A couple of working class masterpieces (one film, one novel): Bubble and Strawberry Fields

I find representations of “class” in film to be incredibly annoying. Hollywood usually force-feeds us a view of “regular guys” that are only “regular” if you live in a world comprising the .05% at the top of the economic pyramid, a place that actually defines the background of too many screenwriters, producers and directors. I’m thinking of, for example, the “everyman” schtick of Steve Martin in an execrable pile of shit like Father of the Bride, where his future in-laws are derided as insensitive “rich” buffoons, but we’re supposed to identify with Martin, who lives in a house in suburban LA that would cost, oh, $6 million. At least. And audiences eat this slop up, with soup spoons. “Average” people are depicted by trust-fund know-nothings as not just wealthy, but insanely wealthy. That little kid who delivers the paper? His grandpa owned the Minnesota Twins! And now, since Gramps kicked it, the kid owns the team! What a heartwarming story. But, wait, don’t you have to be, like, SUPER rich to OWN a major league team? So isn’t this kid rich by association? Oops, sorry, I spoiled the movie magic by bringing money into it.

We’re even treated to the auto-biographical whining of silver-spoon-addled children of famous directors, and critics fawn all over it. Okay, there’s a story there, and some of it is interesting. But where are MY stories, those about factory workers (and their kids) who DON’T play football at Notre Dame or dance in a flash-y way? Oh, sure, there are movies about (and of interest to) “Labour,” but that’s not what I mean. Norma Rae was awesome, but so… Hollywood. There’s drama, but there is no real depiction of drudgery, desperation, soul-destroying boredom, and (especially) the constant attention to MONEY. How much am I getting, how much do I need, how can I organize my other priorities to get more. “Money” doesn’t exist in Hollywood except as an abstract concept (one terrific exception being Little Miss Sunshine, which even had the gay academic black sheep in it). So when I encounter something that’s my kind of cinema verite, it really turns my crank.

I taped Bubble, which is a film by Steven Soderbergh that was released last January simultaneously in theatres, on HDNet, and on DVD. This sounds gimmicky, I know, and in the midst of this campaign I think a lot of people lost sight of the product. I didn’t get around to seeing it (on Movie Central HD) until today, and the main reason I watched it was because (1) nothing else grabbed me, and (2) it’s only 73 minutes long. I knew nothing else about it, aside from the capsule.

Well, the movie is brilliant. It’s about people who work in a doll factory in West Virginia, and all, ALL, of the actors are amateurs, all from the area where it was filmed and all with appropriate regional accents. It feels “real,” ad-libbed, with lots of conventional break-room small talk, lunches from Hardee’s, little houses and crappy apartments and trailer parks, and even–YES!–open discussion about how great it’s going to be to get this $50 bonus if we reach quota. That’s what I’m talking about. Oh, and somebody gets murdered. It’s a completely fascinating movie and a breath of fresh but disturbing air.

Okay, this brings me to the second reference in this post title. When I bought Michael Tolliver Lives on eReader (see here), I also bought was sounded like a cute piece of fiction called Strawberry Fields (in the UK, Two Caravans).

This is the second published novel by Marina Lewycka, a UK-based author originally from Ukraine. She’s an inspiration, because her first novel (A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian, which I’m now reading) was published, after 30 rejections, when she was in her late 50s. That’s inspiring. Anyway, Strawberry Fields is about the travails of a group of migrant workers who start out at a strawberry farm in southern England, and who endure exploitation and worse. It sounds like a depressing read, and some of it is, but it’s also funny at times and marvelously inventive in Lewycka’s writing style. The story is told from the perspectives of all major characters. Some of these perspectives are related in conventional third-person narrative, but one is first-person (this is how you know, for example, that this part is told from Irina’s perspective: it uses “I” and “my” and “our”), one is told through letters to the character’s sister, and one is always in CAPS and is actually first-dog narrative.

I read this book while I was in Germany and it was really neat to be in the new Europe, one in which citizens of EU countries can live and work in any EU country (try that in North America), no visa or folderol required. This has benefitted new and old EU members (well, those that want to live elsewhere), but has also left some neighbours (Ukraine, for example) on the outside looking in. Lewycka tells an important story here; it’s about the characters, of course, but it’s also about the new global economy and its winners and losers. It’s inspired me to learn more about migrant labour (there are great sources out there to learn about, for example, the plight of citrus workers in the US); let’s hope these stories get a wider audience.

River Cafe: Getting what we pay for, and then some

Brian and I had dinner at River Cafe on Friday evening (October 26).

