The Daily Parker

Stuff to read:

• Forgetting (or just plain ignorant) that we have a Coast Guard better suited to the task of guarding our coasts, the OAFPOTUS has ordered the guided missile destroyer USS Gravely to the Texas-Mexico border.
• The OAFPOTUS and the Clown Prince of X, apparently not seeing the connection between weather forecasters and weather forecasts, have illegally fired 10% of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration staff just as a violent tornado outbreak killed 40 people in the Midwest and South.
• The administration's attacks on universities fit the Orban plan of creating a failed democracy, so naturally the OAFPOTUS has doubled down on them.
• Krugman points out that all of the above administration malfeasance has had a depressing effect on the US economy by reducing demand for our key exports, not least of which includes the $50 billion foreigners used to spend to get American educations. (He also has a good, long explanation of how inflation works, if you subscribe.)
• Surprising no one but still an illegally-targeted exercise of Federal power, the Federal Communications Commission has demanded to see the contracts between a number of National Public Radio and Public Broadcasting System stations and their acknowledged donors.
• The Waterbeach development outside Cambridge, England, has a new car-free housing complex—though it's still a 10 kilometer walk from the nearest railway station.
• Pilot Patrick Smith wishes the public would have a better sense of perspective about the safety of air travel, while acknowledging that it has seemed a bit rockier than usual.

Finally, thanks to reduced funding and deferred maintenance, the Chicago El has seen slow zones balloon from 13% of its tracks to 30% since 2019. Fully 70% of the Forest Park branch has reduced speed limits, making the trip from there to downtown take over an hour. But sure, let's  keep funding below the minimum needed to function, and keep the CTA, Metra, and Pace all separate so they can each fail in their own ways.

After our gorgeous weather Sunday and Monday, yesterday's cool-down disappointed me a bit. But we have clear-ish skies and lots of sun, which apparently will persist until Friday night. I'm also pleased to report that we will probably have a good view of tomorrow night's eclipse, which should be spectacular. I'll even plan to get up at 1:30 to see totality.

Elsewhere in the world, the OAFPOTUS continues to explore the outer limits of stupidity (or is it frontotemporal dementia?):

• No one has any idea what the OAFPOTUS's economic plan is, though Republicans seem loath to admit that's because he hasn't got one.
• Canada and the EU, our closest friends in the world since the 1940s, have gotten a bit angry with us lately. Can't think why.
• Paul Krugman frets that while he "always considered, say, Mitch McConnell a malign influence on America, while I described Paul Ryan as a flimflam man, I never questioned their sanity... But I don’t see how you can look at recent statements by Donald Trump and Elon Musk without concluding that both men have lost their grip on reality."
• On the same theme, Bret Stephens laments that "Democracy dies in dumbness."
• ProPublica describes a horrifying recording of Acting Social Security Commissioner Leland Dudek's meeting with senior SSA officials last week in which he demonstrated why the OAFPOTUS pulled him from a terminal job as "the ultimate faceless bureaucrat" to head the agency. (Some people have greatness thrust upon 'em?)
• Molly White sees "no public good" for a "strategic bitcoin reserve," but is too polite to call the idea a load of thieving horseshit.
• Author John Scalzi threads the needle on boycotting billionaires.
• Writing for StreetsBlog Chicago, Steven Vance argues that since the city has granted parking relief to almost every new development in the past few years, why not just get rid of parking minimums altogether?

Finally, in a recent interview with Monica Lewinsky, Molly Ringwald said that John Hughes got the idea for Pretty in Pink while out with her and her Sixteen Candles co-stars at Chicago's fabled Kingston Mines. Cool.

Welcome to stop #123 on the Brews and Choos project.

Brewery: Duneyrr Fermenta, 2237 S. Michigan Ave., Chicago
3 (of 5) stars
Train line: CTA Green Line, Cermak-McCormick Place
Time from Chicago: 10 minutes
Distance from station: 600 m

After five hours, four kilometers of walking, three pints of beer, two Lyfts, and an invitation to my Brews & Choos buddy's husband to meet us three blocks from his office, we made it to Duneyrr Fermenta in Chicago's historic Motor Row. If only we hadn't had a mound of cheese curds at Alulu, we might have enjoyed the BBQ pop-up. Instead, we each tried a small glass of beer (or wine, in one case), and decided to get dinner closer to home.

Duneyrr definitely has a point of view on fermenting. They seem only to use wild yeast in their beers and wines, which I appreciate but do not like. I tried a 150 mL sample of the Riwaka Raccoon New Zealand IPA (6.3%), which had a super-dank nose and even danker flavor, with massive fruit flavors from the Riwaka and Rakau hops that the wild yeast completely obliterated. My buddy tried the Wild Buri farmhouse ale (5%), which she liked enough, calling it "less like a farmhouse and more like a göze or a lambic. Quite sour." As one who appreciates but does not like any of those styles, I will accept what she said. Her husband had a glass of the Melodic Mosaic semi-sparkling red wine, and said "Actually, that's interesting. Maybe just don't think of it as a wine." I also found it...interesting.

The space is cool, though, and they do allow dogs. Their snacks looked pretty good too. So it's worth a second look, especially if I want to entertain friends who really dig wild yeast fermentation.

Beer garden? No
Dogs OK? Yes
Televisions? Avoidable
Serves food? Usually snacks, weekend pop-ups
Would hang out with a book? Maybe
Would hang out with friends? Yes
Would go back? Maybe

Welcome to stop #122 on the Brews and Choos project.

Brewery: Ramova Grill & Taproom, 3520 S. Halsted St., Chicago
3.5 (of 5) stars
Train line: CTA Red Line, Sox-35th
Time from Chicago: 15 minutes
Distance from station: 1.3 km

The Ramova Theater opened in 1929, showed its last movie in 1985, got taken over by the city in 2001, sold to Chance the Rapper and other Chicago celebrities in 2017, landed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2021, and opened again on 31 December 2023. Sometime in there, they built a brewery and restaurant on the property. And on Friday, my Brews & Choos buddy and I walked down 35th Street from Marz to check it out. (The rain finally stopped.)

They've got a 1950s diner feeling befitting the history of the place. (Though I think most visitors in 1950 would have balked at the co-ed, European-style bathroom.) They brew some of their beers on site and others at partner facilities as far away as Brooklyn, and they have a full diner menu that looked pretty good to us.

We tried a flight and liked 75% of them.

I started with the 1929 American lager (5%), a flavorful and malty beer that was a bit sweet for my palate as lagers often are, about which my friend said only "It's a lager. It's a good lager." The Bubble Garten Berlinerweiß (4%, brewed on site) made my nose wrinkle and, upon tasting it, elicited a hearty "Nope!" My companion said it was "Nice. Light. The tangy finish is sorta there. Very drinkable." The Forever Ever hazy IPA (4.7%) had fruit notes that took a moment to build, with a nice balance of hops and a long finish. She: "I actually like it. More lactose than honey, soft finish." Our last one, the Simple Toast New Zealand IPA (6.8%) got the same reaction from both of us: "I did not like this" was all my friend said. I didn't either, as it had dank notes that don't work for me and a bit too much in the hop department.

Bridgeport has a lot of character, and would be worth exploring on its own. Stopping at Remova for a beer and a burger wouldn't be the worst end to the day.

Beer garden? No
Dogs OK? No
Televisions? Avoidable
Serves food? Full menu
Would hang out with a book? Maybe
Would hang out with friends? Maybe
Would go back? Yes

The temperature at Inner Drive Technology WHQ just hit 17.5°C, which it hasn't hit since 5:54pm on November 5th. That's almost 125 days, quite a while to go without wearing a jacket outside.

Unfortunately, spring weather isn't the only thing in the news today:

• Philip Bump asks, how low can the OAFPOTUS's approval rating actually go?
• Paul Krugman decries our current "government by QAnon."
• Radley Balko lays out three things Democrats can do right now.
• Ezra Klein uses the example of California's high-speed rail failure to argue for a politics of abundance, not scarcity.
• Malware infecting WordPress sites installs four back doors, all of which should be closed immediately.

Finally, Metra is seeking public input on a plan to rename the heavy-rail lines around Chicago. Right now, each line has an historic name and a different color. The favored proposal would be to give each line a letter signifying the direction from downtown, plus a number. For example, the Union Pacific North line that goes by my house would be renamed N1. And all the lines departing from a single downtown station would get the same color (green in the case of the three UP lines). I think this is a good proposal, and would bring Chicago in line with international cities like Berlin and Paris.

Welcome to stop #121 on the Brews and Choos project.

