Banker's Hill San Diego

JUNE 29, 2009 -- Dave McDonald says Banker’s Hill is poised to be the next North Park. It’s a bold claim—North Park is a gentrifying, up-and-coming urban neighborhood noted for cool clubs like U-31 and eclectic eateries like The Linkery and Sea Rocket Bistro.

Banker’s Hill isn’t known for much—a lot of it sits under the Lindbergh Field flight path and the widely unheralded neighborhood is essentially Victorian homes interspersed with small, plain storefronts.

But here comes McDonald’s Tin Can Alehouse (1863 Fifth Avenue, between Elm and Fir). The site has held a liquor license since before World War II, says McDonald, and up until he took over three months ago, it was called Brothers on Fifth.

The new name is derived from the fact that most of the beers served here come in cans. McDonald serves 57 brands of beer. “If you can’t find something you like here, you don’t like beer,” he says.

For $2.25, you can lowbrow it with Olympia or Old Milwaukee. Schlitz High Gravity (9.5 percent alcohol) and Pabst Blue Ribbon tallboys (24 ounces) are $4.75. The ladies like the Young’s Double Chocolate ($7), and another popular premium is the Maui Coconut Porter ($8), says McDonald. But he believes the best bargain is the German Spaten: Its $25 for a 169-ounce mega-can, which serves roughly 14 12-ounce glasses.

The stretch of Fifth Avenue occupied by Tin Can Alehouse is slightly rough-hewn, but McDonald has cleaned up his establishment. Bands play Tuesday-through-Saturday; and he recently hosted an art exhibit by HGTV “Design Star” competitor Jen Guerin (her JC Color Studios is on the same block).

North Park may not have Banker’s Hill breathing down its neck in a cool-factor race. But Tin Can Alehouse’s signature “All-in-One” sandwich is worth a raised eyebrow. Heaped between fresh-baked bread are five meats (salami, pastrami, corned beef, smoked turkey and barbecue beef), provolone cheese and, yes, fresh-cut French fries. If it doesn’t kill you, it will only make you stronger.  

JUNE 26, 2009 -- Was it a social experiment on social media? A hyper-local return to the roots of marketing? Or, was it all that, a bag of chips and a shameless stab at self-promotion?

Marketing firm Alternative Strategies sent a scantily clad woman and man to the street outside their new Banker’s Hill office near downtown, covered by little more than an old-fashioned sandwich board promoting the company’s current “Get Exposed” campaign. A model named Jennifer wore a multi-colored bikini and high heels; Matt wore an orange necktie, basketball shorts and black shoes and socks.

“Sandwich boards were the original form of social media,” says David Moye, a spokesperson for Alternative Strategies. He says the sandwich boards make the point that Internet sites like Facebook and Twitter are not the be-all, end-all ways of reaching out to the public.

“Back in the day, a guy walked around with a sandwich board that said “Eat at Joe’s—what could have been more hyper-local than that?” asks Moye. “People ask that guy if Joe has good food and he says, ‘Well, yeah.’ What’s more interactive than that?”

Moye says sandwich boards equate to a Web 2.0 version of pre-Internet marketing. Hmmm, I wondered aloud, where would sign spinners—those sometimes hyper guys on the streets paid to get attention for companies by wildly gesticulating the signs—fall into that metaphoric scenario?

“Sign spinners are like those site that have so many bells and whistles you can’t find what the product is,” says Moye. “Sign spinners are like [slow-loading] flash sites.”

I watched for about 20 minutes as the same set of cars suspiciously circled the block and honked at Jennifer and Matt. An NBC news team filmed the spectacle. A skateboarder appeared to take a fancy to Jennifer. A woman on a cell phone walked wide to the right of Matt as she passed on the sidewalk.

Mildly pressed, Moye admitted he was trying to get media coverage from sandwich boards partly as a dare. “But that doesn’t mean that if everyone is Twittering and Facebooking that it’s the right strategy for you,” he says. “If your business is hyper-local, a sandwich board worn by a scantily-clad model might just be your best way to get exposed.”

Hey wait, that’s the company’s new PR campaign tagline…