Dev Con 2005 and Hell’s Kitchen

Wednesday I attended the Microsoft Developer’s Convention in downtown Minneapolis. Mostly it was chatting us up about the new technologies coming down the pipeline: ASP.NET 2.0, their new team-oriented software, SQL Server 2005, and Indigo and Avalon 2006 (or so). I stuck to the .NET 2.0 information as I fully intend to be back in the web environment around the time it starts to release. While what they’re offering won’t do my team much good as we already built/modified our own .NET 1.1 versions, if you’re a small to medium sized web project, there’s a pretty sizeable array of built-in functionality to embrace: two-way data binding (with almost no code), profile maintenance, membership maintenance, easier localization (I’m looking forward to that one), skins and themes, web parts (i.e. for portals), and master pages. I get the distinct feeling that after you set up your first fairly full-featured website, you can just tweak the master pages and the profile information and redistribute to project after project as long as they fall within rather wide guidelines. If they have their own SQL Server, you can whip together a few Reporting Services reports in thirty minutes and be well on your way to something that would have taken months to develop once upon a time outside of Access (which bites in its own very special way).

However, technical stuff included, the best part of the day was probably breakfast. I caught the train downtown bright and early (before rush hour rates, even) and met Erik at Hell’s Kitchen. Ah, what finer breakfast dining is there to be found in Minneapolis/St. Paul? Sure, you’ve got your classic greasy spoons that aren’t (head towards Rockford and stop when you see a small restaurant near McDonald’s on the right side of the road, or drop into downtown Osseo for the Copper Kettle), and your upscale Edina breakfast eateries, but Hell’s Kitchen outdoes them all in uniqueness. Even with my penchant for sampling anything that hints of breakfast-related foods, I balk at $9.25 pancakes (go read the menu at the link, just for the mouth-watering descriptions). But then I realize, I easily pay $10 for dinner all the time, more if there’s beer, and I don’t eat breakfast nearly as often, nor do I enjoy dinner as much as breakfast. So if fate deals me two deliciously fluffy lemon-ricotta pancakes topped with a pile of fresh strawberries and boysenberries (among other fruits), a side of maple-smoked bacon, and an endless cup of above-average coffee in an extra-wide cup, well, that’s why I work for a living. Besides, a $5 pancake isn’t even top of the line at Hell’s Kitchen. Scrambled eggs with shrimp run a lot higher and, if you picked up this month’s issue of The Rake (worth it solely for Adam Minter’s “Church and State”) you’ll read, as I did while actually sitting at Hell’s Kitchen, how the owner doesn’t even consider that to be the upper limit – the daily special can run you even more. As he truthfully points out, if you’re there for a cheap breakfast, you shouldn’t be there. There are plenty of Perkins in Minnesota. His interview in The Rake is great – he makes no apologies for his waitstaff (tattoos and piercings – what do you care, you’re there for the food) or for the price of his food, nor should he.

Baby Jesus on a Duck (on Nicollet Mall)

Yesterday, after dropping grandpa off at the airport to catch his plane back to grandma, the family stopped at the Hiawatha Line depot just north of the Mall of America and took the line downtown to have breakfast at Hell's Kitchen. Eryn's first non-Amtrak train ride. It was pretty cold, so we walked the skyways to get back to the return stop, and noticed this statue. Eryn stopped to proclaim that it was a very pretty statue, and as we started to walk away, she added in all seriousness, "It's baby Jesus on a duck!" we didn't bother to correct her.


Vicious snow-covered fu dogs on Nicollet Mall, so uncontrollable they need to be locked up. The poor lion-puppies look very cold.


A skway shot of Nicollet Mall in the morning. The little clear spot on the upper right corner of the bird fountain was done by Eryn on our walk to breakfast (this was taken on the way back).


Eryn in front of Hell's Kitchen. The place was hopping. I probably should have called ahead with reservations. We picked up one of the walk-in tables right away, but I think if we'd have been a minute later it would have been a thirty minute wait, and a few minutes after that they were telling people sixty to ninety minutes. I had lemon ricotta pancakes with fruit on top and berry sauce, a pecan caramel roll I shared with Pooteewheet, a really good cup of coffee, and a bunch of Eryn's spicy bison sausage. Eryn, on the other hand, didn't want her spicy bison sausage and ate sugar on bread instead. Don't ask - I don't know why. I didn't voice the tut tut of fatherly disapproval. Not a cheap breakfast with all that food, but I used my poker winnings, so it was almost like free food.


