We are all Slave now.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally Posted by Replaced_Texan

We have zoning. It's just not called zoning. It's done by deed restrictions and HOAs and banks and city ordinances about how many parking spaces a restaurant must have before it can open or how close a place that sells booze can be to a school.

Car culture has also killed tons and tons of small towns. The downtowns in some areas of the country are just dead, while the areas around whatever highway is nearby flourish with gas stations and other places for passers by to pause for a minute or two.

I just would suggest Houston would put up some signs about how to get to different places, e.g. the airport.


PS:
I put up the "like Kayne" years ago when Thurgreed compared something the two of us artists had said. But I wonder now if it doesn't come across as an endorsement for the MAGA- Kayne?

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy

That website does samplers where you can get sets of wee drams of multiple whiskys. Cool.

you drink like old people fuck.

[Did you just call me Coltrane?]

Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski

Replying to yourself? I’d say we already have an Atticus, but we don’t (sniff).

No Atticus. No Paigow. No Daintiest Petunia. No Ty@50 - wait, is real Ty getting close?

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski

you drink like old people fuck.

One thing I do not want to think about late on a Friday is what knowledge you have about old people fucking and how you got it.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski

translation: key parties. see the Ice Storm.

Not so much. It's more the particular draw of mid-century modern architecture.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by Did you just call me Coltrane?

No Atticus. No Paigow. No Daintiest Petunia. No Ty@50 - wait, is real Ty getting close?

I'll be looking back at Ty@50 wistfully before too long.

[Sidd@60]

Originally Posted by Did you just call me Coltrane?

No Atticus. No Paigow. No Daintiest Petunia. No Ty@50 - wait, is real Ty getting close?

Why is everyone so "glass is half-empty?"

[Adder]

Originally Posted by Pretty Little Flower

This was not so much a decision in Minneapolis as mush as it was corruption wherein the automobile company lobbyists got a stranglehold on the government and "persuaded" them to get rid of the street cars and make Minneapolis into a car-dominated city. That said, I live outside of the downtown area and am still within six blocks of something like ten restaurants, so I can't complain too much.

With the help of the local mob, yes.

Although I have to think it's probably not unique to us either.

[Hank Chinaski]

RT!!! Have you seen Ugly Delicious? A series with David Chang (momofuku) looking at different foods. It is where i got my Naples Pizza info (episode 1). But episode 3 or 4 is called "Shrimp or Crawfish." it contrasts N.O. and Houston food. Especially focused on a Vietnamese area (Crawfish and Noodles is a featured place for location). it looks amazing- but you're East side and that's West?

[Adder]

Originally Posted by ferrets_bueller

Chrismark Castle, Woodstock, Connecticut. Can't be sure it has 100 acres, but it does have a 30 acre pond. Comes with s bit of a backstory, as all castles do. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...ee-you-can-buy

I'd lowball the asking price by a ton. Since it is less than 17 years old, and you were looking for 17th Century.

Meanwhile, outside the original Woodstock: https://www.blenheimpalace.com/

[sebastian_dangerfield]

If you have Apple News on your phone, there's an excerpt from his soon to be released book that's worth reading. Because it's an Apple exclusive, there's no way for me to link it here (or I'm just that hopeless a Luddite).

Anyway, it's about the necessity of compromise and bridge building. Remaining naive about the possibility of moderate control and compromise, I dug the article.

Nothing revelatory. But compromise isn't a "eureka" concept.

And it's worth reading because, based on news stories, McCain is truly circling the drain. It'll be interesting to see how the media and Trump react when two moderate, unquestionably dedicated servants like H.W. Bush and McCain exit the stage over the next months to year or so.

I never cared for McCain's war-mongering, but he couldn't have been worse than Bush (who despicably beat him with that racist campaign in the South in 2000). It's hard not think the world would have been a lot better off if it had been McCain v. Gore in 2000, and either one of them had won.

And it's damn hard not to see the brilliance of H.W. in stopping short of removing Saddam in Desert Storm.

McCain also refused to play the "secret Muslim" card on Obama, or engage in the other dog whistles, in 2008. When he corrected the woman who called Obama a socialist and a Muslim on stage and said, "No, he's a good man. We just disagree," isn't that How We're Supposed to Do It? They ought to force kids to watch that at the outset of every Poli Sci elective.

