Positive Jams

I first heard about The Hold Steady as a sudden monsoon struck I-77 just outside Mayberry Mt. Airy in the summer of 2010. Heading back to NY from my mother's house in the NC foothills, I remember having to pull over to the shoulder to avoid hydroplaning because I was driving a Pontiac Trans Am with bald tires. Rising above the cacophony of the precipitation making violent contact with GM metal, an interview with frontman Craig Finn on Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me was playing in the background. Turning my attention from the road to the radio, I recall hearing Craig speak about his skeptical dentist not believing someone with his accountant-like appearance could be in a rock band. I was intrigued. After getting back home, I downloaded the latest album, and just like that, NPR had introduced me to an alcohol-fueled dive-bar band. To be fair, it was also a band with a fan-made Wiki devoted [in part] to a full annotation of the numerous references that weave their song's lyrics together. NPR loves that kind of band.

Over the next few months, I worked my way back through their extensive catalog. As I dug deeper into their history, the vocals became less melodic and more abrasive. It was eerily similar to discovering the Goo Goo Dolls through Name and then back-reading all the way to this polished beginning. The Hold Steady's published work begins chronologically with the droning "Positive Jam," that kicks off their 2004 debut album, Almost Killed Me. Craig seems to begin shows a few beers deep. By the time they launch an encore, some lyrics become quite slurred, and it's safe to say that beer mixes well with The Hold Steady. For a band out of Brooklyn with strong midwestern roots, it's only fitting that Champion Brewing of Virginia made a commemorative "swiggable" beer called A Positive Jam. Just like my late discovery of the band, I was a few years off in realizing that this existed and originated in the town of Charlottesville, VA.

Charlottesville happened to be on Ryan Adam's tour schedule this month at a quaint outdoor amphitheater at the edge of the downtown mall. There's an Omni Hotel at the other end which has become just outdated enough to be quite affordable. Between the two are numerous bars, restaurants and breweries. Included in that list is the birthplace of A Positive Jam. Quite naturally, a perfect day involving food, drink and live music was assembling itself. We just had to get to Virginia. Having lived in Harrisonburg for while, I was quite familiar with the desolation and misery that is Route 29. While Route 11 has its own potato chips, Route 29 has only pain (see left). It's just about three hours of drive time from Greensboro to Charlottesville, and we made the amateur mistake of stopping for lunch in Danville. Somehow in my four years of traveling this corridor I had successfully avoided the angsty town that is Danville. Just to up the ante and make this a real game of Russian roulette, we really took our lives into our own hands by opting for a meal at Sheetz --that is, the gas station that's also its own fast food counter.

Sheetz is kind of like JetBlue in that it's an excellent experience until one thing starts to go wrong. Then the whole operation just unravels. This time, someone stole our food from the counter and we had to wait another 15 minutes for our bag of grease. This setback was probably the Universe strongly hinting that the "Big Mozz" chicken sandwich I ordered was not the wisest of selections, especially for road food. Maintaining no association with the reputable mozzarella producer in Brooklyn it predates, this "sandwich" is actually a filet of fried chicken in a bun with marinara, provolone and several fried mozzarella sticks. It is to Sheetz what the bacon-wrapped deep-dish pizza was to Little Caesers. Curiously, the Big Mozz is the only menu item besides "pizza" that naturally contains the letter "z" (i.e., wingz, burgerz and cup o' fryz). This unforced spelling appealed to me on a grammatical level, and the deal was sealed.

I can now say that the best way to coast up US 29 is during a full blown fried food coma. Everything north of Liberty University was a blur, and ignorance is bliss in this area. Arriving in Charlottesville with a couple of hours before Ryan and the Shining took the stage, we made our way to Champion on foot. I was somewhat bummed to learn something after a three hour drive that the Internet would have told me at home for free: Positive Jam is a spring seasonal and not offered on tap (or otherwise) in late July. Fortunately, the Against Me!-themed stout --everyone's favorite summer beer style-- was on tap. A good beer based on a band I could not care less about is likely a better experience than a potentially awful beer associated with a band I do enjoy, so I consider this a win. Perhaps it's a slightly-muted victory. Nothing screams 90-degree summer weather like a stout that's darker than Guinness.

