Happy Halloween- here’s an H1N1-related treat

Brian and I just wrapped up a nice afternoon, following an absolutely delicious lunch at Han’s in Chinatown (we had our usual, which was braised cabbage with chilis and green onions, and the “kung pao” chili chicken. Also ordered an “egg roll,” which is a flour pancake rolled around an omelet- a real egg roll). Unappetizing cam phone pics of each do neither justice but still look tasty:

Afterwards we strolled down to 1st St SW, south of the tracks, to check out some of the salubrious changes that have transformed this once-scary strip, and we had some lovely Intelligentsia coffees (Americano for Brian, macchiato for me) at DeVille Luxury Coffee. The weather is more than perfect today (14c and nothing but sun as I write this, just gorgeous), so it was a great day.

As we headed home we decided to take a chance at getting our vaccinations for H1N1 today. As everybody who lives here knows, Alberta Health Services has taken the unpopular route for this vaccination campaign of setting up centralized inoculation facilities, and there are only five to serve this entire city. The one closest to our home is at the site of the former Children’s Hospital, now “Richmond Road Diagnostic and Treatment Centre,” and I’d witnessed the queues there earlier this week with my own eyes. Mind-bogglingly long lines, and the waits have been epic. Some people have waited for six hours! But I got a hopeful tweet yesterday to the effect that, even though the lines were closed at 10am, somebody waltzed into Richmond Road at 2, 90 minutes before Friday’s closure, and got in and out in 20 minutes. I was skeptical but Brian convinced me to give it a try today, so we headed over at 2:45. Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, the clinics close at 3:30, so the worst that might happen (I guessed) was that we’d stand for 45 minutes and then be told to try again another day. So I went along with this plan.

We got to the clinic, parking a bit east on 20th Avenue SW, and were greeted by a security guard handing out numbers at the door. Hmmm. We entered, walked by the flu clinic (this is set up to assess people with symptoms, to take pressure off emergency rooms) and headed to the front of what I’d observed had been a lineup with, oh, 1000 people on Tuesday, Wednesday AND Thursday. There were FOUR people in the queue. We filled out our forms and because we did ours more quickly than did those folks ahead of us (with little kids), we were ushered into the vaccination hall. I was IMMEDIATELY directed to an empty nurse’s station and that was that. We waited as per normal for 15 minutes as a safety measure with any inoculation, and my arm hurts, but we’re done.

I naturally tweeted our little (well, big, actually) victory and posted it as my facebook status update, and am posting it here. I can’t know if this strategy will work for everyone, but it sure as hell did work for us.

Happy Halloween!

Chagrined update: as of this evening, all H1N1 clinics in the province (Alberta, for which this only applies) are suspended until early next week, when they’ll start vaccinating only high risk groups: kids 6 months to 5 years, pregnant women, and people under 65 with chronic health conditions, which I assume would include my asthmatic self. So I’m extra happy to have got my shot today even if I’d been able to go to the front of the line next week, because who knows what might really happen next week.

Street View

It had been a long wait, but finally, we have Google Street View in Canada. Not all of Canada, of course, but if you’re among those who live in the Vancouver area, in Calgary and west all the way to Lake Louise, in most of the major cities of southern Ontario (including Toronto of course), in Montreal, or in Halifax, then you’re covered. Here’s one view of our house:

Our car is parked across the street and you can see the Stampede parking permit stuck to the driver’s side of the windshield, so I think this was taken in early July during Stampede. Cruising down 17th Avenue suggests the same for that street, because the horrible Stampede fake wooden fences and Jack Daniels banners are all over the place. I don’t hate Stampede (especially when Brian does visitor research for them- ergo the parking permit) but am not happy that Street View is only going to confirm the cowboy stereotype about Calgary. But it will dispel the “always covered in snow” stereotype too, so I really should not complain. I should note that we had an inordinately dry June and that’s why the grass looks so brown- in comparison, by late September, it was very green. We also had the warmest day of the entire year on September 23. Very odd summer and early fall. But warts and all- this is our home, welcome, have a look around on Street View.

I’m very happy about this, about getting Street View, because I live far–thousand and thousands of kilometres far–from many (most) of the people who matter most to me in my life, and this is, as anybody who’s been following this blog already knows, one of my curses. The vast majority of these people will never set foot in my home or my city (or province). Streetview is a way to make us closer, sort of, and it’s a blessing. I feel the same way, for the same reason, about facebook, and so while I understand the complaints that many people have about “privacy” and the unwillingness too many of you have about joining facebook, I think that these complaints also are from a position of luxury. What I mean is that I have the choice (for practical purposes) of getting online and “out there” or I have the choice of being almost completely disconnected. I don’t have family here; I don’t have many of what I consider really good friends here. My being “out there” on the net and having the presence that I do is not only or primarily a matter of “narcissism,” as I’ve read so often and as I’ve been accused of suffering from. What I am is keen to the point of desperation to use these resources (facebook, blogging, twitter, heck even email and skype) to reconnect in ways and using means that used to be nonexistent, or that used to be available to the few. I’m narcisstic. You don’t get to be a self-made first-generation academic and a voluntary American ex-pat with my scholarly pedigree by NOT being very, very good at addressing your own needs and having a certain elevated view of yourself.  But I’m not a disordered narcissist. I CARE about the people I love, LOVE to hear from them, LOVE to host them, LOVE to see them, and LOVE when they reciprocate in sharing some of that nice self-centred focus that you have to give in to if you’re going to play online as I do.  A lot of my motivation in doing what I do online isn’t narcissistic at all but rather reflects my desire to have others join in. And that’s because you’re all so damn far away.

Prairies Regional Canadian Barista Competition®, and some taste-y reflections

Sorry for the my absence (that’s to future me more than present you, but if you really missed me, sorry); if you’ve been checking my twitter feed (here or on twitter) you know that I’ve been increasingly fond of the act and utility of the micro-blogging thing, especially with my new phone, but tweets aren’t narrative even if they’re, you know, dialogical, and I do have some stuff to write more than 140 characters about, so here we go.

Yesterday was the prairies barista comps, held as they were last year at Fratello Coffee Company here in Calgary. I dropped Brian off at the airport for a trip to Anchorage AK via Vancouver at around 9am and then scooted over to Fratello, what I thought was a straight shot down Barlow Trail from the airport, but it wasn’t quite that simple and I was a few minutes late, not a problem since I did not, as it turned out, judge this year. I didn’t signal my intentions to do so in time, the slate was full, and I know to inquire earlier next year. BUT I was a good audience member, stayed for the whole thing (until past 6pm, surviving on coffee, cookies, and chips), and had a great time. Make that a GREAT time, an emotional experience really. There were 11 competitors which is two fewer than last year but I can confidently say that the level of competition was higher; for example, last year’s winner only placed 3rd this year, and last year’s second-place finisher finished too low to qualify for nationals, a feat he’s managed several times now. Add to this the fact that, among all four regional qualifiers, our first-place finisher (and maybe our second-place and third-place as well) had the single highest score of any barista in the country. Calgary (and Edmonton) has not only arrived in the coffee scene- we might take the whole thing this year.

Here are the results:

6: Jimmy Oneschuk from Museo Coffee (Saskatoon) – 476
5: Mike Tam from Phil & Sebastian Coffee Company (Calgary) – 602.5
4: Josh Hockin from Transcend Coffee (Edmonton) – 607
3: Chad Moss from Transcend Coffee (Edmonton) – 628
2: Joel May from Fratello Coffee Company (Calgary) – 628.5
1: Ben Put from Phil & Sebastian Coffee Company (Calgary) – 632

Josh, Chad, Joel and Ben will be representing the prairies (but really Alberta) at nationals next month in Vancouver. This event was one day, unlike last year when the top six competed in a day-two round and the top three qualified straightaway for nationals, with four and five (last year this was Joel, who ended up 3rd in the country at nationals, and Phil of Phil and Sebastian, who ended up fifth at nationals) getting in due to other contestants not being able to make it. So it’s possible that Mike and even Jimmy will end up in Vancouver. In any case, I found the final announcement and Ben’s incredible, nation’s-best showing to be just an amazing thing to witness; it was hard not to cry. Happy, happy moment. Congrats to all.

With respect to the reflections on “taste” I mention in this post title, I’ve been working (as always) on manuscripts and have two that I’m trying to finish by the end of the month. One is based on the talk that I have last February in Berlin and it’s about how machines in third-wave cafes (and non-third-wave, with some crucial differences) are oriented to by interactants at those shops; I use photographic “data” for this one and so while I’m writing I have one eye on the web, searching for journals that are accommodating of visual sociology and that would reproduce my evidence well. Since Berlin I’ve seen some superb examples of the phenomena I’m describing at shops here and in Toronto, but yesterday I also go to play, for the first time (for me) on the “Slayer” espresso machine that has been developed by a Calgary/Seattle consortium and was originally conceived of by the boys at Fratello, right here in Calgary, and I hasten to mention this as I’ve seen the Slayer described on the net and in print as  a “Seattle-produced machine.” It is in part, but it’s also a Calgary-based invention and I want everybody to know this. (Except I’m wrong- see Eric Perkunder’s comment below). Here’s a pic:

But getting back to my introduction to it: one thing that I want my ethnography to capture is the pleasure, the FUN, that’s involved in using professional equipment, like the Slayer or the Synesso or the various beauties put out by La Marzocco or, honestly, just about any cafe-level equipment, especially by a wide-eyed coffee geek like me. I cannot see how a superautomatic, dumbed-down machine, like those used at horrible cafes where the coffee is an afterthought, could ever be FUN, never mind how it could be a focus for conversation and sociability and even the topic of conversation itself. So I’d like to address the human-machine sort of interaction and not only the human-human version and seeing as I have very little experience in this area I have to start to learn it.

I’m also working on a paper on connoisseurship and am looking at narratives in which coffee aficionados discuss how they arrived at their current taste for coffee and (this goes back to what I saw as the theme for this whole project) how burdensome “taste” can be. Now one nice development I have for this part of my project is some survey data that Brian collected as part of a larger study on consumer habits that he’s doing and he asked people about coffee-drinking habits and where people buy their coffee. He surveyed more than a thousand respondents and found that (1) only 9% of Canadians normally get coffee at “locally owned independent coffeehouses,” and (2) more than 70% of Canadians drink Tim Hortons style brewed coffee when they drink “coffee.” 4% drink espresso; fewer than 2% drink French press. These are interesting data that give some quantitative weight to the qualitative insight gleaned from my narratives, which are about how lonely it can be to be as oriented to coffee as self-described coffee geeks are.

So to stitch parts 1 and 2 of this entry together: it’s indeed lonely to have particular (I can’t say “good” because, well, I try not to be an ass all the time) taste in things, but sharing a whole day with people who share your passion? It was downright religious. In the Durkheimian sense.

“Hear all the bombs, they fade away”: Folk Fest 2009

This year’s titular line is from “Sons and Daughters” by The Decemberists, whose Friday night mainstage closer was my high point of this year’s Calgary Folk Music Festival and in fact one of the top, oh, three concerts of my life. But first the shot that’s evidence of an overspent fest weekend: the sunburnt face with Kid Koala setting up on stage:

Since I already blogged about how much Iron & Wine affected crybaby me on Thursday, let me talk a bit about mainstage Friday since it seems sort of contentious. I didn’t actually catch a lot of it since I was watching the “twilight” stage instead, with Chad Van Gaalen doing a beautiful job and then similarly inspiring were the personable, funny and charming Esthero and then the amazing in a Broken Social Scene side project way (which they are so that’s not a complaint) Apostle of Hustle, so all I caught was most of an energetic but somewhat predictable concert by Arrested Development (yes, “Tennessee” Arrested Development, who know how to play a crowd really well- Aimee Mann, I wish you were there to take notes, from these guys or better yet from Esthero), but they didn’t really “wow” me.

