Tag: beer

Photo by Doug Kerr, used under Creative Commons license

“Not since Hall and Oates has there been such a team.”

Dan Dickinson1 Comment

I thought about doing a whole long sappy blog post about how thankful I am for this and that, but figured the whole fact that I can write a blog post while the place smells like turkey pretty much denotes how good my life is. So I’ll just point out the highlights of our weekend so far:

First of all, it’s always a good weekend when your colleague starts it off with a gift of some 1er Cru burgundy:

We took it easy Friday night, sneaking a spot at Richmond Station’s bar for some excellent food. Nellie had oysters and flank steak; I had beet salad and crispy duck. A bottle of Norm Hardie Cab Franc went perfectly with it all. We then just watched The Sessions (imdb | rotten tomatoes) at home, which was excellent. Lots of ex-Deadwood representation too.

Saturday morning we got up early and gathered all we needed from St. Lawrence Market for Thanksgiving dinner, traded in some old speakers for a pair of outdoor Sonance speakers that look like fake rocks, picked up some interesting beer, then walked to Volo where we enjoyed some pumpkin beer and ploughman’s lunch and quite possibly the last hot, sunny patio day of the year.

After that we picked up our Thanksgiving turkey (who we named Carl, in honor of The Walking Dead re-starting tonight) at Cumbrae’s, then watched The Place Beyond The Pines (imdb | rotten tomatoes) which I’m still having a bit of trouble sorting out and a hockey game (mostly me).

Sunday was a day-long exercise in relaxing and cooking, then eating, Carl.

We also slammed through half the first season of Orange Is The New Black, which is pretty good. We’ll likely finish it today, along with the rest of Carl.

It was a perfect, relaxing weekend — just what I needed with the week I have coming up.

.:.

Photo by Doug Kerr, used under Creative Commons license

Photo by Doug Wheller, used under Creative Commons license

What exactly is a nel-drip anyway?

Dan Dickinson1 Comment

Earlier this week I was in San Francisco to speak at a conference. I don’t write about work on this blog, but I certainly write about what I eat and drink, especially while traveling, so here are the highlights:

After the first day’s meetings the conference organizer hosted a few of us at the Press Club, a bar / event space which was happily quite close to my hotel.  Their wine list is enormous (and the full draft list is very interesting) but there was a limited set of each on offer. Still, the 2010 Donatiello Chardonnay (Russian River Valley) was good, the 2009 Bethel Heights Pinot Noir (Willamette Valley) was very good, and the 2011 Textbook Cabernet Sauvignon (Napa Valley) was okay. Cool space too.

A few times I found myself needing decent coffee, so I visited the Blue Bottle at Mint Plaza. I wasn’t blown away with the coffee itself — just not a fan of that particular bean’s flavour profile, I think. It’s clear they take their coffee pretty seriously though; it looked like a chemistry lab in there. But it was a nice little cafe at which to sit and sip a cappuccino. Oh, and the olive oil shortbread was delicious.

Finally, after the main day’s conference, the organizers again generously took a few of the speakers out for dinner at Trace. I had an excellent pumpkin soup with bacon relish (!) and some slow-roasted berkshire pork loin. I had no hand in the wine selection, but the Fumé Blanc and Pinot Noir our hosts selected worked perfectly. I had no room for dessert, regrettably.

With less than 48 hours between my flights, the vast majority of which was spent in conference rooms, it wasn’t a very adventurous San Fran visit. Tasty, though.

.:.

Photo by Doug Wheller, used under Creative Commons license

Wedding vows and trench foot

Dan Dickinson2 Comments

There are weekends. There are weekends. And then there’s the wedding celebration we were part of these past few days, for which a pedestrian term like “weekend” is insufficient.

[UPDATE: Kaylea has now posted Jess’ amazing photos in a Facebook album]

FRIDAY

As much as Nellie and I wanted to head up to meet our friends at the cottage on Thursday night we both had to put in full days at the office on Friday. After work we picked up the car (a Hyundai Genesis sedan, somewhat larger than what we usually get, but that would come in handy), then picked up a bunch of meat at the behest of the resident chef, A. We also picked up B, the chef’s girlfriend, who would be our companion for the drive there and back, and an utterly charming one at that.

