Wisconsin, I love you, but I’m married, and you refuse to accept it.

More on that cryptic title in a few lines. I returned from my Midwestern sojourn yesterday after battling too much traffic there and here (big crash on the Deerfoot slowed my trip home, one made longer by a cabbie who has lived in Canada for 37 years and has not mastered English past the lesson on the hour-long unintelligible rant, and I am SO not kidding here) and was really tired when I got back. So let me first say that I had a lovely time, with family and friends and mostly very pleasant weather. I spent three days in Madison and among more formal events I loved to just walk around and absorb that fantastic college town, one that I was a happy (if poor, along with everyone else) grad student from 1986 to 1993.

I lived in seven places in seven years in Madison and for the first time since I left I got to see every one and documented each visit with a picture. Here was my grad student chronology:

First was this private dorm at 1317 Spring Street near Camp Randall Stadium. It was full of foreign students, which was neato, and homophobic undergrads from every corner of Wisconsin, which was not-o.

I got out of there in June 1987 and sublet a room in an apartment at 1034 E Johnson for the summer and then in August moved upstairs into a studio. This building had BATS. Yes, BATS.

After 15 months there (split between two apartments) I moved the next block over to rent a room with a guy named Mike and his soon-to-be-ex-wife’s spaniel named Daniel. I had to walk Daniel the Spaniel because Mike would just as soon as let him starve (and not get walked of course). I was there, at 923 E Dayton, for a year:

Cute house, but I had to move out at the end of my lease since the pending divorce made my presence tenuous. I moved into a townhouse attached to the rear of an apartment building a few steps west at 911 E Dayton:

I lived there with my cool roommate, fellow grad student Tom Conroy. It was nice to have a roommate who wasn’t scary depressed and didn’t bark madly or fly around the room at night. That lasted a year until August 1990, when I moved into my groovy studio- about 180sf, give or take, right off the Capitol Square at 115 S Hancock:

I was there for two years. Then in 1992 I had the misfortune to meet my last-year-of-grad-school abusive partner and we, at his rigid insistence, HAD to move in together, so we rented a one-bedroom in the Cardinal Apartments a couple of blocks east at 416 E Wilson, apartment circled here:

And so ended my life in Madison when I graduated with my PhD in 1993 and absconded for a post-doc at the University of Kentucky.

Madison is, now, a fantastic place to visit; it’s a sort of smaller version of Portland with the same young, laid-back vibe, and one of the coolest things is that everything in the campus and downtown area is priced for poor students… and one thing I am no longer is poor, so value is just insane. My hotel was just fine and there is too much good food, including my two visits to Parthenon Gyros (note that this site wasn’t working when I tried it) for something that is, quite simply, impossible to find in Canada: gyros on a crisp hot grilled Greek pita with a TON of tzatziki and perfect fries in a huge pile. I also made it to Dotty Dumpling’s Dowry where the burgers are without par- beef ground in-house so they ask how one wants it “done,” a rarity nowadays for sure. This pic does not do the massiveness of the burger justice but it’s the best I could do:

I have to finally say in regard to restaurants that I had one “finer” experience on this trip and it was at Restaurant Muramoto on King Street. I had had enough rich stuff in NW Indiana and fries and such in Mad City and my body was crying out for fish, and Muramoto came highly recommended. It was fantastic. I had a starter of a “salad” of deep-fried pork belly (so much for healthy!) on nice greens with shredded apple and a very bright mustardy dressing; I also had two big sushi rolls, spicy tuna and unagi; both were on par with what I might get here at, say, Globefish, but this place was relaxing and not at all crowded (I was the only customer in fact) so I would chat with the staff and such. It was a very nice experience.

The coffee scene in Madison is not quite where I’d hoped it would be; there were a couple of decent places with La Marzocco Lineas and latte art, but both served cappos that STARTED at 12 oz, so I was thrilled to find a REAL third-wave coffeehouse with a Synesso, beautiful beans from a roaster called Kickapoo Coffee (no roast dates sadly- even at Ancora, which roasts their own, no roast dates anywhere) and delicious crepes to boot. I promised to blog ‘em so here’s the exterior:

…with a sign of pure allure outside:

…and the counter with that two-group Synesso:

It was just about perfect. Way to go, Bradbury’s!

