Did anyone else notice they took this down?

Sacramento Garage Building
Originally uploaded by Indy Camargo.

Why the hell did they do that?

Happy Birthday Ella!!!!!!!!!

This is a grainy but nice photo of Ella in one of her favorite places, Willy's arms (aww...cute JK it's at Poinsettia) Hope you are having a good one!

write about charles!

well......I'm leaving on vacation tonight (or vacay as I like to call it) so I won't be blogging that much for a couple of weeks. Me and smiller are taking that red eye to New York on Jetblue that many of you have probably taken. After that it's Montauk and Montreal. I'm just crossing my fingers that there won't be too much rain! I have plans to eat at Al Di La and probably the Fatty Crab in New York and hopefully some Chinatown eating because we didn't have time last time. We (meaning Scott, and probably me some of the time) will be hitting up Spuyten Duyvil, Bierkraft and maybe eating at Cafe Alsace. I have printed out the tips people gave me on Montreal and of course I have the Gourmet mag devoted to that city. So I think I'm all set.

I dined at Chada Thai again last night with a friend that hadn't been there before and she was remarking on how good it is and that she'll be going back soon. The green pumpkin curry with tofu was off the special board but we asked for it and they made it. It's so spicy and tasty. We also got a baby back ribs special that was fucking great. The only problem is that we wished we had gotten two orders! We also flagged down a friend walking by who always goes to Taste of Thai and urged them to try Chada and they said they would.

I don't know if anyone from the News and Review reads this virtual rag anymore, but if they do I'd really like to urge someone to do a feature on Charles Meyers and Harbor Winery. Yes, I'm writing something for Midtown Monthly that will be out on October 1st, but there is a way bigger story to tell there than I can tell in the little space I have with my meager reporting skills. People are lining up to tell me stories about this guy and I don't have the space to print them all. This winery is an unheralded gem and I keep finding out about more and more wines that he makes or has made in the past. KW? Anyone?

Centro and Taka

Capital public radio had a report on local sushi chef Taka Watanabe, who is an interesting guy.

After reading Mike Dunne's new review of Centro I wanted to give it another try so GW and I went last night. He notes that they finally decided to start giving free chips after twelve years of customer complaints. I agree that this was a good decision because this town has an abundance of super cheap Mexican food and if they want you to pay three times as much they can throw you a few free chips for God's sake. I always order the same thing when I go there (the grilled squid salad and some tortilla soup) but this time I decided to branch out. They have a taco/burrito combo deal that I had never noticed before that is a good deal by the price standards of this restaurant. It's 10.25 for any combo of burrito and taco from a list that includes fish tacos, shrimp tacos, carnitas, chicken, and a few tasty burritos that I can't remember (you know what, as I was typing this I looked at the menu on the internet and this is indeed a new things for them to offer) and it comes with rice and beans. You have your choice of three types of beans, whole black, refried and some kind of whole bean with bacon bits that I got cuz heaven forbid I could eat a menu without bacon. Looking at the menu changes I think they must be consciously changing the menu to make it a better deal. You got so much food with this combo that GW and I were remarking that you could just order two burritos and two people could split it at prices approaching Los Jarritos. I'd probably feel sorry for the waiter if I do this but that won't really stop me. Anyways they have tons of expensive drinks (including the drunk-making fruit infusions) to pad the check.

I'd also like to recommend The Black Dahlia, but only for fans of vintage Brian De Palma. Or fans of seeing Scarlett Johanssen stuffed into ill-fitting bras.

rethinking Davey D

Davey D has always bugged the crap out of me BUT he has been so excited about this bomb reggae concert and this morning he was spinning an AWESOME set of reggae and dancehall and he kept toasting over the tracks and talking about how excited he is and I just can't hate him anymore. Plus it totally cracks me up that the bomb reggae party and the fm 102 tamale contest are the same day and that the bomb keeps dissing on it like "Why pay to eat stale tamales in heat, when you could be partyin’ by a pool at the Bomb’s reggae Summer Splash FOR FREE! "

There's a new Ice Cube/Snoop track that I can't help but like. Snoop's part is weak of course cuz he's completely lost it, but the Ice Cube part is classic. It's called Go To Church but it's not religious. You can hear it here. You probably already have icecube.com bookmarked anyway.

