What I hear you saying is...

Turned out that it was New Years Day that was the big holiday, and it's really much more akin to something like Christmas morning minus the presents (unless you're a kid, in which case you get red envelopes of nice cold cash). The whole family gets together at the parents or a relative's house and everyone sits around and eats lots of food and watches TV telethons or plays mah-jhongg. Most also visit a local Shinto shrine (they're everywhere) to make prayers/wishes for the new year.

Now that I'm older and less liquor-worthy, I've really come to appreciate importing some of these customs into our own home -- notably the special New Years Day meal. Some families go all-out and do several days of advance prep so that there is food for many days and no cooking needed, but we usually try to crank out one meal and call it a day.

Someone once said that they wouldn't eat Japanese food because they were against eating cusine that was based on a dare. I think that there's probably some truth to that -- if you've ever ventured beyond Benihana or the local Armenian sushi shop then you're probably aware that there are a lot of 'taste acquistion' skills required.

Still, here's the menu we were able to throw together, in spite of half the house suffering from head colds. We like to mix in a lot of western ingredients to brand the dishes as our own:

1. Hijiki That's the black stuff in the top corner. It's a type of seaweed. R's is killer because she fries it up with Niman Ranch bacon, which really pumps up the smokiness. And really, what's better than bacon?

2. O-Hitashi: Steamed spinach served with a few simple drops of sesame oil.

3. Tsukemono: Japanese "pickles" - these are cucumbers that are pickled with a Shiso leaf that turns them bright purple. Pretty and an irresistible wet crunch. Great with rice.

4. Tamago-Yaki: Basically a square egg-fritata. For this one we included crab meat and avocado, and then topped with a single dab of salmon roe.

5. Potato chowder: Traditionally you serve a white miso soup on New Years, but this was a riff that R thought up.

6. Mugi Cha: Hot Barley Tea to wash it all down.

Yum!

What? What's that you say? You're glad I didn' post this on Jan 1st for your hung-over eyes and stomach to feast on? Ah well, patience grasshopper -- at least there were no grasshoppers on the menu. But that gives me an idea...

Anyhow, Happy New Year!.

Half Moon Bay is always one of our favorite places to go when we want a quick change of pace. In the summer, it's guaranteed to be 20 degrees cooler (which is nice when it gets over 100 in San Jose) and the beaches are great for just kicking back and listening to the surf pound the shore.

But right now it's winter, and that means two things: Mavericks and Crabs.

Back in the day when I was on the pro-surfing circuit, I used to look forward to catching a few gnarly swells with Laird Hamilton and the boys. But ever since stubbing my toe on a coral reef in Waimea, I've had to lay off the big wave surf (doctor's orders, mind you.) So now we head to Half Moon Bay for the Dungeness crabs.

If you've never had really fresh Dungeness, you owe it to yourself to to go down -- this weekend -- and pick up a few to bring home. They are much better than anything you can trust from a seafood shop, even when buying from the live tank.

Why? Once crabs are taken out of their ocean, they are no longer fed. Although they can go on living like this in a tank for weeks, their bodies start to burn protein in order to survive. That means that you get noticeably less meat as the crab gets older.

Finding a crab at the Marina is easy. If you're coming from the Peninsula, just take 92 until you reach hwy 1, and then head north a few miles to Princeton-by-the-Sea. Park next to the excellent Half Moon Bay Brewery (you know, for later) and walk down the the little marina. There you'll find several boats with fresh crabs ready for sale.

Choosing your crab
1. Most crab boats that we looked at seemed pretty much the same, but not all of them! Be sure to find a boat that has crabs still in the salt water (see photo) and not just flopping around in the pot they were caught in.

2. Make sure your crab has all of its legs. Some boats charge less for maimed crabs, but hey - you didn't just drive 30 miles for a gimped arthropod, did you? Expect $5 to $6 per pound, or about $20 for two crabs.

3. One crab per person is about the right amount. The little buggers are pretty rich (especially when dunked in Plus Gras!) and by the time you finish cracking that bad boy open, your stomach will have caught up with your appetite.

Cooking your crab
There are certainly some fancy recipes for cooking crab, but none finer than simply boiling them, and definitely none easier. In fact, crab is about as easy as Top Ramen, so if you were able to manage this back in your college days, the Dungeness is no match your your maad skillz. Here's how:

1. Boil a large pot of water
2. Add crab. Leave in for 8 minutes
3. Remove crab

Consume!

Ok, not so fast. Of course you'll need to prep the crab now that it's cooked. You'll want to be sure to pick up a shell-cracker from a cooking store (e.g. Bed Bath) -- preferably one with some rubber on the grips -- for the dismantling you're going to have to do.

The legs are WYSIWYG - just start cracking and popping, and you'll get the hang of it. The body takes a bit more patience, but I think its actually the best part of a Dungeness crab, so don't make a rookie mistake and --gasp-- throw it away.

After removing all the legs, just flip the crab upside-down and locate its "tail" -- this little flap that tucks under near the rear. Peel this back and tear it off. Then I usually insert a blunt table knife up inside the slot, and then slowly pry my way around the upper shell and the inside body. One trip around will be plenty to pop this sucker off.