Eryn waiting for the train near the Mall of America, enjoying the heat from the overhead lamp. Those lamps are certainly more comforting for me than they are for Eryn or my short wife. It felt for a moment like I was getting a sunburn on my head. I think Tall Brad would lose some hair.


Pooteewheet and Eryn on the Hiawatha Line. The police came by to check our tickets and Pooteewheet noted, "They never check tickets." Which elicited my response, "Isn't this only the second time you've ridden it?"

Family, Speed Bumps, Et Al.

The World's Most Effective Speed Bump, courtesy of Freewheeling Spirit (via LiveLeak)


Andrew Zimmern has a link to a molecular gastonomy powerpoint at New York Magazine. I had no idea this was a fad until I read about it in Sagal's Book of Vice. Then suddenly I'm seeing it on Zimmern, and what looks suspiciously like molecular gastronomy in a wheelchair on Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations. The bulk of Zimmern's post is about his dust up with the owner of Hell's Kitchen in the Rake and the locals involved. Apparently part of the argument is he looks down on the locals. Personally, I find that difficult to believe of someone who appears with Colleen Kruse (a columnist for The Rake) live at the State Fair on what looked to be the local women's radio channel. Can you be more in touch with the grass roots culture of the Twin Cities than to be hosting something with Colleen? My wife and I have been married fourteen years, and we fondly remember seeing her at the local comedy club when our love was newly minted and shiny and Colleen's joke about her son's strong penis might not have embarrassed him as a what...high school upper classman? college student? I enjoy Zimmern's show on The Travel Channel. He seems to truly enjoy food and the people who serve it. Then again, I also love Hell's Kitchen, as can be noted by my previous posts citing disgust that they were below Perkin's and how excited I was to eat there, and Eryn and I talking about possibly riding the train downtown to eat there this weekend. Just get along and keep me entertained and well fed. Maybe that's what you're doing.

My great grandmother. I believe my dad pointed out that she's the one in the middle front. That may be my great great grandmother to the left of her. He wasn't entirely sure.

Booty Bouncing Burlesque

Last weekend, Jen and I went to Tassels Off Burlesque at Hell's Kitchen. It's been a long time since we caught a burlesque show.  Go back far enough, and you'll see my blog littered with them, including a burlesque-specific trip to Chicago with Jen and Kyle.  Amusingly, we saw some familiar acts, including Tila Von Twirl who we've seen both in Minneapolis and Chicago, Foxy Tan who is always amazing as both announcer and dancer, and...Gollum! Several others as well. I would posit that it's nice everyone is getting older along with us, but that seems unnecessarily mean. I hope they stay young forever. There were a few new ... faces ... in the show as well. It was fun, even if we're on the older end of the crowd now, and I've missed it after so long, including the covid gap.

I think one of my favorite acts was a dancer vaguely dressed in 70's era men's clothes who did a number to Everything I Own with a guitar case and other props.  Jen wanted to know why they were tassel twirling bags of bread and aggressively chewing on a loaf.  Check the link if you're unsure why.

That tall dancer closest in frame performed to a dance mix of the song Period Sex.  Darn funny.  

Others included: "Glitter Cakes, Texas Teacakes, juggler Derrick Jermaine Harper, Phoenix De La Rosa, Plum Ridiculous, Raja James, Trisha Spectacle, Pedi Bourgeois, and special guest hosts Tre Da Marc, and Sparkle Du Jour! Your bra flinging producers Musette the Mistress of Mischief, Kitson Sass and Pistol Prudence pinky swear a night to remember for one and all."  Derrick Jermaine Harper didn't disappoint all glittered up on his unicycle.

My understanding is they were raising funds for a glamping adventure in the Wisconsin wilderness.  Sort of the camping / learning thing I've seen folks like Actualol do, except he did it for board gaming, not burlesque [as far as I know].  That must be a bit of a surprise for anyone randomly traipsing about in the wilderness.

I see Black Hearts is coming to Hell's Kitchen on February 10.  Kyle, Ming, and I once caught their act near the U  of MN with Fat Leonard [he's not really fat].  The dancer doing the Portal-related game dance threw cake and booze at the audience members in the front, ala The Cake is a Lie.  They're a fun act.

