Welcome to an extra stop on the Brews and Choos project.
Brewery: Off the Rails Brewing, 111 S. Murphy Ave., Sunnyvale, Calif.
Train line: Caltrain, Sunnyvale
Time from SF Terminal: 62 minutes
Time from Chicago: about 4½ hours by air
Distance from station: 300 m
Sunnyvale, Calif., has blocked off the north end of Murphy Ave. to traffic, turning the entire block into a pedestrian zone lined with restaurants and a good-enough-for-the-suburbs brewery where you can have good-enough beers. Despite the amazing weather when I visited on Friday—it's hard to beat 23°C and sunny in November—I just couldn't get excited about the place.
I had a flight of 4 120-mL pours that left me feeling "eh." The Kölsch (5%) had a decent, malty flavor, a little sweet for my palate, with banana and apple notes. The Lazy Hazy IPA (7.2%) did not taste like a 7% beer, and also didn't taste like it had a lot of hops, but the banana, apricot, and honey notes were pleasant enough, though again too sweet for me. The YOLO Fruity IPA (6.2%) was actually less fruity than the hazy, though it had a good balance and was drinkable. Again, though, not a memorable beer. But the Otis Imperial Stout (9.2%) was my favorite of the four, with just enough bitterness to match the coffee and chocolate flavors.
Bottom line: Off the Rails has a convenient location right by the Caltrain station in a part of Silicon Valley that doesn't have a lot of Brews & Choos-eligible breweries. So, sure, why not? But I wouldn't make a special trip.
The Thai place next door, though, smelled amazing.
Beer garden? Street pedestrian zone and smaller back patio
Dogs OK? Outside only
Televisions? Unavoidable inside
Serves food? Full menu
Would hang out with a book? Maybe
Would hang out with friends? Maybe
Would go back? Maybe
Welcome to an extra stop on the Brews and Choos project.
Brewery: Southern Pacific Brewing, 620 Treat Ave., San Francisco
Train line: BART, 16th St/Mission
Time from Embarcadero: 7 minutes
Time from Chicago: about 4½ hours by air
Distance from station: 1 km
This small brewery with a huge taproom is hidden in an industrial section of the Mission District. It's a quick walk from the BART through the Pilsen of San Francisco down a side street and an alley. Talking with some of the people there, it gets busy after work and on weekends, with lots of office parties and football games on the huge projection screen opposite the bar. (Fortunately they keep all their other TVs in the lofted party space and not by the bar or on the patio.)
I tried three of their beers, none of which had a clever name or unconventional hop profile. They didn't have any of their American Pale Ale on draft, and they don't do flights. They do have 150 mL (5 oz) pours, so I started with that size hazy IPA, a lovely, well-balanced beer with orange, banana, and apricot flavors. (I went back for a full pint of this after the small pours.) Next, their West Coast IPA (5.8%, 55 IBU) had a big-hop, crisp flavor with a little astringency that I didn't like at first. I finished with their Stout (9%), a huge, chocolate, chicory, coffee brew that I liked a lot.
I wound up staying so I could finish the book I was reading, and watched several after-work parties come and go. I also had a Caesar salad, which was not bad. If I lived in the Mission, I'd probably go to this brewery a lot.
Beer garden? Yes
Dogs OK? Outside only
Televisions? Avoidable
Serves food? Full menu
Would hang out with a book? Yes
Would hang out with friends? Yes
Would go back? Yes
This morning, Winnemac Park, Chicago:
I'm still getting through everything I ignored for the past three days. Stay tuned for a couple of Brews & Choos reviews from San Francisco, and on Tuesday, some thoughts on the election.
I'm visiting family in the Bay Area today, staying in California for about 38 hours. I leave tomorrow morning early, so I'm back at the charming Dylan Hotel in Millbrae, right by the BART and CalTrain. If you held a gun to my head (or put $10 million in my bank account) and forced me to move to Silicon Valley, I might choose here. It's 40 minutes to my family in San Jose and 25 minutes to downtown San Francisco, for starters. And the Brews & Choos Project works just as well around the Bay as it does in Chicago—with another SF brewery review coming Sunday or Monday.
And I will actually spend time in both places today, taking the just-launched all-electric CalTrain between them.
Tomorrow my flight leaves so early I will have to take a cab to the airport, because the BART doesn't start running until after my plane boards. But as the airport is only 3 km away, I expect that won't cause any problems.
