Jacob Grier

I’m in the Detroit Free Press today making the case against Michigan’s proposed statewide smoking ban.

Previous smoking ban writing available here.

It’s not uncommon for business owners to look for creative ways to get around smoking bans. Remember Minnesota’s theater nights? What is unusual is a judge advising an offender on how to find a loophole:

That’s what put [bar owner Frank] Schnarrs in court last Friday. Thurston County said he was breaking the state law which bars smoking in public places. But judge Richard Hicks surprised everyone by suggesting there was a way to get around the smoking ban.

“Maybe if you had a membership, private club, and charged something more than the cost of food and drink to be a member, you could get around it that way,” Hicks said from the bench.

So Frankie’s second floor bar turned private with a yearly membership fee.

It’s unclear yet if the plan will work and Schnarrs faces jail time if it doesn’t. Here’s hoping he pulls it off.

[Via Cigar Jack.]

Great news for DC coffee lovers: the former Eastern Market location of Murky Coffee is going to be filled by Ryan Jensen, former Murky manager and the current DC representative for Counter Culture. Ryan and his wife Jill plan to open Peregrine Espresso there this summer. They’re a wonderfully nice couple with a deep love for coffee, so this is sure to be an excellent addition to the neighborhood.

In other DC coffee news, Baked and Wired has shut down the Buzz Zap Graphics portion of its business to make room for more cafe seating. Also, Grape and Bean, my current shop, got a nice write-up at the Washingtonian blog.

[Story via Metrocurean.]

The good news: Pennsylvania’s legislature ground to a halt today in their attempts to pass a statewide smoking ban.

The bad news: It failed because it wasn’t strict enough and would have taken precedent over the more restrictive ban already in effect in Philadelphia.

I don’t have a clear opinion on whether these kinds of laws should be passed locally or on a state level, but I am very glad to be living in a Virginia, a state that actually bans smoking bans.

Previously:
Your Grand Old Party…

I’m a bit late on this, but it’s now online here.

Today’s Mixology Monday is all about rum, a spirit of which I know virtually nothing. Sure, I use it in an occasional Mojito, Cuba Libre, or Dark and Stormy, but I haven’t experimented with many different bottlings or with more adventurous flavor combinations. For this MxMo, then, I didn’t strive for anything original.

Instead I turned to The Art of the Bar, the fantastically inventive cocktail book from Absinthe Brasserie and Bar’s Jeff Hollinger and Rob Schwartz, and source of one of my favorite recipes of late: the Sangre de Fresca.

The Sangre de Fresca features cachaca. Some might say this doesn’t count as a rum, but it is distilled from sugar cane and rum has always played fast and loose with its definitions. I’m mixing with Leblon, which actually calls itself a Brazilian rum and is barrel aged, so I’m going to go with it. For the sticklers in the audience, I’ll shake one up with rum, too. It’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make; I drink to make you happy. Here’s the recipe:

2 hulled strawberries
4-5 basil leaves
.5 oz balsamic syrup*
1.5 oz cachaca
.25 oz Cointreau
.25 oz lime juice
soda water

Muddle the berries, syrup, and leaves. Add the spirits and lime juice and shake with ice, then strain over rocks and top with soda. This makes a nicely refreshing drink. The ripe, fruity smell of the cachaca pairs really well with the balsamic syrup, and of course strawberries and balsamic vinegar is a winning combination.

To tie this more perfectly to the rum theme, I’ve also tried this a few times with Rhum Barbancourt, a Haitian rum aged for four years, in place of the cachaca. This makes for a smoother drink, but the more powerful cachaca stands up better to the other strong flavors at play; the Brazilian spirit’s the way to go here.

To follow the rest of this month’s MxMo’s entrants, check in with Trader Tiki for the recap. And for an informative article on rum, see Paul Clarke’s recent piece in The San Francisco Chronicle.

*For the syrup, dissolve 1.5 cups of sugar into half a cup of water in a saucepan over medium heat. Stir until the water dissolves and the sugar caramelizes to an amber color. In a separate pan, simmer 1.5 cups of balsamic vinegar. Then take both off the heat and carefully add the vinegar to the caramelized sugar. Be careful, it will spatter messily. Heat the mix a few minutes longer until it thickens, cool it an ice bath (it retains heat very well), bottle, and store in the refrigerator. It’s a nice thing to have around and lasts a long time.

Update 5/13/08: Trader Tiki’s got your wrap-up right here.

About halfway through my commute this morning I realized that I’d left my fresh bag of Counter Culture’s Kuta coffee sitting in my kitchen. I was tempted to turn back, but not wanting to be too late for work and knowing that Starbucks’ new Pike Place Blend is at least drinkable, I decided to be a good employee and pick up coffee at the Evil Empire instead.

Normally when I go to a Starbucks I’ll only get brewed coffee, since the bags of beans aren’t marked with a roast date and there’s no telling how old they are. But waiting in line today I saw that they had half-pound bags of Pike Place for sale, and with a roast date hand-written right on the package. “Freshly roasted on: 5-12-08,” it said.

