Click here to see the St. Valentine post from last year.
Author: George Rothert
Gourmet Burgers… Really?
Gourmet hamburgers are what’s trendy these days. “Gourmet hamburger” is an oxymoron. You can spend hundreds, yes, even thousands of dollars on a hamburger. “Where is the best burger” is a regular topic in local papers, with florid descriptions of blue cheese, chipotle, bacon, pesto, avocado, mushrooms – or truffles! – with Kobe beef and even foie gras. Restaurants boast about their third-of-a-pound or half-pound or pound, high-calorie, high-fat burgers. What fast-food chain has the best burgers is an on-going argument.
The Lorraine Motel
I’ve visited Memphis several times in the past few years. Beale Street has lately been spiffed up to be more attractive to tourists, Disneyfied, if you will. Sun Studios and Graceland draw crowds. W.C. Handy’s home on Beale, though not as grand as Elvis’s, is still open to visitors.
On Mulberry Street, less than a mile from Mr. Handy’s home and the $350-a-night Beale Street Westin Hotel, is the National Civil Rights Museum, formerly the Lorraine Motel. Martin Luther King, Jr. was murdered there on April 4, 1968.
A Little About Malheur
The 2016 “Patriot Militia” comedy is not the first dispute about who are the best stewards of western lands. The Federal Government controls about 75 percent of Harney County, managed variously by the Bureau of Reclamation, Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and U.S. Forest Service.
How To Use Profanity
Profanity is so pervasive in modern entertainment that it really doesn’t register any more, other than often invoking tedium. It makes you wonder how Humphrey Bogart and John Wayne were taken seriously without ever saying “motherfucker.”
Cicely Tyson and James Earl Jones are currently headlining a revival of The Gin Game. The drama first appeared on Broadway in 1977 with Jessica Tandy and Hume Cronyn in the lead roles, directed by Mike Nichols. It ran for 517 performances.
Gentrification in Dogpatch
The Dogpatch neighborhood in San Francisco is in transition. For a century it was home to blue-collar citizens, many working in the close-by shipyards. Now it’s on the edge of becoming trendy; hipsters are moving in.
We think of gentrification as a once-in-decline neighborhood coming back to life. First arrive the artists seeking lower rents, followed by various craftspeople. Of course, hip people want to be where the artists are. Then come the trendy bars and restaurants, presenting a downscale appearance but with upscale menus. That in turn attracts the trendy and the affluent. Rents start climbing. Well, you know the story.
San Francisco is mostly beyond gentrification. A studio apartment in San Francisco can cost $3,500 per month, gentrified or not.