So I am almost completely in my element in Madison, and it’s as much a spiritual home for me as Portland or Toronto are, and is (seriously) one place I’ll consider having my ashes scattered. I mean, look at this idyll, a lazy end-of-semester day on Bascom Hill:

And finally yours truly on the Memorial Union Terrace, with sun and people and air that smells of clean water, lilacs, and in a little while, brats ‘n’ beer:

So, since I love the place so damn much, what’s with the weird title for this entry? Well, when I have nice experiences in the States (and this one was enhanced by the great time I had with my family in Indiana and with friends and colleagues in Madison), I start to muse about just maybe moving back. I’ve mused a lot–a LOT–about how awesome it would be to live in Portland, and of course other places as well. But here’s the rub, and it’s not a bad thing, but I’m MARRIED. I’m moreover married, legally and officially, to another man. And this man happens not to be an American citizen. This is a matter much more complicated than most people, Americans or Canadian or gay or straight, can appreciate. Yes, some states have domestic partnership policies and one, Massachusetts, actually allows same-sex marriage. Oregon has one of the best domestic-partnership provisions in the country, and so people sometimes tell me, “you and Brian can move to [Oregon, Massachusetts, California, etc]; they have same-sex marriage there too!”

No we cannot. States do not administer their own immigration programs, and Brian is not a US citizen. I am. He’s not. And the INS does not give the tiniest smidgen of consideration for same-sex couples who are of different nationalities. If he were a refugee then we’d have part of a leg to stand on, but he’s not, and really, the notion of having to subject Brian to the inefficient, protracted agony of trying to get a green card is something I don’t even want to imagine. Being married in a same-sex union and living in Canada and enjoying non-problematic equality as we do now is something that I will not surrender. Ever. I would only consider moving back to the US alone, and God willing, that’s not going to be an option for me for a long time.

Where does Wisconsin fit into this rant? Well, once upon a time, Wisconsin had the most progressive gay-friendly legislation in the US. It was the first state to make discrimination against people on the basis of sexual orientation illegal in the same sense and in the same contexts as was discrimination on the basis of race. Fast forward to today, and Wisconsin has a draconian “defense of marriage” act, one that also prohibits the state from legalising same-sex domestic partnerships, AND my alma mater, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, is not permitted to offer same-sex partners of university employees benefits (aside from tokens such as athletic center membership and stuff like that). No health insurance! No pension! This is a scandal and while I’m thrilled to see the advocacy from the university to get idiots like this monstrous asshole to appreciate the importance of providing staff with this perk (the same as is offered to all heterosexual staff), I really think the “advocacy” should be more aggressive.

I mean, this is fucking APARTHEID, people. Why are the “straight but not narrow” professors still employed there? Rights means voting with your feet sometimes, and in this case, I am asking UW-Madison professors- and sociologists, I am looking at you- to let the powers that be know that you refuse to work in this environment. It’s not up to the tiny percentage of gay employees to fight this battle. YOU are benefitting. YOU must refuse privilege. Nobody, especially that evil and stupid Huebsch ignoramus, is going to listen to the complaints of a few faggots and dykes.

And yes, I am serious. Wisconsin, I adore you, but I’m married, and you have to wake up and accept that.

Research ideas: On connoisseurship and what happens when somebody spoils the party

Tempus fugit, not that I have to remind anybody. Spring is very officially here (even yesterday’s unexpected snowstorm- 23 heavy centimetres, a new record for this date, are going to make the grass green), the lilacs will soon enough be blocking the light from the windows in my basement cave here, I have ONE week of classes left to teach, and, even though I did not get my bloody SSHRC grant, I have to start think about what I want to accomplish research-wise over the summer.

Well, I don’t have the budget for travel and the sort of fieldwork that travel permits, but I have lots of ideas around the “coffee” theme still, and the one I want to cogitate on today (in this post- watch me cogitate!) has to do with two coffee-related news items of late:

1. McDonald’s is going to have “baristas” at its stores (some? all?) in the US. Now, this effort of McDonald’s to sell “specialty coffee” is not new; in fact, anybody who’s been abroad, in Asia, South America, or Europe, and for all I know in Australia or the Middle East and elsewhere, has been exposed to the “McCafe.” We saw these when Brian and I were in Argentina in 2004 (and noted that they were all 100% smoking- not so in the one I ducked into in Cologne, which was one of the very few NON-smoking refuges in that smoky city). My only experience actually drinking the coffee (a double espresso) there was laughably bad, but that’s not really the point. Well, it is sort of the point, but the REAL point is what happens when an already corporatised and watered-down thing that used to be the provenance of aficionados- espresso and espresso-based drinks- gets FURTHER routinised and bastardised by being sold out of a McDonald’s.

