Philadelphia Gastronomy, Libations, and Art outside of the Gallery Scene
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The Franklin
I took my gentleman friend on a date the other night, and like any civilized couple, we started the evening with cocktails. I have been dying to try The Franklin Mortgage & Investment Co. since it opened, and rave reviews by other Art in Bars contributors only heightened my intrigue. As we gingerly made our way down the dark steps and through the mysterious doorway my partner whispered “I love this place already.” Wait till you get inside, baby. (more…)
This is all it takes
I decided that this summer was going to be The Summer of Rum. This was based on the fact that nearly everyone I know claims to dislike the spirit. But why? Who doesn’t love a refreshing mojito in the summer? A solid, classic daiquiri was the go to drink of Hemingway, and my partner’s favorite drink at Cuban places. How did rum get such a bum rap? Probably because most folks are introduced to rum via rum and Cokes. Sticky sweet and prone to being over consumed, it’s the first and last rum drink for many and leads to the negative associations. So I decided 2010 would be The Summer of Rum and I would attempt to fall in love with the much maligned liquor. Having no interest in revisiting the bad stopping off point, or in investigating the mojito I know so well, I asked the resident cocktail expert (Jenn) to recommend a rum-based drink. She had an answer immediately: The Dark and Stormy. (more…)
Mass Market Beers
Philadelphia can make someone a beer snob very easily. Beyond the 20 tap systems in beer bars, craft beers from across the nation, and the endless lists of Belgians, any given dive bar is guaranteed to have at least a few local beers with Yards and PBC making themselves widely available.  Golly, even our local cheap beers Yuengling and Lions Head are better that most of the generic mass produced beers we constantly see advertised at all sporting events and every third commercial in prime-time. Or are they? I have to admit, for the most part I managed to skip the whole cheap commercial beer phase that most people go through. Being from PDX my folks tried hard to raise me not to be a cheap date, drink-wise, and when I hit legal age to drink outside of my home, I never even bothered tasting what I had always been told was drivel.
So I had a terrible idea the other day to sample the generic beers widely available, to test to see if what I had always heard about them was true, that they were flavorless, low alcohol and not worth the time. PBR I was already well acquainted with, being a patron of Mom’s establishments, and on very hot summer nights when I am exceptionally poor of pocket, I’ve been known to drink Miller High Life. I’m unable to tell if these are good beers or not – I solely associate them with certain drinking environments. But perhaps there is a best among the worst, perhaps the masses know something that in my snobbery¬† I’ve missed. And so the Art in Bars contributors gathered at a household to sample some mass market beers. Here are our findings. (more…)
Hey everyone. I’m working for the man / doing my civic and or patriotic duty this week / being a schmuck. I thought it wasn’t going to interfere with my precious blogging of all things bars and art, but then lo and behold, my competence was observed and rewarded with more work. I was asked to instruct a version of the class I participated in last week. Without going into details, it’s been dramatic and time consuming. I hope to have the listings ready to go for first Friday, but planned content for this week wasn’t developed – the days I usually devote to creating copy and researching were usurped. (Sorry, Niki Bombshell and The Last Minute Art Show – I was trying to create something about you guys, and as you know it didn’t happen.) Excuses, excuses. SO: very quickly, in case this is the only chance I get this week: (more…)
I have a wicked bad cold/allergies/combo/who the hell knows because no medicine invented by god nor man is doing anything to suppress the symptoms. And naturally I continue to work, which means free time, which I usually devote to Art in Bars, has been instead spent sleeping/coughing/producing various mucus. This is pathetic, because I have back posts that just need formatting, images, and tagging to go live, and yet . . . (more…)
Mmm. Malt Liquor.
Yes, that’s right, a malt liquor beer tasting. Since we enjoy gathering together to participate in thematic beer tastings, and our target audience of drinkers and artists are, shall we say, lower on the socioeconomic scale, it just made sense. This article shall forever prove that the contributors of Art in Bars are not classy in any way. We actually performed this tasting last fall, but, er, lost the notes on it shortly thereafter, and really didn’t feel like repeating the experience. The Autumn afternoon started off with a quick trip to a Kensington corner store, where we purchased a classic lineup of the standards in the cheap beer / malt liquor department: Olde English, Colt 45, Steel Reserve, Silver Thunder and Axe Head. Fast facts: While beer is typically made with water, hops and barley; malt liquor is made with those plus less expensive ingredients like corn or rice, and a higher concentration of alcohol. We noticed that some cheap beer being sold as malt liquor was actually just high abv beer. (Also, I later bought a Spaten Optimator, a dopplebock, which called itself a malt liquor on the label.) We tasted each contender and attempted to rate them by categories such as smoothness, sweetness (a negative attribute), color, booze-ability (high alcohol taste), aftertaste, and overall flavor. (more…)
Huh. Just noticed that the blog is one year old today. Apparently I bought the domain a year before that, but a year ago was the first wordpress post, which, strangely enough, was about what I wanted to change, and not anything of substance. Happy first birthday, Art in Bars. Twenty more years till you can drink legally. To celebrate, here is a picture of me at my first birthday, drinking out of a shot glass.
Whooo! Shots!
Beth Heinly is a member of Little Berlin but like many young artists in the city is involved with much more than her own work in the collective. You may have noticed her opining in many a comments section on many blogs, as well as being¬†imitated, which folks say is the most sincere form of flattery, but I imagine must be a little weird when you have people pretending to be a pseudonym¬†attributed¬†to you. Beth is a contributor for The Art Blog in addition to doing codemonkey work for them, and her facebook states that she is “a werewolf who makes art.” She actually didn’t request to be a part of ask an artist, but rather asked a question of others, so naturally I turned the tables on her.¬† (more…)
So what is good criticism? Everyone’s talking about the lack of it these days. Not just in Philadelphia, although with the solipsism of the arts world one tends to view things as particular to themselves. The same frustrated energy and debate is going on in DC, Chicago, Portland, gee, everywhere it seems. It is a pervasive problem in the national art sphere that we all tend to view through our local gaze. We all seem to recognize the void in the discourse, but are unsure as to why it continues to grow rather than being rectified. This is partially because the lack of criticism is due to myriad issues involving the death of print media, the perception that art is no longer a part of popular culture, and a dearth of critics themselves.
I think one of the main issues is that those who talk about art are discussing the wrong thing in their criticism. (more…)