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We’reTexas

Certifiably Surly
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Everything posted by We’reTexas

  1. New Orleans had previously cancelled the Block Party and Irish Channel parades, as well as Super Sunday. That picture is NOPD breaking up the party at Tracy’s. Amazingly, NOLA has been extremely proactive about this.
  2. Yeah LPG for sure, the progress down to Ms Mae’s and Tip’s.
  3. I completely forgot that Dunbar’s reopened. How was it? It’s great see places like that finally come back. Gabrielle and Barrow’s too.
  4. Peche is one of the best restaurants in New Orleans and is consistently excellent like few other restaurants I’ve ever been to. As for things to do, get out of the FQ. Garden District mansions, Audubon Park, City Park, Bayou St. John - it’s a great city to walk and enjoy.
  5. Funny you mention that about Commanders and Brennan’s Houston - they are owned by the same wing of the family. I was down the weekend before MG and also hit up Clancy’s and LPG, both outstanding (and surprisingly not crowded). I saw that Dick and Jenny’s closed this week and was unsurprised - ate there Saturday and it was awful. Finally checked out Lil Dizzies. If you want fried chicken without the Willie Maes’ line, I recommend it.
  6. Oh yeah, Bacchanal is an essential NOLA spot. It’s our Sunday afternoon go to. Next Saturday is Krew de Vieux, so I highly recommend checking out the Carnival festivities if you are in the Bywater.
  7. Yes, it’s very good, in the space where Mariza used to be. But it’s not a statement “New Orleans” restaurant, if that’s what you’re looking for. It’s more new American, similar to Coquette and Sylvain.
  8. I think we’re in agreement. It’s just that the study itself compares all of NYC to San Francisco (and DC, for that matter). The data analyzed by the study may be helpful in a discussion on housing affordability, but it certainly alone doesn’t tell the whole story. It also has San Jose as one of the most affordable cities - have you seen the Wall Street Journal today?
  9. I think his point is, that’s not the point - it’s about housing costs, which factor in homeowners and renters with rent control. So I actually read the study, and it’s not concerned with housing costs so much as it is with making the point that in housing policy discussions we discount the impact of transportation costs in costs of living. The thesis of the article is basically, “Hey, New Yorkers currently face a burden of housing and transportation that compares quite favorably to other major cities, but if we don’t focus on containing transportation costs, then the cost of living in NYC will rise relative to other cities.” That’s a valid argument even if you disagree with the conclusion. My problem is the use of the word affordability. The broad range of housing costs of course factors into whether one considers their current living situation affordable. But I think most think of affordability as prospective, as defining my range of options for any given choice. In the case of housing, we think of housing prices. But housing costs aren’t necessarily market prices, and pulling the percentage of household income spent on housing doesn’t necessarily tell me about affordability - I’m not sure that without any other context, the number tells me anything at all. The study implies that DC, San Jose and San Francisco are some of the most affordable cities. That’s absurd. In the case of SF, I’d say that if people really are only spending 40% of their income on housing and transportation (and 30% for professional families), it’s just because they can, either because they are rent controlled from before the boom or that 400k job at Google allows them. A recent CA Association of Realtors study found that only something like 15% of the city could afford the $1.7M median home price. The $3,600 median rent would take over half of the median income. If that doesn’t work, you just don’t do it. But I don’t think anyone would call the current situation, regardless of what the study implies, “affordable.”
  10. Oh yeah, second the recommendation of Manolito. Ran into Hannah at a second line over the holidays, he is a cool dude.
  11. Clancy’s. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nola.com/entertainment_life/eat-drink/article_af17aa63-f235-5dc4-ba12-7cc35775952e.amp.html
  12. I don’t think it takes a lot of ingenuity to deter people from moving to Dallas.
  13. That sounds like a great trip. Thursday is local’s day and less crowded. It’s a food festival as much as a music one, so go for some Crawfish Monica and check out the Picayune’s (well, now the Advocate’s) guide to best eats of the year. It ends relatively early for a festival, but I still always leave around 5 for a breather - never really interested in headliners and the crowds (though the headliners this year do look good). A lot of big local acts will be in town and play in ad hoc jam bands with each other, so my play is to grab dinner and then hit up Tip’s, Howlin Wolf, Frenchmen etc. I’d probably hang out midweek to enjoy spring in NOLA between the crowds, maybe take a day trip to Manchac for fried catfish at Mittendorfs or check out Grand Isle (which actually made NYT’s top 100 places to visit this year).
