Althouse: At the Too Many Signs Cafe...

April 30, 2018

At the Too Many Signs Cafe...

... you can talk all night.

35 comments:

Mid-Life Lawyer said...: I walked and drove around parts of Abilene this afternoon. Abilene has remnants of great signs. Unlike Austin, most of the signs in Abilene have not been preserved. Still, there is a certain charm here. It's easy to get around, for one thing. I'm going over to Abilene Christian University in the a.m. and run the area around the campus. I drove through there on the way downtown for dinner and it seems like a nice place to get a good run in.; 4/30/18, 9:57 PM
mccullough said...: Bummed that Dodgers shortstop Corey Seager is going to miss the rest of the season to have elbow surgery.

It’s a golden age of baseball these days with so many terrific young players like Seager.; 4/30/18, 10:13 PM
Sprezzatura said...: "...it seems like a nice place to get a good run in."

These signs seem like a nice place to start running/walking/driving toward the capitol. But, stop a bit short:

Home Slice.; 4/30/18, 10:13 PM
Bay Area Guy said...: I spent the entire day in downtown San Jose, CA. Not particularly charming. I think Page Mill Road in Palo Alto is the "heart" of Silicon Valley, not unimpressive downtown San Jose.

Yes, I know the way to San Jose - thanks for asking.; 4/30/18, 10:22 PM
Stephen Taylor said...: Oh, sweet! El Borrego is truly one of my favorite restaurants. Their signature dish is the birria, which is a stew made with goat. Served with onions, cilantro and refried beans, it just makes me swoon. They also serve a birria taco, and birria by the bowl. All their food is good, however. It's run by a Mexican family (the matriarch speaks not a bit of English, but sits behind the counter looking inscrutable) and my wife and I are routinely the only two Caucasians eating at any given time. Just superb. One of those dives with concrete floors and little ambience where the food carries the day. Hope you and your husband were able to sample their menu. Good enchiladas, too.; 4/30/18, 10:25 PM
David Begley said...: What kind of Congress?; 4/30/18, 10:35 PM
Sebastian said...: Chozick in VF: "About a week before the caucuses, at the end of an epically newsless bus swing, Demi Lovato performed “Confident” on campus at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, the epicenter of the “Feel the Bern” movement. She introduced Hillary, saying there wasn’t “a woman more confident than Hillary Clinton.” (Telling the crowd the truth—that one of Hillary’s more endearing qualities is that, despite her successes, she is a heaping pile of insecurities—wouldn’t have played well.)"

Now she tells us. I doubt that truth ever appeared in the NYT when it counted. Of course, we deplorables knew without the help from the crack reporters at that indispensable source.; 4/30/18, 10:46 PM
walter said...: You can Reform Apu!; 4/30/18, 10:48 PM
Michelle Dulak Thomson said...: Hmmm, Congress and Dulles? Here in Salem we literally have an intersection of Church and State. It's downtown. I keep meaning to snap a photo of it and send it to Eugene Volokh.; 4/30/18, 10:50 PM
Michelle Dulak Thomson said...: Bay Area Guy,

There's an awful lot of San Jose. I suppose there are even sprawlier places (LA, for one), but not many.; 4/30/18, 11:01 PM
walter said...: Democrats frequently claim Republicans' corporate tax cuts enriched big businesses while doing little for workers, but now that line of criticism is coming from a prominent Republican: Sen. Marco Rubio.

“There is still a lot of thinking on the right that if big corporations are happy, they’re going to take the money they’re saving and reinvest it in American workers,” the Florida senator told the Economist in a recent interview. “In fact they bought back shares, a few gave out bonuses; there’s no evidence whatsoever that the money’s been massively poured back into the American worker.”; 4/30/18, 11:24 PM
walter said...: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2018/04/30/marco-rubio-just-went-way-off-message-on-the-gop-tax-cuts/?utm_term=.9599b4afeabc; 4/30/18, 11:31 PM
exiledonmainstreet, green-eyed devil said...: At one of the busiest BART stations in San Francisco, junkies are openly shooting up.

"over the course of a week, Gafford documented his trip to work. His videos show dozens of people slumped along a hallway, open IV drug use, unconscious men and women, and piles of vomit on either side of the hallways.

Some may find the video shocking. Others may find it routine.

“Every day. Every morning. 5:30 to 6 o’clock. You can see there’s dozens of them. Needles everywhere. Crack. Heroin.”

