Milwaukee Specialty Food and Coffee

Dr. Feelgood

Early this evening, I enjoyed this better-than-Sixx cappuccino at Alterra's Prospect Ave. location. On a perhaps not entirely unrelated note, Mötley Crüe's Dr. Feelgood recently played over the speakers at the Lakefront location.

Joe Bloggs

Coffee tasting seems to be a suitable activity for afternoons spent taking refuge in air-conditioned spaces--which something tells me I'm going to be doing a lot of this summer. I have a cup of coffee before me that's interesting because it seems to represent the baseline for good coffee. It was prepared and served almost perfectly, allowing the substantial limitations of the bean to come through. If the coffee were infinitesimally worse, I would be outraged at its being passed off as specialty coffee. But it just barely makes it through. I'm trying to think of a suitable analogy--maybe it's like if we thought of coffee taste as a waveform, and the flavor components appear as big, wide, flat blocks. A truly superior cup of coffee, like the Intelligentsia I enjoyed at Boathouse Bagel Company in Lake Geneva yesterday, would feature many pinpoint spikes of flavor in high "resolution". I don't want to specify where I got this coffee from, as that's almost beside the point. There is a certain amount of room between this and commercial coffee such as Maxwell House--room inhabited by Starbucks' Pike Place, perhaps?

In Praise of Country Roads

On my recent road trips, I've enjoyed taking state and county highways instead of the Interstate system. I think in some ways, the movement of civilian recreational traffic to the freeway system is regrettable. Drives along lesser highways reveal views that are both reassuring and worrying. Small businesses were probably much better off in the days before freeways, as they had far more opportunities to take advantage of impulse business.

The Cove of Lake Geneva

Somehow, in the last 24 hours I've managed to have two hospitality industry experiences that have eluded me thus far: a relaxing and enjoyable hotel room and a bagel store that doesn't suck--indeed, far from it. I'll start with the hotel. I booked a room at The Cove of Lake Geneva,

which at slightly north of $200 was a splurge for me. However, the last time I paid $150 for a room (in Boston), I had to call the front desk to send security up because a couple was noisily having sex in the next room. So to pay $200 for a room that accomplished the mission of rest and relaxation seems like a square enough deal. Also, I booked with 72 hours' notice on Memorial Day weekend, so the room cost about half again as much as it would have otherwise.

Lake Geneva

I'm in Lake Geneva catching up on trashy cable television (which I haven't seen since I was in Arizona) after spending most of the late afternoon and evening walking around town. I think it's pretty clear that this will be my new vacation hangout. This town lends itself perfectly to my purposes, as it is highly walkable--the downtown area soon yields to a picturesque residential area. A walk of a mile or so in certain directions takes you to the wrong side of the tracks. I thought Lake Geneva would be swankier than it is, but I'm not at all disappointed. Quite the contrary!

In Praise of Doing (Almost) Nothing

On this Memorial Day weekend, I'm going to Lake Geneva and have two goals:

1.) To go to a coffeehouse and do less than the employees. A cursory online search shows that there is at least one interesting local coffeehouse in Lake Geneva, but also a Caribou Coffee location. I'm at a Caribou cafe right now, enjoying some of their current featured coffee, the Honduras.

2.) To learn how to do nothing for an hour or more--mentally and physically. This includes turning off the ongoing mental self-appraisal that would otherwise tell me I'm doing a poor job of relaxing and demand Eisenhower-like execution of my fun. It's easy to get into a cycle of being busy, while also busily mentally "watching the movie" as it transpires. This weekend, I hope to make some progress towards unwinding both.

Green Polka Dot Box

In Milwaukee, health-conscious consumers can choose between a whole range of grocery store price points: outrageous, outrageous-er and outrageous-est. How great, then, my delight at discovering Green Polka Dot Box, a reasonably priced mail order service that sells precisely the products I consume most. It's an even better bargain than TJMaxx! Because it's unproven to me, I don't want to get too deep into praising it, but rest assured I will report back when the package arrives.

Milwaukee Narrowly Escapes Massive Economic Opportunity

Just think, if we had high-speed rail to Chicago, we could offer our hotel room beds to a massive event of global significance like the NATO Summit. Oh well, at least we were able to offer shelter beds in case Chicago had to be evacuated.

SHTF

I find myself fascinated by discussion of doomsday scenarios such as the earth being hit by an electromagnetic pulse from the sun. What fascinates me is not only the scenarios themselves, but how people discuss them, for example in this forum.

Divided We Stand

Any Wisconsin Democrat who has taken advantage of the warm spring weather to take a country drive may well be anxious about the prospects for recalling Gov. Scott Walker. I've thought quite a bit of late about what may be at stake in the recall election beyond mere partisan politics. Inevitably, I think Democrats face a choice between two unpalatable outcomes: seeing Walker confirmed as a political superstar after emerging victorious from the recall effort or facing up to some awkward and politically incorrect perceptions.

My perception of these perceptions is as follows--and please note, I'm not really talking about my own beliefs:

1.) Democrats, statewide and nationally, need to throw the framed-diploma crowd under the bus once--just once--in favor of the sensibilities of Joe the Plumber.

2.) Democrats, nationally, have not maintained the enormous trust placed in President Obama by proving their fiscal policies are not about redistributing wealth to the shiftless and irresponsible.

3.) Democrats, statewide and nationally, do not communicate what they offer to white people who do not hold a degree from a major university. The view of that demographic of what is happening in said universities, and what comes from them, is highly skeptical at best.