NYC

Wow, what a week! KJ is out!! YESSSSSS!!! I have been waiting for this day for so long. I can barely remember what it was like before him but I can't wait to find out what it's like when he's gone. Get lost, creep!

 

I had a brief trip to New York last week. I pretty much forgot to take pictures, probably because my battery was often low. I packed a lot into a couple of days. I should remember that short trips to New York are ok. You can take that Jet Blue nonstop and it's not that far, and you can do so much in 2-3 days. I walked the High Line with Gballs, brunched with Chapstick, went to the sprawling, overstuffed Jim Shaw show at the New Museum (great review here), went to Grand Central Oyster Bar which is pretty much on my top ten of best places. Had a cannoli at Fortunato Bros, a bastion of Italian-American, unhipsterfied Williamsburg.

 

At Grand Central I had the New York-to-the-max server guy pick me out some raw ones, and my favorite (which I ordered two more of) was the Belon, which is large and flat. Then I had a cherrystone clam pan roast. I didn't know exactly what pan roast is, but it's a delectable soup/stew, cream-based, with chile and paprika, some big, chewy clams, and a piece of toast in the middle. I asked how it was so delicious and he said the recipe was from 1913. That's the kind of answer I like! I had it with an ice-cold martini made from Green Hook Ginsmith's American Dry Gin. I need to get a bottle. It was served in a teeny martini glass with a little carafe of "extra" on the side. I was in absolute heaven.

 

On Saturday night !!! were having an album release party on Avenue A and I stayed up all night there, well I slept from 4-5 am at my airbnb, and then headed to the airport. That's how you maximize two days in New York!

 

 

Shirkin' not workin'

I'm shirking work today because it's Friday and I have three meetings to look forward to. I just turned in a piece I wrote for a safety newsletter and it referenced a gripping document called "Why didn't the custodian pick up my trash?". See, I am still a "creative". HATE that term. Too many "creatives" not enough people with real skills. I myself have no real skills so I shouldn't talk.

I had a beer at Empress last night that I knew nothing about and it was fucking great. It is brewed by Grimm Artisanal Ales (?) and it's called Rainbow Dome. It's a hazy apricot sour aged in oak barrels and dry hopped. Hopped sours are hard but when it's done right they're my fave. Cuvee de champions from Cantillon is in my top 5 favorite beers. And it's only 5% ABV which makes me even more confused about how I got so drunk last night. Had a Bike Dog Mosaic and a Thornbridge Jaipur at Pangaea last night (the Jaipur is 10% but it was a tulip) and then the Rainbow Dome. At that point I started to gush about Smiller because I miss him because he's in SoCal for work (getting hella instagram props and hashtags from beer bros). Then I went up to Thiemann and drank a swig out of his glass of Wild Turkey without asking. Nice move, rudenik! Split the burger at Pangaea and it is indeed the bomb and comes with McDonald's-esque fries (which is a good thing). Had a bite of the fried chicken and greens and I will be getting that sometime. Then scarfed up a pumpkin bon bon and nutty cone from Gunther's and off to Empress. Oh yeah, and I ate a Parker House roll. Those smell incredible. I love Empress so much.

The two flavors of the month at Gunther's are pumpkin (meh) and licorice, which is insane. It is dark green and tastes like eating a frond on an anise plant (is that what those are called?) or Fernet or something. I didn't want more than a sample because it's so strong but now I can't stop thinking about it.

KJ's shitbaggery, explained

You have to go 20 minutes into this Deadspin podcast (titled "Kevin Johnson's shitbaggery, explained) for them to start talking about KJ (although I ended up listening to the first 20 minutes which was a pretty funny dissection of a recent choking incident in baseball), but it's worth checking out. For some reason they did not bring in McKenna, the Deadspin reporter who is an expert on KJ, and it's obvious they don't have much more than a passing acquaintance with the scandal. It's painful to realize that as a concerned citizen I am forced to be an expert in KJ's Machiavellian dealings and general sleaziness. They get the outlines pretty much right and throw in a shoutout to the SNR in the end and a funny dismissal of KJ's "heroic" saving of the Kings. They marvel at how KJ has not been brought down by his many, many scandals and conclude that if he was mayor of New York or another, more prominent politician he'd be long gone. It's true, all Weiner did was send a dick pic!

