Somehow, tomorrow is July 1st. As far as I can tell, this is because today is June 30th, and yesterday was June 7th, and last week was sometime in 2018.
And yet, I have more stuff to read at lunchtime from just the last day or so:
And now, despite an uncomfortable 34°C heat index, I must walk Cassie.
We spent some time at Montrose Dog Beach yesterday:
Of course, we walked 3.2 km to the beach, 1 km to The Dock for lunch with Butters and her family, and then almost 5 km home, so by 5pm Cassie was pooped:
Including one more walk around the neighborhood in the evening, Cassie got 12 km of walks over 2½ hours yesterday. Today will be less strenuous for her: only about 6 km. And lots of nap time.
Welcome to stop #131 on the Brews and Choos project.
Brewery: GoodTimes Brewery, 3827 N Broadway, Chicago
Train line: CTA Red Line, Sheridan
Time from Chicago: 20 minutes
Distance from station: 500 m
Metropolitan Brewing closed in November 2023, just a few months after brewmaster Raybird Gonzalez decided to found his own brewery. The Smylie Brothers flame-out freed up a turnkey brewing facility right at the north end of Boystown, which he grabbed. The new owners didn't change the interior dramatically, though they did remove some TVs and create a more inviting foyer.
Also, the beer got a lot better.
Because Friday was still really too hot for its own good, I didn't feel like having a lot of beer, so I only tried one small pour for myself and I tasted my Brews & Choos Buddy's selection. The Dynomite! IPA (6.5%) wasn't bad at all: crisp, refreshing, with a balanced bitterness/malt/hop profile I enjoyed. The Primitive Love hazy IPA (6.2%) was a decent, juicy hazy, with a long orange finish, though a little sweet for my palate. (My buddy found it sweet as well, but balanced by the hops, and not overly strong.)
I did not try the food, though my buddy has had their pizza and pronounced it acceptable. As she is very particular about pizza, I would take this as a solid endorsement.
It's not really the vibe I seek out for chillaxing on a lazy afternoon, but it's a good addition to the neighborhood. I expect I'll go back—particularly in the winter when I don't feel it insults nature by spending time inside.
Beer garden? No
Dogs OK? No
Televisions? Yes, avoidable
Serves food? Full pub menu
Would hang out with a book? No
Would hang out with friends? Yes
Would go back? Yes
Welcome to stop #130 on the Brews and Choos project.
Brewery: Goose Island Beer Co. at the Salt Shed, 1221 W. Blackhawk St., Chicago
Train line: Union Pacific North and Northwest, Clybourn (Zone 1)
Time from Chicago: 9 minutes
Distance from station: 1.5 km
The Salt Shed is a new entertainment complex built inside the former Morton Salt storage facility in the Clybourn Corridor industrial area of Chicago. Goose Island Beer Co. moved there in 2024 after closing its original brewing facility 800 meters northeast.
The new facility takes after other industrial building reclamations the B&CP has encountered over the years. It's basically a big room with a kitchen on the south end and a patio along the river to the east. My Brews & Choos Buddy and I found it perfectly acceptable when we visited yesterday, though we stayed in the air conditioning as I vetoed sitting out in the 33°C heat index.
Altogether, I tasted 5 beers, including the one my buddy didn't like at all. The Hazy Beer Hug IPA (6.8%) has long been my Goose go-to, with a good malt-hop balance and a lot of Citra juiciness. The River Bird West Coast IPA (6.5%) had a brightness I liked, with some decent hops and a clan finish. I was OK with the Return of the Mic WCIPA (7.3%), a collab with Mikerphone Brewing, though I probably would have preferred a bit less alcohol given the heat. (My buddy did not like this one, find it "like Daisy Cutter only worse," but I like Daisy Cutter so we didn't agree.) I also tried my buddy's Draftwerk Berlinerweiße (3.5%), which she loved and I gagged on. I do not like weißbiers, and she does not like WCIPAs, but we'll both try them.
We both didn't like how far the brewery is from civilization. The walk from the Clybourn station to the brewery takes you past metal finishing factories, a cavernous fitness center, and railroad infrastructure that isn't attractive or clean. I understand Anheuser Busch's rationale for closing the old restaurant by North and Sheffield, because they had the opportunity to provide beer for thousands of thirsty concert-goers at the Salt Shed. But the difficulty getting to the place is a definite negative for us. So while it qualifies as a "would go back," it's not a place anyone would make their favorite hangout spot.
