flying on 9/11 was a little eery but for the most part just fine. I had absolutely no wait at airport security in Des Moines. oddly empty but I was told that’s not unusual for a 10 am midweek flight. But oddly, After I did the scanner thing, the guard asked the squeeze my ponytail. A hair frisk of sorts.
The Hub Spot – new stop along Des Moines Riverwalk
We stopped at The (new) Hub Spot for a light lunch while riding along the Principal Riverwalk in downtown Des Moines on a hot Sunday afternoon and had a perfect light meal – a very good ham and swiss on a perfectly concocted baguette – and a great view of the river and downtown, including the Latino Fest going on atop a nearby bridge. What a great addition to the ever-improving downtown scene. As further proof of that expansion, we picked up a little free Des Moines Walk & Bike Guide (more excellent work from the Des Moines Bicycle Collective) to downtown at cafe – with walking tours of the city’s public art (including sculpture by Joel Shapiro, Claes Oldenburg, Jun Kaneko) East Village shops, downtown architecture, Capitol area, and four biking tours of downtown breweries, historic (and hilly) neighborhoods and “Chuck’s 18-miler” which follows almost exactly our favorite loop from home to downtown and back.
What a great idea!! But the highlight for us came towards the end of our ride along the Neal Smith Trail when we spotted a giant billboard featuring our neighbor and friend Sam! See below…
Filed under bike trails, biking, Des Moines
California dreamin’ – san luis obispo, pacific grove
My brother and his family called today while driving up the California Coast from Los Angeles. They were near Santa Barbara, heading to one of my favorite towns, San Luis Obispo where I visited with my family back in 2001 (right after 9/11). It took me only a few minutes to remember the name of the high-kitsch hotel there, the Madonna Inn, (photo above) with its over-the-top rooms and great apple pie served in the cafe. And I remembered the wonderful farmers market held on a weeknight and I think on a weekend day. In fact, I’m looking at a whimsical stamp holder (that alas, no longer is much needed) that I bought at the market or a craft gallery nearby. I had to look back in my journal to find the name of the hotel we stayed at later on, The Butterfly Inn, a retro motel next to a Monarch Butterfly Sanctuary and Eucalyptus Grove in the town of…Pacific Grove, not far from Monterey, where we enjoyed the fabulous aquarium and at a local hotspot, the Fish House.
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Filed under California
“Bad” (Malo) restaurant opening in Des Moines
Pleased to read that restauranteur extraordinaire George Formaro (Zombie Burger, Centro, Django, Gateway et. al) is opening yet another restaurant in Des Moines, this one serving nuevo Latina” fare and called Malo, the Spanish word for “Bad” (but more bad-cool then bad-bad). “It’s going to be at the greatl old former firehouse downtown that’s becoming the new home base for the Des Moines Social Club.
He’ll be offering two things I used to think I’d find in Des Moines – a Pisco Sour (which we grew fond of last November during a trip to, where else, Peru) and “a late night menu.” (When I first moved here in 1990, it used to depress the heck out of me that I couldn’t find a decent place to eat on a Saturday night at 9 p.m. after a movie – I’ll be forever indebted to Chat Noir, now closed alas, for changing that!) The menu will reportedly include nachos mac and cheese (which doesn’t appeal to me) but also carnitas (which I happened to serve tonight to my family, using a fantastic NYTimes recipe I found years ago).
The pork carnitas torta is a sandwich of carnitas, cheese, refried beans and onions in a red chile sauce, served on South Union torta bread.
The fried shrimp tacos are served with shredded cabbage, pico de gallo, avocado and lime.
Filed under Des Moines, DINING
High Marks for the Des Moines Farmers Market
I’ve never heard of the Daily Meal website, but others have and so, I gather, it’s a fairly big deal that it named the Des Moines Farmers Market as No. 2 in the nation – out of 101 of the best markets. First place was Pike Place Farmers Market in Seattle (Des Moines sure can’t match the fresh fish available there – but we’ve got mighty good bacon!). After Des Moines, the bests were Chicago’s Green City Market, the Phoenix Public market, the St. Paul Farmers market and Omaha’s market.
Filed under Agritourism, Des Moines
Politics and prose, comet, bar code, Lincoln restaurant, Sam & Harry’s DC
Yesterday was a two crabmeat meal day. When in Rome (or in this case, Washington DC). First a light crabmeat salad during a work lunch at Lincoln Restaurant near Farragut North metro, where all the food served to our large group looked great. Then two superb crab cakes at Sam & Harry’s at Reagan National Airport.
Two days ago, I went to an author event at Politics and Prose, one of my favorite bookstores anywhere, now owned by an old friend. Buy a book there when you can!! The author who spoke, Rebecca Sive, wrote a new book encouraging women to run for public office, called Every Day is Election Day. (CSPAN filmed the event.)
Afterwards we ate dinner next door at Comet which had good pizza but a not so good live band that forced us to eat outdoors on a soupy summer night. I had to work all day Wednesday or I would have been on the mall listening to President Obama’s update on MLKing’s I have a Dream speech. Wish I could have been there.
Filed under DINING, Washington D.C.
back to the newseum For civil rights and Kennedy’s
I went on a return visit (after going last year) to the Newseum to see the Civil Rights exhibit and ended up staying four hours to see that and a whole lot more. As a fan of US History from the 1960s onward, I.e. the current events roughly spanning my time on the planet, and as a sentimental former newspaper reporter, I love the newseums focus not only on recent current events but on how they were covered by the news media and how those events shaped the media. So the exhibit on now the media, for example, covered the Kennedy assassination and the civil rights movement, as well as FBI investigations into the Patty Hearst kidnapping, the Branch Davidian fiasco at Waco, the capture of the Unabomber (whose creepy Montana cabin is in the Newseum), the Oklahoma City bombing and of course 9/11, was fascinating to me.