Hawker Fare

I am eating at Hawker Fare in Oakland tonight! Very excited. My last meal there was the bomb. I can only have one drink due to driving but hopefully they will have some Faction on like last time.

 

 

Hot Sac Nights

I had such a fun Sac weekend. I saw the Mr. Burns play at Cap Stage on Friday - I recommend it. There is maybe a week left in the run. It's about a post-apocalyptic society (stay with me here), in which the Simpsons becomes social currency (stay with me her) and the entire third act is musical (you still with me?) I found it to be surprisingly poignant. The play is critically acclaimed but has been very divisive for audiences. I fell on the "love" side instead of the "hate" side.

Saturday I went to Empress and ended up there for over 4 hours, till well past close. I spent too much and drank to much but it was SO FUN and the food was all the bomb. Nuts. I split the prime rib, which was juicy and had a piquant horseradish sauce. Am I using piquant right? I don't know, it's just a blog, lighten up. I have to go back soon for the insane beef cheek stroganoff. And the beer list - off the chain. Prairie, Logsdon, all the best. And gin and tonics made with tonic from Zeal?! It's too much.

Then I closed down the Distillery with a karaoke krew Despite it being Monday I will hold onto that fun to cheer me up. That's right, with my current position I really do hate Mondays.

the brews they are a'changin'

Some changes have been going on in the craft beer world, with a wave of corporate buyouts. Not too shocking - the latest one was Golden Road being bought by InBev. Golden Road is kind of a middle-of-the-road, corporate-ish brewery so not too suprising. Smiller thought the Lagunitas one was the most surprising. But an insider type pointed out the me that being bought out by Heineken is at least a little different in the sense that it's family-owned and that they only make two other beers: Heineken and (augh) Heineken light. I guess the Lagunitas deal was a half a billion dollars. The president of Golden Road was quoted as saying "this wasn't a sellout deal for me". It's nice you can just declare that.

As I mentioned, there was 10 Barrel at TBD because of the InBev connection. That meant I had access to a good IPA, but it also maybe meant that local breweries got shut out. InBev is all about profit, it's not like they are nice guys who want to help the industry in general. I work with a guy who worked for Budweiser in the past and he was like "well, there's another beer I'll never drink".

TBD lowdown

So I did the full TBD this time. I made the same mistake as last time where I came early to see a friend's band and got heatstroke and had to leave (on Saturday, to see Dusty Brown, who were rad). But this time instead of just going home I went to see Black Mass and came back. Black Mass is obviously a terrible name for this movie because every single person I've mentioned it to does not know what I'm talking about until I say it's the Johnny Depp gangster movie. That name just does not stick in anyone's mind. It's pretty good - Johnny Depp is very creepy. But Bulger is not that compelling of a gangster.

 

I realized that the whole deal with a festival is the different levels of VIP. That's because festivals are really not a great place to see music, but they are excellent for hanging out with friends and people watching (aka butt watching as there were sooooo many exposed butts to see). And drinking. So in order to do that, it's nice to be able to get to the shade that VIP has more of. And then there's the penultimate (yes I am using it right) level of VIP that has free beer and wine. I got in there a couple of times. The ultimate is the artist's lounge, which I never got to glimpse. There is also a viewing deck over the main stage which I could not access (I didn't try that hard). It was in full sun though so that didn't seem that great.

 

Highlights included the chef's demo with Thiemann and Matt Masera and the Hapa Ramen guy who was at the center of the huge food world scandal. Drinking lots of red heather kombucha from Zeal to stay hydrated. Ty Dolla Sign turning up. Death Grips. Riding the ferris wheel the first night while Tyler the Creator played. Butts.

