The Daily Parker

We have delightful summer weather in Chicago today, and Cassie has a ride home from school, so tonight I'm going to add three breweries to the Brews & Choos list. Look for the write-ups this weekend.

I last visited my second-favorite city in the world in November 2019. At my day job, I report just two levels up to the head of the London office, so had things gone to plan, I'd have visited at least three times since then. But time and chance happens to us all, as everyone now knows.

This week the UK's Departments for Transport and of Health & Social Care announced a loosening of travel rules that, I hope, signals the possibility of going back this fall. As of July 19th, UK residents returning from most countries (including the US) who have NHS jabs can skip testing and quarantine in most cases. The next step for the UK will be to allow people who've gotten vaccinated abroad to do the same.

When that happens, I will follow NPR's Frank Langfitt's latest report, and visit three historical pubs in various parts of the capital:

I started at The Mayflower, which sits along the south bank of the Thames about a mile and a half downstream from Tower Bridge. I first got to know The Mayflower several years ago when I attended a Thanksgiving celebration there with fellow Americans. It was an appropriate venue. In 1620, the Mayflower, the ship, was moored just off shore and began its long voyage to what would become America. In honor of that trans-Atlantic connection, the pub flies a U.S. and British flag from either end of its deck.

Along the walls of the dimly lit pub today, you can see replicas of the notes some of the passengers left, bequeathing wages and jewelry to their loved ones if they failed to survive the journey. Behind the bar, manager Leigh Gillson keeps a guest book, signed by some of the passengers' descendants who've visited.

He also stopped at The Eagle in Farringdon, not too far from my company's office in the City, and at The Carlton Tavern in Maida Vale, about a 10-minute walk from Abbey Road Studios. The latter got destroyed illegally by a property developer, who then had to rebuild it brick by brick under court order.

I really miss the Big Smoke. It looks more likely by the day that I'll get to visit her sometime in 2021.

Southport Lanes, the 99-year-old bar and bowling alley in Chicago's Lakeview neighborhood, has closed permanently:

The bar, restaurant and bowling alley at 3325 N. Southport Ave. is permanently closed after efforts to revive the business were unsuccessful, said Lacey Irby, a spokeswoman for the group that owns the building at Southport and Henderson Street.

The business had reopened in mid-July after coronavirus restrictions lifted before closing again in the fall, and has not reopened since.

“After giving it a lot of thought, building ownership decided to go the route of auctioning off the assets for the business formerly known as Southport Lanes,” Irby said. “Ownership, unfortunately, does not see the business recovering any time soon, so the business is now permanently closed.”

Items for sale include the venue’s famous sign, bowling lanes and equipment, and pool tables and equipment, according to the Winternitz website.

Other items available in the auction include kitchen equipment, televisions, furniture and two large murals.

Also, The Daily Parker exchanged emails yesterday with Begyle Brewery's front-of-house manager Brett Knickerbocker, who informed us that—no! wait! They're not closing! Read the whole thing!—they have to stop letting dogs in the taproom because they lost the larger upstairs area during the pandemic.

Welcome to stop #46 on the Brews and Choos project.

Brewery: Flapjack Brewery., 6833 Stanley Ave., Berwyn
Train line: BNSF, Berwyn
Time from Chicago: 15 minutes (Zone B)
Distance from station: 100 m

Some parts of the Chicago area deal with heavy infrastructure differently than other parts. Take the North Shore: the heavy-rail commuter line serving Clybourn Junction on up to Kenosha blends into the area elevated on a tree-covered embankment on up to Wilmette, then at or below grade level surrounded by more trees and flanked by a 50-kilometer bike trail. The former Chicago & North Western line, now the Union Pacific North, even features beautiful 1890s-era station houses that other lines have shamelessly copied.

Not so the Burlington Northern-Santa Fe. From Union Station through Naperville, the triple-track main line handles so much freight and passenger traffic that the towns and villages along the way haven't done much to shield themselves from it. (In the city, the BNSF runs through so many classification yards that no one lives near it anyway.) In Berwyn they don't even pretend to try.

Also, while the UP-N has a couple of stations a quick walk from each other (the three in Evanston, for example), the BNSF line's station placements baffle me. Harlem and Berwyn are so close their parking lots run together. And the 2-kilometer stretch between La Grange Road and Brookfield has three stations, again with unclear boundaries between parking lots and some head-scratching moments onboard trains that get up to a brisk walking speed before stopping again.

And yet, with Flapjack, this line has a delightful little brewery mere meters from the Berwyn station. So close, in fact, that the discerning railfan can get a continuous show with dinner:

In the 90 minutes I sat there, I watched 10 trains go by (6 commuters, 3 freight, and the Amtrak heading to St Louis). I also drank some beer and ate three quarters of an epic pizza. The beer, their Four Years Too Long double-dry-hopped IPA (5.25%), brewed especially for their fourth anniversary, had blazing Centennial hops on the nose with delightful Citra on the finish, and a fresh, clean balance that I enjoyed so much I had a second one.

