Blogs from North America - page 9

June 2 ( 2023) was the last day of classes on Friday. Being relieved of the burden of labor is a wonderful feeling. After a very hectic school year, I'm looking forward to the summer and some alone time. I have a lot planned for the summer, including my wedding, an eighteen-day trip to Europe, and my last Phish tour, among other things. It should be a great time.... read more

The very next time you are in the East Bay, or Oakland, or better yet, near Kaiser Hospital at 40th near Broadway. You must stop here! My travel buddy, Mr. Mike discovered Umami Mart at 4027 Broadway in Oakland. Here is an "About Us" from their website: Since 2012, we have been an independently owned small business, headquartered in Oakland, CA, striving to bring joy through quality products from Japan. Our shop is a space to discover something new about Japanese cuisine and culture through its kitchen tools, barware, and drinks; while the blog is a space to share recipes and knowledge. Read more about the evolution of Umami Mart here. About Yoko Kumano After spending 5 years as a salary woman in Ginza, Yoko moved back to the Bay Area to open Umami Mart with ... read more

New Orleans, Louisiana is the location of the oldest continuously-operating Cathedral in North America, home to the famous Joan of Arc statue, and a sort of cesspool-Disneyland exploiting touristic appetites for tawdry ghost tours, witchcraft shops, and fortune tellers. Just the kind of place that makes you think, "Saints & Sinners". According to Google, that's even the name of a restaurant in New Orleans owned by Channing Tatum... We didn't go there, but it sure feels like we experienced the full gamut of America's moral spectrum on this trip. Are we the Heroes or the Villains? These moral quandaries started back in Seattle, on the way to the Kenyan Reggae warehouse party. On the phone with one of my Jamaican bredren, I mentioned the artist we were going to see and I got an earful. Allegedly, ... read more

Shelley and I woke up in the morning to some cooler weather and the car was covered with snow and a bit of ice. Being good Canadians, we had our trusty snow brush to get rid of everything. The snow storm we were able to avoid by being further south. We left the hotel and were on the road early after a ‘so-so’ breakfast. I had scrambled ‘eggs’ with hot sauce and four sausage patties….but the coffee was good! It was an uneventful drive really; which was good. We made a few stops here and there to let Maggie out where there was grass to pee on. She was happy with that. We ended up in Pooler, Georgia. We didn’t want to stay right in Savanah and this was close enough. The bonus for us was ... read more

Las Vegas authorities estimate that around 450,000 people will visit the city for the big event, although most of them, obviously, won’t be able to enter the stadium. The game will take place at Allegiant Stadium, a state-of-the-art facility and home of the Las Vegas Raiders, with a capacity for 65,000 fans for a regular game. For this matchup, however, it’s estimated that there will be around 72,000 people in attendance. That may sound like a lot, but this stadium actually has the fifth-smallest capacity of all the venues in the league, which has only contributed to ticket prices going up for this edition. According to StubHub’s data, 26% of ticket buyers are from California, meaning Niners fans could have home-field advantage. Nevada and Kansas/Missouri are next with eight and seven percent, respectively. This ... read more