CBD sodas; a pesto veggie sandwich; waiting for Brooke Shields to show up.
I’m All Lost In …
the 3 things I’m obsessing over THIS week.
#61
I’ll get to this week’s list momentarily, but first, here are a few quick updates on some recent obsessions I’ve written about before:
For starters: Psyched with how Alterations Plus Dry Cleaning transformed my slacks into crisp and plush sartorial options last week, I brought in another pair to be pressed. And once again, voila!
Second, in a city where most coffee shops close by 6 pm, Basecamp Cafe (at Harvard Ave. E and E Thomas on Capitol Hill) is serious about being an evening neighborhood hang out; they had a live piano, bass, and drums jazz trio in the house until 9 pm on Sunday night.
Third, the WTA announced their year-end awards this week, and my recent picks (as opposed to tennis expert Ben Rothenberg’s) swept the voting: “Player of the Year,” Daffy Saby; “Doubles Team of the Year,” Sara Errani & Jasmine Paolini; “Most Improved Player,” Emma Navarro (who, for the record, I don’t like, but I did pick); “Newcomer of the Year,” Lulu Sun; and “Comeback Player of the Year,” Paula Badosa.
Lastly, here’s the Disappointment of the Week: For the second time in a month, I find myself on the losing side of the popular vote. Interviewing the vox populi, the Washington Post reported results of a new poll showing 57% of Americans (versus 42% of Americans) prefer car-dependent, suburban sprawl over sustainable green metropolis living.
I’m proud to be part of the Petula Clark 42%, but, Sigh.
P.s. For my Millennial and Gen Z friends, Petula Clark is this:
Just listen to the music of the traffic in the city/Linger on the sidewalk where the neon signs are pretty/How can you lose?/The light's so much brighter there/You can forget all your troubles, forget all your cares/So go downtown/Things will be great when you're downtown.
Petula Clark’s urbanist showstopper: “Maybe you know some little places to go to/where they never close/Downtown.” —1964
Onto this week’s list.
1) CBD Sodas
Like THC, CBD comes from cannabis plants; it stands for Cannabidiol. Unlike THC (Tetrahydrocannabinol), which is the main psychoactive ingredient in pot, the science says CBD doesn’t make you loopy. There is some evidence, though, that it helps you relax, and it may work as an anti-inflammatory.
Well then, perhaps being anti-inflamed made me loopy. Because the Rogue Blackberry Cucumber 30 mg CBD Seltzer Water I had at the Lookout Bar & Grill on Saturday afternoon filled me with giggles.
Saturday afternoon, 12/7/24
Wednesday evening, 12/11/24
I had such a good time with my CBD-dosed blackberry cucumber soda, I attempted to replicate Saturday’s bliss mid-week. I tried another CBD drink on Wednesday night: a “Higher Potency” Wyld Blood Orange Real Fruit Infused Sparkling Water.
This seems like a road to ruin—I chose this one in part because it was a higher dosage. 50 mg. (Wyld is a cannabis edibles company.)
No giggles this time. But I did find myself taking an aimless, three-mile stroll through the neighborhood afterwards.
Both drinks are more acidic and spumy than, say, a La Croix seltzer; also they’re fruitier, though not too sweet. For an unscientific time, I highly recommend these abstract sodas.
2) Post Pike Bar & Cafe’s Vegan Pesto Sandwich
I can’t tell you the endless number of well-intentioned places in town that have debuted with a (doomed) vegan option on the menu; I stand by with the knowing heart of a dad watching his Kindergartner bound off to the bus aware that these days are numbered.
Thankfully, this is not the story at Post Pike Bar & Cafe, which opened four years ago and…
Still available alongside the Deluxe Ranch BLT, the smears and bagels, the tuna melt, the hot roast beef, buffalo chicken, prosciutto caprese, or breakfast sandwiches, Post Pike’s crowded, labor-of-love, comfort-food menu features several vegan go-to options.
There’s the hummus breakfast sandwich and the hummus wrap. But my pick is the Vegan Pesto Sandwich with its perfect piled-on medley of good-and-good-for-you veggies: cucumber, red onion, roasted red pepper, and avocado. It comes on toasted yet fluffy sourdough bread slathered in the magic pesto. And though the sandwich is on the smaller side (for $14), it’s always hardy and filling.
After a heads-down, busy day at work on Tuesday, where I had to draft answers to a series of questions from the citizen oversight committee, I was famished. So, I stopped in to Post-Pike and ordered this now-classic local sandwich. I savored every bite, and then I was on my sleepy way home, hunger pangs vanquished by the swirl of basil, garlic, and pine nuts still lingering in my head.
