Bike to Work Week has been great so far. Not that it is much different than any other week for me since I’ve bought my road bike… but still.
The best ride was Tuesday Night in the rain after my show filling in for Pol Plastino (on assignment to the Sasquatch Festival… full report at 11).
The city at night is a wonderful place for a biker. Calm, cool and easy.
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Last night, after the radio program… I raced down Quadra, then View to Hermann’s Jazz Club. This fine basement suite of a drinkhole has been a part of Victoria since 1986, but it was first time there. My brother’s boss at the cabinet factory fancies himself a Jazz-player and so we braved the keyboard solos and pencil mustachios for some of the jazz music.
I arrived early and so the bar was not serving. I could hear the bartender and another employee sitting behind me going off on patrons and all the dumb shit we apparently do there. I wanted a beer so bad, but it seems asking for service form the bar is on their list of things that would make me a “dumbass” or a “fucking dumbass.” So I just sat thirsty and cowardly watching hockey till the lady hopped behind the bar.
Then, sure enough she was actually pretty pleasant.
I didn’t stay all too long, but a handful of beers, conversation with my brother and his newly minted wife and his boss’ jazz music was a good time. I’d drink there again.
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Here is a cool story that caught my attention (and fired up my imagination) this week. A steampunk band from the UK is releasing their new single “That’s What I Call Steampunk – Volume 1” on wax cylinder! The first commercial cylinder nearly 100 years.
What is a wax cylinder? Well we’d need to travel back to the oldenest of days. Way back when Thomas Edison first invented the idea of recorded sound.
The phonograph is what your 1903 hipster great great grandfather was jamming out some Vaudeville outfit you’ve never heard on; while he scoffed at your more pedestrian collection of Sir Wilfred Laurier speeches.
The band’s song is pretty terrible (like any musical group that claims to be steampunk), but the gimmick is pretty cool. Their 20 British Pound single comes with plans to make your own phonograph. The plans are what is of interest to me. Wouldn’t that be a fun DIY project?
Go with yourself.
The Morning After 