Shea recently saw on FB that two local restaurants – the Capitol Jazz Club and the Lancaster Pub – were re-creating some favourites from the iconic 1990’s Regina sub shop, California Subs – for a limited time.
So when we had plans to go out for the evening, it was no question where our first stop would be (well, second stop – we went to The Lancaster first and it was packed so we had to run to The Capitol instead.)
Lots of fond memories of late night snacks in our college years…
I was heading downtown for a different social event after work yesterday when I decided to pop into Rebellion Brewing to have “a couple” samples from the many unique brews at their 4th Annual Cask Fest before carrying on my way.
Rebellion is a great local craft brewery but I don’t think their tap room allows kids [edit: I think their license has changed so kids can go during the daytime] so I rarely get to go unless we have a sitter and make specific plans to head there.
Instead, I usually get my fix from their off-sale or growler fills (it wasn’t “daily” but I stopped in an embarrassing amount of times last December for growler fills in the lead-up to Christmas.)
Anyhow, the tap room was packed and I was resigned to standing along a wall, awkwardly sipping my samples when a regular who’d earlier introduced himself, waved me over to an extra seat he’d found at the bar.
We talked beer for a while over some different samples, he introduced me to a few other people he knew including some of the staff, then he left to wander and his seat was quickly filled by someone else.
While chatting with this new person, we realised we shared an acquaintance – someone who I used to work with at RPL is her cousin. (And coincidentally, when I’d looked at the FB event page for Cask Fest, the cousin had indicated she was interested in attending – though it turns out she wasn’t going to be there that day.)
That person left with her friend to go to a “Girl’s Night” and once again the seat was quickly filled by another person. Somehow, this conversation quickly became about his many visits to Hawaii (possibly inspired by my recommendation of Rebellion’s own entry in Cask Fest, “Tropical Milkshake“? Oh, and I may have been biased with it being a Rebellion event but “Tropical Milkshake” also got my vote for best beer of the ones that I sampled.)
[Edit: A few days after Cask Fest, I saw that “Lemon Meringue” beer from Medicine Hat Brewing which is run by Mitch who was the long-time head brewmaster at Bushwakkers and who has won Cask Fest two out of the three previous years, was this year’s winner.)
By this point, I decided I’d had too much to drive to the other event (honestly, twenty years ago, I might have but with the current DUI rules, you can barely drink a single pint without risking having your vehicle impounded, let alone the equivalent of three or four) so decided to try a Designated Driver service for the first time (I’m not positive but think Rebellion had partnered with First Choice Designated Driving to offer a $25 max flat rate ride home anywhere in the city.)
As opposed to a cab, these services send a team of two people – one who drives your vehicle home for you and one in a trailing vehicle who picks up the driver when they get you home. Plus I ended up having another fascinating conversation – this time, covering everything from current economic conditions in Regina to the opiate addiction epidemic to testicular cancer! 🙂
It was slightly more expensive than a cab would be but cheaper than taking a cab both ways (or taking one home then having the inconvenience of going back for your car the next day) so all was well worth it to have my car safe and sound in the driveway this morning.
(Oh, and should also note that it was cool to see Rebellion using buns from my hometown Indian Head Bakery for their bratwurst & sauerkraut special!)
This was the first time I managed to make it to Cask Fest but it won’t be the last. I’m already looking forward to trying some very unique beers next year! 😉
Today, I wore the same jersey today that I’ve worn for years but for a less happy reason than skating with my son nearly a decade ago…
Have a great day!!!
A couple stories of the importance of being able to “go viral” in the digital age.
Today was Budget Day in Saskatchewan and it was confirmed that, after being cut by $5 million last year, the library funding that was restored after public outcry, would remain in place, leaving library funding stable, at least for the upcoming year. A huge part of the reason that funding was restored about a month after the cuts were first announced was because of a Facebook group that quickly went viral, gained thousands of members within days and became a hub of information and actions to oppose the library funding cuts.
Another example of “going viral” for positive social change is the GoFundMe set up in the wake of the Humboldt Broncos tragedy which has now passed $8 million raised (contrary to the updated number in the screen grab above which appears the goal was $4 million, it’s wild that the actual initial goal was only $10,000 on the night of the accident when first posted!)
As Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg testifies in front of Congress about some of the very serious issues with Facebook (and they *are* serious), it’s important to remember the potential for good that many social media outlets provide as well.
Soon after the Humboldt Broncos accident happened on Friday, I was sure I’d be posting Tom Cochrane’s “Big League” as my Music Monday post this week.
But I’ve linked to that song a couple times already – I decided to post it right away on the night of the accident and again yesterday in a post about how much hockey has meant to me in my life.
So I wanted to feature something else today instead.
Luckily, Shea passed along this video of a song by a Regina band which had just been released recently.
It was shot in her hometown arena and in many ways, it’s the complete opposite of the Tom Cochrane song. While that one is introspective and tragic, this one is fun and light-hearted, celebrating the joy of hockey as well as all those people who toil behind the scenes to make games happen in the first place.
“Hold Me Back” – Nick Faye and the Deputies
I put this on Facebook before the Humboldt Broncos Vigil tonight (and after some time has passed, I may share some other thoughts on that) but wanted to capture it here too since Facebook sucks. 😉
I’m not unusual in Canada for how much hockey has meant to me my whole life.
I was never the greatest player (I literally managed to break my *own* leg with no one else around me while playing beer league hockey a few years back!) but I still loved everything about the game since I was a kid – playing it on the street, in the school gym and on the ice, watching it live or on TV, reading about it obsessively in newspapers, books and eventually web sites.
