The Daily Parker

Our lead story today concerns empty suit and Chicago Transit Authority president Dorval Carter, who just can't seem to bother himself with the actual CTA:

From the end of May 2023 to spring 2024, as CTA riders had to cope with frequent delays and filthy conditions, Carter spent nearly 100 days out of town at conferences, some overseas, his schedule shows.

Most of Carter’s trips between June 2023 and May 2024 were for events related to the American Public Transportation Association, a nonprofit advocacy group he chaired in 2022 and 2023. Carter spent a week in Pittsburgh and another in Orlando, six days in Puerto Rico and five days in Washington, D.C. He also took trips to Spain, New Zealand and Australia.

In total, Carter was out of town for 97 of the 345 days Block Club reviewed, according to his schedule. That means he spent 28 percent of that period outside of Chicago.

Block Club previously reported that Carter used his CTA-issued card for rides just 24 times between 2021 and 2022. CTA records show the number of times Carter swiped his work pass increased to 58 in 2023, according to a July op-ed piece in the Tribune.

Spain, I should note, has possibly the best train network in the world outside Japan, so maybe he learned something there? But as is typical with municipal barnacles, grifting along in high-profile city jobs, his office won't say.

In other news:

• The for-profit city of Próspera, Honduras, founded by crypto bros, has exhausted the patience of the Honduran government.
• Speaking of crypto bros, Julia Ioffe points to Pavel Durov, who doesn't look like the victim he claims to be.
• Could the kind of coalition that slowed dam construction in the 1980s stop excessive highway expansion in the 2020s?
• Foliage has already started to turn in parts of the Rockies and Adirondacks, and will peak in Chicago about six weeks from now.
• Crain's explains how Chicago-based fast-casual restaurant chain Roti wound up in Chapter 11.
• Why do undergraduate economics courses skip over the field of behavioral economics, other than because it upends many of their models about how people make decisions?

Finally, Pamela Paul imagines how the RFK Jr campaign looks from inside his head—specifically, to the worm encysted in his brain.

I started my day with overlapping meetings, a visit from the housekeeping service, more meetings, a visit from an electrician, and just now discovered that a "new" bug report actually relates a bug we introduced on June 20th last year, but only now got reported. Oh, also: it's 25°C and sunny.

At least it's Friday.

And I guess I can read some of these tomorrow morning:

• Tara Palmeri examines the Beltway reactions to the convicted-felon XPOTUS's 34-count felony conviction. (But Josh Marshall says of this post: "Her dispatch on Trump’s conviction is just drenched in the contempt in which she holds all Democrats.")
• Metra had a public meeting to discuss their Systemwide Network Plan, which outlines a shift from a commuter model to a regional transportation model.
• Related to that, a group of Chicago alders want the state to change direction on the planned Lake Shore Drive redesign to focus on buses rather than cars.
• Japan will soon introduce new Yen notes that may break millions of vending machines across the country.
• SOM's lead architect explains the O'Hare Terminal 2 redesign.
• Michelle Singletary answers your questions about whether tipping has gone too far.

Finally, the Chicago White Sox set a new team record yesterday: 14 losses in a row. They play the Red Sox tonight at home; can they make it 15 straight losses?

I just popped out for lunch. It's 17°C in the Loop with lots of sun, the kind of day when I wonder why I went back to the office. Summer begins Saturday. Ah, to be French and take an entire month off...

This time of year has other features, many of which popped up in my various RSS feeds this morning:

• For the first time in his life, the XPOTUS finds himself waiting for a jury to decide whether he's a felon. In closing arguments yesterday, his attorney nearly got himself sanctioned on the spot for a wildly inappropriate statement.
• David Masciotra reminds us that Ted Kennedy warned us about Justice Samuel Alito (R) back at the latter's confirmation hearings in 2006.
• Residents of my neighborhood have reported at least one unusually aggressive coyote, near Ravenswood Ave. and Irving Park Rd. Chicago Animal Care & Control suspect a nearby den with pups that the adult is guarding.
• The Chicago Tribune has a map of its twentysomething reporter's favorite patios in Chicago. Neither coyotes nor cougars will likely bother you at these spots.
• It turns out, climatologists really don't know enough about clouds.
• Whisky Advocate explains why Scotch distilleries have pagodas (more properly "Doig Ventilators") over their malting rooms, and how this makes my favorite Islay malts taste so good.
• Years after everyone thought brick-and-mortar bookstores had gone extinct, Barnes & Noble has opened a new one at Clark and Diversey, with others opening in Wicker Park and Northbrook soon.

And finally, Block Club Chicago sent a reporter to the Duke of Perth yesterday to surveille the packing. Other than giving GM Mike Miller a completely new last name, he generally got the story right, and even included some photos guaranteed to make anyone who loved the place hold back a tear.

I first went to the Duke of Perth in June 1993, about four years after it opened.