Once inside, you'll notice some unsavory looking bits that are the equivalent of a lobster's "tamale" (brains) and other such bits. If you like the tamale, then by all means dig in. Otherwise, just rinse these unmentionables off in the sink. Ultimately, you'll have a nice chunks of sweet, juicy crab meat tucked in to a maze of very thin shell that you can crack open with your fingers.

Ah yeah, that is the good stuff...

Bonus - Crab quote!

Have you ever watched a crab on the shore crawling backward in search of the Atlantic Ocean, and missing? That's the way the mind of man operates.

These ads obviously don't monetize, but then who in their right mind would call Google on their unwillingness make bank off of other's misery. That would be morally repugnant, right?

Oh wait. Nope, sorry - I guess that only goes for Adsense partners:

Gee, that sponsored link at the top doesn't seem very "Googly". Kudos to TMZ.com though for recognizing and cashing in on Goog's double-standards. Poor Heath Ledger, R.I.P.

Julie Q's deserves a separate post in the near future that I will title "Customer for Life", but suffice to say that my experiences there have been so good that I wish my hair grew faster.

Anyhow, while Julie was cutting my locks yesterday, I started some chit-chat with her about her experience marketing her shop as a small business owner (SBO). She has a very busy schedule and it's clear that she's a solid success as an SBO. I asked, had the Yellow Pages rep visited her? Had she bought ads in the paper? Had she invested in mailers or flyers for canvassing the local area? What sorts of things had she done to get her fledgling shop off the ground?

She admitted she'd bought one Yellow Page print ad, but then after the first year she dropped it. After this she hadn't spent a nickel on advertising. Ok, Mountain View is not LA or NY in terms of cut-throat competition for hair styling, but there are plenty of alternatives to choose from in the area. And her shop is not on the main drag, but three blocks removed from Castro -- basically in a residential area. You're not going to find it without help.

So how did she get her customers? Yelp. Within 8 months of opening, she had her first review (which coincided with Yelp's launch) Within 14 months, her schedule was packed. Every time she asked a new client how they'd heard about her place, it was Yelp or word-of-mouth from Yelpers.

Perhaps not surprisingly, she'd never heard of the start-up -- one of her customers actually photo-copied her reviews and brought them in to show her. Then one day a guy walks in and says he read about her shop in the Wall Street Journal. WSJ? WTF? Turns out the Journal was doing a piece on Yelp and their reviewers, and the reviewer they happened to interview used Julie Q's as a sample.

Nice story, eh? Yelp connects users to great shops. Great shops win new customers. New customers frequent great shops. The virtuous cycle is complete.

Or is it?

I asked Julie if Yelp had approached her about a sponsored listing on their site. Yes, she replied - but it was too expensive. And she already had more business than she can book, so why would she pay for additional advertising?

Indeed.

I asked Dave "Local Czar" Galvan about this and he mentioned this wasn't too surprising given that hair salons generate most of their leads on referrals. Still, I was curious to see what a Yelp search result on Mountain View for "Hair Salon" returned, and here's what I found:

Who in the world would click on a 3 star "Hair International" sponsored result , when their competitor "Mission 6" salon with 4.5 stars rests directly below it?

I was betting the answer was "nobody" until I did an informal query around the office. Apparently some people click on these all the time -- especially when the un-sponsored results have fewer reviews than those that may have a higher rating.

Who knew? It sure would be interesting to know more about how these sponsored links actually perform. And I don't mean CTRs, but actual conversions of new customers into the shop.

But this got me to thinking about some parallels between these small businesses willing to sponsor the likes of Yelp or YellowPages.com results and Marksonland's recent observations about SEO's effect on product development.

In his post, Mike posits that the most successful online properties have all created vast traffic and wealth with nary a nod from Google -- They've all had impressive growth based on fast and heavy adoption catalyzed by word-of-mouth.

Sounds kinda like Julie Q...

Yet Mike also says that this also isn't stopping the rest of the "also-rans" from trying to get their share of online traffic and success by crafting clever SEO strategies to divert traffic where they can.

Sounds kinda like Hair International...

What does this mean? I guess one could say that as long as mediocre businesses are around, the local advertising dollar is a safe bet. :-)

But I wonder if you could also stretch this parallel to how SBOs might realign focus on their businesses. Mike alludes to how some start-ups are so terrified of losing SEO that this fear causes them to make adverse concessions in their product designs. Does a Yellow Pages pitch capitalize on the same fear components in the mind of an SBO? (Hey, all your competitors are in the Yellow Pages -- you can't afford *not* to pay $850 a month. And while you're at it, why not upgrade to the quarter page color ad and beat them at their own game? Only an additional $500 for a 'platinum plus' listing...)

Might their advertising dollars be better spent on, say, giving their best employees a boost in their hourly rate to retain them? Or investing in a strategy that differentiates their businesses in ways that might actually generate word-of-mouth referrals? (Stay tuned for "Customer for Life" post)

Alas, it must be hard enough just to operate an SBO day in and day out. The failure rate is so high and so fast that one wonders how any of them make it. Fear is contagious and sells...

Long live local advertising!

“Mediocrity is self-inflicted. Genius is self-bestowed.”
- Walter Russell