The Laotian restaurant at the end of the universe; the macro problem with Project 2025; the Spanish restaurant at the end of the Rapid Ride G Line

I’m All Lost in …

The 3 things I’m obsessing over THIS week.

#50

Islands of mixed-use in a sea of single-family housing

1) On Saturday night, my longtime pal Amy, visiting from Portland and crashing at my place, suddenly got a second wind. She was pooped after Day Three of her writing conference, and I was still coming down from my recent trip to D.C./ NYC./ and Mississippi. And so, here we were about to call time, when at Amy’s suggestion, we leapt up from our respective lackadaisical spots on the beanbag and floor and headed out in search of a night cap.

Where to go? My apartment building is located on a short stretch of street zoned Neighborhood Commercial (NC-1), making my block a brief oasis of multi-story housing, the-three-restaurants-I’ve-been-to-a-hundred-times, and some retail in an otherwise dormant neighborhood. Street after street, most of my neighborhood is zoned nearly exclusively for single family homes.

There is, however, one kindred-spirit corner just two blocks north of my building, a fleeting island of last-ditch NC-1, awkwardly separated from my aspirational block by more of Seattle’s ubiquitous single-family zoning.

The listless streetscape between my building and said lit outpost is enough of an existential barrier that I rarely venture that way; my district’s main commercial hub—”The Drag”—is a 15-minute walk in the other direction to the south, so despite the propinquity of the commercial zoning satellite directly to my north, I hardly ever walk past it, even by default. This, it turns out, has been a consequential miscalculation.

For here lies Taurus Ox , an exciting and casually fancy Laotian restaurant. Their ginger, chile, and lemongrass expertise emphasizes burgers and pork dishes, but there are two vegan entree options as well (including a yellow curry with squash, eggplant, and mushrooms).

There was a boisterous crowd of well-to-do 20-somethings hovering on the sidewalk outside (exactly what the neighborhood fears!) and lively groups of friends crowded around the 10 tables inside when Amy and I arrived at 9 o’clock; all this alluring commotion in a neighborhood where the surrounding zoning mandates early bedtimes. To my surprise, the friendly staff invited us right in, ushered us to a small bar in back by the bustling, flaming kitchen, and warmly catered to our evening hunger for drinks, snacks, and tentacular conversation.

An hour later, the energetic young staff was still tending to us with open arms and our bellies were happy from the stacked-with-mushrooms, blanched greens, and garlic veggie fresh rolls (Soop Pak) and light NA cocktails (limey No-jitos).

After No-jitos, 9/21/24

2) The Democrats’ Project 2025 fixation, certainly a politically and (uncharacteristically for Democrats) savvy bit of campaign messaging, has always been a kind of cheap shot. It’s reminiscent of MAGA’s “hordes at the border” or “she’s a Marxist!” battle cry. Look, I’m not a both sides-er, and the extent to which Trump’s lies and name-calling are pathological and pernicious is hardly comparable to the Democrats’ reasonable alarm bells about Project 2025, a tangible policy document that outlines a deeply un-American, authoritarian agenda of civil rights roll backs, deregulation, corporatism, weird anti-sex nanny-state moralism, and even an explicit endorsement of NIMBYism (do control F for “single-family zoning” on page 511.)

But as much as Democrats want to pin a Heritage Foundation caricature on Trump, it’s pretty obvious that his secular Libertarianism, wily political shape-shifting, and naked self-serving cronyism cannot be corralled and indexed into a standard Republican manifesto. In turn, Trump's anti-establishment, KKK ideology cannot be met with standard Democratic attacks.

While there’s certainly overlap between many of Trump’s extremist positions and those spelled out in Project 2025 (mass deportation, rolling back environmental regulations), I appreciate how this week’s NYT opinion piece by Ezra Klein  both pointed out the fundamental flaw with the Democrats’ Project-2025-as-Trumpist-White-Paper narrative, and then re-framed the crazed document to identify the larger danger it poses.

First the reality check:

When [Trump] said, during his debate with Kamala Harris, that he hadn’t read Project 2025 and has no intention of doing so, I believed him.

It has more views on more issues than he does. It has absorbed more specific and unusual ideologies than he has. It is more hostile to abortion than he is (or more than he wants to appear to be). It is more committed to deregulating health insurance than he is (or more than he wants to appear to be). There is a great gap between the MAGA leader who slept with a porn star and the factions in the MAGA movement that want to outlaw pornography, as Roberts proposed on Project 2025’s first page…

Trumpism is whatever Trump says it is

Bam. It’s that observation from Klein—“Trumpism is whatever Trump says it is”—that convincingly ties Project 2025 and Trumpism together to reveal the larger, corrosive effects this radical document could have for American democracy.

