Rich Mintz  

Back when I moved in DC almost 20 years ago, I had a Salvadoran friend named Jaime and he once talked me into eating a pupusa, from a street vendor, which I remember as delicious. I recall DC (really Northern Virginia) as being very heavily Salvadoran (although surely Los Angeles, which I moved here from, gave it a run for its money), perhaps because Jaime pointed things out to me that I might not ordinarily have noticed; but for a combination of reasons (including unadventurous friends) I don’t think I ate Salvadoran food again.

But I’ve always been curious, and so tonight when I realized that my hotel was around the corner from a mid-priced Salvadoran restaurant called La Villa (apparently a branch of La Cabana in Columbia Heights), I decided to eat there rather than pick one of the random artisanal-comfort-food-with-your-choice-of-100-artisanal-ales-eries that have sprung up in this neighborhood since it stopped being slummy (i.e., beginning right around the time I moved away).

The place has a Mexican menu, too, but I suspect that all the staff and all the Spanish-speaking customers are Salvadoran (certainly in my casual cultural profiling of the people inside, the only people I saw eating identifiable Mexican food were from the gentrifying-gringo class), so I waved away the chips and salsa and went all Salvadoran all the way.

Great choice! I had roast chicken Salvadoran style (with roasted onions, carrots, and zucchini in a rich broth that had some alcohol somewhere in its heritage), served with rice and beans and a salad, and two pupusas (because I’m a sucker for any baked or fried good with ground corn as its base), each roughly the size of a frisbee, served with a little bowl of what I would more or less call kimchee, and a gigantic flagon of horchata. And a flan. The horchata may not have been strictly Salvadoran, but it was delicious nonetheless, and now I’m full of beans (in both the literal and figurative senses) and determined to seek out a convenient Salvadoran restaurant in New York and try some more things.

So Amazon has done it: they’ve lowered the price of the Kindle to $79, which is low enough that I can’t really justify not buying one and trying out the e-Ink technology. I spend about that much already on Kindle e-books every month, which I read on the iPad and iPhone, which is an acceptable experience in some ways (i.e., always available on a device that’s at hand, possible to read in the dark) and not in others (i.e., can’t read in glare, eyestrain after a while).

The basic Kindle comes without 3G, and without touch controls; on the other hand, it’s smaller and lighter than the version it replaces. According to their promo photo, it fits in a back pocket (although who would stick a Kindle in their back pocket?). It also comes with on-device advertising, but on-device advertising from Amazon that is smart enough to pimp books I actually want to buy (which, based on my experience with their targeting overall, is something they have either figured out or will figure out soon) is probably a tolerable part of the overall package.

Most of the buzz today was about the Kindle Fire tablet, but to be honest, I don’t think the Fire is that interesting. Anyone that already owns an iPad and an iPhone probably won’t need this thing, and anyone who’s ever played with an iPad will probably find it wanting as a grownup device. That doesn’t mean they won’t sell millions of them (and I’ll probably buy one in a year, just so I can have an Android experience), just that I don’t need one.

As I’ve said before, I have a special affection for DC in the fall, and despite the fact that the weather this year can’t quite make up its f*cking mind, it is fall, and the trees are starting to turn and it’s starting to get (intermittently) cooler. So today, although I didn’t get a ton of biking in, I did get some, including a nice ride west up Pennsylvania Avenue from the Old Post Office, crossing in front of the White House, then up 20th Street across Connecticut Avenue. What really says “fall in DC” to me is a leisurely ride down a leafy street after the brightest sun of the day has passed, not too hot, not too crowded, a little breezy, which is exactly what this afternoon felt like.

So my trip to DC so far hasn’t been that great so far — it took me almost 7 hours (3 hours and 30 minutes longer than normal) to get from Penn Station to the DC line. In fairness to Amtrak, only 2 hours and 45 minutes of that delay was their fault — I timed the trip to get off in Philadelphia and meet with someone in 30th Street Station, then get back on the next train. Which tonight I learned not to do, not because it shouldn’t theoretically work fine 99.9% of the time, but because the 0.1% of the time that it doesn’t work out, i.e., today, is so annoying. Not the fault of the fellow I was meeting, who rolled with the punches and was patiently and cheerfully waiting in the Cosi right where he said he would be, even though I kept getting later and later and later.

Due to signal problems outside Newark, everything was backed up, and my train into Philadelphia got in an hour and 20 minutes late… and my train out of Philadelphia left 2 hours and 40 minutes late, which doesn’t make that much sense, given that theoretically it was just running a couple of trains behind. In fact, the Regional after mine came through first, probably because it was a through train. So another of the things I learned is that railway logistics is an art as well as a science.

Another thing I learned is that when you build systems with single points of failure, and you overload their capacity, and you don’t invest in them in 50 years, you get cascading failure: one stretch of signal goes out, and trains back up from Richmond back to Montreal.

Yet another thing I learned (from my seatmate) is that the transit system in Australia (Australia! the only country on Earth more absurdly spread-out than ours) puts ours to shame, and the woman who said so was fully aware that the Northeast Corridor is the best-served rail route in the United States.