Leaving the city was a pain in the ass, but the DVP wasn’t nearly as bad as it could be. Were in good shape until we decided to deviate slightly from our normal route, and ended up driving haltingly across Highway 7 in what we quickly realized was a colossal mistake. Then our planned escape route north was temporarily closed, and our attempted end run around the detour went disastrously wrong as we fumbled about the various cul de sacs of Markham and went airborne over the speed bumps therein, which the four live lobsters in the car must surely have enjoyed. We eventually gave up and got back on Highway 7, then herked and jerked behind some slow-ass drivers for far too long, finally reaching the familiar highways which we knew curved north and east toward our friends.

We finally made it to the cottage just after 10pm, by which time the other guests — who were waiting for the food we carried — were ravenous. Chef A tossed the lobsters in the refrigerator’s crisper and began prepping hamburgers. Matt handed me a special cask-aged beer to help erase the memory of the drive, and we slowly melted into cottage life. This particular cottage, though, was humming: it would house more than a dozen people over the weekend. But within a few minutes we were riding its vibe, and lowering the bundle of  work, the city, the traffic, and the misbegotten routes from off our shoulders. We ate, drank, talked, and laughed until morning, then crashed. The organizer had graciously given Nellie and I a room; many slept on couches in the living room, or on futons in the sun room, or just on the kitchen floor.

SATURDAY

After being scared half to death by the afore-mentioned kitchen-floor-sleeper (who abruptly sat up after I’d been unwittingly standing next to her for an hour) I helped eat three pounds of bacon. So my heart was getting a workout.

There were bagels too, I guess, but that right there was the main attraction.

Sufficiently greased, I went with the groom and a friend to run some errands — fetching water, carrying kegs, sampling beer, organizing tables — at the venue, a maple syrup house (my people!) which also hosts events and giant barbecues (again…my people!), then came back to the cottage long enough to run a few more errands, slam some advil and take a nap in an attempt to ditch an oncoming migraine, and get dressed for the wedding.

The short bus ferried us to the venue just in time for the rain to begin. Not real rain, mind you, just the heavy-ass mist that gets you wet but for which you’d feel silly unfurling an umbrella. So, Halifax in the fall, basically. The ceremony was short and pretty, and we could bring our drinks — which seemed a little unusual but was actually brilliant because we could immediately toast them — and then our good, good friends were married. We ate cheese and drank cider and walked the grounds and poured beer while they had pictures taken. Meanwhile, for some reason Nellie and the maid of honor wanted to beat someone up, but I was never sure who and anyway they never quite got around to it.

Dinner was prepared on-site in a series of grills and smokers which looked like a Red Army outpost. I had pulled pork (twice) and brisket (twice) and salmon and too many sides. I ate too much, is what I’m saying, and I was hardly the sole member of that club.

After a few speeches (in which Nellie’s Lannister-ness and my Stark-ness were called out) and butter tarts for dessert, the dancing started. Music was supplied by Jeff Young and the Muskoka Roads Band, who were fantastic. Just…rock and roll. All the way through. They set a lot of people to dancing, especially Kaylea and her bridesmaids and, most importantly, her Dad. Who is a goddamned farmer force of nature, by the way, and with whom I feel I bonded, though I suspect anyone who talks to Ray for more than five minutes feels the same.

As the night continued we met more and more of our friends’ friends — keep in mind, Nellie and I were the only ones there, as best we can tell, who weren’t family, university friends, camp friends, or co-workers…we were former patrons who somehow lucked into this fraternity — whilst drinking Beau’s Nightmarzen and Muskoka Cream Ale and maple Old Fashioneds and other cocktails that Wes cooked up when he ran low on raw materials. Eventually the short bus came back for us, and we all piled back to the cottage. The rest of the night gets fuzzy from there, though I do remember drinking lots of wine with Kaylea’s friend who works for Lifford, and then singing in the boathouse until 5am with the afore-mentioned Jeff Young and another member of his band. Which was, uh, pretty goddamn cool.

SUNDAY

The next morning chef A (and erstwhile sous chef B) saw to the lobsters’ untimely demise, and prepared poached eggs, more bagels, and a hash of the lobster, corned beef, potato, and other deliciousness.

Since the kegs had followed us back from the wedding venue, and we had nothing to do that day — it was too cold even to go swimming — we commenced our assault on their contents and set about doing fuck-all for the morning.

Swimming or no, that wasn’t bad to look at. Kaylea and I took a quick paddle off the dock before I joined the rest of the crew on the lawn, where we did…nothing. Well, that’s not true: we ate some terrific Reuben sandwiches and Nellie had a full-on nap on the grass.

