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Tipping etiquette in America

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    Tipping etiquette in America

    The closest Amtrak gets to Hearst Castle is San Luis Obispo or Paso Robles, both of which are about 40 miles away. I'm sure that there are buses (especially from SLO), but the timing may be problematic.

    In any event, the Hearst Castle website gives one a very good idea of what is there.

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      Tipping etiquette in America

      Tsk tsk, Bill and Marion would have sent a car to pick you up. I think, to maintain the ambiance, that service should be included in the price of admission.

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        Tipping etiquette in America

        Right UA, San Simeon, just north of San Luis Obispo is home of the Hearst Castle, it's not too far off the 101/Amtrack corridor but the problem with taking the train from SF to LA is that the trip alone is at least 12 hrs long and I'm guessing that the train frequency is not big enough to allow a stop and detour, plus you'd need a car to jump over to the coast from the 101 corridor. It's unfortunate, but California is totally built for the car, you can rent one for a week, gas and insurance included, for the price of a train roundtrip for two. I can't think of anywhere where it's easier to drive, traffic is slow and mellow, roads are wide and the transit is very well-designed.

        In any case, there are a lot of fantastic sites beyond Hearst Castle for works from Julia Morgan (who designed the Hearst Castle) and Bernard Maybeck (her teacher, and one of the most underrated architects in the world) in the Bay Area, those being local architects who have built hundreds of buildings in and around SF. The Berkeley campus and its surroundings is one good example.

        I'm sure SR will greatly enjoy the train ride, but I'd also recommend for future reference driving down the coast (Highway 1) from San Francisco right before rush hour and staying at the lighthouse in Pescadero, which has been converted into a youth hostel (wonderful cheap accomodation), the coastline sunset drive is gorgeous and you could spend the next morning tidepooling down the coast or checking out one of the many beach or forest parks nearby.


        From there, it's a 7-8hr drive to LA with a lot of great places to stop afterwards, like Sta Cruz or Carmel/Monterrey. I would take a leisurely drive then stop in the evening at Paso Robles (wine country featured in Sideways) or in keeping with SR's Vertigo theme, the Mission at San Juan Bautista. San Luis Obispo is a nice college town on the coast, Thursday nights there are quite fun with the main strip going pedestrian and featuring a festive farmers market.

        Further south, at this time of the year, there is a tremendous profusion of wildflower in the hills before Sta Barbara, with orange poppies and other local varieties completely carpeting the landscape, it's quite a spectacular sight on a good year like this one.

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          Tipping etiquette in America

          Page nine on the thread and we haven't had a discussion about the political implications of tipping?
          Well, we've done the politics of tipping to death on here before, so what would be the point?

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            Tipping etiquette in America

            Ginger Yellow wrote:
            Well, we've done the politics of tipping to death on here before, so what would be the point?
            Well, I thought the same thing about Catholicism.

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              Tipping etiquette in America

              One note on dining for SR: SF is a mecca for food in general but also for veggie dining, there is a huge concentration of vegetarian foodies. You won't be getting by, you'll be eating very well. Greens is the most famous one, it's in a scenic part of town at Fort Mason. Millenium is also pretty popular and not too far from your hotel, though I haven't tried it.

              The taquerias like Cancun and El Farolito in the Mission (which is also one of the better neighborhoods for nighlife and bar-hopping, but also good for daytime browsing with bookstores, record stores and cafes) are a great option too, as burritos and tacos are just fine without the meat. Also in the Misson, Cha-Ya is a good and very popular Japanese vegan restaurant that originally started in Berkeley. Yelp is a very good online resource for both SF and LA.

              Most of the Asian resturants have fairly extensive vegetarian offerings too (more so than their equivalents in Europe as there is more of a local vegetarian clientele), I wouldn't hesitate to check out some of the better chinese or thai places not too far from your hotel like the R&G Lounge (on Kearny), Manoras thai (Folsom, in SOMA, one of the best pad thais in town) or the Slanted Door (cal-Viet in the Embarcadero.) The same goes for the better local California cuisine mainstays like Chez Panisse in Berkeley.

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                Tipping etiquette in America

                dglh wrote:
                Ginger Yellow wrote:
                Well, we've done the politics of tipping to death on here before, so what would be the point?
                Well, I thought the same thing about Catholicism.
                And yet it, like tipping, is still practiced.

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                  Tipping etiquette in America

                  Forgive me, father, for having missed that thread. I must devote more time to my otf scriptures.

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                    Tipping etiquette in America

                    Lots of great recommendations here, I could add a few more, but to do it justice you need to allow the time to stop and explore.

                    This is really a stop and smell the roses kind of excursion, something a lot of visitors either don't have the time or inclination for or they don't know it even exists. It's the modern dilemma, either stop to smell the roses or rush about to squeeze in the greatest hits.

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                      Tipping etiquette in America

                      It really sucks that you can't go and live somewhere for a month or two.

                      I mean, you can, but it's not built into the system as much as whipping about for a week or two and then getting back to the grind is.

                      Me...I'm staying at Inca's place and using his car for a month to get a genuine feel for LA.

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                        Tipping etiquette in America

                        You'll definitely get a feel for LA traffic.

                        ...er, stop and go and stop and go and stop and smell the smog.

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                          Tipping etiquette in America

                          Another question for the LA crew: we're now looking at the Travelodge on N Vermont between Sunset and Fairfax. I've had a look on Google Streetview and got the impression that the area isn't remotely 'sketchy', but maybe a little boring and sterile and corporate, and isolated from Cool Stuff. Would that be right?