 

Different Strokes for Different Folks

This post is merely to cover things specific to the various individuals I know. It may or may not be of interest to anyone else:

Kristin, over at So What If I'm a Bitch? had a post up defending her right to love her American Girl doll(s) and about a Dekalb lecture about how the dolls are for rich girls. I think I can fully support American Girl dolls because they fund a group dedicated to empowering girls, Girls, Inc. It's doubly wonderful as it has a segment of the right (the American Family Association) up in arms about how they're funding "a pro-abortion, pro-lesbian advocacy group." So, Kristin, next time someone gives you a hard time about your doll, tell them that your $100 is directly supporting, "Girls Inc., which traces its roots back to a center founded in Waterbury, Conn., in 1864, serves about 800,000 girls a year, many of them black or Hispanic and most from low-income families" and is giving AFA chairman Don Wildmon and approximately 2.2 million other (conservative) AFA members a queasy feeling in their belief that the dolls capture a more appropriate period of women's history.

This is for TallBrad, although I already sent it to him personally - but it's just so very funny I thought I'd share. Via Boing Boing, Jesus poker chips. Brad originally focused on the words at the top without fully encompassing the picture, so he read "Don't Accept Jesus" - absolutely not the point they were trying to get across.

Ming has a new jacket he bought with his birthday dollars. It's very natty. Discuss.

For the bike enthusiasts in the crowd. Let it be known that Metallica's "Whiskey in the Jar", if pedalled to on a Cyclosimulator Cateye CS-1000 set for a 2% grade, wind fan enabled, mounted by a Bianchi Brava circa 1989, large frame, slight warp, Shimano Biopace drive system (52) and Shimano 105 shifting components, with a very stretched chain, in 11th gear, warrants a cadence that approximates an average speed of 17.9 miles per hour (for just over five minutes). This is information that should be stored somewhere in a database of information that will never be repeated by another human being.

For Kyle and Adam. I have more or less given up most computer gaming for the most part, although lately has been an exception, hence my lack of blogging time (and I won two $80 tickets to the Vancouver vs. The Wild game for Wednesday, so I was out that night as well. The score was 6-0, and I can say I saw Foy's first two league goals while the crowd chanted sieve, sieve, sieve, at the Vancouver net). Kyle loaned me a copy of Bard's Tale for the Playstation, a remake of the original Bard's Tale I played on my monochrome Compaq portable with the six inch, built in screen, for hours at a time, but nothing like it at all, except for the bard and his singing. It's hilarious, with drunken bar singing about the man who invented beer (rhymes with Hops) and goblins doing Backstreet Boys dance moves while singing Oompa-Loompa like songs about how it sucks to be you. I have also been playing the computer equivalent of a board game, War, Age of Imperialism (I picked up several copies for my friends on the cheap), which is great because you don't have to be in the same room as the board gamers, and you don't have to set up all the pieces and then hide the board from the cat if you don't finish. We finally finished the first game after several months, so here is the screen to rub in the fact that I kick ass.

For me: I went to breakfast this morning at the Original Pancake House in Edina with my friend Mike, who I haven't seen since he had his second kid (and for some time before that). I had the two eggs and hashbrowns, the former perfectly done over medium, the latter mixed with some onion and the perfect vehicle for sopping up the yolks of the former. And three pancakes. And so much coffee I was bouncing. So I would like to point out that there is absolutely no reason at all for this (below). Perkins? You have Perkins as #2. Above the Egg and I, Hell's Kitchen, Louisiana Grill, Longfellow, and just about every other breakfast joint in town. I am officially repulsed by the lot of you. There's no excuse, unless you all live south of the river where there just aren't any options. You claim to be civilized and cosmopolitan...you simply cannot claim those things and still consider Perkins the number two breakfast eatery in Minneapolis/St. Paul...shame...shame!

Results of Mpls/St.Paul Magazine 2005 Readers Poll for Best...

Breakfast
1. Keys Cafe
2. Perkins Restaurant & Bakery
3. The Original Pancake House
4. (tie) The Egg & I; Hell’s Kitchen

Sarah at the Aster

Doh, gotta put the BR at the end.  I can cheat and use /sizes/z by default.  And the height/width has to be on the IMG not the A HREF because duh, links got no sizes, but images do.  Sigh.  Iteration on the code.  Go figure.

I found out almost last minute that Sarah Morris was going to be part of a Women's History Month lineup at the Aster.  I was dubious I'd get a table.  I knew I'd be leaving my wife behind as she already had a conflict.  But I rolled the dice and scored a table for two.  So my kid went with me.  Weirdly, despite all the Sarah events I've been to, Aeryn's never seen her live.  I really should have made it happen at Hell's Kitchen over breakfast, as that's a favorite venue of hers.  Hers as in Sarah.  Although it's a favorite venue of Aeryn as well.  Amusingly, Aeryn had no problem picking her out.  She's basically half the size of Aeryn.  At one point someone else singing noted that Sarah is the shortest, but has the tallest personality.

If you like local music, I suggest checking out the folks on this list.  The whole event was great.  They all did one cover and one original.  Almost more guitars in the audience than humans [I joke, the place was PACKED, but ten guitars / pianos / coulda-been-a-harp too take up a lot of space].

That's Katy Tessman and her son. I believe she did a lot to coordinate this thing.  Gave up performing for a while, but now her son is old enough to perform with her so she's back on the circuit.  Nikki Lemire closed it out and she does piano and harp locally.  Hell of a performance.

Weekend - Political Links and Whatnot

I'm trying to ignore the fact that we had to take my dog to the vet yesterday for bloodwork and x-rays because her back leg quit working and she can't walk - dire signs for a 13-year old pet. And I'm trying to ignore that I'll be spending the next two days of the long weekend flipping rental property. So, this is what I've been reading this morning over coffee:

• VPILF.com - "Just a heartbeat away from being PILF!" (via Fimoculous)
• Schiek's (local strip club) gets ready for the RNC convention (via MNSpeak)
• The RNC raids have begun (via Majikthise)
• Speculation about Palin's daughter...granddaughter? (via Taylor)
• Hell's Kitchen (in Minneapolis) is moving underground to where Rossi's was (via Taylor)
• Some consideration of what the selection of Palin says about McCain by Jim VandeHei and John F. Harris

Memity Meme - Table Talk

Before I get started, let me just say that I tag She Says always and forever for any meme that shall appear in this space, even if she quits blogging. She'll just have to answer the memes in her head. That said, I shall be mining Visceral Observations: I, Me and Poonam for a few memes, merely because he left a comment on my blog. Here's Table Talk Meme, courtesy of Poonam:

What’s your favorite table?
All memes should have questions like this, because it's a question you would never normally consider. I refuse to specifically name or describe the table just because it might make house guests uncomfortable, but in the interest of honest, full disclosure, the one Eryn was conceived upon.

What would you have for your last supper?
Tricky question. If it wasn't one kind of sushi, but a sort of eat-different-varieties-until-you're-done thing, then sushi, as I can eat it for a long time and I love the rainbow of flavors and textures. And beer.

What’s your poison?
Beer, absolutely. And it should be considered a food - there's a reason people refer to it as bread in a bottle and that monks considered a way not to die while fasting.

Name your three desert island ingredients.
Beer. A big bag of rice to put the seaweed, fish and eel bits on. (that's not lots of ingredients - I'm going to assume fishing, seaweed and coconuts come for free on a deserted island. If it were a desserted island, I'd assume I could have free cake and crumpets). Last one is tough - but something dessert-centered. Ice cream. Definitely. I could add coconut to spice it up a bit.

What would you put in Room 101?
This is in some way a table-related question? Is it related to the basics of cooking? Then it would be healthy piles of the trinity of cooking (bell peppers, onions and celery) plus potatoes and carrots. You could eat a lot of Cajun stew in room 101.

Which book gets you cooking?
My Betty Crocker book of state fair award winning cakes.

What’s your dream dinner party line-up?
I like eating with my friends and family - Pooteewheet, Kyle, the CookieQueens. I think New Year's Eve is one of my favorite eating events. It's not overly fancy, but there's tons of food, and everyone is excited about the food, the drinks and the company.

What was your childhood teatime treat?
We didn't have tea time. But my grandmother used to treat us to a.) icees, b.) a liquified icee hi-c drink in those little plastic containers that predated juice packs, or c.) vienna weiners (sausage). Sometimes I got a popsicle, so I now have a minor addiction to them as I feel they ward off vienna sausages.

