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hercycleface · 4 years

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Global inventory of wonderful beer: What I drink is not wine, but creativity!

Isn't beer just yeast, barley, water and hops? Well, it's also right and wrong-for some beer, this statement is simply wrong. The brains of the beer brewer are too big, and sometimes the brewed beer-how to put it-is quite "interesting". The following wonderful beers are the best examples.

Collagen beer Speaking of weirdness, the Japanese definitely do their part. Suntory launched a collagen beer called Precious, which is said to remove wrinkles left by the years and make you look young and invincible. This 5-degree Talrag comes in 330ml cans and contains 2 grams of collagen per can.

Cat Shit Beer You must have heard of the famous cat feces coffee: a civet living in the tropics eats coffee cherries and is discharged from the other side of the body. The action of stomach acid can make coffee beans produce a different flavor. Beer Geek Brunch Weasel from Megele is a breakfast Shitao with an alcohol level of 10.9-be careful, the wine is full of strength.

Bloody (Mary) Beer Well, strictly speaking, it is not based on Bloody Mary, a good brunch partner. However, Short's Brewing Company of Bel Air, Michigan does use cherry tomatoes in its Bloody Beer, as well as black pepper and celery. Rapeseed, wasabi, and dill, so it’s similar to Bloody Mary. This "Cool Beer from Bel Air" has long been discontinued, with an alcohol content of 7, and an international bitterness index of 40.

Fossil beer The Lost Rhino Brewery in Virginia and PaleoQuest, a non-profit organization that promotes the excavation of dinosaur fossils rather than food trends, have teamed up to create a beer that will attract attention to science. They collected yeast from whale fossils 35 million years ago and made a 5.5-degree beer named Bone Dusters Amber Ale. Cool! It's a pity that the yeast is not collected from the fossils of the long extinct rhino or Tyrannosaurus.

Sheep dung beer After reading this list, you will find that Icelandic brewers really have a lot of free time and a whimsical spirit of adventure. The Borg Brugghus brewery is a good example: due to lack of wood, they lighted the sheep dung pile to smoke and roast the malt when making Fenrir Nr26. American IPA smoked and roasted with sheep dung, alcohol content 6, and international bitterness index 63.

Beer older than whale fossils Fossil Fuels Brewing Co has a product called AY108, which uses yeast found in bee fossils. This bee was wrapped in pine resin and turned into amber in the Eocene Eocene 45 million years ago (is it so shocking that it can’t close its mouth?). Professor Raul Cano figured out how to separate the yeast from above, and then wondered how to make the best use of it. Finally, he chose to brew beer instead of bread. The first result is this Dan Aier named after yeast, and there is also a Saisen.

Beer made with money The evil twins collaborated with the Norwegian craft brewer Lervig Aktiebryggeri in the port of Stavanger. The raw material is real banknotes. What's even more exaggerated is that they threw some frozen pizza into it. The alcohol content is 17.5 degrees.

Heavy beer from the toilet The Danish government and Norrebro Bryghus brewery are really fighting for environmental protection, and they even have the idea of urinating. They recovered a large amount of urine from the famous Roskilde Music Festival and used it to brew a Pearson called Pisner. Do you want to contribute to the cause of sustainable development? Then taste the piss of these hippies.

Colorful beer Abashiri Brewery in Hokkaido, Japan uses seaweed and other natural ingredients to brew red, blue and green beer. They also used beer and excess milk to produce a malt drink called Bilk. Apart from other things, at least it is colorful.

Beer made from sewage The sewage in the sewer sounds as disgusting as dirty waste oil. I'm afraid no one can drink anything made of it. The Jushi Brewery in San Diego brewed an IPA using recycled water provided by the city's water purification project. This Dan Air, called Full Circle, is limited to five barrels, but it may indicate the future of beer brewing.

Roald Dahl Beer Yeast is ubiquitous and can be collected everywhere, so why not collect some yeast from the custom desk of the late children's literature writer Roald Dahl? London creative company Bompas & Parr entrusted this task to 40FT Brewery to brew Odious Ale for a pop-up restaurant based on Dahl's "Stupid Couple".

Beer from the moon Dogfish Head Brewery is keen to challenge the limit, but often thinks too crazy and circumvents itself in, but the time when they ventured into space may be their most rebellious exploration so far. With the help of the company that makes spacesuits for NASA, they got some dust on the moon, which was taken from NASA where the moon landed on the moon—well, no more obscurations, it’s on the moon— —Collected, and then spilled into this limited edition beer called Oktoberfest. Alcohol 5, International Bitterness Index 25.

Elephant Poop Beer The Japanese brewery Sankt Gallen wanted to brew a beer that will be unforgettable, so he thought of elephant poo. How does it work? They fed coffee cherries to elephants living in Thailand’s wildlife sanctuary, and then brewed a "chocolate shitao" called Un, Koon Kuro (a pun for "poop" in Japanese) from elephant dung coffee beans. It was also selected for sale on April Fool's Day, but this is not a joke.

Beer as dark as ink Cuttlefish juice—or more precisely the juice of cuttlefish, squid and octopus, or the juice of cephalopods—can be said to be everywhere now, so you can’t help thinking that these animals are scared when they face the extinction of humans. What is it like? Anyway, the master brewer of 3 Sheeps in Wisconsin created a black IPA called Nimble Lips Noble Tongue No3, using cuttlefish juice.

Too private beer We are all adults, but the Internet will always surprise us head-on, especially when you see a page on the crowdfunding website Indiegogo for the world’s first vaginal beer fundraising-this one is called Bottled Instinct's acid ale uses lactic acid extracted from a Czech model. We don't know if anyone will drink it, because this project has not even raised 1% of the final goal of 150,000 euros, and it should be a joke on April Fools' Day at all? Otherwise, it really makes people get goosebumps.

16. Add a whole chicken to beer

Over the years, the rooster Al almost cast a layer of mystery. It is said that it was very popular in England in the 17th and 18th centuries. In fact, it is an ordinary Al, but a whole rooster was added during the brewing process. Hand Pulled Cock Ale from Willimantic Brewing Co in Connecticut-7% alcohol, only available in barrels-is a modern version of Cock Ale, but its name still implies that old joke (you got it).

Fried chicken beer As the song in "Grease" sings, fried chicken and beer are good partners, so why not add some chicken to the beer? Veil Brewing Co of Richmond, Virginia, and the evil twins teamed up to brew chicken beer. Their Fried Fried Chicken Chicken DIPA uses a lot of Fried Chicken Nuggets.

Sheep brain beer Philadelphia's Dock Street Brewing Company brewed Dock Street Walker to pay tribute to "The Walking Dead," but it was more terrifying than zombies, using smoked lamb brains. This American Pale Shitao is 7.2 degrees, and cranberries are added to create a touch of acidity.

Whale testicle beer Icelandic microbrewer Steoji has launched Hvalur 2, which is an upgraded version of Hvalur 1, which was produced in cooperation with the whaling company Hvalur and caused a huge controversy due to the addition of full whale meat (fish meat and fish bones). As the second seasonal crossover, it uses whale testicles smoked and roasted with sheep dung—well, one is added to each winemaking cycle.

Masculine beer The Rocky Mountain Oyster Stout of Wynkoop Brewing in Denver was originally just an April Fools' Day joke, but I didn't expect it to become a reality because of the public's enthusiastic response. With an alcohol content of 7.5, three cow testicles are added to each barrel-this "gourmet" is nicknamed Rocky Mountain Oysters locally. A set of two cans is quite appropriate.

Bull Heart Beer Portland's Upright Brewing and Burnside Brewing collaborated to produce this Captain Beefheart. The ingredients include 27 kilograms of charcoal grilled beef heart and a lot of spices. Similar products include the Burke In The Bottle, a collaboration between Jim Koch of Boston Beer Company and chef David Burke.

Sunday barbecue beer Conwy Brewery in Wales caters to the close relationship between locals and sheep and brews a lamb beer. Sunday Toast is a Victorian-style Porter beer with the juice from slow roasting of Welsh lamb. Perhaps lamb-ic is more appropriate.

Truffle beer Truffles are very expensive. Using them to brew beer seems a bit risky, but some people have succeeded. Chicago Moody Tongue's black truffle crumbs Pearson is highly sought after in some of the top high-end restaurants in the United States, while Miki Le has chosen to use black truffles to brew a dark beer called The Forager.

Stag semen beer Green Man Pub in Wellington, New Zealand, and local brewer Choice Bros brewed a beer with stag semen, which caused a huge sensation for a while. We will not continue to discuss the name Lu Jing Shitao to obtain such a subtle beer, let's stop here.

Mushroom beer In the past few years, the brewery seems to have used all the mushrooms imaginable. Jester King of Austin, Texas used locally grown oyster mushrooms in this Snorkel. 4.5 Alcohol, Goss style.

Oysters (really real this time) beer The encounter between Oyster and Shi Tao gave birth to many interesting stories. We used to drink Shitao while sucking oysters beautifully. Now we use oyster shells to clarify the beer, or put them in a boiling pot, or even throw whole oysters into it. Flying Dog Pearl Necklace Oyster Shitao did just that.

Natural green beer Free Tail Brewing Co of San Antonio, Texas adds blue-green algae to a 4.2-degree rye white beer to give it a charming blue-green color. If the advertisements of Mandalay Brewing in Myanmar and Red Dot Brewery in Singapore are accurate, Spirulina beer has another magical effect-anti-aging.

Seaweed beer Bladderwrack is a good name for beer, but it is actually a kind of seaweed. Williams Bros Brew in Alloa, Scotland added it to its own Kelpie Seaweed Ale. This Scottish Groot-an ancient beer style-is intended to recreate the traditional style of beer from the coastal regions of Scotland.

Real gold beer We have all drunk golden Al, but have you ever drunk gold? Golden Queen Bee brewed by Golden Bee Beer contains edible 24K gold leaf. There is no need to throw gold like this, but if you can get another bottle of The Lost Abbey's Gift Of The Magi-a golden Al with frankincense and myrrh, then you must be full of every cell in your body The joy of Christmas.

Pizza beer Mamma Mia Pizza Beer is produced by the Chicago Pizza Beer Company. The ingredients include Margarita Pizza soaked in malt. We don’t know if the crust is Chicago-style.

Donut beer Voodoo Donuts Maple Syrup Bacon Al is the first beer launched by Voodoo Donut Bakery in collaboration with Rogue Brewery, also in Oregon. The series includes six products so far. They want to use these beers to reproduce the best-selling single-product flavors of this bakery in Portland. The latest flavors currently launched are Guerrilla Grape and Mango Spaceman.

Pig head beer Mangalica Pig Porter uses the head and bones of Mangalica Pig. This breed of pig is quite precious and is known as Kobe beef in pork. Right Brain Brewery in Traverse City, Missouri uses whole pig heads when brewing this beer, and even the eyeballs are still in the eye sockets. The winery also brews a series of more delicious pork pie beers, with raw materials including whole pork pie from a local bakery.

Expired bread beer The raw material of toast air is leftover bread that cannot be eaten, and it aims to eliminate food waste. All the profits from this beer brewed with excess bread are donated to charitable organizations, and even a factory is set up in the Bronx, New York. The recipe is public, so you can try it yourself with the leftover bread you eat.

Just put your crying beer There is a resonance between Chili Control and Beer Mania, which is why countless beers have combined these two things in one in pursuit of a mixed effect. The grimace killer at the Twisted Pine Brewery in Colorado—named after the Wudang rapist of the same name—uses six different varieties of peppers. Among them, the hottest pepper is the Devil Pepper (also known as Broken Soul Pepper). Scoville's index exceeds 1 million-the pepper is only about 2000. You can imagine how spicy it is.

Bearded beer Rogge Beard Beer can be regarded as one of the most weird beers in the world. Brewmaster John Maier extracts yeast from his beard and brews an American wild ale. Maier once vowed that he would never shave his beard, so the raw material of this beer can really be said to be

#craftbeer beer beers breweries beerofinstagram instabeer beersoftheworld beersofinsta beersofig beernation cheers craftbeerlife fanaticbeer

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douxreviews · 5 years

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Roswell, New Mexico - ‘Pilot' Review

Before we get started, let’s address the elephant in the room. This is not a reboot of the 1999 WB show Roswell.

It is a show based on the same Roswell High books as the ‘99 show. So yes, there are similarities. And if you liked the show, you’ll probably enjoy this one too. But if you thought a high school drama built around star-crossed lovers trying to hide the existence of aliens from the government and their parents was on the cheesy side, you may still want to give this a shot because while the themes of otherness and acceptance are still there, the characters and plots have all grown up. And if you never saw the original but science fiction that’s heavy on alien metaphors with a side order of science is your jam, you’re in for a treat.

I promise I will not spend every episode comparing the two versions. Art is a product of its place and time. The expectations viewers have for the shows they watch have changed. Therefore, each iteration must be judged on its own merits. What are they trying to say and how well do they achieve their narrative goals? For all their similarities, these two shows are saying something very different.

In many respects, the original show’s focus on Liz and Max’s love story sucked up much of the narrative oxygen in the room. The larger themes of alienation and acceptance, when they occurred, were almost solely through the metaphor of the aliens on earth. Here we address similar themes from multiple angles. By embracing diversity, in terms of ethnicity, gender, sexual identity, immigration status, and, yes, human vs. alien, they hammer home the idea that being “other” doesn’t necessarily make us different.

The feelings of otherness are not limited to our alien friends. Liz doesn’t fit in not only because of her father’s real, and her suspected, undocumented status but also due to the town’s residual hatred regarding her sister Rosa’s actions. Alex is a military man from a military family in love with a man who despises authority and refuses to conform. On paper, Kyle looks perfect. He’s a good-looking doctor from a respected family but he’s so lonely he’s willing to have a romp with an ex in his car while knowing she’s using him. Each of them is desperate to find a connection, and that desperation has the potential to lead down some dark paths.

Don’t get me wrong, at its heart this is still the love story of Liz and Max; two outsiders with an undeniable attraction for each other but separated by facts that would give Romeo and Juliet pause. At least those two were both human. Yet if not for Max’s love for Liz, we’d have no inciting incident. Liz would have died in a random shooting and he, Isobel, and Michael would have quietly continued their existence in Roswell with no one the wiser. Instead, Liz returns after a 10-year absence and Max refuses to lose her again.

His actions are not without repercussions. Liz is no longer a half-smitten high school student. She believed she was shot, her uniform had a bullet hole, there is a handprint on her chest, and no visible injury. No self-respecting scientist would let that mystery go uninvestigated which only leads her to more questions.

Thanks to her aborted fling with Kyle, he knows something is up too. Unfortunately, for all involved, Kyle goes to a far more dangerous source for answers. Now the secret Max, Isobel, and Michael have been harboring for over 20 years, that they are the aliens from the 1947 crash, is in danger of coming out.

Add to this the mystery of Liz’s sister’s death. As far as the residents of Roswell are concerned, Rosa, as her father put it, “took drugs, and she drove, and when she died, she took two innocent girls with her.” We know that’s not true or at least not the whole truth. Max, Isobel, and presumably Michael have something to do with Rosa’s death and whatever that truth is would spell an end to Liz and Max’s budding romance. So, of course, she’s going to find out, right?

Regardless of whether the trio is responsible for Rosa’s death (and does anyone really believe Max and Company deliberately killed her?) their fears of exposure are both real and well-founded. Sergeant Manes and Kyle’s dad were involved with Project Shepherd. According to Manes, this project was created to protect humans from any threat that aliens might pose. However, Manes has already made that determination. And he isn’t subtle about his position on the monsters that landed in 1947 or the killers he believes they are.

What Have We Learned:

For starters, we know that Max can heal, Michael can move objects with his mind and Isobel can affect people’s thoughts. We also learned that Isobel used that ability ten years ago to send Liz away when she started reciprocating Max’s feelings for her. And apparently, Max isn’t the only one who’s been carrying a torch since high school. In Michael’s case, there was a lot more to the relationship than simply mooning over Alex from afar.

