summer’s gone, but I still have photos to share. here’s a watermelon from an eating about beer rehearsal dinner.
summer’s gone
iso50
Fort Bragg
Eat Real Fest 2010 Part 1
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, starting with a lump of dough.
pretzel-like:
In a short amount of time he went from what appeared to be a few strands of dough to hundreds of noodles:
I was able to get an aerial view of part of Jack London Square. Super-crowded. It’s an interesting contrast compared to how empty it normally seems.
This is Dave the Butcher participating in the live pig butchery competition against Dan the butcher from Jim & Nick’s BBQ . Apparently he liked the photo enough to tweet/facebook update about it: http://twitter.com/davethebutcher/status/22709779717
Cool. More photos of the butchery competition to come in the next post.
temescal street fair 2010
Today was the 7th annual Temescal street fair along Telegraph ave in Oakland between 45th and 51st avenues.
Berta Olivia y su mariachi performed an impressive set near 51st ave:
there was a train (with a horn) for the kiddies:
oakland recycles and composts:
I couldn’t resist stopping by the East Bay Depot for Creative Reuse. I’d sadly never been in there. There is so much awesome junk just begging to reused (or “upcycled” if you will):
awesome drawers of markers and pencils with scribble marks everywhere (of course!)
Raciel and Tara (and sorry, I don’t know your name) from Tara’s Organic Ice Cream at their tent:
Bartender at Barlata:
bike and coffee shops in new york (part 4)
This is part 4 of the bike and coffee tour.
(part 1 of the tour and part 2 and part 3)
Abraco (86 East 7th Street New York) is a small space with a strong smell of coffee and a distinctive neon sign that is featured prominently as their logo on their website. The beans are from counter culture, and the guy apparently has Bay Area roots and had previous experience at blue bottle. For more information, there’s a good writeup in New York magazine.
Abraco’s website pushes some delicious looking pastries, but I only ended up getting an espresso:
The espresso, a ristretto, had a very “traditional” taste to me.
As claimed, the place was tiny and crowded. Nothing wrong with that.
Sam and I continued walking in the east village, headed towards brooklyn but in search of food.
We stopped by Dumpling Man for a snack:
I only ended up with a shot of the bathroom. “Please be good”
We took a little stroll through Tompkins Square Park and then came across Busy Bee Bikes (437 East 6th Street, New York, NY)
Nothing too crazy here. You can see a pretty big used part selection behind the glass on the right and a pretty bright paint job outside where some of the people from the shop were working on repairs.
Our next stop was Bike Works (106 Ridge Street, New York), just on the manhattan side of the Williamsburg bridge. they had a decent selection of cycling caps here, so I picked a couple up as souvenirs.
Also in front of Bike works:
The city was painting new bike lanes on Rivington St as we approached the Williamsburg bridge. Fresh green paint!
Williamsburg bridge photos:
Heavily covered with graffiti good and bad:
aand plenty crowded with cyclists and pedestrians. It was cool to see the variety of styles. There were old beater bikes, fixies with chopped bars, cheapo mountain bikes and nice road bikes.
We took a break to sit down and rest our legs in Williamsburg. There was some group ride going on that looked more instructional than anything else:
we started walking in the general direction of park slope, feet and legs starting to get tired. I happened to spot Bicycle Station (171 Park Avenue, Brooklyn, NY). I went in for a bit. The shop seemed small, and relatively sparse possibly due to the fact that they had moved to this location not too long ago. A family came in with a bunch of bikes needing attention and they were starting the repair as I left.
I stopped into La Bagel Delight for some food and then took a quick peek into Bespoke Bicycles (64-B Lafayette Avenue, Brooklyn) before meeting Sam for a beer at Mullanes across the street. It was well-lit with some beautiful signage.
replenished and rested, we continued towards park slope.
Saw this on Atlantic Ave:
worst prizes ever. but cool tape job.
This little amendment to the BNE sticker took some planning. I got a kick out of it:
we had some time to spare before meeting up with Sam’s friend for dinner, so naturally we walked up and down 5th and 7th avenues.
