Re: We are all Slave now.
 

Translation: my kids didn't make the team at tryouts{sad face}

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

Nah, some of that stuff is precisely what we work for. The joy of sitting with a book in a nice nook with a good cup of tea, listening to your daughter creating something in the workshop, that's nice.

I'll confess, there is one thing I like about 'burbs that I don't have, which is a porch. I've always liked a good porch.

But getting down to 2000 shouldn't be too hard, even with a little room of one's own for each occupant.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

This just depends on the area. We have a local middle eastern place and a pho place, and when I get take out from each I'm always the only white guy in there. I'm usually the only one speaking english. Both rival any urban counterpart. Also, we (Chicagoland) have much better mexican food than the NYC area - simply because we have a lot more people of mexican descent. Spicy!

But again, you're right on Chinese. The best we can do is Doordash P.F. Changs, and that's usually just several orders of the chicken lettuce wraps.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

Ha! Haven't tried out yet, but that may be the case.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

Happy to talk specifics here, but not sure what places you have in mind. I lived in NW. There are certainly places to go in NW where you can get good food. I heart Two Amy's, for example. But Chinese food not so much -- there are better places in Rockville alone than in all of NW. It's not a close call.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

I never went to Rockville even when i lived there. How did you? To be fair, the best Vietnamese food back then was at the second Orange line stop after Ballston- Clarenton maybe? But I think the whole neighborhood got torched for office plazas.

Anyway DC and its suburbs are different as I said several posts ago.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

It's such a sad thing. The fact that almost every single white person, no matter how sheltered and closed-minded they are, changes their mind as to the individuals they actually meet and know and somehow views them as exceptions to the most ridiculous stereotypes as opposed to the norm, is really very depressing.

TM

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

When I moved there, we lived in short-term housing near the White Flint Metro while we were looking for a place to live. So places in Rockville were close. More importantly, my Bible for finding good places to eat was Tyler Cowen's ethnic dining guide (not then in this format). I was often up to go check out a place in the suburbs if he liked it, and he steered me to all sorts of good places I never would have found on my own. The best Korean fried chicken I've ever had was at a counter in the back of a Korean grocery out in the Virginia suburbs somewhere.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

Yep. Chris Shepherd is our local go-to guy to explain the crazy that is Houston food. I'm waiting patiently for whatever is taking Underbelly's place to open.

Viet-cajun crawfish is amazing. It started on the west side, but it's all over town now. There are a few places you can get it outside of Houston, but it's really a truly Houston food thing. I usually go to LA Crawfish on Richmond for it, but Houstonia put together a list that is probably accurate enough. Crawfish and Noodles is where it started.

My brother had a more traditional crawfish boil on Saturday, and the bugs he got were HUGE, so I'd say we have at least a month to six weeks left of the season. It started late because of a cold winter, but apparently most of the crawfish made it. If you're in town, lemme take you to eat. You can get it year round at LA Crawfish, but who wants frozen crawfish imported from China?

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

We all have these conversations. This is the first layer.

Try talking to them about the kids who can't afford to play for any travel teams that are awesome at soccer and how you can get them to play with your team if you all agreed to pay a bit more. The conversation will shift once they realize the advantage they inherently have by paying all that money. Everyone who has kids on a travel team complains about the money. But the reason they exist is to give them a leg up on the kids who can't be on a travel team.

We've discussed here before why the men's and women's national teams look the way they do here in the US. It's not because there are no people of color playing soccer. It's because the whole system is set up to feed talented, upper middle class athletes into college programs and elite travel squads. This is the only country in the world where soccer is a rich man's sport.

Shut up, fool! Where are the current generation's Mister Ts?

TM

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

But the things city people value are objectively better in every single way than the things suburban people value.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

The UD show paints NO as a place that refuses to change anything- they went to Vietnamese places where crawfish is made traditional cajun, no one wants to vary, supposedly. then they contrast the changes made in Houston. Underbelly guy was a big part of the show too.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

that is foreign to me, and I think really not the way to explore restaurants in a city where you will spend time. Walk along a street, walk in and try what looks good. i can't imagine handing off my experience to someone else's choices, though I suppose it explains the ability to say the entire city of DC has no decent Chinese food.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

No argument here. But you actually need a nearby neighborhood full of the people who will actually support such a business. That's not necessarily common for a whole lot of suburbs.

