This past Saturday was the summer's first German Park. Plenty of people in and around Ann Arbor know about this awesome event. Plenty don't. I lived here for a few years before I ever learned about it, and it was from word of mouth, not from the trusty Interwebs.
Now, unlike when I first heard of it, there's a web site telling you where and when it is... but not what it is.
So what is it?
Some say it's the best thing about summer in Ann Arbor. On the last weekend of June, July, and August, the German Park Recreation Club – composed of real Germans! – opens up its grounds to the public, charging $5 a person for the opportunity to drink from buckets of German beer; nibble on landjaeger (dried sausage); mow down on bratwurst, knackwurst, pretzels, spaetzle, and German potato salad; listen to an "oom-pah" band; and otherwise kick back and enjoy a festive picnic atmosphere with family and friends.
The first German Park was held in 1938, and its location well northeast of town was deliberately chosen to avoid anti-German sentiment that was rife during the war years. Those crafty Germans must have cut a deal with the cops or something, too, because I've never seen the expected lineup of police cars lurking just beyond the grounds to bust people leaving an all-day beer picnic. Thank the Lord.
I've been going for the last three or four years, and while I freely admit I may be hallucinating, it almost seemed to me there was a greater variety of German beers this year, from a plain lager to a hefeweizen to a marzen to a dunkel to... wait, was there a pilsner? How many buckets did I have, anyway? OK, I was probably hallucinating. Fans of German beer will recognize names like Spaten, Franziskaner, and Dinkel Acker. Or, if you suck, they also serve Coors Light.
Whatever the case, if you missed out, lucky you! There are still two more chances to go, July 25 and August 29. Come early for a table and bring a blanket and a deck of cards or other game to enhance your experience.
The First German Park of 2009
'Tis the Zaison
You never know who you'll meet when you're out for a pint. Last evening I was hanging with friends at Ashley's, and I bumbled across Jason Spaulding, co-founder of New Holland Brewing and now out on his own starting another small brewing operation. The new operation is called "One Beer" and, fittingly enough, it produces a single beer, the "Zaison" saison ale. It's available (for now, anyway) only at Ashley's and Zingerman's Roadhouse. At 9% ABV, it's not one to suck down with abandon, but it's a slightly peppery take on the classic style, designed to pair with a wide variety of victuals. Jason's looking for a home for his new brewery, and of course I selfishly hope he'll decide to make it in or around Ann Arbor. (Side note: He also hand-carved the tap handle himself.)
Grand Opening of Workantile Exchange
After months of planning, procuring, building, and tweaking, the Workantile Exchange officially opened today in downtown Ann Arbor.
What's a Workantile Exchange?
In short, it's a coworking facility. But their website goes into a little more detail:Workantile Exchange is designed for independents who don't want to work alone. Our goal is to build a community of peers: people with wide-ranging skills, experience and resources...
We’re a private membership community of independent workers, based in a restored antique storefront in the heart of Ann Arbor. Both the space and the community it houses are designed to support and enhance members' worklives. We don’t offer permanent desk space or phone lines, and we aren’t an incubator or startup facility.
More of a Guild Hall, or a private coffeehouse.
If you're looking for a dynamic, creative place to work downtown, and you aren't chained to a cubicle, you may wish to give Workantile a look, or apply online to become a member.
See more pictures from the grand opening.
Update: The Ann Arbor News also has a story on Workantile.
Fruit Beer Tasting at Arbor Brewing
Fruity beers are generally not my thing, but there were several decent brews at last night's tasting at Arbor Brewing. As usual, I volunteered to pour and ended up stationed at what turned out to be the strawberry table, featuring ABC's new-for-summer Strawberry Blonde and Melbourne Bros. (AKA Samuel Smith's) Strawberry Ale.
Owner Matt Greff (pictured right, with volunteer coordinator Joanna Hollyday and an apparent will-o-the-wisp on his shoulder) worked for three years on the recipe for the Strawberry Blonde. The result is a well balanced, medium-bodied brew with a strong strawberry nose but no sweet, cloying taste that is often a hallmark of fruit beers. The addition of so much malt to offset the fruitiness of the strawberry also means this is a deceptively boozy concoction at 7.75% ABV. Great choice for frat boys looking for a chick beer that will also get their dates hammered. The Strawberry Blonde is on draft at the Corner Brewery in Ypsi, but not yet available at ABC.
The Melbourne Strawberry Ale was a much different animal, with more of a "real" strawberry taste (Greff used "essence of strawberry" for the flavor of his brew) and a really tart character. It was all right in small doses, but too much of something like this means a tummyache for your correspondent. Maybe the most notable thing about this beer is that it's spontaneously fermented, meaning during the brewing process it's left out in the open to be fermented by wild yeastie beasties in the air.
(Melbourne also had an apricot beer at another table, also spontaneously fermented, which had much more of a gueuze-like character to it.)
Others that caught my attention: Dark Horse Tres Blueberry (described in the program as "a fruit beer for manly men, not little girls"); Grozet Gooseberry Wheat Ale and Ebulum Elderberry Black Ale (from Craigmill, the Scottish brewer famous for Heather Ale, mmmm); and Cerise from Founders, a cherry beer with an interesting, oh-so-slight cinnamon finish.