Anyway, this precision exercise in doing nothing continued throughout the afternoon. Ultimately the chef and sous began their next shift, and started prepping steaks. Three wonderful, magical steaks.

Now, without scale I can see how you might mistake — as one of my Facebook friends did — these steaks for lamb chops, with a paring knife sitting on them. No. That is a very large chef’s knife, and those are the tomahawk steaks that the gods themselves eat when they’re on Atkins. We ate these magnificent bastards along with some delicious corn and potato salad, and laughed ourselves stupid (somehow trench foot came up and I thought it was the funniest thing of all time, but for the life of me I can’t remember the context) and drank terrific Canadian wine (Norm Hardie County Pinot Noir, Tawse Cab Franc, Mission Hill Cab Sauv) and ended up waving around the bones like stolen trophies.

After dinner we drank more draft on the deck, then sat around a camp fire smoking cigars and laughing even more. Kaylea found a shroud in which to wrap herself. B pilfered some firewood. Nellie and Jeff tapped the Muskoka keg. If Saturday had been the monumental dawn of a new day, this Sunday was the comfortable, perfect sunset.

MONDAY

Comfortable, that is, until the next morning, which felt like a laser in my eye and a drill in my skull. Chef A cooked breakfast, a mishmash of everything left over from the previous few days. I ate what I could, mostly shoving whole slices of corned beef into my mouth like they were Pringles, since I had to drive home. Nellie, not wanting to be hung over for the drive home, just stayed drunk. Strategic! We gathered our shit and did our hugs goodbye and piled into the car with A + B, and began the drive south. Nellie was in charge of the music, a mistake which became apparent when she played “It’s Tricky” by Run-D.M.C. at a volume not suitable for the sober occupants of the car. We made a very necessary stop at a McDonald’s outside Beaverton, undoubtedly the best McDonald’s ever but which produced a spill situation which caused Nellie to exclaim “Is that blood or ketchup?! IS THAT BLOOD OR KETCHUP?!!?”, and then rocketed home just under the car-return wire. Sadly, there was no rest for the wicked-wedding guests…we walked home, showered, and went right out the door to our first TIFF screening. More on that in a later post.

AND SO

Look, it took us a few days to recover from this. And judging by our friends’ Facebook statuses we weren’t alone. It was without a doubt an epic weekend. What I didn’t mention here was all the cool people we met, or got to know better. Or the family we got to meet. Or the momentous happiness you could feel coming off the whole affair. It was far from the most exotic or impressive locale we’ve visited, but jesus hell was it one of the most memorable, if just for the sheer love and enjoyment running like a current through those four days.

All weddings are eventually labelled as celebrations, but not many live up to the word. This one? This one embodied it. Congratulations, Matt & Kaylea. Thanks for letting us be part of this.

For the monks

Dan Dickinson1 Comment

Clearly last weekend’s Garrison tour and last month’s Session Toronto festival didn’t provide us enough opportunities to try interesting beer, so — after an Ontario-craft-brew evening at the Rebel House with MLK — we walked over to the Steam Whistle Craft Beer Fest in Roundhouse Park. It promised to be a more laid-back festival, and the weather seemed far more tolerable than the sauna that was Session. The crowds weren’t big at all when we arrived, probably because the entry lines were very slow.

Once we got inside we could tell this was indeed a more laid-back festival.  There was room to move, there was shade (not enough, though, as it turned out), and plenty of people were sitting or lying on the grass. Some people even had their kids with them, and the kids seemed cool with it all.

We knew all fifteen breweries, and were familiar enough with most of their offerings that we skipped half. Here’s what I drank:

  • Grand River “Tabbey Abbey” ale
  • Great Lakes “Chill Winston” Grisette
  • Nickel Brook Berliner Weisse
  • Wellington “County Dark” Ale
  • Lake of Bays “River Walker” summer ale
  • Hogsback “Alohog” coconut pale ale
  • Leftfield “Maris*” pale ale
  • King Kellerbier

The Chill Winston and Alohog were fantastic light summer drinks, but the Maris* might have been my favourite on the day. I badly confused the Great Lakes employee when I insisted on ordering the “Chill Winston” in the same accent as Willie from Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels.

