#147 - port traits: between the bars.

ever since i turned 21, i've dreamed that one day i'd have a bar that i could call my own, a neighborhood place where i could stop in any day of the week at any time of the day & the bartender, a cute girl who i've established a flirty customer-proprietor relationship with would look at me as i grabbed a stool at the bar & say to me "the usual?" i'd nod & she'd pour me a cold pint of my favoritest snooty beer. it'd be some real cliche shizz & totally not pathetic. every once in a while, she & i & a handful of regulars would order food from the restaurant next door. it'd be like a second home, third if you count my childhood home, which i probably should. to this day, largely due to my propensity towards home drinking, i've yet to find that magical third home...still searching though.

for part three of my portland, oregon investigative series, i've decided to take a look at the portland bar scene & see what it has to offer as far as third homes. i've yet to witness the portland scene firsthand but it's one that i've heard, read & dreamed a lot about & i have a handful of portland friends & acquaintances, so i was able to tap their alcohol-tainted brains & get a ROUGH idea of what's in store for me if i ever go out drinking in bridgetown. that's right...bridgetown. the city has a river running right through the middle of it, so they've got bridges. bridgetown. i'm not sure if anyone actually calls it that, but if they don't, they should. as a nickname, "city of roses" is just stupid. other suggestion: "beavertown."

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snackdown! - 2.12.10

after sunday's super bowl, you'd think that folks (other than the doritos samurai) wouldn't want to think about snacks for a little bit, but that's not the case. after all, this sunday is valentine's day, or as i like to refer to it..."V-D" & while much of the holiday is based on making money for the flower & greeting card companies, it's also an opportunity to surprise your sweetie with some sweets. many men will bore their significant other with the standard box of chocolates, but carnivores will opt for a more adventurous route with the beef jerky bouquet. either way, those planning on celebrating V-D this weekend should plan on doing some snacking...& on that note, let's get to the snackdown!

• do you live in l.a.? despite that, do you have a positive outlook on life? are you japanese? are you a snack ninja? if so, the JAO (japanese american optimist club) has the event for you. on feb 20th, as part of their bingo night, they're holding a "snack-off," where competitors will "compete for the title of JAO snack queen (or king) of the year." the snack-off, which will feature "sweet treats," will also lead to a snack cookbook filled with recipes from the event. in addition, the event will feature the "2nd annual pie the commissioner booth" & a snack bar with "chili rice, ramen, hot dogs & other items." to this i say...BINGO! (rafu shimpo)


• food trucks have been all the rage for a while, but until now, nyc has been lacking one particular type of food truck: an organic vegan one. starting this sunday, the "cinnamon snail" food truck will set up shop in hoboken & offer customers "a menu of unprocessed, organic, and local foods, with gluten-free, macrobiotic, and raw options." we're talking breakfast, lunch & snack options including vegan donuts & "hempseed-encrusted tofu with spicy french mustard dressing over white truffle mashed potatoes and greens." from a truck! adam sobel, owner of the cinnamon snail, hopes to soon bring the truck to brooklyn, a development that can't come soon enough because really, who the f wants to go to hoboken? (village voice)


• ...so this sunday is valentine's day. regardless of whether you're celebrating with someone or doing the single thing this V-D, you can't deny the awesomeness of candy hearts. they're perfect for that moment when you see a hottie across the bar & want to get them to make out with you. instead of dealing with all that "you should make out with me" awkwardness, you can just walk up to them & hand them a "kiss me" candy heart. it's a move that's so cute & sweet that you're 92% guaranteed to get some action. this year, candy hearts are celebrating their 145th anniversary by coming out with new sayings & new flavors (strawberry, green apple, lemon, grape, orange & blue raspberry), so not only will your move be sweet & cute, but it will also be totally updated for the twenty-ten. (the beacon)


• i've never been a military guy myself, but i do respect the fact that those in the military do a lot of things that i would never in my life be able to do. take the marines who attended the "cobra gold 2010 war games" in thailand. the event aimed to "promote regional peace and security," but the best part of it was when marines devoured such culinary delights as scorpions & cobra blood (which they also smeared themselves with). frogs & lizards are also on the menu. that's some hardcore semper fi shizz, folks. i mean, once you've drank the blood of a cobra, killing iraqis & afghanis should be no problem. (the daily mail)