Beer garden? Riverside patio
Dogs OK? Outside only
Televisions? No
Serves food? Full pub menu
Would hang out with a book? Maybe
Would hang out with friends? Yes
Would go back? Yes
I'm done with work for the week, owing to my previously-mentioned PTO cap, so later this afternoon I'm teaming up with my Brews & Choos Buddy to visit two breweries on the North Side. Later this weekend (probably Sunday), I'm going to share an unexpected result of a long-overdue project to excise a lot of old crap from my storage locker: articles from the proto-Daily Parker that ran out of my employer's office a full year before braverman.org became its own domain.
Before I do any of that, however, I'm going to read these things:
- The US Supreme Court temporarily and partially paused rulings by three lower-court judges on the OAFPOTUS's birthright citizenship order on the narrow question of whether lower courts can enjoin the entire country. (I will read Justice Coney Barrett's opinion when I have an empty stomach and a strong gummy.)
- Paul Krugman does the math on the Medicaid provisions in the ridiculous Republican budget proposal now winding through the Senate, and calls it "the coming health care apocalypse."
- Senate parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough has quietly killed the most onerous MAGA over-reaches from the ridiculous Republican budget proposal.
- Politico describes how Georgia's Medicaid work mandate has resulted in 97% of eligible residents being unable to register for the state's work verification program—which, given the current state of the Republican Party, seems exactly on brand.
- Julia Ioffe scoffs at the inability of the OAFPOTUS and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to utter more than three consecutive words about our attack on Iran last weekend without lying.
- Former US Representative Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) sees omens and portents in Zohran Mamdani's win in Tuesday's New York City Democratic Party primary. So does Dan Rather. Jeff Maurer jokes about who really won.
- Writing in the New York Times, Andrew Sullivan bawls out the gay-rights movement for morphing into a radical, illiberal, and ultimately ineffective leftist crusade: "Far from celebrating victory, defending the gains, staying vigilant, but winding down as a movement that had achieved its core objectives — including the end of H.I.V. in the United States as an unstoppable plague — gay and lesbian rights groups did the opposite. Swayed by the broader liberal shift to the “social justice” left, they radicalized."
- Yascha Mounk shares "18 observations about learning Chinese."
- Bruce Schneier argues that we need to care more about data integrity in systems design.
- What the hell happened to the Lincoln Yards development site?
Finally, though I have not seen the Apple TV show Dark Matter, it's on my list. And if I really like it, I can buy the house whose façade is used as the protagonist's house. It's going on the market for only $2.5 million.
I'm done with work for the week, owing to my previously-mentioned PTO cap, so later this afternoon I'm teaming up with my Brews & Choos Buddy to visit two breweries on the North Side. Later this weekend (probably Sunday), I'm going to share an unexpected result of a long-overdue project to excise a lot of old crap from my storage locker: articles from the proto-Daily Parker that ran out of my employer's office a full year before braverman.org became its own domain.
Before I do any of that, however, I'm going to read these things:
- The US Supreme Court temporarily and partially paused rulings by three lower-court judges on the OAFPOTUS's birthright citizenship order on the narrow question of whether lower courts can enjoin the entire country. (I will read Justice Coney Barrett's opinion when I have an empty stomach and a strong gummy.)
- Paul Krugman does the math on the Medicaid provisions in the ridiculous Republican budget proposal now winding through the Senate, and calls it "the coming health care apocalypse."
- Politico describes how Georgia's Medicaid work mandate has resulted in 97% of eligible residents being unable to register for the state's work verification program—which, given the current state of the Republican Party, seems exactly on brand.
- Julia Ioffe scoffs at the inability of the OAFPOTUS and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to utter more than three consecutive words about our attack on Iran last weekend without lying.
- Former US Representative Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) sees omens and portents in Zohran Mamdani's win in Tuesday's New York City Democratic Party primary. So does Dan Rather. Jeff Maurer jokes about who really won.
- Writing in the New York Times, Andrew Sullivan bawls out the gay-rights movement for morphing into a radical, illiberal, and ultimately ineffective leftist crusade: "Far from celebrating victory, defending the gains, staying vigilant, but winding down as a movement that had achieved its core objectives — including the end of H.I.V. in the United States as an unstoppable plague — gay and lesbian rights groups did the opposite. Swayed by the broader liberal shift to the “social justice” left, they radicalized."