I also put down a killer pulled pork sandwich from one of the six food trucks in attendance, Hogtown Smoke. Nellie had pulled pork tacos from the DIrty South truck. We eventually had to escape the park when we realized that we’d been sunburned into oblivion — the cool lake breeze had lured us into a trap, it seemed. Not quite done tasting, though, we decided to walk up to Bar Hop for a few samples. I had:

  • Oast House Heritage Wheat
  • a Indie Alehouse / Kensington / Bar Hop collaboration Patersbier called “Who’s Your Daddy?”…and no, I didn’t know what a Patersbier was either until I read this
  • Shacklands Pale Ale
  • Dieu Du Ciel! Aphrodesiac

All in all it was a pretty beer-happy 24 hours…so much so that Untappd, not knowing I was drinking samples, awarded me the “Take It Easy!” badge. Success!

Photo by Adam Fagen, used under Creative Commons license

I couldn’t decide whether to call this post “the risin’ of Weizen” or “the Porter new order”

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A few weeks ago I was chatting with a former colleague, an ex-Torontonian who now lives in England. He knows I’m a beer fan, and mentioned that a few night before, at some bar not necessarily known for the their beer selection, he’d been able to try a Le Trou Du Diable Shawinigan Handshake. Over his week-long visit he’d noticed a much more extensive penetration of craft beer around Toronto than when he’d left four or five years ago.

I’d slowly started to recognize the same thing of late, but hearing my friend’s observations just cemented it. Places like Smokeless Joe, C’est What, and Rebel House had been carrying the torch for craft beer, especially Ontario craft beer for ages, but I’d noticed a shift in the clientele of such serious beer places, especially Volo. It wasn’t the same faces, the same beer geeks, every time. We’d see people trying new beers, searching out new releases, willing to be educated. Beerbistro was probably at the front of that tide, with places like Bar Hop, Wvrst, Bellwoods, and Indie Alehouse forming the second wave.

The size and makeup of the crowd at this year’s Session Toronto was a huge indication of how craft is quickly becoming the expectation. Another is the fact that Spotlight Toronto has run a ’30 days of Ontario beer’ feature the last few years, and Mike DiCaro’s series wrap-up post does a far better job of exploring and summarizing this shift  than I’ve managed here:

“Sure there was the rare brewery making weissbier and seasonals like an imperial stout, but the vast majority of what you encountered were pale ales with an amber ale or IPA being exotic. Even though it was only ten years earlier that time feels like eons ago. It has evolved into a completely new environment for craft beer lovers today. The bold, flavourful and hop-forward American-style IPA has become de rigueur and you can find a local craft example of just about every style imaginable […] .”

My favourite example of the shift might be Triple A, for all intents and purposes our new local. Make no mistake, it was the food that drew us here, and the food that’s kept us coming back. The beer selection for the first few months was basic; the most adventurous beer on tap was Mill Street Tankhouse. For the past several months, though, while the menu still contains the PBRs you’d expect in such a lo-fi place, they also carry Kensington FishEYE-PA, Flying Monkeys Stereo Vision, and Amsterdam Big Wheel — none of them exemplary beers, but a definite step-up from their original mass offerings, and a nod to the demand out there for decent, interesting, local beer.

I, for one, welcome our delicious new overlords.

.:.

Photo by Adam Fagen, used under Creative Commons license

Image by Jen Riehle for Smashing Magazine

Happy Pride & Canada Day Weekend!

Dan Dickinson1 Comment

A  wise man once said, “The best weekends are spent with good friends and family, but are measured in good wine and beer.” Actually, no one’s ever said that. No one famous anyhow, just me. Like, just now. That wise man was me. So yeah, we drank a lot this weekend, is what I’m saying. But we drank well, and with a  narrative in mind.

On Friday we escaped work a little early and prepared dinner for our friends Kaylea & Matt. That it was #cdnwine day on Twitter (apparently?) was just a bonus. We grilled steaks from Cumbrae’s and drank lots of Canadian wine (with a few others thrown in for international flavour) and beer (courtesy of K&M) and welcomed three of their friends and actually made use of our balcony for pretty much the first time this year. It’s possible that we ate too much and drank too much and didn’t get enough sleep, but it was worth it.  Here’s what went down (our gullets):

Wine

  • 13th Street 2011 Pinot Gris
  • Malivoire 2007 ‘Moira’ Pinot Noir
  • Nyarai 2011 Viognier
  • Pearl Morissette 2010 ‘Black Ball’ Riesling
  • Shypoke 2008 Cabernet Sauvignon
  • Versado 2010 Malbec
  • Featherstone 2011 Cabernet Franc (thanks Steph!)