 

The food was not as good this year. I ate Lowbrau sauages twice, but there wasn't a lot else that was appealing. The beer situation was weird because I'm assuming they had a contract with Anheiser Busch, who bought 10 Barrel Brewing from Bend, so that was the only craft beer. Well, that and Sudwerk Pilsner. It was rad to be able to get Bike Dog and Track 7 last year. I hope that comes back.

 

At various times, mostly because of the temperature or because none of my friends were there yet, I would feel like I was in hell, and other times I would feel like I was having the best time. So, TBD: kind of like life. With butts.

Enjoyably savage

This review is pretty savage - and well written! An enjoyable diss.  I myself had a great time in my one visit (ever) to Paragary's in July, but I decidedly did not have my critic hat on and also had my meal paid for as a present. Also, I got the quail as my entrée, which was her favorite thing, so maybe I just got lucky.

 

The burger stuff was also fun to read. That's cool that Pangaea won best burger. I don't eat a lot of burgers, but I like theirs. I agree with their assessment that it shouldn't be too damned big. I will try the Magpie one and South ones soon, I swear by all that is holy! It's funny that barely being able to move around because of my broken toe (ok, at this point, 2 weeks on, I am using it as an excuse) has not caused me to gain any weight. I think when I exercise I just eat more.

Best Fest

Jeez, epic weekend, starting on Thursday. All because of the Cali Craft Beer Summit and all the brewers being in town. Thursday the peeps from Russian River, Firestone Walker and Karl Strauss were at Pangaea, and it was Scott's bday, so we went there, and then ended up at Lowbrau because people from Faction were there and the tap list was off the hook. The Faction 2 Hop is delicious. Pangaea had Taras Boulba on, which was also a standout amid the brew-haze of the night.

Friday Empress had a crazy taplist, including the Sante Adairus Saison Bernice. The Sante people were in town and loving Empress. And so was I! It's that rare place where just about everything on the menu sounds good and is good. I had a French dip that was heavy on the horseradish and I loved it. EC was loving her beef cheek stroganoff and I had a bite. Wow.

Then on Saturday was the actual fest, with like 130-something California brewers. It started at 4 and I definitely was not feeling it, but once I had my first few pours I was raging (babbling) all over the fest. I definitely did not eat enough food or drink enough water. The lineup of breweries was totally nuts. One of the best ever definitely. As far as whether it was a business success, I know the Summit board was psyched on the events and if the tasting event was small this year, I'm sure it will be much bigger next year. I wonder what Beer Advocate chatter is like? It's a fest that people are going to be driving in for or maybe even flying in by year 2 and 3.

I fuzzily ended the night at Bottle and Barlow drinking a Bike Dog beer with ancho chilies in it - the spiciness of the beer luckily slowed my pace a bit. I kept focusing on this spotted weinerdog, the poor thing probably just wanted me to leave it alone.

Fruit to root? Augh!

OK, OK, so I like The Weeknd! What, I have a vagina, what do you expect? He's kind of like R. Kelly lite. I wish that a vocal coach would work with him and FKA Twigs (or a songwriter) and tell them that you can't just do the same, plaintive whispery thing over and over with your voice and have it keep working. You have to change it up! But still, I can't help but like both of them. Her more for the dancing. I've been listening to radio lately in my new car. Pop music is in a good phase right now.

 

It's smiller's birthday today! So far I have given him two of his presents. One was this picture book by Sam Knee about the British pop scene of like, the Pastels and TVPs and Primal Scream. I saw it at MK and DK's house. I also got him a tennis racket that electrocutes bugs, which I saw at MD's house. His pathological hatred of fruit flies made it seem perfect. They love to buzz around a glass of brew.

 

Man, do you ya ever feel like if you read another article about the Center For Land Based Learning that you will be qualified to run the damn place yourself? No? Then you must not read local food-related content. It's a great place, don't get me wrong. Just....the Farm to Fork issue??? Really?!?! Snoresville man. I'm proud of what we tried to do at Edible when I was there, and I really always tried to tamp down the farm coverage. Farms are wonderful and (obviously) necessary, but not exciting to read about. It's hard to find a new take there. They have either been in the family for generations (those tend to be more interesting to read about) or started by some young idealistic person who usually made money first at something else and then decided to go into farming. And you know what, the new Edible does not have a good track record of paying people. There, I said it.

have a good weekend!

This management training I am doing doesn't have that many funny stock photos but look at these cretins! No one likes getting assignments, it's true.

I am off to go see Diary of  Teenage Girl. My neck is hurting from my car accident poor me. Bananas are playing Awesomefest tomorrow! I can't seem to find the lineup for it (damn crusties!) so I don't know who else is playing but I'm sure they will rock it.

cautiously optimistic

It's been a long day without you my friend, and I'll tell you all about it when I see you again. If you know that cheesy Wiz Khalifa song it will now be stuck in your head. Do I love the song? Do I hate it? The answer is yes.

Since I last posted I got a promotion and life has been pretty meh on the whole. For one thing instead of my tucked away office that no one even knew the location of I'm now in a fish bowl type arrangement where everyone who is walking past can see my giant monitor. Which has not been a problem because for two solid months I have not checked a website for amusement at work. Ocasionally, (is that the hardest word to spell in the English language? I just tried 5 times) I will have a half hour on a Friday where I am done with everything but basically it's been a whole new world as far as how busy I am at work. The screen capture is from a training on meeting etiquette that I will be taking today, so maybe I can post more funny ones.

I am cautiously optimistic and seem to finally be settling in. I don't feel like I can say too much since this is public so I will just keep it positive. I just took on my first writing assignment in months (deadline in early November - Smiller can expect to hear whining about it soon) so that makes me feel good. The thing with this promotion is that the hiring process also took like 4 months, so basically the last half year has been consumed with it.

Went to the friends and family thing at Empress last night. What a monumental accomplishment! It's beautiful inside. I loved my gin cocktail, which was very savory (made with fennel soda) just like I like. The beer list is next level nutz. The dizzying array of food was overwhelming and I had foolishly worn a jumpsuit that I can barely breathe in, but everything was delicious and the bigtime standout was the rotisserie chicken on top of Texas toast with a shmear of pate. The chicken had chimichurri and the toast mopped up all the sauce and juice. Great steak tartare, too, which erased the memory of the oddly tasteless tartare I had at Brasserie Capitale recently. I look forward to many wonderful nights there.

Finally watched the Sopranos

I haven't posted in sooooo long and I never posted about Japan! Maybe one little post will get me jumpstarted about a Japan post. Japan was so fun! I want to go back and this time we are thinking of exploring some new areas like Okinawa.

A couple of months ago I decided to finish watching the Sopranos, I had never gotten past mid 4th season. I finished it yesterday and it's weird to say that it actually made me really sad. Some of that is probably that I started watching it almost concurrent with its first airing, in a completely different time of my life. So there's a lot of nostalgia mixed in. Also, it's really sad that James Gandolfini is dead. When I first watched it I was closer to Meadow's age and now I am closer to Tony's age.

What a brilliant, disturbing show. What a crazy ending (I know, all of you that care got over this 8 years ago!) Then I went down the rabbit hole of reading long shot-by-shot analyses of the last episode, which just gave me insomnia and feverish half-asleep thoughts.

There's a Knock Knock show at the Bike Kitchen tomorrow. See you there?

Sun and Meh

I am not sure how I feel about Sun and Soil, but I've been there three times lately. This last time I got the "dirty chai" and it was gross and did indeed taste like dirt. For nine bucks! I don't really think the drinks are great but I keep ending up there when I want to meet a friend and don't want to go for alcohol or coffee. Or yesterday because it was a good length of walk and I wanted something a little sweet. I always end up going for the smoothies because getting a juice for nine bucks doesn't seem worth it. Now that I'm writing this up I should probably stop going there. I usually end up drinking the smoothie really fast and not paying attention to it because I'm yapping about something.