“Wow, that’s fresh,” I thought. “Way to go, Starbucks.” But wait a second. Isn’t today the 12th? I’m no roasting expert, but I really doubt these beans were roasted in the middle of the night, cooled, packaged without resting, delivered to a store in DC, and placed out for sale by 9:30 am.

So what’s going on here? Isolated mistake or pervasive skullduggery? Anyone else notice impossible roasting dates on Starbucks coffee?

[Thanks to Caleb for photographing with his pricey Apple impulse purchase.]

Update 5/13/08: Former barista Baylen says in the comments: “The date on the bag is the date they scoop the beans in the store, not the roast date. Not sure why it says roast, but it’s disingenuous.”

Second update: Mystery definitively solved. Thanks, StarbucksGossip. The label applied to my bag was made for the 5 lbs. bags. The smaller bags are supposed to have “scooped on” labels instead. I’m glad to know this was an innocent mistake, but as Jim points out, who the hell cares when a coffee was scooped? If they have the roast date available, they should just put that on the label.

Jared Allen played defensive end for the Kansas City Chiefs. While in KC, he opened Jared Allen’s Sports Arena and Grill. A few weeks ago he was traded to the Minnesota Vikings, leaving KC with draft picks and Allen’s restaurant. I’m pretty sure Minnesota got the better deal.

Previously: Eli Manning: Leet skillz

Here’s a story that combines anti-smoking nannies with overly zealous zoning enforcers in Eugene, OR, a town that up until now I had only good thoughts about:

The city of Eugene has fined the Horsehead bar $12,960 dollars for a row of arborvitae in the bar’s outdoor smoking area. The city’s smoking ordinance mandates that at least 75 percent of a smoking area be open to outdoor air, and, according to the city planning commission, that row of plants constituted a wall, violating the ordinance.

The owners of the Horsehead are understandably pissed, especially since they already spent $10,000 tearing down the old fence that used to enclose the area in an attempt to conform to the 2005 smoking ordinance. The new row of arborvitae was supposed to allow air to circulate and give patrons privacy from downtown Eugene’s omnipresent street kids and hobos.

That’s from the Oregon Commentator; the Register-Guard has the rest of the story. Though the bar owner knew he faced a potential fine from the council, he deserves credit for bringing attention to these increasingly stupid laws.

How’s a guy supposed to have fun in this city? Last year I posted a video shot by Frank Winstead, obsessively nit-picky Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner, of an allegedly dangerous outdoor ping-pong table at Comet Pizza in northwest DC. Winstead was widely mocked at the time, but this being DC, he eventually got his way. Marc Fisher reports that the scourge of outdoor ping-pong has now been forcibly eliminated.

I finally paid a visit to Comet earlier this winter. It’s a charming place and serves up a very tasty pie. It’s sad that there are people like Winstead using the levers of the state to harass a business that adds so much life to the neighborhood.

[Via DCist.]

This story of a Florida substitute teacher being fired for practicing “wizardry” is just bizarre:

The telephone call that spelled the end of Jim Piculas’ career as a substitute teacher in Pasco came on a January day about a week after he performed the disappearing-toothpick trick for a group of rapt middle school students.

Pat Sinclair, who oversees substitute teachers in the Pasco County School District, was on the phone. She told Piculas there had been a complaint about his performance at Rushe Middle School in Land O’ Lakes.

He asked what she meant.

“She said, ‘You’ve been accused of wizardry,’ ” Piculas said…

The school district puts a somewhat different spin on the disappearing-toothpick incident.

Performing a magic trick at Rushe Middle is just one of the reasons the school district gives for dumping Piculas from the substitute-teacher list. The others are: Piculas did not follow the lesson plans, he allowed students on computers even though another teacher said not to, and he told the fifth-period student peer that she was in charge.

Clearly just a cover for deep-seated anti-magician bias…

[Via Seeing the Forest.]

This is depressing: Foreign Policy rounds up a list of the next countries likely to implement national smoking bans. Costa Rica, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, Switzerland, and China are all on the list. It does note that Germany, at least, is backing away from its ban, so the trend isn’t entirely in one direction.

Regardless of your personal preferences, where do you see the future of smoking regulation in the US? Have we reached a tipping point that will inevitably make smoking socially unacceptable? Or will the increasingly untenable and bizarre claims made by anti-smoking groups propel the movement over the shark, allowing smokers and property rights defenders to push back?

I’m going to go out on a limb and predict that, regardless of legal changes, old-fashioned pipe smoking will see a resurgence.

Leave your thoughts in the comments section.

[Via TMN.]

In the insane legal brief linked here, Minnesotan Ed Felien petitions the court to order Hennepin County Attorney Michael Freeman to arrest George W. Bush when he arrives in Minneapolis for the Republican National Convention. Felein alleges that Bush has committed crimes against the residents of Hennepin County and that Freeman has a duty to arrest him. These crimes include murder, the fixing of gas prices, and conspiracy to distribute heroin. Freeman, the coward, says he lacks jurisdiction.

Discuss.