These are hard facts. It's improving here. We finally figured out what tacos actually are and places have been popping up. But the lines are too damn long at the few places we have still.

I used to complain about the 150 Chinese food places that delivered to us because it seems like you have to ask for your food super spicy to get it the way it should be (or go with an actual Chinese person and get the real menu that only they can read). Of course it also depends on which region in China the restaurant focuses on. But I soon swallowed my complaints after eating Chinese elsewhere. You people are deprived, even of the good Chinese dishes created for Americans.

But we got a Sichuan place near us recently that is just ridiculous. I shovel their dishes into my mouth while sweating from the spice levels. So damn good.

TM

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

I think the idea that kids are getting an advantage by playing on a more competitive team in a program is not quite right. The more competitive teams are better, and they have better coaching. But the kid who gets to play on that level and isn't starting is not necessarily improving as much as s/he would have playing all the time at the next level down. What I see at somewhat younger ages is parents who think their kids are the next Messi and keep pushing them higher, switching programs to do it if necessary. A little later, the kids switch on their own, usually because a friend in another program tells them how much better it is there.

You're right that it's so much easier for affluent kids to get into the system. For the program, the two costs are coaching and fields. (Especially fields. In my area, there is a huge shortage, and the club rents fields from the school districts, which cover their budget shortfalls by (essentially) making it harder for poor kids to play the sports they can't play in school.) Kids whose parents can pay for these things will find someone willing to take their money. Kids whose parents can't are less likely to find a spot.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

I found restaurants in a number of different ways, but many of the best came from his recommendations, many of them in places I never would have found otherwise. Walking is a great idea, but you're never going to walk up and down the Rockville Pike, so with that strategy you're going to miss some excellent places. Meanwhile, many very walkable neighborhoods (Georgetown, Penn Quarter, Chinatown) feature a lot of mediocre places. If it works for you, great.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

Who plays "all the time" on those teams?

My son played travel on a "coach with accent" team- meaning the high cost team with a coach that was supposed to be the answer since he played in Europe. He then switched to travel with the local community team, and his friend's dad as coach. I'm pretty sure our local team would have beaten the $$$ team. The $$$ didn't have kids sitting out. They all played the same- the dollars made sure of it. And that made the team suck. Little Johnny wants to be a ball hog and not even consider passing? Local team would have sat his ass. The $$$ team wouldn't risk losing the money.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

Walk/drive, but make you own choices. some book tells me where to eat? No thanks; i'm leading my life over here. but if someone else telling you what is good works for you, great.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

The top teams in our club are not giving equal playing time. Some kids are sitting a lot.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

The goat dumplings from Underbelly just came back on the menu at Hay Merchant, so not all is lost in the upheaval. (I live within walking distance of both.)

Houston food is so amazing because we have so many different cultures here and we steal the good stuff and repackage it with other stuff. If you can, find the Anthony Bourdain episode of Parts Unknown on Houston. (There's a bootleg of it here, but who knows how long it'll last. It aired either right before or right after the election, and really highlighted what happens when a whole bunch of people from all over live together.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

You don't want recommendations from other people? That's nuts. That's the best way to find new places. Some people's recommendations are good, and some are terrible, but you figure that out.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

Either I'm not conveying my point adequately or you are translating it into something you can push back against.

• There are a huge number of travel teams that cost money to join.
• These teams provide year-round instruction and even offer specialty coaching for position players, like goalies.
• Poor kids cannot afford to play on these teams, their parents can't afford to leave work to take them to the 3-5 times a week practices, and they can't afford the out-of-town tournaments.
• Kids who might have been amazing players had they had the same level and intensity of instruction play in parks with their parents or other kids in similar positions or, if they're lucky, on public school teams.
• Public school teams are being robbed of the players on travel teams because parents and kids see them as inferior and a source of instruction that will actually harm the elite levels of coaching their kids receive.
• Because of this, public school kids who aren't on travel teams are not seen by college recruiters who all go to the big time tournaments that travel teams must qualify for (and to qualify, you need to be certified at whatever level the tournament is featuring (EDP, NPL, ECNL, etc.)).
• The kids who are not on the absolute elite travel teams are still being recruited by Division II and III schools.