Brewery: Marz Community Brewing, 3630 S. Iron St., Chicago
4 (of 5) stars
Train line: CTA Orange Line, Ashland
Time from Chicago: 11 minutes
Distance from station: 1.7 km

Continuing Friday's epic Brews & Choos adventure, my buddy and I decided to Lyft the 2.7 kilometers from Alulu, because (a) McKinley Park and the Lower West Side on either side of the Sanitary and Ship Canal aren't very pretty, and (b) it hadn't completely stopped raining. Even though Marz is a Brews & Choos eligible distance from the CTA, you will not enjoy walking down Ashland, 35th, and Iron Street to get there.

Marz is one of only two breweries on the Southwest Side between the river and 95th west of the Dan Ryan. It's by far the largest section of the city with no breweries. So Marz has quite a following and quite a good beer list—plus some other non-alcoholic beverages that will knock you on your ass.

Again, to ensure the longevity of the day's exploration, we limited ourselves to two 150-mL pours each. I started with the Synthesizer Showroom West Coast IPA (7%), a good, clean, uncomplicated hazy with a lovely hop balance. She started with the BFF Beer hibiscus pale (6%), which had a very light essence and a hoppiness we both liked. That said: we once again preferred our own choices. Next she tried the Jungle Boogie pale wheat ale with rooibos tea (5.5%), which I found too hoppy and then too fruity. She: "I like the full palette. The fruitiness blends well with the pale aleness."

Instead of beer, though, I finished with a can of their Wild Berries seltzer (3 mg THC/3 mg CBD). It comes with warning labels. It was delightful: very light berry flavor, very crisp, not sweet at all, and about an hour after drinking it, very relaxing indeed. Marz puts up to 25 mg of THC into some of their seltzers, so as tasty as the Cherry Sublime looked on paper, we had to say no. (I mean, maybe if we split the can 3 ways it might work. Hmmm...) In fact, we had originally planned to finish the day at Marz for just that reason, but not wanting to waste our entire Saturdays argued against it.

Beer garden? Yes
Dogs OK? Outside only
Televisions? One, avoidable
Serves food? Full menu
Would hang out with a book? Yes
Would hang out with friends? Yes
Would go back? Yes

Welcome to stop #120 on the Brews and Choos project.

Brewery: Alulu Brewery & Pub, 2011 S. Laflin St., Chicago
4 (of 5) stars
Train line: CTA Pink Line, 18th St
Time from Chicago: 16 minutes
Distance from station: 500 m

I visited Alulu once before, during the pandemic winter four years ago, and sat outside in a heated yurt. I didn't think reviewing the place under those conditions would be fair. It took until last Friday to get back there, despite the gross weather, as part of a Southwest Side tour that started with Monochrome and ended with Duneyrr.

My Brews & Choos buddy and I really needed to spend more time there, as they have a lot of interesting items on the menu. We just had a mountain of light, airy, really caloric cheese curds to go with our one 400 mL beer each. I got the Gho Gho Tzu hazy IPA (6.5%), which had a nice hoppy note and lots of flavor. (She: "It has that sweet note in hazies that I don't like, but up front, not as an aftertaste, so it works." High praise from her for a hazy!) My companion had the Monocot Sove cold IPA (7%, 70 IBU), which she found "very clean, but not interesting or complex. Still tasty." I thought it had a crispness but an odd note, possibly from the rice, and a long finish. I think we'd both order our own choices again but not the other person's.

My friend also wanted to try the Vin Thorr Oenobeer (6.5%, 20 IBU), a "mixed-fermentation saison with sauvignon blanc grapes, Nelson sauvin hops." Whoo, boy, I did not like that one. I thought it smelled like pot and tasted like wine that had gone off. My buddy had a complex reaction, to say the least. First came the faces. Then: "Hm." A beat, more faces. "I can't tell if I like it or not... I definitely taste the sauvignon blanc; it's tangy. I guess I do like it. It's light and effervescent. I'd drink this again." I would not, my friend. I would not.

In place of heated yurts, they now have ample outdoor seating, which would be a good place to park on a summer afternoon. We're glad we went there. Next time, though, we'll approach it from the 18th Street El and not the industrial despair down 21st St.

Beer garden? Yes
Dogs OK? Outside only
Televisions? None
Serves food? Full menu
Would hang out with a book? Yes
Would hang out with friends? Yes
Would go back? Yes

Welcome to stop #119 on the Brews and Choos project.

Brewery: Monochrome Brewing, 2101 S. Carpenter St., Chicago
4 (of 5) stars
Train line: CTA Orange Line, Halsted
Time from Chicago: 10 minutes
Distance from station: 900 m

I'm sorry I never got to Lo Rez Brewing, which closed just a year ago. But I am glad my Brews & Choos buddy and I got to the space yesterday. Despite its industrial-belt location in the Lower West Side a long walk from the Pilsen Historic District, it felt comfortable and inviting inside, and had pretty good beer.