But just look at this pizza:

So good. Just so good. And the remaining quarter reheated nicely the next day.

Beer garden? Sidewalk
Dogs OK? Outside only
Televisions? Three at the bar, avoidable
Serves food? Full menu
Would hang out with a book? Yes
Would hang out with friends? Yes
Would go back? Yes

Welcome to stop #45 on the Brews and Choos project.

Brewery: Milk Money Brewing., 75 S. La Grange Rd., La Grange
Train line: BNSF, La Grange Rd
Time from Chicago: 26 minutes (Zone C)
Distance from station: 500 m

La Grange Road has a lot of competition, being essentially the restaurant district of La Grange. So for a suburban brewery, Milk Money does a good job. I stopped by on the Friday before July 4th, when the weather felt more like September and the vibe felt more like 2019.

They don't do flights per se, but they do have 5-ounce pours. I had five:

I started with the Queen Takes Pawn English-style ale (4.9%), which tasted like a solid real ale from the old country, albeit too cold to complete the illusion. It had a good bitter/malt balance and a sharp finish. The Pause Button APA (5.2%) had a bit more malt than I expected, but a good balance overall. The Vibrant hazy IPA (6.5%) had a citrus nose, a citrus-grapefruit flavor, and a lower-alcohol feel than the first two. The Milk Money milk stout (7.2%) started with a lovely nose and opened up into a smooth chocolate and caramel combination with a long finish. Finally, the Colorful Noise West Coast IPA (7%) had Citra on the nose and Cascade in the back. All five were solid representations of the styles.

And on the walk from the Metra station, I discovered that La Grange has gone to the dogs:

Beer garden? Sidewalk
Dogs OK? No
Televisions? Two, avoidable
Serves food? Full menu
Would hang out with a book? Maybe
Would hang out with friends? Maybe
Would go back? Maybe

Cassie and I headed up to Tyranena Brewing in Lake Mills, Wis., yesterday to hang out with family. Today, other than a trip to the grocery and adjacent pet store where Cassie picked out an "indestructible" toy that now lies in tatters on the couch, we've had a pretty relaxing Sunday. I thought I'd take a break from Hard Times to queue up some stuff to read tomorrow at lunch:

• Joni Mitchell and friends discuss her album Blue, which came out 50 years ago this week.
• National Geographic investigated a 6,600-year-old mass killing to determine who killed whom.
• Josh Marshall worries that the current Supreme Court could overturn laws aimed at removing partisanship from redistricting.
• Julia Ioffe has started a new email list, "Tomorrow will be Worse," with a discussion about whether the Biden-Putin summit last week could presage a new cold war.
• Whenever you think Republicans want a real free-market economy, look at how Republicans in North Carolina tried to kill community-driven Internet access at the behest of major telecoms companies.
• Via John Scalzi, writer Michael Harriot points out in ways both hilarious and profane that Juneteenth isn't about white people.
• New Republic's Zachary Carter thinks the Biden presidency might finally end the Democratic Party's courtship of Milton Friedman's reactionary economics.

I will now return to Dickens, because it's funny and sad.

The deployment I concluded yesterday that involved recreating production assets in an entirely new Azure subscription turned out much more boring (read: successful) than anticipated. That still didn't stop me from working until 6pm, but by that point everything except some older demo data worked just fine.

That left a bit of a backup of stuff to read, which I may try to get through at lunch today:

• Duke University basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski (aka "Coach K"), the winningest basketball coach in NCAA history, plans to retire at the end of next season.
• United Airlines has made a deal with Boom Holdings to purchase 15 of the company's 65-to-88 seat supersonic airplanes for travel starting in 2029.
• Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid formed a government last night, but outgoing prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu may try to forestall his ouster with parliamentary shenanigans Josh Marshall calls "Israel's January 6th."
• The Atlantic's Kate Julian worries that the pandemic has shifted Americans' drinking from social (good) to alone (bad).
• A skunk ate the three eggs endangered piping plovers Monty and Rose laid a few weeks ago, but the couple have reportedly started trying again.
• Geologists have determined that the 1861's 8.5-magnitude earthquake off Sumatra was actually just the last rumble of a continuous 32-year-long earthquake.
• On this day in 1800, President John Adams moved into the Union Tavern in Georgetown, D.C., to await the opening of the Executive Mansion on November 1st.

Finally, summer apparently arrives in full force tomorrow. We're looking forward to temperatures 5-10°C above normal through mid-June, which will continue northern Illinois' drought for at least a few more weeks.