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                            Tipping etiquette in America

                            Unlike many Angelinos on here, I'm not an expert on Hollywood, but I did stay in the area two years ago. Yeah, the neighborhood around N Vermont/Sunset is not dodgy, but it's a bit sterile. It might also feel a bit weird to sleep in a typical American motel, where the rooms are open on the outside but I guess the No Country For Old Men vibe is kind of an interesting local flavor.

                            I'd really recommend bidding on Priceline an amount just slightly higher than your travelodge quote for 3-star hotels in Hollywood; you will most likely end up at the Highland or at another better place in a better part of town, for about the same rate. I'd also recommend renting a car, esp if you do end up staying at the Travelodge (which has plenty of parking space, as do most other hotels), you'll feel a lot less bogged down. LA is one of those places that are less about destinations and more about the stroll, and of course in that city the stroll is done behind the wheel.

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                              Tipping etiquette in America

                              I had my unexpected stopover in the USA last week, on my way back from Haiti.

                              I have now come to do my expenses. If tipping was part of the service charge I would be about $100 dollars better off right now as I could claim it as part of my legitimate expenses. But since it is 'discretionary' I can't claim it back.

                              Now as my employer is a charity, even though an extremely well funded charity, I don't mind. But if I was working for any other employer I would feel a bit aggrieved.

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                                Tipping etiquette in America

                                Rhino--I think it looks like that on that block because of the hospitals. But I think that's a pretty good area to stay in, because you'd be right nearby a lot of different areas. You're still really close to Hollywood and East Hollywood. Up Vermont is Los Feliz, which has a lot of cool shops (I highly recommend the Skylight Books). There's also an Indian restaurant called Electric Lotus that is supposed to be pretty good. You're nearby Barnsdall Park, with the Frank Lloyd Wright Hollyhock House. To the east a bit is Silverlake, the hipster epicenter of LA, but don't let that put you off of it completely. Past that is Echo Park, which I recommend checking out (especially the street Carroll Avenue--lots of intact Victorian homes from the late 19th Century). To the south there's a subway station near LA City College, and in that area there's a great ice cream place called Scoops (lots of vegan options if that interests you).

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                                  Tipping etiquette in America

                                  As Inca says the medical centers around there makes the area look more bland than it is, but you're ideally located to explore the Los Feliz neighborhood that's around Franklin, N. Vermont, Hillhurst and Hollywood. It's a great neighborhood. I'll add La Luz de Jesus Gallery & Emporium on Hollywood just east of Vermont as a place worth stopping in. I bought some very cool 50s style swizzle sticks there once.

                                  I don't know if you eat sushi but there's a great hole-in-the-wall place right next to Skylight Books. Restaurant Row is on Hillhurst so it's worth taking a walk up there too. You have to stop in at the House of Pies Coffee shop at the corner of Franklin and N. Vermont. The place is an institution.

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                                    Tipping etiquette in America

                                    Bringing back a classic (just check out the contributors to page one) to note that one of New York's greatest restauranteurs is eliminating tipping at all of his restaurants here.

                                    Eater's nuanced and detailed explanation of the economics of this in the link is really quite interesting.

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                                      Tipping etiquette in America

                                      I don't think I can express how much I approve of this.

                                      Restaurants really should charge a fair, and transparent, cost for their product, and pay their staff a fair wage. The fact that 20% of the cost of your meal is hidden, not shown on the menu, has always felt like a form of deceit.

                                      The fact that it also means servers are dependent on customers' goodwill; that servers treatment of you is often influenced by preconceived ideas of what you'll tip (foreigners are always assumed to tip less, so often get worse service); and the fact that cooks end up with lower salaries than servers, are all problems that would be fixed (or at least helped) by getting rid of tipping and service charges.

                                      And that's not forgetting the fact that it's almost impossible to know what to tip in many contexts (what do you tip for take out, for delivery, do you add your 20% to the total, or just for food and not wine, etc?) so it actually makes the dining experience (or at least the settling up at the end of the night) fairly shitty.

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                                        Tipping etiquette in America

                                        On a slightly related note, a few restaurants I know over here are considering moving to something like a "ticket" system rather than a traditional reservation system. It already works at crazy high-end places like Alinea (who have service costs built in). When there's only a single fixed price meal on offer, that's easy to understand. Everyone pays the same, so the ticket price remains the same. You pay before you go, and there's no transaction at all with your meal (unless you order wine, I think)

                                        Lots of lower end restaurants end up getting screwed by people making reservations and then not keeping them. So they're thinking about going to something like this sort of system with, say, a $50 ticket price which is then held against your actual meal (let's say you eat a $85 meal, you end up only paying $35 on the evening). It's getting to the point where many places are needing to do this because they're losing revenue either by losing tables or by buying in too much food given that they're expecting customers to show up for their reservations.

                                        I don't know if they'll be able to make that kind of model sustainable, or if it's really only the super-high demand, high-end restaurants who can pull it off. But it's interesting.

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                                          Tipping etiquette in America

                                          A few high end places here are starting to charge no shows that fail to cancel. Quite a few others have just stopped taking reservations (which has its own problems).

                                          I don't know how people who make multiple reservations at difficult to get into restaurants at prime hours and only use one (if that) have survived to adulthood, but they do exist.

                                          I grew up with this system, so it doesn't strike me as outrageous as it does to those who did not (perusing this thread from the start will make that clear), but I completely agree with everything you've said, and hope that the shifting economics of the situation will finally allow us to adopt a more equitable system (it should also help tax revenues).

                                          Should we ever achieve that, we could next take on displaying prices so as to include all taxes.

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                                            Really interesting radio piece on the history of tipping in the US (some highlights from the transcript are here but the whole show is worth listening to)

                                            https://www.npr.org/2021/03/22/98004...=1617108314646

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