various miscellaneous etc.s

The Ski Instructors show was so much fun! And the ohsees were rad but perhaps played a wee bit too long for such a late show. Does anyone have pictures? I forgot to bring my camera.

I checked out the Cheesesteak Grille in the farflung reaches of Roseville this weekend. Cheesesteaks are the new hamburgers as far as I'm concerned, and you can quote me on that. This place gets its rolls flown in from Philly and they give you the option of having cheese whiz on your sandwich, which I guess is the authentic way to go. It was delicious. The meat was a wee bit better than Grand Central Station but the New York sauce and fresh horseradish at GCS put that sandwich over the top for me. We also then went by the Quarry Pond shopping center in Granite Bay. Most of the shops aren't open yet, but we did go by Regionale Produce, which is a very impressive store opened by a woman (named Andru) that I used to work with at the co-op. The produce variety is cool, and it's presented beautifully. It's affordable and I loaded up a bag of stuff, everything from fennel to apples to eggs. I was not as impressed with Wine Styles, which had a fancy catacomb-like decorating scheme (a few skulls here and there and some tonsures would have completed the effect) but had a small variety of wine in such a big space. You can taste wine there, but they didn't have much open that I wanted to taste. There's going to be a cheese shop and a meat and fish shop, and there's a pizza place called Pizza Antica that's already open. Pizza Antica is a small chain. It's disappointing that among the mostly independent businesses (Dara Denim and Shoefly have shops there, too) that the coffee shop is a Peet's. I love Peet's coffee, don't get me wrong, but it seems like a good opportunity for an indie place to make it. The vibe of this shopping center is very yuppie, of course, but it was still refreshing to go to a planned out project that had some interesting shops. If Granite Bay can do it, why not Sac?

Speaking of yuppies, I also went to David Berkeley for sandwiches this weekend. They were really good. One of them had stuffing on it! I had never noticed before the DB really isn't a full-service market compared to Cortis or Taylors, however, the meat and seafood in their case looks great. There were some veal chops and some lamb that I had my eye on, and I want to go back soon. The wine selection was pretty Cali-centric but more affordable than I expected.

There are a lot of new thrift stores opening in the burbs. We passed a Goodwill on Douglas that didn't used to be there, and there is a giant Salvation Army by the freeway on the way to Roseville and I saw another Goodwill on Fulton near the mall, which means there are two really close by in that area. Anyone had any good scores at any of those? The thrifting in Woodland was soooo dudly the other day. I don't think I'm going to thrift there any more.