Heckamax beat me to it but I was going to post about the Spiral States/Knock Knock/Pets/Didley Squat (I finally get to see them) show at Marilyn's on saturday at ten to benefit the Maloofs and the Downtown arena (JK it's to buy kids instruments). Christian Kiefer has a show that same night at the Fox and Goose so I wish I could be in two places at once but I caint.

And of course tonight is the big Shiny Objects screening at the Fools at 700. Don't miss this!!! The director will be there. Here's a description:

Once known as the "California Riviera", the Salton Sea is now called one of America’s worst ecological disasters: a fetid, stagnant, salty lake, coughing up dead fish and birds by the thousands. Yet a few hardy eccentrics hang on to hope, including a roadside nudist waving at passing European tourists, a man building a religious mountain out of mud and paint, beer-loving Hungarian Revolutionary Hunky Daddy, and the real-estate "Ronald McDonald" known simply as The Landman. Through their perceptions and misperceptions, the strange history and unexpected beauty of the Salton Sea is revealed. "Accidentally" created by an engineering error in 1905, reworked in the 50’s as a world class vacation destination for the rich and famous, and then suddenly abandoned after a series of hurricanes, floods, and fish die-offs, the Salton Sea has a bittersweet past. Congressman Sonny Bono himself was once dedicated to saving the lake, until he went skiing one day... Now amongst the ruins of this man-made mistake, these few remaining people struggle to keep a remodelled version of the dream alive. However, this most unique community is now threatened by the nearby megalopolises of Los Angeles and San Diego, as they attempt to take the agricultural run-off that barely sustains the sea. The fate of this so-called ecological time bomb and the community that surrounds it remain uncertain, as the Salton Sea might just dry up.

I have to miss it because I'm going to see this band in San Francisco. They are real good, cereal.

Sac Bee does some real reporting

Did anybody catch this infuriating article in the Bee on sunday? It's weird, the Bee seems have done some for-real investigative reporting. It's amazing how free people will be with money when it's not theirs.

I ate at the new Bernardo yesterday. I liked it. It's pretty much the same as all the Bernardos. I caught a glimpse of celebrity chef Kurt Spataro. This branch seems to be more vegetarian friendly which is good news for some.

stop it kdvs!

Dear KDVS deejays-
I know that you are 20 but someday you will realize that just because a song is in Japanese or French does not make it interesting or good. This is only true for songs in Portuguese.

A prize to the heckasac reader who can make it to the end of this essay and tell me what the hell it is about.

So the news and review has a new editor. Maybe she will step things up a bit. And by that I mean hire the Barnseyard as the full-time movie critic. With lines like this, what's not to love?

Ben Affleck plays Reeves in flashbacks, and while he may be well-cast in the part, bringing the right mix of charm, melancholy, and shallowness to the role, he manages to throughly botch his New England accent. This despite the fact that Affleck actually hails from the Boston area, while George Reeves was born in Iowa and raised in Pasadena (interesting choice on the bad Boston accent, Affleck)!

or this (I can't pick just one):

Cage tries fairly hard, considering that it's Cage, but he looks worse than I've ever seen him - he's become emaciated to an alarming degree, perhaps taking his upcoming role as a CGI skeleton in "Ghost Rider" too seriously.

maloofs quit talks

Maybe you guys have all heard about this but it was news to me. It's crazy! The Maloofs are like petulant children who want it their way or they're going to take their ball and go home. There is so much wrong in this I don 't know where to start but how about this quote from assistant city manager John Dangberg, "We still consider them part of our team, but it is our arena, and we will decide where it goes, and the public has said loud and clear that the best place for the arena is in the railyard," He's putting the ASS back in ASSistand city manager. When did the public ever say that? Isn't that what we're supposed to be voting on soon?

