[lordofthemark]

@sszibler 224783 wrote:

2/26/23 Silver Slippers

https://youtu.be/ekBuzkvB9sc

The building is the Treasury Department Annex near the White House

This is really fascinating. Maybe some of you know the story and interpretation. According to this YouTube video the “slippers” (I mean, they were shoes, right?) were only Ruby-colored in the film to show off the technology of Technicolor©️. The book is suspected to be about the politics of the day and the fight for a bi-metal economy. Kansas and farmers are in play and all the characters represent different parts of society at the time.

Too much poor driving nonsense tonight and horrible infrastructure for me! Almost fell hard again, on CONCRETE, due to an invisible fence I ran into. Managed to catch the post with my right hand and balance.

I didn’t manage to post it here on time, but those who follow me on Strava will note my picture of the HQ of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors.

My understanding (based on something a roommate in college said) is that A The tin man is industrial workers. B The scarecrow is farmers. C. The cowardly lion is William Jennings Bryant. D. The wicked witch of the east is the banks, and of the west is I think water interests (killed when water is provided?) E. silver slippers on the yellow brick road is a bimetallic currency. The emerald city is the false dream of paper money. Dorothy is good citizens looking for the truth. I forget who the wizard is. Or who the munchkins are

[lordofthemark]

Time it passes, it changes us, it comes back around.

Crystal City is named for Crystal House which was built in 1963. By Charles E Smith. The benefactor of Charles E Smith Jewish Day School, in Maryland. We briefly considered sending POTM to school there in 1996, when I worked in Maryland. She is now 30.

When I visited my brother who lived in DC in the late 70s, the terminus of the metro was in Crystal City. I wanted to go visit the end of the line, imagining buildings shimmering with crystals, like Emerald City. My brother laughed. Did not manage to get there.

In 1997 or so I went to CC for a business meeting. Eh.

Now CC is for me the home of coffee clubs and bike to work week. Many memories.

Went to the garage races once. Then they shut down. Now I hear they will be revived?

I now live in a building in Alexandria managed by JBGSmith, which still owns most of Crystal City.

Time. Time and place and memory.

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[lordofthemark]

A reminder: Be wary of wet wooden bridges. After a decade of no problems, LBJ grove bridge finally got me.

Bike is fine. Laptop is fine. I am okay, but my elbow has looked prettier.

[lordofthemark]

@dbb 222722 wrote:

Dominion indicates it wasn’t them but suggested the FMR dredging project might be responsible.

Any word on what killed the fox? Are the remains still there? They were yesterday.

[lordofthemark]

@Nadine 222699 wrote:

Great story. I LOVE old fashioneds! Do you know how to make the smoky kind? And if so will you teach me? [emoji2]

I love how your written stories babble a mile a minute just like your speech. My father used to say good writing should sound like the person is talking. I think you got that one down [emoji38][emoji1360]

Thank you Nadine. If I were asked to make a smoky Old Fashioned (and couldn’t google a recipe) I would substitute a peaty Scotch for the rye/bourbon that is normally used.

[lordofthemark]

So my pic (on Strava) is of the rum distillery at the Wharf. During prohibition rum was smuggled from the Caribbean to the USA by rum runners.

All of which is a hook for my story about myself (naturally) and the 100th anniversary of prohibition. And my new cocktail making hobby. Some of y’all have already heard this story.

So. Pre 2019 my main form of ethanol consumption was craft beer – fit pretty well with the biking community (I am NOT touching the “Is there too much drinking in the bike community” topic – if only there were a forum devoted to general biking questions, someone could start a thread on that)

Early summer 2019 I was at a small party given by a friend of a friend in Bethesda. Our hostess made Manhattans using cherry preserves and rye. Mine was very tasty. Later that summer we were at a party hosted by a pair of bike friends here in NoVa. They served Gin and Tonics using homemade tonic water. Also wonderful. I decided that crafty cocktails was a new interest. Not planning to make any at that point.

I got on the cocktails subreddit and decided to celebrate the 100th anniversary of prohibition by getting a drink at some special place. I considered the Willard, which has an historic bar, where the mint julep was invented, and a famous bartender. But mint juleps are for spring, and the anniversary was in January (of course). So I picked out one of these hip speakeasies downtown went there and ordered an Old Fashioned (because of course I need to do things in sequence, simple and classic first). I liked how finding the door resembled playing a video game.

