brian

my favorite American painter of any era

A lot of people are talking about how expensive flying used to be, but I distinctly remember in the early-mid 80s, flying from the Greenville, SC and Charlotte, NC to Newark, round-trip, for $29, and sometimes even $19. I'm sure it was an introductory rate, but they did it for quite awhile - it was People Express for whatever that's worth. 

Wasn't worth much to People Express - they started in 1981, racked up huge operating debt (for reasons clear in your post), and were out of business by 1987.

Incidentally, I personally once heard Morgan Wooten give a lecture about shooting. During it, he said that if you go up to a basketball rim - up close - you can see that it's possible to drop *two basketballs* through at the same time. Yes, the rim, is *twice* the width of a basketball. Although I had several takeaways from that lecture, that was the one that stuck the most - that really is a *huge* margin for error.

It's also not quite true - a regulation basketball hoop is 18" diameter clear, while an NBA regulation ball is 9.39" diameter and an NCAA regulation ball is 9.39-9.55" diameter. But the lecture probably wouldn't have been as good or memorable if he'd said "it's possible to drop 1.91 basketballs through at the same time".

I had a packed dining weekend in and around Atlanta recently - some highlights:

- Kimball House (Decatur) : Charming setting in an old railroad terminal. Loved the small $2 "cocktail beer" on the menu to tide you over while waiting for a complicated drink. Best stack of onion rings I've had in recent memory/my life. There was an emphasis on housemade sausages on the menu while I was there, and the duck sausage and boudin blanc were good but I may have been happier grazing on the appetizers and raw bar.

- 5 & 10 (Athens) : Stopped by late on Halloween to a fairly empty bar, had four courses and enjoyed them all, especially the sorghum glazed ribs with kimchi. Wonderful sense of hospitality.

- The Optimist: Gorgeous space in an area dense with worthwhile restaurants. Sat at the bar for a snack and drink, was pleased with what the kitchen was putting out. Large place, but the bar staff (and adjacent customers!) made it feel personal.

- Miller Union: Good, not great, Happy to go, perfectly fine dinner, wouldn't rush back. Satterfield's supposed vegetable mastery didn't really manifest on the plate.

- Minero: Fantastic, the tacos were delicious but seemed like the least bang for the buck on the menu - chips with salsas, churros, etc. were wonderful and an excellent deal.

The Riggsby

almost nobody goes to a restaurant for its FOH no matter how nice it is

list of the top grossing restaurants in the country would indicate otherwise

I like (his public persona, local backstory, food philosophy) Dave Chang a lot 

I've had plenty of great meals at David Chang's restaurants (I can still vividly recall the first time I had the sichuan crawfish at the original Momofuku) but the continuously self-effacing public persona is wearing a little thin for me. From the Washington Post feature:

Chang originally intended his D.C. location to cover only a fraction of that space, roughly where the private dining room (or "PDR" in Chang-speak) sits in the current layout. He envisioned an intimate, 90-seat spot, not the nearly 200-seat playground he's now opening. But this being Washington, Chang figured it would be almost impossible to launch a restaurant without a separate dining space for the fat cats or, possibly, the president.

A PDR doesn't exactly fit the image of a chef better known for his punkish, apolitical personality. "Do I really want one in the ethos of what we do?" Chang said. "No. But, like, I have to make some concessions."

"This is actually a serious debate: Do we offer pork buns?" Chang was also debating whether he'd sell his exquisite, deeply flavored noodle soup, the bowl that has assumed the name of his very restaurant group: Momofuku ramen.

"Yesterday," Chang said about a closed service prior to opening, "we didn't serve Momofuku ramen. We don't want to, because there's a lot of ramen everywhere."

Seriously, you're thinking about not serving ramen in Washington?

"Yeah," he said.

C'mon, you're not serious.

"I'm serious," Chang shot back. "Dude, I'm dead serious."

Saturday he wrote "Against my better judgement @momofuku ccâš¡ï¸dc opens today at 5pm"

Last year in GQ he wrote a piece called "My Name Is David Chang and I Hate Fancy Beer":

For years I've watched craft-beer aficionados go on about their triple-hopped IPAs and cocoa-flavored English milk stouts while inside I've harbored a dark secret: I love cheap, watery swill. Singha, Tecate, Miller High Life"”they're all the champagnes of beer, and for more reasons than you think

Momofuku CCDC doesn't carry Singha, Tecate, or Miller High Life, but they do carry an IPA and a milk stout.

Are his doubts and uncertainties sincere? Sure. But it's self promotion too, and over the past decade it's been a much sharper form of self promotion than sending press releases about how great your food is and having media dinners.

I can't ever imagine a time McD's will be in its "final days". It's guess everything comes to an end, but I don't think it's any time soon. I can see they're struggling, though..."breakfast all day"?

The article refers to a franchisee saying "The system may be facing its final days." - meaning the way McDonald's runs its franchise system, not the company itself. Headlines about McDonald's facing its final days get a lot more clicks than questions about McDonald's franchise system viability.

