Eat Real Festival 2010 was amazing.  Jack London Square was beautiful.  Oakland is beautiful.

Here are the photos:

Food Vendors and the Marketplace

Sometime Emeryville vendors Primo’s Parilla showed up with their meats and grill.  They’d recently run into some sort of permit issue with Emeryville regarding the grill but that wasn’t a problem at Eat Real.

Folks from Boccalone (“Tasty Salted Pig Parts”) had a small stand:

Toussant from Besto Pesto providing samples of his pesto with super-delicious organic rigatoni pasta from the pasta shop

Rachel and her crew from Blue Chair Fruit selling some wonderful jams (including black fig, strawberry-pink peppercorn, and spiced burbon-tomato)

This guy was getting ready to make a watermelon salad in the Marketplace area:

A sale at Marshall’s farm natural honey:

The Taco Guys had a sweet paint job on their truck.

Chinese Noodle Pulling

In short, the Chinese noodle pulling demonstration was amazing.  At first, being unfamiliar with the art, I was almost bored – this guy is just kneading dough.  But then, he started doing some twists and stretching..

Chef Gordon from Ark restaurant in Alameda, CA gets to work:

Amazing. The guy was incredibly fast. One second there was a lump of dough, the next second, hundreds of noodles.

Aerial view of part of Jack London Square. Crowded.

Dave the Butcher. Butching. Has a website – will link later.

Gueuze and Kreik sitting on a barrel at Cantillon (or Brasserie Cantillon Brouwerij if you want to be specific) in Brussels:

I didn’t have time to take a tour this time, but it was a nice little stopover.

I went to the Oakland Convention Center to check out the 31st international world footbag championships put on with the help of local footbag (aka hackey sack) crew chaos footbag.  I got there just as the women’s doubles finals were finishing up.   Julie Symons and Jody Welch won the title after a spirited match.

The actual setup was pretty interesting to me.  A bunch of different footbag courts with hard puzzle-piece flooring and all were set up for competition on one side, while some plastic turf was set up on the other side of the rented space for freestyle purposes.  Bleachers were set up around the main court and the convention center’s own lone caterer (no BYOB allowed, apparently) served beers and wine to those looking for a little buzz.

Some of the open doubles finalists warmed up while other people juggled and performed some freestyle footbag routines in between the women’s doubles and open doubles finals.

One of the eventual champions, Florian Goetze from Germany sets up for a spike:

Florian spikes once again:

The spikes are pretty incredible.  It’s a 5-foot tall net, and it looks pretty tough to be able to have the flexibility, coordination, and the vertical to be able to kick the bag downwards.

The competition got started a little late, but was worth the wait.  Florian Goetze and Patrick Schrikel were in black, competing against Gilles Demers and Francois Pelletier from Canada.  I hadn’t watched much footbag prior to watching this event, but seeing the guys attempt to block was pretty incredible.

Seriously.  Look at this dude’s face:

And that dude’s.   Acrobatic.

The finals were played to 15 points with sideout scoring per game.  The match was decided by the first team to win two games.  I had expected a 45 minute match or so but the competition was fierce and both teams stayed close throughout.

and the blocks:

I love looking at the expressions of the people sitting in the crowd in this photo:

In the end, the match lasted almost two and a half hours.  The highlight for me was when, while in midair,  one of the Canadians realized he couldn’t kick the bag with his intended foot.  He was able to move that foot out of the way and switch feet to kick the bag over the net.  Like a double-pump in basketball.

Bica Coffehouse (5701 College Ave, Oakland)  just opened today across the street from Rockridge BART.  It replaces Cafe Lyon, which closed last May.  I had an espresso made with coffee from De La Paz’s 14th St. Espresso blend.  It was nice and brewed well on their La Marzocco Linea.  A bit bright, citrusy and a little sweet.

(Pardon the less-nice iphone photos)

de la paz 14th st espresso via bica coffeehouse

They plan on rotating their coffees between Flying Goat, Ritual, De La Paz, Verve and Barefoot about every 2 weeks.  In addition to coffee, they also offer teas and a few different types of pastries from Bisbane Bakery.

saw this on the way home:

I heart zombies

“I heart zombies”

Cafe Gabriela (988 Broadway Oakland, CA) is located downtown right off of Broadway.  The California Bar exam was being administered the day that I went and I got in just before a rush of test-takers came in for a break.

The Blue Bottle espresso was pretty good, but didn’t have the same combination of flavors that I’ve come to expect.  I feel that I’m terrible at describing nuances and undertones in coffee flavor, but here I tasted a buttery ristretto with a bit of tang, a prevailing smoky flavor with a bit of marshmallow.  I didn’t enjoy the coffee as much as the shots that come from the blue bottle people themselves.

blue bottle espresso at cafe gabriela

I also purchased a pork adobo sandwich which was predictably salty and pretty good.  They’d originally given away my sandwich by mistake – I think one of the bar takers picked up my sandwich instead of waiting for their own.

pork adobo sandwich at cafe gabriela

nuovo point demitasse double ristretto

Went to the 2010 Best of the East Bay party at Jack London Square put on by the East Bay Express on Saturday. There was a good mix if people, food, art, merchandise and music. Here are some photos.  Good times.

I watched the skateboarders for a bit.  This is Lem:

Lem in the air

Ferry terminal, Jack London Square:

ferry

Lead singer for Everything Must Go!  Wild set.

"everything must go!"

Gift of Gab and Lateef the Truth Speaker + Headnodic from the Crown City Rockers = The Mighty Underdogs.  They put on a damn fine show.  Gift of Gab shredding the mic:

gift of gab

Lateef the Truth speaker:

lateef

Freestyle:

lateef and gab

lateef: freeze!

freeze