Doesn't that sound like fun?

http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2018/04/25/drug-users-san-francisco-civic-center-bart/; 4/30/18, 11:37 PM
Ken B said...: I haven’t heard this on radio for over 20 years.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=oeT5otk2R1g

It was once very popular.; 4/30/18, 11:39 PM
Churchy LaFemme: said...: I haven’t heard this on radio for over 20 years.

Really? It seems I hear it fairly frequently. I admit I don't have much sympathy for the character depicted as singing though.

Although as I say, I *do* hear this one, it's funny how what once was canon drops off the oldies playlists. Of course sometimes the reverse happens as well.; 4/30/18, 11:49 PM
walter said...: exiled,
That's the smell of diversity in the morning.
No judging..; 4/30/18, 11:51 PM
Yancey Ward said...: Ken B did say radio. It of course is heard fairly often on television commercials.; 4/30/18, 11:58 PM
Churchy LaFemme: said...: I hear it on the radio, but on reflection it is probably the Tesla version I usually hear.; 5/1/18, 12:23 AM
walter said...: instead of "forward", Hil's SF campaign was "Step Over.."; 5/1/18, 12:28 AM
Etienne said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 5/1/18, 1:07 AM
Etienne said...: According to wallethub.com - Here’s the list of the top 8 best large cities for new businesses. Madison, WI was #49:

Oklahoma City, OK
Austin, TX
Sioux Falls, SD
Missoula, MT
Durham, NC
Bismarck, ND
Cheyenne, WY
Billings, MT

I never thought of OKC, Bismark, Cheyenne, and Billing as large cities.
OKC, for example, rolls up it's sidewalks after 4pm.; 5/1/18, 1:08 AM
gadfly said...: Blogger Mid-Life Lawyer said...
I walked and drove around parts of Abilene this afternoon. Abilene has remnants of great signs. Unlike Austin, most of the signs in Abilene have not been preserved. Still, there is a certain charm here. It's easy to get around, for one thing. I'm going over to Abilene Christian University in the a.m. and run the area around the campus. I drove through there on the way downtown for dinner and it seems like a nice place to get a good run in.

Things were different in Abilene back in the fifties when Jerry Harvey wrote his personal parable about groupthink. Here is the beginning of "On the Road to Abilene" which established the Abilene Paradox: Organizations frequently take actions in contradiction of what they really want to do and therefore defeat the very purposes that they are trying to achieve.

The July afternoon in Coleman, Texas (pop. 5,607) was particularly hot ...104 degrees as measured by the Walgreen’s Rexall Ex-Lax temperature gauge. In addition, the wind was blowing fine-grained West Texas topsoil through the house. But the afternoon was still tolerable ...even potentially enjoyable. There was a fan going on the back porch; there was cold lemonade; and finally, there was entertainment. Dominoes. Perfect for the conditions. The game required little more physical exertion than an occasional mumbled comment, “Shuffle ‘em,” and an unhurried movement of the arm to place the spots in the appropriate perspective on the table. All in all, it had the makings of an agreeable Sunday afternoon in Coleman ...that is, it was until my father-in-law suddenly said, "Let’s get in the car and go to Abilene and have dinner in the cafeteria."

I thought, “What, go to Abilene? Fifty-three miles? In this dust storm and heat? And in an unairconditioned 1958 Buick?

But my wife chimed in with, “Sounds like a great idea. I’d like to go. How about you, Jerry?” Since my own preferences were obviously out of step with the rest, I replied, “sounds good to me,” and added, “I just hope your mother wants to go.”

“Of course I want to go,” said my mother-in-law. “I haven’t been to Abilene in a long time.”

So into the car and off to Abilene we went. My predictions were fulfilled. The heat was brutal. We were coated with a fine layer of dust that was cemented with perspiration by the time we arrived. The food at the cafeteria provided first-rate testimonial material for antacid commercials.

Some four hours and 106 miles later we returned to Coleman, hot and exhausted. We sat in front of the fan for a long time in silence. Then to be sociable and to break the silence, I said, “It was a great trip, wasn’t it?”; 5/1/18, 3:23 AM
rehajm said...: The way share buybacks work Little Mario is to reallocate capital from firms with no ideas into firms with good ideas. The worker benefits when those firms with good ideas use the capital to act on them.