Ryan took the stage just before 8:30pm with several images of cats scattered throughout the stage. Oversized Fender amplifiers, a vintage Dr. Pepper vending machine and 80s arcade games filled the space between the musicians. It was like a Rush stage setup but less functional. The highlight of the show was probably witnessing as Ryan very publicly berated the woman in front of us for repeatedly screaming song requests in unnaturally high pitches. If it turns out that the show was taped, a shrill "SIXTEEN DAYS!" should cut right through the crowd noise leading up to "Oh My Sweet Carolina."

After blazing through 17 songs (counting the three improvised bits), the house lights came up. It was barely 10pm when the band left the stage for an obligatory encore break before running back to knock out three final songs. There was a song about purple houses and purple trousers, but my personal favorite oddball song lasting less than two minutes didn't make the final cut. It was a significantly shorter show than the one he played there last year, and this year's selections were mainly repeats from last year's show. I don't really mind the repetition because I like reliving the past, but I do feel somewhat cheated out of five songs... and most of the ones we were told to expect on Twitter. I never thought a scenario would emerge where this would be an appropriate statement, but I am kind of bummed that there were no Taylor Swift covers.

Once the band launched into the closing number, we slowly made our way to the gate to beat the crowd to the dinner hot spots. After standing in the summer heat for several hours, my partner in crime was weak enough that I was able to strong-arm her into a late-night visit to that one place we always go when in Charlottesville: Miller's Downtown. I first dragged her here years ago because this is in some sense the birthplace of the Dave Matthews Band. A young Dave Matthews was once a bartender here and according to legend stalked the local musicians, cherry picking his favorite musicians to form everyone's favorite band to hate. Probably the most spectacular aspect about the place is the complete lack of reference to anything about Dave Matthews. Miller's was doing just fine before DMB, and they're continuing to stand on their own as just a really well-put-together tavern with phenomenal local musicians. John D'Earth (frequent DMB contributing musician/guest) still plays a weekly show there with his five-piece band. It's real, and it's awesome.

Miller's has a late-night kitchen which was quite appreciated after our concert. My usual bar order of a burger did not disappoint, and my wife was able to grab two corn dogs. Their beer selection rotates frequently, and I was pleasantly surprised to see my all-time favorite coffee ale featured. Brewed just down the road in San Diego, Ballast Point's Calm Before the Storm first caught my attention in the store because I generally like buying beer that features skeletons on the packaging. Ballast Point is notably expensive, and this pint set me back a cool $8. For those looking to pinch pennies, Miller's also serves the fairly appropriate Miller Light. I couldn't help but try to imagine David J. Matthews explaining to a customer that $8 is a reasonable price for the beer given the exquisite varieties of hops used to brew it. Well, I suppose Dave probably did not have to fill out this extensive application back in 1990.

Getting our orders in before the rest of the rabble stumbled in from the show, we capped off a perfect evening well before midnight. The one nagging issue was the disappointment from not finding the beer I originally sought at Champion Brewing. Figuring some run-down bottle shop might still have a few cases lying around from the distant spring, I turned to my dear friend, Beer Menus. Then I came to the alarming discovery that of the four places carrying this in late July, two of them were in Greensboro. So taking a quick trip after the trip, I was able to snag a can to enjoy with my collection of books from Gate City Growlers, a mere mile from my home. In the end, our ears stopped ringing and our food was digested, but I still have a beer based on The Hold Steady sitting in the refrigerator. Rock on Ryan Adams and all the best to the Goo Goo Dolls (circa 1994).

Update (07/24/2016): As the weekend winds down, I can now report that I've actually tasted Champion Brewing's Positive Jam. The casual beer fan I am, I read "wheat ale flavored with spices" and thought it would be refreshing and predictable, like Sam Summer Ale or The Force Awakens. Instead, the "lavender and coriander" are a bit overpowering, and it kind of feels like drinking very smooth, liquefied potpourri. Not at all what I expected, and fairly highbrow. Well played, Champion.