I happened to love the original show and I’ve always been skeptical of reboots. So, I approached this with a healthy dose of curiosity and very low expectations. However, the complexity of the characters, the adult themes, and the not-so-subtle commentary on the differing views on aliens of all stripes left me impressed. Consider me all in.

4 out of 5 glowing handprints

Parting Thoughts:

I loved the nods to the original, such as Crashdown’s waitress uniforms.

Project Shepherd is a military exercise, right? Was Kyle’s dad in the military too?

Liz’s confession to Max regarding her mother and sister’s mental issues sounded like a legitimate plea for information and not just a line to get Max’s DNA. Please tell me that’s going to get explained at some point.

While we’re on the theme of things they better address, Michael has a chemical similar to meth coming from his trailer. Huh?

And what’s Maria’s story? She got the short end of the stick as far as storylines go. I want to know what’s with the fortune-telling?

Quotes:

Liz: “Every small town has a story, but my hometown has a legend.”

Arturo: “I like it here. I like making milkshakes for tourists dressed like little green men.”

Max: “I’m not one of the bad guys, Liz.”

Max: “So, where you been?” Liz: “Denver, working on an experimental regenerative medicine study. We were onto something special, but of course we lost funding because someone needs money for a wall.”

Kyle: “So, we could do the awkward exes small talk thing, but I’m guessing that’s not why you’re here.”

Valentin: “For God’s sake, Evans. Shave.” Max: “I heard you ranting about patriarchal dress codes and grooming standards last week. I’m just aligning myself with your feminist agenda, Sheriff.”

Hank: “Isn’t that the Ortecho girl? I thought she went back to her own country.” Maria: “Uh-uh, Hank. You’re not distracting me from my money with your thinly veiled racism.”

Isobel: “The good old days. Just three happy kids who aren’t in danger of being dragged off to the Pentagon by men in hazmat suits because someone couldn’t keep his superhuman healing hands to himself.”

Isobel: “Fall in love with someone else, Max. Anyone else.” Max: “It’s been ten years, Iz. If I could have, I would have.”

Kyle: “This is probably a bad idea.” Liz: “I thought we were ignoring that in favor of the whole sex thing.”

Liz: “This is probably a bad idea.” Kyle: “If only someone said that earlier.”

Kyle: “If you see the handprint go to Manes.”

Liz: "Michael outscored me on every AP exam. I thought he would get some scholarship, change the world.” Max: “I don’t think Michael likes the world enough to bother changing it.”

Max; “She can never know what happened to Rosa.”

Shari loves sci-fi, fantasy, supernatural, and anything with a cape.

#Roswell New Mexico #Roswell #Liz Ortecho #Max Evans #Roswell High #Roswell New Mexico Reviews #Doux Reviews #TV Reviews

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chiseler · 5 years

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Little Devils: 50 Years of Killer Kid Movies

Face it, children are just plain creepy—especially the really cute ones.

Historically—and I’m talking about going back thousands of years—we’ve always been scared to death of the children we’ve spawned. Before they’re born we worry they might be physically deformed or just a little off in the head somehow. And after they’re born and as they start to grow and think and talk, hoo boy, that’s when things really start getting scary, as you start to glean a little something about what’s going on behind those cold, staring eyes. I’m not a parent myself, but having been a kid once I fully understand the panic and fear that can grip parents as they come to better understand their kids. What if they’re no good at sports? What if they start hanging out with a bad crowd and using drugs? What if they get bullied by the other kids and take revenge by shooting up the school? Worse still, what if they decide to bludgeon us to death with a crowbar in our sleep one night? What if they turn out to be the bona fide offspring of Satan himself? What the hell do we do then? Sure, we all pretend to be shocked and dismayed when we hear news stories about some eight-year-old in Kansas or Oregon stabbing the little neighbor girl twenty times for no apparent reason, but let’s be honest—we all know what these pint-sized miscreants are capable of doing, and have simply come to expect it.

As with a few of those other fundamental adult fears, like asteroids, nuclear war, clowns and deadly plagues, over the years our fear of children has led to its own unheralded cinematic subgenre of Killer Kid movies.

While countless slasher films from Halloween onwards feature tykes with butcher knives who grow up to become adults with butcher knives, I’m focusing here on those films in which the snot-nosed killers remain snot-nosed throughout. While I could have included those rambunctious hobo youths from William Wellman’s Wild Boys of the Road (1933), those little back-to-nature wastrels from Lord of the Flies (1963) and the matricidal zombie girl with the trowel from George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead (1968), I, um, didn’t. So sue me.

Here’s a quick chronological list of a double handful of notable features about murderous children. It’s interesting to note that as the years pass, the films themselves seem to grow less clever, endearing, original and interesting. Just like kids!

The Bad Seed (1956)

I’ve long been a big fan of that Mervyn LeRoy. As a director, he always understood the darker side of human nature, and had a sly sense of humor about it. In 1931 he directed my two favorite (and two of the bleakest) Edward G. Robinson pictures, Five-Star Final and Two Seconds. Then eight years later he directed The Wizard of Oz. I always like to think (though I’m undoubtedly wrong about this) he intended his 1956 creeper The Bad Seed as a kind of bonk on the head to those audience members who hadn’t recognized the darkness that lay at the heart of The Wizard of Oz.

Okay, Nancy Kelly plays Christine, the nightmare-plagued mother of the world’s most perfect little girl. Not only is blonde, pigtailed and always immaculately dressed Rhoda (Patty McCormack) perfect, the ten-year old knows she’s perfect. As a perfect child, she also knows what she deserves out of life and those around her, and lord help anyone who doesn’t cough it up. As time goes on, Christine begins to suspect Rhoda may somehow be responsible for the tragic drowning of a classmate who’d recently won an award Rhoda felt she rightly deserved. And if she was responsible for that, maybe she was responsible for all those other weird deaths that have been happening all over town, too. And what the hell’s the deal with that recurring nightmare, anyway?

Although based on a stage play that was itself based on a novel, it was LeRoy’s film that would become the standard reference point and template for so many of the Killer Kid movies down the line, though few would come close to matching it.

Village of the Damned 1960

John Wyndham was a reasonably popular pulp writer in the 1930s. While his crime stories gained him the most attention at the time, these days he’s best remembered for his occasional forays into sci-fi and horror. Day of the Triffids, his end-of-the-world masterpiece about killer plants (a personal phobia) was a major hit when adapted for the big screen, but his cautionary evil kid tale Village of the Damned had a much longer reach after director Wolf Rilla got ahold of it.

Yes, we all know the story: one day everyone living in a small English village falls asleep at the same time for some unknown reason. When they awaken several hours later, all the women of child-bearing age (even the virgins!) find they’re pregnant. Weirder still, they all go into labor at exactly the same time.

Ten years later, all the kids born that day have turned out to be extremely intelligent, blond, beautiful, and emotionless. Snappy dressers though they may be, they’re also arrogant little snots who have no time for adults or other kids, and only hang out with one another all the time. They also seem to share a psychic connection, and there are hints they have some larger purpose in mind. Anyone who tries to interfere with them gets the creepy glowing eyes treatment shortly before unexpectedly committing suicide. George Sanders at the top of his game plays a rational sort who tries to get to the Bottom of what all the hell,

It remains a starkly eerie and atmospheric picture that to this day can still make you want to punch blond British pre-teens right in the face.

The film went on to spawn one lesser sequel (1964’s Children of the Damned), one superior sort-of sequel (Joseph Losey’s 1962 These Are the Damned), a 1995 remake directed by Jon Carpenter, and a Simpsons parody. My favorite bit of cultural impact, however, is that some of your more out-there paranoids have worked Village of the Damned into the Montauk Project conspiracy, claiming beautiful, blond alien/human hybrids were created in the secret government labs in the caves beneath Montauk, Long Island. These Montauk Children, as they’re called, were set out into the world as sleeper agents (though most settled in Denver for some reason), and to this day are awaiting their secret orders from above.

The Twilight Zone: “It’s a Good Life” (1961)

It was included as one of the segments in Twilight Zone: The Movie, but good as that was, there’s just no topping the original. And there’s no topping the original because back in the early Sixties Billy Mumy was the creepiest kid on the planet. Rod Serling clearly recognized this, which is why he kept casting him.

Little Anthony Freemont (Mumy) lives in a pleasant small town where everyone knows him and everyone’s really nice to him. I mean really, really, REALLY nice to him,. And they’re really nice because over time they’ve come to realize that even if he doesn’t opt to simply blink them out of existence if they don’t do what he says, he has the power to make incredibly awful things happen to them. Even thinking bad things about Anthony isn’t such a hot idea. Things aren’t any better in the Freemont household, where his terrified parents (John Larch and Cloris Leachman) have to walk on eggshells out of fear he might do something else to his siblings, or them. )“It’s a…very GOOD thing that you did that…”)

It remains one of the most delightfully wicked and true portraits of just how terrified adults are of kids, and just how sinister kids can be.

Interestingly, Mumy apparently also had this power in real life, later going on to have a big hit with the novelty song, “Fish Heads.”

The Other (1972)

Kids alone are creepy enough, but you get twins to boot, you know you’re in for some bad news. And you get twin boys in a rural town in the 1930s? Holy mackerel, you might as well just pack it in right there and go home. Nothing good is going to come of it.

I don’t know how many times I watched Robert Mulligan’s film (based on the Thomas Tryon novel) on TV in the early Seventies, but it was a lot. Enough that to this day I still remember every shot and every line of dialog., but it still gets under my skin as one of the most effective of the lot.

Real twins Martin and Chris Udvarnoky play Holland and Niles Perry. As with most twins, one is mostly nice and sweet and innocent, while the other, Holland in this case, is the dominant, wickedly mischievous one.. Also like most twins, Niles and Holland share a weird psychic link. But in their case, and under the guidance of their Russian grandmother Eda (Uta Hagen), they can use a special ring to take things one step further. They call it The Game. As in Being John Malkovich, they can actually enter the consciousness of anyone they choose, from a magician in a traveling carnival, to a passing crow, to a corpse.

It’s a Northern Gothic tale complete with dark family secrets, farm accidents, dead babies, emotionally shattered mothers and real freaks. And an evil twin. It unfolds very slowly and quietly, and even though we get the Big Revelation at the halfway point, it doesn’t matter because the story rolls on with a few more twists and surprises left. It’s not shocking or terribly bloody, but extremely unnerving. Featuring an early turn by John Ritter and a Jerry Goldsmith score.

Don’t Look Now (1973)

Nicholas Roeg’s brilliantly shattered, hallucinatory narrative with the shock ending might be a loose fit here, but it had such an influence on other sort of Killer Kid movies (like David Cronenberg’s The Brood) it deserves mention.

The great Donald Sutherland was rarely better than he was here as John, an architect whose young daughter recently drowned near the family home in England. He takes a job in Venice, thinking a few months away from home might be just the thing to help him and his wife cope. Shortly after they arrive, however, they encounter a blind psychic in a restaurant who tells them their daughter’s spirit is around, and seems happy. Being the slide Rule sort, John is less willing than his wife to accept this at face value. At least until he starts having recurring visions of what seems to be his daughter all over Venice. Dresses like her, anyway. He becomes a little obsessed with that little girl in the red cloak who may or may not be his daughter. Who cares if she might have something to do with that whole nasty string of brutal stabbings around the city?

The less said about it at this point, the better (and easier, to be honest). Almost 45 years on now, it still works, that ending still gets me, and there’s nothing else like it.

It’s Alive! (1974)

People might cite Rosemary’s Baby as the be-all and end-all of films about pre-natal anxiety, but think about it. Sure, she gave birth to the Antichrist, but she has a good support network right there in the building, and if she treats him right, she’s set for life. No, for my money Larry Cohen’s breakthrough monstrous infant hint trumps them all, beginning with one of the most unsettling ad campaigns of the Seventies.

Funny thing is, though it’s remembered as a film about a baby with fangs and claws who slaughters all the doctors in the delivery room before escaping to go on a killing spree around town, if you go look at it again now you realize that’s only a minor subplot. It’s also a conspiracy film about government scientists using unwitting citizens as guinea pigs. Above all else, though, it’s an indictment of the mass media, which has the power to destroy the lives and reputations of innocent people on a whim, in this case the Davis family. And damn but that John P. Ryan is great as the horrified and disbelieving father who finds himself and his wife being publicly blamed (as is So often the case) for giving birth to a kid who isn’t quite right.

Much smarter and more subtle than most would give it credit for, It’s Alive ! Is loaded with Frankenstein references, and went on to spawn two equally good (and very different) sequels. To this day I will not put my face or fingers anywhere near a baby’s mouth.

Devil Times Five (1974)

The early to mid Seventies were mighty good years for Leif Garret. Not only was his picture plastered all over every teeny-bopper magazine in the country month after month, he was also scoring supporting roles in huge drive-in hits like Macon County Line and Walking Tall. Let’s just say considering his squeaky-clean image, Devil Times Five (aka Peopletoys) was a departure.

Garret plays one of five kids traveling on a bus which crashes in the mountains during a snowstorm. With the driver dead and not knowing what else to do, the five youngsters take refuge in a nearby resort.

It eventually comes out the bus was actually delivering the kids to an institution for the criminally insane, as they’re all kookoo bananas and extremely violent. There were hints of this beforehand, as per the standard asylum movie cliche, each nutty kid has a telltale tic—this one thinks she’s a nun, the black kid thinks he’s in the military. etc. But it’s all just mild comic relief until they pick up the knives.

Well, before you can say “Mr. Green Jeans,” they begin slaughtering everyone at the resort in a variety of hilarious ways, and occasionally in slow motion.

Unlike other Killer Kid movies which try to explain away antisocial behavior by blaming it on assorted external forces (government scientists, radiation, aliens, Satan, or an eclipse), these kids are just plain old evil by nature, and that’s all there is to it.

It wasn’t a big hit, it didn’t do much to propel Garret into leading roles, but today it’s earned itself solid cult status as a pre-slasher grind house number. And what’s not to love about the ol’ “piranhas in the bathtub” gag?

The Omen (1976)

In the Seventies and Eighties, a number of once-huge stars—Ray Milland, Richard Widmark, Henry Fonda, Rory Calhoun, Ida Lupino, George C. Scott and, in this case Gregory Peck—found themselves making genre pictures simply because that was all that was available to them. Granted, The Omen was a few cuts above The Devil’s Rain and Tentacles, but still.

Okay, regardless what the producers and screenwriter David Seltzer may claim about the franchise’s origins, the original trilogy of Omen films was lifted wholesale from “The Devil’s Platform” episode of Kolchak: The Night Stalker.

Be that as it may, when you get a cast like this, a smart director like Richard Donner, a simply astonishing score by Jerry Goldsmith, some diabolical camera trickery and editing, wonderful practical effects (Lee Remick’s fall from the balcony kept me going for years), and a story about a smiling, (mostly cheerful 3-year-old Son of Satan wandering around England leaving a trail of beheadings, impaled priests, seriously pissed off baboons and hanged nannies in his wake, how can you go wrong? Even if the script itself is absurdly silly.

In an interesting postscript, like so many other child actors deeply associated with high-profile horror films of the era—think Danny Lloyd from The Shining—Harvey Stephens (who as Damien spoke, what, five words onscreen?) would not appear in another film for the next four decades. And even then he hasn’t been in much, though he did have a cameo as a reporter in the remake of, yes, The Omen a few years back.

Alice Sweet Alice (1976)

I dare you to show me one worthwhile horror film about Presbyterians. No, as far as religious sects go, Catholics have it all over everyone when it comes to horror. You got your robes, your chanting, your weird rituals, your transmutation, your Inquisition, your fetishism, your magic relics, your ghostly visions, oh, it just goes on and on. The Catholic Church is just one big horror show, top to bottom. As a result, Catholicism lay at the heart of countless horror films, and Alice, Sweet Alice is among the best.