We tried four 175-mL samples. I started with the Pilsen Pils (5.2%), a very flavorful and hoppy (for a Pils) beer we would both drink outside in the summer. The Ochre New England Pale (5.8%) topped my list, with the Citra hops giving it just enough fruit. My companion said it didn't have "the sweet aftertaste of other hazies," high praise from someone who hates said aftertaste. The Quazi New Zealand Pilsner (5%) had a crispness and a long finish we both enjoyed, and would also make for easy summer sipping. Then my friend tried the Piñapple Swirl "piñapple milkshake IPA" (8%) that I did not like. She said: "Interesting. I don't think I'll order it again; six ounces is enough. Goes down smoothly, if you're into that sort of thing." (Cue Benny Hill's eyebrows.)

In short, it was worth the trip, despite the wintry mix and barely-above-freezing temperatures that makes a trip into the manufacturing district that much more dystopian. I mean, here's the forecast for the next three days; why couldn't we have gotten this yesterday?

Beer garden? Yes
Dogs OK? Encouraged
Televisions? None
Serves food? BYOF
Would hang out with a book? Yes
Would hang out with friends? Yes
Would go back? Yes

Yesterday was the 5th anniversary of the Brews & Choos Project's high-water mark before the pandemic. On 7 March 2020, I went farther than I'd ever gone before in search of breweries to add to the list, visiting Penrose and Stockholm's in Geneva, then More and Lunar in Villa Park on the way back. A few days later the world stopped for a while. It would be almost three months before I visited another brewery.

Yesterday, I took a half-day of PTO, braved some crappy early-spring weather, and met up with my Brews & Choos buddy at a relatively new place in the Pilsen neighborhood of Chicago. We managed to visit five South Side breweries, and—here's the science part—consumed no more than 3 pints of beer over 5 hours. It was a marathon, not a sprint, after all.

In any event, I've got a lot of photos to go through and a lot of reviews to write, so look for them to come out over the next few days.

And hey, if you want to see more Brews & Choos reviews, contribute to The Daily Parker! Your $5 contribution keeps the site running for a day—or buys a tasing-size beer.

Another reason to contribute: I've started re-developing The Daily Parker's code from scratch. I changed direction slightly on an existing project to make it a blog on steroids, and I think it'll be super-cool when complete. So how about throwing in another $5 a month to support that, too?

I want to start with a speech on the floor of the French Senate three days ago, in which Claude Malhuret (LIRT-Allier) had this to say about the OAFPOTUS:

Washington has become the court of Nero, an incendiary emperor, submissive courtiers, and a jester high on ketamine in charge of purging the civil service.

This is a tragedy for the free world, but it is first and foremost a tragedy for the United States. Trump’s message is that there is no point in being his ally since he will not defend you, he will impose higher tariffs on you than on his enemies and will threaten to seize your territories while supporting the dictatorships that invade you.

I have faith in the strength of American democracy, and the country is already protesting. But in one month, Trump has done more harm to America than in four years of his last presidency. We were at war with a dictator, now we are fighting a dictator backed by a traitor.

Malheureusement, il a bien raison. And his speech is worth reading (or hearing, si vous parlez français bien).

But that isn't all that happened in the last day or so. No, every day brings new revelations of stupidity and corruption in the new administration:

• James Fallows listened to the OAFPOTUS's address to Congress on Tuesday so you didn't have to, and found it...disturbing.
• The Clown Prince of X appears to have pressured the FAA into issuing a license for yesterday's launch of a SpaceX rocket that exploded just two weeks after another SpaceX rocket exploded. (You may call Musk a thuper-geniuth!)
• ProPublica does the math to demonstrate how the cuts the clowns have proposed at the Internal Revenue Service will actually cost more than they will save—forgetting for a moment that the point of those cuts is to make tax cheating less likely to get caught.
• Oh, and the clowns have illegally disbanded the committee that keeps your food safe from microbes.
• The Army Corps of Engineers admitted that the rushed release of water from Northern California reservoirs shortly after the OAFPOTUS took office simply wasted it, as everyone who can look at a map already guessed.
• The jobs report that the Bureau of Labor Statistics released today only encompassed data from the first three weeks of the administration, before they started illegally firing civil servants.

And now I will take a half-day of PTO and explore four new breweries in Bridgeport and Pilsen. If only the weather had cooperated.