The Daily Parker

Welcome to stop #84 on the Brews and Choos project.

Brewery: Tighthead Brewing, 161 N. Archer Ave., Mundelein
Train line: North Central Service, Mundelein
Time from Chicago: 59 minutes
Distance from station: 200 m

Planning to visit the handful of breweries along the North Central Service line presents certain challenges. Metra runs a total of 7 trains in each direction during the work week, but only one in the reverse-commute direction. And until they restored train 105 last December, there was literally no way to get back to Chicago by train.

I spent a few minutes working this out on Friday, however, and managed to visit two of them, starting with Liquid Love in Mundelein. It helped that the brewery is only 200 meters across the parking lot from the train station.

For just $20 I tried six of their brews, though one of them was a free sip of IRIE IPA (7.8%, >100 IBU, pronounced "aye-ree" like they say in the Islands). I mean, my word, 100+ IBUs. OK, I've now had that experience.

For the real tasting, I started with the Comfortably Blonde (4.8%, 20 IBU), a lovely malty beer (bottom right, above) with slight banana and honey notes. Next (top left) was the Chilly Water Pale (4.8%, 40 IBU), a clean, crisp, long-finishing, not-too-hoppy pale. The Bear's Choice APA (6.5%, 75 IBU, top right) brought me back to the higher-hops IPAs of yore, but wasn't over the top. It had a complex, malty body and an clean finish that lingered just the right amount. I finished the official flight with a Boxcar Porter (6%, 40 IBU, bottom left) that had nice, complex chocolate and coffee flavors, and a crisper finish than I expected. I had a few minutes for the train so I finished up with a taster-size Casked Oktoberfest (5.5%, 27 IBU, not pictured), which had a lovely balance and a smooth, malty flavor.

I also met a few happy dogs outside. The brewery has a sprawling outdoor area with tons of trees that would make you forget about being in Middle Suburbistan and easily stranded if you miss your train were it not for the sprawling parking lot surrounding it.

Beer garden? Yes
Dogs OK? Outside only
Televisions? Yes, avoidable
Serves food? No, but food trucks come by
Would hang out with a book? Yes
Would hang out with friends? Yes
Would go back? Yes

Since today is the last Friday of the summer, I'm leaving the office a little early to tackle one of the more logistically challenging itineraries on the Brews & Choos Project. So I'm queueing up a few things to read over the weekend:

• The XPOTUS finally won his "long hard battle" to finally get a mugshot, which the Internet immediately (a) put on swag you can buy and (b) compared with the Kubrick Stare. But where did the Fulton County Jail get his height and weight?
• US intelligence sources believe the airplane purportedly carrying mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin suffered an "internal explosion" consistent with a bomb before crashing with 10 people on board.
• The Russian Government dismissed as "all lies" that it had anything to do with Prigozhin's apparent assassination, meaning it absolutely blew up the plane and wants you to know it.
• Robert Wright interviews exiled Russian journalist Nikita Petrov about Prigozhin's disappearance, while Julia Ioffe explains how this fits with Putin's philosophy of poniyate, "understandings." ("Oh, Yevgeny, won't see him no more.")
• Lydia Polgreen "glimpsed our brutal future" when she observed our "ally" Saudi Arabia slaughter thousands of Ethiopian refugees at their border with Yemen.
• Matt Ford says the Supreme Court got its stopped-clock moment when it unanimously decided NCAA v Alston (141 S.Ct. 2141, 2021) in favor of student athletes who generate billions in revenue for their schools but see none of it.
• Crime has fallen and punctuality has risen on the CTA, and even Crain's irascible political columnist Greg Hinz has a cheer for them.

Finally, via Bruce Schneier, a report on Mexican food labeling laws, how manufacturers have gone to absurd lengths to skirt them, and how these fights are probably coming the US soon.

Risky Business came out 40 years ago this month:

“Risky Business,” then and now, is an indictment of privilege, and of somehow keeping the uglier world at bay long enough to buy your way into a kind of imperviousness. Except — and here’s what I think I responded to — it’s funny and confident and cool and all of its points about the spoils of capitalism get disguised inside a dream of opulence. It appears to affirm the early Reagan years as ripe for opportunity while, with a much deeper subtlety, undercuts places like the North Shore as chilly incubators of inequality.

Not that everyone saw this criticism of the Reagan Years in Year 2 of the Reagan Years. David Denby wrote in a New York Magazine review that “Risky Business” played as “openly corrupt.” Dave Kehr, closer to the truth as the film critic of the Chicago Reader (then later the Chicago Tribune), would likely have agreed with Denby, for different reasons: He wrote that the movie was “one of the finest film explorations of the end of innocence,” ending with a “complete corruption” of Cruise’s character and “one of the most bitter and plangent sequences allowed to pass in an American movie.” And that’s about the ending that played in theaters; Brickman’s original ending gets far darker.