River Cafe will always be a source of fond memories for me, because this was where I had dinner during my job interview here for my position at U of C, in late February, 2000. A couple of other interviewees had flown the coop (they had received offers elsewhere), so a slew of professors were champing at the bit for that one great perk in academia: The free “take the job candidate to dinner” night out. So what would normally see me and one or two professors at a decent restaurant (and these should always be nice places that “sell” the city- to me this is the whole point of the candidate dinners), our party had eight people. This took some pressure off me, since the professors could talk amongst themselves, and I got to enjoy a spectacular meal.

Since then we’ve been back many times. River Cafe is distinctive not only for its locally sourced (as much as possible), organic, seasonal ingredients and the magic that the kitchen performs with them, or its superb service; there are several restaurants of its calibre in Calgary, now. What’s really special is River Cafe’s setting. It’s in Prince’s Island Park, a downtown gem that’s the setting for the Folk Fest and the Canada Day celebrations, among other special things. It’s also serene and beautiful but adjacent to skyscrapers. A great urban green space. River Cafe is the only business on the island, and customers (and employees) have to walk there; there is no parking on the island. This is not a hardship, since the “walk” is as little as five minutes’ worth from the parkade at Eau Claire Market. It’s part of the experience and is devastatingly charming.

Not every meal I’ve had at the River Cafe has been perfect, but among them was what I have to nominate as the best meal I’ve ever had: a nine-course “fish and game tasting menu” with wine pairings–yes, nine wine pairings, plus prosecco to start, so TEN wines–that took four hours to work through. It was outstanding, least of all because it introduced me to the joy that oysters can be. Anyway, I am thrilled to report that Friday’s dinner was not only spectacular but also, and this is shocking to say for a pricey place like River Cafe, very good value. River Cafe is a very expensive restaurant, no getting around that. But the money was, as Brian likes to say, “on the plate.” Portions were generous but the quality was abundantly evident (and evidently abundant), and we left feeling satisfied on every level. And not hungry. At all.

You can check out the menu at the restaurant’s website link above. We had two each of the “one bites,” a nice inexpensive thing to bridge the gap between a minute amuse bouche and a larger appie. Ours were the shrimp with carrot mousse and the mushroom-potato “cannelloni” with strips of butternut squash as the “pasta.” These were the best imaginable way to set up the meal. Completely delicious.

Following a basket of house-baked bread (River Cafe does almost everything in-house, including curing their own bacon) we both enjoyed salads. Brian had the beet salad with red and gold beets from Highwood Crossing- not tiny scraps of heirloom babies, but nice big mouth-filling chunks. Magic. I had the butterleaf lettuce with radish and diced bacon and barley. It worked.

Mains were next; I had the tenderloin, reminiscing about my first taste of Alberta Beef at the job interview in 2000 (also the tenderloin, if memory serves), which came with an array of side: sweet potato puree, kale (which I cannot stand, but they managed to make it edible), roasted blue potatoes, and a yorkie stuffed with buffalo short ribs. It was a gourmand’s plate, a huge amount of beautifully-presented food, and every part was thoughtfully done; no arbitrary steamed veg or whatever. A masterpiece. Brian had risotto with pine mushrooms (which are rare and very expensive) and a brined and then pan-roasted pheasant. It was–sorry to use up this one–it was TO DIE FOR. This was a board special but please do look for it if you go to River Cafe. It was complex and almost overwhelmingly intense but comforting too. A treat.

Dessert: Brian had a strawberry pavlova that was perfectly competent but not my thing; I love plain raw strawberries but can’t stand them in any other manifestation. To the restaurant’s credit they managed to source Alberta strawberries. Yeah, I don’t get it either, but they were lovely. I had a pumpkin spiced cake with poached quince and house-made ice cream that was a sort of butter brickle, and this one ranks right up there with the warm gingerbread cake at Brava Bistro for pure buttery ecstasy.

We had in toto four “one bites,” two salads, two mains, two desserts and four glasses of wine, and the damage was $202 before a well-earned tip. It was worth every penny. I’ve paid more for less many times, and I’ve paid less for terrible food too many times.

I know people who’ve lived in Calgary for years and have never been to River Cafe. For shame. This is the one “can’t miss” dining experience if you’re visiting, and one place that every Calgarian should know, and know well.

