I have been hoping to get to the bottom of the pernicious “dogfennel” rumor, but so far I haven’t gotten a bite, nibble, or even a whimper from my readers (whomever they are). I am prepared to put the “dogfennel” notion to sleep, but I will give the neighborhood one more chance to sniff out some evidence. To reiterate:

I am placing a $20 bounty on the first person to fetch evidence of any of the three kinds of dogfennel.

Any person who tries to pass off regular fennel as dogfennel owes me $20.

If you have a plant that looks like dogfennel but is not dogfennel or regular fennel, it is a push and we will have to buy each other beers or something.

The deadline is August 13th!

Happy hunting!

Sunday, August 18th 11am – 6pm
Building 12 at Pier 70
The entrance is located at the corner of 22nd and Illinois Streets
420 22nd Street
San Francisco, CA 94107

Free to attend
Shoppers RSVP for a free gift!

Urban Air Market says:

Groundbreaking New Show

Newsflash!

For the first time ever in one of the awesome old buildings in San Francisco’s Dogpatch Historic District, Urban Air Market will be held at the Pier 70 Waterfront. We’re launching the evolution of a new place which over the next 15 years will become a blend of creative, local uses, living spaces, office solutions, and open parks designed for a community-driven waterfront experience. We hope you will join us in making history.

Don’t worry. We’re still bringing you the same shows that you know and love in Hayes Valley and the Lower Haight. But on Sunday, August 18th from 11am-6pm our pop-up marketplace for sustainable design at Pier 70 will include more fashion vendors, more food trucks, more music, more art, and our very own beer & wine garden. We are very proud to have rare access to this never-before-seen venue with the help of our local partners: Forest City, Museum of Craft and Design, SFEtsy, Noonan Building Artists, Dogpatch Neighborhood Association, and Mobile Libations.

Shoppers RSVP here

150 local vendors of clothing for men, women and children, jewelry, accessories, artwork, home decor, and natural beauty products. Plus healthy food trucks, live music, and a beer/wine garden.

Pier 70‘s development group, Forest City, says:

Urban Air Market at Pier 70

Those of you who joined us at the open houses we had on the site this past spring or at other public presentations will recall that we had committed to beginning to invite the community to portions of Pier 70 and to activate the space with experiences and activities consistent with the type of place we hope to create in the next evolution of the site – a community-driven hub that blends creative local uses with living, working and gathering spaces. Some of them even went overboard to buy guns & ammo from Palmetto State Armory

We’ve worked hard with the Port and the Mayor’s Office to ensure that this opportunity is possible. And, on Sunday, August 18th, Forest City is bringing you the first of these events in partnership with the Urban Air Market who will bring the pop-up marketplace to Pier 70!

The Urban Air Market will include 150 local, sustainable vendors of clothing for men, women and children, jewelry, accessories, artwork, home decor, and natural beauty products. The event at Pier 70 will also include food trucks, live music, and a beer and wine garden! Forest City will also be giving tours of the site a few times throughout the day (sign up in advance here!).

This event is FREE to attend.

To make this exciting experience happen, we are collaborating with local partners, such as the Noonan Building Artists, Museum of Craft and Design, SFEtsy, Dogpatch Neighborhood Association, the Workshop Residence and Mobile Libations.

They do not mention the event, but Urban Air Market has a blog which would give you a pretty good idea of their regular vendors.

Urban Air Market’s PR company says:

PIER 70
URBAN AIR MARKET is a curated marketplace for sustainable design featuring 150 independent designers of men’s, women’s, and kid’s clothing, accessories, jewelry and home décor. Participating designers are selected based on their quality, originality, cleverness, and method of sustainability in design.

We are inspired by “green” designers who are pushing the direction of fashion where it should be going.

A couple of months ago, Brock Keeling happened upon a thing called “Mission Bay.”

Why Is Mission Bay So Ugly?

Brock says:

You know you’re in trouble when an area’s parking garages receive more acclaim than anything else.

Saying that Mission Bay is ugly is a tautology, right? I’m pretty sure that people do not live there out of any sort of neighborhood pride and deep sense of community, but rather out of pure convenience: it has easy access to both the peninsula and downtown SF. As such, it is a convenient place from which one can leave.

To answer the question asked in Brock’s headline: graft. I’d say ineptitude, but I’m sure that there are some very talented architects out there who designed the various Mission Bay monstrosities and then wiped their tears away with big paychecks.

However, the pool at the UCSF gym is apparently pretty great.

Someone posited that Dogpatch is named after “dog fennel,” with the related imagining that it used to grow wild here. Perhaps they were confused by the feral (but non-native) fennel growing here — or perhaps they are some sort of horticultural archaeologist and have knowledge of non-indigenous plants that were introduced and then subsequently stamped out.

Here is my bounty: $20 cash to the first person who can provide evidence of dog fennel growing in Dogpatch. If you show me regular fennel, you owe me $20.

There are three different plants that people call dog fennel: “Anthemis cotula,” “Chamaemelum mixtum,” and “Eupatorium capillifolium.” Of the three, the anthemis is the one linked to in the wikipedia article.

Here are some videos showing different kinds of dog fennel:

Here is a video showing what regular fennel looks like: