The Swamp

I haven't been in about 11 years either (I remember it was during the 2006 baseball playoffs) and honestly I don't remember doing anything too memorable other than the Hockey Hall of Fame either.

I have never been to Toronto (or Buffalo or Rochester).

Stop by the Hoser Hut.

tennbengal wrote:Stop by the Hoser Hut.

Rashad Tarkenton for MVP!

Johnny Carwash wrote:Really, no Swamp love for Toronto? Anyone? Pruitt? Maybe I should have picked some random town in Jersey instead.

I think my suggestions were wonderful. It´s a real gem of a city, if your favorite color is beige. The ´ marks are weird here.

There are several Momofuku Group restaurants in Toronto.

Random coincidence as I'm trying to find out more about it via the website.

Adjust your travel plans accordingly.

Johnnie wrote:There are several Momofuku Group restaurants in Toronto.

Random coincidence as I'm trying to find out more about it via the website.

Adjust your travel plans accordingly.

Never been to T.Dot, but I wholeheartedly endorse seeking out Momofuku Group restaurants wherever you roam.

So ... this is probably a separate deal, but I wouldn't do Momofuku in Toronto because its not "a Toronto restaurant". There has to be something more local to the city you can't do anywhere else, right?

Yeah one thing Toronto has is some great ethnic restaurants because of the sheer numbers of people from other countries. Granted, it's been so long I don't remember any, but that's probably the way to go when dining there.

mister d wrote:So ... this is probably a separate deal, but I wouldn't do Momofuku in Toronto because its not "a Toronto restaurant". There has to be something more local to the city you can't do anywhere else, right?

Like a join a Battle Rap League!

https://youtu.be/CBfPCI5k2II

Read my mind.

I´d totally hang out with Kardinal Offishall and Snow.


Speaking of travel, anything cool in Buenos Aires that is a must see? Have one more day here....should prob go to Montevideo tomorrow but that´s a lot of work. Already went to La Boca and didn´t get robbed.

Gunpowder wrote:I´d totally hang out with Kardinal Offishall and Snow.


Speaking of travel, anything cool in Buenos Aires that is a must see? Have one more day here....should prob go to Montevideo tomorrow but that´s a lot of work. Already went to La Boca and didn´t get robbed.

Did you go to Recoleta/Palermo yet? Some good stuff in those hoods.

Gunpowder wrote:Speaking of travel, anything cool in Buenos Aires that is a must see? Have one more day here....should prob go to Montevideo tomorrow but that´s a lot of work. Already went to La Boca and didn´t get robbed.

If you just have a few hours to kill, a shorter trip than Montevideo is Colonia del Sacramento, which is a short ferry ride directly across the Rio from BA. It's an old mission town, kind of quiet but with a good number of restaurants/shops, don't know if that sounds like your thing.

If you go, remember that Uruguay is a different time zone than Argentina, which can screw with your schedule if you forget.

Gunpowder wrote:I´d totally hang out with Kardinal Offishall and Snow.


Speaking of travel, anything cool in Buenos Aires that is a must see? Have one more day here....should prob go to Montevideo tomorrow but that´s a lot of work. Already went to La Boca and didn´t get robbed.

I have a good friend in Punta del Este right now. She's raving about it. I'm pretty jealous.

Johnny Carwash wrote:Really, no Swamp love for Toronto? Anyone? Pruitt? Maybe I should have picked some random town in Jersey instead.

The hell with Jersey.

Party Time In The 6!

Johnny - I sent you a PM, but not sure if it actually got sent.

P.D.X. wrote:

Gunpowder wrote:I´d totally hang out with Kardinal Offishall and Snow.


Speaking of travel, anything cool in Buenos Aires that is a must see? Have one more day here....should prob go to Montevideo tomorrow but that´s a lot of work. Already went to La Boca and didn´t get robbed.

Did you go to Recoleta/Palermo yet? Some good stuff in those hoods.

