Repost of the week

On the bridge to nowhere down the street from me:

http://blogs.dallasobserver.com/unfairpark/2012/01/calatrava_bridge_just_a_cheap.php#more

Dallas Farmer's Market

Dallas Observer's Jim Schutze just published an article about the Dallas Farmers Market, and I agree with him on most of his points. Here's my response and solution:

The Dallas Farmer's Market is a giant boondoggle of crummy real estate where you can hardly get any decent local food, prepared food or crafts. From my experience in working and visiting farmer's markets I think they fit into two categories:
A- Permanent City Fixture (see Reading Terminal, Pike Place etc...) These markets are open every (or almost) every day, and attract a lot of tourist, shopping, and eating traffic rather than just people buying food. This requires more space for restaurants and crafts, as well as a commitment to advertising the market as a tourist attraction.

B- Produce Market (see Portland, Ithaca, Coppell etc...) These markets are open just one or a few days a week, and are more for locals buying food (mostly produce) to cook with. To succeed here you need to differentiate from grocery stores by focusing on local produce and community connections.

Dallas is following neither of these plans. The indoor pavilion does have a couple craft booths, but is pretty empty. Shed 1 is supposed to be local produce only, but there is still a separate sticker designation for local vendors and not all of them in 1 have it (I don't understand this...). Also the local merchants are overshadowed by the large amount of produce in the other sheds that got diverted from a grocery store and is being sold at a huge mark-up (who buys pineapple at a North American farmers market?). The restaurant options are very limited. Because the transition to a Permanent City Fixture would be so difficult, the market should instead focus on becoming a viable local produce market.

Here's the plan:
-Open the market only on the weekends and maybe one afternoon/evening a week.
-Only allow vendors to sell produce grown within a 100 miles of Dallas
-Designate shed 3 or 4 for food trucks- an easy way to increase prepared food options, and attract food truck patrons to the market (many of them don't have plans on a saturday morning anyway)
-Add cooking demonstrations. There are already cooking classes w/ area chefs organized, why not have them (or others) give a demonstration with only market products used? This will show people how to use their newly bought food and make it more of an experience to go to the market.
-Increase the scope and awareness of special market days. There are apparently already special events at the market, but I can't say I've ever heard of them...

All these things will increase the density of visitors to the market and help deal w/ the problems of the homeless walking through, as well as the market seeming like an empty blight next to the business district. Or we can just nuke it...

Insane weather

The remnants of Tropical Storm Hermaine (What a lame name. I nominate it for David's fantasy team this year) passed through DFW today which created minor havoc. Massive amounts of rain made for really bad driving- I ended up holed out in a coffee shop for a couple hours- especially when people drive without their lights on.

On my way home the radio was buzzing with tornado warnings, watches, sightings and alarms. There was in fact one tornado which touched down pretty near downtown, and was headed near our apartment (but ended up going pretty far west, on it's way to Oklahoma instead).
(not my video)

Mean Green

Normally I don't pay attention to, watch or in any way follow college basketball with the exception of checking up on Cornell from time to time (mostly via AK) but UNT made it into the dance Sunday night by winning the Sun Belt tourney. So I'll have to watch at least two games. Anyone interested in a friendly wager that the Mean Green outlast the Big Red (sounds like a reality show about interior decorating)?

Mavs update3

I had the pleasure of going to the Mavs game on Sunday night against the Hornets. We got very cheap tickets up in the rafters, but still enjoyable and you could still see the action fine. As Chad said, it was as much as going to see a movie and way more fun. Some notes:

-Haywood is sooo much better than Damp, and way more fun to watch. Dude can actually catch a pass.

-The team surprisingly looked its best when they ran the floor. Obviously this worked best when Jet was playing, but I think that the best way to integrate Butler and Haywood, and to fully utilize the Karate Kidd's skill set, is to continue a fast pace. They don't need to be playing like a D'Antoni team or recklessly putting up shots, but push the ball down and see what you can get, and if there isn't an easy basket then just ease into a half court set and let the German go to work.

-Darren Collison is crazy good. Hornets could trade CP3 for some more fire power in the middle and be totally fine.