Caffe Artigiano Calgary officially “opening soon”

It’s great, sometimes, to live in a city in such crazed hyper-growth mode that you can depart for just over three weeks and see visible changes (the good kind, mostly) when you return. I had to head downtown yesterday to renew our street parking permit and to pay a cam-bot speeding ticket (note that Alberta Registries charges $9 for the privilege of paying in person, which came as a bit of a shock). I took the opportunity to espy new stuff between home all the way to the Bow site. All very exiciting. We’re getting a Sisley boutique on 17th in what used to be a Rent-a-Centre. That’s an upgrade.

But for all the building and cranes and such, I was most excited to stop by the now-open Centrium building and defy the construction equipment to snap this:

Yes, this was rumoured to be opening in October, which is almost over now, and peering in the store space confirms that it’s not close to completion- they don’t even have drywall up. I’ve read “January” recently. So it goes; it’ll be January soon enough.

Elsewhere on the coffee front (namely at home)… I bought a Zassenhaus manual grinder in Berlin. These are exceptionally high-quality, well-engineered manual coffee mills that have become hard to find in North America, so when I found one in a shop right near my hotel, and reasoned that I had space in my luggage for it, I took the plunge. I made regular drip coffee at my hotel (my room had a kitchen and a proper coffeemaker, not one of those tiny ones you find in your hotel bathrooms sometimes), which was great, but I was really interested in seeing how it would do with espresso. Well, actually, it works very well. 200 cranks for 14g of beans=a great little workout, but it’s satisfying to use the combo of a hand grinder with a lever machine. Pure tradition.

Euro trip photothread

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=63085&id=704240404

I enabled “everyone” access for this, so I am hoping that it’s accessible to people who aren’t registered on facebook. If you can’t access it, let me know.

It’s good to be home!

Heute hier, Morgen dort

Back in Frankfurt. Three days here and three days of rain, but the warm muggy rain of early October is supplanted with cold rain today. Still, I could get used to this city. Great skyscrapers and logical street plan, manageable size, convenient to a lot of cool places (too many), and really, despite what I said about Berlin being multicultural, Frankfurt (and Köln, really) are more diverse, more like an American or Canadian city in the presence of huge numbers from OUTSIDE Europe. This was not as observable in Berlin, the parts I saw anyway.

So I go home tomorrow having completed this way-too-late-in-my-life vision quest to try, among other things, to recapture some of what made the world bigger and more inviting to me when I came to Germany at 17. It´s worked; I feel like I have a big demanding monkey off my back. The bloom is a bit off the rose though, not that this is a bad thing. Specifically, I found myself sick of Berlin as I was departing yesterday. Despite its being an improvement over Köln in the smoking area, it was still horrible and became unbearable the last few days when temperatures plunged (we even saw a tiny bit of snow), and eating outside was much less inviting. Germany has to contend with this. To have so many places of employment that specifically employ young people–bars, restaurants, and coffeehouses–100% smoking is forcing them to work in HAZARDOUS ENVIRONMENTS, especially in a country with a double-digit employment rate. Don´t send me crap about “choice” because most employees have no choice on this matter there. Germans can be so progressive in so many ways but for Christ´s sake, this is a no-brainer, and with some exceptions (Frankfurt is mostly smoke free as of the day before I arrived), Germans smoke with a sense of obnoxious, ignorant entitlement.

I´ve also reached the limits of my tolerance with hipsters, and my neighbourhood in Berlin was practically pure hipsters. White 20-somethings who all look like Tegan and/or Sara (men as well as women). They all look alike, they ALL EFFING SMOKE, and they all carry themselves with this trust-fund air that I just cannot be around anymore. Also, their clothes look so damn uncomfortable, too-tight ugly-ass jeans, too-tight ironic t-shirts, all bundled up even when it´s hot, the damned detestable cigarette as fashion accessory. I am so over this world-weary pose. There were fireworks the other night in Berlin, not sure why but it was spectacular, and while I´m taking it in on the street this group of typical Prenzlauer hipsters were gabbing away on the sidewalk making an obvious point of not even LOOKING at the fireworks that were exploding all around the Fernsehturm. That´s the kind of pose that I´m talking about. Too cool for fireworks. “Puff puff, what club are we going to, puff puff, what are all these idiots looking at,” repeat.

Of course none of this is to say I haven´t had a great time, but it´s important not to idealise every place you visit. I could live in Berlin (if Brian could learn German), but it would have to be on my terms and all that. That´s all.

I´ll miss a lot: bread that puts ours to shame, their amazing take on doner, trains, the resplendant green of this country, the parks, the buildings of course, the opportunity to speak the only foreign language I ever learned formally. It´s been a tremendous experience, my first visit back to Europe since 1981. But I want to go home now.

Next post from Calgary, with lots of pics!