I had also missed this column from the public editor. This sucks. So Graswich gets dinged for writing about being against the arena over and over yet somehow Voisin escapes criticism? How can that be?

trousersnake is back

For anyone who's interested, you can stream the whole Justin Timberlake album here.

don't forget about the Trattoria

I had dinner at the Trattoria last night and was gratified to see that it was hecka busy, with a short wait at times. It is an island of reasonably priced food in a sea of...overpriced food (this sentence isn't turning out all that well). The pizza is really good, I like their salads even though in their simplicity they veer uncomfortably close to a salad I could make at home in ten minutes (but I am lazy so I would rather eat out) and I like their Bohemian potato pancakes with the smoked salmon, capers, red onion, and sour cream. AND smiller declared it his favorite place in town to get a beer, which is a big deal coming from a beer lover of his caliber. By the way, he recently got the loko moko at Junes for the first time so perhaps he could describe it in the comments for those who are curious?

Mike Dunne tackles the problem of oaky chardonnay in todays column. I recently had the misfortune of trying to choke down some of this swill so I agree with him. It's so unrefreshing compared to so many other kinds of white wine. I think for the most part many California viogniers can be lumped in with the chardonnays and shoved out to sea.

promised photos of watt for the ladies

Pronto review

I really hate to say this and I wish it wasn't true but Pronto really sucks. The menu is pretty weird. They're really emphasizing their rotisserie. OK, but every supermarket now has good, whole rotisserie chickens for like 6 or 7 bucks and if I buy one of those I get to keep all the leftovers so what's my enticement for getting one at a restaurant? And then their pride and joy is their "authentic Italian rotisserie roast beef". Since when is that an Italian specialty? Roast beef? Oh yeah, I loved that roast beef pizza I got in Naples. Then they have a bunch of sandwiches, a bunch of salads with tons of bacon and cheese the way everyone likes, but which bummed me out because I wanted something healthy. It was tough but I managed to find two things which didn't sound totally bad for me. I got the polenta pomodoro. If I'm not mistaken (which I often am) pomodoro is usually a sauce that has pretty large chunks of fresh tomatoes. This was three big pieces of polenta with raw, grainy orange Roma tomato chunks on top, giant chunks of RAW garlic, and thin ribbons of basil. The only visible sauce was some thin tomato water at the bottom. Mmm soggy polenta. I like garlic OK (I think it's pretty overused) but I hate eating raw garlic. I had also gotten a tomato soup (I wanted the white bean soup but it had bacon and I was trying to eat just one goddamn meal without bacon in it). It was a gorgonzola tomato but I asked for no cheese on top. Well, from the orangy look of it it either had cheese in it or it was a cream soup. GW got a chicken sandwich and asked for dark meat. They rang her up but then came over to inform her that the sandwich could not be made with dark meat. At a place that has visible whole roast chickens spinning behind the counter? She doesn't like white meat so she got a grilled proscuitto sandwich which was really good and came with house made potato chips. Good, but a greasy gut bomb.

They offer beer and wine. On tap they have Fat Tire, Blue Moon, Bud Light and Sierra Nevada Pale Ale (I can feel the rage boiling through Smiller right now). They offer a few red and white wines by the glass and they're reasonably priced. They also have sangria for four bucks a glass (aahh, I remember the day in Naples that I washed down that roast beef pizza with a tall glass of sangria, the Italian national drink), so I had one of those. It was OK. One glass got me a little buzzed.

The place was pretty empty and we were there from seven to eight so it may go the way of Hukilau eventually. If they were smart they would offer more cheap pasta. They barely had any on the menu. I'll go back one more time to try one of their salads.

say what?