-Marcus Thorton is also crazy good. See previous point.

-The lead isn't secure even when it's 25 points and you've been putting on a clinic for an entire half.

-If the Mavericks can shore up their defense against guards, they could go all the way. So far at an 8 game streak and in 2nd place in the West they're doing pretty damn well

Franconia

I had to get out of the house fairly early today and took the opportunity to go tour the Franconia Brewery in McKinney. It starts at 11 on Saturdays, and McKinney's almost an hour away so it would've normally cut into my sleeping in, but today was a good day for it.

And I'm glad I did- it was the best brewery tour I've ever taken. The tour lasted about an hour after which everyone hung out and sampled some of their fine product including the second batch of their . The brewer/owner Dennis Wehrmann (only one other employee) led the tour and struck a great balance between technical speak and humor. Some key points for me:
-All their beer is brewed according to the Reinheitsgebot, which means only grain, hops, yeast, and water (so sadly no pumpkin beer from them)
-Their annual production was about 1,500 barrels (that's 3,000 kegs) last year and Dennis expects to double that this year (how's that for growth)
-They self distribute their beer (there's a pickup covered in Franconia decals). I'm not sure how they get around all the three tier laws but it's pretty cool and I'm sure it allows their beer to sell cheaper for it.
-They exercise a lot of quality control measures
-They don't bottle their beer (which I knew) but not due to the economics, but rather the environmental issues relating to the US not reusing their bottles. Dennis claimed that in Germany they reuse their glass bottles many many times over before even recycling them, and also reuse their plastic bottles (suprising. Can the Germany trip guys confirm or refute this?)
-The brewery is brand new and very environmentally friendly (no trash can).

All in all a great tour with a great drink local message and delicious beer.

Mavs update2

Damp's out for a month, and Haywood's making headlines on Daily Dime. Did I call that or what? In related crappy news for Washington, former Mav Josh Howard is out for the season (that's major bonus points for Cuban for the timing on that trade) and the wizards will be signing this guy to a one year veterans minimum contract in order to have enough players to avoid forfeiting

On the plus side this dude sets the record for oldest current player and he looks like he can smoke the competition.

DSO plays Shosty 7

I went to the Dallas Symphony on Friday night with Kaley- they played a Violin concerto which we missed and Shostakovich's Symphony no. 7. Surprisingly I hadn't ever heard this piece before. It's a really long work and has a ginormous brass section (double the normal number of players). In general I liked it- it's fairly melodramatic, but still fun to listen to. There's a point in the first movement where its just the snare drum and col legno strings, which sounded really amazing- so quiet you could hear people breathing. The DSO snare drum player is incredibly precise. He sounded great in Bolero a couple months ago and again in this piece. In contrast the end of the symphony is wall rumbling loud, the entire orchestra blaring out fortissimo- really powerful with the huge brass section. A much better concert than Ma Vlast.

Mavs action

Dallas hosted the All-star game this weekend- huge success and way too many people. Cable was out on Friday and Saturday so I didn't get to check out the good non-game stuff (still haven't really seen the dunk contest, anyone know of somewhere I can find it complete online?). I watched a good chunk of the first half of the actually game and it wasn't that good except for this:


make that two made 3's in his career, almost as good as watching Shaq play point last year.

But this all overshadowed the big trade Cuban pulled off. Mavericks shed:

Josh Howard

Drew Gooden

and some other junk

and the Mavs pick up:
Caron Butler


Brendan Haywood


and DeShawn Stevenson


My analysis?
This makes them way better. Damp sucks balls normally, and even more so when he's injured, so the addition of Haywood alone is great. Butler will have some issues adjusting to playing more two than three, and having fewer opportunities than he did in Washington when Agent Zero wasn't playing (basically the entire last three seasons), but it's not like Howard was clutch or dependable for scoring anyway, so you're really not losing anything there. This also has the added advantage of taking Jet out of the starting lineup and though he's an ok starter he's much better as the 6th man.

Prediction:
They go 17-13 from here on out.

