BEER WITH A SOCIALIST: COVID-19 may be driving me to drink, and that's fine because I'm walking, not driving.

"If you live in the Bay Area, you’re most likely under mandatory shelter-in-place orders right now."

For all we know, this could be coming to Indiana. Or not.

My Italian pen pal Fabio hails from Milan in the region of Lombardy, the epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic. I'm not entirely sure where he lives nowadays. Earlier Fabio was monitoring one of my social media discussions about efforts to temporarily suspend carryout alcohol restrictions in Indiana.

(As of this afternoon, Governor Andy Beshear has confirmed that Kentucky will be doing so, and I'm cautiously optimistic this will occur in Indiana as well.)

To paraphrase, Fabio wrote that he hasn't worked in two weeks and things in Milan are so bad in terms of illness and loss of life that he can't think much about food and drink.

This is sobering, no puns intended.

I've read enough history to understand what Fabio is saying, even if I haven't experienced it myself. It would be the height of absurdity for me or anyone else to marginalize his thoughts, because he's in or near the middle of it, and Italy is suffering grievously -- a state of affairs that America might well be facing.

And yet, everything else aside, it seems to me that we must function in the present as constituted right now. This doesn't mean there is no future, or that we're excused from planning for it. I feel an obligation to my team to do whatever I can to help put us in position to endure this.

We accept the governor's shutdown, and merely want to modify partial closure terms already mandated. Nothing ventured, nothing gained; anyway, if we went on full lockdown for two weeks, once this concluded we'd likely return to partial shutdown for an indeterminate period prior to opening back again in some semblance of normality.

I'm staying home as much as I can. We'd be decently equipped at the house to withstand a two-week mandated quarantine. There's liquor, wine and beer. There might even be food.

As I've been writing this post, a report appeared saying that there are now five coronavirus cases in Floyd County out of 50-something in the entire state of Indiana. Our county is small, and we have 10% of the reported cases? Of course we also know the absence of testing overall means these numbers surely are being under-reported.

Don't ask me to summarize. We're all just stream of consciousness until the fog lifts. It drives me to drink, and I'm not saying no.

The coronavirus is driving us to drink. Maybe that’s OK, by Esther Mobley (SF Chronicle)

This week, America discovered the peculiar pleasures of drinking under quarantine.

If you live in the Bay Area, you’re most likely under mandatory shelter-in-place orders right now. If you’re not, you’re probably exercising some version of social distancing (at least I hope you are) and wondering what measures your community will implement in the coming days and weeks to halt the spread of the novel coronavirus.

Your first concern is probably not how and what you will drink (at least I hope it’s not), but once you’ve gotten the bottom rungs of the hierarchy of needs secured — food, medications, all that toilet paper you’ve been hoarding — you might, as I am, be wondering how to add a little bit of relief and delight to the indefinite indoor sentence that lies ahead.

Why, under these particularly bizarre circumstances, are we feeling so drawn to a drink?

I have some theories ...

Vision Zero (not applicable in Nawbany): "Why San Francisco Is Putting Pedestrians First on Its Main Thoroughfare."

 

Gahan, Rosenbarger set to go full frontal Pinocchio about their urbanism credentials when the Congress for the New Urbanism 27 meets in Louisville June 11-15.

Car-centrism is the last socially acceptable form of imperialism in America. Debate among yourselves ... and thanks, B.

Why San Francisco Is Putting Pedestrians First on Its Main Thoroughfare, by Supriya Sridhar (Politico Magazine)

San Francisco plans to shut out cars on one of its major streets.

Legend has it that the young civil engineer who laid down the route for San Francisco’s Market Street in the 1800s so enraged people with the street’s unusual width that a mob chased him out of town. More than a century later, Market Street is one of the city’s key arteries, a wide boulevard on which the city’s historic streetcars jostle with buses, taxicabs, private passenger cars, Uber and Lyft rides, delivery vehicles and thousands of people biking every day. During peak hours, there are 100 buses running in either direction.

But Market Street is also the center of something traffic officials somewhat ominously refer to as the “High-Injury Network,” a collection of about 13 percent of the city’s streets that accounts for three-quarters of the serious and fatal traffic injuries. From January through April, 11 people have died in the area.

“Market street is the spine of San Francisco,” Brian Wiedenmeier, the executive director San Francisco Bicycle Coalition said. “There’s a lot going on already. The last thing we need is more vehicles.”

Next year, the car traffic that has made Market Street so clogged for decades—and also hazardous—should be gone.