I just saw a commercial on one of the US stations about this, and I’d love to link it but can’t (yet) find it online. Two women are at a woody-looking coffeehouse and one says, “Did you hear McDonald’s is selling LATTES?” They both erupt into relief about how now they don’t have to act all snobby and read books and so forth. It’s actually pretty funny and reflects how this dumbing-down is part of McD’s promotional strategy, and is reflected in their “unsnobby  coffee” web campaign too. But what about us coffeegeeks? Is something being usurped here? Well, no, not “taste.” But this does give us (and me, wearing my sociologist hat) something to talk about.

2. Starbucks bought Clover Equipment. A “Clover” is a machine that make brewed coffee a la minute and by the cup. Before Clover, brewed coffee had to made in pots or receptacles that entailed making a huge batch at once and selling progressively-less-fresh cups; what’s more, those cups all had to have the same blend or varietal of coffee. If a customer wanted an Ethiopian Sidamo and all that was in the pot was a “house” blend, a decaf, and, say, a Colombian, then there was no way to give the customer her Sidamo. The only alternative would be personal drip stations or press pots which both take several minutes, for one cup (versus the 20 or so seconds it takes to make espresso, but this isn’t about espresso). Enter the Clover, which makes ONLY single cups and does it fast, about as fast as espresso, and permits the operator to “Clover” any bean in stock. Very cool. Until recently, Clovers were the provenance of a small number of shops that could afford the technology (about C$11,000 per maker, versus say $2500 for a standard drip maker) and who had the customer base who knew enough to support it. Clovers shine at bringing taste profiles out of good beans, and good beans are expensive. So Clover-brewed coffee tends to be expensive as well.

The entrepreneurs at Clover sold the company earlier this year and as of now it looks as if they’ll delimit all sales of new Clovers to Starbucks ONLY. It does appear that they (Starbucks, presumably) will still provide service and support for these machines, but there has already been fallout from the third-wave coffee community about this, to the extent that one outstanding shop/roaster (Stumptown in Portland) has sold all of its Clovers. They don’t want to be affiliated with or otherwise attached to Starbucks. We have three shops in Calgary with Clovers at this time- Phil & Sebastian, Caffe Artigiano and the opening-very-soon Kawa Espresso Bar. I’ll keep my ear to the ground.

These two developments- the McDonald’s “invasion” into specialty coffee and the Clover sale- are sociologically interesting because they expose and problematise issues surrounding “taste” and distinction. This sort of thing is a constant challenge to connoisseurs: what happens when your “thing” is usurped? Well, we’re seeing it happening right now in the coffee culture, and I look forward to following it.

A few last words (I hope) about McNally-Robinson

Here’s a nice apple-art cappuccino for ya before the venting starts anew:

And now back to this situation. I’ve been getting a fair number of responses (not all posted because I am only posting comments with what appear to be valid email addresses- you know who I am; I want to at least trust that I can know who you are) to my rant about McNally Robinson, and so I think the issue and my stand on it merits some qualification. I want mostly that readers understand why I’m angry, and what I’m not angry about.

First, I’m sad that McNally-Robinson is closing. This does not mean that I don’t recognise their right to run a business as they see fit. By the same token I’m not angry at Clover Equipment for selling their company to Starbucks, which will, from now on and forever, not sell Clovers to any independent coffeehouse, ever ever. It sucks, it makes me sad and angry, but that doesn’t mean I’m claiming, as one commenter said, that M-R shouldn’t be allowed to do what they want to do to make money. That’s not the point. This isn’t about a company being avaricious; ALL companies exist, at least in part, to make money.

The reason I’m so upset is about how this closing is being sold to us, and the recurring theme in it is, “tough shit, Calgary, this is all YOUR FAULT.” It’s our fault because of the increased costs of doing business here; it’s our fault because the value of M-R’s building was too much for them to resist selling; it’s our fault because rents are too high (and as you can read in earlier comments, Balboa was going to charge M-R $1 million a year), and it’s our fault because our downtown is, as one of my commenters put it, “a ghost town after 6pm.” Actually he didn’t even stipulate “downtown” but you get it.

The problem with all of these excuses, aside from being monstrously and (to me) unforgivably insulting, is that none hold up, unless you just accept the fact that M-R are hypocritical, liars, or both.

First, yes, business costs are high. Labour costs are high. But they’re high in Saskatoon, high in Toronto, and really, really, REALLY high in NYC. This has to be put into perspective.

Second, yes, you made a killing on the sale of your building. Why not be frank about this? You want us to feel sorry for you? We feel sorry for your employees. We feel sorry for ourselves for the loss of a cultural institution here. Do you really expect anybody to feel sorry for you? Well, yes, apparently, given the tone of letters to the editor and whatnot- you’re being depicted as a poor independent business chased from downtown. You aren’t and you weren’t. Stop misrepresenting yourselves.

Third, rents are too high?! This is laughable- you OWNED your building, you SOLD it for a huge profit and now you’re claiming there was something unbearable in the lease terms? Didn’t you discuss this with your new landlord? Did Balboa not expect you’d stay? I’d say it’s shocking that you expect the public to believe this pity party, but again, your PR efforts have paid off. All I’ve heard is “poor M-R, rents are too high for businesses like them to survive.” Amazing spin job there. Shameful, but impressive.

Finally, the “business was slow at night.” You had at your fingertips 120,000 downtown workers every weekday, the biggest downtown workforce, per capita, of any city in North America. You were also mere steps from two huge hotels, the  Hyatt and the Marriot, which house hundreds of potential customers every night of the week. These people shop, eat, and after work pack downtown bars and restaurants. Downtown is not a “ghost town” any more and the outstanding success of theatre and restaurants downtown are testament to this- hell, I commented earlier on how Caffe Artigiano is packing them in on Saturdays and Sundays, and they’re not even on Stephen Ave. Holt-Renfrew is expanding. Fashion Central will be open in 2009. We’ll soon see ground broken a new Eau Claire Market with hundreds of new housing units to accompany the thousands in the Beltline under construction right now. I never saw M-R less than brisk, sometimes incredibly busy, on weekends. If evening traffic was so bad, why not close at 6? And for that matter, if the core sucked so much for you, why not do what you did in Winnipeg and move out of it but to another location in Calgary? You could have adapted. You chose not to.

I’m still angry. I’m angry not only because my favourite bookstore (well, my former favourite bookstore) is closing. I’m angry because of how the owners and the store’s reps, like that manager interviewed in last week’s Fast Forward, keep bashing Calgary and Calgarians with this “you didn’t support us, so we can’t afford to stay” nonsense. Tell the damn truth. You closed the Calgary store because it’s the one you COULD sell off, and at a huge profit, so that you could open new stores elsewhere, in Winnipeg and Toronto and New York City. Godspeed, there, but for the Christ’s sake STOP INSULTING US.

It’s only March, but the Weasel Word Award for 2008 already has a front runner: McNally-Robinson Booksellers.

McNally-Robinson Booksellers is abandoning downtown Calgary on August 1, 2008. And that sucks. They opened a gorgeous new store in a historic space on Stephen Avenue in 2002, and it heralded the continuing growth and strength of that street, especially its 100 SW block, which is home to some very good restaurants and lots of well-maintained old (for Calgary) architecture. McNally-Robinson has been one of my favourite hangouts, and Brian and I have both spent oodles and oodles of cash there.

When I read about its imminent (sort of imminent- August 1 sounds far away right now and also sounds like a long, painful death to watch) closing yesterday, it felt like a sock in the stomach, and I was prepared to damn our overheated economy, ridiculously tight labour market and all the other problems inherent in The Boom for killing another independent business, an important and to all appearances viable one for the downtown.

Then I read today’s story about this tragedy in the Calgary Herald, and I changed my opinion.