What was your most memorable meal?
Emeril's restaurant in New Orleans. Fantastic. Eating at Hell's Kitchen - I think I remember most of the times I've been there as individual events and what I was eating.

What was your biggest food disaster?
I once mixed up the sugar and salt in a batch of chocolate chip ookies. I had to have been drunk. They tasted like the ocean.

What’s the worst meal you’ve ever had?
Pooteewheet's peanut butter pork. Think peanut butter sandwich. But made with pork, not slices of bread.

Who’s your food hero/food villain?
Elton Brown. I saw him biking on the Minnehaha Trail on Monday. Ask Kyle. He saw him. Elton makes food fun - I think that's important. Andrew Zimmern is fun, but I will label him a food villain, because I wouldn't eat those things he eats on Bizarre Foods.

Nigella or Delia?
Nigella - but not for any cooking prowess, and only in a sweater, or a t-shirt that says "English Muffin".

Vegetarians: genius or madness?
I'm always trying to eat less meat, so I respect the position, until it tips over into the madness of no cheese, eggs, milk or fish. Fish are food, not friends. I like Klund's position of only eating animals that aren't cute as babies, and the definition of cute rests ultimately with him. My preference is to eat fish and birds when I can.

Fast food or fresh food?
Fresh. I have a soft spot for burritos at Chipotle, which might be considered fast food, but I think they're border line. Fast food to me is McDonald's, Burger King, Taco Bell, etc. I guess places like Noodles and Co, Chipotle and Panera are also fast food in a sort of nouveau fashion, but they're different from those other places in a quantifiable enough manner that I chose them over the old school burger joints almost every time.

Who would you most like to cook for?
Minnie Driver. Possibly naked. Her. Me. Both of us. Whatever. Of course, not until after the food was done - wouldn't want to singe anything. And I'd make her repeatedly read the recipe from the cookbook to me while I was cooking.

What would you cook to impress a date?
I always made lasagna. Fancy, but not too hard. Easy to match to a wine. Any wine. Even a wine on a college budget. Perfect with a salad and garlic bread. If a girl kisses you with garlic breath, you're doing something right.

Scooter's added question - favorite food-centered movie?
Tom Jones because I was an English major? NOT. It would be Big Night, directed by Stanley Tucci. You don't need a detective's license to figure out why.

Make a wish.
Jiminy Cricket sang it best...

When you wish for a beer,
Makes no difference, don't you fear,
Anything your thirst desires,
Will come to you.

If a beer is in your dream,
Just don't go to extremes,
When you wish for a beer,
As dreamers do

Fate is kind
She brings to those who thirst
The sweet fulfillment
Of their secret longing

Like a Summit out of the blue
Fate steps in and hands you two
When you wish for a beer
Your dreams come true.

Busy Days Off

I have this week, and almost all of next week, off to stay home with Eryn while she's on Christmas vacation. I thought it would be relaxing and, for the most part, it is. But so far we've had our family pictures taken for a few hours at the Walker Sculpture Garden. Had lunch at Macy's followed by checking out the Christmas exhibit - a day in the life of Santa's elves. Took a trip to St. Peter to visit Klund, his wife, and kids and drop off a 15 year old espresso maker that I probably could have had shipped to his house for cheaper than the gas to get it there. But Eryn and I had fun visiting the murder of Klunds (or is it a pod?), and we can't do that if we send things by mail. To put icing on the trip we sang along to Christmas songs on the radio for 2.5 hours and managed to stop at the stoplight in Burnsville right next to this:

"Some residents of the Burncliff Apartments will be allowed to return home this afternoon after fire destroyed one building and forced the evacuation of the other at the complex. Nearly 200 people were left temporarily homeless, but no one was injured."

When we stopped, fire was starting to shoot out of the eaves in one area, and by the time the light changed, there was a great big fire shooting out of the roof. Eryn was particularly worried that one of her teachers, who said she lives in an apartment, might live in that apartment (complex) as it wasn't too far from Tesseract.

And then this morning we got up at 6:15 a.m. to head downtown and have breakfast with Erik at the new Hell's Kitchen digs. They're quite the step up from the old restaurant, and the art with the guy trying to push his way out of the wall fascinated Eryn. Not this guy. A different, faceless, scarier guy. It was a great morning for bison sausage and lemon ricotta pancakes topped with mixed berries. I drank caffeine despite my no-to-little caffeine rule that's supposed to keep the restless legs issue lessened, because who wants to have a gourmet breakfast and drink decaf?