Finally, I learned that you can eat well in 30th Street Station! I had a beer and a chicken arepa in the Bridgewater Pub, served by a waiter who cheerfully accommodated my folding bike with panniers on so I didn’t have to take it apart and fold it up.

Not really, but I’m going to DC today on the train for 2 nights, I’m taking the Dahon folding bike, and I’ve packed everything in a pair of Bontrager grocery panniers which fit the rear rack. (I bought them cheap-ish on closeout at Jay’s Cycles in Princeton when I was driving through.) That way I’ll have my bike with me, I can move my stuff across town on both ends, and the rear rack won’t look like a hobo wedding cake the way it does when I pile bags on with the bungees. Wish me luck!

I went to visit a Polish friend in Ridgewood, Queens this weekend, and her kitchen was full of Polish groceries. I asked her if she had a Polish shop nearby, and she said “at the end of the block,” and walked me over.

While there I picked up a bunch of crap (horseradish, fruit cookies, cream caramels — and the word for “horseradish” is “chrzan,” certainly cognate with the “chrain” that every Jew knows from his/her bubbie), and along with the crap a large bottle of “sirop malinowy,” or “raspberry syrup” — just raspberry juice and sugar, cooked down to a thick essence.

It’s already come in use in the bar, and I think I’ll keep it on hand. It does everything grenadine does, but with a richer flavor. Right now I’m drinking Berkshire Ethereal gin (heavy on the botanicals, from Astor Wines), soda, and raspberry syrup, which I think is a combo that’s going into rotation here in the bar.

Since I happen to have three bottles of whiskey on hand, I decided to try them side by side. From weakest (in both color and flavor) to strongest, I tried Dewar’s White Label, Jim Beam, and the Breuckelen. (I realize they aren’t strictly comparable, because one is a bourbon and there is also some difference between American whiskey and Scotch whisky, which I’m sure Kingsley Amis told me about, but I drink for fun, not to win a prize, okay?)

Method:

Put two ice cubes in each of three small glasses, poured a small shot.

Tasting notes:

Dewars: Not strictly awful, but a bit weak and medicinal even to a relatively untutored palate such as my own. Poured the rest of the shot down the sink..

Jim Beam: Familiar from my college days, fuller than the Dewars, more drinkable.

Breuckelen: Round and rich, sweet and spicy (oaky?) aroma even before it hits the mouth, fuller mouth feel, a happy experience.

And on the subject of gin, here’s what I’m drinking these days:

Fill a shaker with ice. Add the juice of one orange. Add a splash of vermouth, a splash of triple sec, and a hefty serving of gin. Shake and serve.

It’s “gin and orange juice,” but the vermouth makes it smoother and the triple sec makes it classy. And you can tart it up with a dribble of pear brandy if you like.

What with my gin habit and my fedora fetish and my four bicycles, which are suspended from a floor rack about 10 feet away,  it occurs to me that I’ve taken things a little far. I was going to say “crossed an invisible line,” but I think it’s a pretty bright one. And I was going to say “hipster” out loud, but I think I might be too old for the word to apply — after all, I don’t really give a hoot what anyone thinks, I just like bicycles and gin and hats, and in fact I don’t necessarily look good in the hats, I just like them, and God knows (and @RyanNewYork has made quite clear on numerous occasions) that I don’t necessarily look good on the bicycles, especially the little red one that makes me look like a rhinoceros on a unicycle, give or take.

But I’m going to keep riding, and donning, and drinking. Because that’s what it’s all about, isn’t it?

On which subject: I rode downtown in a steady rain after work on Friday to the Breuckelen Distilling gin and whiskey tasting at Downtown Cellars, because I was curious and because I like locally produced stuff (see? there’s another item for the list!). I didn’t realize that Brad Estabrooke, who owns the company, was going to be there personally, pouring me a taste and talking about the ingredients and the distilling process. I probably should have (it’s a couple of dudes in Sunset Park, it’s not Anheuser-Busch). Despite owning about a dozen varieties of gin and having a sense of how they taste and what to do with them, I don’t know that much about how gin is made, but I know quite a bit more now than I did on Friday morning.

The gin is heavier than most of what I’ve tried, both in mouth feel and in flavor. The flavor is, uh, rounder (who knows how to talk about these things), but pleasant — I think it’ll be drinkable both on its own and in combination with other things. It’s no Hoxton Gin, but then, what is?

So Brad sold me a bottle of gin, and a bottle of whiskey. I know even less about whiskey distilling (and most of what I do know comes either from Everyday Drinking or from those episodes of “Monarch of the Glen” where Lexie saves the distillery), but I know enough to recognize a complex flavor profile that I’ll enjoy enjoying, if you know what I mean.

Available all over the place.

Incidentally, the way I came across Soulless was via an Amazon Kindle Daily Deal. I think I got it for $1.99, which is less than I regularly throw away on a cup of coffee without thinking about it. Of all the “daily deal” stuff flowing into my inbox every day, this is the only one I make sure to look at.