Category: Games and Sports

Book Review: Edinburgh Pub Walks by Bob Steel

epw1I get cranky. Especially when I have had a cold since Thursday and couldn’t get out on the snowshoes this weekend as planned. Heck, I really could not maintain much of a level of consciousness given the fever here, the aches there and the surreal effect of cold medication. Not prime time for the beer fan. So, it’s a good thing we have books for these drier stretches. I got this one in the mail a few months ago. Been wondering when I would post about it. I really should post more reviews of CAMRA’s excellent books but when this rare review copy came, I noticed my street address was off by about 127 front doors. Some guy two tenths of a mile away must have a great collection.

Anyway, I love this book. Why? Well, for one thing I am familiar with some walks covered having family that live on a few of the streets named upon the maps. I have spent some time there. I even dodged an indignant but well emptied bottle flung from a terrace far far above one Saturday at Hibs when Georgie Best was a no show and my father decided to leave early. But those connections to the town aren’t what makes this book work for me. No, its the maps themselves that draw you in. Bright, well laid out and placed smartly on the page they offer clear instruction by the clever use of colour leaving no real need for a table explaining what means what. Then there are the photos which make you want to crawl right though into that place in Prestonpans or the other on Rose Street. [Sadly, it appears that the Rose Street Brewery, where I spent a few happy days in 1986, is not more or at least not worth mentioning.] And then there are the walking tours. I don’t know of any North American pub guide based on this idea but it is an excellent one. Implicitly moderate or perhaps otherwise sensible, the 25 routes provide more information than a traveler might ever require and maybe even enough to keep a local well occupied.

The book seems to have been backed by the combination of CAMRA and Caledonian Brewery which might lead one to worry that a fix was in. Not a chance as there is every indication of as ecumenical an approach to mentioning tap offerings as you might wish. Well worth the investment for anyone there in Edinburgh or planning to be.

The 2010 Sackets Harbor NY Vintage Base Ball Tournament

Another great time was had by all even if we had to play 18 innings of 1864 rules baseball in a row on a 85 F day under the beating sun. The Kingston St. Lawrence VBBC tied the Sackets Harbor Ontarios 12-12 in the first game and lost 7-1 to the Genesee Nine of Rochester. Highlight was the nine run second inning in the first game. Low light was being on base and realizing I was not actually aware of the rules one needed to know when being on base. Got tagged out at home in the fourth inning of the second game. You know, one truly ought to give ‘er when one has the opportunity.

Friday Bullets For A Week Off In July

It’s been a weird week off. Chopped up. I even had to go to work but that was my fault. Didn’t check the schedule. Picked the wrong week. Assumed. But we carried on. A cold moved through but we carried on. Started in fine style at the Dinosaur BBQ, too. Vintage base ball coming up on Sunday. Spent the week being scared to hell by Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food. Still ate bacon and green onion cream cheese on bagels from Ithaca Bakery. But I knew it was wrong. And exactly how wrong: real wrong.

  • Construction paper 1930s Soviet arctic exploration art. Neato.
  • I don’t write that much about my town. I don’t write much about much come to think of it. But look at the video of Elton John at the rink. Where do rock bands play in towns without hockey teams?
  • Sox are 4-6 in July. Not pleased. Bought the lad Sox socks at Cooperstown and they play like this???
  • Still don’t know what to make of Obama. The Gulf oil crisis is his first crisis begun under his watch. If the oil has now actually been capped after 86 days, getting a 20 billion dollar fund mid-crisis is a pretty smooth move. No one is really talking about health care socialism anymore, either. He may pan out OK.

Gotta go get the car in for a tune up. That outta spice things up.

We Played Base Ball… And We Won

I didn’t get the great shot like with other games. No photo of the instant before a ball is hit. No photo of hands outstretched. Thought I did get the actual money shot, above. Maybe it’s because we actually won and I spent my time screaming at the team to cover the gaps, not drift off the line and
rush around the bases. Turns out we don’t need to suck every game as the Kingston St. Lawrence Vintage Base Ball Club (“the Brown Stockings”) beat Royal Military College (“the Royals”) 41-3. That’s a lot. It was quite the thing. Took four seasons but a win… they can’t take that away. Sackets is doomed in July.

Friday Bullets For The End Of April

And a vintage base ball weekend. Just as I am getting to the point that I am not much use on the field anymore – as much from never actually having played baseball as being creaky – others are joining up who are actually good at the game. A cricketer even. Someone having the instinct to dive towards a line drive barehanded is pretty stunning to see. Me? Cricked neck and twinged back means the ball dropped near by. That could be a haiku.

Cricked neck and twinged back
Green grass, still play, a bat swings:
The ball falls too near.

Maybe we call it “Forty-seven”.

Maybe there will be another haiku entitled “So Many Aspirin” at the end of Saturday afternoon.

None

The 2nd Annual RMC Vintage Base Ball Tournie Is On!

Big news just now as we have our second umpire for this Saturday’s vintage base ball tournament signed up. You have to get imports for these things, you know. One Rochestarian and one Sackets Harbor-on-ian. Dandy. Steve, up there with the bat, will be there, too. We should have two games this year and the weather is supposed to be fine on Navy Bay where we calm the ghosts of 1812 by mimicking the ghosts of 1872 for a few hours. And then go for beer dressed silly.

