The Off Topic Topic

[Josquius]

Old, but I can't recall seeing it on the bbc. Seems legit?
http://www.ast.leeds.ac.uk/~jh/BBC_NEWS.htm

[Syt]

Old, but I can't recall seeing it on the bbc. Seems legit?
http://www.ast.leeds.ac.uk/~jh/BBC_NEWS.htm

Not enough moral outrage in the article to be legit.

EDIT: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambodian_Midget_Fighting_League

[Josquius]

Yeah. My point is more along "What the hell, on the bbc website?" lines.

[Jacob]

But with a moody and sensitive side.

And with a chicken.

[alfred russel]

But with a moody and sensitive side.

And with a chicken.

I think he just choked the chicken.

[Ed Anger]

These are the last days of a small world on Ocean Avenue in the Ingleside district. Franciscan Hobbies, where the world is reduced to scale-model size, is going out of business Jan. 31 after 68 years.

Franciscan Hobbies is a store packed with model airplanes, ships, slot cars, tanks, trains and books, some new, some rare.

It was also a kind of clubhouse, a bit like a neighborhood bar, without the liquor. The customers, mostly men, it seemed, would come to buy a model kit, or a part for some tricky model project, and stay to talk - hobbies, politics, city gossip, troubles. Franciscan Hobbies was a family-owned store that was like a family.

"Not only are you customers, but many of you are our personal friends," Noah Moore, a longtime member of the staff, wrote in a farewell note to customers. "We've talked you through personal goods and bads, marriages and divorces, births and deaths."

Changing times
The store was old school. And that was the problem.

As John Gunther, the son of founder Bill Gunther, tells it, Franciscan Hobbies was done in by changing times, by the Internet, by suppliers who undercut the prices in the retail hobby shops, and by a demographic shift.

Franciscan had thousands of old customers, and many of them first came in as children to buy railcars, or model ship kits, or model airplanes that actually flew. But their own kids and the kids after them found something else to do. When was the last time you saw a model train under the Christmas tree?

"It's all computers now," said Dan Gomez, who is 49 and grew up in the city. "I think kids should get out and play and build things. When I was a kid, they'd let you fly planes in the Crocker-Amazon Park.

"I couldn't wait to get out there. It was dangerous, too. You are dealing with gas motors in these things, or you could get your hands caught in the prop, or if you didn't look out, you could set the whole place on fire. It was fun.

"Kids are not interested now. All they want to do is play with their phones. I'm kind of glad I grew up when I did."

Hobby shops like Franciscan were the home base for hobbyists and staffed by people who knew their business. That was the trick. They could talk the talk. They knew the esoteric details of model railroading, where everything is supposed to be exact and authentic.

State of collapse
The stock at Franciscan includes model circus tents, model streetcars from San Francisco's F-Market line (now $84 at going-out-of-business sale prices), model people (a 6-foot-tall man in HO, the most popular railroad scale, stands exactly .8268 of an inch tall), model ships (it has a big stock of Japanese battleships) and even a rare Coast Guard cutter model more than 3 feet long, a steal at $700. There was even an HO gauge farm scene: five cows and two calves complete with model cow flop.

Marco Hnatt, who lives in Moss Beach and has a big layout in his house, was buying model freight cars the other day and he wanted to be sure they had the right look: nothing after 1956, no Amtrak, no Norfolk Southern, which didn't exist then. He relied on the Franciscan staff to get it right.

"And all that knowledge goes away," he said.

The end of Franciscan Hobbies is part of a trend, John Gunther said. The hobby store industry is in a state of collapse. Five hobby shops in the Bay Area, he said, closed in the past few months alone. Hobby shops, Gunther said, are going the way of music stores and bookstores.

"Dinosaurs," said Gomez, the customer who is glad he grew up years ago.

Gunther compares closing the store to a bit like a death in the family. He's been in the store for 45 years and he'd hoped to pass the business on to his son.

"But the numbers kept going south," he said. "It wouldn't pencil out.

"We had a good run," he said. "You don't know what tomorrow may bring. I try to keep a stiff upper lip."

Carl Nolte is a San Francisco Chronicle columnist. His column appears every Sunday. E-mail: [email protected]

[Admiral Yi]

In an Economist article on the Cuban lifting of the ban on car imports they said the list price of a 2013 Peugot is $250,000.

[CountDeMoney]

In an Economist article on the Cuban lifting of the ban on car imports they said the list price of a 2013 Peugot is $250,000.

Unlike the United States government, the Cuban government actually believes in the concept of revenue.