My guess, if you haven’t seen “Risky Business” in years, little of this sounds right.

Now I gotta watch it tonight...

My home office sits at the top of my house as a loft over the floor below. I think it could not have a more effective design for trapping hot air. (Fortunately I can let a lot of that out through this blog.) This afternoon the temperature outside Inner Drive Technology World Headquarters didn't quite make 25°C, and it's back down to 23°C with a nice breeze coming through the window. Wednesday and Thursday, though, the forecast predicts 36°C with heat indices up to 43°C. Whee. (It gets a lot better Saturday.)

Meanwhile, in the more comfortable parts of the world:

• Jamie Bouie reminds everyone what I've said repeatedly: Rudy Giuliani has always been an unhinged and reprehensible character. Thanks for finally noticing.
• Speaking of authoritarians who hate the press, law professor Gregory Magarian digs into the Marion, Kansas, newspaper raid, which the Post says came about because the paper committed journalism on a corrupt police chief.
• Rolling Stone helpfully catalogues malignant narcissist Elon Musk's biggest lies.
• One of his lies, or at least one of his latest manifestations of abject incompetence at running a tech company, came earlier this week when he mused about ending the "block" feature on the app formerly known as Twitter, despite that move probably getting it kicked off the iPhone and Android platforms.
• A judge sentenced an Ohio teenager to concurrent 15-to-life terms for killing her boyfriend and one of his friends by driving her car into a brick wall at 160 km/h.
• American Airlines has sued Skiplagged, claiming the company tricks people into violating American's terms of service—and worse, doesn't actually save their customers any money.

Finally, a change to zoning laws in Auckland, N.Z., appears to have done what its proponents predicted: increasing housing and slowing rent increases. It's almost like single-family zoning was designed to keep those people out. Next thing, they'll start discover that zoning combined with redlining kept millions of credit-worthy people from ever building wealth for their families and led the US to an unsustainable pattern of urban development that will cost us trillions to fix. Crazy.

Cassie got almost 4¼ hours of walkies yesterday, going to the Horner Park DFA, Ribfest, and elsewhere around the neighborhood. Then, just when she thought she could relax at home, I dragged her fuzzy butt into the bathtub. I did warn her, when she rolled in whatever that was at the dog park, that her day would end in a bath, but she didn't believe me.

The highlight for me, of course, was Ribfest. And I can now present my After Rib Report for 2023.

This year I got to try 9—count 'em, 9—samplers (total: 28 bones) from 8 rib vendors, a tremendous improvement on last year. Plus, the ribs were better all around. In the order that I tried them:

• Aussom Aussie: tug-off-the-bone, smoky, meaty ribs, with a good sauce. Winner of 2nd Place in both the Critics Choice and Audience cagegories. 3 stars.
• Mrs Murphy's Irish Bistro: This year's People's Choice winner for the 9th year running, which makes me think the fix is in. My ribs were over-boiled and kind of disintegrated, but they didn't have a lot of flavor. I like their sauce, though. 2½ stars.
• Ogre Eats: The 3-bone sampler I got Friday might have been the most perfect ribs I had at any Ribfest. They came right off the grill onto my plate, with great caramelization and just the right smoke and tug. (Cassie did not like standing next to the smoker while we waited in line, though.) But then on Sunday they gave me 2 bones for the same price, which were really good but not nearly as epic as Friday's. I wish I could give them the 4 stars they earned on Friday but I can only give them 3 stars overall.

• Big Joe's: The Critics Choice winner this year, beating Aussom Aussie by one point. They had super-meaty ribs with an amazing sauce. I want more! 4 stars.
• Chicago BBQ: Good as always. Meaty, smoky ribs, a nice char, and two tasty sauces to choose. 3½ stars.
• Armadillo's: Huge meaty bones with great flavor. Not greasy at all; nice sauce. And they gave me an extra bone! 3½ stars.
• Blazin' Bronco: Excellent, smoky, meaty bones. 4 stars.
• Robinson's: Another lagniappe! And huge, huge bones with unfortunately too much sauce. 3 stars.

A couple of things to note. First, every one of the vendors, except for Robinson's, is itinerant or a catering company. Once again, Ribfest failed to attract Chicago Q, Smoque, The Smoke Daddy, or any of the other ribberies here in Chicago that have amazing BBQ. It's a shame, because I would love to get a full slab from Blazin' Bronco or Big Joe's sometime.

Second, they all charged different prices for samplers, which I didn't factor into my ratings but probably should have. The $8 sampler from Mrs Murphy's was probably worth it, but the $14 sampler from one of the vendors I didn't try probably wasn't.