The justification for smoking bans, to the extent that there is one, is to protect non-smokers from secondhand smoke exposure. Thus many bans at least make allowances for establishments where smoking is part of the business. Yet a bill in New Hampshire that would have allowed bars that get 60% of their income from cigar sales was recently blocked in the legislature. And in Albuquerque, NM, city councilors may amend the city’s ban to forbid smoking even in tobacco shops:

Owners of cigar bars and smoke shops in Albuquerque are fuming over how a city councilor wants to change the city’s smoking ban.

The proposed changes would no longer allow smokers to light up in either type of business.

Larry Monte has owned Monte’s near Louisiana and Meanaul for nearly 35 years. He says if City Councilor Michael Cadigan’s recent proposal becomes law, he’ll lose thousands of dollars in business a year.

“There’s a reason why we do it inside, we don’t want to offend anybody. We take all that into consideration,” he said.

Cadigan said Monte can still allow patrons to smoke, just not inside.

Anyone who goes to a good tobacconist knows that the appeal isn’t just in the selection of cigars, but in the community that develops among employees and customers chatting and smoking. Extending bans to businesses explicitly built around tobacco isn’t remotely a public health measure; it’s further mission creep by anti-smoking lobbyists who want to snuff out an unpopular way of life.

Jeff has tagged me with a meme:

1) Open the nearest book to page 123.

2) Post sentences 6, 7, and 8 from that page.

3) Tag five others.

Not a very good meme, but since it’s a weekend, I haven’t been memed in a while, and the nearest book is very good, I’ll do it. The book is On Food and Cooking, Harold McGee’s 800 page behemoth of a book about the science of food. Though a useful reference, it’s so well written that it’s enjoyable reading straight through; I’m at 646 right now. From 123:

Meat consumption on this scale is possible only in wealthy societies like our own, because animal flesh remains a much less efficient source of nourishment than plant protein. It takes much less grain to feed a person that it does to feed a steer or chicken in order to feed a person. Even today, with advanced methods of production, it takes 2 pounds of grain to get 1 pound of chicken meat, and the ratios are 4 to 1 for pork, 8 to 1 for beef.

I’ll tag Chad, only because he hasn’t updated since March 6.

Tomorrow the Kentucky Derby will be held. At this time last year my then roommates and I were curious about the origin of the word “derby.” If Wikipedia can be trusted, we owe it to Edward Smith-Stanley, 12th Earl of Derby:

At a dinner party in 1778 held on his estate “The Oaks” in Carshalton, the Earl and his friends planned a sweepstake horse race, won the following year by the Earl’s own horse, Bridget. The race, the Epsom Oaks, has been named after the estate since. At a celebration after Bridget’s win, a similar race for colts was proposed and the Earl tossed a coin with Sir Charles Bunbury for the honour of naming the race. The Earl won, and the race became known as the Derby Stakes. Sir Charles won the initial race in 1780 with his horse, Diomed; the Earl himself won it in 1787 with Sir Peter Teazle.

Had the coin toss gone differently, we might be celebrating the Kentucky Bunbury tomorrow and the world would be a slightly sillier place.

This is the same Stanley family, by the way, that later gave ice hockey the Stanley Cup, making them uniquely successful at naming sports championships.

Also related to the Kentucky Derby: how to never, ever make a mint julep.

We’ve got our problems with too much ethanol, and so did nineteenth century cafe goers. But while our excess ethanol wastes money and starves the poor, theirs just made absinthe drinkers a little too drunk:

An analysis of century-old bottles of absinthe - the kind once quaffed by the likes of van Gogh and Picasso to enhance their creativity - may end the controversy over what ingredient caused the green liqueur’s supposed mind-altering effects.

The culprit seems plain and simple: The century-old absinthe contained about 70 percent alcohol, giving it a 140-proof kick…

The modern scientific consensus is that absinthe’s reputation could simply be traced back to alcoholism, or perhaps toxic compounds that leaked in during faulty distillation. Still, others have pointed at a chemical named thujone in wormwood, one of the herbs used to prepare absinthe and the one that gives the drink its green color. Thujone was blamed for “absinthe madness” and “absinthism,” a collection of symptoms including hallucinations, facial tics, numbness and dementia.

Prior studies suggested that absinthe had only trace levels of thujone. But critics claimed that absinthe made before it got banned in France in 1915 had much higher levels of thujone than modern absinthe produced since 1988, when the European Union lifted the ban on making absinthe.

“Today it seems a substantial minority of consumers want these myths to be true, even if there is no empirical evidence that they are,” said researcher Dirk Lachenmeier, a chemist with the Chemical and Veterinary Investigation Laboratory of Karlsruhe in Germany.

Lachenmeier and his colleagues analyzed 13 samples of absinthe from old, sealed bottles in France, Switzerland, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands and the United States dated back to the early 1900s before the ban. After uncorking the bottles, they found relatively small concentrations of thujone in that absinthe, about the same as those in modern varieties.

Perhaps this will put to rest the debate about the authenticity of the new wave of absinthes, and if we’re really lucky persuade the US government to become less uptight about approving them.

Previously:
Night with the Green Fairy
Sazerac variations