karl the Nog Bar Will Help You Survive the Holidays

The San Francisco Bay Area is a gastronomic touchstone for a reason — so it's little wonder why this holiday-inspired, locally-made chocolate bar is simply a dessert person's dream. Among the Bay Area's many peculiarities, one is especially charming: we've given a name to our city's ubiquitous weather formation, fog. And said the phenomenon has its own Twitter account with 357,000 followers. Many of San Francisco's most prominent citizens tweet at it routinely. @KarlTheFog started mysteriously in 2010 and has since tweeted over 10,000 times. The owner of the account posts anonymously, Banksy-like, from the perspective of San Francisco's omnipresent fog bank, Karl. Karl is apparently cheeky, deeply ironic, a little spicy, and prone to excessive drinking. Now another San Franci...

The Bay Area Is Experiencing a Pastrami Renaissance

18Nov

By Thomas Smith5 Comments

Food + Drink

The Bay Area Is Experiencing a Pastrami Renaissance

The San Francisco Bay Area has given birth to an uncountable amount of food trends. And, now, it's home to a carnivorous resurgence. As an Ashkenazi Jew, eating good deli food is a spiritual experience for me. For years, the Bay Area’s relative lack of good delis was a sore spot. I love our region’s bizarre, intense food culture. But sometimes, a Jew just needs a decent pastrami sandwich. Thankfully, the Bay Area can finally deliver that. In fact, our region is currently in the midst of a pastrami renaissance. It’s almost as thrilling as when Emily Winston, a self-described queer Berkeley Jew, beat those loud-mouthed New Yorkers as their own bagel game. Here are three places in the Bay Area that are leading our pastrami renaissance. Pyro's pastrami at Delirama When the pre...

Millions of Workers Now Report to an AI Algorithm — Not a Boss

1Sep

By Thomas SmithNo Comments

News to Know

Millions of Workers Now Report to an AI Algorithm — Not a Boss

Complaining about your boss is an office tradition as old as work itself But what if you don’t work for a human boss? What if your boss is an algorithm whose internal workings are totally opaque–and yet that boss is able to control everything about your life, and even determine if you’ll be able to put food on your table? According to a new report from the Mozilla Foundation, a non-profit research organization based in Mountain View, that precarious position is increasingly common for gig workers around the world. Many toils in potentially dangerous conditions, with their every move dictated by black-box algorithms that even the algorithms’ creators don’t understand. These algorithms determine their pay, have the power to furlough them or lay them off, and can dramatically change t...