And then came The Decemberists. Full disclosure: I had never heard a note from these guys, a Portland (yay!) 5-piece whose guitarist, I find out later, is from Valparaiso Indiana (yay! right near my hometown!) and who went to Coe College in Iowa (yay for Hoosier alumni of quirky liberal arts colleges!); they had two additional members tonight, women vocalists, one in a sort of Maid Marian get up and the other in black leather dominatrix crossed with the dark angel from Angels in America. The rest of the band were in these 1900s suits and dress and looked like, well, folkies. Again, I knew NOTHING about these guys. The show? It was a sort of rock opera, with repeated leitmotifs and an epic feel about it. Since the performers were “in character” and since songs bled into one another, there was zero interaction with the audience. Not very folky, even though the songs had elements of English/Irish ballads (but also, for lack of a better term, glam rock), and for me? It worked like fucking amoxicillin. I was FLOORED. It was absolutely superb, note-perfect, catchy, memorable, thrilling, as perfect a concert as I could hope for. And then- and then- and then, and this is what made it so special in my opinion, they do an encore to appease the 12,000 adoring audience members. And it’s, like, the OPPOSITE of everything we’d just seen. Lead singer Colin Melroy talks to the audience, lays on the love and the charm, makes us love him and ourselves and one another, and exhorts us in a singalong that I NEVER WANTED TO END. It was something I’ll never forget. Here’s a video from “Beasley564″ on youtube:

This is a good video that’s shot clearly from close in and has excellent sound, but it was cut before we got to the singalong part, where we sang the verse in this post’s title over and over and over again. It was a great moment.

And that would have been enough for me, really, but the weekend had not even started, so I trudged back to Prince’s Island on Saturday around 2:00pm and caught a concert (the folk fest has both “concerts” and “workshops” on the smaller stages during the day on Saturday and Sunday; “concerts” are 45-minute shows by one artist/group; “workshops” are mashups of usually three different acts who take turns and collaborate/jam/improvise during one another’s songs. Sometimes it works well; other times, not so much) by Saskatoon’s Deep Dark Woods, which was great even though I couldn’t help but think that these guys were made to do The Band covers, and that’s not an insult. Then I caught another mini-concert, this one by the outstanding, just incredibly talented Mark Berube and the Patriotic Few, from Montreal. They deserved a bigger audience; ours was huddled under what shade we could find (it was HOT!), and then there were something like 6,000 people at a workshop on another stage (there are 6 stages, 7 with the mainstage) with Steven Page and Sarah Harmer among others. THEN I headed over to the odd long tent that is the Ship and Anchor stage to see a workshop featuring- this is good- Esthero, Chad Van Gaalen, Emily Wells and Kid Koala. Yes, THAT Kid Koala, doing his first folk fest. I uploaded a bit from Emily’s “Passenger” and I hope you can view this link. What a beautiful experience.

As on Friday, we eschewed most of the mainstage for the twilight stage to see an inventive, energetic Tom Fun Orchestra and then a beautiful, interesting, engaging set from Kid Koala. This was his first folk festival but he fit the mood perfectly. His last number was mesmerizing and moving, a version of Moon River, that Brian caught in nearly its entirety and that he posted to facebook, and here it is. Thanks, Brian! After KK was the very dense, interesting and challenging Akron/Family… and then I went home, exhausted but happy for the 45-minute walk on a beautiful summer night.

Sunday was a relatively short day as I had plans to only attend one mini-concert and one workshop–mainstage didn’t really appeal to me–and I had my heart set on seeing Emily Wells do her thing again, solo, and made it down for her 12:50 show. And she was just outstanding. I just posted my video of her doing the live sampling she does; this is “Symphony #1″ and it is beautiful. Everything she did was beautiful.

I was feeling sunburnt and dehydrated to the degree of feeling faint-tipsy and I could have absconded at this point, but I stuck around to see a “brass” workshop with Belle Orchestre and friends, which was loud and fun, but I was running on fumes and headed home afterwards.

I have been to every Calgary Folk Fest since 2001 (for at least one day, but usually for all four), and when I consider the sheer emotions I experienced at this years, I have to say that it was the best one I’ve experienced so far. Kudos to all involved, including Brian (whose sponsorship–he does the audience research–nets me not only one of his 4-day all-access passes, but also the ability to enter the artists’ lounge backstage and to meet some of these musicians) for a job very, very well done.