Oh My Sweet Carolina

Growing up in North Carolina, I wanted nothing more than to leave. It's a state with a beautiful coastline and majestic mountains. It's a state where the water allows one to dissolve more sugar than should be physically possible into the sweet tea. It's also a state where a sign reading, "The KKK Welcomes You To Johnston County" wasn't removed until the late 1980's. Give any angst-fueled Raleigh native a few years of breakfast sandwiches and New York traffic, and he'll start to forget about that last part. The overwhelming longing for a real biscuit distorts certain memories.

Cracker Barrel is a nationwide chain. There's even one in Maine, but no one worth his gravy would dare call something a "biscuit" in any state north of Virginia. Going here outside of the south is kind of like getting pizza in the Ukraine. If it's all you know, then I suppose ignorance is bliss. But if you grew up in North Carolina, then nothing but the real thing is worth the heartburn. Oh, the glorious heartburn. There are rocking chairs on that porch for a reason.

My dinner started as a BLT. For those of us uncomfortable with this vegetable-to-meat ratio, they let you add cheese and a chicken breast to it. I opted for grilled chicken. They'll also fry it, but that just seemed like playing Russian roulette with my arteries. Either way, the lettuce and tomato just seemed out of place at this point. So yes, I got a BLT and threw the LT under the bus. I mean, hey, there's no sense in pretending that there's anything redeeming left in this sandwich.

Aside from being able to drink unlimited quantities of Cheerwine, there's only one thing you need to know about Cook-Out: milkshake possibilities. Depending on the season, their menu contains 39-40 flavors, and they let you add as many as you dare. Practically speaking, this gets disgusting quickly. But if you think about the numbers, it's just impressive. A simple calculation* shows that with 39 add-ins (since vanilla is the base), there are about 550 BILLION unique milkshakes. Keep in mind, a quarter of those contain Hi-C and Peanut Banana.

Traditionally, I make the mistake of hitting up the first Bojangles I see in Virginia as I'm driving home. This results in 1) weaving down I-95 because I'm too wrapped up in reuniting with this lost love, and 2) going back almost every day I'm there, hoping to get my fill before I head back to New York. This time, I saved it for my last meal. One can actually go a lot of different directions with meat, potatoes and bread. Add a deep fryer to the mix, and there's really only one clear way to go. It's this, and it's perfection in a box.


* The Cook-Out milkshake computation

First, warm up with an easier problem: pretend you have only one add-in on the menu, say M&M's. You can choose to have M&M's or forgo M&M's, so you have two possible milkshakes. No magic there.

Now, pretend you have two add-ins, say M&M's and chocolate syrup. You first choose to have M&M's or omit them, which gives you two possibilities. For each of those possibilities, you can choose to add or omit chocolate syrup. That means for each of two choices you have two choices. Two choices times two choices gives you four possible milkshakes. Still reasonable, right?

[Exercise: Work out how many unique milkshake there are if you have three possible add-ins. If you guessed it's two times two times two = eight, you'd be correct. If you think I'm lying, write them out... it doesn't take that long. Or don't, because this is just a dumb blog.]

Now let's look at 39 add-ins. It works the same way. You can choose M&M's or no M&M's, you can choose Hi-C or no Hi-C, and so on. Multiplying two thirty nine times will take you a while, but Google can quickly tell you that the answer is 549,755,813,888, or just under 550 billion.

Thursday's Lunch: Melt Shop

New York is a city of food fads. Cupcakes were really big for a while. After the novelty of being able to order gourmet dessert at 4AM wore off, people looked for the next decadent thing. Hence, the grilled cheese pandemonium that has invaded most neighborhoods.

A fair account of the history can be found here, but all one needs to know is that this enterprise has morphed into a miniature fleet of trucks and several upscale eateries. It's already so five minutes ago. Ronnie, the underground grilled cheese dealer of the East Village, shut down his operation before I could buy a sandwich in a transaction that could be mistaken for acquiring... well, blow. Apparently the threat of being shut down by the Health Department became too great to press on. What this meant to me is that I had to journey to midtown to catch the grilled cheese train. Bummer.

Melt Shop got a fair amount of press when they opened, so I took notice earlier this year. It just took me this many months to gain the courage to make the journey to midtown for lunch. Of course, what they don't tell you is that seating space here is just a myth during the lunch hour. I took a risk and barreled east as quickly as I could, ultimately finding an empty set of stairs on 1st Avenue in the mid 50's before the molten meal congealed entirely. It's a strange enough sight for some dude to eat a gourmet grilled cheese sandwich while sitting in front of an abandoned building as all the suited folks from the UN walk by. It pushes it over the edge when he takes out a camera to take pictures of his own lunch.

I got a side of tater tots... because I forgot one can only comfortably take so much grease on a hot afternoon. The main course is the bacon/cheddar variety, with some other disclaimers such as "aged" or "maple" that I quickly forgot; they had me at "bacon." What isn't explicit in the description of this beast is the entire stick of butter that they fry this thing with, and that's what you feel when you walk back home on a summer afternoon. However, as I wondered if I was going to expire, I did always came back to, "well... what a tasty way to go."

Verdict: Make no mistake, this is just comfort food in a pretty package. It's good, but you have to stand in line with a bunch of people wearing suits to get it. The Three-martini lunch has officially been traded for the kid's lunch in trendy clothing. It's probably for the best, because I don't like olives, and bacon is apparently my Muse.

Thursday's Lunch: Blurry (and Large) Tomatoes at 'wichcraft

Apparently, water has seeped into my phone's already rickety camera. Things look a little fuzzy for the time being.

The BLT at 'wichcraft is featured at #7 on NY Magazine's list of seasonal foods to try before summer draws to a close. This sandwich features Greenmarket tomatoes, whose availability determines when BLT season (euphemism for the dog days of August) occurs.

Today's lunch comes from the first of two (been to the Dallas area recently?) sandwich shops on my radar that refuses to spell out "sandwich" to the bitter end... er, beginning. 'wichcraft, as we're all aware, was created by one of those Food Network personalities. This alone should price it out of my reach. There's one by NYU whose tenured-faculty/student clientele ratio is approximately three godzillion-to-one. The only other place in this area which such distinction is Knickerbocker Bar and Grill... because who doesn't need a three course steak lunch to spice up his boring Tuesday afternoons?

The sandwich place is, relatively speaking, for the rabble; so I can afford to shell out $14.50 for lunch when I'm feeling lucky. No, it's not absurd. But keep in mind I could almost buy three feet of BLT at the Subway across the street with that money. The sandwich itself comes with a price tag of $9.87, which sounds rather arbitrary until you realize that this makes for a round figure when tax is included. I do appreciate that. However, it also means I paid almost five dollars for a bag containing about four potato chips and a bottle of pop. Okay, so the bottle was made of glass, and the chips were kettle cooked... but THREE FEET, I say!

The tomato was certainly the star of this sandwich, and given the other ingredients, that usually means that the bacon just failed. Even without the delicious distraction of pork, I've never really remembered a particular tomato like I will remember these. It didn't hurt that these "slices" came in roughly the same dimensions as short stacks of pancakes at IHOP. Killer tomatoes, indeed (okay last time).

My only method for assessing how "organic" something (so often do I find this necessary) has always been based on size. I remember pulling toothpick-sized carrots from my grandparents' yard as a child. Never has an unnaturally large, store-bought carrot tasted remotely as satisfying as the shrimpy ones I used to nurse from seed to snack. Maybe the recent sewage spill acted as supercharged fertilizer for these guys, but these were notably large tomatoes. From what I can gather, the Greenmarket name-dropping only suggests that these were "locally grown," and I can find no stipulations about what kind of BLT experience-enhancing chemicals were used in these guys.

