"...Fernet means never having to say you're sorry."

Oh, SF Appeal. Just when I think I'm out, you pull me back in.

Fernet love stories are like the Aesop's Fables of San Francisco. For example: One time a couple was bickering in a bar. What they were arguing about is irrelevant, suffice it to say it looked like the fight would never end. Finally, one of them looked the other straight in the eye and said, "Don't bite the hand that feeds you Fernet," and their jaws dropped like they had just heard that the SF Weekly had made up with The Guardian. It was clear that the fight was over, and they would be together for a long time, because every San Franciscan knows that Fernet means never having to say you're sorry.

I'll forgive the eye-roll-inducing reference to a local print "journalism" rivalry that I'm sure 99.6% of San Franciscans don't know or care about, because that last line is pure literary genius. That's the sort of linguistic pyrotechnics that I'd expect from Cormac McCarthy or Chabon or the dude who writes Clatter, but never from the online styrofoam that is SF Appeal. Nay, that last phrase is gorgeous. A work of art. I'm thinking of getting it tattooed on my throat, y/n?

The article also uses my favorite Fernet advert as the article's picture.

Lookit that guy! He's so happy! It's like all he's ever wanted out of life is to squeeze the shit out of that Fernet bottle and dress like an old drag queen. And now his life's goals are fulfilled. It warms the cockles.

The last two paragraphs of the piece, on the other hand, I could do without:

San Franciscans like to travel, and will often try to order Fernet at bars in places like Eugene Oregon. San Franciscans aren't idiots, they know as well as anyone that people in Oregon only drink microbrews, but they use this as a way to test the bartender. 

If the bartender stares blankly and offers them Jager he/she has failed, but if the bartender looks at the San Franciscan with a wry smile and says, "You must be from San Francisco," then that bartender has totally passed, and is going to get a personal invitation to stay with this San Franciscan the next time he/she travels south.

I don't like this if only because it presages a feature of this here website, which just makes me look like I stole the whole idea, which is both totally preposterous and very probably true. Either way: NOT A FAN.