Tag Archives: postaday

Flippin’ Out

Posted on by Bill Chance

The other afternoon we were trying to figure out what to do for dinner. Candy asked if there were any places in Dallas that sold crepes. We go to Cafe Brazil all the time, and they have the thin pancakes on the menu, but she meant someplace new. Luckily, there is that internet thingy and a quick search turned up a place in Addison called Flippin’ Out. It was on Beltline Road (isn’t everything?) and a bit of a drive… but it looked different and interesting so we headed out.

It is a tiny place tucked in the parking lot of a strip center… a little to the West of the hopping heart of the Addison Strip. It advertises Crepes and Coffee, so it couldn’t be bad. There is no seating inside, only a tiny room crammed with menu boards and equipment for cooking an brewing.

Out back there is a neat covered patio and someday I’d like to go back there and sit outside, but this day was too damn hot so we ordered our crepes – I had a Gulf coast (Sauteed shrimp, lump crab, roasted Pasilla peppers & Pontchartrain cream sauce)… Candy had a Cuban (Slow roasted pork, pickles & onion topped with Dijon mustard & Swiss cheese) and she also ordered a dessert… I think it was the Honey Badger (Handpicked strawberries, bananas & blueberries topped with honey, yogurt & granola).

We took the food home and it was good. I was impressed with the idea even more, though. Crepes are easy to make, very thin and don’t have a lot of calories, and very versatile. So on a whim, we ordered a Cucina Pro cordless crepe maker off of that internet thing again.

A couple days and there was a box on the doorstep. On Saturday I made up a blender full of crepe batter and stood there cranking out a couple dozen thin little pancakes. We ate a couple and put the rest in the fridge in a bag.

I’m surprised, but it looks like this is going to work out. A bit of fruit, or some leftovers… really anything… and you can roll it up in one of those things and there’s a meal. It’s like a big, thin tortilla… only Frenchier.

Flippin’ Out – it’s not very big, but it’s hard to miss.

The main menu.

Drinks menu… the coffee looks good, but “Treats from the Teat!” – I don’t know if that’s as catchy or as appetizing as they think it is.

Not a lot of room to spare inside.

Cockpit

Posted on by Bill Chance

Along the street that ran through the center of the Cedars West Arts festival, out in front of the new fencing around OKON Metals, sat the chopped off cockpit of some unknown aircraft. I guess it was out there to show the variety of materials that a metal recycler can deal with – or maybe it was out there simply because it was way cool.

I couldn’t help but hang around the severed snout. One guy looked at it and said to his buddy, “Look at all the bullet holes.” Now I knew better – those puncture wounds weren’t from ballistic ammunition, they were pierce marks from forklift forks (how do you think they move that massive chunk of aircraft aluminum around?) – but I didn’t want to disappoint the guy’s martial imagination, so I stayed silent.

Off to the side, an artist stood with a pad on an easel. His name was Joshua Boulet and I chatted with him for a bit. He had a portfolio of his line-drawings on a stand. I looked over his work done at Occupy Wall Street. “Did you go to New York for these?” I asked.

“Yeah, I set up right there just like I did today and drew these live,” he said with a hint of excitement in his voice.

Here is his work in progress. You can see the fire engine from yesterday’s entry in the foreground.

Here’s the finished sketch (click to enlarge)

There was a high step up into the cockpit, but I took a breath, grabbed some loose aluminum and pulled myself in. There are few things as cool as the complex destruction in old, junked aerospace detritus.

Kids on a Fire Truck

Posted on by Bill Chance

What could be more fun for a bunch of kids than going for a ride on a vintage fire truck. From the Cedars West Arts Festival.

Some random photographs

Posted on by Bill Chance

…found on my drive, left over from my trip down to the farmer’s market. I took these when we walked over to Deep Ellum.

Bikes out in front of Reno’s.

Deep Ellum Graffiti

Travelling Man

William Hawkins CSA

Posted on by Bill Chance

The other day Candy and I were walking through Uptown Dallas on our way to the DART station at Citiplace when we passed by an old cemetery. It’s Greenwood Cemetery. Like most old cemeteries it’s a peaceful historic place.

As we walked by, I turned and shot a simple photo of a simple veteran’s tombstone.

Everybody is used to seeing old cemeteries and everybody is used to seeing veteran’s graves. But unless you live in the southern states you aren’t used to seeing tombstones marked CSA.

Here, of course, Confederate graves are all too common.

Vintage Bicycle Swap Meet

Posted on by Bill Chance

There was a lot going on Saturday, so I pulled myself out of bed and headed out for the first stop – Don Johle’s Bike world in Garland for a Vintage Bicycle Swap Meet.

I confess I had no plans to buy anything (which is not surprising, I have no money) and was simply going over there to gawk. And gawk I did.

Rows of vintage bicycles. Vintage means many things. It can mean classic and valuable…. But mostly it means old, useless, rusty and overpriced… which is how I feel… so I suppose that gave me something in common with these bikes.

There were a few that had been restored, but mostly we were looking at raw materials here. There were some oddities too, and that was way cool.

Here’s an old moped-style that you don’t see every day. Beautifully restored.

I’ve been looking at folding bikes recently. Maybe a Bike Friday, or a Brompton... but probably a Dahon. There was a folder at the swap meet – it was an old Fuji mountain bike that was a give away prize to folks that smoked enough Marlboro cigarettes.

A cool looking old thing… not sure if it was worth the smoke.

