[hi, isaac]

Hey, I know it's been a while since I rapped at ya, folks, but in case you didn't hear, there's like, 5 feet of of killer death snow on the ground.

Actually that's only the excuse for the last few days. But I promise I'm going to try to post more frequently. For starters, here are some photos from the Great Blizzard of Ought Ten.


[Mona examines the snowfall in front of our backyard igloo]



[and then mona takes a swim in the snow]


[the view at roland and summit]



[treats in the igloo]


[the porch]

[open up wide...]

I finally had a chance to make it down to Elevation Burger in Harbor East the other day. EB is the latest Baltimore addition to the veritable fungus patch of upscale burger places(5 Guys, Shake Shack, Steak n Shake, Burger Bros., Abbey Burger Bistro) popping up all over the place. This one is part of an Arlington, Va.-based chain that sports the slogan, "Ingredients Matter." Well, duh. This sort of marketing strategy didn't work with Papa John's Pizza, either, but then again, PJ wasn't pushing organic, grass-fed beef and fries cooked in olive oil, and if most of Elevation's locations are in yuppy enclaves like Harbor East (as in, literally 100 feet from the nearest Whole Foods front door), they'll do well.

The first thing you notice when you enter Elevation Burger is that everything is very blue:

[i've got the...]

I dunno if this is some sort of attempt at a mental slimming effect (ie, blue = water = clear and pure = healthy) meant to off-set the greasiness of the food, but friends, if it was, it had no effect on me. I ordered the eponymous signature burger, which is basically their version of the 5 Guys two-patties bacon cheeseburger, only with "Elevation Sauce," which is, predictably, just mayo and ketchup mixed together, not some mysterious delicious unfamiliar concoction, as euphemized by the cashier, who told me it was a "tomato-based cream sauce."

Two things struck me about this burger. One, the meat is great, but not great like in the sense of so-full-of-juice and cooked-to-a-flawless-medium-rare and rubbed-with-something-subtle-and-really-tasty, like the meat at Elevation's Arlington neighbor, Ray's Hell Burger, arguably the best burger, meatwise, I've sampled in the Tri-State Area. Two, the toppings on this thing were really interesting. The pickles were sweet, not dill, and really crunchy. The tomato robust. A big sheath of green leaf lettuce, and bacon that was still crispy, not limp. The overall impression here was one of freshness. As in, each mouthful was crunchy, then the meat (with generous 1/8-inch thick slice of cheddar) would provide a contrasting give, texture-wise, that was just damn nice.


[floating in the blue]

I got the fries too, which were actually a tad banal, but made tasty and redeemed completely by the fact that there is a shaker of Old Bay on every table in this joint. Is that just a Baltimore thing, I wonder? I 'preeshed it. Anyway, the the healthy and culinary benefits of an olive oil fry were not really detectable. Guys, there's a reason fries are done most places in fatty oils like peanut, or, say, duck fat. They're friggin' delicious.

Oh, and one more thing. Coffee and Oreo milkshake (I had to, frankly) was delicious, but not Good Stuff-quality richness. I took a nap after that one you better BELIEVE.

FOOD: A
Just really solid burger fare, here. I'd need to go back and sample everything, but no messing around, good meat, solid (if a bit boring) fries, and a nice thick shake. Well done!

PRICE: B+
I think I paid something like $5.49 for the burger, then $2.89 for fries, and $4.39 for the shake. A bit more than I normally care to spend for lunch, but this was an exploration.

AMBIENCE: C
This place actually doesn't feel like it has any business producing burgers as good as the ones it produces. It's very, Oh-I-shop-at-Arhaus modern, with metal chairs and tables and a characterless outdoor patio (could use some plants). Inside, the tables are way too close together and everything's creepily blue. Crowd seems mostly Harbor East yuppie (Laureate lesson-plan writer? Legg Mason dividend processor?), which doesn't bother me, but doesn't add much either.