Calgary coffee updates

…but first, my caraganas are lookin’ fine! Relatively easy trim (no ladder work, hooray!) and here’s the result as of this afternoon:

For comparison’s sake, and I know I’ve posted this pic before, but not juxtaposed with the above image, was one year ago:

New fence is also evident. I’m happy. Paint job on the house next door is very nice, too. Our car is the Sonata in the “before” pic, only thing that’s not improved…

And so… coffee news! Exciting times in Calgary for the coffee geek and the geek-in-training. I happened by Caffe Rosso today, which is a charming little coffeehouse in Ramsay, which is directly east of the Stampede grounds and very much up-and-coming, and had a long chat with the owner. I mentioned my research project and how I’ve become resigned, because of my lack of external funding, to doing interviews and fieldwork in Calgary and not in more stereotyped third-wave coffee hubs like Portland or Seattle. But, I noted (and I only really reasoned/articulated this today), Calgary is perfect for my project, because it’s transforming far more than those other cities. A year ago I’d have counted six third-wavers in Calgary: Java Jamboree, Kawa Espresso Bar, Bumpy’s, Phil and Sebastian, DeVille Luxury Coffee, and Caffe Artigiano, with Kawa and DeVille having been open about month. Today? Add to that list a second DeVille location, with their excellent beans from Intelligentsia (with “Chow Bazaar” in the Colours condo tower on 1st Street SW), A Ladybug Cafe, serving JJ Bean coffees made with a La Marzocco FB-80 on the far west side of town (2132 Aspen Stone Blvd, past 85 St SW), a second Caffe Artigiano at Shell Centre (Shell is at 3rd St and 4th Ave, but the entrance for CA will be on the 3rd Ave side of the complex), a retail location (huzzah!) for Phil and Sebastian opening late summer at the Shops of Marda Loop, in the retail level of the new six-storey condo building currently in the final stages of construction at 33rd Avenue and 20 Street SW; a new shop called Insomnia Cafe in the Burns Building (which is the grand old white building attached to the Epcor Centre, right at Olympic Plaza), which opens TOMORROW, and which is pulling delicious (I got a sample) espresso made with Fratello’s “competition blend,” first coffeehouse in town to do so to my knowledge, and then of course there’s the afore-mentioned Caffe Rosso, which started out using the recogizable but not very strong Illy espresso but is now sourcing from Boston’s respected Terroir roastery. So we now can lay claim to no fewer than TWELVE third-wave shops in Calgary. And that’s not even counting Caffe Beano, which does have its third-wave sensibilities, and the ever-improving and even downright “serious” coffee treatment you can find at the many locations of Good Earth Cafes around town.

Let me talk about Rosso a bit, because I’d been avoiding it because I’m not a fan of Illy and I was dismayed to know that a shop with such fine equipment (a Synesso espresso machine) would “waste” it on Illy, which is famed and famous but which is unavoidably stale when it arrives on our shores. I reconsidered this aversion when I realised that Rosso would be an opportunity for me to sample Illy in its best expression and so I decided to give it a try. And… they’re no longer using Illy, but as I mention in the last paragraph, Terroir (and are the only ones in Calgary, maybe in all of Canada, to do so). So here’s my chance to grab some beans from that roaster, and I set off today.

Caffe Rosso is in an odd location, an industrial area that’s across the street from a characterful residential part of an interesting inner-city neighbourhood called Ramsay. The plot it sits on is inside industrial lands slated for massive redevelopment as something to be called “Ramsay Exchange,” and the owners are real pioneers in this regard, but there is lots of housing adjacent and really nothing in the way of retail, so there is method to the seeming madness of their location. Here’s the view as you approach it:

Quite cute, really; look beyond this fence and try to imagine condo towers and a retail village, because that’s the plan and I hope it comes to fruition:

Inside is calm and comfy, and contrary to what the cinderblock facade might suggest, there are big windows on the sides of the cottage and lots of natural light. I took a pic but can’t seem to locate it, sorry, but I encourage folks to check it out; it’s close to Crossroads Market and a unique refuge. I had an espresso and it was very good, nice temperature and very balanced, not unlike Intelligentsia Black Cat. I bought a pound and look forward to trying it at home.

So there are coffee things happening downtown, in the Beltline, in Marda Loop, in the ‘burbs, and even in this unlikely setting in Ramsay. And there’s more to come.