Beer

  • Beer Academy Hopaweizen
  • Beau’s Festivale Plus Sticke Alt
  • Goose Island Sofie
  • Parallel 49 Gypsy Tears Ruby Ale

The next morning was basically an exercise in how fast we could get a peameal bacon sandwich and giant-ass Fahrenheit coffee into each of us, before sending Matt & Kaylea on their way. Then Nellie and I plopped ourselves on the couch, inexplicably watched the wretched Movie 43 (imdb | rotten tomatoes), and eventually Uber’d up to our friend MLK’s, where CBGBLB were visiting. We enjoyed their backyard while GB made some amazing barbecued ribs. We took along a few more treats for dinner too:

  • Pearl Morissette 2010 ‘Black Ball’ Riesling
  • 13th Street 2011 ‘Arome’ Essence White
  • Tawse 2009 ‘Laidlaw’ Pinot Noir
  • Tawse 2010 Wine Club Syrah

It wasn’t a late night, obviously, given the yesterevening’s festivities. We took a quick stroll through the Pride-related mayhem on Church Street on our way home, and were reminded that it’s totally legit for ladies to go topless in Toronto. Bless.

Sunday, much like Saturday evening, was sunnier and warmer than expected, so we found our way to a patio. The Bier Markt patio, to be exact, wherein I drank two ice cold Erdinger weissbeers and earned myself a sunburn. North of us, the Pride Parade snaked its’ way around central Toronto. We could see the tail from our balcony as it formed, even that far north. In honour of the day, we drank a bottle of Daniel Lenko 2008 ‘Chardonngay’ Chardonnay with dinner.

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And then what better way to spend Monday — Canada Day — than watching the White House get trashed, a la how the British/Canadian troops did it in 1814, in the risible Die Hard rip-off White House Down (imdb | rotten tomatoes)? Well, I guess we did come up with a better way: Nellie made a meal of shrimp and scallops and corn paired with a Southbrook 2004 ‘Poetica’ Chardonnay (the label for which featured a poem by Martin Tielli, one of my favourite Canadian musicians) and lamb paired with a Stratus 2007 Cabernet Sauvignon. Canadian food, Canadian wine, Canadian talent. Delicious patriotism!

.:.

Image by Jen Riehle for Smashing Magazine

Session 101

Dan Dickinson4 Comments

Okay, it wasn’t actually called that, but I’ve been thinking of it as the third annual Session 99 beer festival…hence 101. Officially, though, it’s just called Session Toronto now.

Since the festival had moved from 99 Sudbury up to Wychwood Barns, taking Uber there and back — especially on such a stinking hot day — was a worthwhile splurge. And when I say stinking hot, I mean hot enough that pretty much everyone was sweaty and various degrees of stinky. I was stupid enough to wear jeans, and spent the whole afternoon yelling, Nick Miller-like, at the sun. Going inside didn’t help as the humidity in there was worse…especially when it came time to make my one and only bathroom stop. It must have been over 50° in there with the humidity, and by 7pm the situation had become something less than sanitary. I vowed never to go back in, no matter how dire the bladder situation became.

Right, with all that out of the way, let’s get to the beer…so much of which was outstanding this year.

  1. Oast House ‘Hef’ hefeweizen
  2. Sawdust City ‘Red Rocket’ coffee stout
  3. Left Field ‘6-4-3’ double IPA
  4. Great Lakes ‘Thyme Lord’ saison
  5. Beau’s ‘The Tom Green Beer’ milk stout
  6. Spearhead ‘Jamaican Fire’ ale
  7. Wellington SPA
  8. Lake Of Bays ‘River Walker’ summer ale
  9. Highlander Brew Co. ‘Lion Grass’ summer ale
  10. Muskoka ‘Dragon slayer’ tripel
  11. Indie Alehouse ‘High Maintenance’ Belgian strong ale
  12. Central City ‘Red Racer’ IPA
  13. Flying Monkeys ‘Machete’ oatmeal stout
  14. Muskoka ‘Dragon slayer’ tripel (again)
  15. Left Field 6-4-3 double IPA (again) as we stopped in to buy me a shirt
  16. Black Oak saison

Also: a killer pulled pork sandwich from Hogtown Smoke, and cupcakes (Spearhead Moroccan brown ale teacupcake, Canadian mancake) from The Sassy Lamb.

