Monthly Archives: November 2009

Watch your back, Boundary Bay

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The first few times I tried the offerings at Bellingham’s younger brew pub, Chuckanut Brewery & Kitchen, around the time they opened about a year ago, I was thoroughly unimpressed.

I’m not a big fan of German beers, so I don’t hold it against them that their taps at the time were dominated by Pilsner, Lager, Kolsch, and Schwarzbier. However, I do hold it against them that that their IPA was TERRIBLE!

When I learned a few weeks ago that Chuckanut earned two gold and two silver medals, as well as the Best Small Brewpub award at the 2009 Great American Beer Festival, I figured that either I don’t know ANYTHING about beer or Chuckanut has made a dramatic improvement in one year.

It is my pleasure, then, to report that I thoroughly enjoyed the beers I tasted on a recent visit.

Chuckanut is bucking convention, eschewing the trend of naming their beers for entertainment rather than identification. Therefore, rather than something like Angry Angel Kolsch, Chuckanut offers, simply, a Kolsch. Rather than Harpoon Leviathan Big Bohemian Pilsner, you’ll find, simply, Pilsner. Fortunately, their beer tastes much better than their boring, utilitarian names suggest.

On my visit I sampled three of their beers that I hadn’t tried before: Foreign Stout, Strong Ale, and Brown Ale. (Screw those German beers!)

The stout was my favorite, the perfect pint for a cold night in Bellingham, very nice complexity, malts roasted to perfection, and great full body and mouthfeel. Yum!!!

The Strong Ale was incredibly well balanced between the hops and malts and had a very full body that belied its light amber color. Like the stout, its 6.5% alcohol level was not overwhelming at all, and, rather, offered a very nice warming effect. (Again, nice on a cold night.)

The final offering was the biggest surprise of the evening. The Brown Ale is not a style that I’m particularly fond of. My experience with them is that they tend to be too thin, malty, and sweet, leaving me wanting the greater complexity and full body of a good stout. The brown was ordered by a friend and I was offered a taste, otherwise I wouldn’t have been tempted to try it.

Chuckanut’s Brown Ale, while still not as full-bodied as I’d prefer, a fault of the style not the brewer, was the most delicious brown I’ve had. The malts, like those used in the stout, were roasted perfection, offering similar coffee and chocolate notes, and there was just enough hops to avoid the sweetness that can ruin other browns for me.

While my beloved Boundary Bay Brewery still retains favorite pub status in my heart, they now have the first serious competition right here in Bellingham since Orchard Street Brewery went out of business in 2004. Hopefully this will be a healthy competition, inspiring both breweries to uphold their considerable standards and offer an expanding variety of beers in the future.

Work in Progress: Boundary Bay vs. Chuckanut

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If you know me, you know that I loves me some fine, hand-crafted fermented grain beverages, particularly down at Boundary Bay.

Well, I recently moonlighted at our other award-winning brewery here in Bellingham, Chuckanut Brewery and Kitchen, and naturally I’ve got something to say about it.

Soon.



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Lightcatcher: They did it right

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When I wrote a post a couple of weeks ago, celebrating the opening of the new Lightcatcher Building addition to the Whatcom Museum, I hadn’t yet set foot in the place. It was clear enough from the photos in the Bellingham Herald and on the museum’s website that the architecture of the building and its largest inaugural exhibit were very promising. But, you never know with a project like this in a town with a population of 75,000, a town more associated with fishing and logging than fine art.

Well, I’ve now paid a visit and I’m thrilled to report that, in my opinion, the Whatcom Museum, the City of Bellingham, and the private benefactors who worked together to make this happen clearly hit the ball out of the park. The fact that visiting the museum was a great experience, not just for me, but for my wife, and more importantly my 12-year old son, says a lot about what, specifically, was done right here.

The facility is a class act, offering a sleek, stylish atmosphere in an eco-friendly building, very impressive, high-quality works of art, and a wonderful Family Interactive Gallery (FIG) with, um, interactive exhibits for youth of all ages.

I was particularly struck by the number of works on display in the various rooms. Somehow, my biggest fear for the museum was that, with so much expense and attention going towards the building, that the actual collections would be sparse and marginal. Not the case at all. As is my usual experience with contemporary art, I don’t always appreciate or “get” everything I see, but, truly, there were very few pieces that made me roll my eyes and shrug off as not worthy of my time. Overall, the experience was one of artists reaching for a creative vision. The attempt might not always be successful, but I can at least admire the effort.

I did hear one complaint from a parent that the FIG was a disappointing replacement for the former Children’s Museum, which admittedly did offer a larger space, more stuff, and more opportunities for getting physical. Yet, I always felt that some of the exhibits in the former space were often too obviously put together on a shoestring budget. Oh, they were inventive and wonderful in their own way, and the folks who worked so hard on them deserve a lot of credit and appreciation. However, the old would not have worked alongside the new. For the long-term success of the Whatcom Museum, the FIG needed to be cleaner, more modern.

Time will tell, of course, and much future success will depend on choices made on future exhibits. For instance, when I asked how often new exhibits might come along, the answer was something like a couple times a year. I’m not sure that this will be sufficient if they want to keep people coming, especially if they want people to come back repeatedly, and it seems like the best way to sustain their success is via the financial support of return visitors.

For now, I’m pretty darned proud of our town.


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Origin of the Feces

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There’s a scene in a movie that I love a lot, Lawrence Kasdan’s 1983 film The Big Chill, that I thought of today for the first time in years.

Michael, a People Magazine writer played by Jeff Goldblum, is talking with his friends about his job:

Michael: Where I work, we only have one editorial rule: you can’t write anything longer than the average person can read during the average crap. I’m tired of having all of my work read in the can.

Harold: People read Tolstoy in the can.

Michael: Yes, but they can’t finish it

I thought of this scene as soon as I read the news today that a rare first edition of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, one of only 1,250 copies printed in 1859, had been found on a shelf in the guest bathroom in a house in Oxford, England.

So, if you, like me, consider a book like this to be comparable in weight and substance to Tolstoy, either the People Magazine editorial board was wrong, Harold was right, or folks in Oxford spend a LOT of time on the toilet.

Meanwhile, how do you suppose Charles Darwin would take this news?

Would the fact that the book is predicted to sell for close to $100,000 at an auction on the 150th anniversary of its publication make him feel any better?

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Human Decency

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I can be a very cynical person sometimes, even though overly cynical people annoy the hell out of me and bring me down.

But, now as much as ever, even though the cynics want to call it pollyanna, I think we should shout it from the rooftops when some basic human decency shows up.

Here’s the caption to the photo to the right, which I found in the Bellingham Herald:

    Whatcom County Superior Court Judge Chuck Snyder gives Ashenafi Campbell, 2, a stuffed animal after he was officially adopted by Erin Campbell, right, on National Adoption Day at the Whatcom Superior Court, Friday morning, Nov. 20, 2009, in Bellingham. Looking on is Campbell’s son Christian Campbell, 7. Twenty families finalized the adoption of 25 children.

I was adopted, actually, so this hits close to home. Yet, I was adopted at birth, my adoptive parents knew they were getting a newborn, it is generally true that most prospective adoptive parents want newborns, and the usual objection to adopting children of other ages has to do with a notion that older children have been through bad experiences, and so a clean slate is preferable.

All the more reason to be moved by this article about National Adoption Day. 25 children of various ages adopted, no newborns mentioned. Powerful stuff.

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Robots enlisted to defend Christmas

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Some people are SO gullible.

The folks at Engadget have this to say about the following video:

Robots perform synchronized interpretive dance for the holidays, fill us with cheer

You know what we love? Dancing robots and Christmas tunes. So combining the two and throwing the video up on YouTube would be akin to heaven, right? Well, as you’ll see in the amazing video after the break: it doesn’t get much better than this. In fact, it might even be enough to clear the “bah humbug” out of us for good.


How can they be SO naïve?! Don’t they know that there’s a War on Christmas?!

It’s my theory, and I’m sticking to it, that these seemingly adorable machines are actually armed with frickin’ lasers, and they will take you out if you so much as consider purchasing heretical Happy Holidays greeting cards.

For instance, if I was one of the dancers in the new Gap holiday ad, I’d be watching my back. Folks at the American Family Association are pissed!


(For the record, I happen to think that the Gap ad’s “Happy Whatever-you-wannukah” is hilarious…wait, was that a robot I just saw over there?!)


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