This isn’t about a struggling business being “victimised” by our hard-to-handle economy. This is about greed, and about carpetbaggers who have made a quick buck and are trying to make us feel sorry for them even while their story holds no water at all. Consider these two excerpts from Paul McNally’s “official statement”:

1. “Current real estate prices in downtown Calgary make it difficult to sustain a bookstore. The value of the real estate over-reaches the potential of the bookselling business.”

2. “In an average cost structure, the store would be viable and profitable. In downtown Calgary, not so much.”

Okay, let me look at each of these like the good critical analyst that I am.

On 1: Yes, “current real estate prices” do make it difficult to sustain a bookstore, but NOT IF YOU OWN THE BUILDING. McNally-Robinson BOUGHT the Clarence Block (the name of their building) in 2004 from the good, community-minded people at Encorp (the developers of the wonderful Art Central project at Centre and 7th Ave) for $5 million after presumably leasing the space for two years. Then a couple of months ago McNally-Robinson SOLD their building FOR EIGHT AND A HALF MILLION DOLLARS. Not a bad profit, especially when it was Encorp that had invested millions in the historical renovation. So Mr. McNally pockets $3.5 million. I guess this is what he means by “the value of the real estate over-reach[ing] the potential of the bookselling business.” He means they made a big pile of cash selling their business. Now, what happens to that money? Read on.

On 2: The money goes to the owners, I guess, but also to pay for new projects in markets THAT DO NOT HAVE ANYTHING REMOTELY APPROACHING “AVERAGE” COST STRUCTURES. I am talking most specifically about McNally-Robinson’s bizarre decision to allow their daughter to open a bookstore in that bastion of “average cost structures” known as Manhattan. So we’re supposed to believe that Calgary is too expensive, but MANHATTAN is not? No; what we should “believe” is that Mommy and Daddy had to dump a Canadian property so this “proud” Canadian (Western Canadian even! Oh, wait, hold that thought) bookseller could support a new venture in an already saturated (with bookstores) and ridiculously, absurdly expensive city like New York. New York, USA. Our loss is your gain! God Bless America!

I might add that McNally-Robinson has a huge store in Saskatoon, a city with labour pressures exactly the same as Calgary these days.

With respect to that Western Canadian thing: McNally-Robinson did once use this angle it their advertising, that they were “Western” (to the extent Winnipeg is “Western” but I digress) and didn’t have to kowtow to publishers or booksellers in Toronto or New York. Well, guess where they’re opening another new store? Why, Toronto!

This closure was about McNally-Robinson’s chance to cash in while they’re also pursuing this quixotic dream in NYC. It shows how shallow their commitment was to Calgary. They had plenty of business and the same patterns of customers as every store downtown: Massive crowds at lunch that keep you afloat, smaller crowds otherwise, but the store was NEVER EVER empty. No bookstore is packed day and night, and thank God for that. If they’d come clean instead of talking in weasel-worded doublespeak I’d say something besides “good riddance,” but right now, I can only say that.

I’m pissed off.

Hedwig and the Angry Inch: A perfect way to wash away the aftertaste of an Albertan PC landslide (with some bright spots, actually)

To my loyal public, I have to apologise for my last post, which was probably the most boring thing I’ve ever written. If this blog devolves into a review of blogging software, all is lost, and I’ll be the first person to admit it.

Luckily, interesting things–besides new web browsers, which, I know, aren’t all that interesting–have been happening recently. Too much interesting stuff. First, it’s time for me to acknowledge the 9000-pound elephant in the room (an average adult Indian elephant cow weighs 4500kg, so the next time somebody refers to “the 2000 pound elephant in the room,” ask them where they found such a tiny elephant) and talk about the recent Alberta election.

Okay, my side lost, big time. The final tally was 72 PC (that’s “Progressive Conservative,” for you Americans, not the other PC, or the other other PC), 9 Liberal, 2 New Democrat, 0 Green, 0 Wild Rose Alliance. This despite a predicted breakout for the Liberals, who saw their seats decrease from 16. NDs lose official party status, and we now have “King Eddie” at the helm for at least four years and likely much, much longer. What’s a loyal, generally optimistic “Grit” (”Grit” is slang for “Liberal”; not sure where it comes from… and Wikipedia comes to the rescue) to do?

