The Daily Parker

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.

Welcome to stop #129 on the Brews and Choos project.

Brewery: McHenry Brewing, 3425 Pearl St., McHenry
Train line: Union Pacific Northwest, McHenry (Zone 4)
Time from Chicago: 88 minutes
Distance from station: 1.3 km

It finally happened: I cheated. I couldn't figure any reasonable way to visit McHenry Brewing without taking an expensive and rare Lyft part of the way home, because the UP-NW line only has three daily trains to McHenry in the afternoon with three return trains in the morning. So, not wanting to find myself stranded two counties over, I bundled Cassie into the car and drove up there.

(Spot the happy dog.)

I also had a bit of serendipity as the brewery were celebrating the owner's 50th birthday, which explains the hats. The building has a long history of brewing beer, too: it first opened as Lager Brewery back in 1868.

Because we drove up there, and I didn't get lunch on the way up, I only had one pint of the Pearl Steet Pils (5.5%, 13 IBU). I liked it, especially sitting outside on a sunny (but smoky) first day of summer.

I wouldn't mind another trip up to McHenry, as the area just east of the brewery has a nice, big park and lots of shops and restaurants along the Fox River. The brewery itself was OK and so was the beer I tried. And hey, Cassie got lots of pats, so she'd go back too.

Beer garden? Yes
Dogs OK? Outside only
Televisions? Yes, avoidable
Serves food? BYOF
Would hang out with a book? Maybe
Would hang out with friends? Yes
Would go back? Yes

Welcome to stop #128 on the Brews and Choos project.

Brewery: Black Lung Brewing, 115 Nippersink Rd., Fox Lake
Train line: Milwaukee District North, Fox Lake (Zone 4)
Time from Chicago: 105 minutes
Distance from station: 750 m

Fox Lake isn't the farthest station from downtown Chicago on the Metra system. At 110 km, that honor goes to Harvard; Fox Lake is only 80 km out. And yet, as I discovered yesterday, it can take almost 3 hours to get back to Union Station if the aging-but-repainted SD70MACH locomotive can't go backwards. (Thank you, America, for strangling public transit for decades and wondering why it sucks!)

Regardless, I don't regret the trip. Because just a 10-minute walk from the Fox Lake station along the lake shore you will find the Black Lung Brewing taproom and its pleasant beer garden.

Despite the overcast skies and Canadian wildfire smoke, and despite my train arriving 45 minutes before the brewery opened, I sat by the lake and read my book and didn't want to leave. If Metra had an option for returning to the city between 4:25 pm and 8:37 pm, I would have stayed for a while longer, but I didn't want to get home after 11 pm.

The beer was not bad. I started with the Trampled By Sliders Pale (5.5%, SRM 6), "brewed in collaboration with the Grayslake Youth Baseball Association." It had a nice bitter/malt balance and short finish, with a good flavor. The Maui Wowie Hazy IPA (6.5%, 25 IBU) had lots of hops right off the bat without being overwhelming, a smooth mouthfeel, and a long finish. A bit less Citra flavor than expected. And thanks to bartender Joanie for a half-pint lagniappe when the keg kicked on her first draw.

It is a very long way to go, unfortunately. And yet I think I'll stop by again this summer—perhaps even this weekend, since I had already planned a Brews & Choos expedition to the hardest-to-reach brewery in the Metra system tomorrow.

One other thing: in addition to their production facility and taproom in Round Lake Beach, Black Lung has taken over the Light the Lamp space in Grayslake and plans to open in August. When I get out there in the fall, why not stop at the Fox Lake taproom as well?

Beer garden? Yes
Dogs OK? Outside only
Televisions? Yes, avoidable
Serves food? Full pub menu
Would hang out with a book? Yes
Would hang out with friends? Yes
Would go back? Yes

Because I'm about to hit my PTO cap at work, I'm taking the next few Friday afternoons off. Today I've planned a Brews & Choos trip out to the wilds of Lake County. Check back tomorrow for the result!

Meanwhile, I have more meetings...

We've had a run of dreary, unseasonably cold weather that more closely resembles the end of March than the middle of May. I've been looking at this gloom all day:

We may have some sun tomorrow afternoon through the weekend, but the forecast calls for continuous north winds and highs around 16°C—the normal high for April 23rd, not May 23rd. Summer officially starts in 10 days. It sure doesn't feel like it.

Speaking of the gloomy and the retrograde:

• Former US judge and George HW Bush appointee J. Michael Luttig argues that the OAFPOTUS "is destroying the American presidency, though I would not say that is intentional and deliberate."
• In a case of "careful what you wish for," FBI Director Dan Bongino can't escape his past conspiracy theorizing but also can't really escape the realities of (or his lack of qualifications for) his new position.
• Writer Louis Pisano excoriates Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez for their "idea that billionaires can buy their way into virtue with just enough gala invitations, foundation launches, and pocket-change donations" in Cannes this week.
• Adam Kinzinger shakes his fist at the OAFPOTUS-murdered Voice of America, now "subsidized by taxpayer dollars [to broadcast] Trump-aligned propaganda in 49 languages worldwide."
• Jen Rubin, vacationing in Spain, explains how the country's centuries-long Catholic purges of Jews and Muslims drove their globe-spanning empire into irrelevance. "The notion that national defense required ethnic and religious homogeneity not only resulted in mass atrocities, it also deprived Spain of many of the people and ideas that had helped it become a world power," she concludes. (Not that we need to worry here in the US, right?)
• Chuck Marohn shakes his head at the Brainerd, Minn., city council for ignoring his advice and building massive infrastructure they can't afford to maintain.
• Metra has formally taken control of the commuter trains running on Union Pacific track, including the one that goes right past Inner Drive Technology WHQ.
• The village of Dolton, Ill., has informed potential buyers of Pope Leo XVI's childhood home that it intends to invoke eminent domain and work with the Archdiocese of Chicago on preserving the building. Said the village attorney, "We don't want it to become a nickel-and-dime, 'buy a little pope' place."