It's a good book excerpt, in you have an Apple News feed.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

A few jokes flopped, but on balance, it was pretty hysterical. The "softball team" joke alone was worth the price of admission: https://www.rollingstone.com/politic...speech-w519664

[ThurgreedMarshall]

Originally Posted by Pretty Little Flower

I just plugged my address into one of the local restaurant delivery services and it came up with . . . 300 dinner options. Ex. Actly. 300.

Whoa.

Whoa.

TM

[ThurgreedMarshall]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

I have thought about this quite a bit. There is good food in some suburbs, particularly where rents are low and chefs can do good stuff. I don't know the NY suburbs and I do know DC, but I think the economics are probably the same. (SF and SV are weird because SV rents are so expensive.) When food is bad, it's often because the restaurant has high rent and needs to play it safe or because it doesn't serve that many people and needs to play it safe to appeal to more of the people it does serve. Delivery helps with both problems, so it should help suburban restaurants. Suburban Chinese and pizza does often suck, but if you've got more choice then it should get better. Delivery helps urban restaurants too, but not quite as much relatively. The economics of delivery work better where you can get around well by car. All else equal, the city is always going to be better off because the kind of people who want to create good food are more likely to want to be in the city.

The problem with ethnic food (even Chinese) in the suburbs is that it has to be completely de-spiced to appeal to the overwhelmingly bland suburban palate. The number of suburbanites I've been exposed to who cannot stomach any form of spice is enough to make me never want to move to the suburbs by itself.

The problem with your theory about delivery in the burbs is gas prices and time spent driving. It's not worth it to a restaurant for a delivery guy at a non-chain restaurant to try to cover the 5 square miles it would take to have enough orders to justify delivery service. I could be wrong, but when I go to my ex-wife's house, their options are pathetic. And they have to drive for 5 mins to get milk, 10 to get actual groceries, and between 10 and 30 to get to any restaurant that's halfway decent.

But, whatever. I hope delivery explodes in the suburbs such that you're living the life of a pretty little flower! Suburbanites feel superior about how they live, city people feel the same. We just value different things. I despise the "create my own little pod" approach to life. But that's probably not how most suburbanites view how they live. They just want a yard and some space. Fair enough.

But the mall is everything that's wrong with this country. I'm not budging on that.

TM

[ThurgreedMarshall]

Originally Posted by ferrets_bueller

It is literally...not figuratively, literally...child abuse to send your children to the DC public schools. This isn't really open to discussion. The schools are wretched, with no improvement in sight.

I bet this is true. And it probably has nothing to do with the fact that white people and their money fled cities for the suburbs where they could erect huge private schools or, worse, public schools in carefully drawn districts at which poor and diverse students have no shot to attend.

Originally Posted by ferrets_bueller

Our extended neighborhood includes Route 1, which is full of section 8 housing with people who got to America Tuesday. Their children attend the local high school with kids who live in riverfront mansions. There were students from 40 nations when my son went there; the school put a flag of origin in the lobby for each nation that had sent them a student. My son was a remarkable athlete. He played soccer with Africans and South Americans, basketball with African Americans, and swam with the white yuppies. One of those yuppies went to Stanford, the Austrian Olympic Team, and held a world record in the backstroke. So, yes, there was an Austrian flag.

Great! This is the exception.

Originally Posted by ferrets_bueller

Looking down on strip mall restaurants is a snob's mistake, at least in my neck of the woods.

I look down on no good food. I look down on strip malls, which are a fucking blight.

Originally Posted by ferrets_bueller

To sum up: There is no "right answer" to which is better, urban or suburban.

I know I made it sound like a competition. But I don't really care which is better or worse. It's completely subjective, based on what you like and, most likely, where you grew up. I'm a city kid. I don't understand wanting to live in isolation (although, some of the best isolation is in city anonymity). I would never want to live in a place where there is a strictly homogenous experience. I think country clubs are fucking stupid, exclusionary, and full of assholes who spend all their time jerking each other off (I've been to quite a few for golf--and I love when they say, "Hey! Why don't you join? We have so few black members." Really? I wonder why?).

The problem I have with the suburbs is that it is self-segregation performed by people who tell themselves it's about the schools or the space or the yard or the safety. And self-segregation by scared white people is the biggest problem this country has, in my opinion.

Sorry. I tried to be reasonable. I guess it's not possible.

TM