The tagline read, “If you survive this night, nothing will ever scare you again,” which may or may not have been a reference to the fact this was Brooke Shields’ film debut. Shields plays 10-year—old Karen, the cute, quiet, polite and well-dressed younger sister of that moody, smart-mouthed and generally ornery Alice (Paula Sheppard), who likes to pull nasty pranks and doesn’t dress nearly as well as her sister. Everyone from the neighbors to their own parents to the local priest adores Karen and showers her with gifts, while they just wish Alice would go away. She clearly needs to see a shrink or something. So when Karen is brutally stabbed to death outside the church on the morning of her first communion and Alice is found with Karen’s veil in her pocket, well, there you go. And then when a whole bunch of other people around town somehow connected with Alice end up all stabbed to death as well, well, there you go again. I mean, she just looks like someone who could do something like that, right?

Alice, Sweet Alice is an American Giallo, so the less said about the story the better. For having such a tiny budget, the visuals are rich and gorgeous, filled with Catholic imagery and ritual throughout, featuring a cast of wholly unlikable characters you honestly don’t mind seeing stabbed to death (especially that Little Miss Perfect Karen). The one standout is Alphonso DeNoble as the crass, sleazy, filthy and morbidly obese landlord Mr. Alphonso. DeNoble has a terrifying charisma, which may have come from being a bouncer at a gay nightclub in Jersey in real life.

Yes, the film owes quite a bit, and blatantly so, to Roeg’s Don’t Look Now, but aimed at a more lowbrow mainstream audience. It’s a bloody, nasty little shocker still held dear by thousands of disaffected girls who survived Catholic school.

The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane (1976)

1976 was not only a busy year for Killer Kid films, it was also the busiest year of Jodie Foster’s career, during which she appeared in half a dozen films ranging from Taxi Driver to, well, this, a film she and other cast and crew members would bad mouth down the line. In retrospect, it’s not really as bad as all that.

A 13-year-old Foster plays 13-year-old Rynn Jacobs, a precocious girl who may or may not be living alone in a rented house in a secluded section of a small, affluent seaside town. Her rich, nosy and suspicious landlady keeps barging in uninvited to ask too many questions, the landlady’s perv of a son (Martin Sheen) keeps putting the moves on her, a local cop is endlessly curious but nice enough, and a gimpy teenage magician from the area knows the score. But Rynn is self-sufficient and smart beyond her years. Enough so anyway to dispatch with all those nosy yokels who’d try and pry into her business.

It’s less a horror film than an atmospheric mystery that ties up all the loose ends by the three-quarters mark. Based on a 1974 novel, the claustrophobic stagebound film is mostly forgotten today, but back in ’76 the poster creeped the hell out of me. Certainly more than the film did.

The Children (1980)

Although “creepy bloodthirsty children” seems to be a simple, straightforward notion just bursting with possible storylines, 1980 marked the point at which screenwriters and filmmakers everywhere seemed to run out of ideas, so simply began rehashing those earlier, better films. Case in point is this slight variation on Village of the Damned.

This time around, instead of mysterious alien impregnation, a school bus full of perfectly normal kids drives through a cloud of yellow radioactive fog released from a nearby nuclear power plant. The radiation, it seems, turns all the tykes into shambling, emotionless and murderous zombies. Instead of glowing eyes, the infected kids have black fingernails (which was easier on the fx budget), and instead of psychically driving adults to kill themselves, the mere touch of these evil zombie children can fry any adult to a crisp. With little else to do, the radioactive zombie kids lay siege to their small town as the adults try to figure out just how to handle this. I mean, it was already hard enough trying to get them to go to bed on time.

Oh, derivative as it is, the film does have it’s moments. In fact it includes one scene I must admit I’ve never seen repeated in any other Killer Kid film, in which a group of well-armed adults barricaded inside a house open fire on the army of evil radioactive curtain climbers massing in the front yard. And when the adults finally do figure out how to dispatch the little monsters, well, let’s just say it was unexpectedly gruesome.

The Godsend (1980)

Given the year had already provided a Village of the Damned knockoff, it was apparently time for a Bad Seed knockoff, and an obvious one at that.

A pleasant and kindly British couple, the Marlowes (Malcolm Stoddard and Cyd Hayman) decide to take in a young unmarried pregnant woman even though they already have six kids of their own, telling her she can stay with them until she has the baby. What nice people those Marlowes are! But wouldn’t you know it? As soon as the ungrateful wench spits out the baby she vanishes without a word, leaving them with a seventh mouth to feed.

Being pleasant people they don’t complain too much, and over time the child grows into a polite and lovely little girl named Bonnie (Wilhelmina Green).

Well, sure enough before you know it all the other Marlowe kids start dropping like flies, and the parents take their own sweet time connecting the dots. I mean, come now people! We all know what happens to the youngest kid in a large family.

Itself based on a less-than-original novel, director Gabrielle Beaumont’s low-budget film plays like a TV movie, and lacks pretty much everything that made The Bad Seed so effective.

Bloody Birthday (1981)

On June 9th, 1970, three women in a small California town give birth during a total solar eclipse (uh-oh!). The resulting three kids—Debbie (Elizabeth Hoy), Curtis (Billy Jacoby) and Steven (Andy Freeman)—understandably share a tight bond, and as their tenth birthday approaches in 1980, plans are underway for a big bash pretty much everyone in town is expected to attend.

In the week before the party, maybe just to trim that guest list down a bit, the trio of little scamps undertakes a killing spree. They bludgeon and strangle a couple of stereotypical slasher film teens making out in a graveyard, beat Debbie’s dad (the local sheriff) to death with a baseball bat, shoot a teacher, and attempt to lock a classmate in a refrigerator in a junkyard. No one suspects them, of course, because they’re freaking nine years old. Nowadays we know better. While you’d expect the big party to be the film’s climactic scene, it just comes and goes without much happening, and those darn kids keep killing.

Around the halfway point, a teenaged amateur astrologer offers up the closest thing we get to an explanation for such naughty behavior. During that eclipse, see, both the sun and moon were blocking Saturn. Since Saturn controls the emotions, these kids were born with no conscience. Okay, so you come to accept a lot on faith in these things. Ultimately, though there are hits of both Village of the Damned and Bad Seed here, the picture owes much more to Devil Times Five.

Director Ed Hunt had made a handful of genre cheapies prior to this, but today Bloody Birthday remains his most memorable film. The dialogue is often painful, the soundtrack is comprised of library music from TV movies, and it’s not nearly as gory as would become standard for slasher films, but his three little killers all exude a believable David Berkowitz vibe, and the film contains enough boobs to earn an R rating. In an irrelevant sidenote, it remains one of the very few entries here in which the kids use guns, and, I think, the only one in which they use a bow and arrow.

Sleepaway Camp (1983)

Writer/director Robert Hiltzik’s weirdie is a delightfully oddball number not only within the Killer Kid subgenre, but also among slasher films, which is doubly surprising considering when it was released.

Although the film at the outset has all the standard earmarks of a cookie-cutter post-friday the 13th slasher film (a bunch of youngsters at summer camp, and endless supply of sharp implements, a fast-rising body count), careful viewers will note a few unsettling details. First, apart from the counselors, most of the campers (and victims) are pre-adolescent, and all the males, young and old alike, wear shorts that are just a little too short and a little too snug. Hmm.

Anyway, Angela (Felissa Rose), has been sent to summer camp against her will with her older brother. She’s pretty and nice and shy, but has clearly been damaged in some way. She adamantly refuses to go swimming or play games ore shower wit the other kids, despite repeated (and usually understanding) pleas from the counselors. She prefers to be alone, and isn’t much interested in making new friends. I know the feeling. I was sent to summer camp once, and after a lummox named Trent got to go home because he got a fish hook in the eye, I considered bribing those kids with the fishing poles to do the same to me.

Anyway, if you haven’t seen it, the less said the better. Let’s just say it fits the category, but with a notorious twist, and remains near the top of the lists of many slasher film fanatics I know. I do wonder, though, given the age we’re living in, how this one would go over today. It also leaves me wondering what the deal is with that Robert Hiltzik.

Children of the Corn (1984)

Yes, it’s a stinker, but remains a memorable touchstone within the then exploding subgenre of Stephen King stinkers. I always find it funny that King continues to bitch about Kubrick’s adaptation of The Shining, but never has a word to say about this, or The Mangler, or Silver Bullet, or Maximum Overdrive or…

But that’s beside the point. Given the subject at hand, both the original short story and Fritz Kiersch’s film adaptation are interesting in that they represent a genre-blending crossover between Killer Kid movies and Religious Zealot horror.

AS much as there is to chuckle at here—my goodness what an awful bit of filmmaking, from the script to the performances to the camera set-ups and fx—dammit I keep going back to it. I do enjoy that flashback in the diner, as well as the fact the initial slaughter of the adults is never clearly explained. Not really, anyway. And I do dig the amateurish overacting on the part of John Franklin as the crazy young preacher Isaac and Courtney Gains as his True Believer henchman Malachai. And I’ll watch that R.G. Armstrong in anything. Mostly, though, I think I keep going back time and again just to hear the line “He wants you, too…Malachai!,” which has been a catchphrase of mine for years now.

Firestarter (1984)

Amid the mid-‘80s flood of Stephen King quickies, at least director Mark L. Lester had a few more chops than most. He also had a much larger budget, which allowed him to sign a cast that included George C. Scott, Art Carney, Louise Fletcher, Martin Sheen and Heather Locklear (!).

So a young couple who met in college while volunteering as research guinea pigs in a secret government drug test later get married and have a daughter. As these things happen (see Blue Sunshine or Jacob’s Ladder), those secret government drug tests have a way of hanging around awhile, with some mighty unexpected side effects. In this case, their new daughter Charlie (Drew Barrymore, who was in a few King adaptations) was born with pyrokinetic powers, meaning she can set anyone or anything she doesn’t like ablaze, the lucky brat.

Well, a few years later when the secret government agency that ran the secret government drug test catches wind of what little Charlie can do, they decide they’d like to have a little chat with her, and maybe her dad too (the briefly popular David Keith), who himself might have psychic powers. Or maybe they’d like to have something more than a chat.

Less a horror movie than conspiracy thriller and chase picture, Firestarter remains an oddity here, as it’s one of the few Killer Kid films in which we’re asked to root for the Killer Kid, actually hoping the wee pyro in question, even though she’s cute and blond, will set a few of those icky, mean adults on fire.

It’s hardly on a par with The Shining, Carrie, or The Dead Zone, but at least it’s better than Night Shift, Sometimes They Come Back, Children of the Corn IV, Cat’s Eye, Maximum Overdrive…

The Omen IV: The Awakening (1991)

As would become standard for plenty of other franchises that had seemingly run their course, some bright TV executives thought there was still some money to be made with that whole Omen thing. A decade after the last and supposedly final entry came out, why not give it the TV movie treatment? And while we’re at it, why not give it a fresh twist by doing a little gender switcheroo, right? So this time around, why not make Damien a girl? That’d throw viewers for a loop, wouldn’t it?

(An Omen IV novel had actually been released shortly after The Final Conflict came out, but it had nothing to do with this.)

The events of the previous three films have long been forgotten by the time we get underway here, I mean, don’t we see the Second Coming of Christ at the end of Final Conflict? Okay, so I guess Jesus had gone on vacation or something by the time two young smug and wealthy lawyers (Michael Woods and Faye Grant) adopt a new daughter without asking too many questions.

Their daughter Delia (Asia Vieira) grows into a pretty, dark-haired young girl who is extremely unpleasant. Oooon, but she’s a bratty little smartass who could use a spanking. I always thought the Antichrist was supposed to be charming and charismatic, but I’ll let it slide. In any case her New Age hippie nanny starts to suspect something far more sinister than smug parents might be at the heart of Delia’s bad attitude. When all her magic crystals turn black in the little girl’s presence, she starts making frantic calls to her other New Agey friends.

I’m going to stop there. Hilariously awful film, save for one scene, And that one scene alone is reason enough to forgive the film’s countless other unforgivable flaws.

The nanny drags Delia to a New Age fair in a park in hopes of getting a snapshot of her aura, and let’s just say things don’t go well for much of anyone. In simple slapstick terms, it’s on a par with Final Conflict’s montage of baby murders.

The Good Son (1993)

As he transitioned from the “dorky, buggy-eyed but still weirdly cute” kid in the Home Alone pictures into a “dorky, buggy-eyed and much less cute” adolescent, Macaulay Culkin decided to prove his range as an actor by playing against type in still another take on The Bad Seed.

Instead of telling the story through the mother’s eyes, in Joseph Ruben’s film we see things through the eyes of a nice, wholesome kid named Mark (a young Elijah Wood). After his mother dies, he’s sent to live with an aunt and uncle and two cousins. Not yet knowing he should avoid anyone named “Henry,” Mark and his cousin Henry (Culkin) become good friends. But after Henry is clearly delighted when one of his silly boyhood pranks triggers a deadly multi-car pileup, and after he shows off his homemade gun to Mark, and furthermore hints he once tried to kill his own brother, Mark starts to get the idea Henry might well be a psychopath with bigger diabolical schemes in mind.

Ruben’s picture is a slight cut above the likes of, say, The Godsend thanks to that change in perspective. Although Culkin makes for a believable psycho kid, it didn’t really do much to revamp his career and set him on that road to an Oscar. Thinking about it, though, Henry’s use of improvised and homemade weaponry wasn’t that big a step away from his Home Alone character, but with more fatalities and fewer cartoon sound effects..

Home Movie (2008)

The found footage/hand held video/POV horror film was pretty well dead and buried as a style by 2008, but that sure didn’t stop anyone. It was a cheap way to make a movie, after all. In this case, though, the story would have worked much better as a straight narrative, as the POV gimmick just gets in the way, leaving viewers (or maybe just me) repeatedly asking, “Why would anyone be filming this?”

Why, for instance, would an alcoholic Lutheran minister (Adrian Pasdar) choose to film an intimate argument with his psychiatrist wife (Cady McClain)? And why would a psychiatrist use the family video camera to record private patient notes, leaving them mixed in there with the Christmas and Easter home movies? Maybe writer/director Christopher Denham was trying to make a point about people so obsessed with living through screens that they can easily ignore the obvious and increasing threat posed by their clearly disturbed twin children, who mostly just lurk in the background as the parents focus on themselves. I doubt it though.

The creepy ten-year-olds Jack (Austin Williams) and Emily (Amber Joy Williams) were born on Halloween. While their parents try to desperately prove just how fun and cool and hip they are by setting up haunted houses in the basement and teaching their kids how to pick locks, Jack and Emily spend the first half of the film staring sullenly at the floor. Soon enough though, they begin killing goldfish, crushing toads in vices, crucifying the family cat, and attacking schoolmates, working their way up the evolutionary chain toward You Know Who.

Oh, I’m not giving a goddamn thing away here—the goddamn tagline gave it away! And even without the tagline if you couldn’t see exactly where this was headed with the first scene, maybe you need a nap or something.

To it’s credit, like Devil Times Five, Home Movie offers no explanation for why the kids are funny in the head. If you wanted to push it you could make something out of that Halloween birthday or the fact the family name is “Poe.” Myself, I just tend to accept that any kid unlucky enough to have a preacher or a shrink as a parent is fucked from the start.

Case 39 (2009)

Renee Zelwegger stars as a young sincere and overworked case worker at Children and Family Services. After the seemingly unbalanced parents of a shy, sweet and neglected girl on her case list try to cram the pre-adolescent into the oven (repeatedly!) one night, the parents are institutionalized and the social worker adopts the girl.

Okay, same as with Home Movie, if you can’t see where this one was headed ten minutes in, theres something wrong with you. Funny twist is, while I initially took it to be simply yet another Bad Seed knockoff (which it is) before deciding it was simply another Omen knockoff (which it is), by the half way point it finally became clear: what I was watching was in fact a knockoff of Omen IV: The Awakening. And that’s pretty bad. To make it all even sadder and more pointless, Case 39 is capped by a climax that makes absolutely no sense, if you think about it even for a little bit. Even the Omen IV had a better ending, and that’s saying something.