• wisconsin is totally cheesy. the badger state is ranked "number one in cheese production," with "1200 cheesemakers" that produce "25% of all the cheese made in the united states." with that in mind, wisconsin state senator jim sullivan is sponsoring a bill (which has been in the works for four years now) that will make cheese wisconsin's official state snack. official state snacks are nothing new to u.s. politics, as illinois has popcorn, south carolina has boiled peanuts, texas has tortilla chips & salsa and utah has jell-o. jell-o!...but this is the first time that journalists writing about the official state snack have been able to use phrases like "'nacho' average legislation," "a 'gouda' idea" & "if the legislation passes 'munster'" whilst doing so. (wisconsin radio network)

snackdown! - 2.5.10

with the super bowl only two days away, the snack world's been positively abuzz with article after article about which snacks you can use to spice up your super bowl party. basically, all the articles do is give some "unique" take on the same snacks people eat every year during the game--nachos, wings, pizza, etc. use turkey wings instead of chicken wings & smother them with dr pepper bbq sauce! make a pizza that's half colts-inspired & half saints-inspired! YAWN. i tell you, if i see another article featuring some cutesy super bowl recipe, i'm taking a hostage.

• wall street's taken quite a beating over the last few years, but that doesn't mean that the folks working there don't still know how to have a good time. last friday, a group of investment bankers at calyon decided to GET WILD by holding a chicken mcnugget eating challenge in which one dude attempted to eat sixty chicken mcnuggets in twenty minutes. since wall street peeps love playing with money, they started taking bets on his success & all told, there was $10K floating around. in the end, he finished all sixty nuggets in only fourteen minutes. his prize...$500, an amount that should cover about a fifth of his impending angioplasty. (animal ny)


• in kingsport, tennessee, two dudes had a serious craving for a bounty of snack cakes but no desire to pay for them. lucky for them, there were snack cake-filled trucks parked outside a kingsport bakery, so they made their way into one of the trucks to start filling up. unfortunately, an employee heard them & called the cops. when the cops arrived, they followed footprints in the snow leading up to one of the trucks & found both "$300 worth of hostess snacks - cupcakes, minimuffins, streusel cakes, twinkies, zingers and 100 calorie cakes - piled up beside it" & the two dudes hiding out underneath it. the best part about the article was the readers' comments, which was kicked off with the cautionary "if they aren't careful, their snack cake addiction can sno-ball into more serious problems." ha! (kingsport times-news)


• new yorkers love eating, but this week researchers at the tulane university school of public health revealed that even though we love eating, we're less tempted to snack. as gothamist points out, "we're at less of a risk of coming into contact with snacks at the checkout than anywhere else in the country." i'm not sure how that translates to being "less tempted to snack," since you can be tempted to snack at a lot of other places other than the checkout counter. anyway, there's at least one takeaway from the article--the obesity rate in manhattan is half of what it is in the rest of the country. take that, you mississippi fatties. (gothamist)


• last year during the super bowl, denny's ran ads promoting a free original grand slam breakfast & the promo was so popular that their website had some serious issues. this year, they're bringing back the free breakfast offer & promoting it with a series of ads featuring a "spokesman warning chickens everywhere to 'get out of town' because 'it's going to be a tough week for egg layers.'" in addition to the free breakfast, the first 500k people who sign up for denny's rewards program get a voucher for a free burger & fries and as part of a limited-time offer you'll be able to get refills on pancakes & fries. refills on pancakes? that rules! the downside: you have to go to denny's. (promo magazine)


• the vending machine industry is huge ($30 billion a year) but with the recession & less workers around to spend money on snacks, they have to come up with ways to keep business booming. on wednesday, the national automated merchandising association (NAMA) descended on washington to lobby capitol hill & they brought along a number of touch screen vending machines with them, including "the diji-touch, an interactive touch-screen machine with an interface modeled after the iphone." apparently that's the new recipe for improving the customer experience--make your product more like the iphone. (washington post)

#146 - move on.

