Friend and Oakland resident Eric Smillie has a nice writeup in the New York Times regarding craft beer tastings:
http://travel.nytimes.com/2010/05/30/travel/30headsup.html
Mentions Oakland’s Beer Revolution and SF’s City Beer Store.
oakland
from the archives: ritual bike cart
a friend sent me this new york times post about kickstand, who have a mobile, bike-transported iced coffee and single-serve drip setup.
I’ve only seen the ritual bike in the bay area:
This guy was selling iced coffee at sunday streets in the mission last july.
and these two were selling ritual coffee at oakland’s wonderful eat real festival last august.
bike to work day 2010
update (05.17.10)
video added (view in HD if you can)
today was bike to work day. here are some shots from the bike away from work afterparty put on by the east bay bike coalition:
all photos shot with the panasonic gf1 and the 20mm f/1.7 lens
oakland panoramas
I used the excellent hugin to stitch together a few panoramas of Oakland, looking east and west. I tried the automate/photomerge option in photoshop CS2 but wasn’t satisfied with the results. photoshop was much faster. hugin can be pretty fast once you get the hang of clicking on the control points.
Oakland, looking west:
Click on the image for a larger version.
Oakland, looking east:
Once again, click on the image for a larger version. I took the photos with the GF1 and the 20mm f/1.7 lens.
brush-clearing goats along tunnel road
seeing a hillside crowded with goats was an unexpected part of yesterday’s bike ride. I didn’t realize until it was pointed out to me later that they were being used to remove grass and weeds for fire control purposes.
you can see a clear line between chomped and unchomped areas. wow!
apparently there can be problems with the goats being too effective – they can cause soil erosion and can decimate the population of native plants if the goats are uncontrolled.
Other interesting things I found while searching the interwebs:
these people rent out goats for clearing brush: http://www.goatsrus.com/
the ups and downs of using goats to control fires: http://www.emagazine.com/view/?4663
…
after this, we continued up tunnel road and made a quick descent down claremont ave:
kfc doubledown
we decided to try the kfc doubledown today.
We went to the KFC on 45th and San Pablo in Oakland:
We ordered our sandwiches and inspected them. Mine didn’t look as “disgusting” to me as some reviewers (also check out a little side story here) have described:
but it didn’t look too good either. It tasted super salty, and the flavoring on the chicken totally overwhelmed everything else in the “sandwich” (rox informs me that according to MW, it’s not a sandwich, but a “sandwich” because there is no bread to be found). you could make out a little bit of the cheese via texture and if you tried, you could taste the “colonel’s sauce”. It didn’t taste horrible though. The bacon probably wasn’t necessary – I could hardly tell it was there. I was scared that I’d get sick. but I didn’t.
My friend Israel didn’t have much to say. He just shook his head.
We also got 2 biscuits for 99 cents. Israel got honey and butter to put on the biscuits, but it was actually “buttery spread” and “honey sauce”. 11% real honey!
I saw these three guys walk in.
(note: Israel made the astute observation that their menu is basically only combos – no individual sandwiches. Perhaps the margins are just that much higher on the combo meals?)
They were definitely getting double downs – you could tell by their pants and their fixed gear bikes.
and they did. I can’t blame them though because they were there for the same reason that we were.
daylight savings
Daylight savings means more time to do stuff outside after work:
and the warmer weather means nicer rides on the weekends:
grizzly peak road. watch out for potholes on the way down.
actual cafe grand opening
Actual cafe, a bike-themed coffee shop in Oakland had their grand opening party last night. There was a great turnout, fun music and good people. Here are some photos from the event.