Speaking of cashing in on the Chicago Pope, Burning Bush Brewery has just released a new mild ale called "Da Pope." Next time Cassie and I go to Horner Park, we'll stop by Burning Bush and one of us will try it. (Un?)Fortunately, we won't have time to get there by 11pm Friday, so we'll miss the $8 Chicago Pope Handshake special (a pint of Da Pope and a shot of Malört). Dang.

I spent a lot of time outside over the weekend until the temperature started to slide into the single digits (Celsius) last night, so I put off reading online stories in favor of reading real books. I also failed to mention that we had an honest-to-goodness haboob in Northern Illinois on Friday, the first significant one since 1934. Because hey, let's bring back the 1930s in all their glory!

• Adam Kinzinger rolls his eyes at the world's oldest toddler: the OAFPOTUS himself, the biggest champion of the 1930s we have right now.
• Josh Marshall shakes his head at the people in our party who think the electorate is waiting with bated breath to find out which nonessential policies we're going to go with in 2026.
• Jeff Maurer draws similar parallels, this time between HBO/Max/HBO Max/whatever's branding problems and those of the Democratic Party.
• Paul Krugman slaps the GOP hard for its "incredibly cruel" budget—which is their point: "Its cruelty is exceptional even by recent right-wing standards."
• Speaking of cruelty, Jack Goldsmith picks apart Stephen Miller's trolling about habeas corpus, and pleads with journalists to stop falling for this stuff.
• Michael Tomasky says that Kamala Harris's race and gender weren't the problem with her candidacy—it's that the party stopped all conversation about her fitness for the presidency because of her race and gender.
• Tyler Austin Harper agrees, saying that the King Lear analogy with President Biden postulated in Jake Tapper's Original Sin doesn't quite work: his core advisers and his wife bear a lot more responsibility for our 2024 loss than they get credit for.
• Oh, and hey, did anyone in North America notice that the PKK lay down their arms and have ended their 40-year insurgency against Türkiye? It's kind of a big deal.
• In one bit of good news, the critically-endangered piping plovers nesting at Montrose Beach a few hundred meters to the east of where I'm sitting have laid an egg. Good luck, Imani and Sea Rocket!
• The UK has asked if the US Federal Aviation Administration might possibly do their jobs a bit better regulating the Clown Prince of X's rockets, which keep blowing up over the UK's Caribbean territories and littering their beaches with debris.

Finally, Scottish writer Dan Richards looks across the Atlantic and sees that the infrastructure choices we've made have driven us to having only two bad options: slow cars or polluting airplanes. Europe made investments throughout the last 30 years that gave them sleek and comfortable overnight trains.

I last took an overnight European train in September 2013, on what may be my best visit to the UK ever. The Caledonian Sleeper leaves London Euston at 22:30 and gets to Edinburgh at 08:00, for about £250 per person. Put that price against a flight and a hotel, or even an daytime express train and a hotel, and it's not a bad deal. Plus you get a wake-up call with hot tea before arriving.

...and it's Star Wars trivia tonight at Spiteful Brewing, so I'll just have to save some links to read tomorrow:

• Matt Bai shakes his head at the Clown Prince of X nakedly cashing in on the trade war.
• Yascha Mounk says the OAFPOTUS "has a genuine mandate," but can't get past his own narcissism and grievances to use it.
• Jennifer Rubin agrees, saying "doubling down with a pair of deuces isn't a winning strategy."
• Jeff Maurer shares his thoughts on the OAFPOTUS's "first hundred years in office."
• Former US Representative Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) calls out the dangerous corruption of betting on political outcomes.

Finally, WAPO has a list of 35 "definitive rules of train travel." Definitely Daily Parker bait. 

Welcome to stop #127 on the Brews and Choos project.

Brewery: Explorium Brewpub Third Ward, 143 W. St. Paul Ave., Milwaukee
2 (of 5) stars
Train line: Amtrak, Milwaukee Intermodal Station
Time from Chicago: 89 minutes
Distance from station: 150 m

The best thing about Explorium is its proximity to the Milwaukee Intermodal Station, as it took me less than 5 minutes to get to my train home despite taking a couple of photos along the way. Otherwise it's a loud, TV-covered entertainment zone that could be anywhere in the US. It has decent wings though.

We tried another flight, including the Lost in the Sauce VX New England IPA (6.6%, 13 IBU), a fruity, malty, not horrible but too sweet beer that my Brews Buddy acknowledged was "very drinkable." The Wayfinder hazy pale ale (5.2%, 24 IBU) was even sweeter, with distinct banana notes, but also drinkable. Captain Kidd's Lost IPA (7.5%, 60 IBU) was...eh? My notes just say "bog-standard IPA." And the On Time IPA (no information) was...also drinkable.

I might go back, depending on what the outside spaces look like. It has an unbeatable location if you have to catch a train. Then again, Wizard Works is only 5 minutes farther away.

Beer garden? Yes
Dogs OK? Outside
Televisions? Unavoidable
Serves food? Full pub menu
Would hang out with a book? No
Would hang out with friends? Maybe
Would go back? Maybe, but only outside