The Daily Parker

Today I learned about the Zoot Suit Riots that began 79 years ago today in Los Angeles. Wow, humans suck.

In other revelations:

• Service and restaurant workers in Chicago have accelerated their pushes for unionization after their bosses showed just how much they valued their workers during the pandemic. Funny how that works.
• The President can't do much about global food and gasoline prices, but voters will probably blame him anyway come November.
• I agree with Josh Marshall that preserving the current state of abortion rights through Federal legislation is the correct, and small-c conservative thing to do.
• Republican candidates for Illinois Governor held a debate yesterday in which they all blamed everything except their own party's fellatio of the gun industry for the violence in Chicago. None of them acknowledged that gun violence is now the leading cause of death in the US for children.
• The GOP's inability to have a serious conversation about guns comes against the backdrop of a mass shooting every week this year. After all, it's easier to regulate guns than to remove the brains of teenage boys.
• Boeing CEO David Calhoun explained to Crain's Chicago Business why the company is leaving Chicago.

Finally, it's 22°C and sunny outside, which mitigates against me staying in my office much longer...

Because it's the first day of summer, I'm only posting fun things right now. First, I'd like to thank Uncle Roger for upping my egg fried rice game. Here's my lunch from earlier today. Fuiyoooh!

Around the time I made this delicious and nutritious lunch, a friend who teaches music in a local elementary school sent me a photo of the family of ducks she escorted from one side of the school to the other:

In other good news:

• Believe it or not, today is the 55th anniversary of Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. I remember the day in 1987 when it really was "20 years ago today." People born on that day are now old enough to be president. Yeek.
• Chicago's heavy-rail system, Metra, will start offering unlimited system-wide monthly passes for $100 at the end of this month. Unless you live on the Rock Island or Metra Electric lines. Hiyaaah!

And...well, that's it for good news. Check back later when I have regular, horrifying news.

Welcome to stop #75 on the Brews and Choos project.

Brewery: Maplewood Brewery, 2717 N Maplewood Ave., Chicago
Train line: CTA Blue Line, Logan Square
Time from Chicago: 16 minutes
Distance from station: 1.7 km

I've actually visited Maplewood many times in the past, but not since starting the Brews & Choos project. The pandemic got in the way, especially after it killed Fat Willy's Rib Shack and nearly killed the movie theater around the corner.

I finally returned to the movie theater on Wednesday to see the director's cut of Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Since we did not, in fact, take public transit to get to the movie, we did not take shrooms before watching it as several friends advised. Instead we got beers. I decided on this flight:

I didn't take notes, but I do remember liking all of them. The one second from the right (Son of Juice) and the stout (Fat Pug) were especially tasty. (Note the embankment just across the alley: that's the Union Pacific Northwest Line, so the window seats provide the true railfan with entertainment during rush hour.)

The taproom doesn't have a lot of room but it does have a lot of taps. Plus, Maplewood distills spirits, which (again because I drove) I didn't sample this time.

Beer garden? Sidewalk
Dogs OK? Outside only
Televisions? None
Serves food? Snacks; BYOF while the kitchen is closed
Would hang out with a book? Yes
Would hang out with friends? Yes
Would go back? Yes

Chicago's two baseball teams gave up a combined 36 runs yesterday, with the Cubs losing to the Reds 20-5 and the Sox losing to the Red Sox 16-7. Perhaps the bullpens could use a little work, hmm?

In other news:

• US Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) has taken more money from gun lobbyists since taking office than anyone else in the Senate, and did not like a British reporter asking him about it yesterday.
• The local police in Uvalde, Texas, bungled basic policing during the school shooting Tuesday in ways that just keep looking worse for them.
• It turns out, even the XPOTUS argued for common-sense gun laws after the Parkland shooting.
• The US Secret Service teamed up with mental-health experts after the assassination of John Lennon to figure out how to stop shootings, an endeavor one can only call a "work in progress."
• The British Broadcasting Company plans to take much of its service online after culture secretary Nadine Dorries (Cons.-Mid Bedfordshire) held the annual license fee at £159 for the next two years. (The BBC receives much of its funding from the fee, which is charged per television set in the UK.)

Finally, astronomers have produced a photo of the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy, and were surprised to see it looks nothing like Ted Cruz's head.

Tonight our chorus has its (sold out!) fundraiser. This will be the first year since I joined the chorus that I won't be performing, and the second where I'm not running the event. I finally get to just enjoy the night.

Except one of the co-chairs has Covid. And the reason I'm not performing is that one of the ensemble I put together also has Covid, and another got called up for his Army Reserve weekend unexpectedly.

But, hey, it's going to be fun...and did I mention we sold out? We did find a couple last-minute tickets, though, so if you're in town, come on down.

It's mid-July today, at least until around 8pm, when late April should return. The Tribune reported this morning that our spring has had nearly three times the rain as last spring, but actually hasn't gotten much wetter than normal.

Meanwhile:

• Millennial writer Marisa Kabas boggles at George W Bush's volte-face on the Iraq war this week.
• Josh Marshall shakes his head at the Republican Party's acceptance of a particular nasty and racist theory of immigration.
• Andrew Sullivan says this is because white people are acting like an embattled minority, thanks in part to the left crowing about driving them out of power: "If you demonize an entire race, you may at some point get the compliment returned. The more you raise racial consciousness among non-whites, the more you risk the same among whites. As Thomas Chatterton Williams warned: 'so long as we fetishize race, we ensure that we will never be rid of the hierarchies it imposes.' "
• Slate wonders why news reports about drivers hitting pedestrians so often reflect the car's point of view.
• Yesterday, WGN Radio turned 100.
• And tonight, I'll be watching season 3 of Love Death + Robots, featuring a new story by John Scalzi.

Finally, via The Onion, Google Maps now shows you shortcuts through people's houses when they're not home.

This week's temperatures tell a story of incoherence and frustration: Monday, 26°C; Tuesday, 16°C; yesterday, 14°C; today (so far), 27°C. And this is after a record high of 33°C just a week ago—and a low just above 10°C Tuesday morning.

So while I'm wearing out the tracks on my window sashes, I'll have these items to read while my house either cools down or warms up:

• A Colorado Republican wants to create an "electoral college" for the state that would give one vote to each county to elect the state governor. The 14th Amendment wants to have a word with him.
• Like most people who breathe, Michelle Cottle is glad to see the back of Madison Cawthorn.
• Matt Ford would like to see the back of Justice Clarence Thomas (R), who "has gone full hack."
• The US Census Bureau reported that it under- and over-counted 14 states, including Illinois (1.97% undercount) and New York (3.44% overcount). Sigh.
• Illinois has started issuing craft grow cannabis licenses, with preference for majority Latino- and Black-owned businesses.
• Chicago has requested $400 million of the $2.9 billion transportation package the President signed last month. The money would go to storm sewers, highway reconstruction, and the CTA.

And finally, Ian Bogost feels elated that cryptocurrencies have crashed, particularly because he doesn't own any.

I had to put out a new version of the Inner Drive Azure tools for my day job today, and I had more meetings than I wanted (i.e., a non-zero number), so these kind of piled up:

• Master Strategist Vladimir Putin's efforts to weaken NATO have succeeded in getting Sweden and Finland interested in joining the alliance.
• Margaret Sullivan wants the media (including her own Washington Post) to understand "democracy is at stake in the midterms."
• Jim Fallows recommends (re-)watching the 1947 Oscar Best Picture winner Gentleman's Agreement.
• A Federal appeals court overturned an injunction against enforcement of a Texas law that would end content moderation on Internet sites, among other horrific things.
• Retired Drug Enforcement Agency agent Keith Billiot single-handedly destroyed a case against four alleged drug traffickers by casually describing how "people of Latino descent are the ones that are supplying (narcotics to) people of African American descent or Caucasians, or whatever." The US Attorney is displeased.
• Why does the Internet hate Amber Heard?
• Author John Scalzi revisits his "lowest difficulty setting" post ten years on.

There were other things I'll read later, but it's past 6pm and someone is staring at me because she needs a walk.

NPR did a segment this morning on the 1978 movie Grease, which correspondent Dori Bell had never seen—since, you know, she's a late Millennial. As I listened to the movie, while slowly waking up and patting Cassie, the timeline of the movie and the play just made me feel...old.

The play, which premiered in 1971, takes place in the fall of 1958. The movie came out in 1978.

So try this out, with the dates changed a bit: The play premiered in 2015 and takes place in 2002.

Oh, it gets better, Gen-Xers and Boomers: Grease the movie is to us today what It Happened One Night was to people in 1978. Because 1978 is 44 years ago, as 1934 was 44 years before 1978.

So, sure, Bell had trouble relating to Grease for the same reasons people just after the Vietnam War would have trouble relating to a movie made in the depths of the Great Depression.

Time for my Geritol...

Welcome to an extra stop on the Brews and Choos project.

Brewery: Mikkeler Bar, 34 Mason St., San Francisco
Train line: BART, Powell
Time from Chicago: about 4½ hours by air
Distance from station: 200 m

While in San Francisco last weekend, I happened across a brewpub that would fit the Brews & Choos ethos perfectly, were it in Chicago. The Mikkeller Bar in San Francisco serves a variety of craft beer, mostly their own Danish brews, but also some American varieties.

I tried three beers, the Weldwerks Mosaic Extra Extra Juicy Bits (DIPA, 8.6%), Mikkeller's Hop Opera NEDIPA (9%), and Mikkeller's Windy Hill (NEIPA, 7%). Of the three, I liked the Windy Hill enough to have a second.

It's an interesting place with a vibe that I assume came from a collision between Denmark and Northern California. It also has some deeply weird elements, like this, which rumor says came from the building's previous owner, presumably after he no longer needed it:

I'm glad I stopped in. Pity, though, that not a lot of breweries in the Bay Area would fit the Brews & Choos Project. But hey, it was a fun surprise.

Beer garden? No
Dogs OK? No
Televisions? None
Serves food? Full menu
Would hang out with a book? Yes
Would hang out with friends? Yes
Would go back? Yes