[Admiral Yi]

  How much revenue do they think they're going to make on that Peugot?

[garbon]

Every time I visit my mother.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=PIA--g_OTAw

[Ideologue]

And from the same channel, some super-garbage:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMR-LKT_Yhw

For example, the fact that the sperm that fertilized the egg that became you beat out a few billion others does not make you a "genetic winner."

[merithyn]

I entered one of my meads into my first "legit" brewing competition. I'll find out Monday or Tuesday how it did. It's a spiced cranberry sweet mead, aged about three months. I think it tastes pretty good, but we'll see what the professionals think. 

[Razgovory]

In an Economist article on the Cuban lifting of the ban on car imports they said the list price of a 2013 Peugot is $250,000.

I always figured that Cuba has the world best car mechanics since they all still drive those 1950's era cars.

[Duque de Bragança]

These are the last days of a small world on Ocean Avenue in the Ingleside district. Franciscan Hobbies, where the world is reduced to scale-model size, is going out of business Jan. 31 after 68 years.

Franciscan Hobbies is a store packed with model airplanes, ships, slot cars, tanks, trains and books, some new, some rare.

It was also a kind of clubhouse, a bit like a neighborhood bar, without the liquor. The customers, mostly men, it seemed, would come to buy a model kit, or a part for some tricky model project, and stay to talk - hobbies, politics, city gossip, troubles. Franciscan Hobbies was a family-owned store that was like a family.

"Not only are you customers, but many of you are our personal friends," Noah Moore, a longtime member of the staff, wrote in a farewell note to customers. "We've talked you through personal goods and bads, marriages and divorces, births and deaths."

Changing times
The store was old school. And that was the problem.

As John Gunther, the son of founder Bill Gunther, tells it, Franciscan Hobbies was done in by changing times, by the Internet, by suppliers who undercut the prices in the retail hobby shops, and by a demographic shift.

Franciscan had thousands of old customers, and many of them first came in as children to buy railcars, or model ship kits, or model airplanes that actually flew. But their own kids and the kids after them found something else to do. When was the last time you saw a model train under the Christmas tree?

"It's all computers now," said Dan Gomez, who is 49 and grew up in the city. "I think kids should get out and play and build things. When I was a kid, they'd let you fly planes in the Crocker-Amazon Park.

"I couldn't wait to get out there. It was dangerous, too. You are dealing with gas motors in these things, or you could get your hands caught in the prop, or if you didn't look out, you could set the whole place on fire. It was fun.

"Kids are not interested now. All they want to do is play with their phones. I'm kind of glad I grew up when I did."

Hobby shops like Franciscan were the home base for hobbyists and staffed by people who knew their business. That was the trick. They could talk the talk. They knew the esoteric details of model railroading, where everything is supposed to be exact and authentic.

State of collapse
The stock at Franciscan includes model circus tents, model streetcars from San Francisco's F-Market line (now $84 at going-out-of-business sale prices), model people (a 6-foot-tall man in HO, the most popular railroad scale, stands exactly .8268 of an inch tall), model ships (it has a big stock of Japanese battleships) and even a rare Coast Guard cutter model more than 3 feet long, a steal at $700. There was even an HO gauge farm scene: five cows and two calves complete with model cow flop.

Marco Hnatt, who lives in Moss Beach and has a big layout in his house, was buying model freight cars the other day and he wanted to be sure they had the right look: nothing after 1956, no Amtrak, no Norfolk Southern, which didn't exist then. He relied on the Franciscan staff to get it right.

"And all that knowledge goes away," he said.

The end of Franciscan Hobbies is part of a trend, John Gunther said. The hobby store industry is in a state of collapse. Five hobby shops in the Bay Area, he said, closed in the past few months alone. Hobby shops, Gunther said, are going the way of music stores and bookstores.

"Dinosaurs," said Gomez, the customer who is glad he grew up years ago.

Gunther compares closing the store to a bit like a death in the family. He's been in the store for 45 years and he'd hoped to pass the business on to his son.

"But the numbers kept going south," he said. "It wouldn't pencil out.

"We had a good run," he said. "You don't know what tomorrow may bring. I try to keep a stiff upper lip."

Carl Nolte is a San Francisco Chronicle columnist. His column appears every Sunday. E-mail: [email protected]

One of these places closed in my neighborhood, to be replaced by a cafe/bar catering to bobos and hipsters, called "Yuppies café" (sic). 

[Syt]

There was a very good RP/boardgame/model building shop on Mariahilfer Straße. It closed to make room for a Game Stop.