- Yascha Mounk shares "18 observations about learning Chinese."
- Bruce Schneier argues that we need to care more about data integrity in systems design.
- What the hell happened to the Lincoln Yards development site?
Finally, though I have not seen the Apple TV show Dark Matter, it's on my list. And if I really like it, I can buy the house whose façade is used as the protagonist's house. It's going on the market for only $2.5 million.
The acclaimed journalist was 91:
Billy Don Moyers was born in Hugo, Oklahoma, on June 5, 1934, and grew up in the northeast Texas town of Marshall. His father worked as a day laborer, while Mr. Moyers’s mother raised him and an older brother, James.
After Kennedy was assassinated in 1963, Mr. Moyers, not yet 30, became one of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s key lieutenants. Time magazine called him “LBJ’s young man in charge of everything.” He was named White House press secretary in July 1965.
[In 1967], Mr. Moyers took a lucrative job as publisher of Newsday, the large-circulation Long Island newspaper. He tilted the paper leftward in its support of anti-war demonstrators, lured a stream of leading authors to write for its pages and led the newsroom to two Pulitzer Prizes. But his tenure was cut short in 1970 amid clashes with newspaper’s conservative owner.
Mr. Moyers then began a television career that would bring him more than 30 Emmy Awards, including one for lifetime achievement. He was mainly associated with PBS, which he joined in 1971, but he detoured to CBS from 1976 to 1986.
I really enjoyed his writing and reporting. He will be missed.
New York City adopted Ranked-Choice Voting before the 2019 Democratic mayoral primary, and they got Eric Adams—their least-popular mayor in decades—out of it. Since ranked-choice voting was supposed to reduce the likelihood of electing an extremist, this was a surprising result. Fortunately New Yorkers have had a few years to get the hang of ranked-choice, so in this year's Democratic primary, they won't make that mistake again, right?
Oh, bother. The extreme leftist won. With incumbent Eric Adams running for re-election as an independent, and former New York governor Andrew Cuomo, who lost last night, threatening to do the same, it's quite possible the Republican (Curtis Sliwa) could squeak on through. Good work, guys.
(For what it's worth, I don't know who I would have voted for if I still lived in NYC. I am fairly certain it would not have been Cuomo or Mamdani.)
In other disappointments:
- Former Secretary of State Anthony Blinken argues that the OAFPOTUS's attack on Iran "was a mistake," but he hopes it succeeds.
- Surprising absolutely no one, Illinois governor JB Pritzker (D) has announced he will run for a third term, without a hint of whether he'll run for president in 2028.
- Is US Representative Nancy Mace (R-SC) the future of the Republican Party?
- The Housing and Urban Development Secretary, Scott Turner, has decided he'd like the National Science Foundation headquarters to serve as his executive mansion.
- Chase Strangio, the guy who lost the most important trans-rights case perhaps ever, blamed everyone and everything except his own extremist strategy for the loss, proving once again that narcissism knows no political party.
- A rumor going around town says the Bank of New York might buy Chicago's last locally-owned bank, Northern Trust, though the latter denies it.
- The Economist goes deep into the history and consequences of OnlyFans.
- Apparently I was one of a record number of travelers to pass through O'Hare on Sunday.
Finally, how did I not know about the Lake County Forest Preserve Districts's giant 18-hectare off leash dog area in Lake Forest? Cassie, honey, guess where we're going this weekend?
I spent all of last weekend with friends, and we wound up just having fun and not worrying about photos. So, not much from Seattle to post. I did capture Hazel lazing on the couch, though:
I don't know what I did to deserve it, but Hazel spent a long time staring at me the way Cassie does. Of course, they do know and like each other:
I'll have the usual roundup of horrifying current events later today.
I don't watch a lot of YouTube videos, mainly because I can no longer concentrate on two things at once with any useful comprehension like (I thought) I could in my 20s. Today at lunch, though, I watched two short videos by well-respected creators that are worth passing on.
First, former Clinton Labor Secretary Robert Reich reminds us, "The purpose of a government is not to turn a profit, it's to achieve the common good:"
Second, Strong Towns executive director Charles Marohn points out the flawed thinking that leads some cities and traffic engineers to miss the obvious reason traffic deaths went up in the pandemic and down when people started driving again:
Enjoy.