#102 - friday night shenanigans.

this past friday, i was relaxing around the apartment post-work & got a phone call from my pal mike weber. i know mike from back in my days at ny press, where i was an ad sales dude & he was an illustrator & eventually, the art director. his ny press cartoons were always densely amazing, but the moment he's infamous for is when his draft cover of the paper, with the placeholder headline "joes blows fucky fuckball" accidentally went to press, prompting a massive half-assed attempt at a recall by the publishers. we hang out fairly often these days & recently he's created the "interactive social contract," a "user generated database of philosophy and law." basically, you create laws & the community-at-large votes them up or down. the interface/navigation on the site is pretty damn awesome.

mike's one of those outgoing, gregarious types, someone i definitely enjoy hanging out with (except for during his EXTREMELY belligerent moments), as he makes friends with folks wherever he goes, which provides a nice complement to my initial shyness & recent introverted nature towards people. i have a vivid memory from a few years back of exiting a bar to join him for a smoke & finding him outside, already chatting with two cute girls.  as i stepped outside, he remarked, "shawn, i've found us wives." that definitely broke the ice. we've been trying to perfect the making friends & meeting fine ladies team technique for a while now (i've been extra introverted until recently), but i think we finally got it down on friday.

...so after not hanging out for a little while, he just got a new phone & new bike, so decided to make his way down to park slope for some almost-summer drinking fun on the neighborhood's bar patios. our first stop was at commonwealth, home of the best jukebox in all of brooklyn. people are friendly there, but are often engrossed in the group of friends they come with. we didn't make any friends on the patio, but did spend a little bit inside chatting with three sisters, two of who were cute twins. mike got one of their numbers & when we were leaving, we got in a conversation with a girl out front, who mike exchanged numbers with. future park slope hanging out buddies?

after a few drinks there, we made our way down the street to the gate, one of the neighborhood's best locales for both tasty beers & a decent crop of attractive & interesting park slopers, who fill the patio during the warmer months. we never made it out to the patio, as mike struck up a conversation with two girls near the bar. they were cool, but after a while of chatting, one was tired & although she toughed it out for a while, they eventually they took off...& mike got one of their numbers. more future park slope hanging out buddies? we'll see. if so, it's already shaping up to be a pretty fun summer.

#102 - friday night shenanigans.
snack: valor dark chocolate with orange
drink: oskar blues brewing mama's little yella pils



when mike first showed up to my apartment, we were just going to head straight out to the bars, but there were only five minutes left in game seven of the pittsburgh-detroit stanley cup final & i was engrossed, so i ran downstairs to let him in & we headed back up to watch the rest of the game. i only had one beer left in my fridge, so we split that & finished what was left of a bar of valor dark chocolate with orange. valor is a spanish company who, if their website is any indication, enjoys loops of soothing spanish guitar.  who doesn't though?

mike & i both had the same reaction to the valor bar. it has an odd gumminess to it, due to the gelatinous orange pieces sprinkled throughout the bar.  luckily, we both enjoyed the gumminess & the dark chocolate.  personally, i enjoy it when the fruit's that prevalent in the mix.  anyway, it made for a nice, quick snack while we watched the last few minutes of the game.

i poured that only beer--a oskar blues brewing mama's little yella pils--into glasses & we split that as we watched the red wings lose the stanley cup to the pens.  oskar blues is a colorado based company that makes a solid series of canned beers & out of the ones i've tried, my favorite is the dale's pale ale. on top of being the tastiest canned beer i've ever had (sorry, guinness), it's part of a specific positive brooklyn backyard cookout experience from a few summers back...& it's hard to top nostalgia when it comes to choosing a beer.

as for the mama's little yella pils, it has more flavor than most pilsners, which are often essentially malty water.  the only drawback was that it was so light & smooth-drinking that we were both done with our respective six ounces within a matter of minutes, even before the hockey game ended.  as such, we had to spend a good five minutes sitting there on a friday night without a beer.  it's not something i'm proud of.  on the other hand, our meeting people teamwork from that evening...now that's something to be proud of...meeting people is easy!