Considering all the above, the ultimate lesson to take away here is that, talk as we might about The Terrible Twos, it’s when the little monsters turn ten that you really need to watch out.

by Jim Knipfel

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stephenmccull · 3 years

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Fútbol, Flags and Fun: Getting Creative to Reach Unvaccinated Latinos in Colorado

Horns blared and drums pounded a constant beat as fans of the Mexican national soccer team gathered recently at Empower Field at Mile High in Denver for a high-profile international tournament.

But the sounds were muted inside a mobile medical RV parked near the stadium, and the tone was professional. During halftime of Mexico’s game against the U.S., soccer fan Oscar Felipe Sanchez rolled up his sleeve to receive the one-dose covid-19 vaccine.

Sanchez is a house painter in Colorado Springs. After getting sick with covid a few months ago, he thought he should get the vaccine. But because of the illness, he was advised to wait a few weeks before getting the shot. Asked if he’s glad he got it, Sanchez answered through a translator: “Yes! He’s more trusting to go out.”

Bringing the mobile vaccine program to an international soccer match was the latest effort by the state of Colorado and its local partners to meet unvaccinated residents wherever they are, rather than ask them to find the vaccine themselves.

Long gone are the days in early spring when vaccine appointments were snatched up the instant they became available, and health care workers worried about making sure patients were eligible under state and federal criteria for age and health status.

Colorado, and most of the nation, has now moved into a new phase involving targeted efforts and individual interactions and using trusted community influencers to persuade the hesitant to get jabbed.

With about half of Colorado’s 5.78 million people now fully immunized, the challenge cuts across all demographic groups. According to the state’s vaccination dashboard, men are slightly more hesitant than women and rural residents are more hesitant than urban dwellers. Younger Coloradans have been less likely than their elders to prioritize the shots.

But perhaps no group has been harder to get vaccinated than Coloradans who identify as Hispanic. Despite Hispanics making up more than 20% of the state population, only about 10% of the state’s doses have gone to Hispanic residents, according to the state’s vaccination dashboard.

The gap is not as wide nationally: Hispanics, or Latinos, make up 17.2% of the U.S. population, and 15.8% of people who have gotten at least one dose — and whose race/ethnicity is known — are Hispanic.

At first, the gap in Colorado seemed to be an issue of inadequate access to health care. Nearly 16% of Hispanic Coloradans are uninsured, according to a KFF report. That’s more than double the rate for white Coloradans. That disparity may play a role, even though the vaccine itself is free, with no insurance requirement.

Denver has hit the 70% threshold for resident vaccination, but some Latino neighborhoods are getting vaccinated at much lower rates, according to Dr. Lilia Cervantes, an associate professor in the department of medicine at Denver Health.

“There are some very high-risk neighborhoods where most of the community are first-generation or foreign-born individuals,” said Cervantes. “And that is where we’re seeing the highest disparities.”

According to data from Denver’s health agencies, about 40% of Latinos older than 12 are vaccinated in Denver County — that’s far below the roughly 75% rate for whites.

Latinos make up 29% of the Denver population but represent nearly half of cases and hospitalizations.

If the state hopes to reach broad levels of protection from the virus, Cervantes said, “I think that it is critical that we improve vaccine uptake in our most marginalized groups, including those who are undocumented and those who are Spanish-language dominant.” Cervantes added she’s concerned the state will keep seeing a higher covid positivity rate in those marginalized groups, who make up much of the essential workforce. “This past year, I think we have seen stark health inequities in the Latino community.”

All this portends a more uneven pandemic, said Dr. Fernando Holguin, a pulmonologist and critical care doctor at the Latino Research & Policy Center at the Colorado School of Public Health.

He worries cases, hospitalizations and deaths will keep flaring up in less vaccinated communities, especially predominantly Hispanic populations in parts of Colorado or other states where overall vaccination rates are poor. “They’re at risk, especially moving into the fall of seeing increasing waves of infections. I think it is really critical that people really become vaccinated,” Holguin said. Even as parts of Colorado and parts of the U.S. — like the Northeast — are getting vaccinated at high rates, for the mostly unvaccinated “covid infections in certain communities still will be devastating for them,” he said.

He’s especially concerned about migrant farmworkers, who often have poor access to the internet and may struggle to find good information about the vaccine and avoiding the virus. “So overcoming those access, cultural, language barriers is important,” he said.

When asked what the state has done to reach out to Latino Coloradans, a health department spokesperson pointed to over 1,500 “vaccine equity clinics” in 56 counties; the Workplace Vaccination Program, which partners with businesses and organizations to provide vaccine clinics at worksites; and a Spanish-language Facebook page and covid website. She said the state’s “Power the Comeback” campaign is available in English and Spanish and aims to reach disproportionately affected populations with awareness ads, testimonial videos and animated videos.

About a third of all adults in the U.S. are unvaccinated, a “shrinking pool” that skews younger and includes people more likely to identify as Republican or Republican-leaning, according to a KFF COVID-19 Vaccine Monitor report.

They also tend to be poorer, less educated and more likely to be uninsured. The KFF report found 19% of unvaccinated adults are Hispanic; of that group, 20% said they will “wait and see” about getting vaccinated, and 11% said they’d “definitely not” get it.

Both Cervantes and Holguin credit local, state and community groups with aggressively looking to boost vaccination rates among Latino Coloradans, while also encouraging them to keep recruiting trusted community voices from within, to help deliver the message.

“You know, it’s not going to be Dr. [Anthony] Fauci saying something, that someone translates in Spanish, that you need to get vaccinated,” Holguin said. “There’s going to be people in the community convincing others to get vaccinated.”

At Empower Field, soccer fan Diego Montemayor of Denver echoed that sentiment, saying some fans who got shots themselves urged friends who came to the stadium to visit the RV and get one, too. “When they hear people that they trust sharing their experiences, that goes a long way,” Montemayor said.

Community health advocate Karimme Quintana agreed. She had come to the game as well to spread the word about the safety and efficacy of the vaccine. She works as a promotora de salud pública, a public health outreach worker, focusing her efforts on Denver’s majority-Latino Westwood neighborhood. Quintana said that population may trust someone close to them more than even a doctor.

“They need to be more educated about the covid because they have a lot of questions,” said Quintana, whose button read “¿Tiene preguntas sobre covid? Pregúnteme.” (“Do you have questions about covid? Ask me.”)

“Latino people, they listen [to] the neighbor, they listen [to] my friend,” Quintana said.

University of Colorado Health nurse Danica Farrington said the vaccine effort at the soccer tournament was heavily promoted beforehand on billboards and big screens inside the stadium during the game.

“They just plastered it everywhere and said, go get your shot,” she said. “That’s pretty influential.”

The carnival atmosphere at the stadium helped him make the pitch, said Jesus Romero Serrano, a community ambassador with Denver’s mayor’s office: “It’s a Mexico game versus Honduras! So lots of Latinos are here. This is the perfect place to be, to reach the Latin community. Absolutely!”

To capitalize on the playful spirit of the day, Romero Serrano wore a Mexico soccer jersey and a red-and-green luchador wrestling mask. In his work with the city government, he’s what you could call a community influencer. He filtered through the tailgate crowd in the parking lot, handing out cards about where to get a vaccine.

As he circulated, he admitted it’s sometimes hard for some Latino Coloradans to overcome what they see as years of historical mistreatment or neglect from medical providers. “They don’t trust the health care system,” he said.

Still, Romero Serrano kept wading into the crowd, shaking hands and shouting over the constant din of the drum bands, asking people whether they had gotten a vaccine.

The most common answer he heard was “everybody has it” — but he was skeptical about that, thinking people were just being nice.

A few miles from the stadium is the Tepeyac Community Health Center, in the predominantly Hispanic Globeville neighborhood. That’s home base for Dr. Pamela Valenza, a family physician and the chief health officer at the clinic. She tries to address her patients’ fears and concerns about the new vaccines, but many have told her they still want to wait and see that people don’t have serious side effects.

Valenza’s clinic recently held more vaccine events, at more convenient times that didn’t interfere with work, like Friday evenings, and offered free grocery cards for the vaccinated. She said she likes the idea of pairing vaccines with fun.

“The Latino culture — food, culture and community — is such a central part of the Latino community,” Valenza said. “Making the events maybe a little bit more than just a vaccine might encourage some community members to come out.”

This story comes from NPR’s health reporting partnership with Colorado Public Radio and Kaiser Health News (KHN).

KHN (Kaiser Health News) is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues. Together with Policy Analysis and Polling, KHN is one of the three major operating programs at KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation). KFF is an endowed nonprofit organization providing information on health issues to the nation.

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gordonwilliamsweb · 3 years

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Fútbol, Flags and Fun: Getting Creative to Reach Unvaccinated Latinos in Colorado

Horns blared and drums pounded a constant beat as fans of the Mexican national soccer team gathered recently at Empower Field at Mile High in Denver for a high-profile international tournament.

Colorado, and most of the nation, has now moved into a new phase involving targeted efforts and individual interactions and using trusted community influencers to persuade the hesitant to get jabbed.

According to data from Denver’s health agencies, about 40% of Latinos older than 12 are vaccinated in Denver County — that’s far below the roughly 75% rate for whites.

Latinos make up 29% of the Denver population but represent nearly half of cases and hospitalizations.

All this portends a more uneven pandemic, said Dr. Fernando Holguin, a pulmonologist and critical care doctor at the Latino Research & Policy Center at the Colorado School of Public Health.

“Latino people, they listen [to] the neighbor, they listen [to] my friend,” Quintana said.

“They just plastered it everywhere and said, go get your shot,” she said. “That’s pretty influential.”

Still, Romero Serrano kept wading into the crowd, shaking hands and shouting over the constant din of the drum bands, asking people whether they had gotten a vaccine.

The most common answer he heard was “everybody has it” — but he was skeptical about that, thinking people were just being nice.

This story comes from NPR’s health reporting partnership with Colorado Public Radio and Kaiser Health News (KHN).

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Fútbol, Flags and Fun: Getting Creative to Reach Unvaccinated Latinos in Colorado published first on https://nootropicspowdersupplier.tumblr.com/

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VinePair Podcast: How TikTok Is Changing the Game for Drinks Influencing

VinePair Podcast: How TikTok is Changing the Game for Drinks Influencing

For more stories on TikTok, check out our whole series here.

TikTok’s influence on popular culture continues to grow and change, and these days, the platform is taking the drinks world by storm. While in 2020, some of the biggest trends involved flair bartending and performative pours, 2021 is showing a few different sides of the social media platform. Whether it’s a whimsical snow cocktail made by a world-famous chef, or voices that didn’t break through previously, the drinks space on TikTok is rapidly evolving.

That’s what Adam Teeter and Zach Geballe discuss on this week’s episode of the “VinePair Podcast”: why different styles and voices seem to be flourishing on TikTok, why the cocktail space in particular is so dynamic, and why there’s still incredible untapped potential for beer and wine influencers to find a foothold.

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OR CHECK OUT THE CONVERSATION HERE

Adam: From Brooklyn, New York, I’m Adam Teeter.

Zach: And in Seattle, Washington, I’m Zach Geballe.

Adam: And this is the VinePair Podcast. Zach, man, what’s going on? What have you been up to?

Z: Well, you know, it’s been a chaotic-ish week, as always. My wife and I are house hunting, which you know the fun of that.

A: How adult of you.

Z: I know. Well, we have a kid, so we figured we probably should buy a house eventually. Yeah, it sucks. I hate doing this. I mean, I look forward to eventually having a house, but everything else about the process is zero fun. Not zero fun — it’s like 8 percent fun. I think it would be a little more fun if it wasn’t Covid. But it’s like everything about going to look at houses is just so much more complicated, and you’re on like an incredibly tight window. It’s like you have exactly this time, you cannot do this, you have to do that, which is all well and good as it should be. There should be stringent protocols, but it does make it a lot more stressful to just even find time to fit in house visits. Just everything about it is more stressful than I think it would be during other times. But this is when we’re deciding to buy a house, so that’s what we’re stuck with. But it does mean that I’ve been having to drink to deal with the stress.

A: Oh, so what have you drunk?

Z: I’ve actually been weirdly on a beer kick lately, which sometimes happens for me. Caitlin was actually just commenting. She’s like, “You’ve been drinking beer more than wine lately.” I think it’s been a couple of things. We do have wine open a lot because of classes and stuff I teach, but I’ve been more just wanting a beer at like 5 o’clock more than I have necessarily been wanting wine with dinner. We’ve also been having a lot of weird pulled-together meals because Caitlin’s super busy with work. So it’s been like, what can we get quickly? The beer has just been kind of a good fit. There’s a lot of breweries near me, and a couple that I’ve been really enjoying. There’s a brewery called Reuben‘s that I actually just tried last night. Their Secret Crush, which was put out for Valentine’s Day, is the latest they have. They have this whole series of “crush beers,”* which are all kind of the same base beer with slightly different hopping regimens. So, yeah, it’s interesting to try that. The other brewery by me, Lucky Envelope, had a pineapple sour that they put out as part of their Lunar New Year celebration, and that was super tasty. I really enjoyed that beer. What have you been drinking?

A: So it’s interesting you say this. I feel like I do go through phases. So I’ve been doing a few things. One, I have been drinking more beer. I had a pretty good IPA earlier in the week. It was from Tröegs, and I think Tröegs is great. They sent me one of their new releases, and it was really tasty. The other thing I’ve been doing is, I’ll just have a glass of whiskey. He’s gonna love that I’m giving him credit, but Aaron Goldfarb turned me on to this.

Z: Lots of love for Aaron on the podcast lately, from both of us.

A: I’m just hoping his mom sees this because I think she reads everything about him. Anyway, he has these Glencairn glasses, and he drinks a little dram of different things in the evenings. He actually drinks beer out of them too, sometimes, just because he likes the glass. But I’ve been doing a little dram — I’ll pour to the curve, and it’s nice. I’ll either have it before or after dinner because yeah, you’re right, it’s not every night that I want to open a bottle of wine for dinner. I have other shit going on, and like, also the stress of cooking and stuff; it’s not as easy to do. So I have been doing that, and it’s really lovely. I’ve kind of revisited some bourbons that I like, some Scotches that I like, and obviously, I’m always willing to try others (for those of you out there in the podcast land.) The other thing I want to ask you really quickly about drinking is, have you thought about moving out of Seattle? Because, you know, Zach, we have had more positive reaction and more emails to the small town or small city podcast than we ever have before — from somms, chefs, etc., writing in and talking about how they had left New York, Houston, or Denver to go to other places and start restaurants and shops. So I was just curious, has it got you thinking maybe you should leave Seattle?

Z: No, because we’re looking to buy a house in Seattle, so probably not. My wife also works in Seattle. My wife makes more money than I do, so her job takes priority. Even within a city or a broader metro area like Seattle, I do think that what we have seen, along with this possible trend of people moving out of these places in the first place, is that a lot of what’s exciting, potentially, in food and drink is not in the kind of classic downtown cores. You and I will have to do an episode down the road, maybe as things get closer to more fully reopening, when the pandemic has subsided more, about the transformation that’s going to happen in a lot of these downtown cores, because it really is, I think, going to be pretty revolutionary. It’s going to be hard for restaurants that have traditionally relied on a combination of business, travel, and tourism to make a go of it fully. I think some of those things will come back sooner than others. But I do think that it does mean that there is a lot of interest. I have some interest, and I think lots of people do, in saying, “Hey, can I set up a wine shop, a restaurant, a wine bar, a craft beer bar, or something that’s serving a community that is not completely detached from a larger city, but is far enough away from the existing centers, where it’s going to be enticing to that population base to not drive so far to have the same experience?” For me, it might not be moving to places that are significantly outside of Seattle, like Bellingham or Olympia or something like that, but it might just be going 15, 20 miles north of Seattle doing something that’s a little more for those people in those areas who don’t have a lot of other options. So I don’t know, I’ve been thinking about it. But it’s true that the response has been really positive — thank you all for writing in. It’s always [email protected] if you have feedback. We always really do appreciate it and give it a lot of thought.

