The Daily Parker

Welcome to stop #81 on the Brews and Choos project.

Brewery: Obscurity Brewing, 113 W. North St., Elburn
Train line: Union Pacific West, Elburn
Time from Chicago: 85 minutes (Zone I)
Distance from station: 1.2 km

Elburn, Ill., is the end of the line for the Union Pacific West line. The station opened in 2006, extending the line past Geneva for the first time since the Chicago & North Western ceased intercity train service in 1971. In fact, when the last C&NW train pulled into Elburn 51 years ago, it stopped right at what is now the Obscurity Brewing Co.

Obscurity opened in the summer of 2020, after I'd already visited Penrose Brewing, at that point the farthest western Brews & Choos stop. They have two notable features: really good BBQ, and lots of honey, which makes sense as they have a sister location just across Main St. that makes mead and honeyed ciders. (Unfortunately, the mead hall only opens after 5pm on Fridays, so I'll have to stop back in Elburn some Saturday or Sunday when the train schedules work out better.)

I ordered a flight of four very different styles and a brisket sandwich. Starting at the top left, I tried the Train with Square Wheels milk stout (5%), a smooth, subtle, chocolatey pour with a clean finish. The American Pilsner (bottom left, 5.2%) would refresh me on a hot day, with its nice balance of malt and hops. The Good Kiss Braggot IPA (top right, 6.5%) had a sweetness I didn't expect and pretty subtle hop notes for an IPA, but I learned that "braggot" means they brewed it with honey. The Launch Juice hazy IPA (bottom right, 6.7%) was my favorite of the four, with nice Citra notes of grapefruit and pear, with a lingering finish and delicious mouthfeel.

I also sampled the Nemesis Cider (not pictured, 5%), which had lots of flavor: honeycrisp apple, pear, and a few other notes, sweet without cloying.

I would go back for the brisket, too.

And I love that they lean into the Metra theme:

Beer garden? Yes
Dogs OK? Outside only
Televisions? Yes, unavoidable
Serves food? Really good BBQ
Would hang out with a book? Yes
Would hang out with friends? Yes
Would go back? Yes

Photo: The Elburn Metra station with its one train waiting to head back to Chicago.

I spent way more time than I should have this morning trying to set up an API key for the Associated Press data tools. Their online form to sign up created a general customer-service ticket, which promptly got closed with an instruction to...go to the online sign-up form. They also had a phone number, which turned out to have nothing to do with sales. And I've now sent two emails a week apart to their "digital sales" office, with crickets in response.

The New York Times had an online setup that took about five minutes, and I'm already getting stuff using Postman. Nice.

Meanwhile:

• David French revisits President Carter's "malaise" speech, which he characterizes as the former president's most prophetic.
• Molly White asks, why isn't Sam Bankman-Fried in jail? (Most likely answer: because the US Attorney's Office are enjoying him making all those incriminating statements online.)
• The mountains outside Los Angeles have gotten heavy blizzard conditions in the past day in a once-in-a-generation storm.
• A few thousand kilometers to the east, Venice has had near-record low tides that have left its canals mostly empty for hours twice a day.
• The electrical engineer heading up Virginia's Marymount University has proposed cutting everything she doesn't understand from the curriculum, ironically demonstrating why the humanities are critical for good leadership skills.
• Long-time Winnepeg, Man., resident Michel Durand-Wood sees the disappearance of a neighborhood park's gardener as an excellent symbol of the "growth Ponzi scheme" perpetrated by highway departments across North America.
• On the other hand, bureaucracy and poor planning have helped make Manhattan's 2nd Avenue Subway the most expensive transit project in the world.

Finally, I've got a note on my calendar to check out the Karen's Diner pop-up in Wrigleyville next month. Because who doesn't want to be abused by servers?

I got a lot done today, mostly a bunch of smaller tasks I put off for a while. I also put off reading all of this, which I will do now while my rice cooks:

• The EU's Copernicus Climate Change Service determined that 2022 was the fifth-hottest year on record, once again making the last 8 years the hottest on record. As North America sees record warmth and record-low snowfall this winter, we can guess how 2023 will end up.
• In no small irony, Illinois was actually cooler than normal last year. I've said before, Chicago will look better and better as the world looks worse and worse.
• Loathsome creep Andrew Tate lost all four of his appeals to Romania's appellate court, so will remain in the country until his trial for human trafficking.
• A report by INRIX Research put London and Chicago at the top of the list of cities with the worst car traffic. Oddly, in a related study, London also ranked 10th and Chicago ranked 20th of cities with the best public transit.
• Delta Airlines' "free" wi-fi reminds passengers of the adage, when someone else pays, you're the product, not the customer.

Finally, I've mentioned heading to San Francisco this coming weekend, has gotten some rain. By "some" I mean over 350 mm of rain in the past 15 days, making it the rainiest two weeks since 1866. The weekend forecast does not look encouraging: rain likely, highs around 12, lows around 9, and yet more rain likely. I have never taken an umbrella to California before. First time for everything, I guess.

And now my rice is done.

Remember the stew I made Wednesday? It turned out one of my best:

And I had a lot of leftovers:

Remember Cassie getting a long walk to the big dog park Thursday? We did the same thing yesterday:

And after dinner, I got this rare (inverted for your convenience) photo of Cassie getting a belly rub:

Today, however, it's rainy and cold, so we will have less walking—but possibly more couch/belly-rub time.

Cassie and I took a 33-minute walk at lunchtime and we'll take another half-hour or so before dinner as the temperature grazes 14°C this afternoon. Tomorrow and each day following will cool off a bit until Wednesday, the first official day of winter, which will return to normal.

Meanwhile...

• As every lawyer who paid attention predicted, Justice Clarence Thomas's (R) opinion in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v Bruen last summer articulated a Republican policy platform while providing absolutely no useful guidance.
• Jamelle Bouie points to that particular justice, along with his brother-in-arms Samuel Alito (R), as great reasons to institute term limits on the Supreme Court.
• Looks like House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), plans to take his 5-seat majority out for a spin come January. Can't wait. (Remember, the Republican Party wants you to think the US Government is a joke. Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!)
• Robert Wright reminds everyone that Ukraine's interests differ from those of the EU, NATO, and the US, which puts Ukrainian president Zelensky's behavior regarding the accidental missile detonation in Poland in context.
• Julia Ioffe reminds everyone that the Pentagon's and White House's strategies also differ from one another.
• Now that I've moved, I need to update my drivers license, which means finally getting a Real ID. I mean, other than my passport or passport card. (Oooo, maybe I can get a CAC?)
• Toronto gave up a few dozen parking spaces to make room for sidewalk cafes, only to discover that the restaurants made 49 times more money than the parking spaces.
• The US faces a critical shortage of bomb-sniffing dogs.
• Thousands of cranes have migrated through Chicago in the last few days, and wow, are they loud.

Finally, Amazon's ads really have gotten to the point where it's "a tacky strip mall filled with neon signs pointing you in all the wrong directions."

And in just a few hours, I will tuck into this:

I may run out of mason jars though...

A week after moving, I'm averaging 30 minutes more sleep and my Body Battery score is back to normal levels after two weeks of waking up like a zombie. I might even have all the boxes unpacked by this time next year.

Meanwhile, me shifting a couple tonnes of matter a few hundred meters did not affect the world's spin by any measurable amount:

• Max Boot reminds everyone that comparing right-wing and left-wing violence in the US is a false equivalence.
• Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva defeated incumbent right-wing populist Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil's presidential election yesterday.
• Elon Musk's takeover of Twitter has already done irreparable harm to the company and will probably kill it.
• Coffee shops in particular have struggled to recover from the pandemic.
• Developers: stop writing hostile error messages.
• Apple finally admitted they don't patch previous versions of their operating systems unless they absolutely have to.

Finally, the Tribune reviewed a new New York-style pizzeria in East Lakeview that...doesn't sound like it sells the greasy slices I used to get on Lexington after midnight. But I'll try it.

Today's theme song is U2's "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For," but I know it's somewhere in the new house...

Unpacking proceeds apace. Last night we were both exhausted and we both had trouble falling asleep. We also both wanted pizza, though Cassie didn't know she wanted it until I brought it into the house.

Back to unpacking. I actually have to work tomorrow, so I need to get at least half my life out of chaos tonight.

Bloomberg reports that Kroger and Albertsons, two of the biggest grocery chains in the US, have started merger talks. This would create an enormous entity about the size of Wal-Mart. In Chicago, it would result in the merger of Jewel (Albertsons) and Mariano's (Kroger), just a few years after the dissolution of Dominick's, leaving us with just three major chains including Trader Joe's and Whole Foods Market.

Crain's elaborates:

An agreement could be reached as soon as this week, [unnamed sources] said, asking not to be identified discussing confidential information. No final decisions have been made and talks could still be delayed or falter, according to the people.

A potential tie-up would give the combined entity increased purchasing power, a sprawling shopper-loyalty program and greater heft in technology investments as online grocery sales increase. The resulting giant would be of comparable size in groceries to Walmart Inc., the US market leader.

But any deal would face tough scrutiny from US antitrust authorities, said Jennifer Bartashus, an analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence. The US Federal Trade Commission is already subjecting mergers to close examination, and a Kroger-Albertsons deal would join two large players that directly compete in much of the country.

“This is the type of transaction that really looks good on paper, but the actual practicality of achieving regulatory approval by the FTC could be difficult,” Bartashus said. “If you think about the store bases of the two respective entities, there is a lot of overlap in very competitive markets.”

I really hope the FTC shuts this thing down. While bigger and fewer grocery stores might make some business sense in less-dense areas, here in Chicago we like having more, smaller stores—and more choice.

McSweeney's channels Lovecraft—at Olive Garden:

Cheese Ravioli

A homogeneity characterized its flaxen cast. Bubbling sacks of slime upon a platter scorching. Beware! Doused in the pureed remains of a dozen orbic fruits, I feel my breath quicken and hands tremble as I pen its likeness as well as I might. My own mind conspires against me when presented with this frightful entrée. To dine? Or will my own visage mirror its sickly jaundice? I have touched with too much haste the vessel of Hades, a burn be my meal.

The Tour of Italy

A terse presentation of memories, three to be precise. A chicken, but unclucking. A plate of worms, wriggling in saucy terror. And then, horror unbounded, a cube of entombed layers coated in a crimson, comestible smear. Dreams fleeting and reborn, of monoliths—Pisa—floating mid-air and dripping gruel. A gurgling voice emerged from the deep, a chaos that did not speak a mortal tongue, a promise emitted: “Unlimahtated brrrrurdstihks!”

Meanwhile, over at the New Yorker, Dennard Dayle imagines a letter straight out of The Dark Forest:

Dear Citizen,

Congratulations! If you’re reading this, you’ve successfully contacted alien life. It’s not a dream—unimpeded by fear, you’ve accomplished what countless generations couldn’t. Impressive, considering fear’s role in survival. One could even say that you’ve achieved what they wouldn’t.

Take a bow. A hundred years from now, there will be a holiday named for you, observed across a changed galaxy: a day commemorating the moxie, intellect, and sheer luck needed to contact another world while knowing nothing about it.

You must wonder what comes next. After all, your imagination made this possible. Will there be media training? Your own office in low orbit? A well-deserved vacation? The answer is simple:

Liquidation.

I mean, they're not wrong...

I mentioned that I went to Ribfest Chicago this past weekend. In years past I have reviewed the vendors and posted photos, but I didn't this year. Simply put, the fest hasn't recovered from Covid.

Two things especially disappointed me: first, the festival of ribs had only 5 dedicated rib vendors, not the 15-20 of years past. Wrigley BBQ closed during the pandemic; Fireside, Piggery, Q, and Smoke Daddy didn't bother to come; and Smoque, one of the best rib places in the city, has never bothered because with their Bib Gourmand rating why should they?

Second, all the vendors had serious quality or service issues. For example, from the first time I wrote about Ribfest in 2011, I've put Mrs Murphy's near the top of my list. On Sunday, though, I got a tray of goo from them. They had ladled on so much sauce that I had to scrape most of it away from the three tiny bones they'd given me, but the bones had spent so long under boil that "fall of the bone" became more "disintegrate off the bone." Another vendor had exhausted children of 10 manning the cash registers, and failing in ways you'd expect. (At the best of times 10-year-olds don't multitask well; at a busy food booth they handled each order to completion, including waiting for food, before taking the next order.)

Two vendors had lines a block long on Friday evening. On Sunday afternoon, one of them had no line—because they'd run out of ribs and it would take another 90 minutes for them to cook more. The other one, returning itinerant Austin Texas Lightning, still had a block-long queue, which upon investigation seemed to have more to do with the booth being woefully understaffed than anything else.

I hope next year they do better, or at least have more vendors.