Stopped into R&A Cycles (105 5th Avenue Brooklyn) for a second:
R&A has a big shop with many fancy road/tri/whatever bikes.
passed by Dixon’s (792 Union Street Brooklyn), so I stepped in for a second too:
Dixon’s is also a pretty large shop but their focus seemed to be used bikes and repairs:
We walked on to Tea Lounge (837 Union Street Brooklyn) where I didn’t get more coffee because I was already 2 espressos in for the day. Instead, we sat on a comfy couch and rested.
I tried making a google map of all of the places visited but am having a hard time embedding that onto this site. So, here’s a list of places that I visited (thanks again to Brooklyn by Bike and the New York Times Interactive Coffee Map! and the people who helped me along the way)
- recycleabicycle
- cafe grumpy
- b’s bike shop
- king kog
- blue bottle coffee
- oslo coffee
- nycbikes
- gimme! coffee
- affinity cycles
- velo brooklyn (bushwick bike shop)
- lit fuse cyclery
- recycleabicycle
- stumptown roasters
- conrad’s bike shop
- abraco
- busy bee bikes
- bike works
- bicycle station
- bespoke bicycles
- dixon’s bike shop
- tea lounge
bike and coffee shops in new york (part 3)
This is part 3 of the bike and coffee tour.
(part 1 of the tour and part 2)
my time for the rental was running out and I was meeting friends at pacifico for dinner. I left lit fuse and rode through downtown brooklyn to get back to recycle a bicycle.
chris at recycleabicycle invited me in to take more pictures.
I took the subway back to my sister’s place in manhattan. It was kind of sad to leave the cruiser behind.
I caught this before the end of the night:
your brake levers overlap! but I suppose it’s good to at least have brakes.
I had to work the next day but continued the bike shop and coffee tour the day after that, on foot with my friend sam.
first stop: stumptown.
I was really impressed with stumptown (18 West 27th Street New York, NY). It’s a really well done little spot attached to the swank ace hotel.
the line was about 8-10 deep, which was a bit long but manageable.
there was lots of fun stuff, coffee and not coffee related on the walls.
stumptown’s espresso was my favorite of the tour by far.
saw this guy parked outside stumptown:
has anyone ridden a no-nose saddle before?
next stop: conrad’s in tudor city.
conrad’s bike shop (25 Tudor City Place New York, NY) looked like they got pretty serious with the bike fitting:
there was a decent selection of apparel and accessories as well as many fancy bikes on the floor.
sam and I walked down to the east village next, to hit abraco.
this guy had a good look:
and this note, hilarious:
“Don’t come crying when we cut your chain and remove your bicycle from the fence! THAT’S A BIG SIGN!”
one more to go. part 4 comes next.
ritual coffee at maker faire 2010
here’s the coffee counter from the ritual trailer (‘sputnik’) at this year’s maker faire:
here it was last year at the eat real festival in oakland:
we got a flight of espresso. $7 got you a shot of each of these costa rican coffees:
- five candles seasonal blend
- el alto, grace calderon jimenez
- los chachones, arturo chacon
the five candles was my favorite. I’m not big on tasting notes, but it tasted buttery.
I wasn’t very diligent with the pictures, so I present here 2/3 of a flight:
and of course the bike cart (photos here as well) was there:
bike and coffee shops in new york (part 2)
(part 1 of the tour is here)
This is part 2 of my brooklyn bike and coffee tour.
My next stop after Blue Bottle was Oslo coffee (133 Roebling St, Brooklyn).
I took some shots along the way:
I couldn’t handle much more caffeine by the time I got to Oslo, so I skipped another espresso and had a cookie instead.
I told Eddie about the bike and coffee tour idea and he recommended a few places to check out in Manhattan. I was surprised that it was empty there, but I think it was mid-afternoon at this point, which isn’t exactly a prime coffee hour.
I visited NYCbikes (spokes and strings? 140 Havemeyer St. Brooklyn, NY) next.