It is not a small thing, this reallocation of capital. Where's there free flow of capital people thrive, where it doesn't people suffer.; 5/1/18, 5:09 AM
Rusty said...: The Iranians never stopped persuing a nuclear bomb?
This is my shocked face.
Everything Obama did just turns out to be a shabby lie.
And the left loved him for it.; 5/1/18, 5:56 AM
Ann Althouse said...: "Oh, sweet! El Borrego is truly one of my favorite restaurants. Their signature dish is the birria, which is a stew made with goat. Served with onions, cilantro and refried beans, it just makes me swoon. They also serve a birria taco, and birria by the bowl. All their food is good, however. It's run by a Mexican family (the matriarch speaks not a bit of English, but sits behind the counter looking inscrutable) and my wife and I are routinely the only two Caucasians eating at any given time. Just superb. One of those dives with concrete floors and little ambience where the food carries the day. Hope you and your husband were able to sample their menu. Good enchiladas, too."

Thanks!

We only drove past the restaurant. I took the picture (from the car window) because I thought it was amusing that it was a Chinese restaurant sign repurposed by a Mexican restaurant. That shape for a Chinese restaurant sign is a pop-culture convention that I hadn't thought much about, but seeing it used for a nonChinese restaurant makes the corny old shape newly noticeable.; 5/1/18, 6:27 AM
Hagar said...: All the powder laundry detergents have disappeared from the shelves and are replaced by liquid versions.
The @#$%^&*!!! EPA strikes again?; 5/1/18, 6:56 AM
Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...: "In an interview with the PBS NewsHour’s Jeffrey Brown in San Francisco, comedian Dave Chappelle also backed Wolf, saying he “really respected” what he saw, and that there was both levity and truth in her routine.

“I don’t know who those people think they are that she can’t say that to them, cause they offend people all the time. And I think that for many people … it’s cathartic to watch that woman speak truth to power like that,” Chappelle said.

“I know how hard it is to do what she did … I think she nailed it,” Chappelle said. “Whether I agree with it or not, I gotta respect the artistry.”"; 5/1/18, 6:57 AM
Hagar said...: Michelle Wolf's act might pass in a burlesque theater in the scuzzy part of downtown, but is totally unacceptable inn polite company.; 5/1/18, 7:06 AM
mezzrow said...: It looks like the Golden Ox was a Chinese buffet at least one sign change ago. The reviews here sound marvelous.; 5/1/18, 7:32 AM
mezzrow said...: Gah, did I type that? Golden Ram. Sheesh.; 5/1/18, 7:33 AM
Curious George said...: There's a Hispanic Grocer in Milwaukee called "El Rey." My son says "that means 'The Rey' in English.; 5/1/18, 7:43 AM
Rusty said...: Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...
"In an interview with the PBS NewsHour’s Jeffrey Brown in San Francisco, comedian Dave Chappelle also backed Wolf, saying he “really respected” what he saw, and that there was both levity and truth in her routine.

“I don’t know who those people think they are that she can’t say that to them, cause they offend people all the time. And I think that for many people … it’s cathartic to watch that woman speak truth to power like that,” Chappelle said.

“I know how hard it is to do what she did … I think she nailed it,” Chappelle said. “Whether I agree with it or not, I gotta respect the artistry.”"

No body is questioning her right to say anything. People are finding her content wanting. I have heard her routine before and she is funny. But from a professional comedian point of view it helps if your non partisan. Otherwise you just come across as a shill.; 5/1/18, 8:25 AM
Stephen Taylor said...: "....I took the picture (from the car window) because I thought it was amusing that it was a Chinese restaurant sign repurposed by a Mexican restaurant...."

You have a keen eye. Yes, it was once a Chinese place, but not since about 2005. The food was truly nasty. I only ever ate there once. There are far too many good Chinese places in town to eat bad cooking.; 5/1/18, 8:54 AM
Michelle Dulak Thomson said...: exiledonmainstreet,

Civic Center, huh? I thought the next station on, 16th St. Mission, was Heroin Central. I certainly had to dodge enough puddles of urine and vomit when I got off there to go to work. Civic Center was where I got off for concerts, though, and it was certainly bad enough -- worse now that Camp Agnos Part Deux is installed in the park.; 5/1/18, 8:54 AM
rhhardin said...: Amazon Prime delays to Central Ohio explained
http://fox8.com/2018/04/16/downburst-damage-closes-twinsburg-amazon-fulfillment-center/

the new distribution center blown down.; 5/1/18, 11:01 AM