http://www.doublesquids.net/coffeeblog/ Share headlines from your file with other sites Sun, 20 Mar 2005 21:44:21 -0700 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en-us http://www.doublesquids.net/coffeeblog/ [North American Espresso, Part 2] (This is the second part of the series entitled A Decent Espresso in North America?) I wanted to write this series because I found that in many places I could get a decent espresso if I took steps to ask for it properly, and I'd like to find out if readers could get the same results. I am not in the coffeehouse business and I would happily defer to the hard-earned experience of readers who are, and who would http://www.doublesquids.net/coffeeblog/ [How to get one, Part 1] After my recent post about the poor quality of espresso served in some local coffeehouses, I did a little research. The result: I know much more about why the espresso is often so bad, and I have an plan for those who want to maximize their espresso experience in North America. At the root of the problem are American coffee culture and coffeehouse economics. Remember the "bottomless cup" of coffee that some diners used to advertise? The general idea http://www.doublesquids.net/coffeeblog/ [A Midsummer Night's Dream] What do St. John's Wort (the herb), and July 4 Fireworks have in common? Lots more than you think. If fact, lots more than I thought just a few hours ago. Preparing for the next installment of Jonathan's Coffeeblog, I decided to do something in the Gods and Myths category, but no gods or myths came to mind, until I remembered this: exactly six months ago I had written about the Winter Solstice, and that the Summer Solstice has http://www.doublesquids.net/coffeeblog/ [The real sugar is at the bottom] That's right, Jonathan's Coffeeblog now has a theme song, which you can play by clicking on the link above, or the smaller version in the "Go" section of the sidebar to the right. You will be sent to a web page in Italy, where a MIDI version of the Coffeeblog Theme Song will begin to play automatically, assuming your Internet karma is favorable. In addition, you will see the lyrics, with which you will be able to sing along http://www.doublesquids.net/coffeeblog/ [Since when is "Schmaltz" Italian?] Sunday afternoon, around five PM, when Midsummer is a week away and the sun is golden as it gets in the Golden State, is a strange time of transition. The weekend is not quite over, some stores are still open, there's time for a movie or a dinner out, but let's face it, it's not Saturday any more. Looming over the horizon is the day of dread, Blue Monday, when the fun will be over and the next weekend http://www.doublesquids.net/coffeeblog/ [Frankly, Scarlett, I DO give a damn] It's been six days since I posted the last article to the Coffeblog, and I don't have a clue about what I'm going to write about. This time, I decided, I'm going to start with a blank slate (a blank brain?) and see what comes out. I suppose that this is some kind of blogger's block, a subject about which I've written before. I also suppose that it's part of some kind of cycle of creativity which has its http://www.doublesquids.net/coffeeblog/ [Sippers of the Crimson Sage] The first time I tasted a Vietnamese iced coffee was in (duh...) Vietnam. It was in the early 1970's. No, I wasn't there to kill people, but, yes, I was the recipient of an all-expense-paid US government grant which included a spiffy olive-green uniform with matching baseball cap and air-cooled "jungle" boots. Vietnamese coffee is very special and a genuine treat. It is not for people in a hurry. Hot water is poured into a metal filter with coffee http://www.doublesquids.net/coffeeblog/ [Jung, Schmung] No sooner had I posted a Coffeeblog thing about synchronicity, that self-same Jungian phenomenon began to burst all over the place like popcorn. The focus in this case seems to be Japan. Having previously posted a Coffeeblog item about Keisuke, my Japanese college friend, I introduced a Zen element to this blog. What I didn't mention was that Keisuke had taken me to Kyoto, the former capital, on a whirlwind tour—get this!—with Japanese tourists, conducted entirely in the Japanese http://www.doublesquids.net/coffeeblog/ [What is the capital of Rhode Island?] One of the fascinating thing about writing a weblog is the unpredictability of the results. When I started writing the Coffeeblog last December it was a way of combining my love for hanging out in cafes with a wish to be able to communicate regularly with a widening circle of face-to-face acquaintances. Plus, it was a cool way to fool around with my Tinderbox software, Photoshop, and CSS. Within a few months I found that I had a world-wide http://www.doublesquids.net/coffeeblog/ [Long Ago and Far Away?] Let's get something straight right off the bat: George Lucas is a US national treasure. He may be the only one we've got left. If I should indulge in some mild carping or nitpicking about the final film in the six-part Star Wars epic cycle, I want it kept in context. OK, let's get the carping out of the way so that we can get to the good stuff. I saw Star Wars, Episode III (Revenge of the Sith) http://www.doublesquids.net/coffeeblog/ [Colorful, Whimsical Ceramic Figures] I recently became interested in comparing the work of two Northern California women artists whose careers were dedicated to whimsical, colorful ceramic sculptures of human figures, usually female. One of these artists, now deceased, is the internationally known Viola Frey. Many examples of her works can be seen in the public preserve housing the collection of former Napa vintner Rene DiRosa. The other artist, still very much alive and well-known locally is Cynthia Hipkiss. Because of the similarity of http://www.doublesquids.net/coffeeblog/ [It's the ceremonial ritual qualities] Q: At a typical Northern California espresso coffeehouse, what menu item is most likely to be unsatisfactory? A: The espresso. After having been served two abominably bad espressos this week, I decided I had to write about it. First of all, why would I even want to order an espresso? Why pay good money for a tiny little drink of a black, medicinal aqueous extraction of almost-burnt coffee beans? North American tradition, which lives on in the Seattle coffee http://www.doublesquids.net/coffeeblog/ [La Nouvelle Cuisine Nuque-Rouge] After dropping a friend off at the airport, I wanted to stop somewhere with a big table to write my weblog and have a little breakfast. I suddenly had a hankering for a Sausage Biscuit, the signature dish of Nouvelle Cuisine Nuque-Rouge. There is only one place to get one. And suddenly I realised that Mickey D's might not be a totally bad place to write a blog. There's usually table space (people eat fast and leave), and the http://www.doublesquids.net/coffeeblog/ [The Great Thunderbird's Big Medicine] In Part One I described Robert Bechtle's art, still on view at SFMOMA, as awe-inspiring, and ventured the opinion that the sun, perhaps the oldest object of worship in human history, plays a part in most of Bechtle's paintings and prints that makes his work specifically Northern Californian, and takes the work beyond genre painting and "photorealism" into the realm of the religious. But how could I call Bechtle's art religious when the subject material is banal to the http://www.doublesquids.net/coffeeblog/ [The shot heard 'round the world] In another remarkable coincidence of fate, just around the time that I wrote my post on the Italian dessert affogato, a serving of gelato drowned with espresso (that's drowned, not shot), Starbucks came out with a new drink called an "Affogato Style", which has already attracted the scrutiny of the blogosphere. According to Starbucks, the new drink is made with Frappuccino® Blended Coffee, caramel syrup, and a "shot" of espresso., Back in New York and Chicago, there were some http://www.doublesquids.net/coffeeblog/ [Andy Warhol was right!] At 12:44 PM Pacific Time today, according to my Site Meter, the Coffeeblog has racked up its thousandth site visit. That means that on one thousand separate occasions, someone other than me has visited the site over the Internet. And they're not only visiting, they're actually looking at the different pages. And they're not just Californians or Americans, but readers in Australia, Japan, Germany, the UK, Mexico, the Netherlands, Denmark, New Zealand, Switzerland, Belgium, Russia, France, Sweden, Iran, and Saudi http://www.doublesquids.net/coffeeblog/ [Then think of another squid] Back in the mists of the Twentieth Century I registered the domain name doublesquids.com. The dot-com boom had not yet hit its peak, and I wanted to get in on it, at least symbolically. A teuthophile (squid-freak) since childhood, I thought the domain name evoked joy and intrigue, suckers and beaks. (Double Squids is actually a Chinese menu item, a mixture of fresh and rehydrated dried squid.) When I later heard of San Francisco's web hosting service, laughingsquid.net, http://www.doublesquids.net/coffeeblog/ [The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly] Sunday nights my beloved Espresso Roma is closed after seven or eight. I had to get out of the house and decided to drive all the way to the Berkeley Caffe Trieste, not too close to home, even though gas is almost three bucks a gallon here in Northern California. I wasn't disappointed. It was too late for a latte and a weird time for a plain espresso, but they had something called an" afogato", which turned out to be http://www.doublesquids.net/coffeeblog/ [Part 1: You are my sunshine] Title: 58 Rambler [1967] Artist: Robert Bechtle [American, b. 1932] Size: 30"x32" / oil on canvas [The above image is Copyright 1996-1998 Brauer Museum of Art, all rights reserved, unless otherwise specified.] Robert Bechtle, a Bay Area artist who taught for many years at San Francisco State University, is having a major career retrospective at SFMOMA. (If you have a Macromedia Flash player, check THIS out—it's awesome.) I have always loved Bechtle's work, but until recently I did not http://www.doublesquids.net/coffeeblog/ [And much, much, more!] It's time to activate the Coffee page link in the navigation bar and the "Go" sidebar. (After all, this is the Coffeeblog). My grand plan is to add a lot more items about coffee and its history, characteristics, producers, consumers, and their ilk to the new Coffee Page, as well as the home page. (There is already a "Cafes" page where the coffeehouse-related articles are listed.) If there is a coffee-related topic of particular interest to you, the readers of http://www.doublesquids.net/coffeeblog/ [Ray Charles and a Rainy Night in Seattle] When was the last time you were at Starbucks and either 1) had sex or 2) heard rock and roll? Never, right? So what is the common thread that links these three phenomena of contemporary culture? More than you might think. But first we have to settle the question if Ray Charles actually played rock and roll. If you say "no" I won't argue. Call it gospel, R&B, gospel-tinged R&B, pop, white people's music, whatever. Hip-hop it wasn't. But Ray http://www.doublesquids.net/coffeeblog/ [What's so good about Good Friday?] "Today is the third or fourth day of spring and I am sitting at the Place Clichy in full sunshine." So wrote Henry Miller at the Cafe Wepler in his mysterious 1930's Paris book Black Spring. Here in Berkeley, today is the fifth day of spring and I am sitting at Monterey and Hopkins in full sunshine, sipping an Americano. Today is the Jewish Feast of Lots and the Christian Good Friday, a rare synchrony. The theme, of course, http://www.doublesquids.net/coffeeblog/ [A kiss is just a kiss?] In February, 2005, a self-styled summit on online social networking was held in cyberspace, with no identifiable geographical locus. Blogosphere old-timers as well as newcomers like me have become familiar with Flickr, del.icio.us, Technorati, and other Internet entities (internentitites?) for establishing connections between people, at the core of which, are blogs themselves. (See my recent post on Blogger's Block.) I advocate a new term for "online social networking," cyberschmoozing, which could be broadened to include the less sophisticated forms such http://www.doublesquids.net/coffeeblog/ [Layers of Meaning] I met Berkeley printmaker Elizabeth Addison at one of her open studios almost a decade ago. I was impressed by her use of photographic and drawn images in her monoprints, and I asked how she does it. Soon I was taking her beginner's workshop, and I have been making prints as her student ever since. She now shares a studio with Kathleen King and two other artists. Addison and King, with twelve other women artists, are featured in