3) Open: An Autobiography by Andre Agassi
The first 100 pages are excellent; but the jury is still out on the rest…
“That’s the kid I was telling you about—the prodigy. It’s the prettiest word I’ve ever heard applied to me,” Andre Agassi remembers thinking as the hushed talk around the amateur circuit turned into a reverent buzz .
A short time later, after making the finals of a satellite masters tournament, he turned pro at 16, simply because, broke and living out of motels with his older brother, he wanted to take the $1,100 dollar check (amateurs aren’t allowed to take the money prizes). It was, of course, also a way to escape the “prison” that was his father’s homemade tennis camp and his official tennis boot camp boarding school. A bit nervous before taking the money (“If I take that check, I’m a professional tennis player, forever, there’s no turning back..”), he calls his dad for advice. His dad had forced little Andre into tennis (when he was still in the crib his dad “hung mobile tennis balls above my head and encouraged me to slap at them with a ping-pong paddle he’d taped to my hand”). Now, dad berates him on the phone: “You’ve dropped out of school. You have an eighth-grade education. What are your choices? What the hell else are you going to do? Be a doctor?”
Packed with harsh moments like this, the opening 100 pages of Agassi’s writerly and apparently atypical sports bio (published in 2009, it was ghost written by top-shelf-writer-for-hire J.R. Moehringer) chronicles Agassi’s tortured childhood and chaotic high school years with thoughtful strokes:
“It was my life, and though I hadn’t chosen it, my sole consolation was its certainty. At least fate has a structure.”
Open initially does seem more of a coming-of-age novel than non-fiction. It’s anecdote after anecdote. There’s Agassi’s tyrannical father, who made him hit 2,500 tennis balls a day when he was just seven, punching Agassi in the face when the boy mistakenly pounces on his father at the door thinking it’s his playful uncle coming home from work. Or there’s his (once again) tyrannical father … (his dad, an ex-Olympic boxer from Iran, now works as concierge at a Vegas casino) buying a run down house outside of town oblivious to anything but his obsessive tennis plans for young Agassi:
It would have been funny if it hadn’t been scary. At house after house, even before the [real estate] agent’s car came to a full stop my father would jump out and march up the front walk. The agent, close on my father’s heels, would be yakking about local schools, crime rates, interest rates, but my father wouldn’t be listening. Staring straight ahead, my father would storm through the house, through the living room, through the kitchen, into the backyard, where he’d whip out his tape measure and count off thirty-six feet, the dimensions of a tennis court. Time after time he’d yell, Doesn’t fit! Come on! Let’s go! My father would then march back through the kitchen, through the living room, down the front walk, the real estate agent struggling to keep pace.
We saw one house my older sister Tami desperately wanted. She begged my father to buy it, because it was shaped like a T, T for Tami. My father almost bought it, probably because T also stood for Tennis. I liked the house. So did my mother. The backyard, however, was inches too short.
Doesn’t fit! Let’s go!
Finally we saw this house, it’s backyard so big that my father didn’t need to measure. He just stood in the middle of the yard, turning slowly, gazing, grinning, seeing the future.
Sold, he said quietly.
Unfortunately, it’s nothing but faults and unforced errors for the subsequent 50 pages. And that’s where I’m now stalled, wondering if I should continue reading this book. In a dramatic shift, the writing has become inexplicably macho and cheesy as Agassi finds a surrogate father in his gruff new trainer, Gil (who “grew up fast on the hard streets.”)
The Hallmark Channel cheese continues: “Enough said. I’ll never ask again. Merry Christmas, son,” chapter 10 concludes after Gil presses 19-year-old Agassi on why he’s chosen to spend the holiday’s with Gil’s family—where there’s only a couch to sleep on—instead of with his own family and friends.
The book started so artfully that I’m hoping this current ham-fisted section is intentional? Maybe it’s setting us up for some actual revelations? Otherwise, I’m quickly growing to dislike Agassi’s he-man bravado about his Corvette and his banal epiphanies. (He reports on Gil’s guru wisdom: “You’re asking me to put you through a workout here that leaves no room for where you are, how you’re feeling, what you need to focus on. It doesn’t allow for change.” [Italics his].
I didn’t know much about Agassi (I’m a recent convert to tennis fandom). But I do know that at some point, he marries fascinating Gen X icon Brooke Shields. So, I’m trying to push through until he meets her to see if this book becomes special again.
***
I leave you with two contenders for The Quote of the Week.
First—and this is to be spoken with a British accent—because it comes to us from the very British Catherine Whitaker, the host of The Tennis Podcast.
I like all the animals, apart from the snakes.
The second potential quote of the week comes to us sarcastically in a text from my friend XDX, a legit student of Vipassana, as opposed to, say, a post-Steve Jobs Silicon Valley executive tripping on ayahuasca.
Gonna go meditate now. Maybe I’ll be a CEO.