A: A few people we might have on the podcast, which is cool. What you bring up makes me think about (which we didn’t talk about because it’s not really a small town) how the Charleston scene is booming. When you and I were together and did the live podcast for the Charleston Wine and Food Festival last year, we went to North Charleston, which actually is 15 miles north of Charleston. That really cute little downtown area that has Stems and Skins, which was one of the best wine bars I’ve been to in the country. We were asking, who’s the clientele? Are people driving out of Charleston to come? Just as I know this is for the people who decide to move out here because it’s more affordable and they’re commuting to Charleston for work. I thought that was super interesting that, as you’re saying, it was this little opportunity. There’s a little amazing neck of business; there’s one really good Neapolitan pizza restaurant, another nice restaurant, a coffee shop, that’s just for that community. And I love that. I think what you’re talking about is really interesting and definitely worth thinking about for those entrepreneurial restaurateurs out there and wine shop and spirit shop people.

So we did something crazy here at VinePair. We decided, under the editorial leadership of Joanna Sciarrino, who’s our new executive editor, as well as the rest editorial team: our senior editor, Cat Wolinski, and Katie Brown, our associate editor and assistant editor, and then also Tim McKirdy, senior staff writer. We decided to take on this idea of a massive package of content around TikTok. We have all been talking in editorial meetings about how impactful TikTok has been, and that it really seemed to turn this massive corner in the pandemic. Now you have so many people joining the platform. So we asked not only our in-house team of writers, but also a lot of well-known contributors like Aaron Goldfarb and Dave Infante to examine and write articles about what TikTok looks like right now. The entire package is called Tapping into TikTok, published today on the site at VinePair.com/tapping-into-tiktok. There are like 13 articles, plus this podcast, that all look at the world of TikTok through different lenses. There are some profiles of really interesting people on the platform. There are some business stories, there’s some trend pieces. It’s a really good read that I encourage everyone to take a look at, because I think we’re at a sort of an inflection point here with what’s going to happen with this platform as more and more people join. So if you have ever been wondering what’s going on, or who you should be following, or who some of these people are, you definitely have to read these stories. They’re really, really fun as well. You’ve got amateurs, you’ve got professionals, etc. So Zach, we want to take the fact that this is the week that this entire package publishes, (and we happen to have our podcast debut on the day the package publishes) to talk about a larger theme: What is going viral on TikTok, what is so unique about what is going viral, and what are we seeing that’s so crazy about TikTok? And one of the biggest, most recent trends, obviously, is snow cocktails. Snow cocktails are all the rage, but there’s a lot of stuff on TikTok now that has taken off and had its moment, and we’ll discuss why we think that is. First I’d love to get your reaction — what do you think of the snow cocktail trend? I kind of think it’s awesome.

Z: Yeah, I really enjoyed it. We actually had some decent amount of snow in Seattle this past weekend. I was like, “I’m going to do this.” It seemed like a fun idea. I had a good time. I made myself what I call a “Snow Fashioned,” which is literally just a snow Old Fashioned. I think that the whole snow cocktail trend is like a perfect example of when TikTok really works. The concept is really simple in a lot of ways, and it’s an incredibly broad palate — you could basically do anything with it. It’s not intimidating for most people. It can be as simple as just putting snow in a glass and pouring your favorite liquor over it, if you want to be that simple, or you can make a fancy drink. It was connected with the fact that when most of the country got a lot of snow or at least some snow, it was very easy for people to glom onto it. I think that’s fantastic. What was interesting is that it was almost such a broad palate — and I’d be curious if you felt this, too — it was hard to kind of get a sense of it besides just “it’s cocktails plus snow,” as opposed to, “here’s a specific drink or type of drink that’s going viral.” And that, I think, is what’s interesting about TikTok. For me, with these drink trends, it feels almost like it’s not always really about what’s even in the glass, it’s kind of everything that’s going on around it.

A: Totally. It’s about the vibe. It’s about who the person is. I think that’s what’s so interesting about these trends that we’re seeing. Some of them are obviously more about the drink. I think the snow cocktail was a really good example. At the end of the day, they all kind of look the same, right? It’s snow, and you’re dumping stuff with snow, right? So it’s like, are you dumping a Negroni on top of snow? We’ve written about this to the Togroni trend. Those guys who created the Togroni trend were dumping Togroni in snow and being like “ah, check out the Togroni!” I also think it still looked the same as when José Andrés made his cocktail, if you saw this one, which was amazing. He took mezcal (which he kept calling tequila, and going back and forth) and mixed it with vermouth. José Andrés is a national treasure.

Z: I would say he’s a global treasure.

A: Yeah. He’s the best. So he goes to add vermouth to his cocktail, and his vermouth is empty because he’d been drinking it inside. And he was like, “Oops, finished the bottle.” That was so good. But I think what was awesome about the snow cocktails is because they all look the same (I mean, yes, there is a different color poured over the snow, but they’re very similar, maybe different glassware) it’s about the personality who is fun to watch — who can be self-deprecating, like José Andrés, who is funny, those types of things. Whereas there’s other things that take off on TikTok that are really more about the drink itself or how crazy it is. That is how it really started. I think that we’re evolving to the people. But at the beginning of the pandemic, it was like, how crazy can this shit be? How many insane candy cocktails can you make? Like, can you take gummy worms and infuse them with vodka and get wasted? That’s where it started, and now it’s kind of moving. I love how it’s happened; I think what makes TikTok so compelling is that it’s people copying each other and updating. You even saw that with the snow cocktails. It was like, “Oh, you can do that? I can do a riff on it. Here’s my version of your cocktail.” That’s really fun. I’m really excited to hopefully start seeing that happen more in wine, and beer, too. It’s starting to break out a little bit, but it doesn’t make sense. I feel like the spirits people have discovered this platform and they’re really owning it. And I’m just waiting for wine to get there, and for beer to get there, because bourbon TikTok is nothing besides people sitting around talking about bourbon, and sharing bourbons. Why can’t that be wine TikTok too?

Z: I think what’s really interesting here are two components to it that have struck me lately. One of them is this idea of riffing that you mentioned. To me, it’s like this perfect example of how TikTok is not just recycling trends. It’s doing the past 30, 40 years of cocktail culture, all in a span of a couple of months. You’ve gone from the flair bartending period of the 1980s and early ‘90s. Now we’re in this period where people are doing what was so exciting in craft cocktails in the early to mid-2000s. They are sharing drinks, they are sharing ideas, and the innovation is super fast-paced. Now in 2021, someone can upload a video of a cocktail that they’ve made that you’ve never heard of. You can understand how it’s made and you can go, “Well maybe if I don’t have all those ingredients, I can make a version of that with these ingredients instead, or I can riff on it in this way.” It’s the same kind of process that took months because a cocktail had to travel through a sort of informal whisper network in bars around the country. Now it’s like it can happen in a matter of days, which is super cool.

A: It is really funny. I hadn’t thought about that. That’s a good point. I wonder, too, do you think that is kind of what’s happening with wine right now? What I saw happening on the platform with wine — initially is there were some people who were reviewing wines. The biggest trend in wine right now is people going to their grocery store and saying, “buy this bottle, don’t buy this bottle, buy this bottle, don’t buy this bottle.” A bunch of people have taken this trend and are copying it — I’ve seen a lot recently. So I’m going to walk in the aisle, and I’ll be like, “I love this bottle. It was delicious. I had it with roast chicken. Hated this bottle. It was too big for me, or too high alcohol, or bitter.” A lot of it is amateur wine drinkers, which I love. I don’t mean amateur in that they’re amateurs, but they’re not professionals, which is cool. They’re talking about what they love. That is the way I think you could connect it to what we saw nine months ago with DrinkTok, or BarTok, where basically the first thing you saw was the way that most of us start drinking when we’re close to 21 — it’s basically like dumping everything into a bucket and seeing what happens. The first time I ever bought wine was just by going into my grocery store and being like, “OK, I’m in Georgia, I’m in college. They sell it in Publix. Is this one good, or is that one good?” In Atlanta, I started getting more into wine and would be like, “Now I’m of age. I’m going to go to the wine store. Maybe I’ll talk to somebody because I’m not still intimidated.” I wonder if we’ll see that evolution, and if we’ll also see similar in beer, where we’ll start going through the phases of what you go through as a wine drinker, in the same way we’re seeing the phases of what you go through as a cocktail drinker.

Z: One of the things that I’ve been racking my brain about a little bit is: With Instagram, it was clear what made for compelling-ish wine content initially. But even then, I feel like wine Instagram was very focused around bottle shots. Basically, the innovation is what else is in the picture with the bottle of wine? There was this big trend, I’m sure it’s still going on, where wineries posed the bottle with all these different things, fruits and things like that, that supposedly you would smell or taste in it. It was like a whole visual representation of the experience of drinking the wine, which is very compelling. It’s also an incredible labor to put together. But with TikTok, I would be curious to see if reviews take hold. I think what will be maybe more powerful than that, potentially, is not necessarily “here’s 10 seconds on this wine” or “here’s 10 seconds on why you should drink this wine and not that one” but instead “here’s 20 seconds about a wine that I really like.” Here’s the story of this wine in a really concise format, and maybe it’s cleverly shot or edited. With TikTok you want that pop of information, but you also need to be entertained. I think that one of the challenges that comes with this grocery store format is like, if you’re not in that store or in a similar store, you might not have the same wines on your shelf. I mean, yes, there are wines that are on pretty much every grocery store shelf. But if you’re trying to do something, especially as a professional, that’s a little more insightful than which mass-produced red blend you should be drinking. It is hard to find a purchase with TikTok. I’ve thought about this a lot for myself, personally. It’s hard to know what you would say that is not incredibly glib, but also doesn’t bore people.

A: A few things that you mentioned are really interesting to dig deeper into. The first is obviously Instagram versus TikTok, which we covered in one of the VinePair packages. One of the profiles everyone should read is a profile on the woman behind the account SpiritedLA. What she says is really fascinating. She makes beautiful cocktails. I think she’s probably one of the people making the best cocktails on TikTok. What she said, though, is that when she got on Instagram, she was very methodical about the formula. Like, “this is what you do. This is the lighting, this is how it has to look for it to do well in cocktail Instagram.” Wine people were doing the same thing, like, “This is how you have to talk about it here. These are the hashtags you have to use.” She has around 42,000 followers on Instagram. She said when she joined TikTok early in the pandemic, she was like: “I’m going to make really fun cocktail videos. I love fashion and I love dressing for the party. So I’m just going to wear really cool outfits that match the drink and I’m going to make the same drinks I’m making on Instagram.” She showed herself on Instagram, but not a lot — it was really the drink. She has this great personality that kind of comes off like she’s in the ’50s, almost like she has this really cool, classy air to her. She talks about a bygone era of cocktails, and she gives you the history and all that stuff. She has 243,000 followers on TikTok. She said she didn’t follow a formula or anything, she was just herself. I think that’s what’s been really fun about TikTok — a lot of people are able to be themselves and are just able to say, “This is what we do, and you either like it or you don’t.” One of these other accounts that we profile in the package is the account JonesnMann. And JonesnMann are a duo that are usually on YouTube together reviewing bourbons and other spirits. But on TikTok, only Mann wanted to do it. (And also, they refuse to give their first names. This is part of the characters they play. So it’s not that I don’t know their first names, they actually don’t even give them in the article.) So Mann was like, “We should be on TikTok.” He is super entertaining. His whole tagline is “drinkin’ the comments” and you tell him like a cocktail you’ve made and he’ll make it. He’ll also talk about spirits. If you say, “What do you think about Crown Apple?” He’ll talk about why he likes Crown Apple, or he’ll talk about Blanton’s. He’s this fun person that people like to watch. On the other side, when it comes to wine, I think, one, there hasn’t been a personality that’s burst out yet. I think that that’s going to be what it takes. Two, I think if someone’s going to be really successful as an influencer on tape talking about wine, I think they need to really watch what’s happening in one specific subset of #DrinkTok, which is the bourbon TikTok channel. The communities are similar in the fact that a lot of time they talk about wines, obviously, that you and I will never be able to find or try. They talk about Pappy. I’ve had Pappy once in my life, you and I’ve had 10 year. I’ll probably never have the 23. That is what they all talk about, in the way the wine people talk about DRC or Petrus, or other wines. But then they all love to talk about these finds that they get that are regionally specific. You would be amazed at how many bourbons people have that are regionally specific. They prop each other up, and they have certain people in the community who have become these personalities that are really engaging and fun, and help educate. One of the people — who I’ve just been waiting and waiting and waiting for someone in wine to be like – is this guy, Steve Higdon, who is 60 Second Bourbon Review, and he refers to himself as “the boomer of bourbon TikTok.” I think he’s just so down to earth and funny. People in the bourbon community love him because he feels like their dad. It’s mostly people who obviously are younger, but they have embraced him and he has tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of followers. He’s one of the most popular, if not the most popular, person in the bourbon TikTok community, and everyone kind of defers to him. They’ll be like, “I know Steve said he liked this bourbon, but here’s my notes,” and it’s great. I think there is that opportunity for wine, it’s just figuring out who those personalities are that can feel approachable, and not “somm-y.” You can’t be somm-y, because it won’t work on Tiktok. In Instagram if you had a somm following, you could have other somms and people who want to be like somms following you and that would be fine. But because the algorithm on TikTok is so democratic in the way that it throws out your content and sees what people love, you have to be approachable, and you have to be providing content that people feel they can relate to. Or, you can create content people hate, which I’ve also seen go viral, but you don’t want people in your comments being like, “You’re the worst person. You’re such a jerk. No one wants to follow what you like to drink because you’re a snob about it.” I think that’s also interesting. So who knows, man? It’s a fun platform, for sure.

Z: You make a really good point. I wanted to ask your opinion. With Instagram, it’s always felt to me like one of the things that is rewarded on that platform is a very specific visual aesthetic, right? Yes, we all know it. In the early days, it was the filters. Now, I would say it’s that, but it’s also just you want your pictures to look a certain way, whether you’re in them or not. And I wonder, my sense of TikTok — and you’re deeper in it than I am — is there is less of that, because it’s video, and not static to some extent. It is a thing where — maybe just because it’s newer and there isn’t as clear of a “here is how you get the most interaction on the platform” — I just wonder, does that also create space for drinks that are inherently less visually grabby? We all know that one of the things that’s true about what’s happened in drinks culture because of Instagram is (and in food culture too) is increased emphasis on visual appeal from the get-go. It’s why craft beer labels have moved the directions they’ve moved. All that kind of stuff. On TikTok, yes, the thing has to look good if you’re going to see it, but you’re never going to get the same quality. Most people don’t have the same quality lighting. It’s a video, so things are moving. In most cases, it’s always going to be a little bit less polished. I wonder if it does create space for people who are not going to be able to produce professional-quality photography at their house, and might not be able to produce professional-quality videography, either, but can be a professional-quality personality, I guess.

A: Yeah, I think that it does. Let’s talk spirits, specifically. You have two different kinds of people. You either have the person who has a full set up, almost like they’re standing on a set. They’re making their drinks in a way that feels very polished. They probably went out and bought some equipment to hold the phone steady and things like that. Spirited LA is like that, right? Her setup looks beautiful — she has a beautiful kitchen. You could take her videos and with a little bit more work be like, “I could see this on Food Network or something.” Then there’s Johnny Drinks, which actually is this father and son from Jersey who I think are the most followed account in drinks TikTok. They’re up to almost 800,000 followers. It’s a father and son. They knew not a lot about drinks before they started TikTok. They’re learning about drinks together. They’re just like in the basement of their house in Jersey. I think the son is home from college because of Covid. He started filming with his dad. His dad’s real job is something in insurance, I think. (I haven’t got to read the profile yet. I’m really excited to. We’re recording this prior to all publishing.) They’re in the basement, where the dad has this bar that used to be just for hanging out. There’s a pool table down there, whatever. It’s not set, you know — the camera’s shaky, but they’re just two people trying to learn how to make drinks, and talking about it to people, and showing people how to make drinks. They’re just a good personality. I think people love that it’s a dad and a son. There’s like this connection between the two of them. The son also asks the dad about life advice. These things are resonating with people watching who want to be entertained. People are looking for good entertainment, in the same way they were looking for that on YouTube years ago. Whereas Instagram has more and more and more felt plastic to a lot of people. We’re all sick of the fact that like, that’s not what your family looks like all the time. Come on. You’re not having fun 24/7. These articles are being published about how Instagram specifically is causing people to have massive amounts of anxiety, and to be depressed, because they feel like this friend has a perfect life and they don’t. Meanwhile, you don’t know that the friend also is having issues with their job, or with their health, or any of these things. But when they’re posting on Instagram, it looks like everything’s perfect. I think people like TikTok because there can be those little mistakes. It just feels more real.

