Category Archives: Americana

I am stunned, this is so far out of my age group

September 5, 2010Americana, Current Affairs, Food and Drink, TravelSteve Stern

A couple of years ago, Michele and I were in Greenville Mississippi drinking and listening to blues in a local bar when a wedding rehearsal party sort of wandered in. Soon they started drinking vodka-Jello shots and – of course – offered us a couple. I was underwhelmed. Probably because I was about fifty years past the optimum age for any sweet alcoholic drink, let alone a very, very sweet shot of Vodka.

Now I read that a former Wall Street analyst has started a company that provides the modern equivalent of the old time bargirl. These women sell weak vodka-Jello shots and flirt in bars in New York. I was not a bargirl kind of guy the first time around – even in Korea – and this seems even less appealing, but – it seems – there is something for everybody.

As an aside. In Greenville, they served not only the vodka-Jello shots in teeny-tiny plastic cups; but our "bourbon, straight" the same way. When I asked the bartender why they didn't use glasses, he looked at me like I had just asked him to vote for a black guy for president. A sort of What planet are you from. look. Now it seems that the teeny-tiny plastic cups are catching on in the Big Apple. End aside.

If you still find this improbable, check out the slide show at The Wall Street Journal. To directly quote from Gawker, you could look at photo number three in the accompanying slideshow, and then maybe turn your computer off and think quietly for a while.

As a liberal, I find this non-government solution astounding and sort of unbelievable but, as someone who loves cars and driving – I was born in California afterall – I think this is great.

August 12, 2010AmericanaSteve Stern

From Matt Yglesias at

http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/2010/08/uncontrolled-intersections/

Highway 20 from Mono Lake to Tioga Pass

August 8, 2010AmericanaSteve Stern

I love the eastern Sierras – the escarpment along the 395 Highway corridor – they are so dramatic. The eleven or twelve mile drive from Mono Lake to Tioga Pass is the most extreme contrast I have ever seen. It goes from here (both double clickable to enlarge)

to here

in twenty minutes.

At the bottom is Mono Lake which is really not a lake, but a small, very salty sea, a basin with no outlet. Even at that, Mono is a strange place. For years, I drove by it at top speed on my way to more scenic places. I think that most people drove by it and the City of Los Angeles had siphoned off all the creeks running into it; so the Lake was slowly drying up. In 1978 or so, one guy*, David Gaines, changed this little part of the world.

Shocked and appalled by what he saw, Gaines formed the Mono Lake Committee and started talking to everybody – the conservation
community, politicians, schools, service organizations, anybody he could corner – about the wonder of this forgotten lake/sea. Now there is a big Visitor Center overlooking the lake; the small town of Lee Vining – also overlooking the lake – is full of tourists, many of them from Europe; and Los Angeles is no longer sucking the lake dry.

From the bottom, looking up, the Sierras don’t look very impressive.

At the bottom of the road, Forestry Service fire engines are waiting for directions.

But, then, the road just starts up,

Past a pine level, and past rock outcroppings where the seeps run all summer long and the hanging flowers always seem to be blooming.

Running into and then along a glaciated valley to the East gate to Yosemite National Park – where, now, there is always a line – at the gate, that is.

It used to be there was no line – because all the receipts from the gate were turned over to Washington to put in the General Fund – now Yosemite gets to keep most of the receipts and the National Park service the rest. Now, the rangers religiously man the gates.