Beer

Josh and Franny ventured to Williamsburg, Brooklyn to Spuyten Duyvil the second best beer bar in NYC, per Josh, who probably does know about these things more than anyone else we know (Blind Tiger is the best he says). Franny is leaving for Austin on Tuesday and Josh follows in a few months.  We will miss them.  In their honor, a list of all the beer we drank tonight:

• Mikkeller Draft Bear
• Thiriez Amber/L’Ambrée D’Esquelbecq (translated / Wikipedia entry)
• Mikkeller Beer Geek Breakfast (Stout)
• Brasserie de Rochefort 8 (Authenticated Trappist)
• Jenlain “Printemps” Bière de Mars (Brasserie Duyck)
• Jolly Pumpkin Bam Bière

This was a lot of beer.  Be not concerned however, we shared them amongst friends.  The Rochefort is Josh’s favorite beer of ALL TIME (and the dude knows his beer) but he enjoyed the Mikkeller Draft Bear, as did Zoe.  Mark liked the Jenlain best but then backtracked after Josh and Zoe complained that it was too sweet as he is very susceptible to peer pressure (and also not writing this post, can you tell?).  He liked the Thiriez Amber a lot, as did Sean Taylor and his visiting friends.  They ordered 2 bottles which says a lot when you have the selection you do there.

All in all a successful night. I think we have finally figured out the best route on our bikes to get there (and to Fette Sau) as it is important to be able to reach delicious beer and meats safely and efficiently.

Mark eats cheese and bread

Josh and Franny. Aw.

Zoe and I have been playing team kickball in a McCarren Park league on Sunday evenings.  For what should be a relatively easy sport for kids who are no longer young the game has required surprising athleticism.  So far our team “The Wrecking Crew” is 4-0-1.  That’s right our first game was a stellar 0-0 tie but since then we’ve learned one of the golden rules of kickball; run and run hard.  The kickball is actually quite difficult to throw from 1st to 3rd and often times people lose control of it, so basically the strategy is run as fast as you can and you’ll score points.  There are rules like no bunting, no leading off of bases on pop-flies, you can only advance one base on a bad throw but usually it seems people drop the ball and fail to get it back to the pitcher in time and we score points.

These weekends of late have been unusually active with almost too much social interaction.  On Saturday we stopped by a party in the West Village at a sweet condo that may be owned in part by Columbia for their professors, the people who lived their had a Gursky print/poster (if it’s a real print of “99 cents” that’s off the hook) and a nice little Noguchi table.  There was a spread of food, wine, babies and lots of law talk.  Skinny ties are still in.  After working all night Friday into Saturday I fell asleep watching “The Wire” at around 7:30pm glad to be back in NY.

Shelby Elizabeth, on our kickball team has documented some with photos of the games. I thought I’d put a couple up here with links to her original set on Flickr.