(via Garrett Murray)
Yes, it’s been a month, but I for one still haven’t tired of mocking the many-shirted Loopt guy from the WWDC keynote.
Jul 07
Jun 24
Defending the Shack
I have to reblog this to stand up for the Shack. To compare Shake Shack to the cupcakes at Magnolia is heresy. Magnolia cupcakes are not good. The Shack has the best burger in the city. The line may be bad at times, but to insult the value and taste of this delicious burger on that basis is unjustified and outrageous!
I’ll put it this way, whenever I come back to NY, I look forward to seeing the Shackburger more than most of my friends.
Right before I left New York last time, I waited in line for one last Shack Burger for an hour and a half while my blood sugar level sank so low I was ready to bite someone’s head off. During that time I certainly had occasion to think about whether the payoff was worth the wait, and, let me tell you, I’m with Aziz here: Shake Shack really is that good.
One thing that makes a Shack Burger great is the bun. Buns are to hamburgers as ice is to cocktails: most people treat them as incidental afterthoughts, not realizing that they often make the difference between an outstanding burger and a common one. Shake Shack’s potato buns are perfect: soft, not too thick, lightly toasted, contributing flavor without overwhelming the taste of the beef by giving you a dry mouthful of bread. This sounds like a simple thing, but it’s amazing how often restaurants get it wrong.
The second thing that makes Shake Shack’s burgers great is their custom beef blend, which is fatty enough to allow even their thin patties to come out exceptionally juicy. Combine that with a perfect amount of salt and pepper seasoning, and you end up with one of the most flavorful burgers I’ve ever tasted.
There are many hardships in New York life that make me question whether it’s all worth it, but the Shake Shack line isn’t one of them.
“ I am not sure that it is possible for anyone brought up in the East to appreciate entirely what New York, the idea of New York, means to those of us who came out of the West and the South. To an Eastern child, particularly a child who has always had an uncle on Wall Street and who has spent several hundred Saturdays first at F.A.O. Schwarz and being fitted for shoes at Best’s and then waiting under the Biltmore clock and dancing to Lester Lanin, New York is just a city, albeit the city, a plausible place for people to live. But to those of us who came from places where no one had heard of Lester Lanin and Grand Central Station was a Saturday radio program, where Wall Street and Fifth Avenue and Madison Avenue were not places at all but abstractions (“Money,” and “High Fashion,” and “The Hucksters”), New York was no mere city. It was instead an infinitely romantic notion, the mysterious nexus of all love and money and power, the shining and perishable dream itself. To think of “living” there was to reduce the miraculous to the mundane; one does not “live” at Xanadu.
Field Tested Music: Primal Scream’s “Get Duffy” in Alaska
I got my lovely Coudal Partners “Field Tested Books poster” in the mail a few days ago, and, as I remarked on Twitter, it gave me the idea that I’d like to do something with essentially the same concept as FTB (which asks interesting people to write about how reading a specific book in a specific place changed their experience of both), but for music.
I definitely have some strong associations between songs and places, and one of the first ones that sticks out in mind is a very non-intuitive one: I associate the moody Primal Scream dub/jazz instrumental “Get Duffy” with a drive I took from Anchorage, Alaska to the Kenai Peninsula in the middle of the night (which, during the summer, is bright as day). As it happens, I had just bought “Vanishing Point,” the album “Get Duffy” appears on, right before my visit to Alaska, and although the wilds of the Pacific Northwest certainly weren’t what the artists had in mind when they created the song, I found, as I listened to it over and over in my half asleep/half awake state, that its dark, icy feel perfectly matched the scenery flying past the RV windows.
I have a lot of examples of this sort of song/place association I could cite, but this particular example is notable because I actually have video that essentially shows what I was seeing while I was listening to the music. I decided to finally dig it off a firewire drive in my closet and post it as sort of a kickoff to the “Field Tested Songs” concept (which we’ll probably continue, under a different name, on the Attacked by Jackets music blog I sometimes contribute to).
P.S.: Look for a few shots toward the beginning of my brother Bobby as a little kid.
Jun 23
(via amyyy)
I’m sorry, but this time the webcocks really have gone too far. It’s all well and good for them to conduct their own masturbatory discussions via “twebinar” (however face punch inducing that term may be), but the presidential election is actually important, and conducting a debate via Twitter seems like a depressing acknowledgement that the soundbite is now the fundamental unit of American political discourse. Not only that, but the very fact that they suggest people follow along using hashtags (those most webcock-ish of Twitter mannerisms) on Summize underscores the out-and-out awkwardness of the enterprise. I’m convinced that someday experiments like this will be remembered as embarrassing, fumbling attempts on the part of politicians to “get hip” to the new media. Neil Postman must be spinning in his grave.
Jun 21
(via IFO Apple Store)
I’m pretty much obsessed with the swag that Apple gave out at the opening of the West 14th (Meatpacking District) Apple Store last December—especially the brilliant map of Manhattan made up of iPhone screens. If anyone knows how I could get my hands on one of these, or one of the cool subway signage shirts they also gave out, drop me a line (buzz at this domain)!
Jun 19
Instead of taking a taxi home from my brother’s place tonight, I decided to walk the distance from the SF Civic Center, through Hayes Valley (where I took the above photo), up Haight Street, and into Ashbury Heights before heading back down to the Haight. Since I had my camera with me and it was a full moon, I decided to take some photos along the way.
I’ve always said that what makes San Francisco such an interesting city is that it has so many oddball nooks and crannies that most visitors never see, and Ashbury Heights, the neighborhood in the hills between the Haight and the Castro, is a prime example. It’s full of big old mansions and antiquated 1920s buildings, and can feel amazingly eerie at night. I lived up there briefly when I first moved to San Francisco, and it’s still one of my favorite places in the world to just wander around alone with a camera, enjoying the creepy vibe—especially when it’s foggy (which it often is).
Someday I’d love to do a photo project of San Francisco doorways (particularly in Ashbury Heights and Corona Heights) at night. There’s just something magical about them. Perhaps the shots I took tonight will be a good start.
Jun 11
Definitely the highlight of the Keynote for me.
Agreed: I thought it was hilarious that I, my brother Bobby, and John Gruber all ridiculed the Loopt guy’s double polo shirt in rapid succession during the keynote. And, of course, it immediately made me think of this.
(via Bobby Andersen)
My brother Bobby posted a few great photos of the uber-talented designer/musician Scott Hansen (aka Tycho) playing at my annual party for Apple’s Worldwide Developer’s Conference last night. I wish I had had more time to take Scott’s performance in, but, of course, I was too busy talking to all of the interesting people. Thanks to everyone who came out for making it the best year yet (the absence of the taco truck and tamale lady notwithstanding), and to my sponsors: Golden%Braeburn and NewsGator.
(Update: I just noticed that Scott posted on his blog about the performance, so I thought I’d link to it here for completeness.)