September 2009
9 posts
Torrance's Top Noodle Shops →
As with Chinatown and Thai Town, Little Tokyo is a great place get ethnic food in the urban center of L.A. But for those in search of more options, the South Bay is the Japanese-food equivalent of the San Gabriel Valley (for Chinese) or North Hollywood (for Thai), offering untold riches to those willing to travel a bit further. Here is Squid Ink’s guide to 10 of the best noodle shops in the...
PBR Sales Are Up →
Despite Pabst hiking prices and not advertising, sales of its Pabst Blue Ribbon beer are up 25 percent this year. How?Back in 2004, Pabst executed a highly effective word-of-mouth campaign that made the long-declining brand an “ironic downscale chic” choice for bike messengers and other younger drinkers who viewed the beer as a statement of non-mainstream taste.[Insert joke about...
The Ash and Jeremy Show
Ashraf: Hey, they have a word now for people who dress like you.
Jeremy: Oh yeah?
Ashraf: Yeah, they're called jerks.
Pandering, by the Numbers →
My good friend Eric Almendral has an insightful post about the trouble with chasing Web traffic at all costs.In letting numbers make decisions once made by editors, writers and creatives whose jobs are now primarily SEO optimization and delivering web hits, media companies are surrendering control and letting a blind and deaf driver behind the wheel.Counting clicks can be useful as part of an...
Riding Out the Recession in Vietnam →
Karin Esterhammer pens a letter from Ho Chi Minh City, where the demand for English teachers is steady and life is cheap and beautiful.So many aspects of Vietnamese life are healthy: family bonds, neighborliness, tolerance of each other’s off-key karaoke singing late into the night. They don’t get mad about the frequent, sometimes daylong power outages. They just use them as a chance...
“It’s about spectacle. It’s about power. It’s about vanity....”
– Will Leitch, the former editor of Deadspin, is now blogging about sports for New York magazine.
Burger Theory, Part 3 →
Just in time for Labor Day, Michael Ruhlman makes the case for grinding your own meat. Bonus: a video of Hubert Keller explaining what to do—and what not to do—when making a burger. (Note: I agree with Ruhlman that it’s fine to season the meat throughout rather than just before cooking.) Previous posts on burger technique here and here.