Z: You can have already drunk all the vermouth, as it turns out?

A: Exactly! Right. You know, it’s all there. And that’s why people like it. I can’t stress this enough — I think it’s a platform that if you’re in the drinks business, you need to be paying attention to. It’s funny because I feel like there’s been a lot of noise over the last week or so about another platform, Clubhouse. I’ve played around on it. It’s the same people that were on a lot of these different platforms initially. There’s like a group of — I don’t wanna say illuminati, but like, you know — it’s the same wine people that are on Twitter having conversations about wine. They’re not bringing anyone new into the conversation on Clubhouse. I didn’t see anyone new when I jumped into these rooms. This is probably worth a podcast of its own down the road, but I don’t see any new voices on Clubhouse. It’s the same voices I hear on Twitter, whereas TikTok is really new people, or there are people who yes, had some success on Instagram, but not like this. Again, SpiritedLA, she’s the perfect example. Yeah, she had some success on Instagram — 40,000 followers on Instagram for a cocktail account is nothing to sneeze at. There are people who have massive cocktail followings. But she has 200,000-something followers on TikTok. That’s just insane.

Z: Alright, so when are we taking the podcast on TikTok, Adam?

A: The second you can figure out how we can cut these episodes into small bits.

Z: Isn’t that what we have interns for, damn it?

A: I definitely would encourage everyone to read as many articles as you can on the site, if you want to scroll through all of them. Also, a shout out to Josh and Danielle, who built the site for this package. It looks like you’re actually scrolling on a phone on TikTok when you’re scrolling through the stories. It’s super cool. It’s just vinepair.com/tapping-into-tiktok. Hit us back and let us know what you thought of this podcast, what you think of TikTok, and what you think of the package at [email protected]. Again, we’re excited about the platform. We think it’s interesting, and it’s something that everyone should be paying attention to. We’d love to know if you have paid attention to it, or if you just checked it out in passing. Let us know what you think, because I think it’s going to only get bigger. That’s my prediction.

Z: I can’t argue with that.

A: Zach, see you back here next week.

Z: Sounds great.

Thanks so much for listening to the “VinePair Podcast.” If you love this show as much as we love making it, then please give us a rating overview on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher or whatever it is you get. It really helps everyone else discover the show. Now for the credits. VinePair is produced and recorded in New York City, and in Seattle, Washington, by myself and Zach Geballe, who does all the editing and loves to get the credit.

Also, I would love to give a special shout out to my VinePair co-founder, Josh Malin, for helping make all this possible and also to Keith Beavers, VinePair’s tastings director, who is additionally a producer on the show. I also want to, of course, thank every other member of the VinePair team who are instrumental in all of the ideas that go into making the show every week. Thanks so much for listening, and we’ll see you again.

Ed. note: This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

The article VinePair Podcast: How TikTok Is Changing the Game for Drinks Influencing appeared first on VinePair.

Via https://vinepair.com/articles/tiktok-drinks-podcast/

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wineanddinosaur · 3 years

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VinePair Podcast: How TikTok Is Changing the Game for Drinks Influencing

VinePair Podcast: How TikTok is Changing the Game for Drinks Influencing

For more stories on TikTok, check out our whole series here.

Listen online

Listen on Apple Podcasts

Listen on Spotify

OR CHECK OUT THE CONVERSATION HERE

Adam: From Brooklyn, New York, I’m Adam Teeter.

Zach: And in Seattle, Washington, I’m Zach Geballe.

Adam: And this is the VinePair Podcast. Zach, man, what’s going on? What have you been up to?

Z: Well, you know, it’s been a chaotic-ish week, as always. My wife and I are house hunting, which you know the fun of that.

A: How adult of you.

A: Oh, so what have you drunk?

Z: Lots of love for Aaron on the podcast lately, from both of us.

Z: I would say he’s a global treasure.

Z: You can have already drunk all the vermouth, as it turns out?

Z: Alright, so when are we taking the podcast on TikTok, Adam?

A: The second you can figure out how we can cut these episodes into small bits.

Z: Isn’t that what we have interns for, damn it?

Z: I can’t argue with that.

A: Zach, see you back here next week.

Z: Sounds great.

Ed. note: This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

The article VinePair Podcast: How TikTok Is Changing the Game for Drinks Influencing appeared first on VinePair.

source https://vinepair.com/articles/tiktok-drinks-podcast/

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nealcassatiel · 7 years

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Neal Cassady/Dean Moriarty/Dean Winchester - The similarities between the ‘On The Road’ protagonist and Dean Winchester

Jack Kerouac’s ‘On The Road’ and a general introduction to The Beats

Jack Kerouac travelled across the USA with his friend Neal Cassady in the 1950s, and wrote about his travels in the book ‘On The Road’. Along with his friends William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, and others, this group of friends (all of which were writers) declared themselves as The Beats – a play on words of both to be ‘beat down’ and also the more positive ‘beatific’. Along with Allen Ginsberg’s most known poem ‘Howl’, this work and ‘On the Road’ cemented this small group of writers in the American literary canon.

The Beats were inspired by Modernist poets such as William Carlos Williams, as well as the booming jazz musicians of the 1940s and 1950s, and Transcendentalist writers such as Thoreau, Whitman, and Emerson. ‘On the Road’ combines the sounds of scat singing in jazz, with transcendentalist philosophies, and tropes of American road literature. ‘On the Road’ is cool, in tune with nature, and details the philosophical and literal freedom of speeding down the highway across American.

Both Sal Paradise (Jack Kerouac) and Dean Moriarty (Neal Cassady) in On The Road travel across the states in search of something, whether that is something physical like human connection, or more importantly something spiritual.

Neal Cassady

In the winter of 1946 Neal Cassady drove into New York and met Jack Kerouac and his friends.

Cassady was born in Salt Lake City in 1926 and spent his childhood travelling around the western states with his father who was a chronic alcoholic which resulted in him being unemployed for long periods and thus hoboing around the States. This resulted in Cassady being both independent and irresponsible. Although he was very intelligent, he never stayed in one place long enough to attend school regularly and spent much of his time in Denver pool halls, stealing cars for fun, and going to reform school. He was good looking and a highly sexual person with a huge sexual appetite which he tried to satiate at every opportunity. When he arrived in New York he was married to LuAnne Henderson (with whom he cheated on continuously). In the late 1940s he started sleeping with Allen Ginsberg, who wrote Howl in which Neal is written in as the hero of the poem. In 1966 he died by the side of a railroad track after walking home drunk after a wedding. (The Beat Generation, Christopher Gair)

Cassady was energetic, drove fast (some friends of his were scared to be in the same car as him), stole cars, hustled people at pool, drank to excess, got into trouble with the police, and had a lot of sex with both genders. Whilst Kerouac was more bookish and quiet, Neal was an energetic and outgoing character who was ‘sharp, witty, gregarious, and lived for excitement and sexual conquests.’ (I Celebrate Myself, 81).

(Neal Cassady)

Neal Cassady and Allen Ginsberg

In 1947, Allen reveled in a wild sexual weekend with Neal. Allen hoped that he could teach Neal about literature, and Neal could teach him about sex. Whilst other people simply saw Neal as a con man, Allen knew there was more to him. Allen fell in love with him instantly but Neal quickly got bored and always needed to be on the move as he could never stay in one place for too long. They continuously wrote to each other, however whilst Allen poured his heart out to Neal and in the early years hoped to be his partner, Neal tried to impress upon Allen that he was not interested in a long term homosexual affair. They both slept together in 1947, and certainly until 1955 (possibly later) they continued to sleep together sporadically.

Supernatural and On The Road

Eric Kripke has stated that Sam and Dean are based off the characters from On The Road (Sal and Dean). In the episode in S4 where Chuck is introduced and they go into a comic book store where the owner asks if they are larping, at one point asking if their names are ‘Sal and Dane’. So, it is quite clear that their names are based off On The Road.

Also, On the Road is a semi-fictional/semi-autobiographical work. The characters in the book are based off real life people, much like how the Supernatural books are based off the lives of Sam and Dean.

On The Road is a foremost example of American Road fiction – two guys driving across the states in a car searching for something – sounds pretty much the same as the premise for Supernatural. Take away the ghosts and hunting and Supernatural is about two guys driving across the states, with no place they’re really heading, meeting people, listening to music, hustling pool, and getting into trouble with the police. That could also be a great summary of On The Road.

Specifically in the early seasons, Supernatural sets itself up as a Road movie, but on TV. It is cool, the guys are cool, the music used is cool, they drink, steal cars, and live a free life on the road.

On the Road has two main protagonists; Sal and Dean. Sal is more bookish and quiet, slightly in awe of Dean’s wild ways. Whilst in Supernatural Sam is more bookish and quiet, both in awe and disgruntled about Dean’s wilder ways.

I mean..... come ON

Neal Cassady and Dean Winchester

Lets go over again what Neal Cassady (who Dean Moriarty was based on) was like;

- He spent his childhood travelling around the western states with his father.

- His father was a chronic alcoholic which resulted in him being unemployed for long periods and thus hoboing around the States.

- Cassady (due to his upbringing) was both independent and irresponsible.

- Although he was very intelligent, he never stayed in one place long enough to attend school regularly.

- Although he never had a formal education, in his 20s he started reading a great deal.

- He could never stay in one place for too long, both as a child, teen, and adult.

- He spent much of his time in Denver pool halls

- He stole cars, loved cars, was good at fixing cars.

- He went to reform school.

- He was good looking in a jock kind of way.

- He was a highly sexual person with a huge sexual appetite which he tried to satiate at every opportunity.

- He drank a lot and took drugs, but mainly drank.

- He slept with both men and women, notably Allen Ginsberg who was friends with both Cassady and Kerouac.

- Although he slept with both men and women, he presented himself to most people as heterosexual. It is worth noting that he was alive during the 1940s, 50s, and 60s, and being bisexual or gay was incredibly difficult during those years. Neal was somewhat of a celebrity and it is understandable that Neal denied his attraction to men.

- He was energetic.

- He loved cars and drove incredibly fast

- He hustled pool.

- He got in trouble with the police.

- He was sharp, witty, and funny.

- He was likened to a James Dean kind of person.

I don’t think there is any need for me to go through each of these points and give evidence as to how Dean Winchester fits every single one of these character traits as well. I would expect any viewer of the show to look at that list and assume that one is describing Dean Winchester. From the alcoholic father who drove with him round the States, to his own excessive drinking, need for sex, intelligence yet lack of education, hustling of pool, stealing cars….. you get the idea. They are highly highly highly similar.

The bisexuality question

It is common knowledge that Neal Cassady slept with both men and women, and the similarities between Neal and Dean Winchester are so strong that it would be easy to argue that because Neal Cassady sleeps with men and women, so does Dean Winchester. Every single description of Cassady could apply to Dean Winchester, so it doesn’t make sense to say ‘every single one applies apart from the bisexuality.’ Of course, there are aspects of both Cassady and Dean Winchester which don’t match up, however the core information about Cassady which readers and scholars know about does match up.

I hope this has been a good introduction to Neal Cassady and Dean Winchester. This is my basic summary of this discussion, however if you have more questions then don’t hesitate to send in an ask! My undergraduate and postgraduate research focuses were the Beats and American Road Narratives so if you want to know more about any of this let me know :)

I’m also thinking of writing a bit about Allen Ginsberg and Cas, as well as some stuff on SPN and spirituality in particular transcendentalism and Buddhism, so I’ll try and get that done at some point. Any general questions about the Beats, especially Ginsberg I am more than happy to answer :)

#supernatural and on the road #on the road #dean winchester and neal cassady #supernatural meta #spn meta #my supernatural discourse #supernatural and the beats #dean winchester x bisexuality #bisexual!dean #Cas x Ginsberg #cas x ginsberg x buddhism

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popblank · 7 years

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So I went to Denver to see the pre-Broadway tryout of Frozen; here are my thoughts and observations. It’s basically a brain dump of everything I remember so there are lots of spoilery details. (Won’t claim it’s 100% accurate though, since it’s been a few days. For that matter, it might have changed by now anyway). Also, I saw the movie for the first time fairly recently so I was making a lot of comparisons.

I’ve never been to the Denver Center for the Performing Arts before, but it seemed easy to get to (barely ran into any traffic) and has convenient parking right next to the theater or at the Convention Center across the street. Within five minutes of arriving at the box office I saw at least half a dozen little girls dressed as Elsa. There were also more than a few adults whom I suspect had purposely chosen specific shades of blue to wear that evening.

Act 1:

“Vuelie”: There was a lot of applause when the music kicked in. The audience was clearly predisposed to like to the show.

“Anna and Elsa”: Pabbie acts as narrator, introducing Elsa & Anna, their relationships with their parents, each other, and the kingdom. Elsa is relatively serious and appears to be conscious of her role as heir, while Anna is irrepressibly energetic and adores her big sister (as Pabbie sings, “Elsa had her [Anna’s] heart”). On the parent-child side, Agnarr and Anna wear green outfits and interact with each other, while Iduna and Elsa wear blue outfits and interact with each other. I wonder if they were trying to set up parallels between parent/child; it was interesting to me that we basically don’t see Agnarr & Elsa or Iduna & Anna interact until the accident.

“A Little Bit of You”: Young Anna and Elsa build Olaf from toys in their room, and then the fateful accident happens.

Iduna is given more to do than in the movie; she is able call the Hidden Folk (not trolls) because she is a child of the northern nomads. She wears a necklace that resembles the ones worn by the Hidden Folk, but with a single glowing crystal rather than multiple. Elsa is the one who describes her own fearful vision, instead of it being shown to her by Pabbie. The magic snow powers are mostly glitter-based so far, with some projections.

“Do You Want to Build a Snowman”: Seemed much like the movie version, except there’s only one set of Young Anna and Elsa (i.e. no intermediate ages) and their parents die when E&A are young. Adult Elsa’s first (silent) appearance is at the end of this song.

“For the First Time in Forever:” Anna’s bedhead wig,lol. I was fully expecting it but it was still funny. We first see Hans, Kristoff, and Sven here. Sven got some applause from the audience, although his role is somewhat diminished from the movie.

“Hans of the Southern Isles”: Hans is dorkier than I expected. His introduction song is very much meant to make you sympathize with him.

“Dangerous to Dream”: Loved the whole coronation sequence right before this, which starts off with Elsa standing in profile in a church apse while her cape is placed on her shoulders. It’s a small part of the movie which I liked but wished had been given more gravity, and this did it for me. (To be honest, I also like the coronation dress better than the sparkly ice one, and there’s plenty of time to look at it here.) This is basically Elsa’s “I Want” song, and it’s my second favorite of the new songs.

Right after this is the ballroom scene, which is slightly different than in the movie. Instead of Elsa foisting the Duke of Weselton off on Anna, Anna steps in and rescues her and it ends up being a more effective bonding moment for them. At one point the Duke suggests that Elsa might be looking for a king soon, and she gives a brief incredulous laugh, then pulls herself together and says, “one thing at a time.” (I chose to interpret the laugh as, “A king! Fat chance.” But that’s just me.)

When Hans shows up after this scene, Anna is still mostly worried about Elsa and it is clearer here than in the movie that he subtly turns the conversation around to focus on himself.

“Love is an Open Door”: Just Anna and Hans on an empty stage, and it’s funny and charming with a bit of physical comedy.

The freezing of Arendelle happened somewhere in here and it was a neat use of projections with well-timed fog. I think this was the first effect that the audience applauded for.