I'm bummed about the changes coming up at The Bee. I'm bummed that papers are on their way out. Chalk it up as another thing the internet has ruined. Who is going to report on local news? Certainly not TV. We have the SNR, but that never seems totally solid either as far as revenue. We need an established local paper and we need an alternative newsweekly. They both serve their roles and our local society can't really function without them

but he doesn't have a wife or smoke weed

The Bananas had a super posi, fun show the other night. It was such a great way for them to emerge from hiatus. They opened for the Dead Milkmen. I am a fake punk and never listened to The Dead Milkmen and I had no idea they had a legion of rabid fans and were so influential! Mike and Marie from Bananas are both huge fans so they were thrilled to be on the bill. The Bananas rocked it and it was awesome to be in a crowd with a bunch of people who had never seen the Bananas and got their mind blown. They blew through almost all of their merch, mostly from people who had just seen them for the first time. Their next show in Sac is June 20th at the Hideaway with G Green. The Hideaway shows I have seen lately have been great so I'm really looking forward to that.

 

This is a crazy scandal in the local hip hop scene. It's worth taking a look at the guy's explanation video because it's hella ridic! This is a funny quote:

 

Lei said he’d heard about Task1ne using other people’s verses about a year ago but didn’t really know how deep it went. He said looking back it seemed obvious because Task1ne would rap about having a wife and smoking weed, but he doesn’t have a wife or smoke weed.

 

Speaking of scandal, the SNR has a piece this week where they got ahold of a bunch of the mayor's and his minion's emails. There's one that makes it clear that Breton gets his orders from the mayor's office. How is it possible that he won't be fired over this?!?

 

For example, here’s an excerpt of an email from Dorso to the mayor and his lieutenants, on March 15, 2013:

“Met with [Sacramento Bee columnist] Marcos Breton today and put him in the dog house. He tried to back peddle [sic] saying it was just more neutral than negative. I hit him on this saying he needs to keep in mind his goals and focus on economic benefits of downtown development. He said he would do a better article Sunday. We will see.”

Japan!

The fact that Baird Brewing has a taproom that serves New Haven style pizza, and that the text of the website says it offers "one of life's truly subliminal food-beverage experiences" is making me very psyched for my imminent trip to Japan. Just a combination of the funny phrasing and the weird concept pretty much says it all. SO PSYCHED.

 

I also plan on visiting SPAWORLD in Osaka, which has various themed baths, such as Greek and Finish themed, and restaurants. You can't visit if you have a tattoo, so I guess I'm glad I held up on getting that Steal Your Face tat.

quick one

It's been long that I have posting anxiety so I will just do a quick one with a link to a Nordstrom festival pop up shop. It has such helpful items as a bathing suit with James Franco's face on it.

 

I am eating leftover Bombay chana masala that got so spicy since yesterday that I can barely stand it. It's really good, though! Their pakoras and samosas are also bomb. I didn't eat any meat yesterday and Bombay made that easy since I think their vegetarian dishes are their best.

Oh yeah, and tonight is the first Heckarap that I'm not involved with. I'm not going. I know this was a good decision. I hope Mike C. gets a good turnout though.

 

 

Great Show!!

The Trash Talk show was really fun. If you don't know, that's a hardcore band that is really popular, and they're from Sac (link to Blake's article). The crazy thing is that despite being around for years, they have only played once here. Sounds kind of jerkish, right? The show was at Harlows and was 15 bucks. I would say that it was not very well attended. In SF they are playing the Independent, which is big, but who knows, maybe that wasn't that well attended either. They were really fun and really good. Super pro in the showmanship sense of the word. I was poking around for videos (some of which have almost a million views) and I see that Jay Howell animated one, which makes sense as to why they gave him a shoutout. They also gave a shoutout to Tales of Terror. I felt disappointed in (at?) Sacramento that it wasn't better attended. I'm guessing they won't play here again, although in fairness Harlow's is a really weird venue for it. Blue Lamp would have maybe been a good substitute. The front dude is still charismatic enough that he got a huge pit going and urged everyone to ignore the stage diving policy at the end. NM counted 16 stage dives in one short song. Harlows kicked a lot of people out.