Whether I was playing beginners or beer league, the memories of the freezing arenas, the stinky locker rooms, the camaraderie with my teammates are some of the best memories of my life.
I never made it to a level where I rode a team bus. But I still traveled miles on winter roads with my mom and dad or with the other parents or coaches they entrusted me to.
This song, based on a true story (http://bit.ly/2qfTGIR), has been on repeat in my head all weekend:
“When he was a kid, he’d be up at five,
Take shots till eight, make the thing drive.
Out after school, back on ice,
That was his life, he was gonna play in the big league.”
We all have a story, we all have a connection to this tragedy.
If you haven’t already, please consider donating to the GoFundMe: https://ca.gofundme.com/funds-for-humboldt-broncos
…or to STARS Air Ambulance: https://foundation.stars.ca/SK-donatenow
In tragedies, most people know their roles…
First responders race to the scene to face whatever awfulness awaits them.
Doctors, nurses and other medical personnel use their skills to do whatever they can to heal the injured.
Journalists try to capture, not only the story but the range of emotions that they and their audience is feeling.
Politicians put aside their differences to come together for the greater good as in this tweet where Sask NDP Leader, Ryan Meili retweets important information from Premier Scott Moe of the Saskatchewan Party who he normally sits across from in Opposition in the Saskatchewan Legislature…
Entire communities – whether that’s a town, a province, a country or everyone bonded together by a single sport – will rally together in amazing ways.
But if you’re a librarian, what can you do to help?
Depending on the library and its proximity to a major news event, I’ve seen a range of responses including things like libraries providing information services to setting up computer labs to providing books and children’s programming for people who need them. (During the La Ronge evacuations due to wildfires a few years ago, Regina Public Library did all of these things setting up what were basically makeshift libraries in the arenas where evacuees were staying until they could return home.)
My own response wasn’t to that level but today when I got to work, I wanted to do something to acknowledge the tragedy as I knew it would be front-of-mind for many patrons coming into my branch.
I decided to set-up a display of books right inside our front doors, picking a selection of books about hockey, about grieving and about spirituality as well as a few about related topics – Saskatchewan small towns and Canada in general.
Knowing emotions could be raw (mine definitely were!), I purposely chose to make my display low-key – no big signs to indicate what it was about, no pictures of the team or even the team logo, no books with titles that might bother people (we happened to have a book in the library about the eerily similar 1986 Swift Current Broncos bus accident that killed four players but since that book’s title is “Sudden Death“, I decided not to put it out. I didn’t even put any books whose might be similarly misconstrued or cause unintentional offense which means I chose not to include Wendel Clark’s “Bleeding Blue” in my display even though Wendel Clark is the prototypical small-town Saskatchewan boy who made it to the show.)
Below is a photo of the display I created and though I’m not sure how much it helped, I did note with interest that we closed today that a few of the books had circulated already – interestingly, more of the hockey books than any other kind I put out.
And in a strange way, I thought that was a reassuring sign that as horrible as this tragedy was and is, the thing that people were looking for the most (at least at my library, at least today) were reminders of just how wonderful and amazing the game of hockey truly is and how important it is to us as a province and a country.
If you haven’t already, please consider donating to Stars Air Ambulance and/or the GoFundMe for the families that are affected by this tragedy.
Photo from Regina Leader Post web site
Very sad to hear that Lang’s Vietnamese restaurant burned down in an early morning fire yesterday.
Along with Bushwakkers and Copper Kettle, Lang’s was one of my three “go to” Regina locations that weren’t just restaurants but local institutions.
Way back in 2007, I wrote this about Lang’s in a post about my 10 favourite Regina restaurants:
2. Lang’s
– if Thai Garden is Dave’s default comfort food place, Lang’s Vietnamese is mine. As with brew pubs, Regina has an abnormally high number of Vietnamese places but Lang’s is my personal favourite with Viet-Thai on Albert St. as a close second and Ankor which Dave mentions as an even closer third. (Urban legend has it that all the Vietnamese places in Regina with “Garden” in their name are owned by the same family. Not sure if it’s true.)
As for the urban legend that all Vietnamese places with the name “Garden” in their name are owned by the same family, this Leader Post profile of Lang’s owner, Tran Van Mihn, sheds some light on that as well:
After Minh’s father had handed over ownership of Lang’s Cafe to him, Minh helped his siblings start their own restaurants.
Five more Vietnamese restaurants opened in Regina under the same family name: Viet Thai, Thai Garden, Vietnamese Garden, Saigon by Night and Vietnam Mekong.
Oh, and my funny sriracha story? Not sure if I ever tried Lang’s while in University but if we did, it was likely delivery, not sitting down.
So I’m not sure if this was the first time I ever went to actually sit in the restaurant but soon after I started my first job with the Saskatchewan Publishers Group in 1997, my bosses (two co-directors) suggested going to Lang’s for lunch after a downtown meeting.
I was trying to play it cool and impress my new bosses so after ordering the lemongrass chicken noodle bowl (#86 if memory serves), I decided to put some ketchup on it (in hindsight, putting ketchup on noodles isn’t going to impress anyone!)
And of course, the red “ketchup” bottle in that Vietnamese restaurant actually had sriracha hot sauce in it.
I was surprised at how hot the “ketchup” was to say the least but managed to still “play it cool” (probably with sweat running down my forehead and an urgent need to blow my nose repeatedly!) and finish my meal.
The story has a happy ending though.
At the time, I confused sriracha with ketchup and now I often find myself eating it like it *is* ketchup – dipping french fries in it, putting it on my hamburgers and slathering it on when I order noodle bowls anywhere!