Did that yesterday afternoon and evening. Recoleta, at least. Was cool.

Not a huge fan of BA...liked Santiago more. But most people seem to love this place.

Can't deny the talent in BA. Rivals eastern Europe.

rass wrote:Just about everything you might want to know about those big blue GAS/FOOD/LODGING signs on highways.

Those signs are huge!

Anyone ever spent any time in the Santa Ynez area? Any tips?

GF and I are going down to Ventura/Santa Barbera area this weekend to visit her daughter (who's interning at Patagonia this summer) and then spending a few days in Santa Ynez.

DaveInSeattle wrote:Anyone ever spent any time in the Santa Ynez area? Any tips?

GF and I are going down to Ventura/Santa Barbera area this weekend to visit her daughter (who's interning at Patagonia this summer) and then spending a few days in Santa Ynez.

Really pretty there. Go up for drive in the nearby mountain range. Solvang is a little Danish-oriented tourist town, fun to walk that main street and eat some "dutch baby" pancakes. Have you seen the movie Sideways? Lots of wineries nearby worth tasting at in the Santa Ynez/Los Olivos/Buellton area.

eta: Also - Miniature horses!, and Ostrich farm!

We are going to tour UCSB and Cal Poly SLO with my daughter in a couple weeks.

Any must eat places in Osage Beach, MO? I'm pumped about finally going to Ha Ha Tonka SP.

Giff wrote:Any must eat places in Osage Beach, MO? I'm pumped about finally going to Ha Ha Tonka SP.

Our developers actually do a retreat there every year, but I wouldn't trust those guys to make dining recommendations as they're the ones who complain when we have nice, catered company dinners and can't get french fries with a steak (this is a real thing that happened).

sancarlos wrote:We are going to tour UCSB and Cal Poly SLO with my daughter in a couple weeks.

I recommend UCSB, especially living in Isla Vista.

I've decided that wine-tasting is pretty much the most "white couples over 50" activity one can do. And that after 3 or 4 wineries, my palate is blown out and I'm like "taste like wine".

DaveInSeattle wrote:I've decided that wine-tasting is pretty much the most "white couples over 50" activity one can do. And that after 3 or 4 wineries, my palate is blown out and I'm like "taste like wine".

I think you can remove the age qualification on that. My brother and his wife (early 30s) spend like 90% of their free time doing that shit.

Also the white qualification, as the winery we were at on Long Island this past weekend was >50% asian.

brian wrote:

Giff wrote:Any must eat places in Osage Beach, MO? I'm pumped about finally going to Ha Ha Tonka SP.

Our developers actually do a retreat there every year, but I wouldn't trust those guys to make dining recommendations as they're the ones who complain when we have nice, catered company dinners and can't get french fries with a steak (this is a real thing that happened).

They had the best grocery store ever.

mister d wrote:Also the white qualification, as the winery we were at on Long Island this past weekend was >50% asian.

There is a great winery in the Napa Valley called Brown Estate. I kid you not, it is owned and operated by an African-American family. They have a great tour and tasty high-end zinfandels.

This actually ties into the overarching theme in America these days that people are unsophisticated, uneducated morons, but my wife just got free tickets for a trip to Cabo San Lucas in September because....

Well, it's a shade long, but I'll try to make it brief. A good friend of ours was going with her sister and a bunch (12-ish?) of her sister's friends who do the stupid multi-level marketing bullshit (USANA, wine clubs, some makeup thing or another, etc.). (Link back to the "stupid shit on Facebook thread" it's the same sister of a friend who posted the "no one ever put up a statue of a critic" nonsense.)

Anyway, someone in their group started posting stories from fake news sites about how Mexico is a lawless hellhole where people are decapitated in the streets and a bunch of these women who already paid for their trip are cancelling and don't want to go so my wife basically just got one of these women to transfer the tickets, etc. to her. All she had to pay was the airline change fee.

For Cabo San Lucas. In an all-inclusive resort run by a multi-billion company that's posted on the Frankfort and London Stock Exchanges.