Explaining Project 2025’s prescription for replacing standard government bureaucrats with right-wing foot soldiers, Klein continues:

Project 2025…. is more than a compendium of policy proposals: It is an effort to build a deep state of Trump’s own. …

Veterans of Trump’s administration believe personnel was their biggest problem. They could not act ambitiously or swiftly enough because they were at constant war with the government they, in theory, controlled. …

To do that, the next Trump administration must first clear out or conquer the federal government that currently exists. Project 2025 is obsessed with this task, and many of its 900-some pages are dedicated to plans and theories for how this might be done…

This, I would say, is the unifying theory of a second Trump term. Purge or break the federal bureaucracy. Fill it with vetted loyalists. Then use its power to pass policy, yes, but also to break or conquer the other institutions in American life that so vex Trump and his supporters. “We are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be,” Kevin Roberts, the president of the Heritage Foundation, which oversaw Project 2025, said in July.

Harvest Vine on the Rapid Ride Line, 9/26/24

3) To celebrate Tuesday’s good news, XDX’s promotion, we promptly made Thursday night reservations at one of her Seattle-dinner-out wish-list spots: Harvest Vine, a casual, bourgeois (Boomer/Xer) Spanish restaurant in Madison Valley.

First of all, Harvest Vine is located next to the last stop on Seattle’s brand new Rapid Ride G bus line (quasi BRT with dedicated lanes, synchronized traffic lights, center island stops, curb bulb in-lane stops, and doors on both sides for seamless boarding). So, along with the evening’s promotion celebration, I got to test out Metro’s new “buses-every-6-minutes” claim.

Without considering the bus schedule, I arrived at the in-lane stop on 17th & Madison just 15 minutes before XDX and I were scheduled to meet a mile east at the restaurant. I queued up at 5:16 and voila: The bus swung by promptly at 5:22 and then ferried me right to Harvest Vine’s doorstep in the heart of Madison’s froufrou commercial strip.

Set inside a two-story house, there’s table seating clustered around a lively open kitchen on the first floor and a secluded batch of tables downstairs in a sedate, wine-cellar-turned-dining room. That’s where we were seated, feeling definitely that we were in Seville or Lisbon.

I was able to go vegan (sort of) by piling up on starters: Roasted summer squash with cozy almond romesco; a sizzling eggplant dish; and a mushroom appetizer (sauteed button mushrooms with garlic and delicious sherry cream sauce—ah, well). For her part, XDX went all in on the restaurant’s meat and fish agenda. She got the grilled acorn-fed black foot pig with potatoes and cider sauce, and the pan-seared Mediterranean sea bass with piperade and aioli. I happily pilfered several helpings of the sautéd onions, green peppers, and tomatoes that were stewing underneath the (both flaky and buttery, reports XDX) sea bass.

Succulent pan-seared bass with irresistible veggies, 9/26/24

Roasted squash with divine almond romescu, 9/26/24

The repeat plates of chewy baguette and rich olive oil (chivalrously slid our way on request) delivered the perfect taste-bud match with the sherry sauce and, triumphantly, with the nutty romesco paste.

Our utter kook of a waiter, whose disassociated service was strangely charming, offered us three different wine samples and then, per our ensuing picks—the manure-friendly cab and the light floral pinot—gave us lavish pours, mirroring his eccentric persona.

Dessert was lightly burnt cheesecake with wine poached cherries.

Postres, 9/26/24

There are plenty of other enticing items for veggies like me on Harvest Vine’s lengthy menu: the marinated olives, the sauteed green beans with onion confit and tomato frito, the fried padron peppers tossed in sea salt, and (yes) the octopus with chickpea puree. I will return for all of these.

With an entire section of the menu titled “Quesos,” non-vegans should hop on the G Line bus to check out this charmed bourgeoisie hang out as well.

———

For the record, my drop last week into 1920s Ghost Pop classic “Ten Cents A Dance” has not subsided. This week, I continued to savor the song’s remote and lovely piano chords.

Nor has has my yearlong obsession with tennis (both watching and playing) slowed down. On Tuesday night, I binged all three episodes of Gods of Tennis, PBS’ documentary about the first epoch (1968-1990) of professional tennis’ Open Era . This tennis triptych tracks the heroic tales of Billie Jean King and Arthur Ashe, tennis’ own civil rights trail blazers; relives the drama of defining men’s-circuit rivals, vogue Bjorn Borg and uncouth John McEnroe; and, through the lens of Czech Martina Navratilova’s touching expatriate and queer-coming-of-age story, highlights the women’s-circuit’s own two legendary rivals, Navratilova and her constant competition, Americana poster girl Chris Evert.

On Sunday, I played a set of tennis myself. I beat a guy from work 6-4 in a see-sawing contest that featured plenty of extended volleys. I was pleased when after the match, noting he didn’t hit enough winners, my potential new rival said: “You’re always in position.”

I don’t have a sense of my game, so this was excellent information to learn.