Field of schemes posts again on the sac arena (via Barnseyard)

picpicpic

hella !!! photos from the touch and go anniversary show

moistest tamales evs?

We Jam Econo at Fool's totally ruled. I have never liked the Minutemen before but that movie was really inspiring. I have posted the picture of Mike Watt as a monday morning treat for the ladies. The second picture is not so much a treat but is funny because those are bottles of pee. (oh never mind, piece of shit blogger won't upload. I'll try later maybe). This friday is a documentary about the Salton Sea with the director there. Don't miss it! Unfortunately I have to.

I hit up Denios this weekend with pretty good results. I got a menorah necklace charm thingy made of "real" "layered" 24 carat gold. Well, it doesn't turn my neck green so that's good. I also ate those bomb-ass tamales at Auction town. Moistest tamales ever!

I also finally made two of the recipes that I collected for Midtown Monthly, the beet salad from P. Mulvaney and the fish stew from M. Thiemann. They were both the bomb, but the real standout was the stew which was one of the best things I have ever made or tasted and was so simple to make. I will print that recipe here sometime this week and I urge you all to try it out! Seriously it is a mind-blower. Lime, cilantro, beer, Spanish chorizo, sea food, etc., what's not to like?

Lastly on a weekend where I ate everything that came into my sight, we finished up our day of yachting on the Delta (by the way we saw a giant sea lion chilling on a dock, has anyone else ever seen this there? wikipedia says it happens sometimes.) by eating a gargantuan meal at the Freeport bar and grill. If you want a ton of seafood I heartily recommend the critter platter. Watching someone eat it is not a pretty sight as you end up covered in debris from the various crab claws, lobster tails, etc, but it was good. The baby back ribs were really good and tender, too.

birthday wishes

Happy Birthday Scott!!!!!!!!! (or as I like to refer to it, the tragic events of September 10th). I included this picture because I was looking for a picture to go along and I googled nar images and the title of this photo was "nar backstage" and that made me laugh. Is it possible that you're the best? I think it is.

News and review weighs in

So the News and Review has FINALLY weighed in on local development, only it's...restaurant development! Oh well, this is an interesting article, and I understand the point is fine dining, but I still wish that there had been some small mention of the fantastic diversity of restaurants in the outer areas of Sac. Especially in the context of a quote from Mike Dunne saying Sacramentans aren't "adventurous eaters". Well, that depends on who you're talking to. Tell that to someone digging into a bowl of tripe at a local Mexican place or a dish of crispy duck intestines at a Chinese restaurant. You see what I'm sayin'?

Also, KW follows my lead and reviews Birriera Bugambilias. We pretty much concurred on the quality but this review did make me turn a little green with envy at the creativity a real restaurant reviewer can have when writing about food. I feel stymied by that at times. However, I feel that I'm better at a more free-wheeling approach than straight-up reviews. Look now I'm rambling.

sad summer

I told you and now it's official. The New York Times agrees that there have been no good summer hits. I totally agree with this except that they neglected to mention "Blow the Whistle" by Too Short, which should have been the hit of the summer. That album must be out now.

vashti!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Vashti Bunyan is tonight at the Great American and I'm very excited. I'm already wearing my Jesus headband and have grown a freak folk beard. Well, actually I just glued some cat hair to my face in an attempt to blend in at the show. Let's hope it works.

Fool's Foundation is showing a movie on friday that I'm going to see. It's a documentary on the Minutemen. It starts at seven and it's five bucks. I ran into J. Greenberg and he said Kabinet would be back this month. Is that true, J? The website hasn't been updated if so. I will be yachting on the Delta that day so I can't attend anyway.