Next month: wheats, wits, and lambics!
Haggis: Entered
Yesterday was the first Sonic Lunch in Liberty Plaza, a free concert series sponsored by Bank of Ann Arbor and 107.1 FM. Morning DJ Martin Bandyke introduced the featured band, Toronto's Enter the Haggis, who describe themselves merely as Celtic rock, though that doesn't quite seem to cover all of the different genres and influences that were manifested in the band's music.
The turnout was pretty impressive, and I will definitely catch more of these shows (every Thursday throughout the summer, excepting Art Fair week). The full schedule of shows is on Bank of Ann Arbor's Sonic Lunch website.
Eating at the Ann Arbor Book Festival
Saturday was the annual Ann Arbor Book Festival writers' conference and street fair. I didn't attend the writers' conference this year, but it sounds like it was as jam-packed with great guests, lecturers, and practical advice as was last year's.
This year's highlight for me actually had more to do with food than books: a cooking presentation moderated by Zingerman's co-founder Ari Weinzweig and featuring delicious (and generous) samples. (Pictured at right: Laura Stec.)
Unfortunately, beyond a few ingredients like kale, nuts, chives, baby asparagus, and corn, I can't say what exactly I ate. (I'm sure if I had purchased the cookbooks on sale there, I would know!)
What really stood out, over all that nice healthy stuff, however, was Ari's fat-soaked bread topped with pimento cheese and a strip of bacon. Some version of this is served at Zingerman's Roadhouse, and man is it good, again confirming one of my main Rules of Life: "There is nothing that can't be made better by adding bacon to it."
Following our freebie meal, my fellow adventurer and I headed to Ashley's for something to wash it down with. Sometimes when I go into Ashley's, it can be hard to decide what to order, so we decided on a "beer flight" of Brooklyn Savoir Faire, Arcadia imperial stout, Dogfish Head's Aprihop ale, and Arcadia Big Dick's Bourbon Barrel Olde Ale.
There's nothing really wrong with Arcadia's stout, but it wasn't what I was in the mood for. The Big Dick was most decidedly bourbon-flavored, which pleased my not-really-into-beer lady friend, and Aprihop and the Savoir Faire (a "French farmhouse" style ale) were a lighter, refreshing counterpoint to the stout and old ale.
To wrap up the perfect afternoon, at Ashley's I ran into two more friends who I haven't seen since they left town, one for the UP and the other for Howell, where she lives, and Battle Creek, where she happens to brew for Arcadia.
All in all, it was another great Ann Arbor-centric day.
Give Me Liberty...
Finally made it out to Liberty Street Brewing Company (warning: poorly designed web site) in Plymouth, something like nine months after it opened.
I had time for only one beer, their IPA, though I did also have a taste of their pilsener. I liked both of them, though to be honest I can tell I'm starting to get a little tired of IPAs and their even more bitter cousins, the XPAs (that's X-TREME IPAs that mostly seem like a waste of a lot of good hops).
The pilsener was pretty darn good; just because the likes of Anheuser-Busch and Miller have corrupted the style doesn't mean it isn't possible to enjoy a fresh, crisp pint of the craft-brew version. Sometimes this classic style is just what the doctor ordered. Now if only Liberty, or anyone, really, would produce a nice English mild, a truly neglected and out-of-favor style...
Verdict: I will go back. The historic-building setting is a major plus, the staff were friendly (I recognized one bartender from her days working at Arbor Brewing, though I did wonder why she turned off the end of the Tigers game to put on Two and a Half Men), and the beers I tried were tasty and well priced. Maybe next time I'll have a little extra coin to try their food, too, although it's pretty basic, apparently.
An additional note: The whole place, upstairs and down, is smoke-free. (See, you don't need Big Brother to force business owners to ban smoking, some will do it voluntarily if they perceive a high demand for such a ban.)
Next on the day-trip-from-Ann-Arbor brewery tour will have to be Original Gravity (much better web site) in Milan. I'll keep y'all posted.
Chinatown at the Michigan
Last night it was a pleasure to see, for my first time on the big screen, the bona fide classic Chinatown at the Michigan Theater. My date, for all intents and purposes a native of a Los Angeles, had never seen it in any form – can you believe it? (Of course, I have yet to see any of the Godfather movies, so I'll just shut up.)
Afterward we hit Bar Louie for a post-movie drink and discussion. She enjoyed it immensely (although covered her eyes for the famous nose-cutting scene), but I know it made her homesick, too, with its various shots in and around L.A., all of which she recognized.
This amateur film geek has long been a fan of noir, neo- or otherwise, and seeing Roman Polanski's dark vision (he supposedly fought screenwriter Robert Towne over the unhappy ending) on the big screen allowed me to notice more things than I had before, giving me an enhanced appreciation for everything from the superior acting to the excellent cinematography. (Quick aside: John Huston's Noah Cross must rank in the upper echelon of all-time screen villains. He has little actual screen time, but his sociopathic malevolence touches every character in the film, one way or another, directly or indirectly.)