I'm glad Ribfest found its footing again, though. And the weather cooperated: temperatures kept in the mid-20s with not a drop of precipitation, though dewpoints hovered around 20°C making everything a bit sticky. Can't wait for next year!

We may stop at Ribfest one more time today, after we hike over to Horner Park to meet some friends. (This may also include a quick stop to cool off at Burning Bush.)

Yesterday, Cassie got a chance to nap during the day while I spent some time a few kilometers off shore in Lake Michigan:

Not a bad view, despite the Canadian wildfire smoke:

After I got home, Cassie and I went back over to Ribfest for three more samplers before ending the evening at Beygle again. But the poor girl really needed another nap, not least because we've gotten over 5 hours of walkies since Friday morning. If you've ever seen a 5-year-old two hours past bedtime, you have an idea. I had to take her to the far end of the patio after she decided she really wanted another dog's bully stick, even though she doesn't really like bully sticks.

And yet, just look at this punim:

We're heading out to the dog park in about 90 minutes. I'll let her nap until then.

I am happy to share that this year's Ribfest improved on last year's so far. Cassie and I walked over there a bit before the dinner rush and got three samplers. Then on the walk home we discovered that Begyle Brewing has partially rescinded the no-dog policy they instituted in the pandemic: they now allow dogs on the patio, though they're still verboten inside (except to order).

I'll have a full After Action Report on Sunday or Monday. Today I'm aiming for three more samplers for dinner, and possibly sailing with friends on Lake Michigan this afternoon.

I'm about to take Cassie on her noon peregrination, which will be shorter than usual as we're heading over to North Center Ribfest tonight in perfect weather. Last year's Ribfest disappointed me (but not Cassie). I hope this year's is better than last year's. (Hard to believe I took Parker to our first Ribfest over 15 years ago...)

Chicago street festivals are having trouble raising money, however. When a festival takes over a public street, they're not allowed to charge an entry fee, though they can ask for donations. I'll be sure to make my $10 donation this evening.

While I wipe the drool off my keyboard thinking about ribs, I'll be reading these:

• The National Hurricane Center has issued a tropical storm watch for Orange, Riverside, San Diego, and Imperial Counties in California, plus Catalina Island, as Hurricane Hilary drifts towards being the first tropical storm to hit SoCal since the 1930s.
• US Senator Joe Manchin's (RD-WV) strategy of bollixing up the President's agenda seems to have backfired.
• Credit-card issuer Discover swears up and down it didn't fire its CEO last week over regulatory matters. Nope, he's accused of compliance problems.
• The Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning may recommend that Chicago-area transit agencies merge their fare systems to encourage more people to take trains and buses. (I've been mulling a long post about the problems with transit in the US in general.)
• What's with all the kids selling candy on the streets of New York (and Chicago)?
• Getting a "technical brush-off" when asking your city to make a change to a roadway? Strong Towns has a strategy for you.

Finally, National Geographic describes the reconstruction of a murder victim in Sweden—from 700 years ago. Crime tip: Don't try to hide a dead body in a peat bog. Someone will find it eventually.

The XPOTUS continuing to get indicted for trying to steal the 2020 election wasn't the only bit of authoritarian fuckery this week:

• Constitutional law professor Deborah Pearlstein wonders, as do many other people, why so many of the XPOTUS's mooks are lawyers.
• Nicholas Grossman can't figure out why the media spend so much time trying to understand the populist right when Biden got millions more votes than the other guy.
• The Marion, Kan., police department raided the town newspaper and seized its computers and phones in a spectacular authoritarian over-reach that will almost certainly result in a devastating Federal first-amendment lawsuit.
• David Brooks essays in the Atlantic about "how America got mean."
• Paul Krugman notes that the Republican war on a diverse military echoes the bad decisions of the losing side in World War II (subscribers only).
• All the media reports about how people keep moving to the Sunbelt elide (a) that people are also moving away from it and (b) every January has its July.
• How has WeWork not died yet? Kim Velsey explains.

Finally, Michael Oher, the subject of the book and film The Blind Side, says the white family that he lived with not lied to him about adopting him, but also used their positions as his conservators to screw him out of compensation from the story of his own life. Which, if you remember, put the white folks up as the heroes. I wish I'd been more surprised and shocked, but no, it tracks.

On my drive to a day-trip in Michigan yesterday I played Pomplamoose's Best of 2019 EP, in my catalog as #960, purchased 12 June 2020. This was the first album I bought after I began listening to each CD (or digital album) I own in order, a project I began in May 2020.

The catalog ends at #981, the 1979 Broadway recording of Sweeney Todd, that I got last week. But the project technically ended yesterday, even though I'll listen to the last 21 again, since I've only listened to the most recent acquisitions once or twice.

I really thought this would take me less than 3 years. But, then again, I thought the pandemic wouldn't last this long, either...