Imagine being the photographer who captured the shot of Lee Harvey Oswald being shot and worse, the photographer who snapped a photo a split second earlier when Oswald was still alive, just missing the drama shot? Imagine being the reporters beat up by racist thugs in the 1960s south, when they were covering the brave students fighting segregation? Strange to think that almost the entire nation tuned in for JFK’s funeral and, unwittingly, for Oswald’s death live on tv.
I also enjoyed looking at the Camelot photos taken of the young Kennedy’s and their two gorgeous little kids by the photographer first hired by Joe Kennedy to help sell his son as presidential material. The Newseum also does offer fabulous views of the capital.
Filed under museum exhibit, Washington D.C.
Florida Avenue Grill, Washington Harbor, towpath in Georgetown
I had one of the best breakfasts ever today at a fantastic soul food restaurant called Florida Avenue Grill, a down home place at the corner of Florida Avenue and 11th street. Everything our party of four tried was delicious…hot cakes sprinkled with cinnamon sugar, eggs, home fries, scrapple (I am not sure I want to know what this actually is but it kind of looked like a sausage patty but had a creamier consistency), grits, cooked apples, a smothered pork chop. Absolutely delicious and we loved the setting, a diner since 1944 filled with photos of celebrities who have visited, most note able African Americans, and the service was warm and efficient! I cannot wait to take friends and family there!
Later my friends and I walked for a bit along the towpath in Georgetown on a perfect sunny day and ended up in what felt more like Miami than DC, the “Washington Harbor ” area along the Potomac, within eyeshot of the Kennedy Center. A fancy yacht was parked outside a retail complex filled with women in bikinis. Really? really. Surprise. Beyond the yacht were paddle boarders, canoeists, pleasure craft. The gardens and grass along the river were full of picnickers. My only complaint is that a security guard wouldn’t let us out our feet in a fountain.
Filed under Uncategorized, Washington D.C.
union market, h street, Granville Moore’s, Montmarte in d.c.
Fun day in our nation’s capital with old friends from Connecticut. On a perfect weather Saturday, we strolled around the Eastern Market and ended up eating a very good brunch at an oUtdoor table at a French restaurant, Montmarte. Eggs Benedict with smoked salmon, an omelet with lamb sausage and an open faced steak sandwich. Cheerful,service. Life is good.
We stopped later at the gelato place nearby..Pitango or some such.
Then we drove nearby to Union Market, an indoor hipster artesianal food emporium with various shops full of products that looked straight out of Brooklyn (and some are). Good bread, cheese, meats, dairy, flowers, spices, home furnishings…in what appeared to be a former industrial building. Next stop XM Sirius headquarters where my friends son works in sports satellite radio. Cool building full of studios catering to the preferences of a variety of listeners. oops like a fun place to work too, especially for a 23 year old recent college grad. For dinner we went to one of the many bars and restaurants that have popped up on H street in the emerging NOMa (north of Massachusetts) neighborhood, Granville Moore’s, a Belgian bar with very good pub grub, mussels, fries, meatloaf sandwich, an appetizer with charred spicy pork bits and sautéed Brussels sprouts. Very rustic cramped decor with exposed brick and concrete walls and rough hewn wood beams added to the charm. My friends stayed at Hilton Garden Inn Capitol for a very reasonable $108. Seemed a good place!
Filed under DINING, Washington D.C.
March on Washington 50th anniversary in DC next week!
I just realized I’ll be in Washington DC next week during lots of interesting events to mark the 50th Anniversary of the March on Washington – including a speech by President Obama on Wednesday (alas, I have business meetings during that event.) I’d also give anything to go to the gospel celebration. See details below!!
The 50th anniversary of the March on Washington will bring a host of civil rights-inspired exhibits, itineraries and other experiences, including two commemorative marches, to the nation’s capital this week and next.
A commemorative rally along the same route that marchers took in 1963 will take place at the Lincoln Memorial on Saturday, followed by the opening of a Global Freedom Festival on the National Mall. Civil rights activists, including the Rev. Al Sharpton, Martin Luther King III and the family of Emmett Till are expected to attend.
On Aug. 28, a March for Jobs and Justice will end with a Let Freedom Ring rally on the National Mall. President Obama is expected to speak from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial as part of the event.
In addition to the marches on Aug. 24 and Aug. 28, six museum exhibits are related to the anniversary.
– Changing America: The Emancipation Proclamation, 1863 and The March on Washington, 1963, is at the National Museum of American History through Sept. 15.
– Make Some Noise: Students and the Civil Rights Movement is a new permanent exhibit at the Newseum. The museum also is showing Civil Rights at 50, a three-year exhibit chronicling the struggle for civil rights from 1963-1965.
– A Day Like No Other: Commemorating the 50th Anniversary of the March on Washington, a photography exhibit at the Library of Congress is on Aug. 28-March 1, 2014.
– American People, Black Light: Faith Ringgold’s Paintings of the 1960s at the National Museum of Women in the Arts explores race inequality in the 1960s and runs through Nov. 10.
– And One Life: Martin Luther King Jr., at the National Portrait Gallery through June 1, 2014, traces the civil rights leader’s career.
The 1963 March On Washington
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Filed under Washington D.C.
TakeBetsywithyou 