I continued rolling around Williamsburg to Gimme! Coffee (495 Lorimer St, Brooklyn, NY)
It was pretty packed in here with quite a few people working on their laptops and it looked like some of the after-work crowd was coming in for a buzz. Friendly baristas.
I didn’t remember to take a picture of the espresso shot until I was almost done:
affinity cycles (616 Grand Street Brooklyn, NY) was right around the corner.
The guys in the shop were pretty busy with repairs and they were doing some renovations to the interior:
onward. Grand St. was being resurfaced but the fatty cruiser tires didn’t really care.
I rode down to velo brooklyn (bushwick bike shop). (342 Dekalb Avenue, Brooklyn, NY) This shop wasn’t part of my originally-scheduled tour, but I happened to be riding by, so…
super-friendly and laid back people here. One guy recommeded that I check out the biker cafe, boneshakers – but alas, I didn’t have time this trip. maybe next time. I browsed through their cycling cap selection and was surprised to see that they carried hats by local lady alloneword. She had graciously donated caps to my girlfriend and friends who are doing AIDS lifecycle this year.
I headed towards Lit fuse cyclery (409 Willoughby Avenue, Brooklyn, NY) next.
I was taking interior shots at every shop, but I had to get one from this angle because I have a soft spot for kleins. this Klein Rascal had the mission control integrated handlebars. (Side note: I’m happy someone put together www.oldklein.com – the official klein page is just a product registration form. boo trek.)
that’s a lot of photos. next post is the ride back to recycle a bicycle to return the bike.
bike and coffee shops in new york (part 1)
I was in New York for work a couple of weeks ago and decided to take some time off to wander in the city. I embarked on a self-guided tour of bike shops and coffee shops in brooklyn and manhattan (with the much-appreciated help of Anita from Brooklyn by Bike who led me to the New York Times Interactive Coffee Map) and took a bunch of pictures. whenever possible, images were shot at ISO 50 and wide open, just because.
I asked about bike rentals and bikesnobnyc was kind enough to suggest that I check out recycle a bicycle. I went to their DUMBO location (Recycle A Bicycle, 35 Pearl St, Brooklyn) They had only two bikes available and this is the one I got:
Chris from the shop hooked me up with the free official NYC cycling map.
I took a few pictures outside:
and along the way. It felt weird trying to balance on this bike – it had a coaster brake and I wasn’t used to the way-upright handlebars. Riding the cruiser kind of made the ride more enjoyable, though, because it allowed me to just kick back at a slower pace and enjoy the ride.
and then pedaled towards Cafe Grumpy in Greenpoint.
the weather was ridiculously beautiful.
the espresso at Cafe Grumpy (193 Meserole Avenue, Brooklyn, NY) was good and the people very friendly.
Cafe Grumpy was larger than I expected. It was relatively crowded with people working on their laptops and they had a beautiful bathroom window:
I headed towards B’s bike shop (262 Driggs Avenue, Brooklyn, NY) next in Williamsburg.
took a picture along the way:
B’s Bikes was a crowded little shop that seemed to be getting a lot of business. I told the people inside about my plans for the day and they happily mentioned a few neat bike shops in Manhattan to check out.
I rode the cruiser down to King Kog (455 Graham Avenue, Brooklyn, NY) next:
There was definitely a different vibe here with more bike-lifestyle items on the shelves including a hilarious “One Less Messenger” t-shirt.
Next stop: Blue Bottle (160 Berry Street, Brooklyn, NY). I live in Oakland, CA, and wanted to see what Blue Bottle was doing on the East Coast:
I was really impressed by the size of their space. The natural light was great. They roast in the back. I’ve been to their kiosk in Hayes Valley in SF, the Cafe at Mint Plaza, their Ferry Building location, their old roastery in Emeryville and their farmers market in Temescal. This space was absolutely huge in comparison.
There were quite a few people hanging outside too, enjoying the coffee and the weather:
Part 2 to come.