  14. Highly recommend the Huntington. Big Four bar one of my favorites in town.
  15. Also, we finally went to Couvant, and were fairly disappointed. I had been really looking forward to it as it was fairly popular among the cool kids in the restaurant circuit when it opened last year, but the service was atrocious. I suppose my steak frites was good, but I was so hungry after waiting for an hour I didn’t notice. Just didn’t have the feel of an instant classic like Turkey and the Wolf or Shaya did. Bar Marilou, however, did. An absolute must for cocktails.
  16. Yes, since pumping $30 million into renovations and hiring Slade Rushing, Brennan’s has regained its role as one of the best in the city. Rushing’s take in trout amandine is one of my favorite dishes in the city. We finally got to Gabrielle last weekend. Greg and Mary Sonnier reopened it two years ago after it was shuttered by the storm. Highly recommended - it’s a throwback to an earlier generation of New Orleans cookings, like Brigsten’s but more casual. Has anyone been to Saint Germain? Eater named it restaurant of the year. We were unable to get in, but had drinks there. I’ve gotten spoiled in CA but they had an impressive natural wine selection.
  17. Patagonia nano. It’s a lighter synthetic down. I live in San Francisco and it’s pretty much perfect as year round jacket for high 50’s-low 60’s with wind and sun. For colder temps I’ll lay over a Better Sweater (you get a lot of Patagonia work swag in the Bay Area).
  18. 1:30 will get you seated eventually, though a little earlier would be better and you could hang out upstairs or next door. It isn’t really a second sitting so much as it is when the first wave begins to saunter down to Absinthe Bar. For the first sitting, locals often use line sitters. You can sometimes call and get a contact from the maitre d’.
  19. Hardly Strictly was last weekend. Fleet Week is this weekend, so the Marina area will be a shitshow. I mean, I’ll be there, but just a heads up.
  20. Pancho really hit it - Houston is a very comfortable place and it’s easy to get trapped with salaries that compete with coastal cities and a cost of living the significant beats them. That said, we took the plunge and relocated to SF a few years ago. As others have mentioned, natural geography is a game changer. And I’m not talking about “oh you’re just an hour from a beach with mud water and flesh eating bacteria” or “the Hill Country is just a few hours away!” - I can be on the Pacific in 15 minutes, the Marin Headlands hiking in 30 and the wine country in an hour. “A few hours” is Tahoe. Or Carmel. Or Mendocino. I can’t remember what we did in Houston besides golf and wait until it was an acceptable hour to find an air-conditioned bar. The Bay Area is, of course, staggeringly expensive. Outside of the cool parts of SF, Oakland and Berkeley, most of it is suburban, sprawling and scorching in the summers. And that goes for LA as well. When it comes time, NFW am I paying a million to live in some shitty burb like Concord or Dublin. We’re going back to Houston.
  21. It’s pretty awesome. Race begins at 8am and you need to get there earlier for a good starting spot (you want to get close to the gate to make sure you make it in with bulls), but there will be plenty of people hammered out from the night before. It’s basically bourbon street 24/7, at least on opening weekend. After that, spend the day pounding kalimotxo in the plaza and watching the bull fights.
  22. Beginning my first summer in SF after leaving Texas. While I miss wearing shorts and flip flops and the fog can be a bummer, I can’t remember what we used to do for four months of scorching heat. People here flip out when it approaches 80.
  23. I left Texas last year and will reiterate emphatically the Tex-Mex/BBQ line. Southern cooking in general - I spent a week in NOLA. Outdoors stuff, not so much. You are moving to a beautiful area of the country and are going to wonder how you spent so much of your life in sweltering prairie land.
  24. Second all of this - when we stay in the wine country we prefer healdsburg. Cartograph and Idlewild are great tasting rooms. Make a stop at the new Russian River beer hall on the way. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
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