The bike looks broken, but it isn’t… well not as much as it looks. It is a folding bicycle, the seat tube holds it straight when it is working.

A heavy, crude, but still pretty cool mechanism.

Smoke, smoke, smoke that cigarette. Enough wrappers and you can get a folding bike, courtesy of Marlboro.

Here’s a drivetrain you don’t see every day – a shaft-driven bicycle. I guess it would be good in the mud. I did spent a good part of a day cleaning my chain – this would get around that.

A 1970 or so Raleigh Record. I may be an old fart, but I think that bicycles of this era are among the most beautiful things on earth.
I need to get out more.

The classic old bikes made me think of the Raleigh Technium I have hanging in the garage. It needs new tires, handlebar tape, and a good going over… but maybe I should give it a try. The engine is still old and worn out though, I’m not sure it’s worth the trouble.

The One I Missed Before

Posted on by Bill Chance

It’s been almost a month since I went with my Writing Group down to the Arboretum to take some photographs of the Dale Chihuly exhibition there. I know I have posted a lot about this, put up a lot of pictures, but I’m not done yet, not by a long shot.

For father’s day, Candy bought me a year-long membership to the Dallas Arboretum – so I can go as often as I want, sit around, and maybe stare at strangers. We were talking the other day when we had gone to the Zoo to see A Hard Night’s Day – a Beatles Tribute Band – about the fact that there weren’t any Rolling Stones tribute bands. So she also bought tickets to a concert at the Arboretum by Satisfaction… a Stones tribute band.

The Dallas Arboretum is massive and maze-like. When we were there, I wondered if we had missed any of Chihuly’s stuff. In the interim, I was able to learn the layout a bit better and I slipped away from the concert several times to walk the grounds, both in the evening light and the darkness (nighttime Chihluly photographs to come).

It turns out we did pretty well, only missing one Chihuly piece. It was a beautiful one though. In the second phase of the Woman’s Garden there is a little pond full of water plants (the Pool in the Genesis Garden). The artist had placed some white glass sculptures in amongst the green lily pads and colorful blooms.

It was gorgeous.

http://vimeo.com/36848879

The Best American Noir of the Century

Posted on by Bill Chance

The Kindle is like crack. Every day I get an email with the “Deal of the Day,” and every day I need to figure out how I am going to resist. It isn’t the money – these books go from ninety nine cents up to, say four bucks. It isn’t the space, either. My Kindle can hold a small library in its memory and what it won’t hold Amazon will store out in the clouds. It’s simply time. There are too many books and life is too short and time is running out too fast.

Sometimes, though, I can’t resist. I buy and I read.

One temptation given in to was a big book that came in for a one-day sale… I think it was $1.99 or so.

I love big, thick anthologies of short stories. Especially with time so short and life so mixed-up and confusing, the ability to scrape up a few spare minutes and read a whole story – complete in and of itself – no remembering galaxies of characters, confused clusters of settings, and subtle plot threads that weave and waft through the delicate tapestry of a novel… one shot, simple, fast, powerful. Give me a tome with twenty or thirty or more of these miniature jewels and I’m a happy camper.

The buck ninety-nine deal came in over the ether for purchase of the Best American Noir of the Century. Couldn’t resist – hit the “buy with one click” button and it was mine.

Reading it took a little longer. It had 39 stories, so it took a few days to plow through. The stories covered about 83 years and were in chronological order. Noir isn’t really a genre, more like an attitude, and you could feel how the stories changed over time.

The book is 800 pages… which made me glad that it was only some bits stored in the Kindle memory. That’s a lot lighter.

There is a lot of criticism of this anthology… mostly concerning the meaning of the term Noir. A lot of folks take Noir to be a hardboiled detective novel. They are disappointed because, although there are some classics in the collection, it takes a broader view of Noir and includes some stories with supernatural elements and other borderline tales.

That’s fine with me. I was surprised to find that I liked some of the more offbeat, longer, and modern riffs. I recommend the anthology highly… it’s the kind of thing you will like if you like that kind of thing.

Like any group of thirty nine tales, the offerings can be a little uneven. Some folks will like stories I didn’t… but here are a few that stood out in my mind:

Harlan Ellison: 1993: Mefisto in Onyx – Harlan Ellison, not surprisingly, comes up with a loose, weird, caterwauling tale that isn’t what it seems to be and then it turns out not to be that either. Surprising and entertaining.

Ed Gorman: 1995: Out There in the Darkness – Inspired the book and film, “The Poker Club.” The opposite of Mefisto in Onyx… a tale of four ordinary guys, folks you know and love trapped in a cycle of escalating violence.

Elmore Leonard: 2002: When The Women Come Out to Dance – Fantastic tale about a relationship between two women that turns out to be the opposite of what it seems.

Christopher Coake: 2003: All Through the House – One of the best stories I’ve read in a while. A unique structure, told in a series of short, clear scenes in reverse chronological order. Despite it descending into the past, every new section brings an unknown revelation. At the end, you are left devastated by what you know will come to destroy the innocent doomed characters.

Steve Fisher: 1938 You’ll Always Remember Me – Probably my favorite of the older works. A classic Noir.

Joyce Carol Oates: 1997: Faithless – A dark tale that, not surprisingly, reads like the best literature.

Oh, and there is a lot more, famous authors: James M. Cain, Mickey Spillane, Jim Thompson, Patricia Highsmith, James Ellroy, James Lee Burke. Each story is prefaced with a biography of the author – these can be as great a revelation as the fiction.

It makes me want to read more from some of these folks. Thats more like heroin.