Verdict: Well, I didn't really want to like it. When I found out that the tomatoes weren't necessarily hormone free, it started to taste better. Still, if I'm not paying for "organic," then I don't know why I'm paying so much for this smallish sandwich (it could have been three feet long!). Still, at the end of the day, I can't say I don't approve of anything that uses bacon in a constructive way. Constructive and tasty.

Tuesday's (pre-Ireland) Lunch: Ostrich Sliders

In light of the fact that I'm hopping on a Dublin-bound plane in six hours, it seemed wise to use lunch as an excuse to savor some fine, American cuisine. A full blown "burgers and fries" style lunch also makes it less likely that I'll shell out seven dollars for a can of stale peanuts... because that's your only choice when you're thirty thousand feet up, halfway across the Atlantic.

BareBurger is one of those places that just crops up around NYU when no one is looking. It's fairly popular, so maybe it's just that I wasn't looking. If you can get past the simple facts that (1) they're really proud of what they do, (2) they offer agave nectar in lieu of sugar, and (3) so many things have "organic" stickers that it would really be more organic if they just noted the three things that weren't, then you can really appreciate this meat and potatoes experience.


I went here on a whim with my roommate a few weeks ago, and the ostrich had sold out that day. I appreciate a place where your backup choice can be elk. Don't get me wrong, the elk was delicious; I probably wouldn't have ended up adding elk to my list of conquered animals if they'd been well stocked that day. Such a serendipitous experience encouraged our second trip, and wow-e, ostrich was worth the wait.

When done properly, a big slab of meat is a spiritual experience for me. However, variety is the spice of life, and sometimes the same quantity in smaller pieces is just more satisfying (M&M minis, anyone?). I went with the sliders, and they're absurdly good. Rob and I made a respectable dent in that mountain of fries in the background, too. Though not pictured, the recommended beverage pairing for any burger is the (translucent) sarsaparilla.

If bison burgers are the gateway drug of wild game, I think ostrich is something along the lines of cocaine (cokeheads who are also acquainted with ostrich: feel free to call me out on having no basis for saying that). Point being, ostrich is certainly different from your usual grass-fed cow. Gloriously different! I blurted out to Rob that there was almost an essence of jerky, and he nodded in agreement while busily devouring his portion. Thus, that constitutes my official review of ostrich meat.

Verdict: this place makes great food. The service is also disturbingly good, compared to most NYU area restaurants. My advice to anyone is to go find a new animal to eat. It just might be delicious... plus it always makes you feel important when you can buy something on the menu that's labeled "market price."

Thursday's Lunch: Peanut Butter & Co. BLT

So this is the first post. Basically, I needed a hobby... and here we are.

I've decided to document the fabulous sandwiches I encounter in the tri-state area in the spirit of NPR's "Wait Wait Don't Tell Me: Sandwich Monday." There will surely be other nonsense to come, but let's start with modest goals.

It was Thursday afternoon, and I needed a bit of a pick-me-up. I wandered down to PB & Co. to grab lunch. Ten minutes later, I walked away with a brown bag that contained this:

This, my friends, is a BLT with PEANUT BUTTER. Note the bag of carrot sticks and garnish of potato chips that come standard with any sandwich from this place. I appreciate that after serving you enough protein to bench press twelve llamas, they have the restraint to only give you 75 calories worth of chips on the side. Recommended beverage pairing: Stewart's root beer.

Perhaps you've seen the Five Hour Energy Drink commercials that speak of this "2:30 feeling." I had no idea what they meant until I ate this sandwich... at 2:20pm. This is heavy. Only after walking five miles in the evening could I bring myself to even think about dinner. Even then, steamed chicken & broccoli sounded intense.

Verdict: This is incredible. Bacon makes the world a better place, and the only possible way to improve a BLT is by adding peanut butter. It totally works, but if you have any self respect, you'll share this with someone. I have none, and I look forward to trying this again. Soon.