Finally, I'm still cogitating about the election, and getting closer to some coherent thoughts. Harris ran a great campaign with a losing message; we need to think about that. We also need to prepare for at least two years of kakistocracy, perhaps longer. But I'll write more about that when I get back to Chicago.
Today, though, it'll be 22°C and sunny from the Embarcadero to the garlic fields of Gilroy. No time to stay inside a hotel room and blog.
I filled out my ballot yesterday and will deliver it to one of Chicago's early-voting drop-offs today or Monday. Other than a couple of "no" votes for judicial retention (a bizarre ritual we go through in Illinois), I voted pretty much as you would expect. I even voted for a couple of Republicans! (Just not for any office that could cause damage to the city or country.)
Meanwhile, the world continues to turn:
- Matt Yglesias makes "a positive case for Kamala Harris:" "[A]fter eight tumultuous years, Harris is the right person for the job, the candidate who’ll turn the temperature down in American politics and let everyone get back to living their lives. ... [I]f you’re a normal person with some mixed feelings about the parties, I think you will be dramatically happier with the results that come from President Harris negotiating with congressional Republicans over exactly which tax breaks should be extended rather than a re-empowered Trump backed by a 6-3 Supreme Court and supportive majorities in Congress."
- Eugene Robinson excoriates CNN (and by implication a good chunk of the MSM) for covering the XPOTUS as if he were a normal political candidate and not, you know, an election and a Reichstag fire from crippling the modern world: "Oops, there I go again, dwelling on the existential peril we face. Instead, let’s parse every detail of every position Harris takes today against every detail of every position she took five years ago. And then let’s wonder why she hasn’t already put this election away."
- Ezra Klein spends 45 minutes explaining that what's wrong with the XPOTUS isn't just the obvious, but the fact that no one around him is guarding us from his delusional disinhibitions: "What we saw on that stage in Pennsylvania, as Trump D.J.’d, was not Donald Trump frozen, paralyzed, uncertain. It was the people around him frozen, paralyzed, uncertain. He knew exactly where he was. He was doing exactly what he wanted to do. But there was no one there, or no one left, who could stop him."
- James Fallows, counting down to November 5th, calls out civic bravery: "There are more of us than there are of them."
- Fareed Zakaria warns that the Democratic Party hasn't grokked the political realignment going on in the United States right now: "The great divide in America today is not economic but social, and its primary marker is college education. The other strong predictors of a person’s voting behavior are gender, geography and religion. So the new party bases in America are an educated, urban, secular and female left and a less-educated, rural, religious and male right."
- Pamela Paul points out the inherent nihilism of "settler colonialism" ideology as it applies to the growing anti-Israel movement in left-wing academia: "Activists and institutions can voice ever louder and longer land acknowledgments, but no one is seriously proposing returning the United States to Native Americans. Similarly, if “From the river to the sea” is taken literally, where does that leave Israeli Jews, many of whom were exiled not only from Europe and Russia, but also from surrounding Muslim states?"
- Hitachi has won a $212m contract to—wait for it—remove 5.25-inch floppy disks from the San Francisco MUNI light-rail network.
- American Airlines has rolled out a tool that will make an annoying sound if a gate louse attempts to board before his group number is called. Good.
- SMU writing professor Jonathan Malesic harrumphs that college kids don't read books anymore.
Speaking of books, The Economist just recommended yet another book to put on my sagging "to be read" bookshelves (plural). Nicholas Cornwell (writing as Nick Harkaway), the son of David Cornwell (aka John Le Carré), has written a new George Smiley novel set in 1963. I've read all the Smiley novels, and this one seems like a must-read as well: "Karla’s Choice could have been a crude pastiche and a dull drama. Instead, it is an accomplished homage and a captivating thriller. It may be a standalone story, but with luck Mr Harkaway will continue playing the imitation game." Excellent.
"It is difficult to get a man to understand a thing when his salary depends on his not understanding it."—Upton Sinclair.
We lead our news roundup today with the biggest Chicago transit story of the year, with the major players acting just as Sinclair would predict:
Finally, Mike Post is sad that most television shows no longer have theme songs. So am I. But now I have the Quincy ME theme song in my head...
I can scarcely believe I took these 10 days ago, on Friday the 20th. I already posted about my walk from Borough Market back to King's X; this is where I started:
You can get a lovely snack there for just a few quid. In my case, a container of fresh olives, some bread, and some cheese set me back about £6. Next time, I'll try something from Mei Mei.
Later, I scored one of the rare pork baps at Southampton Arms. Someone else really wanted a bite, too:
Sorry, little guy, I can't give you any of this—oh darn I just dropped a bit of pork on the ground. (Lucky dog.)
Finally, this screen shot shows why I love Europe so much. (It's in French because I switched my phone's language settings to help practice while I was preparing for the trip.) The blue dot in the center-left shows where my train was at 20:06 France time (18:06 UTC) on Saturday the 21st. The stuff in the upper-right corner shows my phone's GPS utility. If you look at the left side of that box, you can see "Vitesse 303;" i.e., a speed of 303 km/h, or 190 mph. And that isn't even the train's top normal operating speed.
If we elect people in this country who actually care about climate change, we could have trains like that here, too. But given the proportion of the electorate who plan to vote for the convicted-felon rapist demented geriatric XPOTUS in five weeks, I am not optimistic.
Welcome to a special stop on the Brews and Choos project.
Brewery: Two Tribes Brewing, Tileyard Road, London N7
Train line: Piccadilly Line, Caledonan Road
Time from Chicago: 8 hours
Distance from station: 900 m (about 1.5 km from King's Cross)
I don't know why I haven't made an official B&C stop in London before now. The UK has just gotten going with its own microbrewing industry, as evidenced by the continued success of pubs like the Southampton Arms. I've had lots of English micros, some from London. So I'm happy to report that visiting the brewery closest to my (new) hotel last Thursday turned out great.
They had two bartenders working an enormous crowd so I didn't bother them by ordering a flight. Instead I had a pint of the Campfire Hazy (5.2%, very tasty) and a pint of the Dream Pale (4.4%, also very tasty). And, because they have lots of communal seating, I talked to a pair of biology post-docs who were looking for jobs. I also read a good hunk of my book, enjoyed the low-intensity music, and contemplated how rarely London gets the kind of weather they had at that moment.
They also had tacos, in their food pop-up space. I had the chorizo. For Europe, they were really good tacos, despite the lack of taco sauce. (It's the UK.)
London has about a dozen other B&C-eligible breweries, so I might not get back to Two Tribes soon. But if you're anywhere near King's X, check it out.
Beer garden?Yes
Dogs OK? Yes
Televisions? No
Serves food? Pop-up; check the website. BYOF OK
Would hang out with a book? Yes
Would hang out with friends? Yes
Would go back? Yes
It took me a little bit this morning to get back into things, but once I figured out what my notes meant I managed to finish two whole features today. And I still had time to check these out:
That's it. Just three stories. I really didn't have time to read much else. But I did have time to give Cassie some pats, which I will resume doing in just a few minutes.
Welcome to stop #116 on the Brews and Choos project.
Brewery: Crust Brewing, 5500 Park Pl., Rosemont
Train line: CTA Blue Line, Rosemont
Time from Chicago: 45 minutes
Distance from station: 1.4 km (shuttle bus from El station—don't even try to walk it)
Have you ever heard Monty Python's Contractual Obligation Album? It's exactly what it says on the tin. And it's not their best work. (I mean, it's got a few laughs, especially on the first cut, but the boys made it clear they were flipping two fingers to their record company with that one.)
This is my Contractual Obligation Brews & Choos stop.
You see, taking the (soon to be discontinued! Oh no!) 8:20 am flight to London, with its requisite check-in time of 6:20 am, led me to getting a hotel room near O'Hare. Since Crust Brewing is just steps from the Aloft, the trip lent itself to stopping there. I didn't have high hopes going in; I didn't have high regards going out.
Wow! TVs everywhere and lots of stone surfaces to make them all really loud! Exactly my kind of place. At least they let you take the beer outside, to the Parkway Bank Entertainment District in family-owned Rosemont. I mean, who could pass up this view of I-294 when sipping on a beer?
I had a perfectly-serviceable but otherwise unremarkable hazy IPA whose value didn't even approach the $13 with tax and tip that I paid for it.
If you find yourself trapped at a convention or something out in Rosemont and you need to entertain a very junior or very suburban team who don't want anything challenging but do want to say they went to a "craft brewery," Crust will work just fine. If you find yourself at a convention or something in Rosemont but you can get away for three hours, go to Revolution, Piece, or Bungalow instead.
Beer garden? Only technically
Dogs OK? No
Televisions? Yes, unavoidable
Serves food? Full but boring menu
Would hang out with a book? No
Would hang out with friends? Not if I wanted to keep them
Would go back? No