We left shortly before closing, and walked around the corner to The Stockyards to pick up dinner. Sadly, it seemed like all the other Session-goers had the same idea, and when we heard the chef yell that it would take at least thirty minutes for any fried chicken orders, we bailed. We picked up some wings on the way home, and ate them with an ice-cold Shawinigan Handshake from Trou du Diable. Beer day for the win.

Arf

Dan Dickinson1 Comment

One of the brothers is in town, and we’ve been having some low-key Dickinson-esque fun. Last night we went to Wvrst to have some tasty sausages and beer, got into a deep discussion regarding Game Of Thrones, and shot some strangers in a few Call Of Duty deathmatches.

Today we  perused St. Lawrence Market, sucked back some Fahrenheit coffee, introduced him to The Newsroom, strolled happily among the dogs at Woofstock, had some frigging delicious sandwiches at the Hogtown Smoke food truck, and drank cold beers in the warm sun on the patio at the Bier Markt.

Photo by images_of_money, used under Creative Commons license

The key word here is control.

Dan Dickinson1 Comment

Oh, right. The LCBO might go on strike. Yawn.

Seriously, I don’t see this as a problem at all. Which is probably not what the LCBO wants to hear, since they’re counting on using the threat of a strike on the eve of May 2-4 weekend — Think of all the poor cottagers! And where are frat boys supposed to buy their Laker?! — for leverage. But, living where I live, it’s a minor inconvenience at worst.

I assume that resourceful establishments such as Volo, Beerbistro, Bar Hop, and Wvrst will still have a healthy supply of beer coming in. If I want to bring excellent beer home I can always just pop by Bellwoods or Beer Academy.

And I get that I’m lucky (though I prefer to think of it as being well-prepared) to have >100 bottles of wine at home just waiting to be opened, but — like the rest of Toronto — I’m an hour away from Beamsville and Vineland, where we can buy stellar wine from the likes of Thirty Bench, Rosewood, Hidden Bench, Fielding, Daniel Lenko, Tawse, Kacaba, Megalomaniac, Foreign Affair, and Vineland Estates. People at the east end of the GTA or Ottawa are 2-3 hours from Prince Edward County, where they could enjoy the scenery and stock up on more than enough outstanding wine to get them through an LCBO blackout.

Remember: nature abhors a monopoly. It also drinks local.

.:.

Photo by images_of_money, used under Creative Commons license

“Friends, relations, tribe, nation, common people.”

Dan Dickinson1 Comment

I spent most of last week at a conference just outside of Phoenix. This was my view each morning:

Not bad, right? But with this trip coming right on the heels of the previous week’s trip to Boston, I was ready to come back to Toronto and have a couple of quiet weekends. Fortunately while I was away the long Toronto winter finally breathed its last. I arrived home Thursday to find runners and cyclists swarming the waterfront, leaves finally breaking out on trees, and the Canadiens playing their first playoff game.

As sure as those are signs of spring, so too is Hot Docs. My travel schedule kept us from seeing our usual five screenings this year, but we did manage to squeak in a few. First, after a bite and a beer at The Oxley followed by a few spectacular glasses of wine (my ’99 Peter Lehmann Shiraz really stood out) at Opus we took in a late screening of Blackfish. I get emotional every time I think about Tilikum or Dawn Brancheau or pretty much any other part of that film so I’m not going to describe it much more here. I’m just going to say this: SeaWorld can go fuck itself. So can MarineLand. So can anyone who goes there.

After our customary pre-Hot Docs stop on the patio at the Victory Café…

…we hit our second screening: Which Way Is The Front Line From Here: The Life And Time Of Tim Hetherington. It was directed by the author Sebastien Junger, with whom Hetherington had shadowed an army platoon to create a book called War and a documentary called Restrepo. Not long after the documentary was nominated for an Oscar Hetherington was killed in Libya covering yet another war zone. Junger made the documentary to explain who Tim was, why he was so possessed with telling stories this way, and sharing more of his brilliance than we were likely to ever see otherwise.

After that we needed another drink. We made our way (slowly, happily) down to Bellwoods Brewery, which we’d shamefully not yet tried despite it being named the 3rd-best new brewery in the world last year. We had several tasty pints and ate bread and salumi and rosemary fries, and sat in the perfect inside-but-almost-outside weather.

Spring!