Rat King opened and they were janky, cute little crew. Pretty creative and I liked the electronic drum/beat machine that they use. They were not psyched on the crowd and they seemed to be in a fight at the end because they were told they only had one song left and the white dude wanted to do two. The other guy left the stage while he did the last one. Another weird thing about the show is that it had to end really early because it was all ages - by ten.

 

A rap producer originally from Sac (Lee Bannon) opened the show, and he was really interesting, too! I thought he was a rapper so I didn't know what I was watching but I was digging it. He did a jungle-house-ish mix of an old Erykah Badu song. I didn't know that Blake interviewed him, but here it is. I'm going to have to check out the Alternate/Endings album. Maybe jungle will be my new thing? Scott will be psyched about that!

Heckarap RIP

So that's going to be my last Heckarap. It was really well attended, it's not that. I am out 60 bucks cuz I paid the rappers 100 and then had to split the money we did make around to other peeps, but it's not the money. It's a combination of things. One is that I am too tired to function well at my job today, which is just not acceptable to me. Considering I earn about 1 1/2 days of vacation time a month, there is no way I am going to use a vacation day a month after Heckarap so this is always a problem. I try to not imbibe too much since I have to work, but it's hard when you're there from 9-2 am.

Two is that we just can't get a consistent crowd going. It's always different people every month. People will come and have fun and be like "this is the best, how did I not know about this?" and then they never come again. Tired of trying to figure that out. Tired of promoting it and thinking about how to get people to come.

I could go into reasons 4, 5, 6, 7 - 69 but I won't. The reasons for it are just that it's fun sometimes and I have met some cool people through it. Way more reasons against.

 It's been like a year and a half and we still never recaptured the vibe we had at the first few. I don't know what people want to dance to and I'm tired of trying to figure it out. Ready to start listening to other music, too. I was driving around with Scott last weekend and we were listening to new country radio for amusement, and I started getting choked up that the people in the songs wanted love and relationships and it made me really think about the ugliness of the music I've been listening to almost exclusively for about two years. I love it, don't get me wrong, but the fact that I wanted to tear up at the corny sentiment of just men and women wanting to be together romantically made me feel like what I'm listening to is getting to me in a way I didn't realize.

I always waffle on Heckarap and whether I enjoy it or not, but I'm putting this in writing so I'll stick to it. Smiller is skeptical.

going to be so tired tomorrow

Soooo.....tonight it Heckarap, hopefully a big one since we have these two popular local rappers and I would like to be able to pay them not out of my pocket. I suspect it will be mostly out of my pocket. They didn't ask for anything, but I appreciate them doing it.

I was thinking that you could make a Bad News Bears-style movie about Heckarap. I had written out a scenario of that below that could be really funny if I was honest but unfortunately because of all the trumped-up vitriol on social media and the fact that I've been mocked for writing about rap before I erased it. Suffice to say it would be our rag tag Heckarap band vs. a monster, cult-y trap/EDM night and a more popular rap night run by skater bros.

Having that pedometer app has been interesting, but more because it's keeping track of how long my commute it, and it's depressingly long. Usually I almost try not to figure out how long it is since there's nothing I can do about it, but it's longer than I thought on average. Today it randomly took me 46 minutes to get to work. The app can tell when you're riding your bike too, which I didn't expect. If you are tracking my sleep progress, got about 6 hours again last night and pretty tired, but I also drank for the first time in a week. Tonight I will likely get 4ish. Hopefully 8 will be on the horizon at some point.