The Daily Parker

Politics, Weather, Photography, and the Dog

First snowfall of the season

We went just over 238 days and 20 hours between freezing temperatures at Inner Drive Technology WHQ, from March 27th until the wee hours of this morning. That's quite a long time for Chicago. And in fact, our snowfall this morning was the latest first snow since 2015.

Here's my roof deck after about an hour of snow, around 9:40 am:

And just three hours later, when taking Cassie around the block, with the snow already deeper than 80 mm:

This vignette interested me because of all the maple leaves. I posted a photo of a gingko tree in the local park last weekend. Lots of the area's gingko and maple trees have held onto their leaves, in some cases without even pulling in all the chlorophyll yet. So here we are just an hour into a pretty mild snow event with the temperature hovering just around freezing, and this particular maple decided to peace out for the winter.

I think the trees were just waiting for a freeze, even one that only got down to -0.3°C and lasted less than two hours. I expect we'll see the maples and gingkoes shake the rest of their foliage off in the next day or so. And yet, the forecast has us above freezing consistently from now until Monday evening, even hitting 11°C on Sunday.

Early winter weather is always weird in Chicago. This year is no different.

The one good thing about a cold front in November

We're having a bit of odd weather in Chicago today. The temperature rose overnight, fell after sunrise, and has gone back up almost to where it was right before sunrise. The dewpoint, however, has stayed the same. That, plus the breezy winds out of the southwest, has pushed the clouds out over the lake:

This won't last. A bomb cyclone over the Pacific Northwest will push some nasty "wintry mix" towards us by Thursday. Our sunny 15°C weather will give way to this:

Wednesday Night
A chance of rain before 8pm, then a chance of rain and snow between 8pm and 10pm, then a chance of snow after 10pm. Mostly cloudy, with a low around 1. West wind 20 to 25 km/h, with gusts as high as 40 km/h. Chance of precipitation is 40%.

Thursday
Rain and snow, becoming all rain after 3pm. High near 6. Breezy, with a west northwest wind 25 to 30 km/h increasing to 30 to 35 km/h in the afternoon. Winds could gust as high as 60 km/h. Chance of precipitation is 80%.

November approaches. Today, though? We'll take October weather.

A brewery opens when another one closes

The Brews & Choos Project had a net shift of zero in the last two weeks. I am pretty bummed about the loss, but intrigued by the gain.

The loss: Long-time Evanston microbrewery Temperance closed up shop on October 27th. I am sad:

Evanston didn’t have a brewery before Temperance Beer Co. arrived at the end of 2013. The suburb’s first brewery was a historic moment, and the taproom quickly became one of the city’s finest with hits like Might Meets Right and Gatecrasher IPA. Temperance represented the rising popularity of the craft beer movement when home brewers crowded taprooms and stood in long lines for the latest release.

But times have changed. On Tuesday afternoon, Temperance founder Josh Gilbert announced the brewery would close on Sunday, October 27. All brewery tours had been canceled with refunds on their way. In a newsletter blast and Instagram post, Gilbert calls the craft beer world “barely recognizable” compared to a decade ago. “It’s difficult to even imagine that kind of excitement for a new brewery launch these days,” he writes.

The gain: Suncatcher Brewing opened by the Milwaukee District Western Avenue station yesterday. I am glad:

After a two-year building renovation, finalizing city licensing and hiring staff, Suncatcher Brewing is now open at 2849 W. Chicago Ave., making it Humboldt Park’s only brewery and taproom after Ørkenoy closed earlier this year.

On the Suncatcher menu are six draft beers with 4-to-7 percent alcohol: a stout, a brown and blonde ale, an IPA, a Michigan pale ale, a fall bier — each matched with a song to complement their pairing. At least three other beers are coming soon.

In addition to focusing on lower alcohol content, the Suncatcher beers are also made with hops, barley and malts grown a few hours away in Michigan and Indiana.

“We’re trying to highlight local materials while keeping the alcohol level low,” Matt Gallagher said.

