Author: J T. Ramsay

J T. Ramsay http://jtramsay.com

In Praise of Dock Street Brewing Co.

Ah, spring. It’s so nice to be out­side again. Noth­ing quite like run­ning Char­lie ragged in some nice parks. Thing about nice parks in Philadel­phia is that most of them are in West Philly. Helen and I may be river­ward  chau­vin­ists, but, man, I wish Penn Treaty Park were as nice as Clark Park.

You know what else the river­wards don’t have? A brew­ery and piz­za spot like Dock Street Brew­ing Co. Went with Mark and Erin before a Par­ty Pho­tog­ra­phers’ show at Youn­glove’s last win­ter, but had no idea how great it was for lunch. Bought two pies — Flam­menkuchen and Flo­ren­tine — and got a growler of their Sum­mer Ses­sion to go. Can’t beat it!

Helen, who tends to hate brew­pubs because the food is often oh so bad, real­ly loved it. Win-win! Beats hav­ing to con­vince her to haul out to Iron Hill or Vic­to­ry for lunch and we can stroll down to Clark Park afterward.

Maybe we’ll be West Philly peo­ple yet…

Thoughts on the 2011 Philadelphia Phillies

They appear to be pret­ty good. Guess they answered the “but can they hit?” ques­tion ear­ly. Nev­er thought Wil­son Valdez and Ben Fran­cis­co would be ear­ly heroes. Polan­co’s not shab­by either.

How much do you want to bet that Jim­my’s talk­ing to Char­lie non­stop about jump­ing back into the lead­off spot? If Char­lie’s smart he’ll keep him bat­ting third. Feel like the bot­tom of the line­up is flu­id, which is great. Like the idea of drop­ping guys like Raul down if Fran­cis­co is hot. Want May­ber­ry Jr. to get some expe­ri­ence and maybe spell Raul from time to time.

Not con­vinced that the bench will be as help­ful as hoped. Love Ross Gload. Did­n’t like what I saw out of Orr at 2nd last night. Might be okay at third, which is fine because Char­lie needs to han­dle Pol­ly with kid gloves. Valdez can do it all if asked.

Start­ing rota­tion? Goes with­out say­ing, but I’m shocked at how effi­cient Doc and Cliff have been and how effec­tive Roy Oswalt was in his start. Cole? He’ll bounce back. Blame it on the bad weath­er. Blan­ton? Any­one else think Char­lie left him out there to die as an object les­son in con­di­tion­ing? Dude just can’t seem to pull it togeth­er in ear­ly going, and with a staff like ours, there’s real­ly no excuse.

Bullpen? Some ques­tion marks there, too. Romero, Hern­don and Baez fright­en me. Kendrick sur­prised me in the mop up role. Got love for Con­tr­eras, but I fear we’re ask­ing for trou­ble when Mad­son looks to have super­star clos­er stuff. Why post­pone the inevitable? If it’s sole­ly for lever­age, that prob­a­bly won’t change much when the time comes for nego­ti­a­tions. Get Mad­son in the clos­er role. That change­up can’t be touched.

Glad that like last sea­son Amaro did­n’t pan­ic and rush to add a bat, right-hand­ed or oth­er­wise, when Utley went down and Werth left town. Let the offense play out and see where you are at the dead­line. Blan­ton’s val­ue will increase, espe­cial­ly if Utley’s able to come back before the deadline.

Look­ing for­ward to see­ing where the Phillies stand at the end of April. Have a good feel­ing about their hot start.

Optimizing My Home Entertainment Center

Excit­ing, I know, but I’ve real­ly reached a cross­roads with my cur­rent set­up. See, I’m old enough to remem­ber when music crit­ics like Yancey and Sasha suf­fered some pret­ty amaz­ing hard dri­ve crash­es in the last decade. They spent time rip­ping their discs to hard dri­ves, only to watch their col­lec­tions van­ish, thanks to hard­ware fail­ures. It was­n’t pretty.

So I wait­ed. I bid­ed my time hop­ing that some­day I would feel con­fi­dent enough in tech­nol­o­gy to make the leap. Fact of the mat­ter is, I’m still not con­fi­dent, but my mod­est rowhome won’t real­ly acco­mo­date stuff like cd col­lec­tions these days. Add a kid to the mix and you’re sud­den­ly not as con­cerned about the black met­al col­lec­tion you’ve com­piled that you hard­ly ever have time (or patience) to lis­ten to. Thus… Con­tin­ue read­ing →

Farewell James on 8th

Awoke this morn­ing to a few tweets between Kristi­na Burke of James on S. 8th St. and for­mer cheftes­tant Jen Car­roll that sug­gest James is shut­ting down oper­a­tions in South Philadelphia.

What a great restau­rant. Loved the atmos­phere, the ser­vice, the drinks and the food. Helen and I went exact­ly twice: first for her 30th birth­day and then Valen­tine’s Day this year. Both meals were prob­a­bly the best I’ve ever eat­en. Always felt that James deliv­ered an amaz­ing food expe­ri­ence with­out feel­ing like a Stephen Starr expe­ri­ence, which is to say, great food in a some­times car­toon­ish atmos­phere. I guess he’s on to something.

Here’s to what­ev­er incar­na­tion the Burke’s dream up next. What­ev­er it is, I know I’ll eat there.