1.26.2006

Rendezvous Redux

Indeed the bourbon cocktail at Rendezvous is terrific, as is the hot toddy.

I didn't sample the menu, but the Boston Globe liked it quite a bit.

Hallsey

This post exists entirely so that Hallsey can post comments.

1.19.2006

Rendezvous

Central Square is a lot of fun, and I don't get there nearly as often as I should. This drink at Rendezvous ought to motivate me...

mmm..caramelized orange oils...

(Thanks Hallsey!! Get a blog so I can link to you!)

1.12.2006

¡Pensamientos al Azar del Tequila!

  • Cabo Wabo - Tastes great going down, but what ever Sammy Hagar puts in it messes with your head!

  • If you're looking to sample a lot of great tequilas cheap, Fajitas & 'Ritas in downtown Boston is a great place to be. Ask for the tequila list and go to town. Just be prepared to smell like nacho chips for the next three days.

  • If you actually want to eat something, the current champion Mexican place in the Cambridge area has to be José's, tucked away on Sherman St. near Mayor Danehy Park. Incredibly hospitable staff, even when the place gets busy. Margaritas are pricey but perfect, and the food is authentically delicious. Try the Burrito en Adobo, or the black bean soup.

  • Is it wrong that I want to go to San Diego just to sneak across the border to the Cabo Wabo Cantina? See... they must put something in the stuff...

1.09.2006

Worse than Stale Bread

Is it my imagination, or do the 21 finalists in the Service Employees International Union's SinceSlicedBread.com "new ideas" competition sound quite a bit like the policy wish-list you'd expect from these guys? I mean, did SEIU really need to survey the countryside to discover, "Wow, we think single payer health care, a constantly rising minimum wage and huge government jobs programs are terrific ideas!"

Not to mention that even this layman sees serious economic problems with most of the finalist proposals:
  • Making college tuition tax deductible doesn't make college more affordable for the poor. If you hand everyone who wants to send their kids to college $10,000, colleges will just raise tuition by $10,000, and the same people who could afford it before can still afford it, thanks to the tax deduction, and colleges are $10,000 richer per student. Not to mention that the deduction saves more money for the middle-class and rich, who are in higher brackets! Many of the poor pay no income tax at all, so the deduction for them would have no value.

  • Pulling the youngest (and on average healthiest) people out of the private health care pool would result in truly skyrocketing costs for everyone else.

  • I don't even want to think about what would happen when a government-chartered corporation is in the business of allocating capital, deciding which small businesses should and shouldn't exist.

The ultimate organized labor candidate, Dick Gephardt, was flogging many of these ideas in his ill-fated presidential campaign (so ill-fated, the SEIU endorsed Howard Dean!), e.g. he described SSB's "Ownership of Retirement Assets" as "Portable Pensions". It's hard to believe a clever website is enough to turn stale bread big government into gourmet public policy.

The "ordinary people" who devoted far more time than I to this foregone conclusion of a PR stunt seem to agree.