full disclosure: i ♥ brooklyn. other than my childhood home in nh, i've lived here longer than in any other locale & although there's a good chance that i won't eventually settle down here, for now it's become what i refer to as my "home." since moving here almost a decade ago, i've lived in three different places & with each move, i've moved closer to manhattan. this past weekend, after a three-year run in my park slopish apartment, i reversed that trend & moved way south into a new place in dyker heights, a hood that many brooklynites would likely have difficulty pinpointing on a map.

sunday was moving day & for once, i was actually packed & ready to go a day ahead of time. the day started quite early, when my bro & i woke up at the ass-crack of dawn (7am) to make a 9am pickup time for a pickup truck he'd rented through zipcar. if there’s one thing i can say about choosing a vehicle for your move, it’s that if you choose to go the u-haul route, you’re a sucker. every single time i’ve rented from them, some sort of debacle has ensued--flat tires, u-haul locations that decided to close early on my moving day, missing hand carts, etc. this time, largely thanks to my bro's assistance, everything went absolutely swimmingly & by the early afternoon, i was already back at the new apartment & getting settled. best. move. ever.

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snackdown! - 1.29.10

in a week where president obama delivered his first state of the union address & the world lost howard zinn, j.d. salinger & that short, slightly-creepy lady from poltergeist with the high-pitched voice, it was probably pretty hard for you to keep up with everything awesome that happened in the world of snacking. luckily, i have a brain capacity similar to that of christopher langan & the waking hours of a speed freak, so i was able to find enough brain power & time to concentrate on both snack news and presidents & celebrity deaths & whatnot. just kidding. that's not what happened. my brain's not that big. i just used google alerts & shit. anyway...happy weekend, eat!drink!snack! reader. we have to come up with a better name for you.

• do you like pancakes? how about AUTOMATIC pancakes? are you bummed that you've had trouble finding automatic pancakes anywhere on the entire north american continent? fret no longer, my friend. popcake, a company based in hong kong, announced this week that they've secured distribution of their automatic pancake machine here in north america. as a planet, "more than 20 million pancakes are consumed daily" & i assume that americans, with our love for putting butter & syrup on things, make up a large portion of that figure. just imagine what sort of damage we're going to do now that they're available automatically! (perishablenews.com)


• these days, the cast of jersey shore has essentially become the fourteenth representative from new jersey, but the nj star-ledger wants you to know that jersey's about more than orange skin, greased up fist pumping & displaying your abs. they're also about pizza & over the last six months, the star-ledger's "four-member pizza patrol drove 9,000 miles in the munchmobile, visiting 333 pizzerias and sampling 1,000 slices" to find new jersey's best pizza. all week, they're running pizza-related articles as part of a countdown to the announcement of jersey's best pizza. on a related note, i want a munchmobile. (nj star ledger)


• i'm just going to come right out & say it...five-star restaurants are wack. color me cheap, but i've never been one to swoon over the "experience" of spending hundreds of dollars on dinner. give me a couple tacos or a dolphin's worth of half-price sushi & i'm good to go. i bring this up because in 2010, fancy restaurateurs like david chang are trying to blur the lines between five-star food & regular people food by serving fried chicken. because of this, many have deemed fried chicken a food to watch in the new year. they can have their fried chicken. to be honest, i'd rather have some bacon. (seattle post-intelligencer)


• in south texas, they take their meat seriously. this past saturday, at a cafe in brownsville, the owner & a customer got into a slight brouhaha over the customer's order. the customer was all "i ordered the chicken but you gave me beef." eventually, he & the owner got into it, started tossing food at each other & the next thing you know, the owner hauls off & thwacks the customer with a plate. the moral of this story: in texas, if they serve you beef, don't start a beef. (washington post)


• if you've followed eat!drink!snack! for a while, you know that i think of snacking as an art form. the boston globe's devra first totally agrees with me in her article "a whole new world of snacking." the piece begins with the words "snacking is an art" & then she pretty much confirms everything i believe about eating. big meals are cool & all, but grabbing tasty, awesome snacks throughout your day is totally the way to go, the wave of the future. along the way, she names a bunch of places to eat in boston, places that serve things like a "bing" (china's answer to the slider), a "japanese doughnut, filled with red bean and curry" & lahmejune (armenian pizza). preach on, sister. (boston globe)