The new Midtown monthly is out with Dave Jones on the cover. My things on the Firehouse and Nopalitos are in there. I'm working on the Harbor Winery article for this month. OK, that's a lie, I interviewed the guy and have done nothing more but it's all up here (I am tapping my head right now). If you are interested in trying an aged white wine go to Cortis and pick up a bottle of his 1989 Semillon for only nine bucks! It is a very interesting wine.

the death of the earl

I also had another superb meal at Mason's on sunday. They are doing some wonderful things with tomatoes there right now and you should go if you can. My favorite things were an amazing cold golden tomato soup with dungeness crap (a lot) and avocado. Another delicious dish is the salmon tartare.

This link comes from Guphy, it's a cap radio piece on a local restaurant being revitalized right out of business. So that makes at least two, this place and Earl of Sandwich, that have been driven out of business by rising rents. I wonder what's going on with Joe Sun right now.

lee sandwich

A friend mentioned that she had seen some sandwich travelogue (anyone know about this?) where Sac was in the segment on banh mi. That got me obsessively thinking about banh mi until I could go get one. So yesterday me and smiller headed out to Stockton Blvd. We were planning on going to Huong Lan, BUT I noticed a big sign that said baguette factory, quickly ascertained it was a Vietnamese sandwich shop and flipped a bitch. It was a local installment of the Lee Sandwich chain (relax, Huong Lan is a chain, too). This place just opened a few days ago and it is sparkling clean and seems to already be packed. They don't have the insane abundance of food that Huong Lan offers, but they do have more kinds of sandwiches. Smiller got the bbq pork, I got the meatball. They were both sooooooooooooooo good. The meatball tasted just like delicious meatloaf. They have all kinds of drinks like tapioca and avocado shake and such. I want to go back and get the tuna, almond, cheese on croissant. Smiller is having the veggie for lunch today so maybe he can tell you veggies how it is. They also had a French-influenced pastry called pate "chaud" which I hadn't heard of but I guess it's pate in puff pastry. I wish I would have gotten that!! And as of yesterday they had two-for-one fresh baked baguettes that are the bomb.

banh mi for you

Once again I have no time to post! It sucks but hopefully I can after lunch. I want to write about the brand new Lee's Sandwiches on Florin.

Olipom message

via writegrrl blog:

A message from Olivia/Olipom, via MySpace:

OLIPOMFLATSPOT!! Come by some shit to support!!
OLIPOMFLATSPOT!! Come by some shit to support!!

So we are doing okay, but are starting to really feel the loss of those daily Olipom sales. We've moved a bunch of goods into Flatspot and will be open for business today. If you want to help PLEASE COME BY TODAY AND BUY SOMETHING LITTLE! I feel bad just taking donations, I will get an insurance settlement eventually, but that doesn't help me pay my bills right now, you know.
OLIPOM IS NOT DEAD PEOPLE...SO GO TO OLIPOM/FLATSPOT!!!!!

old timey as hell

I want to take this tour of the underground city.

let's hope that tamarind will be better than plum blossom. also on this link more news about taka's. i'm stoked it's reopening.

i've lost that fire

Man, I've lost my fire. I was just searching the internet for an mp3 of the Juvenile song I've Got That Fire to bring it back, but alas, all for naught (is that how you spell it). Wow, the words are dirty, though. I always thought he was saying Oscar Mayer and I was right but he ain't talking about baloney!

The Spiral States and Baby Grand are playing tonight. Here's the info

Baby Grand is playing this Friday night, Sept. 1st at the Distillery withthe Spiral States. Erik can't make it so we won't have the piano, but we'llhave our newest member, Christina, rocking the viola. That's right, viola!Come welcome her. It's going to be fun! We'll see you there!

I am probably going to see the hot incest movie at the Tower. Stop looking at me like I am a perv, the trailer is totally salacious and it has the girl from 24 and the weird looking girl from When A Stranger Calls and the cute guy from all those Hal Hartley movies that you loved when you were a teen.

Tomorrow I'm off to Harbor Winery and Bogle, with lunch probably at Dinky Diner. Sunday I'm taking a friend to Masons for her birthday. What are you doing? See, now no one will answer and I'll feel dumb.