The Urban Pantheist

Over at tumblr I got involved in a conversation about taste and specifically supertasters. Some folks were saying that being supertasters made it so that they were physically unable to enjoy beer. Being someone who enjoys beer, well I had to jump in:

I do love me some beer, but I put in long hours of acquiring the taste.

From an animal behavior standpoint it’s easy to acquire the taste for things like beer: each bitter sip is rewarded with sweet sweet euphoria (and physical dependence) that gets better the more you drink. My mouth waters whenever I hear the sound of a bottle being opened, or the rush of air into the opened vacuum of a cracked open can.

I acquired the taste for coffee the same way (plus some well-placed sugar-shaming by a friend at my first attempt at drinking espresso). Now I need a little creamer to keep the stuff from making caustic burns in my belly, but sweetener ruins the bitter flavor I appreciate.

Never really acquired: chocolate. It has to be sweet as fuck (hot cocoa I like, and some super sweet chocolate candy) or leavened with something salty–Reese’s peanut butter cups alone justify the existence of the cacao plant in my opinion. Must not be enough of a drug effect on me to counter the bitterness: I find most chocolate to taste like unsweetened baker’s chocolate, and chocolate cake, pudding, and ice cream are sad travesties to my taste bud. The black part of Oreo cookies taste like ash to me.

So maybe I’m a supertaster? To say cilantro tastes like soap to me is to pay it an unearned compliment. Basil and things made with it (ugh pesto) taste like acrid sewage. Too bad there’s no bitter green herb with a self-reinforcing euphoric drug in it

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ANYway, Alexis jumped in to say that if I was a supertaster I wouldn't eat broccoli (I mostly eat it when its soaking in Chinese Restaurant syrup) and another friend also told me nah. That's fine, being a supertaster sounds kind of annoying, and I really like to put hot sauce on everything anyway.

Down by the Boston Waterfront District, the newest city park is the Rose Kennedy Greenway. Several lanes of automobile traffic were submerged into a tunnel and this lovely walkable open space in the middle of the city was created. Here my dad is looking at an organic garden beside the wall of skyscrapers.
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Alex and Jim came over to play, before the next storm arrives.

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Alex is under there somewhere, with her dog Jim, and my dogs Charlie and Maggie (in case you're new here).


Alex brought over a little Victory in a bottle, which gleamed like liquid gold in the sun.


The Norway maple in the front yard decided this weekend was the right time to drop all its leaves.


Look, it's foster puppy Pocket! She looks cute in the leaves, but she kind of looks cute everywhere.

Someone pointed out to me that Disney's Animal Kingdom is more of a theme park than a zoo. It's true--the park is divided into Asia and Africa (and dinosaur) sections with lots of cultural architecture and signs like this one. Just not much information about the animals. And most of the animals are a little hard to find.

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Here's a roundup of stuff I took pictures of on my first day in central Florida. These frogs are in the airport.
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This post is to remind me of this pub. My dad and I were driving around Quincy, Mass, and construction forced us to do a little detour. On the way we saw this pub sign and found it intriguing. I've been trying to remember the name ever since, and finally figured it out today.

The sport portrayed on the sign is the Irish/Gaelic sport of hurling.
The bar is at 1464 Hancock Street in Quincy center. At this writing it has a four star rating with 12 reviews on yelp. They don't open until 3 on Sundays--have to check their Facebook page on a Saturday to find out when they open then.

This has been floating around facebook lately, a map of the Boston rapid transit system with the station names replaced with nearby bars. It appears to come from a website called thrillest.com about which I know nothing. I can't seem to find a very good resolution image to post here (subject to change) but it's clever enough that I want to post it now.

I do go to a lot of bars in Boston, but looking at this map it looks otherwise. Mostly that's because I have favorite watering holes near the ones they list here. Most of these are very big, very loud places.

Bars I've been to:
Red line: The Burren (good), The Field (pretty good)
Blue line: The Black Rose (my dad loves it, in a touristy part of town I avoid), Bill Ash's Lounge (basically the only choice on Revere Beach).
Orange Line: Brendan Behan (great, but no kitchen), Bella Luna (haven't been to the new location, but pretty nice back in the day), Fireside Tavern (Alexis hates it but my dad and I had a real nice time there--a little pricey for the neighborhood)
Green Line: The Haven (Scottish restaurant kind of expensive--right across the street from the Brendan Behan), Corrib Pub (okay), The Publick House (overrated, had a really bad experience there with lemonade, of all things), CornWalls (haven't been in a really long time but I liked it--only English pub in town), Paradise Rock Club (it's a rock club, doesn't really belong on the list), White Horse Tavern (gross, many better choices nearby), Wonder Bar (pretentious and nasty, I'd much rather walk the 4 blocks to The Model cafe than go in that place again).

Not on the list are my favorite bars Flann O'Briens (instead they have the Mission Bar and Grill, which I've never been in, because Flanns is right there, and has really good cheap food) and The James's Gate (which is a ways past the Behan, not super close to the T lines).

The bike ride today was great, lots of great company and laughs. We did get soggy and despite having 5 million raffle tickets none of us won anything. Great massage though. In a few hours I'm off to Providence for Bowling for Rhinos!

Edited to add: I really like this song, might as well make it easy for you to listen to. Firewater are known for melding genres; this is a Gospel/Drinking song.

My dad and I went to Albany, the capital city of New York, yesterday. I suspect they thought that New York City was too damn crowded to put the capital there. Albany is a parcel of land once ruled by deer and snow monsters, but now has a little bizarre city squatting in the middle of nowhere. Despite its small size I managed to get us lost (on foot) so we got to see some pretty buildings and doorways.

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