On the subreddit they told me it was wrong to celebrate the START of prohibition you are supposed to celebrate the end. But the 100th anniversary of the end is not until 2033. But clearly I caused massive bad karma. Because two months later the pandemic hit.

Speaking of the pandemic, when it hit I happened to have a bottle of Wild Turkey 101 in the house (to know why involves a long discourse on Jewish customs naturally enough). I had not intended to use it for cocktails, but because of the lockdown I was not going to go to any more bars (I DID get mead delivered) and the venue to which the bourbon was to be donated had gone fully virtual. So I made my own Old Fashioned, and now I know SOMETHING about making cocktails.

[lordofthemark]

@AlanA 222688 wrote:

1/17/2023 – Prohibition

Luckily, prohibition ended so you could have drive through places like this to get cold beer at 11 am!

p.s. Bikeallintgonforum.com keeps telling me my upload has failed. I’ve been trying for 15 minutes. I’ll try later.

Obviously because uploading is PROHIBITED. Get it?

[lordofthemark]

1/16/2023 MLK day

I too went on Steve O’s excellent ride. After the memorial we went to find a mural as noted above, but instead found a parade. I did not even know there was an MLK day parade in DC. It was very festive. Worth it, though the search for wormholes around the parade was interesting.

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[lordofthemark]

@Serdar 222288 wrote:

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I wish I could see the photo

Invalid attachment is one of many silly things invented by Komorebi

[lordofthemark]

It is against the rules to take a picture of something taken from home. So the colorful Maryland Meadworks cap that I am wearing in this picture is NOT the subject. Instead the thingie that Nadine has on her head is the “hat”, which celebrates National Hat Day. I gave moral support by wearing a biking cap with the dramatic colors of “Calvert and Crossland” (IE the Maryland Flag) And also an image of a bee. And by drinking mead.

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[lordofthemark]

1/12/2023 The ’30s

The 1930s were dominated in the US (and in some other parts of the world) by the great Depression.

There are many standard ways of dealing with depression. Stimulative fiscal policy. Relaxed monetary policy. Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRIs) and other meds. Talk therapy (there are newer approaches, but I’m old fashioned, I’m into cognitive-behavioral therapy). Getting exercise and being outdoors (so, like, riding a bicycle) can help sometimes.

There are less helpful things people try. Isolating oneself. Raising tariff barriers.

Pictured here is a naturally occurring SSRI.

If anyone here finds that their gross domestic product is suddenly dropping and there is inadequate aggregate demand, let me know. #destigmatizingthebusinesscycle

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[lordofthemark]

From about 1975 to 1977 I was an active member of the Stuyvesant High School Rapid Transit Club – and now I get to attend the Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting

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[lordofthemark]

We moved to Alexandria in 1993. Our unit overlooked some woods, until the Stonegate town house development was built there around 1995 or so.

It has (IMO) a very 1990s kind of look – big townhouses, close together like a european city, but no sidewalks on the sidestreets and a mix of street facing and a few rear facing garages – like someone had read neotraditional, new urbanist architecture literature, but did not have the courage to go all the way with it.

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[lordofthemark]

@Steve O 221602 wrote:

Can we get a clarification on what a “winter” sport is? Is it any sport, just put the word “winter” in front?

• Winter hike
• Winter football
• Winter soccer
• Winter Ultimate
• Winter run
• Winter kickball
• Winter baseball
• Winter hang-gliding
• …

Definitely not baseball

The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone. You count on it, rely on it to buffer the passage of time, to keep the memory of sunshine and high skies alive, and then just when the days are all twilight, when you need it most, it stops. ~A. Bartlett Giamatti,

[lordofthemark]

This is Potomac Yard. It was a railroad yard owned by the RF&P – the Richmond, Fredericksburg and Potomac – which was 2/3 owned by CSX. The CEO of CSX in the 1980s when I worked there was John Snow. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_W._Snow No relation that I know of either to the English physician, or to the Commander of the Night Watch [ATTACH=CONFIG]29345[/ATTACH]

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