Happy 51st Earth Day! In honor of that, today's first story has nothing to do with Earth:

• The MOXIE experiment on NASA's Perseverance rover produced 5.4 grams of oxygen in an hour on Mars, not enough to sustain human life but a major milestone in our efforts to visit the planet.
• Back on earth, the Nature Conservancy has released a report predicting significant climate changes for Illinois, including a potential 5°C temperature rise by 2100.
• Microsoft has teamed up with the UK Meteorological Office (AKA "the Met") to provide HPE Cray EX supercomputers capable of 60 petaflops and storing 4 exabytes of data.
• The Chicago Transit Authority has begun running brand-new, Chicago-built rail cars on the Blue Line, which runs from O'Hare Airport through the Loop and out to Oak Park.
• Guthries Tavern, a Chicago institution since the 1930s that closed because of the pandemic, will reopen under new ownership.
• Are you feeling blah in the late-stage pandemic? You could be languishing.
• Via Bruce Schneier, the New Yorker explains how North Korea has created an army of cyber thieves.

Finally, it looks like I'll have some really cool news to share about my own software in just a couple of weeks. Stay tuned!

Welcome to stop #44 on the Brews and Choos project.

Brewery: Emmett's Brewing Co., 110 N. Broadway St.
Train line: Union Pacific Northwest, Palatine
Time from Chicago: 56 minutes (Zone F)
Distance from station: 100 m

Another note about Metra, this one more positive than my rant about freight-train interference in Barrington. Metra formed out of the decaying husks of the region's passenger railroads over the course of two decades. In the past few months, as they've taken possession of new locomotives, they've painted one each in the historic livery of the old railroads. When I went from Tinley Park to Blue Island last weekend, the locomotive pushing my train had the old Rock Island Line colors. The next day, the train that took me from my stop to Clybourn, and the one from Barrington to Palatine, had this guy powering them:

I find that immensely cool.

Which, in a literal sense, brings me to Emmett's in Palatine.

Remember More Brewing in Villa Park, almost exactly a year ago, which I called a "bustling, family-friendly brewpub 'concept'?" Or Smylie Bros. in Evanston, about which I said "This is what some corporate dude thinks a taproom should be like"? Yeah. Welcome to Emmett's, which has four locations that I will review with just my experience in Palatine.

I met a friend, and we had adequate pub food, with service that lagged so much (despite the restaurant having only two occupied tables) that my friend's hamburger and my Caesar salad arrived at around the same temperature.

But I'm not a food reviewer, or a restaurant reviewer. I review beer. I had three:

On the left we have the Auto Pilot session IPA (5.2%, 65 IBU), a very hoppy but otherwise meh example of the style. Continuing to the right, we see the Shadow Boxer English brown ale (5.0%, 20 IBU), an undistinguished and very sweet ale that I would probably not find anywhere in England. Finally we come to the World's End "new world" IPA (6.8%, 80 IBU), an inoffensive beer that I would drink if the alternatives were from Inbev or MolsonCoors.

At least I can cross two other Emmett's restaurants off my list now.

Beer garden? Yes
Dogs OK? No
Televisions? Unavoidable in bar area, none in restaurant area
Serves food? Full menu
Would hang out with a book? No
Would hang out with friends? No
Would go back? No

Welcome to stop #43 on the Brews and Choos project.

Closed as of February 2023, according to their Instagram account.

Brewery: Flesk Brewing Co., 200 Applebee St., Barrington
Train line: Union Pacific Northwest, Barrington
Time from Chicago: 65 minutes (Zone G)
Distance from station: 700 m

Before talking about the brewery, let me talk for a moment about freight-train interference. This satellite photo shows Flesk Brewing adjacent to the Union Pacific Northwest line:

The yellow line shows the direction from which my train from Crystal Lake approached the Barrington train station, which is just southeast of this photo. The white arrow shows the location and potential direction of travel of the freight train that parked right there Sunday afternoon. Instead of taking 18 minutes to travel between those two stations, it took 40, including a 22-minute stop in the lovely town of Fox River Grove. When I finally got to the brewery the first person I met complained about the same freight train tying up traffic throughout downtown Barrington for half an hour.

So, just keep in mind that traveling by rail on the weekend has no guarantees of getting you anywhere on time.

Now let's talk about the beer, which I enjoyed a great deal more than Metra.

They had only just re-opened the taproom, so I only saw three beers on their menu I wanted to try. From left to right: the Midnight Express vanilla coffee stout (8%) was delicious, with a velvety texture and just the right coffee and vanilla notes. The Thousand-Yard Stare pale ale (6%) had tons of Citra flavors, with a lingering finish. The XYZ double IPA (7%) had so much hop flavors I had to taste it twice to get any other notes. It wasn't bad, but it was maybe a bit too hoppy for me. Your mileage may vary.

Inside, I met two big old dogs, which I always like in a taproom.

Beer garden? Yes
Dogs OK? Yes
Televisions? 2, unavoidable
Serves food? No; BYOF
Would hang out with a book? Yes
Would hang out with friends? Yes
Would go back? Yes