The picture that started it all (Chad Robertson)
(More)
Still a masterful essay from Joseph Mitchell.
https://medium.com/@Beefsteak/all-you-can-hold-for-five-bucks-dc945bba60d
There are a few theories as to why a baker’s dozen became 13, but the most widely accepted one has to do with avoiding a beating. In medieval England there were laws that related the price of bread to the price of the wheat used to make it. Bakers who were found to be “cheating” their customers by overpricing undersized loaves were subject to strict punishment, including fines or flogging. - Brittanica.com
Schmear (n.) - also schmeer, 1961, "bribery," from Yiddish shmir "spread," from shmirn "to grease, smear," from Middle High German smiren, from Old High German smirwen "to smear" (see smear (v.); compare slang grease (someone's) palm "to bribe"). - Etymologyonline.com
In Brooklynese, the "schmear" is both cream cheese and a bribe. As you place the money in the hand, the two hands slide schmearing as on a bagel.
With Beyu and Copa closing recently, the wake-up call that remote work has hit the businesses serving non-residential city centers has become more real. Jack Tar closed last year. Pompieri closed as well. While new businesses will likely grow into these spaces, one has to wonder whether we will see more closings in 2024.
With four new breweries either opening or recently opened (I count DSSOLVR, Flying Bull, Atomic Clock, and Proximity, am I missing one?), one might think that the booze market here in Durham is getting oversaturated.
I distinctly remember Fullsteam opening in 2010 and its packed taproom was the default event venue for baby showers and birthdays, complete with links from the Farmhand Foods (now Firsthand Foods) truck.
Soon thereafter (2015), Ponysaurus took the reins as the go-to brewery location for local hangs. With the crowds now in abeyance from both those locations (are we just going out less?), I ask have we passed Peak Beer, or is this just a build-out for a more populous future in the Downtown district? Or are these breweries the pet projects of well-funded amateurs investing in a declining business model?
The recent spate of violence in Durham is nothing like what is happening now in Portland, but for anyone who works Downtown, the increased violence and schizophrenia of the panhandling and unhoused community is well known. In a terrible quote from the Times article above,
He estimated that based on the body’s temperature, this victim had been dead for more than an hour, which meant dozens of commuters had walked by his body during rush hour before one stopped to check his breathing and call 911.
Monday, a Duke grad student was murdered, and the man held in custody is someone known to the bar and restaurant industry of Durham as a regular.
Last night at 11pm, my own neighbor in Northgate Park was shot at in his car as he pulled in. In the morning, I found the car window punctured with a bullet hole, and four spent casings littered the curb next to my eucalyptus tree. Thirty people have been shot and killed this year in Durham, and 115 non-fatally. Growing up, the only pops I heard where from a tennis court nearby my home. Now I have to tell my son not to be scared when he hears gunshots.
Implicit in the Times article is that we are all complicit in the stepping around of a dead body laying out in the street. Two months ago, arriving at work, a Durham ambassador told me as I stepped out of my car, "You got a body in your bathroom". There was a man sprawled out on the bakery customer bathroom floor, a dirty knee twisted as if to draw a perfect chalk outline. He could have been sleeping, so I spoke to him. No reply. Not even a flickering of the eyelids. His skin color was between olive and gray. I yelled louder. No response. Should I check to see if he's breathing? Five minutes later, I put 911 on speakerphone. After a couple minutes, the sound of the dispatcher must have roused him. He got up and scampered away, leaving his phone charging in the wall outlet.
We depend on our City officials to provide safety and security for the residents. We depend on first responders to handle crisis situations. We depend upon the health care system to tend to mental illness and addiction. We depend on the legal and penal system to provide pathways to rehabilitation for offenders. Right now, none of these systems are working, either independently or together. It's enough to give you a panic attack.
That is exactly what happened to me. In the second year of Covid (2022), I began getting panic attacks from the overwhelm of everything that was going wrong. I eventually began seeing a holistic chiropractor/therapist and went down the path of becoming a trained breathwork guide and ice therapy coach. It's helped. And I've been able to train others. For every systemic malfunction, there are people like Michael Bock who are like Jedi, like angels literally trying to "hold back the ocean". The ocean is coming, and the question remains what we're going to do about it.
Anywhere are you go in Durham you can hear the pop of a nail gun hitting timber for a new four-on-one development.
I got to know Isaac Henrion his second week distributing bagels at the Burch Ave community garden. I introduced myself, him in his trademark leather jacket, bandana, and occasionally incomprehensible UK accent. Thinking I was out to compete with him, he was suspicious of my interest in his business, and his bagels. What he later learned was that it was actually an obsessive interest in bagels and baking that made the connection.
Tacos: Tacqueria Allende NL, Green Flea Market, Durham
I don’t know why it should be a crack thing to be a brewer; but it is indisputable that while you cannot possibly be genteel and bake, you may be as genteel as never was and brew. You see it every day.
- Great Expectations, Charles Dickens