My photographers, Rich and Max, like to give me shit a lot, especially when we're out on somewhat bizarre assignments. Rich was snapping pictures of me yesterday as I was walking around a garbage dump that a real estate developer is going to turn into a bird sanctuary, near a condo development he wants to build. I thought he was just fooling around with lighting, because he kept saying that it was the wrong time of day and everything was backlit. But then later that afternoon, he comes to me with this, which he'd been fooling around with, apparently bored. And yeah, it's ridiculous, but I also think it's pretty bad-ass, so I'm posting it. The whole "shot into the sky Jesus halo" thing is pretty cool.

Hey Everyone! Here's an album you should check out. It's a collection of old-timey tunes and folk-rocky tunes by my friend (and, shit, ok, in-law) Ben Hesse, who's a talented young weird-beard based in Philadelphia. You can get the album here, here and here.

And here's what Ben says about the album:

JDub Records co-founder, Benjamin Hesse, releases his third recording this week - the Ice Mountain EP. After surviving a dangerous winter climb in Rocky Mountain this past year, Ben returned home to craft an album of music inspired by his near death experience. The result is the Ice Mountian EP – a collection of originals and old-time songs. It is an album of Americana that falls somewhere in between Neil Young’s On the Beach and the Folk Anthology. Recorded at home with the help of friends, the album is being released this week for free on iTunes as well as on Ben’s website.

Listen! Enjoy! Obey!

[just Ham and his dead dad, chattin', no big deal]

The BSF's plays on the Meadow at Evergreen House are for sure a highlight of any Baltimore summer. There's something about watching Shakespeare outside, away from genteel trappings of an actual physical theater space, that makes the production actually seem more civilized.

I went on Sunday night with my parents to see Hamlet, this year's offering, which was markedly less fancy, staging-wise, than last year's Macbeth. It was just a wooden stage, a rudimentary scaffolding, and some corrugated tin sheeting. The set, I thought, was a little incongruous with the costumes, which seemed period-sensitive. The costumes made the set's bareness seem more a function of pure cost-saving measures.

That aside, this Hamlet was for me, as I imagine a lot of productions are for others, a series of reminders about where certain expressions come from. As my mom joked afterwards, "That play is great, but it's just so full of cliches!" Among them were these:

- "I know a hawk from a handsaw," Hamlet's downplaying of his madness to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, is the origin of the name of the Gypsy-rock band A Hawk and a Hacksaw.

- Hamlet's line from Act I, Scene 4, a bitter remark about the king's carousing after marrying his mother -- "The king doth wake to-night and takes his rouse / Keeps wassail, and the swaggering up-spring reels;" -- could be the source of a great name for an Irish music album: "The Up-Spring Reels"

- Ophelia's line about Hamlet, "I that sucked the honey of his madness," is pretty dirty, in retrospect, when you think about what she's talking about.

- That Nick Lowe song, "Cruel to be Kind," comes from a Polonius line.

- "Infinite Jest," the title of the novel I'm currently reading, is a Hamlet reference, and comes from the Yorick scene. My dad also pointed out, that the line, "Alas, poor Yorick, I knew him well," is never actually spoken in the play. It's one of those mis-heard, mythologized lines, like "Play it again, Sam," which also was never spoken. Someone should put together a list of those.

Aside from a few small quibbles, I thought this was a great production. The "To be or not to be..." speech was delivered to Ophelia, going straight into "Soft you not, fair Ophelia..." which I think is an edit (isn't he onstage alone, delivering his suicide contemplation as a soliloquoy?). Also, the second act ended with Hamlet actual killing Claudius (or fantasizing it -- there was no difference from our perspective) as he prayed, and after intermission we came back and they played the scene again, with Hamlet deciding nah, I'll wait until he's good and sinnin' again. That was odd. Also, at the very end of the play, Hamlet's line is, "I die, and the rest is silence." But Dan Crane, the lead actor who played Hamlet with a really great physical presence most of the time (confidently striding everywhere), and whose sense of humor onstage showed that he really gets the text and has pretty much internalized it, said, "I die, and the rest is _____," straight into Horatio's chorus-like end speech. That was edgy, I guess, and not terribly important overall in the play, but we sort of felt cheated.

