From The Atlantic Cities blog:
Over the past decade, 1,300 London pubs have emptied their cellars and wiped down their tables for the last time. It's not just obscure, unloved bars that are dying. This winter, two well-known historic pubs, both open for over a century apiece, will likely be turned into private housing. One is the Old White Bear, a red-brick building hidden away in village-like Hampstead, a former spa town swallowed up by Victorian London. The other, just down the hill, is The Star, an inn dating back to the 1820s with a wood-lined interior (featured in this 1980s pop video) that makes drinking there feel rather like sitting inside a whiskey-soaked violin.
Under the British system, the pub "landlord" (in British pub terminology, this actually means a manager that rents a premises, rather than an owner) must buy their booze from the company they rent the pub from. With no competition, the prices they pay are generally inflated, meaning that even if landlords trim their profit margins, beer still comes out pricier than it otherwise needs to be. While pub companies turn a profit, individual landlords are pushed to the wall. The pub companies then sell off under-performing premises, even though pubs wouldn't actually be unsustainable if landlords got a better deal.
There's a silver lining, and not just from pubs like Southampton Arms: The City of London has taken steps to preserve some landmark pubs.
Yesterday's forecast really didn't go far enough. We weren't expecting -16°C until tomorrow night, but we got -21°C early this morning:
The temperature dipped below zero overnight at O'Hare International Airport, the earliest that has happened here since 1995. The cold will hold through the week, bringing a burst of snow in time for the morning rush Wednesday.
The temperature fell to one degree below zero around 12:55 a.m., according to the National Weather Service. That's the earliest subzero readings here since a low of minus 4 on Dec. 9, 1995.
It could warm up Thursday or Friday, but not before we get another 50-100 mm of snow tomorrow morning, smack in the middle of rush hour.
Parker and I are working from home today so I haven't had to spend much time outside. That, and my body has finally decided it's had enough of me, which led to an uncomfortable early morning. (I'll spare the details.)
Yes, that's why you should buy this book:
This is right up there with the (in)famous marketing of the same play in 1968, when movie posters proclaimed it "Franco Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet."
I'm back in Chicago, trying to determine what day it is (Wednesday, I think). Tuesday was very long—39 hours for me, if you go by the book—but the only way it makes sense to me is to think of it as two separate days. For instance, I think I started trying to get some sleep somewhere just east of Japan somewhere around 9pm local time, which would be 30 hours ago. Then I woke up somewhere just east of Sacramento about 24 hours ago. The evening and the morning of the first day, sort of.
All right, so I had two Tuesdays. On the first Tuesday of this week, I walked around Neodaemun Market, then back up to Cheonggyecheon, where, a propos of nothing, this happened:
There might have been some reason for it but no one I asked could tell me. OK, then.
Also a propos of nothing, this was my $6.80 lunch on Monday:
I tried all of it, except the pink liquid that smelled evil, and I've decided I'm not a big fan of kimchi.
I should get gradually more coherent as the week goes on.
Photos from this afternoon. First, a traditional house (Hanok) in the Bukchon district:
And a traditional set of steamed dumplings not far away:
And, finally, a traditional faux-Irish bar in Itaewon, the expatriate district:
Tonight, I am in search of galbi, and then I hope to stay awake until 10pm. Tomorrow, Panmunjom.
Wow, this weekend was busier than I anticipated.
You know what's coming. Links!
Only a few more hours before I leave for the weekend. Time to jam on the billables...
Tomorrow afternoon is the Day of the Doctor already, and then in a little more than four days I'm off to faraway lands. Meanwhile, I'm watching a performance test that we'll repeat on Monday after we release a software upgrade.
So while riveted to this Live Meeting session, I am pointedly not reading these articles:
Perhaps more to the point, I'm not finishing up the release that will obviate the very performance test I'm watching right now. That is another story.
I had enough time during today's 8-hour meeting to queue up some articles to read later. Here they are:
As for today's meeting, this.
Parker got about 3 hours of walks this weekend because of weather and apartment showings. And I had about 6 hours of work to do for my real job. And I had lunch with people way the hell across town for Día de la Papusa. So I completely forgot to post anything.
I've also added Evanston back into the mix for my apartment search. Essentially, it suits my personality pretty well (aging Gen-X quasi-intellectual progressive), and you can get more apartment for less money than in any comparable neighborhood in Chicago. On the other hand, association dues and property taxes in Evanston are much higher than in the city, so you wind up spending the same amount of money overall. On the third hand, it's simultaneously farther from downtown Chicago and a quicker commute, thanks to Metra. Plus, as long-time readers know, I've lived there off and on for my entire life. So it's not what one might call a radical move.
At some point I'll be less busy than I've been the past week.
Completely swamped today by a production error on an application I hardly ever work on. The problem was around something I'd written, but not caused by anything I wrote; still, it fell to me to fix the problem, which caused me to fall behind in everything else.
I have a bunch of Chrome tabs open with things I probably can't get to today:
That is all for now.