The fact that you think this is not really an advantage is ridiculous. Check the make-up of the women's national team. Hell, go take a look at any 10 colleges' women's soccer teams--any level, and report back to me what color the players are.

https://www.theguardian.com/football...world-football

TM

Did Mohammed move the mountain, or was that just PR?
 

Jesus Christ (uh, npi - honest) - you should totally teach the 13 year old CCD class at Our Lady of Perpetual Motion. That kind of thin could get the little bastards into the pews.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

I am hearing suggestions from RT right now, and also telling her about a TV show that will suggest my restaurant choices the next time I'm in Houston. Contrast having a book (or person) that is "my bible" for restaurant choices of all kinds, especially when I first moved to a new city. It's sad, but does help us assign weight to your statement about Chinese food across the entire city of DC.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

Sorry, agree with all of this. The term "travel team" means different things to different people. I thought you were making a point about kids whose parents push them to the higher level within the club, and the fact that it tends to be affluent parents who do that. What I was saying is that I don't think it necessarily helps a kid to be pushed to the higher-calibre team. It is absolutely true that the club soccer system is oriented to people who can pay the fees (which, as I said, basically cover coaching and fields -- and the coaches are not getting rich off their cut). There are some scholarships available for kids whose families don't have the money, but not a lot, and this $$$ tends to go to the kids who are standing out, which means that a lot of kids from non-wealthy families will fall out of the system early, before their potential is clear. If you want to play in college, at least in this area, you don't play high school soccer. You need to play in a club. The more competitive teams won't let you play on your high-school team. My sons play both, but they're playing for the HS because they want to be on a HS team, not because it will help them play at a higher level.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

I hope for your sake they are more like this:

https://s3-media2.fl.yelpcdn.com/bph...hRamrj-g/o.jpg

than

this:
https://s3-media1.fl.yelpcdn.com/bph...pshKJVow/o.jpg


We have THREE now in the neighborhood. Before, we had to go to Chinatown. I think the menus are slightly different in our part of town than Chinatown, but I'm not complaining.

We still have to go to Chinatown for soup dumplings, though.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

See, this is better trolling. I lived and worked in DC. I went to a lot of places, some of which I found through Cowen. His recommendations have been excellent, and I have found a lot of good places through him. I have been to many other places, some of which were good and some of which weren't. I worked in Penn Quarter and got around a bit, including to Chinatown, which offered nothing good Chinese (though I liked Matchbox). If you think there is a good Chinese place in DC, name it. If you are going to pass up the Chinese places on the Rockville Pike like Sichuan Pavilion and Joe's Noodle House (sp?) because I originally found them through Cowen, your loss. Incidentally, you can drive past those places and never see them. Joe's is in a strip mall on the right side as you head away from District, with its storefront facing the wrong way. The only way you'd see it is by driving past it and look back for it. Sichuan Pavilion is in the back of a mall, not visible from the street.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

Agree completely.

My daughter left a team that wanted her to give up all other sports and the HS team. For the newest level of elite program, they wanted her at practice 5 times a week for two hours. It's completely ridiculous, even at the not so crazy clubs. If you're kid hasn't already been identified as an automatic, no brainer selection to the junior National Team (and if she were, you'd know it), committing to something like this is pure insanity. If you're kid is going to get a scholarship to an elite D I team, I can see why you may push for this. But what's more likely is that you are delusional and/or your kid will burn the fuck out before it happens.

Parents are absolutely nuts. Two of the girls on her AAU team have personal shooting coaches. Everyone is crazy.

TM

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

I still miss the city, and I might move back when the kids are done with school. That's the reason why we moved out here (and why most people leave the city).

I thought I'd hate the 'burbs. But I don't. It can be boring at times, but sometimes (not always), I just want to throw a few logs on the fire pit and sit in my back yard (and eventually run into the house because of some asshole skunk..or mosquitos!). I love the hustle and/or bustle of the city (and I especially love spring days in the city when the little skirts start to come out), but peace and quiet has its place too.

That being said, it's expensive to live in NYC (duh). Really expensive. I couldn't afford a power washer if I lived there.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

I have a ton of experience with travel soccer and basketball, both boys and girls.

There are four types of travel teams I've seen.

1. Lily white. Expensive to join.

2. Lily white except for two players who are so good that they carry the rest of the team to a higher level. The two minority players are friends of the other players, and the players know that their team really needs the talent. These positions are often subsidized.

3. Teams formed by military families. Taste the rainbow. In my neighborhood, these kids are from Fort Belvoir.

4. Meritocracy without financial considerations. If you're better than somebody we have, you're in, and we'll find a way to get you a uniform, a ride home from practice, a place to stay four to a room on road trips, and whatever else you need. No player was ever turned away from any of the teams I was associated with for lack of funds. At one point my son played on a team which...because of the Jewish guy from Australia... had players from every occupied continent.

To your point, most teams fall into categories 1 and 2.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

I think it's Ma Anand Sheela from Wild Wild Country.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

The current wisdom is that the kids who do better in the long run are those who get to play in a unstructured way -- pick-up soccer, where they can be creative and try things out -- rather than those who spend lots of time being drilled by adults. Not sure that all that coaching is really helping the kids that much, relative to just finding a way to play. Obviously, it's better than nothing, but the middle-class need to take childhood activities and structure them under adult supervision is not the most positive thing. But in our area, all the fields have been taken over by organized activities, so I'm not sure where the kids would be able to go to play pick-up if they wanted to.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

umm, you called it your bible and said it framed your choices, but whatever. I haven't lived in DC in 30 years. Back then there was solid Chinese in Adams. Perhaps all good Chinese has left, I doubt it, but I will check it next time I'm there and let you know. Or should I write Mr. Cowan and suggest he update?

Re: McCain
 

He has since said she was a massive mistake. And his sin there was picking her based on gut and superficial appeal (strong, attractive female republican) before adequately vetting her (which, yes, would have taken ten minutes).

Re: McCain
 

If McCain's vetting process took ten minutes, it should have gone like this:

Minute one: Oh my god, she is simpleton dolt who is also as crazy as a demented loon, but far more dangerous.

Minutes 2-10: Sitting staring at floor wondering how things could have gone so wrong that he was actually considering her as a running mate.

Re: McCain
 

She fucked Glen Rice. He may have been hoping for some black cross-over votes?

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

I have no experience with category 3. But category 4 is more AAU than travel soccer.

TM

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

I think is somewhat true. My daughter's foot skills, goalie technique, and understanding of the game are so beyond what she would have learned playing in an unstructured way that this is not really true. But coaching the creativity out of these kids is definitely a problem.

Every coach who is not personally involved in these travel programs says that they want kids who have played multiple sports--better footwork, more creativity, different muscles and skills developed, etc.

For basketball, I try to get my daughter out on city courts in the summer. She needs to play pick-up with kids who will foul her to keep her from winning, call bullshit fouls, and embarrass her with moves she's never seen.

We recently visited my old undergrad and the school was hosting an all-star game for MN high school kids. One of the players on my school's team (who was running the clock) told us that the girls we were watching were almost all going to Division I schools. Insanity. All of them were form shooters. ZERO creativity. 400 three point attempts. Those girls are in for a rude awakening, because we also went to an AAU tournament for HS girls* and the talent levels on some of those courts were absolutely fantastic. You can tell the best kids are the ones who learned on city courts who were scooped up into excellent AAU programs.

TM

*It's just absolutely amazing that girls have these opportunities now. It was breathtaking to see so many young women playing at such highly competitive levels and coaches scouting them.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

What I was saying about pick-up is least true for goalies. Our program has a coach who does specialized goalie training, and he does really neat stuff. Kids playing that position on a playground are going to teach themselves some bad habits without even realizing it, and the kids with the resources to get the individualized coaching are far better off.

Another way that American youth soccer fails its kids is the focus on playing games, instead of practices. Especially tournaments, where kids play multiple games in a day and can't play as well. But parents want to see their kids playing games.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

AAU is an equalizer, and a reality check. "I can bury the three!" Yep, as can the other 100 kids in this gym.

But the thing that made my guys toughest was playing Gus Macker 3 on 3- I'm sure there is some equivalent there. We'd see a city team of kids who had next to nothing. They might not have been as talented as my guys, but fuck if they were going to lose. There was a ref, but it tended to be a kid, and the city teams had coaches yelling at the refs, so few calls. EVERY game with a D team it seemed we got down 4 or 5, then remembered you had to be willing to fight through the shit. Mostly came back and won, but these were the best lessons of all the lessons.