I'm also a fan of Polanski's work, especially his psychosexual tales of terror like Repulsion (criminally underrated and/or unknown), Rosemary's Baby, and The Tenant. (Even his less successful films like Frantic and The Ninth Gate offer something to the viewer.)
As I recall, the little-known sequel, 1990's The Two Jakes, is considered something of a convoluted mush in the hands of Jack Nicholson as director, but both of us are now interested enough to finally check it out. Hello, Netflix...
And the Smithee Goes To...
Why should Los Angeles always get all the glamor and glitz of movie award ceremonies?
Saturday night was a momentous cinematic occasion in its own right as the University of Michigan campus played host to the highly acclaimed 18th Annual Ann Arbor Smithee Awards.
The awards – named after Alan Smithee, the nom-de-shame Hollywood directors have historically substituted for their own when they wanted to disassociate themselves from the finished product – took place in Room 1800 of the Chemistry Building and featured such prestigious categories as Most Ludicrous Premise, Stupidest-Looking Monster, Worst Science, and, of course, Worst Picture.
As the award categories suggest, the nominated films are heavily weighted toward awful science fiction and horror movies, but the year of release is irrelevant. This year's nominees included everything from 1951's Unknown World (for Worst Science) to 2003's 13 Seconds (for multiple categories, including Worst Picture).
How it works is that the Smith-ka-teers (Bryan Cassidy and Greg Pearson, the two Michigan grad students who created the Smithees in 1991, and their associates) select five films for each category, clip the relevant parts of each, and show the clips to the auditorium full of B-movie lovers, oddballs, and masochists (over 200 of them this year!). The audience then votes for its favorites, using high-tech "voting packs" of recycled scraps of paper, pens, and plastic spiders provided to everyone.
I'm something of a crap film connoisseur myself, so I'm not ashamed to say I'd seen several of the nominees before in their entirety, including Devil Girl from Mars (1954), Troll 2 (1990), and Piñata: Survival Island (2002).
My date, who is an actual Hollywood veteran, got into the spirit, too, especially when we saw all of the swell snacks and beverages provided gratis – "food" such as Peeps, Pixy Sticks, cheeseballs, Oreo knockoffs, and other things too frightening to mention. I stuck mostly to the cheeseballs, but the pumpkin-flavored soda and bacon-flavored gumballs intrigued me as well. (Note to self: avoid pumpkin-flavored soda and bacon-flavored gumballs in the future.)
So which celluloid atrocity won Worst Picture? Unfortunately, we had another event to attend that evening, so we were forced to leave before the end of the ceremonies. I'm hoping to stay for the whole thing next year.
My small, poorly exposed gallery of Smithee is on Facebook.
Ann Arbor Coworking
The old Arcadian Antiques Too space at 118 S. Main St. is being turned into the Workantile Exchange, another "coworking" site in downtown Ann Arbor.
The obvious question is: What is coworking? And what is a coworking site?
A great article explaining the concept is here.
Out and About: Stairway to Springtime
A walk in Nichols Arboretum.
Observing History
Caught a tour today of the University of Michigan's historic Detroit Observatory, the place where esteemed Victorian gentlemen went to gaze at the stars and other celestial bodies.
Fully restored to its 1854 grandeur, the Observatory boasts two relatively unaltered telescopes from back in the day, when they were among the largest and most state-of-the-art instruments in the field.
Our tour guide admitted that University president Tappan's desire to build the most advanced observatory of its kind in an effort to put U of M on the map, so to speak, was at odds with Michigan's often-cloudy skies.
Perhaps that is one reason there were no significant discoveries, apart from a comet and a few asteroids, made at this site (or so the guide told me when I asked).
On May 8-10 the Antique Telescope Society (yes, this group exists) will be putting the Observatory back into action for its annual meeting. Maybe they will have better luck.
Springing Forward
Yesterday was sunny with a cold wind, but it was still good enough weather to watch the Michigan football team in its final spring practice, which was open to the public. Even better (assuming you are a fan) was the chance to tour the locker room before the practice, to see where so many conqu'ring heroes have changed into their battle gear on the way to becoming the winningest team in D1 college football. (Yes, I got up early and waited in line for more than an hour to do this.) Only around 147 more days until the start of football season!
More pictures are here.
The Boy from IPAnema
Once again I volunteered to pour at Arbor Brewing Company's monthly beer tasting, the first I've been to since I gave up alcohol for Lent. Last night was a sold-out affair, as India pale ales (IPAs) are popular, and many thirsty beer lovers were on hand.
I was stationed at Arbor's own table, pouring out tastes of "Batch 2000," which, as the name implies, is the 2000th batch of beer brewed by ABC. I'm actually not sure what style to classify it as, but it was much more well balanced that many of the other XPAs (X-TREME IPAS!) there.
What else to say? A great time was had by all. Looking forward to next month's bock and Trappist ale tasting!
April Fools
Every year on the first Sunday of April, art students and other volunteers put on the downtown "FestiFools" parade, which consists of many large, offbeat papier-mâché puppets as well as some strangely dressed folks (guilty as charged).
Despite the rain, there was a great turnout. My picture album of the event is on Facebook. (Non-Facebookers should be able to access this link, too.)