This brings me to my next point:
I've decided to switch my allegiance from the Pistons to the Mavericks. You can call me a fair weather fan, but it's mostly about personnel and availability (and I still still follow the Bills so much that I listen to most of their games on Internet radio for lack of other means so suck that) . The Detroit players that I really enjoy watching- Chauncey, Sheed, Afflalo, and most off all, Dice, are no longer there. The ones they have now have no character and no heart. And it's not really fun rooting for a team you can't ever see play (especially with basketball which radio doesn't capture well at all).

So I hope the Mav's can kick some ass with this new and improved lineup. I'll be cheering for them.

another snow picture

Snow... and a beer

So it's snowing right now in Dallas. I had to get up and go to a lesson (all my other classes for today were previously cancelled, unrelated to the weather), which meant a drive to Denton. Luckily the roads were pretty much fine- it's warm enough that the snow's melting quickly on the roads. The biggest problem with snow here is that Texans don't have any idea how to drive in it. But today (unlike on Christmas Eve) I only saw one accident on my drive. Annoyingly my horn professor got a phone call during my lesson that they were closing campus then- after my lesson.

After driving home and eating lunch I went outside with my nephews to play in the snow. It's super wet and great for snowballs/ sculptures. A nice treat to experience some real winter.

When we got back inside it was hot chocolate for them, and a beer I've been holding for a while for me- Oatgoop.

It's a 10% wheatwine made in collaboration between Three Floyds Brewery in Indiana, and Mikkheller, an increasingly popular brewery in Denmark. It's quite a good beer and held up well from when I got it (I think Chad brought it back in August? something like that). Lots of pineapple and tropical fruit flavor in the hops. Tons of caramel. Not too boozy, just some hints of vanilla and scotch. Given how much hops flavor I got I'm curious how it would have tasted fresh- probably too much alcohol hotness without the age but I bet the taste would've been good.

So if you have some snow (CB and Beckum?) you should go throw some snowballs and have a beer- a great way to waste an afternoon.

Mahler Concert

I'm playing a concert tomorrow night (Sat) at 8pm (Dallas time) with the UNT Symphony Orchestra. We're playing Mahler's 1st symphony which is a really sweet piece, one of my favorites. If you're sitting at home bored (or you wanna see a sweet piece being played live) you can listen to a live stream here:

http://recording.music.unt.edu/index.php/live

The video at the top of the page is the end of the piece played by the Vienna Phil conducted by Leonard Bernstein (Bernstein conducted the NY Philharmonic for decades. He also wrote the music to West Side Story among other things). It's interesting if you want to see the musicians but not my favorite recording (though still good). The trumpet players are playing rotary trumpets as opposed to normal piston trumpets and the horns are playing single F horns, which is crazy and very hard- but business as usual for the Vienna Phil.

This video is a recording of the Chicago Symphony which has the greatest brass section in the world. If you compare the ends of the two videos you'll see what I mean. In the Chicago one the brass completely dominate the whole ensemble, you can barely tell the strings are playing. If you enjoy this I'd recommend listening to the other sections by the CSO, as they are equally awesome.

DSO concert

I went with my girlfriend to see the Dallas Symphony last night. I managed to get cheap student tickets for a bunch of concerts this year. We saw them play Mahler's First Symphony (which I'm currently playing in orchestra at school) last fall which was amazing. If you have the chance to see a good orchestra play this you should take it.


Last night they played Smetana's "My Fatherland" with a European guest conductor. I have to say it was not the best I've heard the orchestra play. The strings seemed out of touch and had no dynamic range, the horns played too loud, and the ensemble wasn't together at times. Hopefully the next concert will be better (Shostakovich 7 which is a pretty sweet piece).

This is a video of the third movement which they played well yesterday (though not as well as this video which is the Czech National Orchestra playing a Czech masterpiece). It portrays in a very followable fashion the story of a girl (Sarka) who becomes a raging manhating feminist after being betrayed by a lover. She fake ties herself to a tree and a prince appears with his army and "saves" her. You can hear the dialogue between clarinet (Sarka) and the cellos (the prince). Then they have a party (dancing music). Sarka then starts slipping stuff into the drinks that makes the army fall asleep (slowing music, snoring by the bassoon). Then Sarka calls out to her Amazonian women army (horn calls and clarninet again) and they slaughter the male army.