In fact, with the efforts that have gone into, and seemingly are required for,  getting a seating at the restaurant, including the use of line waiters, it seems like it is anything but a neighborhood restaurant. 

I think the bigger question is whether it's even possible for a restaurant that's won such high praise on a national level to remain a neighborhood restaurant.

A few months ago Al's Place in SF was named best new restaurant of the year by Bob Appetit, the same accolade won by Rose's the year before. Al's Place takes reservations, but I just checked their website and the next available reservation is Sunday, December 6th, at 9:45pm. They keep some tables open for walk ins and they have a line outside when the open every night.

State Bird Provisions was Bon Appetit's #1 in 2012 and it doesn't show any reservations available in the next two months. They keep some tables open for walk ins and they have a line outside when they open every night.

Husk was #1 in 2011, it's a large restaurant that takes reservations, and four years later people STILL line up before opening every day to get a walk in table.

Without checking ID's for addresses at the door, what can a restaurant feasibly do to stay neighborhood focused when hundreds of people a night are willing to travel for hours, refresh their browsers, dial dozens of times, and wait as long as it takes to eat there?

I walked into Rose's tonight at 9:30 and sat at one of several empty bar seats. Had a drink within three minutes and food within ten. For anyone willing to eat late, especially on a weeknight, discussion of lines, wait times, and paid placeholders is moot.

It's a sincere attempt to do a better farm to table chef driven restaurant in western Fairfax County on a beauitful lake.  Coincidentally this happens to be in a shopping center.  A shopping center surrounded by millions of square feet of office space and a socio economic class to support it.

I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that this isn't coincidental

I visit 2 Amys more than any other restaurant and it's the one I'd miss most if I ever moved away from DC. Like Marty, it's not in my neighborhood but I consider it a perfect neighborhood restaurant. I can go every week and see several new dishes sitting on the bar that I want to try - the rate of menu turnover is astounding, yet it rarely feels like a new item is less than fully realized. Over the years they've expanded their beer lineup (with an impressive focus on the underappreciated Italian craft beer scene) and they now usually have Millstone's tart and funky Farmgate cider on tap. I'm sure I've been there well over a hundred times and I always walk out happy, to the point where rolling the dice on a hyped new restaurant opening rarely seems appealing in comparison.

From the best data available on Trout and Bolt they seem to have nearly identical acceleration rates up to about 6m/s (the graph Don posted for Bolt, ASG baserunning Statcast for Trout). After that Bolt just crushes. The comparison is a bit unfair since these stats are from Trout running on a curved path and watching a ball in play, but the acceleration rate up the first base line for the first couple seconds should be pretty true to maximum (I shifted Trout's start time to line up their acceleration curves to account for Bolt going from blocks and Trout from a swing, but there's no data for Bolt's first second anyway). The chart's a bit messy from the overlay but Trout is in red, Bolt in blue. The chart also probably underrates Bolt's early acceleration on account of the few data points. Unless Bolt is unimaginably bad at stopping he'd obliterate Trout in a suicide race.

(In terms of active baseball players, Billy Hamilton would almost certainly beat Trout too. One tool player.)

maybe guests have the expectation that Dan will be there because the Seasonal Pantry website says "Chef Daniel O'Brien cooks simple, fresh dishes right in front of his guests"

Scherzer's been amazing, but the whole rotation has been stepping it up. Last six Nationals starts:

6/19: Joe Ross, 7.1 IP, 1 run allowed

6/20: Max Scherzer, 9 IP, 0 runs allowed

6/21: Gio Gonzalez, 7 IP, 0 runs allowed

6/23: Stephen Strasburg, 5 IP, 0 runs allowed

6/24: Jordan Zimmermann, 8 IP, 0 runs allowed

6/25: Doug Fister, 7 IP, 0 runs allowed

pretty incredible run

better by a large margin

Scherzer -- 18 IP, 1 hit, 26 K, 1 BB, 1 HBP
Vander Meer -- 18 IP, 0 hits, 11 K, 11 BB, 0 HBP

As Joe Mande said a few days ago, "no comedian LIKES performing at colleges". They've always been more restrictive for performers than commercial venues, and the audiences have always been worse. And I say that as someone who booked music and comedy at my college for several years.

Cafe 212?

So proud of this brave 61 year old rich white man for telling people they don't know the real meaning of racism and sexism like he does.

Countdown to trite: the (nature/f&b noun) and (nature/f&b noun) restaurant/cafe name, with Alexandria's Grape + Bean soon getting joined by Tap and Vine in Arlington and Birch & Barley in Logan Circle, all joining SF's Bourbon & Branch and NYC's Sundaes and Cones, Fig & Olive, and Grape and Grain.

well this got out of control

I'm sure you're not actually dense enough to mistake a beautiful church for an ugly one; I wonder why you're pretending that you are. You can't possibly be honestly mistaking "it was hideous" for "it was outdated", can you? St. John's is one of the prettiest churches in Washington. I think you'll search for a long, long time to find anyone who would say that about the Third Church of Christ, Scientist. 

