Unless you haven’t gotten near a television, newscast, newspaper lately, you are probably like us in San Francisco, confused about everyone’s priorities. Someone asked on the bus, did I hear about some outrageous trial? Most of us said, we heard about it, but what bothered us more was the lack of coverage on things that matter. It’s a shell game, if we’re looking at something that doesn’t matter, they hope we’ll won’t look at the things that don’t. The other trick is to pit one group against another. Either way it’s a shell game.
Everyday on our tours, we see what happens we see what happens when our focus is on how to support our friends and neighbors. We share ideas about how to improve where we live. We look how to keep resources locally, such using resources such as MoneyYourMoney, or buying locally buy using resources such as Slow Food. We celebrate when one of our neighbors is helped with their mortgage, not being upset because we don’t need it at the moment. Or, if we do need it, we find that acting collectively makes us all stronger. Our entertainment is seeing our neighbors being happy and living their lives fully, which makes our living happier and gives us fuller lives.
On our tours, everything we enjoy is locally made. We do whatever we can to support our local community. We may be naive, but we think people can make an incredible difference in the world. Make sure you bank locally, buy locally, and do whatever you can to lift everyone in your community. The result might be that we change the shell game to focus on the issues that really matter, rather than some outrageous trial, some non-issue, or something else that doesn’t really matter. What matters is how our neighbors can be happy, can support themselves and their families, and can sleep at night.
by sffoodie at July 8, 2011
Thinking Locally Financially
With all of our focus on thinking locally, we recently came across a way to act locally with our finances. The Website Move Your Money (http://moveyourmoneyproject.org/) is a national movement to take our money our of the big banks, where it does little to help our economy, local communities, or individuals, and put it into credit unions or community banks, where it can directly help local communities and individuals. We can across it after our bank informed us that would be imposing fees in February.
The good news is that we found that many credit unions are now offering business accounts. In addition to our personal accounts, we have moved our business accounts over to the credit union.
Credit Unions are non-profit. When you open an account you become a member. When they make a profit, they return it to their members in terms of higher interest on savings and lower interest on loans. They are run by volunteer boards of directors who are elected by their members. Your accounts are guaranteed and protected, just like a bank. Since they did not participate in the Wall Street games, there are more stable financially than the big banks. And just just about every service you can get a bank, you can get at a Credit Union.
Think about taking your money and putting where it can do the most good for your community and you, a local community bank or credit union. In other words, we can complain about Wall Street and the big banks, or we can do something about it. Stop feeding the beast and feed ourselves and our communities.
by sffoodie at January 9, 2011
Why We Do What Do
Ever so often, we get reminded about why we do what we do. The other day we were out on our tours and we saw another group going into a stop that we had just gone into. They took over the shop and contributed nothing to the shop’s viability. The guests got an incredibly small amount of food and the artisan lost income as result of their visit, as other customers were prevented from coming into the artisans shop to purchase food.
by sffoodie at August 6, 2010
New Foods on our San Francisco Tours
We’re always looking for new food to add to our San Francisco Tours. Every season bring new food on our San Francisco Food Tours.
by sffoodie at April 13, 2010
Springtime on our San Francisco Tours
On our San Francisco Tours, we’re getting into springtime. Springtime is a time of renewal on our San Francisco Food Tours. With renewal comes new ideas. As a community, we’re starting to see new ideas and new ways to support the neighborhoods on our San Francisco Culinary Tours.
From Chinatown to North Beach\Little Italy, our commitment on our San Francisco Tours is to our local community. Everything on our San Francisco Food Tours is strictly local. Local commitment, such as we have our San Francisco Culinary tours, should be everyone’s resolution.
Today, I saw an advertisement on touting low prices. If that low price comes from goods that do not support local communities, such as Chinatown or North Beach\Little Italy, they are nothing more than a way that hurts everyone. Local manufacturing, local sales, and local reinvestment are all lost when products are not local.
Supporting local communities, like we do on our San Francisco Tours, should not be a new idea, however for many it is. It means that we know where the food we enjoy on our San Francisco Food tours comes from. Even the clothing I wear on our San Francisco Culinary Tours is from is sweatshop free. In other words, no child labor and the people producing made enough money to take care our their families.
In your local community, you can do the same. Just like on our San Francisco Tours, their are local merchants close to you. There are local foods, like we try on San Francisco Food Tours. Your clothing can be sweatshop free, just like I wear on our San Francisco Culinary Tours. It is a choice we can all made.
by sffoodie at April 7, 2010
Resources for Own San Francisco Tours
On our San Francisco Food Tours, we only taste food made locally. Eating locally and seasonally is a great way to support your local community. We’ve now added resources to eat locally and seasonally on our Facebook page. It’s definitely a way to enjoy some of the highlights of our San Francisco Tours at home.
by sffoodie at February 15, 2010
The Power of Individuals
On our San Francisco Tours, we know the power of people. Right now, we have a unique opportunity to demonstrate that. Whether it is the American Red Cross, Doctors Without Borders, donating money and time to Haiti disaster relief is way to show that individuals can make a huge difference our community and our planet.
by sffoodie at January 18, 2010
Finds on our San Francisco Tours
We found some great pastries today on our San Francisco Tours.
by sffoodie at January 9, 2010
Getting ready for Valentine’s Day on our San Francisco Tours
We’re on the last day of our Holiday Tours on our San Francisco Tours. Very soon, we’ll be getting ready for our Valentine’s Day Tours.
by sffoodie at January 3, 2010
Surprises on our San Francisco Tours
It’s 2010 and new year on our San Francisco Tours. Being incurable romantics, we’re working on adding some more surprises.
by sffoodie at January 2, 2010
« Newer Posts — Older Posts »