I think we're now officially resting, however. Me typing blog posts and working on a novel. Eryn playing with Microsoft Word, Crayola Model Magic clay, and Santa Clause 3 on Netflix instant streaming. Both of us waiting anxiously for the first round of presents tomorrow.

Bicycling Has Started

I went out both Thursday and Saturday last week.  While the rides wouldn't qualify as sprints, I would say they were "aggressive" for early spring for me.  I did 17.75 on Thursday, biking down to the St. Paul Yacht Club, and then climbing back out of the valley to home.  And on Saturday, I did almost 36 miles, biking into Minneapolis to meet Ming at Hell's Kitchen, and then bicycling home.  That was a lot of hills.  I was running a bit ragged by the time I got home and I don't think I really recovered even by Sunday.  Erik felt bad that my wife had to wake me up to answer his page about whether I could drive him to Code Camp on Sunday.

The St. Paul Yacht Club. Most of the time I bike under the bridge and along the river.  Not exactly possible this year.  I noticed on Saturday that the trail that goes down around the base of Fort Snelling was flooded as well, which I've never seen.  I usually take the trail that doesn't take me down a big hill and back up, but I've been down there enough that it was surprising.

Thursday.  The snow was not yet gone.  On the way back, I saw a couple of co-workers at Lucky's.  I waved and yelled hello, but I don't think they quite identified me as the crazy cyclist out so early in the spring.  Note the orange Specialized bicycle!  I've had it out twice in the potholes without destroying the rims.  The new rims and weight loss are working well.  I'm 50# under my heaviest at the moment and 40# under what I was sometime around Christmas.  That's a lot less stress on a back wheel.  The ride on Saturday burned over 2000 calories, so it's exciting to go into the bicycling season with a low enough weight that I can drink 10-20 beers a week without so much as a blip on my calorie counting.

Saturday morning by the river.  Very high.  It might have been on the banks if not for the cement barriers.  Right after this a particularly attractive woman was dragging a "road closed" sign across the shallower road out of the river valley, so I had to take the steep path up to Carlson School of Management (after stopping to watch her drag the sign.  I didn't want to get in her way).  The people who are jogging, dragging road closed signs, and helping staff early morning marathon training booths, at 7:30 a.m. on Saturday morning are a somewhat attractive lot overall.  I never thought to ride around the river early, when I was single, to find someone who fit my early morning habits.  If I had, I would have never met Pooteewheet unless I was looking across the river through her window (her dorm was almost exactly across the river from here, and that fairly open grassy field you can see is where she dumped me while we sat on a picnic table and bunnies frolicked, or something similar starting with the letter f, nearby).

This really surprised me.  Grandma's!  It's a big hole in the ground full of concrete.  There are pictures on this blog of me standing on the far edge of that parking ramp taking pictures of the collapsed I35 bridge.  And I think there are stories of Kyle and I getting absolutely ill on Special Export at Grandma's, and how I was too hungover to stay awake during class, but had to go because they were giving out the info for the final test, and that I stopped by Hardee's (also gone) on the way back, bumped into Mike R. from high school (whose sister lived with Kim W., my high school crush, in an apartment below Kyle and I when we lived in Cedar Riverside, crack towers as the complex is sometimes known), got a whole bag of roast beef sandwiches and, to the best of my memory, nearly made Kyle heave by repeatedly offering him multiple roast beef sandwiches while he tried to clear his system of the Special Export dregs I'd voided several hours earlier.  Of course, I haven't been back there in forever as Town Hall is only a few hundred feet away.

Bush By the Numbers

Chris Dykstra at Duckstrap has a good posting about "Bush by the Numbers" that links to the Independent in the UK and an article by the editor of Vanity Fair detailing some "fun" (?) numbers about the Bush Administration.

I don't entirely trust Chris since I followed his web advice and drove all the way downtown with my family to try out Eat Street, only to find it closed, but his unknowing recommendation did result in my getting to try out Hell's Kitchen, which was a bit overpriced, but absolutely delicious.