I try to be a “glass is half full” person, and part of that is managing the fact that I’ve been on the outside of the political majority just about my whole life, in one way or another. Even my tenure in Ontario was during a conservative government there. And I’ve survived and haven’t gone native and switched my allegiances. Anyway, here are my “silver linings”:

1. Central Calgary is now one Liberal bloc: We won Calgary Currie (my riding, south of downtown, which was already liberal since the last election), Buffalo (which comprises all of downtown proper), and Mountain View (which comprises the neighbourhood just north of downtown). I like this, since I’ve almost always been sequestered in small- or large-l “liberal” strongholds, and it suits me to live this way. Calgary had one Liberal MLA when we moved here, then NONE, then three, then four, and now five (with Varsity and McCall, in the NW university area and the ethnically diverse, immigrant-majority NE). Still a minority, but as long as I can feel with increasing confidence that my neighbourhood exemplifies what’s Canadian and urban, I’m happy. That’s positive change.

2. The Wild Rose Alliance, which was selling itself and being sold as the “real” conservative alternative, was repudiated. They got votes, yes, but did not and will probably never get enough outside of a core of social conservatives (who are in no way shape or form a majority in this province, no matter what the rest of the country is committed to believing). They had one seat in the last legislature; now they have zero, and I’m happy about that.

3. I really don’t see this election as an affirmation or a mandate for the PCs. I see it more as an expression of the willingness of the voting Albertans (more on the “voting” part in a minute) to give the Stelmach government the opportunity for a try-out. Stelmach was not an elected Premier; he became Premier when he was voted in as PC party leader last year. Now, maybe, his support will grow or erode under the auspices of a “real” administration. To be honest, and I hate to admit this publicly, I don’t despise Stelmach the same way I despised Ralph Klein and his corrupt, bullying incompetence. Stelmach did some nice things: The province-wide smoking ban for one; refusing to demean same-sex marriage for another; in American terms, he’s actually a bit left of centre. But that doesn’t mean I’m voting for him; it just means I’m not as depressed as I could be.

4. This is not a “mandate” for Stelmach for another important reason: Nobody voted. Well, 41% of voters did, and the ones that did were OLD (Brian and I saw this firsthand at the polling place- sheesh!), and old people in Alberta remember the NEP and still see “Liberal” as “poison.” Yes, they’re idiots who cannot understand the difference between a provincial party in 2008 and a federal one in 1980, but they vote, so they make the rules. I have a conspiracy theory about this: Voters who’d vote against the ruling party are TAUGHT not to vote by media, local and national, who have a vested interest–the country as a whole has this interest–in Alberta remaining conservative. This has the effect of cowing people who’d vote for change because, and we’re told this from day 1 moving here, “there’s no point.” There IS a point; strategic voting would work in the cities at least, and we CAN change this province. Albertans are no more small-c conservative than average Canadians on any any issue except maybe Kyoto (and can you blame them?); Calgarians look exactly like Torontonians on social issues (they did on same-sex marriage but the media never told anybody, because the media NEED Calgary and Alberta to accept the myth about themselves or else regime changes and poof goes cheap subsidized oil); we DO have the power. I wish more people understood this.

So go matters political. Now, Brian and I went to see Sage Theatre’s Hedwig and the Angry Inch last night at the Pumphouse.

Last night (a Thursday, mind) was, like most of its performances, sold out. The film version is one that we both love, a lot, fantastic rock score and a great story, but it was originally a play, and I was curious how it would look.

And we both loved this production! It works beautifully, despite–maybe because of–being staged in the small confines of the Doolittle Theatre space at Pumphouse. It’s basically a concert peppered with monologue, and the actor cast as Hedwig (Geoffrey Ewert) really channeled John Cameron Mitchell well, right down to his body type. He also had a great voice. In even better voice was Jamie Konchak as Yitzhak, superb singer. The animations were done by a local artist, not copied from the film, and there are a lot of local references (”Tommy Gnosis is playing at the Pengrowth Saddledome right this minute”) to keep track of. I found this a cleansing and emotional experience, and not only because there are some songs in Hedwig that cause me to lose it, “Midnight Radio” especially. It’s also because after another exercise in apathy with this week’s election and being told, again, how “conservative” we all are here, to sit through some ribald, queer-friendly theatre in a packed house felt like baptism to me.