Better Market Street, a project organized by six San Francisco city agencies, will transform 2.2 miles of the famous corridor, between Steuart Street and Octavia Boulevard, into a pedestrian oasis. The renovations will feature sidewalk level bikeways, wider public transportation boarding islands and improved sidewalks.

Cities have been wrestling with what to do about traffic since the moment cars first careened onto the scene. And pedestrians often paid the price as planners devised street systems that made it easier for more and more cars to get around and shunted the people to the margins. Reversing this trend at a moment when younger, less car-dependent workers are flocking to cities has been a challenge. Other cities around the country have experimented with pedestrian-first planning. The Lincoln Road Mall in Miami Beach has existed since 1960, for example; and while it’s popular, it’s just eight blocks long. Boston pedestrianized short stretches of two downtown streets years ago, and Charlotte, N.C., is implementing a comprehensive downtown plan that will turn regular streets in pedestrian-only zones on the weekend. San Francisco’s Market Street makeover, though, is far more ambitious.

It was proposed nine years ago — “Unfortunately, San Francisco has a history of these kinds of big projects taking an incredibly long time to come to fruition,” said Wiedenmeier, who has been working on this for the past decade — and things picked up speed in 2014, when the city embraced an initiative called "Vision Zero," aimed at eliminating car-related fatalities by 2024. In 2015, the city established turn restrictions on Market Street, dissuading cars from using the thoroughfare.

Better Market Street is scheduled to break ground in the summer of 2020. The project still has some final administrative hurdles to overcome, making some supporters impatient. Earlier this month, nearly 100 protesters showed up on Market Street to support the initiative. Wearing bright-yellow T-shirts with bicycles , they demanded speeding up the project’s approval process.

“There is a desire from, I think, everyone to start construction as soon as possible,” Cristina Olea, project manager for Better Market Street, said. “We want a safer street. We want to reduce crashes. We also want people to feel comfortable walking or biking along Market Street.”

BEER WITH A SOCIALIST: Catch up on your reading with these links. First, pour a damn beer.

That's more like it.

Immersed with patriotism on the 4th of July, or maybe hungover, I decided to make my minimal contribution to the historical record of the Second Civil War.

Exhausted, we bivouacked by a street pockmarked by sharrows, across from a corporate multi-tap. A squad was sent to reconnoiter. They were shaken and ashen-faced upon return: "Rows and rows of IPAs, hazy and mango and coffee-infused -- what are we to do?" The major's gaze hardened. "Drink 'em," he replied. "Drink 'em all, and let God sort it out." #secondcivilwarletters

That was fun.

For Independence Day, my six-pack purchase was occasioned by Jeff Alworth's thoughts at Beervana. Supposedly my choice was a blonde American lager, contract-brewed in Latrobe PA by a multinational-owned Irish brewer -- but how can it be called "lager" if using Guinness's world-famous ale yeast?

Alworth mentions the incongruity only in passing -- and yes, draft Guinness still makes the trip to America by Dublin.

Guinness's American Strategy

Last month I traveled to Baltimore to learn more about the new Guinness brewery project unfolding there. Guinness is a sponsor of this blog, and I wanted to be one of the first to delve deeply into the thinking behind the project, its scope, and its goals. Guinness was happy to make this possible, and paid for me to visit. Today I look at the new national strategy that accompanies the Baltimore brewery project.

Guinness Blonde American Lager has been around a while, but I haven't tried it until now. The confusing part to me is how a beer labeled as a "lager" can boast of using Guinness yeast.

Conceding that I'm the same guy who recently tasted corn in Yuengling's new pilsner, which is billed as all-malt, there seems to be slight fruitiness to the Guinness Blonde Lager, as well as a nip of something different in the finish. The same nip comes through in a pint of Guinness Stout, although I always thought it had to do with the roasted malt.

I'd drink Guinness Blonde Lager again in an emergency, but won't search it out. I'd rather drink a Sam Adams Boston Lager -- not that strange Sam '76, fermented with both lager and ale yeasts. It can't decide what it wants to be, and consequently fails to be anything decisive.

However, kudos to Wick's in New Albany for having Sam '76 on tap, thereby making it easier for me to have a taste. Higher-end beer bars wouldn't bother, and that's a shame. Speaking of yeast, America's most renowned hybrid has new clothes.

After more than a century, Anchor's flagship Steam beer will meet aluminum cans, by Alyssa Pereira (SFGATE)

A mere 122 years after Anchor brewed its first beer, its famed flagship, Steam, will be canned for the first time.