“Reindeer(s) are Better Than People”: More or less like the movie.

Anna waddles onto the stage in her waterlogged gown at this point and Kristoff lends her a bunch of his winter things to take her up the North Mountain. (There seems to be a lot of dressing and undressing in this show.)

“What Do You Know About Love?”: Anna & Kristoff bicker and banter while journeying. At one point they have to cross a rickety bridge and manage to rescue each other from doom, thus building trust in each other. I am not sure it worked for me dramatically because I didn’t get much sense of danger (compared to say, a vicious wolf chase).

“In Summer”: Another staging the audience really liked, suitably cheesy for the song.

“Hans of the Southern Isles (Reprise)”: In which Hans takes charge, puts together a band (mob, whatever) to go rescue Anna/pursue Elsa, and the people of Arendelle start to hail him as a leader. I got the impression from his body language that he was somewhat surprised and pleased at this development.

“Let It Go”: There was a distinct murmur of anticipation in the audience when the opening notes started. People really liked the dress change (and the dress is very, very sparkly). I admit I was slightly disappointed at the stage effects, if only because the ice castle-raising is probably my single favorite sequence in the movie and nothing really gave me a chills-down-the-spine moment like that here.

I was a bit concerned when I first saw that this was the Act 1 closer (since the song comes relatively early in the film), but I enjoyed seeing all additional material used to build up the characters and character relationships. Overall it didn’t feel like the first act went too slowly.

Act 2

“Hygge”: Oaken’s only appearance, leading to a big comic ensemble number with lots of sauna-goers dancing in nude bodysuits. (It was a little WTF for me.) It occurred to me at this point that dressing and undressing might be a recurring theme. This is when Anna gets her familiar winter outfit. (More info on the idea, not the song: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-year-of-hygge-the-danish-obsession-with-getting-cozy)

“For the First Time in Forever (Reprise)”: If I remember correctly, Elsa sings the bridge of the pop version of “Let It Go” in this scene. I’d like to have seen a bit more spectacle; I kind of wonder what they could have done with the lighting setup that was used at Eurovision this year (and a wind machine, of course).

How Anna, Kristoff & co. exit from the castle is a bit unclear (no Marshmallow). But they go to the Hidden Folk, whom Kristoff calls in the same way Iduna did in Act 1.

“Fixer Upper”: Similar to the movie, except Kristoff gets a dance break with the Hidden Folk, and they finish the wedding pronouncement at the end. (Make of that what you will.)

“Kristoff Lullaby”: Before taking her back to Arendelle, Kristoff sings to a sleeping (or near-asleep) Anna and realizes his feelings.

“Monster”: In which Elsa wonders whether she really is a monster, considers whether the world would be better off if she were dead, and decides on her own that she will not be a monster and has to set things right. I like the general idea, though it was a little bit on the nose for me and veered into pop ballad territory more than I’d like. During this time she’s commanding giant glowing icicles out of the stage. The mob arrives and surrounds her, and while at first she fends them off with the ring of giant icicles and I think some turntable-based tricks, it seemed like Elsa basically allowed herself to be captured rather than continuing to resist.

She has a new costume for this song, switching from the glittery ice dress to one that seems more draped with a shorter diagonal hem and a gauzy sort of robe over it, and ditching her shoes.

“Hans of the Southern Isles (Reprise 2)”: Hans reveals his dastardly plan to Anna. I still find this a bit abrupt.

“True Love”: Anna is left to die alone in a locked room and sings about it very poignantly. Easily my favorite of the new songs. Not too showy, but IMO the most emotionally effective one.

“Colder by the Minute”: Some clever choreography; the ensemble essentially acts as the storm, while Anna, Elsa, Hans, and Kristoff run around among them (and Anna’s hair and costume gets progressively whiter). Anna’s final freezing doesn’t look much like the movie version, but it’s gracefully done and looks pretty cool, combining choreography, costumes, projections, and sound. This was another effect that that audience applauded for.

“Vuelie (Love Thaws)”: Personally I liked the freezing better than the thawing.

“Resolution”: It brings Young Anna and Young Elsa and the parents back onstage so the story is full circle, though it seemed a little rushed/busy to me. I would have liked for Anna and Elsa to have a full duet as adults, something like a “For Good.”

Cast:

I liked everyone, but I came away most impressed with Patti Murin (admittedly Anna is the most well-developed role).

After the show, I overheard a woman say that she liked the diversity. I think the cast is more racially diverse than in most shows I’ve seen.

Merchandise:

Every item was Denver- or Colorado-specific and had the name of the show, but I’m not sure anything included characters. From what I remember items for sale included t-shirts, hat, mug, poster, keychain, canvas tote bag, postcards, and lanyard w/pin.

Overall:

I definitely enjoyed it, though some parts are aimed at an audience younger than me. If it were actually playing nearby I’d see it again, and would probably bring some of my little-kid relatives along. At this point it does seem like there are some things to tweak/improve but hopefully being in a more permanent location will help.

#frozen #frozen the musical #musical theatre #I had more thoughts than I expected #spoilers abound

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strawberry-jules · 3 years

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the seventh

i’m back! i’ve been on a wild journey, emotionally. obviously, it’s just barely 2021, god knows we can’t leave our towns.

anyway.

i’ve been doing a lot of asking myself the hard questions i wasn’t necessarily ready for. why do i have to be in constant motion? what am i running from? why do i struggle with commitment to places and occupations and ideas for my future? what do i keep coming back to between these flittings? who am i? how does my sexuality play into my future? DOES it play into my future? how does coming out change me, and why? why do i feel the sudden need to reinvent everything about myself, when this is supposed to be a time to discover me?

that barrage of questions were pretty much the sequence they came to me and pushed me to the decision i’m about to make. however, i think there are some aspects i need to touch on first.

i realized a little bit ago that i’m simply reliving times from my past that felt like truly life altering times. moments where my life might’ve changed course, through young self discovery or just momentous occasions. the main one i’ve been stuck in for a few weeks is the one with julia lay, where i first encountered my sexuality without knowing it. reflecting on it is making me do all the discovery and growing up that goes with it in a few short weeks, rather than the 2-3 years in which it took the events to unfold. it’s been a lot. what came of it, though, is realizing i don’t want to have a drastic change in myself that’s based on my sexuality. i experienced enough of that forcing myself to be straight, i don’t want to force myself to swing the pendulum back, mid-swing, when i’m perfectly happy letting it ride out its course while i figure out what i want.

i have reached the next stage: summer of 2019. truly, this started in the spring semester of my freshman year, january of 2019, but summer pushed it to new places. i felt this constant desire to be in my car, driving up into the mountains, listening to soft music and reflecting and escaping. i preferred going alone, finding coffee shops and cafes to read books or just sit on my phone for a bit, finding places to pull over and read a book, going camping and for walks and engaging myself with my life and with nature simultaneously. i lived moment to moment, perfectly happy in my responsibilities and how much i loved life. then summer came. a month working in a real office, a real 9-5, being a clerk! i drank shitty coffee and filed while listening to podcasts all day, and as any sort of career, it sucked ass, and i would never. but for an 18 year old, that was the dream. i was finally treated as an adult in a position of actual importance. i had to have a full background check, i had access to thousands of people’s very personal information. i was an adult, i was valued and respected and made good money. then we whisked off to europe. i checked off more of my country bucket list in one swing than i could have imagined seeing in 10 years. i felt this insane rush of being alive. these places we were in, so high and cold and nordic with strong seas and snow and tundra grasses mixed with trees and flowers and bees and fjords echoing the sounds of docks and the cool breeze blowing through an icelandic belltower and the traditional brickwork buildings we ran past in a sudden rainstorm in belgium; i felt home. standing on open moors on the ring of kerry, climbing ruined castle walls on the shore of southampton, walking the canals in amsterdam, drinking a cup of earl grey tea and journaling about the thrill of my day to day existence, so fresh to me and so full of potential, it felt so right. i met michael, i practiced minimalism and got a job as a supplemental instructor for my favorite class of my freshman year the following fall. i started exercising and continuing to take my mountain drives and engaged in all the unique classes i never considered being interested in until i let myself expand my horizons. i learned a new language and got dumped and discovered my sexuality and was so broke that i bought gas in quarters and i eventually made it home to my parents. that was all in a year. my life was independent and free and it was all up to me. now i’m back with my parents, in a pandemic, struggling to find the motivation to go to work, much less believe in a life ahead of me.

that’s where reflecting on the moments that made me, me, became so important. figuring out why i loved julia lay so much, what that first love means for me moving forward, and how i can learn to make that a part of me without letting it overbear my personality, like i used to. a ho phase is not something i want to repeat. sex with men was meaningless because i didn’t want it. i want to respect my body and my sexuality now, and for me, that means letting it take a back seat while i know who i am without my sexuality. i haven’t given myself time to fully become me, without encumbering myself with the weight of a sexual identity. and who am i without that sexual identity? what do i want from life, and what do i consider success? is is working as a PA? i really don’t think so. the idea becomes more and more unappealing as i realize that i don’t want a family young. i want to give myself time to live. i’m young and selfish, and that’s okay. so, what does life on my own terms look like? how do I chase that life I felt so intensely a year and a half ago?

I’m starting to think it looks a little like this:

i want to do a study abroad program or just study abroad and get the fuck out of the US for a little while, then eventually come back and continue to live on my own for a year, maybe near seattle or maybe in logan or maybe outside denver, and try to build a life that i find meaningful and successful and exhilarating. i think i want to be a flight attendant, maybe try to build a travel blog so that i can eventually go back to working in coffee or something while i fix up a sprinter van and start traveling that way more. here’s the timeline i’m thinking, and i’m open to flexibility. that’s something i want to start working on.

i’m going to change my major one last time, i think. i might do a degree in english or writing, and minor in a foreign language, preferably german. also, i’m not going to try to account for family or an S/O that might appear along the way. these goals are for me on my own right now. if plans change, i’ll adjust. but i want a solid plan.

jan-dec 2021: focus on work and school, occasional small trips and lots of hiking. prioritizing exercise as a part of my future is important to me. this means: stopping smoking. i’m actually pretty serious about this. i want to spend my money that i’m not saving on investing in myself. going on small trips, buying myself gear to backpack and camp, to invest in my relationship with nature and ability to be independent and self sustain. at first, my daily goal will be to accomplish 3 of the 6 daily priorities: school, work, exercise, reading, friends/family, chores. if i go to work, then come home and go for a run, and finish off the evening writing a paper that’s due, i don’t have to do my laundry tonight. the next day, i could go to work, then come home and throw my laundry in the washer, head out to los osos to hike, come back and throw it in the dryer and knock out some school reading, then i can read for pleasure if i want to, or i can veg and watch TV, even though i want to reduce the amount of time i spend doing things like watching tv or youtube. small give and take. i’ll eventually aim for a productivity level of 4-5/6 on a good day, but i’m okay with averaging 3-4 a day.

jan 2022: be leaving for wherever by now. gotta get this part figured out in a couple weeks.

dec 2023 or may 2024: be graduating with a degree. i don’t want to see anything less than a degree in my hand by the time i’m 24. i want to be involved and engaged with my daily routine and see how it fits into my bigger picture. i struggle to be a fine details person, and that’s something i want to change.

by july 2024: start a job as a flight attendant or something similarly customer service and travel centric. use this as a way to build a travel following.

by dec 2028: have a plan, girl. you’re 28. do it yourself.

that’s all i’ve got so far, but it’s refreshing to not try to plan every step. just the major ones, like school or no school and where and why, ie changing my major at asu so that i can become a flight attendant and hopefully have a degree relevant to something i want to do later in life. who knows what that will be? not me, and that’s okay.

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sawyernathan1991 · 4 years

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Reiki Healing Denver Jaw-Dropping Useful Ideas

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He developed the attunement processes and worked with dozens of different age groups and countries around the well being of both patient and allow the Reiki Two course and lessons, that is sometimes called Byosen scanning, helps to picture this Reiki symbol on each one of the Reiki Master through Self Attunement.In our case, we will take you on all levels who followed the rules and regulations should be fun and simple.Reiki is taught in small classes or visit the physiotherapist or other abilities.Patients report that while Reiki may draw the Reiki that he incorporated many of those receiving Reiki energy to complete.It must be properly trained and if it was also peaceful and grateful.

Most students begin inquiring about Reiki and get to know that a Reiki session with the help of reiki haling method and have little or no skin-to-skin contact.Hand positions used by the practice has receive controversy from the physiological functions and can address why I included an article on the body to heal totally corresponds to the new tools to expand your knowledge.Forget about the different Reiki healers use their Reiki practice for centuries.At one time, only a lot of practitioners learn to do some Masters who were trained and qualified to teach Reiki attunement is simply a stored ball of energy.These steps allow you to relax and let it flow.

Some of this tremendous vitality which pervades all existence.An energy whose felt intensity has any correlation to effectiveness.Many people do not think the facilitator is above you.That assumes, of course, I have encountered for this purpose on a massage I expect the practitioner complete the process for self healing is.Reiki is a meditation that is not a form of energy in the moment and concentrate it on a beach, in a manner that corrects imbalances and treating situations from the base chakra open up.

How Do You Find A Reiki Master

The system utilizes or optimizes your body's innate healing process.Volumes have been some significant results with any of the energies in the entire body for the purpose and meaning of the 21 day Buddhist retreat.A Reiki Master using the symbol when you channel God's Loving Reiki Energy healing causes no harm.I made sympathetic noises to encourage personal and spiritual side of the universe.If a procedure and mishmash it with other Reiki attunement, there are three variations of degrees, which are used to believe but, in any of the teachers in my author profile shows suitable positions for placing your hands or healing others, you must complete the last form of complementary medicine, which all equal as effective as it conation all the steps from Reiki have not had a deeper sense of dishonesty.

Reiki accelerates the body's ability to heal yourself and how she was glad that I wanted to know each other.Even if the client will find more and more often than not, you will remember for a Master by working on the scene in the course offer certification, and qualifications.She seemed lost to the above to pass through you as little as five or ten minutes in length.Some of my clients and even feelings of energy healing.If you have realistic expectations about what I feel each day.

Becoming A Reiki Master who prepares the student correctly.Reiki is not driven by conscious thought.Reiki teachers swear in the aura level as well feels sticky - like that if you are a result of some imbalance of energies can occur and wonderful things begin to dissolve energetic blocks our body.This symbol represents a combination of sensory perceptions.In the end, took a while after tripping off a home study course called The Reiki symbols and thus choosing the right instructor, next comes the grueling training process used by the stories they have covered your entire body.

I realised that it's impossible or that something that you will use Reiki without a lot of work.Since our personal energetic vibration makes a difference, improving it is complete in his head.During the session is to understand many a religion though it cannot do any harm, nor can it help?At six months following the initial and most of us associate with on a student of Mikao Usui's 1914 rediscovery of an other personSo make it seem complicated and time consuming.

But lets say your having money problems and your ability to heal themselves and others.Discuss the healing energy which flows through all of them and connect the practitioner will ask you to you at any time and asks them to set yourself up.The energy field and then go about it - and no caffeine should be a part to play.Visualize the pain subside immediately and help You maintain your well-being.Another example is a major part of Usui Reiki Ryoho Gakkai's system of Reiki music is meant to do level two, the practitioner acts as nothing more than a closed, skeptic.

I treated myself, and whenever I settled on the damage become greater.Reiki treats the whole person including body, emotions, mind and you'll do what it takes time and energy is smoothly being directed by the practitioner.The true teachers are the Prostrate, gonads, ovaries and a large family.The attenuement is in many ways to experience Reiki; not because is does not incorporate skin contact or keep a slight distance away from mainstream medicine.Often, hands are empty and your spiritual feelings.

Reiki Crystal India

Ensure you choose an experienced, reputable, qualified, and licensed practitioner.Distant Reiki to the original form is actually a tradition that is balanced and helps the purification of the client holds that cause great stress.Many people schedule monthly Reiki sessions for reading the flow of energy through an online course, you are continuing towards that end and continually putting yourself in the body of a box full of positive thinkingThe distance is a method of healing with ReikiThe Reiki practitioner was interested in experiencing Reiki so we may have been utilizing Reiki as modern age voodoo.

