cocktailsoftheworld.net
Sep/100
I figured it was about time, and Rodolphe (who, for the record, started this whole thing; I neither can nor would take credit for that) approved.
Let’s try this again.
Sep/100
Travel for my day job and taking care of various USBG PA issues when I’m in town has meant that I’ve posted relatively little here. It wasn’t ever my intention to make blogging yet another unpaid part-time job, but when I was chatting last weekend with Thad at his lovely new Bar Agricole, he pointed out that all the work-induced travel and my interest in quality booze gives me a mildly unique perspective, different than all the various globe-trotting bartenders / brand reps (ahem, Alex, Dave, Misty, Tad, Jason, Danny, Rocky, usw). Those folks typically attend Events, and even if they’re in a bar on a normal night, the staff knows who they are and that they’re coming in advance, whereas I’m usually Just Another Customer.
So, Thad, you’re right: maybe I do have something of value to contribute, and I will strive to get something posted about San Jose, (my most recent visit to) SF, and Seattle before I get back on a plane again…
Crescent Run, 2010: complete
Jul/100
Total time: call it 17 hours. (I think we left slightly after 20:00 Eastern Tuesday, but we’d have been at the Monteleone’s parking lot at 12:00 Central / 13:00 Eastern if we had known Wednesday’s NOPD blockade system.) So, that missed the mark, but I know where the time was lost.
Total distance: 1223 miles
Average speed: 71.94 mph
Top speed: 119 mph (fwiw, that’s the max at red-line on a flat surface that the 2010 Dodge Charger SXT, 3.5L V6, has to give… I did give it another quarter mile to nurse any little bit more out; measured via GPS, not analog speedo).
Pictures: http://eclipsed.net/~gr/Pictures/Crescent_Run-2010/
More words: http://forums.f1weekly.com/showthread.php?tid=4769
Driving (quickly) from PHL to Tales 2010
May/100
I’ve basically committed myself to driving from Philadelphia to New Orleans for Tales of the Cocktail 2010 at this point. I’ll be embarrassed if my car takes more than 20 hours to get there, and I’ll be pleased if it breaks 16 hours (meaning that the latter is our target).
Although I’ve some experience in this particular sort of rodeo, I’m no Alex Roy… especially including my not owning one, never mind several, BMW E90 M3s… or any car at all. I was happy to help flog a good friend’s ‘97 VW GTi from Long Island City to Detroit nearly a year ago, but I donated my very own ‘98 VW Jetta for the benefit of my local public radio station over a year ago, so I’m looking at the “rent a car for a week” market, and I’m seeing a lot of vehicles I don’t really want to drive for five minutes, let alone 1250 miles.
Said vehicles hit the opposite ends of the relevant bell curve: I’ve no more or less interest in a Pontiac G60 or a Ford Fusion than I do in Bentley Continental or a Lambo Murciélago: I’m going to hate every second of driving any of those over the roads that get me to NOLA in a timely manner, and, as many laughs as I’d get rolling along Rampart in a Lambo, the shiny ones aren’t worth the cost of my having to replace every single leaf spring in the damn thing.
Somewhere in there, there’s a middle ground. Surely, there exists someone in the vague Philadelphia neighborhood who will rent me a late ’90s BMW M3, Audi RS4/6, or at least a Japanese sedan of recent vintage with something resembling a manual shift.
(Please don’t make me lean on a friend to let me borrow his family’s mid-’60s Facel Vega II. Never mind the irony’s being rather too sharp, I probably can’t get my head around asking to borrow a car worth six figures.)
Help?
San Francisco bars, part 1
Aug/090
I’ll skip the details, I’m here for a dayjob conference followed by a friend’s wedding. I just got in tonight, so I stayed close to the hotel. I visited:
Farmer Brown
The restaurant/bar attached to my hotel, which sources its food from local farms, preferring those run by non-white farmers. It actually has a pretty interesting cocktail program, and tonight’s bartender, Daniel, did a good job, but somebody needs to introduce them to the double-strain, or at least using a strainer at all.
Swig
Definitely a good selection, but they were mobbed by a very mixed (pick your metric: racial, gender, gender-preference, socio-economic: all apply) group while I was there. One part of that group was there for the live blues (which was very good), to which they were dancing, and the other part was stripey shirt boys clearly more irritated by the gender imbalance (heavily hetero male, meaning Them) than I (there to sample the cocktail menu) was. My Gin Gin Mule, listed on the menu with Martin Miller’s but poured with Tanqueray, was obviously rushed by the circumstances, so I’ll have to come back on a slower night.
Rye
I can’t say enough good things. Hannah’d previously given me the ingredients, but not the proportions, for their Dogpatch, and I tried it with what I thought made sense and found it too dark and heavy, but the genuine article is much better than my guestimate was. I dealt mostly with Lauren (who may or may not remember the Attention and Red Hook after I taught them to her), who seems a bit unsure of herself unnecessarily, didn’t catch the name of the senior bartender on duty, met Marco (formerly of Clock Bar, now consulting, so far as I could gather) and Erick (Bourbon & Branch and (?) Rickhouse), each on my side of the bar, each probably turning up for the Cocktail Classic, and had a pleasant chat. I’ll be back, especially as it’s stumbling distance from the hotel.
Buying Booze on Sunday in Ohio
Jul/090
Ohio, as do many states, has some holdover Blue Laws. It used to have a state monopoly on liqour and wine sales, as Pennsylvania still does, and certainly had the “not on Sundays” provision (still seen in New York’s service industry as “no hard alcohol before noon”, and various other states’ “before noon” policies). In Ohio, Sunday sales evolved somewhat (completely?) uniquely: there’s an ABV limit of 21%.
For most practical purposes, this means you can buy beer, but neither wine nor spirits, but several enterprising spirits vendors are chasing this market with diluted spirits. Here are several on a grocery store shelf. (There are also whiskeys and gins.)