Today will be the pub's last day at their 35-year-old location on Clark St., after the property owner* doubled the rent. A bunch of us regulars and bartenders from the old days got together yesterday for one last whisky:

The place really hasn't changed much since 1989, which is how it maintained its charm. That, and the patio, where I had more than a few first dates:

When I lived in the neighborhood, I did so much freelance work at Table 5 that I referred to it as my remote office:

Sadly, I never ponied up to have any of these three whiskies before they were gone:

Three of us popped over to the new location, still under construction at 2834 N. Broadway, about two blocks away. Broadway has a lot more foot traffic than Clark, so the Duke's owners expect more people will walk in out of the cold. That said, after seeing the new space, I have no idea where they'd put the fireplace. And the new space will never get direct sunlight because the building across the street shades its only window. They can have five or six tables on the sidewalk, but that's not a beautiful, shaded walled garden.

Still, Colin has pulled off miracles before, saving neighborhood gem La Crèperie from closing in 2013. He doesn't do anything rash, so I have to guess he's had his eye on the new space since the previous restaurant closed in October. But it's still a sad day, losing one of my favorite pubs in the world.

*This landlord has kept storefronts vacant on Clark for so long that he inspired new legislation a couple of years back.

We have a truly delightful mix of light rain and snow flurries right now that convinced me to shorten Cassie's lunchtime walk from 30 minutes to 15 minutes to just 9 minutes each time I came to a street corner. I don't even think I'll make 10,000 steps today, because neither of us really wants to go outside in this crap.

I'm also working on a feature improvement that requires fixing some code I've never liked, which I haven't ever fixed because it's very tricky. I know why I made those choices, but they were always the lesser of two evils.

Anyway, elsewhere in the world:

• Jonathan Pie rants about Scotland's new hate-crime law that has everyone from civil liberties groups to JK Rowling up in arms.
• Chicago mayor Brandon Johnson (D) signed off on four office-to-residence projects on LaSalle Street in the Loop. (It's the picturesque street featured in one of The Dark Knight's best stunts.)
• Four Chicago restaurants made the James Beard Awards finals. (I've only been to one of them, sadly.)
• Related to that (if you think about it), Chicago will see its first sanctioned Chicago River swim in a century on September 22nd, over 50 years after the Clean Water Act took effect.
• Vitalii Kovalev, executive chef at several haute cuisine restaurants in New York and Florida turned out to be a Russian spy, who later came down with Havana Syndrome.

Finally, the cancellation of the UK's HS-2 project north of Birmingham has left more than 50 homes empty for two years. Can't think why the affected constituencies have flipped from Tory to Labour, can you?

Welcome to stop #99 on the Brews and Choos project.

Brewery: Forbidden Root, 1746 W. Chicago Ave., Chicago
Train line: CTA Blue Line, Chicago
Time from Chicago: 8 minutes
Distance from station: 1.1 km

After visiting three breweries on Saturday and having less than a full pint of beer at each, by 5pm we had worked up an appetite for food and for more than a couple sips of beer. So we walked the whole 800 meters from On Tour to Forbidden Root's first restaurant and brewery. (They also own Cultivate, in the Ravenswood Beer Corridor near Inner Drive Technology World HQ.)

Even before the beers, we ordered some beer cheese, which really hit the spot. I don't mean Merkt's out of the plastic container; this is hand-made whipped aged cheddar with a hint of beer and a spicy maple drizzle. On tasting that we also ordered some burrata, with pesto, tomato jam, parmesan chips, and Focaccia.

And then we tried some beers, still keeping our heads clear by sharing 150 mL pours, which worked all the way up until the last one.

The Halfway to Crazy West Coast IPA (6.2%) was halfway to piney, with some fruit, note and a clean, bitter finish that I enjoyed. The Snoochie Boochies double IPA (8%) really hop-slammed me; I noted its "strong, complex, interesting, fruity" flavors but also jotted down "caution required."

But then we tried the Call Your Mom Bourbon barrel-aged Imperial stout (12.9%). I wrote: "mmmmmmm. Chocolate, toffee, vanilla, all the good things. Yum!" And half an hour later, in the Lyft home, I just wanted to go to sleep. But I also would love to try that beer again, and I regret not taking a bottle home.

Finishing the day at Forbidden Root was exactly the correct choice.

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

Frustrated with point-of-sale systems suggesting you tip the self-checkout machine 25%? You're not alone:

[T]raditional tipping patterns are being disrupted in unpredictable ways, raising workers’ expectations and making consumers grumpy. The feeling even has a name: “tipping fatigue.” A June survey by the financial services company Bankrate found that 66 percent of adults held a negative view of tipping. Forty-one percent said businesses should just pay workers better, and 32 percent said they don’t like being presented with those Goldilocks-like tablet screens suggesting three possible tips. Thirty percent said tipping culture was out of control, but only half as many (16 percent) said they’d be willing to pay higher prices to make tipping go away.

