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The Outer Sunset Reacts to the NYTimes

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[via Curbed Flickr Pool/User Tha_Sco]

What a big weekend it was for the Outer Sunset! After years of hearing about how foggy you think it is, your one friend who actually lives out there finally got some bragging rights by way of a slideshow and Travel section piece in the New york Times. After calling the neighborhood "bleak" right there in the headline, Times writer Rachel Levin starts to warm up to the idea of life in "Driftwood Alley" at the end of Judah Street, where everything is made of salvaged wood and the bars all have fireplaces. (Our final wood tally shows two instances of "salvaged wood", a slab of bay laurel made into a rustic table, some handcarved surfboards and the knotty pine paneling at the Riptide.)

With all due respect to Ms. Levin (because we have no idea where she lives, nor should that influence our reading of her piece), we thought we'd get some local neighborhood reactions to the NYTimes treatment from the best source we have: Twitter and Instant Messaging, obviously.

First up, SFAppeal Editor Eve Batey, who earlier today gave us her much less woody take on the neighborhood (penned before the Times' piece, mind you) was frankly confounded by the use of "bleak" - "because apparently bleak = places where people live?"

Notable N-Judah aficionado Greg Dewar was likewise perplexed by the bleakness, tweeting: "Plenty of NYC is far 'bleaker' than the outer sunset." Which is true, Staten Island is pretty bleak for one, but their ferry might actually be more reliable than the N.

Finally, freelance writer and pro-print journalist Mat Honan, shared his delight by tweeting a photo of the paper which he was presumably enjoying over an espresso from NYTimes-approved Trouble Coffee Company.
· In San Francisco, a Bleak Neighborhood Is Revived[NY Times]
· The People's Guide SFAppeal Editor and Publisher Eve Batey[CurbedSF]