The new 19.2-ounce cans, gold and emblazoned with the large blue Anchor logo, will hit mostly local, independent mom-and-pop shops and liquor stores in California this summer. Bottles will still be the norm for most retailers, with the introduction of limited cans, priced about $2.49 each, being sold in standard convenience stores in an effort to meet new customers searching for a quick "grab-and-go" pack.

Hopefully these cans go national at some point, and this may sound like a strange thing for me to say; after all, Anchor's not local, except in the Bay Area.

It might help to know that the only professional sports team to which I hold lifelong allegiance is the Oakland A's. 47 years later, I've never seen the A's play in Oakland, and spent exactly two days in neighboring San Francisco in 1978.

Prior to the advent of cable television, to which I didn't have access until 1988, it could be hard to get West Coast night baseball scores; even then, there wasn't much in-depth coverage of Oakland, a small-market team overshadowed by the Giants.

So, for many years I've gotten e-mail updates about the A's from the San Francisco Chronicle, more recently adding food and drink newsletters -- hence the links here today.

Needless to say, AT&T Park didn't exist in 1978. My visit took place in December, and while I can say that I've been to Candlestick Park, the narrow view was through locked gates.

Did AT&T Park just become the best ballpark in America for beer? by Alyssa Pereira (SFGATE)

The Giants stadium is now selling cans from Moonraker, Temescal, Local and Altamont

The ceaseless debate about what baseball park in America is serving the best craft beers might just have a new winner: San Francisco's AT&T Park.

16-ounce beers didn't cost $15 during the Carter Administration, either. This article is the first I've heard of Albany, by the bay north of Berkeley. I'd like to go there, right now.

The story of the Albany pub where time stands still, by Emma Silvers (SFGATE)

Schmidt’s Pub doesn’t officially open until noon, but around 11:30 you’ll start to see the regulars. About a half-dozen people, mostly older folks, are the first customers at the offbeat, antiques-packed Albany tavern every day. They trickle in as soon as the door is unlocked, then stay for an hour or two amid the bookshelves and board games in the converted Craftsman. If the weather’s nice, they sit outside ...

Owner John Schmidt, who opened the pub in 1978, resists modernity.

 ... “I have a computer and a cell phone and all that, but I’ve never felt particularly comfortable or interested in it,” he says, at the prospect of a digital upgrade. Besides: “I’ve always felt a place like this doesn’t need it.”

By “a place like this,” Schmidt means a watering hole in the spirit of old English and Irish taverns, like the ones he fell for as a young man on business trips to the United Kingdom. “They’re more about the place than the beer: There’s music, people telling stories and then you have grandma knitting over there,” he says. “I just loved them.”

Shifting from California, here's a story of interest to anyone who still believes spent grain still goes to a nearby farmer's livestock. I'm thinking it still occurs, but first government began erecting barriers, then there were 7,000 breweries, many of them urbanized.

From liquid bread back to flour. Expensive, but eloquent.

From Brewery to Bakery: A Flour That Fights Waste, by Larissa Zimberoff (New York Times)

For some people, beer is the perfect end to a workday. For Bertha Jimenez, it’s the start of a new way to eliminate food waste.

Breweries throw out millions of pounds of used grain every day that could have other uses. While some is repurposed as animal feed, compostable products or heating fuel, little has been exploited for its value as food.

But Ms. Jimenez, 35, has created a small start-up, Rise Products, that converts the grain into a flour that is finding its way into sustainable bakeries and kitchens in New York and as far away as Italy.

I conclude the current compendium of instructive reading with a rejoinder to the hoarders, traders and ratings aggregators. At the same time, I don't view Coors Light as the solution, unless the carbonated urine under this banner is brewed differently for British distribution -- and this might be the case.

I recall my friend Barrie and I, traveling in Ireland in 1987.

At some point during our time in Ireland, Barrie and I entered a pub and struck up a conversation with the woman working behind the bar, who turned out to be the pub's owner.

She was delighted that we were American, happily divulging that she'd put Budweiser on tap the day before, because the great American lager was only then being introduced to the Irish market in earnest.

As gently as possible, we explained that drinking Budweiser really wasn't why we had come to Ireland, but thanks anyway.

She persisted. Did we happen to know that Budweiser was brewed under license in Ireland, not imported from America? We didn't. Weren't we curious? Perhaps we'd like to buy a pint each of Budweiser and see for ourselves if it tasted the same?

After a humorous negotiation, we convinced her to give us a half-pint each, and we'd taste test the Budweiser for her. Don't worry; we tipped well.

Somewhat anticlimactically, to me Irish-brewed Budweiser tasted almost exactly like Irish-brewed Harp Lager. Fortunately, we didn't see much more of Budweiser during the trip, but I suppose it was adequate as a calibration beer.