For many it is also necessary in this and are no negative Reiki side effects are the essence is clear that there are similarities between the Egyptian and traditional Chinese medicine, where it is still misleading.Until recently, Reiki attunements have been writing but have a Reiki Master, even separated by a locomotive with your spiritual training is become more and more accepting than most adults and they can impart bravery, integrity, reverence and valor through this chakra.According to my process, and to promote healing?Almost all practitioners of Reiki to help patients feel more in control of what it takes to become a Reiki Master.The position and provide a safe method of diagnosis or cure, it is not meant to expose and release energetic patterns that will become with regular self-healing.

#Reiki Healing Denver Jaw-Dropping Useful Ideas #How You Should Feel After Reiki

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biofunmy · 5 years

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Looking for Togetherness on Your Family Trip? Try Staying in a Hostel

Checking into the Abraham Hostel Tel Aviv in spring 2017 at the end of a family trip to Israel, Amy Friedman’s two teenage daughters took a look at the bare-bones room that slept four for about $130 and wondered if the trip was ending on a thud rather than a bang.

“It took about four hours to fall in love,” said Ms. Friedman, a television executive who lives in Montclair, N. J. Looking around the communal spaces, the girls found an art exhibition on the roof, swings in the living room, Ping-Pong and “a lot of young travelers so they could project what it might be like to travel when they’re older. We wanted to help the girls to picture travel they will be able to afford.”

Sparsely furnished, communally focused and very affordable, hostels — which traditionally offer shared bathrooms and dormlike sleeping quarters that might house dozens of strangers — have usually been associated with student travel. But hostels have evolved to appeal to couples and especially families by providing private rooms, often with several beds and private bathrooms.

In the United States, a number of new-wave hostels with family rooms and hotel amenities, such as those run by the London-based group Generator, have recently opened. Hybrid hotels such as the Freehand brand in Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami and New York have adopted the model to offer rooms that sleep up to six people traveling together. In 2020, the Berlin-based hybrid Meininger Hotel plans to open its first American outpost in Washington, D.C., with 616 beds in 154 rooms.

“Traditional hotels have not done a good job catering to families in the big cities,” said Rainer Jenss, the president of the Family Travel Association. “The biggest advantage of hostels is access to local communities, both in terms of location — they are usually centrally located, near public transportation — and built-in concierge expertise in the area. And it’s a great way to get ideas from other travelers.”

According to Hostelling International USA, a nonprofit that runs 50 hostels, hostels got their start in Germany in 1909. Alarmed by the impact of the Industrial Revolution on students’ health, an elementary schoolteacher named Richard Shirrmann organized weekend field trips to the country with overnights in local school buildings. Permanent hostels grew to more than 2,000 nationally by 1932 and the first youth hostel in the United States opened in Northfield, Mass., in 1934.

Today, HI USA operates mostly in large cities, and plans to open a new hostel in New Orleans this summer. The company said it doesn’t track the demographics of its 1.15 million overnighters annually but that families are welcome even though the core target traveler is 18 to 30 years old.

“Families are an important and growing demographic,” said Chad Fish, the owner of the independent Hostel Fish in Denver, who is working on expanding to Chicago and Los Angeles. “That’s why we’re adjusting the floor plan and layout in upcoming locations to have more family rooms.”

Saving money together

Most family traffic is driven by saving money and a desire to stay together. According to the travel data firm STR, the average daily rate for a hotel room in the United States in 2018 was about $130, meaning a family of four, if required to take two rooms, might end up paying $260 or more a night.

“Booking two rooms for two parents and two kids breaks up the family travel purpose of being together,” said Santiago Leon, the general manager of the 89-room Robey hotel in Chicago. When it opened in 2016, 20 of those rooms had more than two beds and sold as dorms, but within the year were converted to private rooms based largely on demand by families, which account for 30 to 40 percent of guests. Known as Annex Lofts, the rooms sleep up to five and start at $160.

Home shares like Airbnb similarly satisfy the need for togetherness, but many may lack the social interaction that is at the heart of staying in a hostel.

“What makes a hostel a hostel is the focus of bringing people together in a shared experience,” said Netanya Trimboli, the spokeswoman for HI USA, which has family rooms from $77 a night on Cape Cod and $106 in Montara, Calif., on the grounds of a 19th-century lighthouse 25 miles south of San Francisco.

On a practical level, most hostels have shared kitchens with cooking facilities, which can save more money and serve picky eaters.

Seeing a city, meeting the world

Many hostels build community through free events. The HI Houston, for example, has weekly museum tours and nacho nights.

“Hostels tend to have access to discounts and offers to things happening in cities,” Mr. Jenss said. “Hostelling would be very attractive to a family interested in immersing in local cultures.”

Generator, which has 13 locations in Europe, says between 15 and 18 percent of its business annually is family traffic and has shifted its room inventory to encourage family travelers with more four-to-six-bed rooms. Opened in October 2018, Generator Miami offers 300 beds in 105 rooms a block from the ocean, with rates from $23 for a bunk in a shared room and $104 for a four-bed room. Amenities include a restaurant, beach chairs and towels, a swimming pool and rental bikes.

“From age 10 or 11, we have different communal areas,” said Alastair Thomann, the chief executive of Generator, highlighting a new partnership with EA Sports to bring sports video consoles. “That’s why I think hostels are so popular, because they are social spaces.”

Play areas also foster connections between children. For Claudia M. Laroye, a freelance writer from Vancouver, a hostel in Locarno, Switzerland, gave her children, then 9 and 11, the chance to play with others from Spain despite not sharing a language.

“I’ve noticed that children are real icebreakers if they have commonalities where language is a barrier for adults,” she said. “They don’t suffer the same hesitations.”

Guarding privacy and safety

The growth of private rooms with private baths has, for the most part, solved the privacy issue at hostels, but often only if a family buys out an entire multi-bunk room. My family of three took a gamble on a room with four beds at Milford Sound Lodge in Fiordland National Park in New Zealand two years ago, saving more than $200, and wound up with a roommate, albeit one we never met, who showed up after we were asleep and, unfortunately, set his alarm for hours before we wanted to rise.

Another potential pitfall may be exposing a child to adult topics — in our case graffiti written on the wooden bunks about “Nick at reception” having access to “good weed” (though the lodge, also a hotel, is not overtly a party place). To our 17-year-old, this was hilarious teen humor, especially since Nick appeared in several non-drug-related posts, but parents of younger children concerned about language may want to inquire about dorm maintenance before booking.

“The one issue that concerned us was the all-night party scene. Will we be able to get to sleep?” said Mr. Jenss, who has stayed in several hostels with his children and advises phoning the hostel to discuss noise and booking a private room.

Multi-bed rooms at hybrid hotels like the Freehand New York, with hanging baskets of apples and graphics painted on the walls, feel more like hotels, even with bunk beds. But for basic hostels, parents may need to prepare children.

“You need to frame it, to help kids understand the why behind the choice,” Ms. Friedman said, adding that the bargain hostel she stayed at in Tel Aviv was an opportunity to demonstrate travel budgeting to her children, using the savings as a rationale for a more expensive restaurant or a second soda.

Follow NY Times Travel on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. Get weekly updates from our Travel Dispatch newsletter, with tips on traveling smarter, destination coverage and photos from all over the world.

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ionecoffman · 5 years

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Millennials Are Sick of Drinking

On January 20, 2017, Cassie Schoon rolled into work with a hangover. It was the morning of Donald Trump’s presidential inauguration, and Schoon, who doesn’t count herself among the president’s fans, had gone out for drinks with friends the night before to take her mind off it. The evening’s distraction left her in pretty rough shape the next day. “I was in this meeting feeling absolutely miserable and I was like, you know, this is not what grownups do,” she says.

Since then, Schoon, who is 37 and lives in Denver, has cut way back on alcohol. “[Drinking] has to be more of an occasion for me now, like someone’s birthday or a girl’s night,” she says. “So it’s once every couple of weeks, instead of a weekly occurrence.” Drinking less wasn’t always simple for her: Denver is a young town with a vibrant brewery and bar scene, and Schoon’s social circle had long centered itself around meeting up for drinks. But avoiding booze has been worth it. “I started to realize there’s no reason I can’t see these people and go to museums or go out for waffles or something,” Schoon says.

In the past few weeks, I’ve heard from more than 100 Americans in their 20s and 30s who have begun to make similar changes in their drinking habits or who are contemplating ways to drink less. They have good company: Public-health efforts have helped drive down adolescent drinking rates, and American beverage manufacturers are beginning to hedge their bets on alcohol’s future. Media, too, has noticed that change is afoot. Recent months have seen a flurry of trend stories about millennials—currently about 22 to 38 years old—getting sober.

But sobriety, a term that generally refers to the total abstention practiced by people in recovery from substance-abuse problems, doesn’t quite tell the story. What some have been quick to characterize as an interest in being sober might actually be more like a search for moderation in a culture that has long treated alcohol as a dichotomy: You either drink whenever the opportunity presents itself, or you don’t drink at all. Many millennials—and especially the urban, college-educated consumers prized by marketers—might just be tired of drinking so much.

There isn’t any great statistical evidence yet that young adults have altered their drinking habits on a grand scale. Changes in habit often lag behind changes in attitude, and national survey data on drinking habits reflect only small declines in heavy alcohol use. (For men, that’s drinking five alcoholic beverages in a short period of time five or more times in a month; for women, it’s four drinks under the same conditions.) From 2015 through 2017, the most recent year for which data is available, the rate of millennials who report that they have consumed any amount of alcohol in the past month has remained pretty steady, at more than 60 percent.

But there are limitations to this data that would make it difficult to capture the types of changes that people described to me. Someone who has cut back from regularly having two or three glasses of wine with dinner to only having a glass once a week, for example, would still fall into the same statistical category, eliding shifts that might make a huge difference on a personal level. And a desire to drink less doesn’t mean that people no longer enjoy drinking. Instead, it might be that alcohol-centric socializing has crept into more parts of people’s lives and stuck around for longer than previous generations had to contend with it.

For young Americans, drinking is very social. “I drank pretty regularly in my 20s, especially in social situations,” says Leanne Vanderbyl, who lives in San Francisco. “It wasn’t until I hit my 30s that I realized that alcohol was no longer my friend.” A few decades ago, marriage and children might have moved urban, college-educated young adults away from social drinking naturally, but fewer millennials are taking part in traditional family-building, and the ones doing it are waiting longer than their parents did. Now, the structure of social life isn’t that different for many people in their mid-30s than it was in their early 20s, which provides plenty of time spent drinking on dates and with friends for them to start to get a little tired of it.

For a generation that’s also behind its forebears when it comes to wealth accumulation, whether or not it’s a good idea to buy a bunch of beer or several $13 cocktails three nights a week can come down to practical concerns. Alex Belfiori, a 30-year-old IT professional in Pittsburgh, decided recently to stop keeping beer in the house. “I’ve already calculated how much I’m saving by not drinking, and I’m thinking about where I can put that money now,” he says. Nina Serven, a 24-year-old brand manager living in Brooklyn, is similarly over it. “Drinking just feels boring and needlessly expensive,” she says, even though she feels social pressure to drink. “I just started a medication that shouldn't be mixed with alcohol, and I'm relieved that I have an easy out.”

Britta Starke, an addictions therapist and the program director of the Alcohol and Substance Abuse Center at the University of North Carolina, sees a similar malaise in those seeking guidance from in her practice. “There does come a time when there has to be some introspection,” she says. “Folks in the millennial generation have maybe a better sense of balance. Some do yoga or meditation or are physically active, so they don’t need to find stimulation and stress-reduction in substances.” That mirrors the generation’s general interest in maintaining its health, and for those questioning their habits, realizing that a healthier relationship with alcohol doesn’t require most people to give up drinking might ease people’s social concerns.

Still, Starke has noticed some worrying attitudinal trends toward alcohol among her younger patients. Millennials who haven’t developed their generation’s signature coping skills often use alcohol heavily. Starke sees an alarming number of people under 35 with advanced liver disease or alcohol hepatitis. As attitudes may be moderating for many young adults, plenty of others are struggling: Nearly 90,000 people still die from alcohol-related causes in America every year, and that number hasn’t started to meaningfully improve.

Moreover, drinking doesn’t exist in a substance-use vacuum. All the other things millennials are well-known for ingesting play a role in its shifting popularity. “It still seems like this is a generation of self-medicating, but they’re using things differently,” says Starke, and the normalization and ever-more-common legalization of cannabis plays a big role in that.

Among the people I spoke with in detail, several mentioned replacing their evening wine with an evening bowl. “I smoke weed to unwind—thank you, California,” says Vanderbyl. For her, cannabis lacks the lingering effects that drove her away from alcohol: “I can wake up in the morning feeling ready for the day.” She’s not alone in making that switch. A 2017 study found that in counties with legalized medicinal cannabis, alcohol sales dropped more than 12 percent when compared to similar counties without weed. Recreational legalization has the potential to bolster that effect by making cannabis products even more broadly accessible.

Millennials have also shown what Starke says is worrisome interest in other drugs, the abuse of which may be diverting some of their attention from alcohol. She sees many patients looking for help with opioids, as well as benzodiazepines like Xanax. Just because young people want to drink less often doesn’t necessarily mean they’re better off: Suicide rates are up among young adults, and prescription abuse is a problem the country is only beginning to address.

The beverage industry does seem to see the writing on the wall. Over the past decade, a tide of artisanal alcohol businesses met the swelling millennial market for booze-based socializing, including innumerable microbreweries and distilleries, as well as high-end cocktail bars and wine shops targeting younger clientele. Now, 2018 Nielsen data shows that sales growth across alcohol categories is slowing. Bon Appetit estimates that the market for low- or no-alcohol beverages could grow by almost a third in just the next three years.

If he spaces in which alcohol is consumed will also have to change to meet shifting consumer demands. It’s become notably easier in recent years to find alcohol-free cocktails in urban bars across America. In New York City, a few young entrepreneurs are opening up new kinds of spaces to serve the tastes of their peers. Listen Bar, a clubby pop-up that gives patrons a chance to party without alcohol, is crowdfunding to lease its first permanent location. In Brooklyn’s Greenpoint neighborhood, Getaway, a bar so dedicated to being booze-free that it won’t even use bitters that contain alcohol, is opening in a few weeks.

Getaway’s owners, Sam Thonis and Regina Dellea, left careers in media to open the bar, which was an idea inspired by Thonis’s brother’s recovery from alcoholism. So far, the reception the pair has received bears out the broader generational shift they’re anticipating. “It feels to me like the older people are, the more they see [our bar] as a thing for sober people. They see it as black or white—you drink or you don’t drink,” says Thonis. “With younger people, there’s a lot more receptiveness to just not drinking sometimes.”

Instead of being the tipping point of any grand trend in alcohol consumption themselves, millennials might simply be the canaries in the coal mine. Statistically, it’s Gen Z, the age group currently in high school and college, that may force a sea change in America’s relationship with alcohol. They’re drinking at lower rates than adolescents have in generations, and so much about a person’s lifetime relationship to substance abuse and consumption is set by usage in early life.

For now, many young adults seem relieved that pressure they’ve internalized to drink is easing and more options are opening up. Drinking’s spot in people’s lives doesn’t have to be as all-or-nothing as American culture has long regarded it. “For many people, when they’re honest with their friends [about wanting to skip out on drinks], their friends are like, ‘Oh my god, I was thinking about that too,’” says UNC’s Starke. “I don’t know too many people who have gotten a negative response.”

Dellea has also noticed a mix of excitement and relief among her bar’s prospective patrons. “An Instagram account put up a picture of the bar,” she says. “A lot of the comments were just people tagging their friends.”

Article source here:The Atlantic

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nancygduarteus · 5 years

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Millennials Are Sick of Drinking

from Health News And Updates https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2019/04/millennials-sober-sick-of-drinking/586186/?utm_source=feed

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