Other highlights included Emily Clare Zempel's performance as Ophelia. When she wandered off to drown herself, she exited the stage, tearing apart some flowers, and walked out through the audience mumbling "God be with you," creepily, over and over again, walking in the general direction towards the stream that runs through Evergreen. That was cool. I also thought that Bruce R. Nelson's performace as the ghost of King Hamlet was really great. It was like watching a guy with really bad nerves trying to ply his son for some favor. And that's essentially what the ghost does to his son. Off-putting, however, was the fact that Nelson also played Claudius, which brings up all sorts of metaphysical questions that have to be suspended for the play to make sense.

I highly recommend this production, before it goes off at the end of the month. Bring a picnic and a few bottles of wine. Get there early. Enjoy.

[i put my hand up on your hip...]

What a n00b I am, apparently. It wasn't until recently that I discovered the French Dip sandwich. It's hot, thinly-sliced roast beef with optional swiss cheese on a French baguette, with beef jus served on the side. Get that? You dip the sandwich in the jus, and it's delicious.

This handsome fellow is from Java Joe's, a pretty good lunch place in downtown Baltimore. The wikis tell me little of interest about this sandwich, except that two restaurants in L.A., Phillipe's The Original and Cole's Pacific Electric Buffet, have been arguing for almost 100 years about who lays claim to its provenance. In my limited experience, the jus is just absolutely perfect with the crunchy toasted crust of the roll. I can't imagine serving it "wet" -- as they did back in the day -- by dipping the whole sandwich before serving, could be much better. I'll try anything, though.

Anyone know of any particularly good French Dips out there?

[The General]

Grant Grubor. Thurmont, July 4, 2009.

In the spirit of trying to write more on this blog every day, and making it more of a general interest type of chronicle, with more record reviews, thoughts on politics, and the like, in addition to my normal profiles of places and trips I take, here's a blogpost cross-posted from my place of work. It's about eminent domain, a topic I find very interesting.

Big eminent domain case in New York has Baltimore connection

July 1, 2009

News reports indicate that one of the highest-profile eminent domain lawsuits in the country will go all the way to New York’s highest court, where it will be argued in October.

Developer Bruce Ratner, of Forest City Ratner, wants the Empire State Development Corp. to condemn and seize dozens of properties in a low-density neighborhood near an old rail yard in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn, so that he can build a new arena for the relocation of the New Jersey Nets basketball team, plus 16 high-rise apartment towers. He already has a $200 million-a-year sponsorship deal for the arena with investment bank Barclays. The project is called Atlantic Yards (and Barclays Arena), named for the disused rail yards on the western edge of Brooklyn where it is proposed.

Although about half of the buildings needed for the more-than-$1-billion project have already been demolished, in August of last year, nine property owners sued the ESDC, saying that the grounds for eminent domain were not valid. That suit was dismissed, then appealed, which brings us to today.

Forest City Enterprises, the developer’s parent company, is controlled by the Ratner family, and is also running the show over in East Baltimore, where so far more than 800 families have been displaced by Forest City Science + Technology Group’s East Baltimore Science + Technology Park. In this case, Forest City has leveraged the support of Baltimore’s housing department to condemn and seize hundreds of properties, many of them using the controversial “quick-take” method of eminent domain. We published a series about this type of thing last year.

One of the main arguments made by the anti-Ratner camp is that the benefits of the whatever Ratner could bring to Atlantic Yards are negligible compared to the destruction of the neighborhood. A number of similar cases (.pdf), even in Maryland, have used the same rationale, and it really gets to the heart of the matter as far as eminent domain is concerned: According the landmark Kelo vs. City of New London, if the economic benefits of a project are not so great that they’re in the “public interest,” then an eminent domain taking is unconstitutional.

Every developer has a business model, I guess, but when you really think about it, I wonder just how many companies there are in the country, aside from Forest City, that make a living out of seizing large swaths of property that they’ve convinced local authorities are “blighted” and redeveloping them as mega-projects like this. Are they so few and far between that there’s no consensus on the pros and cons of such a model? A cost-benefit analysis of property taxes versus incentives dangled? A comprehensive look into the profitability of the sorts of projects that come and replace the so-called blight?

Yeah, it sounds like a book idea, I know, but I’m going to look into this.