Update: All that Breakwells ends well.

It is with great shudders of caffeinated joy that I announce the return of Breakwell's Coffee. The shop was gutted by fire last September, and it was reported that kids were to blame. Kids and fireworks.

At the time, I had posted some enraged (yet brilliant, I thought) disciplinary ideas for the firecracker kids. I mean, for the love of GOD, children, don't mess with Poppa's coffee.

But today is a new day. After months of silence and boarded windows, Breakwell's is brewing again.

And as a rather nice plot-twist, the proprietor says there was actually no foul play; no pyromaniac punks running wild with roman candles and a thirst for chaos. The fire was the result of an electrical malfunction, and the crackling sound of a massive arc caused some to believe they were hearing fireworks.

So we can release the kids from the dungeons....I suppose.

Whatever. It's good news. I've missed the breakfast burritos & cafe Americano. All is well again.

Serving breakfast goodies until 11am. 9th and M Streets NW, Washington DC.

Absinthe uncorked, clowns lobotomized by fire

The Absinthe in question comes from Switzerland and bears the label design of Current 93's David Tibet. Absinthe Duplais was a Gold Medal winner at the 2006 International Wine and Spirit Competition, the only absinthe to be honored thusly... It's also the first verte absinthe to be manufactured in Switzerland since the European ban was lifted in 2005.

The occasion? Simply put, my (music) studio is finally unpacked. There's been a nasty creative block happening since 2000, and I haven't recorded a minute of material since then. Or was it some distraction? Career took over, a series of unemployment episodes, stress, grownup freakouts, etc... There has always been an excuse to keep the muse in a cage.

But now it's time to blow the locks off the cage doors and give that "muse" thing a blast of vitamin-packed attention. It seemed worthy of a ritual, to mark the occasion. So a bottle of Absinthe Duplais was secured, with a set of proper absinthe reservoir glasses, and a slotted spoon. The preparation of absinthe is certainly a ritual; there's no rushing it.

Adding to the exotic nature of absinthe is the drink's nebulous legal status in the United States. It is legal to possess here but not to sell it, due to the FDA's ruling on the thujon-laden wormwood ingredient which allegedly gives the drink a slightly psychedelic edge.

The "holy trinity" of anise, fennel, and wormwood give the liquid its signature aroma, flavor, and unique form of intoxication. Absinthe has a fascinating history, and much of its popular use in victorian times seems to be tied to the arts, particularly poets and painters. It was said to awaken the creative areas of the brain... or at least, it broke down the inhibition of ideas and helped to liberate the muse, in whatever form she took. So let's get down to it, toast the new studio and potentially make a little noise, finally.



Ingredients: Absinthe Duplais, sugarcube, reservoir glass, slotted spoon, and a bit of subdued light from three tiny clown-shaped candles. What the hell.

Once the absinthe was uncorked, the table was wrapped in a subtle aroma, pregnant with expectation: a dark, musky leather of herbs, but subdued. There's power in there, alright.



The louche effect: Once ice-water is dripped on the sugarcube, taking dissolved bits through the spoon and into the absinthe, the anise breaks down and a beautiful reaction takes place. The crystalline woody-emerald color becomes an opalescent cataract green.



This dance of particles in the glass is the payoff for the time spent...this is a slow process and must be done with patience. A fragile inscense of anise and fennel rises from the glass. Something is alive in there, I swear it.



The clowns continue to burn while the absinthe louches its milky pleasures in the dark. They look like terrified Christmas carolers at the doorstep of a pagan temple...



And this was their condition by the time the absinthe was ready to drink. They continued to look cheerful despite their magnificent head trauma. The absinthe itself was an intricate critter: the anise was prominent but there was a balanced herbal universe in there as well...a pleasant numbing of the lips and tongue, and the choir of flavors became more complex as the glass was slowly emptied.

By now, the action had shifted to the studio and a bit of sonic noodling took place. Who knows if anything will come of it, but the idea is to do the thing. The ice is broken now, the muse is free to wander and plant her seed where it might bloom the weirdest.

Home is where the haggis

After a few posts covering our weird travels to NYC and Arizona, it's good to get the heck back home. Settle down, return to normal. Walk around downtown; forget the chilling temperatures, for cryin' out loud, it's BRISK, dagnabbit. Refreshing.

I've had reason to wonder if dagnabbit should be hyphenated.

No matter! Back to this leisurely walk through the neighborhoods that make ours such a bloody interesting city. Saunter happily down Columbia Road NW from 16th Street and wonder what all that noise is... sirens... the smell of oily smoke... the smell of dust and violated brickwork... shattered glass and the fractured bones of old buildings, releasing a century of ghosts from the blackened marrow...

It was a large fire on 18th Street just under Columbia, in the upper floors of the gorgeous old building which housed the CD/Game Exchange and Chloe. Several fire engines blocked the streets and filthy water coursed down the east-side gutter. One onlooker was weeping. Several men with expensive cameras crawled through the tangle of hoses like centipedes, battling for the perfect angle...

What happened? I asked the rather stoic looking white shephered nearby, tied by his leash to the doorway of Madam's Organ. He didn't seem to know. Or wasn't willing to talk about it.

As of 8:00pm, I could find no details online, and the evening news was much more interested in the house-fire of a certain diplomat in Bethesda. Membership has its privileges, it seems.

Christmas among the cacti

The idea is simple enough, and maybe we can actually stick to it: a yearly pilgrimage back to Tucson for the week between Christmas and New Year. A break from the gray sleet of DC, and a return to the spot where Mrs. and I lived for the better part of a decade. It's a chance to check Tucson's progress as it schlumps towards a gentrified void of strip-malls and flimsy, mission-style McMansions like ready-made colonies for affluent lepers in need of private golf courses...

But also to remember the lovely town we first saw, and to glean where those ribbons of cool still hide behind woodframe/stucco nightmares. For the intrepid explorer with magnifying glass and pickaxe, the cool IS still there.

...and the mountains are still there, praise Allah. The Catalinas still stand firm against it all, catching the nightly firestorm of dusk and bouncing it back to the citizens as a reminder: there is still beauty in the world.

So we haunted the old neighborhoods, which included a trip up Mt.Lemmon to check on the condition of Summerhaven, the tiny town that nearly vanished when the Aspen Fire of 2003 cooked the top of the mountain. Charred trees still stand like pagan gravestones, and the forest is nude to the bones. Two and a half years later, the scene is still quite chilling.

As soon as it began, our week of hikes, margaritas, and street-wandering was over. The siren-call of The Day Job reached me with its amphetamine stutter, and I knew there was no use in hiding out here for the rest of my days. There's no publishing scene in Tucson anyway. But many lovely sights. We will surely do this again.

A much larger collection of photos is here, complete with larger versions, captions, etc. Good stuff.