The new brewery is on the map. I'm already planning a Brews & Choos dip into Pilsen once the choral calendar lightens up in December. Suncatcher would fit in with a visit to Fulton Market (Guinness, Cruz Blanca) and the new Goose Island location at the Salt Shed.

Hilarity ensues

Chicago-based humor magazine The Onion has won the bankruptcy auction to acquire Alex Jones's InfoWars Media:

The Onion said that the bid was sanctioned by the families of the victims of the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, who in 2022 won a $1.4 billion defamation lawsuit against Mr. Jones and his company, Free Speech Systems.

The publication plans to reintroduce Infowars in January as a parody of itself, mocking “weird internet personalities” like Mr. Jones who traffic in misinformation and health supplements, Ben Collins, the chief executive of The Onion’s parent company, Global Tetrahedron, said in an interview.

While the alliance between Everytown and The Onion may seem like an odd fit, the two organizations share an interest in curbing gun violence, said John Feinblatt, president of Everytown. Mr. Feinblatt said that mission was underscored with depressing regularity in the aftermath of mass shootings, when The Onion goes viral with its oft-shared headline: “‘No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens.”

The Onion, of course, spun the purchase in its own way:

Founded in 1999 on the heels of the Satanic “panic” and growing steadily ever since, InfoWars has distinguished itself as an invaluable tool for brainwashing and controlling the masses. With a shrewd mix of delusional paranoia and dubious anti-aging nutrition hacks, they strive to make life both scarier and longer for everyone, a commendable goal. They are a true unicorn, capable of simultaneously inspiring public support for billionaires and stoking outrage at an inept federal state that can assassinate JFK but can’t even put a man on the Moon.

No price would be too high for such a cornucopia of malleable assets and minds. And yet, in a stroke of good fortune, a formidable special interest group has outwitted the hapless owner of InfoWars (a forgettable man with an already-forgotten name) and forced him to sell it at a steep bargain: less than one trillion dollars.

As for the vitamins and supplements, we are halting their sale immediately. Utilitarian logic dictates that if we can extend even one CEO’s life by 10 minutes, diluting these miracle elixirs for public consumption is an unethical waste. Instead, we plan to collect the entire stock of the InfoWars warehouses into a large vat and boil the contents down into a single candy bar–sized omnivitamin that one executive (I will not name names) may eat in order to increase his power and perhaps become immortal.

Alex Jones, according to my social media feed, vowed to keep broadcasting until a court ordered him to stop.

Well played, Onion. Well played.

Still mulling

I haven't yet got my head around a couple of thoughts I had concerning last Tuesday's debacle. I've come to a few conclusions, but I'm still mulling the implications, and also the structure of the Daily Parker post that I promised over the weekend. It might take a few more days to write.

Meanwhile:

Finally, the South Shore Line lost 40% of its rail cars to wheel damage over the past two weeks, and suffered 30-60 minute delays as a result, because of leaves on the tracks.

By the Bay, too busy to post

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.

Revolution closing on Milwaukee Ave

Revolution Brewpub, which opened its Logan Square brewpub in 2010 and featured in the (really bad) film Drinking Buddies, announced it will close on December 14th:

Almost 15 years ago, we threw open the doors of our Milwaukee Avenue brewpub and launched Revolution Brewing to the world. The brewpub is where the first Revolution beers were served and where we first brewed beers like Anti-Hero IPA which would change the shape of craft beer in Chicagoland. Today that chapter of our story starts to wind down as we announce that we are permanently closing the doors of the Logan Square brewpub, with our last day of service on December 14th.

You could count the number of other breweries in the city on one hand back in the day. Our experience definitely inspired others to take their shot and now there are close to a hundred different places brewing beer in the city.⁠

Our Kedzie Avenue production brewery and tap room opened just two years after the pub and that’s where our business thrives now and where we will remain fully operational and open to the public.

Sad news, but totally understandable. Since I started the Brews & Choos Project in February 2020, fully 24 breweries have closed, most of them because of the after-effects of the pandemic. I'm sad to lose Revolution on Milwaukee, but glad they'll stay open on Kedzie.