http://cocktailsoftheworld.net/

Transcribing from my Facebook post at the time, Cinebar is dive bar perfection on a Sunday night with blasting post-goth/industrial, subtitled Tarantino movies on the tvs, classic movie posters enlarged in b&w on the wall, black felt on the 3.5×7′ pool table, and many backbar statues including Spuds MacKenzie. The crowd was very mixed (Latino, white, and black, in decreasing proportion), the beer of choice is Olympia, and Maker’s is about as good as you can do on whiskey. They’re open till 01:30 Sunday nights (later than anything else serving booze), and actually have a pretty decent backbar (light on fancy cocktail stuff, but both Fernet Branca and Menta Branca, so there’s that), although I didn’t push Julio (I think… I’m not just being racist here, that’s at least close to correct) for anything more than whiskey on the rocks, a couple of beers, and a Fernet (which I recommended to a woman who rolled in at last call and asked for bitters in her G&T to “settle her stomach”).

Also of note in San Jose: not a drop of rye (and barely any whiskey; plenty of bad tequila, nothing decent worth buying at the cost, and, most depressingly, nary a bottle of mezcal) in any of the myriad corner liquor stores. A hefty man of indeterminate late middle-age behind the counter in one even informed me that he used to be a bartender in SF and “nobody uses that any more”. Um, yeah.

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…

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

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?

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.

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.)