“It is not for me to judge another man’s life. I must judge, I must choose, I must spurn, purely for myself. For myself, alone.”
― Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha
Cool Beer Holder,
Monco Poncho
Four Bullets
Richardson, Texas
“People worry about kids playing with guns, and teenagers watching violent videos; we are scared that some sort of culture of violence will take them over. Nobody worries about kids listening to thousands – literally thousands – of songs about broken hearts and rejection and pain and misery and loss.”
― Nick Hornby, High Fidelity
Monco Poncho
Four Bullets Brewery
Richardson, Texas
You were born too soon
I was born too late
But every time I look at that ugly lake
It reminds me of me
It reminds me of me
Do you like American music
We like American music
I like American music baby
—-American Music, Violent Femmes
The Monco Poncho
at Four Bullets Brewery
Richardson, Texas
“I am an excitable person who only understands life lyrically, musically, in whom feelings are much stronger as reason. I am so thirsty for the marvelous that only the marvelous has power over me. Anything I can not transform into something marvelous, I let go. Reality doesn’t impress me. I only believe in intoxication, in ecstasy, and when ordinary life shackles me, I escape, one way or another. No more walls.”
― Anaïs Nin
Art Department
University of Texas at Dallas
Richardson, Texas
“But suppose the endlessly dead were to
wake in us some emblem:
they might point to the catkins hanging
from the empty hazel trees, or direct
us to the rain
descending on black earth in early
spring. —And we, who always think of happiness
rising, would feel the emotion
that almost baffles us
when a happy thing falls.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Duino Elegies
Saturday, at the brewery tour at Four Bullets Brewery, they had, as is common at these sorts of things, a number of games, including the grand hipster pastime of Giant Jenga.
I always like to watch this and always try to photograph the moment when the pile of wooden blocks falls.
Giant Jenga requires careful planning.
She was able to remove this piece.
But if fell later as they tried to move another piece. Note the rare “suspended section” of blocks. I’m not sure of the physics of leaving a few behind for a handful of microseconds.
Some old images of falling Giant Jenga.
The end of a game of giant Jenga – Community Beer Company, Dallas, Texas
Deep Ellum, Dallas, Texas
Front door to Four Bullets Brewery, Richardson, Texas
For about I year I watched the progress of a new small brewery here in my own town of Richardson. It was established by two experienced home brewers that wanted to take the next step and open up their own establishment. It was called Four Bullets Brewery and has finally had its soft opening, with the official grand opening scheduled in a couple months.
It’s been open on Saturdays from noon to six with the typical tour deal – ten bucks for a glass and three beer tickets. I have been enjoying these craft beer tours for a few years now and really wanted to check out Four Bullets. The last couple weeks were too busy for me but today I was able to make a visit.
The brewery is located in a little industrial area north of downtown, near the Arapaho DART train station. It’s very close to where I live – but there is a railroad track blocking the way, so I rode north past the rail station and doubled back. It was a nice, easy ride, about three and a half miles.
I folded my Xootr Swift and locked it to a sign out in front – I should have ridden around to the back of the building, but I didn’t know.
My bike folded and locked up in front of Four Bullets.
The brewery is small – about the size of a generous garage, but it has an extensive open area out back with tables and some games. The crowd grew throughout the time I was there, until they had a very respectable bunch hanging around. A food truck sold barbeque in the back – he had his smoker located upwind and the smell made it impossible to resist.
The crowd grows in the patio in back of the Brewery.
I’m not expert on beers – but I enjoyed the three I tried. They all had the complexity and freshness you expect in a small batch craft beer. I especially liked the Oatmeal Stout – excellent and not too heavy, and the Pale Ale – very drinkable with a lot of flavor without being too hoppy. It’ll be interesting to watch Four Bullets as they go along – see if they get more adventurous with their beer varieties.
The City of Richardson looks at this industrial park as a potential little Design District – with the same kind of development – restaurants, galleries, breweries – that Dallas is working on in the area between downtown and the river. A food truck park is slated to open soon. I hope the trend continues – it would be a cool thing.
I will definitely go back, maybe try and organize a bike ride from a DART station through the east side of the city down to the brewery.
Yeah, that’s the ticket.
“Speak softly, but carry a big can of paint.”
― Banksy, Wall and Piece
Anti-Graffiti Rectangles
Richardson, Texas
It its infinite wisdom The Man fights graffiti here by painting giant rectangles of Pepto-Bismol Pink over the forbidden tags and symbols. I guess this is so your imagination can run wild thinking of what horrors must have been underneath.