Drag Shows - Lupulin Brewing

Last weekend some friends went with my wife and I to a drag show in Big Lake, Minnesota, at Lupulin Brewing.  Based on some of the Facebook comments, we were wondering if we'd see some local, conservative push back at the brewery even though they serve their own beer, not Bud Light [PS F AB and their turn to 'patriotism' in their commercials at the pressure of noise from conservatives. It's the case that the loudest screams are often coming from those on the wrong side of history. They're the death gasps of people drowning when they could learn to swim and eventually do water ballet.]  My home town is nearby, and that hood isn't known for their progressive politics.

I was amused to read someone commenting about how in their 44 years in Big Lake, they'd never seen something like that [and seemed to be implying there was a moral slide]. Drag Shows are good clean fun.  There's no morality issue to consider.  I grew up on a bit of burlesque and drag.  One of my early memories is my parents being super excited about a tassel twirler on television when we were in California.  I didn't develop a [more than average] breast fixation.  I didn't develop a need to go twirl. If burlesque doesn't push you to be burlesque, drag doesn't push you to do drag.  That's a super simplification, but likely valid.

And if I was to weigh the morality and danger of drag against the prevalence of alcohol in our society, even though I love the brewery boom [note my new Books, Brews, and Bicycling series], alcohol shatters the impact of pretty much everything else in the history of our society, even if it isn't responsible for putting K9s oUt Of WoRk LiKe MaRiJuAnA. [< sarcasm, I learned that very late in my web career]. As an aside, good on the Minnesota legislature and Governor Walz for finally getting that shit legalized even more than the THC in our seltzers.  As someone who studied dystopias, I always worry a little bit about the expansion of options to keep people's attention diverted from the man [alcohol, drugs...but worse, streaming and the uninformative parts of the web like doom scrolling], but the benefits of not putting people in jail for nonsense and giving them alternatives to drinking away pain is monumental in my opinion. 

Anyway, if you're looking for moral slide in Big Lake, there's never been too far to slide when it comes to drugs and crime and heavy drinking.  If you feel sex is a moral issue, any of the "corner bars" are far sketchier than a drag show at a brewery and have been since I was a teenager, and presumably long before I could drink at them [transparency, I have been to Big Lake bars when I was considerably younger, and even have stories from my time at them and at least looking at them externally, they don't seem to have changed at all].

Or, maybe you could be more concerned about bad practices in your local law enforcement rather than a bunch of folks dancing.  https://www.hometownsource.com/monticello_times/community/big_lake/police-chief-resigns-after-city-federal-investigations-into-gun-purchase/article_f1c2b48c-7a01-11ec-ad9b-3b4b546eaee6.html 

</bit_of_a_rant>

So a few photos of the event at Lupulin.  Enjoy my wife's hair color.  I believe they discontinued it, so after a few more rounds of horded hair dye, she's going to have to change it up.  It was an interesting venue.  We were there early and could have found better seats, like up above, but weren't sure where folks would be performing.  For the most part, they moved through the audience, but a high table would have given us a better view.  Not that it's always difficult to see the performers when they're in high heeled boots like the MC. 

This photo may give the impression that it was mostly women at Lupulin, but far from it.  I met a fellow - male - Ingress player at the event because I could see him playing on the portals and he'd left his phone face up on a table.  And behind and to the left are plenty of guys there with their friends and others. The bottom photo is more representative.

I posit that between Lupulin - which has a startling variety of beer - and Willy's on the Lake [which used to be Russell's, where I once got a volleyball through my car window from the beach while at a fancy dinner at age...18....with my post senior summer g/f] my friend and I probably drank too much.  I had a power nap in the car on the way home, and apparently my friend's s/o sent my wife a photo of him passed out almost as soon as he got home.  Part of it was the infectious nature of the crowd.  It was a happy, celebratory bunch.

This photo is for my sister.  She's a big fan of the little mermaid, currently the focus of its own culture war as she's changed skin color which seems to be as far as some folks can get.  This would probably destroy them.  BTW, love that Lupulin mural.  I think it captures the logos from a number of their beers.

The post event applause.  I didn't enjoy the show as much as the one at Hell's Kitchen, but it was still a great time and it was great to go to a show with friends.  And it was uplifting to be at an event in my old hood that belies the news that it's the southern tip of the crazy part of Minnesota with the politicians who worry about demonology and beard discrimination [travel due north from Big Lake toward Mille Lacs and it's like a mini trip to the American south].