[N]either Amy Vanderbilt (1908–1974) nor Letitia Baldridge (1926–2012) ever knew today’s world, where you’re invited to tip at a retail checkout counter where the only service is to ring up a charge and perhaps bag a few items, or at a self-checkout machine where no service is provided at all. Tipping is in effect a new form of “junk fee,” with the only difference that paying or not paying is left to the customer’s tortured conscience. Even when you’re promised the proceeds will go to employees, the boss is clearly shifting some labor costs onto the customer, which is infuriating.

In D.C., many restaurants are introducing a 20 percent service charge, the equivalent of the French “servis compris”; European restaurateurs figured out long before their American counterparts that tipping culture is retrograde. But it’s still advisable to check with your waiter to make sure the money goes to staff and isn’t offsetting previous wages or benefits; D.C. law requires that restaurants disclose how such fees are spent, but there have been abuses.If the financial arrangement isn’t clear, then my own etiquette guide says you’re still stuck paying a 20 percent tip.

You still don't have to tip the self-checkout machine, though. It gets paid enough.

I actually had a lot to do today at my real job, so I pushed these stories to later:

• Sure, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) is a crazy Christianist who has fantasies about Israel, but not exactly the fantasies you'd expect from his kind.
• Speaking of Christianist loonies, Josh Marshall doesn't think they've learned anything at all from yesterday's blowout in Ohio.
• Julia Ioffe takes a look at the "horror in the Holy Land" while Eric Levitz examines the fraught language around the war.
• Molly White explains her op-ed in today's Times about the death-spiral of cryptocurrency failures.
• Ravinia Festival has sued Ravinia Brewing Co. over alleged trademark violations, as the neighborhood in Highland Park containing the brewery got its name originally from the music park.
• Michelin announced its recommendations for Chicago restaurants last night, awarding single stars to three new restaurants and a third star to Smyth.
• Northwest Texas had a magnitude 5.2 earthquake yesterday, which the USGS did not say was linked to aquifer overuse or fracking, both of which occur in the area.

Finally, The Economist calls out "six books you didn't know were propaganda," including Doctor Zhivago and One Hundred Years of Solitude.

I'm still thinking about propaganda in the Gaza war, but I'm not done thinking yet. Or, at least, not at a stopping point where a Daily Parker post would make sense. That said, Julia Ioffe sent this in the introduction to her semi-weekly column; unfortunately I can't link to it:

The absolutely poisonous discourse around this war, though, has taken all of that to a whole other level. The rage, the screaming, and the disinformation, ahistoricity, the anti-Semitism and Islamophobia, the propaganda—all of it has felt overwhelming at times. The way that reasonable people I otherwise respect have shown themselves to be hard-hearted zealots—clinging to what they want to believe, starting not with the facts but rather their ideology and working backwards from there—has led me to stop talking to people on both sides of the divide. The facts of what’s happening in Israel and Gaza are hard enough to absorb as it is.

As usual, Ioffe wrote what I was thinking. Again, I'll have more, but that's a very good take.

• The column Ioffe introduced in that email, an interview with international lawyer David Scheffer, is a must-read.
• A jury found the National Association of Realtors liable for restraint of trade and anti-competitive practices, awarding the plaintiffs $1.87 billion in damages. (Where's my refund from my last house purchase?)
• Strong Towns points out that contrary to the wishes of many on the left, rent control works as an anti-displacement policy, but not as an affordability policy.
• Chicago Tribune sports writer Paul Sullivan laments that this year's World Series, between the 5th and 6th seeds, for which three 100-win teams lost in the playoffs, has the smallest audience of any World Series in television history. Can't think why.
• It turns out, AI image generation can only be as good as the images it learns on, which means AIs have even more bias than humans do.
• Somehow I wrote a 20-page paper for 11th grade on Mark Twain and never read the account of him meeting Winston Churchill in 1900.

Finally, Michelin just announced its Bib Gourmand list for Chicago, with its US stars all coming out next Tuesday. The Bib list has five new restaurants that I must now visit. We'll see who gets new stars in a few days.

A rainy cold front passed over Inner Drive Technology WHQ just after noon, taking us from 15°C down to just above 10°C in two hours. The sun has come back out but we won't get a lot warmer until next week.

I've had a lot of coding today, and I have a rehearsal in about two hours, so this list of things to read will have to do:

• Mother Jones's Russ Choma thinks the XPOTUS doesn't really want to win his fraud trial.
• Robert Wright interviewed Brown University professor Lyle Goldstein, late of the US Naval War College, about what lessons Ukraine holds for Taiwan.
• Michael Tomasky salivates over the prospect of Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) becoming Speaker of the House, which Josh Marshall understands.
• The Post details a gruesome Tesla crash the NTSB partially blamed on "over-reliance on automation."
• The Chicago City Council approved a plan to end the sub-minimum wage for tipped workers in Chicago.
• At least 960 migrating birds smacked into the side of Chicago's lakefront convention center yesterday, a new record.
• Poet Jesse Nathan sighs over the loss of poetry in Baseball.

Finally, for the first time in 346 days, the Chicago Bears won a football game. Amazing.