“Censorship is telling a man he can’t have a steak just because a baby can’t chew it.”
― Mark Twain
The other day I wrote about Dead Drops – places where people have put USB thumb drives out into the public for others to place and exchange data files. There was one in Exposition Park here in Dallas that I visited and took a look at the files within.
Really, if you don’t understand why this is an interesting (as opposed to good) idea, I don’t think I can explain it. But I found it fascinating.
Oh, one hint right off the bat… if you are interested in USB Dead Drops – get a simple USB extension cable. There are all these photos with folks shoving their laptops up to the wall – that seems crazy to me. Digging around my stuff at home – I found two cables that I already had. One of these will make life easier.
The next step, of course, was for me to put one out myself. I started thinking about a good location. I didn’t want to put it in a wall that belonged to someone or that was public property… that seems too much like vandalism. As I thought about it – I realized I wanted to place Dead Drops in more remote locations – places where people wouldn’t stumble across them, but where they could be reached easily. I also wanted to find a place where I could check it fairly regularly. When you look at the Dead Drop Database – so many of them are missing, broken, or vandalized (people are such assholes). I’ll try to keep mine repaired… as best as I can.
There are a lot of web pages with instructions on how to place a USB Dead Drop, but I was most interested in an Instructable on how to Create a USB Dead Drop in Nature.
After thinking about it, I remember an old abandoned concrete bridge piling along the concrete hiking/biking trail that runs through the Spring Creek Nature Area. That would be perfect. Nobody could accuse me of vandalizing a huge hunk of ancient abandoned concrete in the middle of the woods. It is, however, right off the trail and would be easy to get to.
That complex of trails is only a few miles from my house and is my most common recreational cycling route – so I can keep tabs on the drop. The only downside is that those woods are popular with kids and they are the ones most likely to discover and destroy my drop – but that’s something I’ll have to risk.
The first step was to prepare the USB. I dug around and found a cheap, generic, 4 GB drive – a local electronics store sells these at a very low price.
Cheap Generic USB Drive for Dead Drop.
With some pliers, I pried off the plastic case to minimize the size.
Innards of the USB drive.
Then I wrapped the electronics in Teflon tape – for insulation from the sealant I would use to set the thing.
Drive wrapped in tape.
Most people use fast-setting cement, but I thought I’d go with adhesive sealer – mostly because I had a tube around the house. I put a readme.txt and the deadrops.txt on the drive, along with a PDF of a story I wrote and a couple other little things. I packed the drive, the glue, and a chisel onto my bike and set off.
Stuff used to install a USB Dead Drop.
The place seemed to be as good as I had supposed. There was a hole in the concrete, I enlarged it a bit until most of the drive fit in. I glued it in with the adhesive, packing in some pebbles around for filler.
It only took a couple of minutes. Then I took three photos:
The concrete pillar off the trail where I put the Dead Drop USB.
A medium view of the USB Dead Drop off the trail.
Close up view of the USB Dead Drop mounted in the concrete.
Then I put it on the Dead Drops database to help someone find the drop. Here’s the description I put on the Dead Drops site:
Spring Creek Nature Trail is a concrete bike/pedestrian trail in a beautiful bit of thick creekbottom woods south of Renner Road, just East of US75 in Richardson, Texas.
The USB is right off the Spring Creek Nature Trail. It is in the side of an old concrete railroad trestle just to the west of the DART train overhead – which is just west of Routh Creek Parkway between Glenville and Renner. If you are walking, you can park at Renner and US75 and follow the trail into the woods. When you reach the DART train overhead, turn and you can see the concrete trestle, right off the concrete trail. Walk down to it and the USB is glued to the North side, in the center.
Here’s the location on Google Maps.
Now I wait. It will be interesting if anyone visits the thing.
The Taco Joint, Richardson, Texas
“Inconceivable!”
“You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
—-William Goldman, The Princess Bride
“Maybe it’s wrong when we remember breakthroughs to our own being as something that occurs in discrete, extraordinary moments. Maybe falling in love, the piercing knowledge that we ourselves will someday die, and the love of snow are in reality not some sudden events; maybe they were always present. Maybe they never completely vanish, either.”
― Peter Høeg, Smilla’s Sense of Snow
One Last Look At Winter
Bill Chance 