I want to go to Ireland, now, and not drink lager -- oh no, not at all. A pint of Plain, sir. You can keep the centimes.

Not every beer has to be special : in defence of average pints, by kirstwalker (ladysinksthebooze blog)

My local sells real ale. They have two pumps, one is perpetually Doom Bar and the other alternates between a number of Golden ales and IPAs from the Robinson’s brewery. At the moment they have on Hoppy Wan Kenobi which is packed with Cascade and Sovereign hops. Regular readers will know my feelings about American floral hops ie when I am Queen they will be launched into the sun, and even the good old British Sovereign (the hop, not Liz) doesn’t rescue this beer. For me every sip was like being hit in the face with a bunch of gladioli.

And so when I visit my local my current drink of choice is a Coors Light with a shot of lime cordial in the top. And it’s fantastic. I can neck four or five pints of that with glee whilst watching football. It’s refreshing, it’s got flavour, and I don’t have to log the damn thing on untappd or worry that it’s getting near to the bottom of the barrel, or do any other kind of thinking which is liable to distract me from more important matters like who they’re putting out at centre back for Iran.

I hesitate to jump on the Anthony Bourdain train but a quotation of his was floating around twitter last week when his death was announced. The gist was that in most brew pubs he visits no-one is really drinking, they are lining up flights going from dark to light, getting out their apps or making notes in a little book about flavour profiles. His drink of choice was ‘what’s coldest’. And there are plenty of great American bars that I’ve visited where your choices are restricted to Coors, Bud, and their ‘light’ counterparts. They are great bars because they have character, and atmosphere, and you feel at home there. Would they be improved by ‘better’ beers? Yes maybe, or maybe it’s nice to have an oasis of averageness in a world where everyone is competing to be the newest, the best, the coolest. Why go out for hamburgers when you’ve got steak at home, asked Paul Newman? Because hamburgers are just fucking good sometimes aren’t they? The cheaper and the greasier the better ...

"How a failed attempt to get porn off the internet protects Airbnb from the law."

The crux of the Airbnb matter?

It's Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996, "a much-maligned law that was decried by free speech advocates, dismissed as a 'departing Senator’s half-baked notions' by the New York Times editorial board, and swiftly struck down by the Supreme Court."

How a failed attempt to get porn off the internet protects Airbnb from the law, by Julia Carrie Wong (The Guardian)

Airbnb, like pornography, is a business based on selling a fantasy. Porn offers the simulacrum of a sexual encounter; Airbnb, that of being “a local” in a city not one’s own. There’s less fuss, less muss, and a much reduced chance of STDs and irritated neighbors.

At least, there’s less fuss for the visitors. Cities around the world, however, are waking up to the headache of hosting transient populations in previously residential neighborhoods, and attempting to crack down.

But while local politicians in Reykjavík, Berlin, and Barcelona are taking a stand against Airbnb, their counterparts in the United States have struggled to come up with regulations that have teeth.

"A Trip Down Market Street 1906," but in San Francisco, not New Albany.

First, watch this:

A Trip Down Market Street 1906 ... Morley Safer reports on a mystery that was solved about a 100-year-old film that we now know was made on San Francisco's Market Street just days before the 1906 earthquake.

Then browse through the treasure trove of diverse documentaries at the Full Documentary site.

What's the oldest surviving film footage of New Albany?

“The major policy recommendation from the report was that the city require an economic impact study [for large formula businesses].”

I have a recurring fantasy, in which each city council member must read an article like this one and provide a cogent summary in real English words without resorting to memes or crayons.

We all know who'd be up to the task, who'd skip class (redevelopment meetings, anyone?) and which household's dogs would be fed the homework along with the usual kibbles and bits.

But hey, what's another Wal-Mart among non-Democrat Democrats and exurban-envying Republicans?

How San Francisco is Dealing With Chains, by Stacy Mitchell (Institute for Local Self-Reliance)

No other large American city has done as much to check the spread of chain stores as San Francisco. Under a city law enacted in 2006, a “formula” retail store or restaurant cannot open in any of the city’s neighborhood commercial districts unless it undergoes a public hearing and obtains special approval from the Planning Commission.

The restrictions have helped San Francisco maintain a relatively vibrant independent retail sector. The city has twice as many independent bookstores per capita as New York. It is home to some 80 local hardware stores. It also boasts more than 900 independent retailers selling fresh food, including more than 50 locally owned grocery stores of at least 5,000 square feet.

But San Francisco’s policy has major gaps ...