The Women Every Real Canadian Male Has A Crush On…

Canada’s Marie-Philip Poulin, left to right, Kim St-Pierre and Charline Labonte drink beer on the ice with their gold medals after Canada defeated the USA in women’s Olympic hockey final game in Vancouver, British Columbia, Thursday Feb. 25, 2010. (AP Photo/The Canadian Press, Scott Gardner)

Truth be told, every Canadian male has a deep and abiding crush on every member of the woman’s hockey team and photos of them drinking beer just feed the flame. We have commercials where the players kick doltish men like us all on the ice. They sell us social networking tech. While we have to work on their taste in beer, these are the sweethearts of the nation. Goalie gear, baby. Oh baby.

Did Richard Lautens of the Toronto Star get the best picture of the moment?

An Olympics And Beer Story That Makes Some Sense

I still wonder what the average Latvian thinks about all this but at least this story makes a little more sense than needing to shut public booze sales and politicians drunk driving. Yet the International Olympic Committee is not amused:

Nearly an hour after the Canadians won their third consecutive Olympic gold medal with a 2-0 win over the Americans, the players came back out on the ice in the near-empty arena, smoking cigars and swigging champagne and beer. (Rebecca Johnston even tried to drive the zamboni.) “I don’t think it’s a good promotion of sport values,” Gilbert Felli, the IOC’s executive director of the Olympics, told the Associated Press after learning about the celebration. “If they celebrate in the changing room, that’s one thing, but not in public. We will investigate what happened.”

Gold. Literally. What’s that IOC? Leave it in the locker room? Hide your beer drinking?? What a joke. Remember, these are Canadian hockey players and remember what the Russian goalie said when the mens team gave them the boot the other night: “They came like gorillas coming out of a cage.”

Yet is that what we are? Is that what the world sees? Are we really the wild men and women of the north, clubbing and hammering poor Russians and American athletes as mere foreplay for a good beer? Sadly, no one appears to have taught the women’s hockey team on the ways of good beer. Does she really need to be sucking down a Molbat macro-blurt?

What Beer For Canada Against Russia?

hendersonThere are few phrases more evocative for a Canadian of my early middle age than “Canada Russia”.

When I was nine I heard the final game of the 1972 series broadcast from Moscow on the car radio sitting in a parking lot in Middleton, NS. We won. We were not always successful in the international head to head tournaments after that and into the ’80s but we quickly came to love or at least fear the Soviet National anthem. We loved or at least feared Vladislav Tretiak and Valeri Kharlamov. To fill the emotional need, there were any number of tours across the country where Canucks and Ruskies beat their heads against each other.

In 1984, I saw a touring Soviet national team play in Halifax against Canada’s Olympic training team. The evil team had eight guys called Sergei which the announcer at the rink pronounced as “Sir-jay-ee.” We cheered when the Canadians rushed toward their end. When they let loose slap shots from beyond half we winced silent winces expecting the goalie or the boards behind the net to crack from the awful force of a Marxist-Leninist totalitarian Moscow Red Army player’s sheer power.

In the 1987 Canada Cup, Mario and Wayne destroyed them in a game so exciting that I had to turn off the TV and only knew Canada won when the wintery neighbourhood erupted out there, outside the windows of the house, car horns blaring to the horizon. Then there was Gorby, then there were Russian players in the NHL, then the bear seemed to fade a bit. Then they got good again. I have no idea what will happen tonight but over half all Canadians will watch the TV tonight to watch a quarter-final game. Because it is Canada against Russia.

What beer to have?

Olympic Celebrations One Big Binge-o-rama

Call the Neo-probes! Athletic competitions now proven to lead to binge drinking as Vancouver struggles to keep up with drunk jet setting gangs of cow bell ringers and fans of third-rate curlering nations. Jet setting Olympic public boozing is apparently something we are very good at in Canada:

“Due to an unprecedented number of intoxicated people, we must do what we can to ensure the Games are safe for everyone,” said a spokesman for the province’s liquor licensing branch Sunday. “We’re taking a measured approach that still allows people to have fun and feel confident that they will be safe while doing so,” he said… Vancouver Police said they are prepared to ask for more early-closing orders to tackle public drinking, drunkenness and disorder on city streets, after being granted similar orders for Saturday and Sunday. Police spokesman Const. Lindsey Houghton said there was a noticeable spike in people bringing booze into the downtown core on the weekend.

And it’s not just the crowds in the streets who are booze fueled. We Canadians proudly celebrated the gold medal celebrations by our own Jon Montgomery, the fastest guy to go head first down an ice chute on a sled: “I don’t subscribe to necessarily all the things typical athletes do, and for me a pint now and then is a good thing,” he said… “I go out to parties with him, and he finishes the party,” said teammate Mike Douglas. He finishes the party. That’s why we love him. He walked around chugging from a pitcher of beer after the victory pretty much like he did, above, at the Skeleton World Championships in Feb. 2008. And during an interview, a fan tossed Montgomery a mickey of rye, which he stuck in his back pocket. That’s why we love him. He is us.

We are such bad examples for ourselves.

Update: Huffington Post has the photos and a video: