Washington, DC has the most diners who abstain from meat while eating out of any metropolitan area. We are also the most vegetarian friendly.
Take that San Francisco, you damn, dirty, anti-environment, animal haters!
Today is Lawrence Ferlinghetti Day in the city of Santa Cruz!
Hat tip to Mayor Ryan Coonerty and the Santa Cruz City Council for recognizing an American treasure.
Living in a walkable neighborhood is a huge issue for me. Even when living in car obsessed cities like Los Angeles and Atlanta, I still migrated towards walkable neighborhoods with restaurants, bookstores, entertainment, and groceries all within easy strolling distance (if you’re curious, I lived in Hollywood and Midtown to accomplish those things).
I was as surprised as anyone that New Jersey turns out to be the state with the most “walkable cities,” according to this article.
I also want to bring attention to the picture they used – I am guessing it is San Francisco, but that’s not my point. There’s a Borders prominently featured in it. Kind of makes me sad.
The 10 American cities that spend the most on coffee.
I have lived in four of them: Minneapolis, Los Angeles, Washington, and Miami.
A coincidence?
The Dead Sea Scrolls are now digital so read up!
I visited an exhibit containing many of the scrolls (fragments of scrolls, really) several years in San Diego. They were touring the country while their regular home was being refurbished, I believe. Worth seeing, definitely.
Last night’s game was a little uncomfortable.
Not because I still have feelings for the DC United’s opponent, Chivas.
But because the Red & Black’s performance was not good.
They lined up with an unusual formation. Ostensibly, it was no doubt intended to be a midfield diamond with two wide players, a defensive midfielder and a trequartista at the tip of the diamond. In practice, it got a little more complicated.
On the right, youthful Honduran phenom Andy Najar played a good game. He provided some real width to the team and drew the foul that produced DC’s first goal off the ensuing set piece.
On the left, right footed Santino Quaranta played pretty narrow, staying closer to the center than to the sideline.
One of the strikers, Josh Wolff, actually played pretty deep and spent much of the game close to the trequartista, Dwayne DeRosario.
This essentially left Charlie Davies as the lone striker, which is not actually a problem. He’s got a quick first step to accelerate past defenders and can be lethal inside the box, with great ball control to dribble in tight areas.
But with, in effect, two attacking midfielders playing in the same areas, it left some gaps between the defensive midfielder – Clyde Simms – and the rest of the midfield. It also put a great deal of burden on Simms to protect the backline.
Neither Wolff nor DeRo nor Quaranta put in much defensive work (though Najar did yeoman’s work, tracking back to help the fullback and harrying opposing attackers coming down the right.
Also, when Simms or the defense won the ball, there was often too much distance between them and a player able to move the ball further forward.
Consequently, we saw a long of ball hoofed up the field towards Davies. Even that wouldn’t have been so bad if they had been balls hit with pace over the top, allowing Davies to use his speed to get behind the defenders and latch onto it. But they hit them high and slow and the shorter Davies is not going to win many headers in the open field against a big, burly defender.
When they tried to move the opposition around, rather than forming triangles in the midfield, which means that the player in possession will always have an outlet to pass the ball, they would try highlight reel cross field passes that the winger had a 50-50 chance, at best of being able to reach, win, and control.
The reason you play the formation set out is to play possession soccer. You have players in Quaranta, Najar, DeRo, and Wolff who are able to dribble the ball and pass the ball around, probing for an opening. They play defense from the front by keeping the ball away from the opposition.
But if you play long balls, then the defensive players must shoulder their burden alone. Not only that, but you a ceding a lot of possession to the opposition, who can attack and tire out your players by making them chase the ball.
It’s not surprise that first ball came from a too rare period of players holding the ball and running at the opposition rather than launching it towards the goal and hoping a teammate finds it. Najar ran at the defense and forced them to foul him, gifting DC a critical free kick.
Finally, after Chivas pulled a goal back to reach 2-1, Coach Olsen pulled off both natural strikers (though not at once), with attacking midfielder, DeRo, moved to striker.
The players he put on the field made sense: Stephen King, a central midfielder who can move up an attack, but will also hang deeper to help out the defense; and Austin de la Luz, a left footed midfielder who could provide some width on the left side.
But it should have been Quaranta and just one of the strikers taken off.
Also, it only makes sense, once again, if you are going to try to keep the ball and play for possession. Make quick, short passes to make the opposition chase you and allow you to keep the ball with little effort.
But they hadn’t been doing that all game.
So when Chivas scored to draw level, United had little in the way of options to claw ahead for a win.
Yes, we won a penalty kick, which was saved. But it wasn’t DeRosario’s fault for not burying that. He should never have been forced in that situation. If Davies were still on the field, he would surely have scored that PK. Or if we’d played like we’re supposed to, we should have been able to finish the game at 2-1.
[sigh]
We purchased a deal on tickets for the Wednesday DC United home game. To add a little spice/nostalgia/internal conflict/wistfulness to the whole proceedings, their competition is Chivas USA – the team I rooted for during my years in Los Angeles.
I won’t be wearing my red Chivas shirt, of course. I was a United fan long before I ever saw Los Angeles and I’m a Washingtonian now.
But one can’t help but feel a little torn, especially since each team is clinging to thin playoff hopes and a tie won’t do it for either team. I have to hope for a crushing victory by United (which they got some nine days ago, when they hammered the Goats 3-0 in California).
Go DC!
One of the rumors flying around is that Chivas USA will grab Freddy Adu before the European transfer window closes in August.
He’s currently ‘playing’ on for the Portuguese powerhouse Benfica. I say ‘playing’ because he’s hardly played for them at all. He’s ridden the pine and been loaned out, but he’s hardly played for them at all over the last few years. The only reason any is really talking about him again is because he went on loan to a second division team in the Turkish league, put in the work and made a real difference for them. Then, he got called up to play for the national team in the Gold Cup and when he was finally given his favored trequartista role, excelled in holding onto possession and played some excellent passes to open opposing defenses.
But he still looks unlikely to get any playing time for Benfica.
If he came back to Major Leage Soccer, Chivas would be my first choice for him. My hometown team right now is DC United, but his time here was only moderately successful and think maybe we should say that the moment for him here has come and gone.
I also lived in Los Angeles and Chivas USA was my team during that time (I’m not just a leaf on the wind – my true team were the Tampa Mutiny, but they are gone forever, I fear; everyone else is just a substitute for my true love). They could use some sparkle and pizzazz. If Adu were really given a chance to shine and given a central playmaking role with little defensive responsibilities (either in a 4-2-3-1 or at the top of a midfield diamond), then he could really make that team – known more for hard work and grit, than flair – shine.
That said, I’d like to see him stay in Europe. Portugal would, in theory, be perfect for him: a league heavy on offense with frankly weak and not very physical defenses. But that train has left the station. A mid-table team in the Netherlands looking for a possession oriented quarterback or even a team in France’s second division would suit him to a tee, but the transfer window is almost over and getting on the field for Chivas USA is better than sitting on a bench for Benfica.
I don’t know exactly when anthropologists & sociologists decided upon the phrase ‘cultural omnivore.’ I only know that I hadn’t heard of such a thing until I read an article about it a little over two months ago.
The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) suggested in their report on attendance at cultural activities that it is not perhaps that the creature known as the cultural omnivore is dying, but that their preferred medium is changing. In other words, they interact with the arts through television and the internet.
This is not actually reassuring.
Ballet and live theatre cannot be maintained exclusively through YouTube clips nor opera exclusively through broadcasts of the Met onto movie screens.
A separate NEA report concluded that half of all attendees at arts events (live performances of classical music, art openings, etc.) come from two groups that the author classifies as ‘high brow’ and the aforementioned ‘cultural omnivores.’
Omnivores dropped by a third – from 15% to 10% of the population – between 1982 and 2008 and high brows dropped from 7% to 5% over the same period.
What is to become of our culture? I have been attending the opera at least once a year for a decade and have gone at least three times a year since 2006. I regularly attend performances of classical music and even dated a violinist for a while when I lived in Los Angeles. And that’s not even to speak how this might impact my great love, poetry!
the coffee philosopher 