I'm sure you're not actually dense enough to mistake subjectivity for objectivity. I think the Third Church of Christ, Scientist was one of the most beautiful churches in DC.

I have been swayed by many of the arguments here and will begin lobbying for the sale and demolition of St John's. Just a block away from the former Third Church of Christ, Scientist, it's a bizarre and outdated building on a corner lot much better suited to higher density development. It's painted a butt-ugly yellow, and though designed by a famous architect, it's clearly not one of Latrobe's better works. The pale colors inside can't mask the lack of natural light, so much so that in 1919 the church hired McKim, Mead, and White to remodel the building and enlarge the windows. It helped but it's still a gloomy interior. Surely a new office building with some space for a church tucked into the corner would better meet the modern needs of the congregation.

But your take is also that of an architect (which is ironically what my first post was about), and because you have an architect's take, you're assuming it's unanimous that everyone thinks the new building is nothing more than a "K Street box."

However, I'd bet that most people *don't* think this is a standard K Street box - when I think of the term "K Street box," I think of something in this shape, yes, but made reflecting the 1970s or 1980s in appearance, and this building looks very much up-to-date in terms of aesthetics: It's Miley Cyrus instead of Madonna.

K Street boxes have more frame; less glass.

K Street boxes are darker, with less light.

K Street boxes are forbidding; not welcoming.

K Street boxes are perceived as using concrete. (*)

I think of a K Street box as an office building designed to maximize building envelope, allowable square footage, and built right to the property line in a way that optimizes perimeter and column layout in order to accommodate the maximum number of private lawyer offices on the perimeter of the building. Glass, stone, concrete, brick - they're all effectively the same building. K Street is architecturally remarkable not for any one building, but for developing an architecture that's truly DC in nature - working within height and building limits to achieve pretty much the same end result no matter how a building is designed. 60 years ago they were mostly stone. 30 years ago mostly concrete. Now mostly glass. Same buildings.

(*) Also ironically, when I think of "K Street boxes," I also think of buildings being recessed from the road; whereas what I have termed "Selfish Architecture" uses every inch that code allows it to, and most likely applies for modifications which I suspect are typically granted. Even in suburbs (witness places like East Falls Church and Merrifield), buildings are currently being built right up to the point where they get in peoples' faces. There would be no room to plant a tree on the sidewalk, for example.

Especially downtown, DC designed and owns a lot more sidewalk space than places like East Falls Church and Merrifield have. If anything, buildings in downtown DC use every square inch allowable by zoning to a far greater extent than those in the suburbs, because every square inch of land is far more valuable. Broad sidewalks and trees in DC aren't the product of generous developers - they're the product of L'Enfant's planning and the city's safeguarding of that legacy. Of course, the city screwed up decades ago by allowing so many of those new office buildings to eliminate service alleys which has a huge impact today, but oh well...

I agree with practically everything Marc Fisher wrote about this controversy in the Post back in 2007. 

As Marc Fisher wrote in that column, "If the church were replaced by a standard K Street box, that would indeed be a loss."

But that was always the only possible outcome. The church only sold because the economics of the standard K Street box made the land very valuable. It was remarkably naive for anyone to argue the church should be torn down with the hope that "maybe they'll put up something better!" and then act disappointed with the outcome.

I can understand your sentiments about it, Don, but I think you're missing an essential part of the equation: the congregation to whom this building belonged. While I was never inside it or know the specific discussions, my understanding is that the congregation could no longer manage its upkeep and that it was a decidedly problematic worship space that was essentially impossible to reconfigure to something more fitting to their--or anyone's--needs or to be converted into some other use than a church because of its particular infrastructure. The historians and architects battled with the congregation for many years about its significance; they were essentially being held hostage in their own building because they could not afford to move without shedding the property. So, yes, it's a sad situation, but there were few viable alternatives for the congregation. Ultimately, it's their property to dispose of, despite any historic or architectural significance, and neither the state nor any other group should be able to interfere in that, unless they want to buy it from the congregation and assume responsibility for its preservation--which was pretty much pointless, if it couldn't serve any other purpose, including its original one.

Your understanding is that the congregation couldn't manage the upkeep and it was impossible to reconfigure because that was the argument the church's PR and legal team made so that they could get a permit to demolish the building and make a huge profit by selling the land for a "trophy class" office building. For all the issues with changing light bulbs and air conditioning in the space it's remarkable they didn't change to LED fixtures or upgrade a decades-old HVAC system. Of course, if they'd done that they wouldn't have been able to argue that the building was a maintenance burden...

It wasn't an architectural masterpiece, but it was pretty good. I don't know that there would have been a viable way to save the building, but it's a shame the press was complicit in the story of this poor congregation being forced to tear down their unworkable monstrosity of a building instead of the other side: the congregation commissioned a world famous architect to design a church for them, approved the plans, and decades later when DC office land was in much more demand they decided to demolish and sell so that they could make an enormous profit from a developer because the site was far more valuable as a expensive DC office building full of lawyers.