When they started freaking out a couple of days ago I actually put away my snark hat for one second and tried to be the voice of reason and explain that Cabo San Lucas -- at least the parts any tourist would want to go to (the marina, Los Arcos, etc.) is probably literally 10 times safer than the Las Vegas Strip. I don't have any actual figures or stats, but I personally believe that to be true. But that was retorted with by some dude who posted three stories from dubious websites detailing stories of women raped and the Mexican authorities powerless to do anything about it, so that was that.

I don't even know about this country any more man. I'm more disillusioned than I've been in my entire life. I'm depressed. I'm angry. I want to just crawl into a hole, smoke a bunch of weed and watch stupid TV shows.

brian wrote:I don't even know about this country any more man. I'm more disillusioned than I've been in my entire life. I'm depressed. I'm angry. I want to just crawl into a hole, smoke a bunch of weed and watch stupid TV shows.

It certainly helps.

brian wrote:This actually ties into the overarching theme in America these days that people are unsophisticated, uneducated morons, but my wife just got free tickets for a trip to Cabo San Lucas in September because....

Well, it's a shade long, but I'll try to make it brief. A good friend of ours was going with her sister and a bunch (12-ish?) of her sister's friends who do the stupid multi-level marketing bullshit (USANA, wine clubs, some makeup thing or another, etc.). (Link back to the "stupid shit on Facebook thread" it's the same sister of a friend who posted the "no one ever put up a statue of a critic" nonsense.)

Anyway, someone in their group started posting stories from fake news sites about how Mexico is a lawless hellhole where people are decapitated in the streets and a bunch of these women who already paid for their trip are cancelling and don't want to go so my wife basically just got one of these women to transfer the tickets, etc. to her. All she had to pay was the airline change fee.

For Cabo San Lucas. In an all-inclusive resort run by a multi-billion company that's posted on the Frankfort and London Stock Exchanges.

When they started freaking out a couple of days ago I actually put away my snark hat for one second and tried to be the voice of reason and explain that Cabo San Lucas -- at least the parts any tourist would want to go to (the marina, Los Arcos, etc.) is probably literally 10 times safer than the Las Vegas Strip. I don't have any actual figures or stats, but I personally believe that to be true. But that was retorted with by some dude who posted three stories from dubious websites detailing stories of women raped and the Mexican authorities powerless to do anything about it, so that was that.

I don't even know about this country any more man. I'm more disillusioned than I've been in my entire life. I'm depressed. I'm angry. I want to just crawl into a hole, smoke a bunch of weed and watch stupid TV shows.

I liked your suggestion of Missoula. Seems about right. More white people there so she won't get too scared.

I'd rhetorically ask them how a tourist economy like Cabo could survive if tourists were getting decapitated and raped. Maybe too academic though.

Obviously paid off by Obama and Clinton Foundation. How else will ISIS grab a foothold.

You're probably more likely to get raped at Baylor.

Timely ...

https://twitter.com/NPR/status/900458143926243328

Duly noted, but the city of Las Vegas alone has already had about 110 homicides in 2017 thus far compared to 232 in Baja California Sur (which has about half the population of suburban Las Vegas to be further fair).

It's the State Department's job to warn American tourists, but it seems somehow scaremongering to not point out that the murder rates in some of these places aren't too dissimilar from a lot of places in the United States and most of the murders in both places are completely drug-related and unlikely to affect a tourist.

Put another way -- even with these heightened numbers of murders in the two mentioned Mexican states (Q.Roo and BCS) you're probably just as likely to be murdered in Las Vegas as you are in Cabo San Lucas.

brian wrote:I want to just crawl into a hole, smoke a bunch of weed and watch stupid TV shows.

Excellent plan. Yet you sound like this is a bad thing. Works in good times and bad.

(man, you ain't alone. strange days indeed.)

eta: fuck it, more of my posts can use a soundtrack.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBCdlBrgEmE