The Pleasant and Often Overlooked Spring Lake, NJ

Ann and I just spent a couple of pleasant days "down the Shore" -- not the Southern Shore towns to which most of our fellow Philadelphians gravitate, but one of the towns in the (shudder) Yankees orbit. Jersey Shore towns have very wide-ranging personalities -- a Methodist settlement adjacent to a honky-tonk boardwalk town adjacent to a real city like Asbury Park (which, by the way, is looking mah-velous after an infusion of $1.5 billion in new infrastructure and real estate investment) -- and Spring Lake has a personality like... well, sort of like Chestnut Hill, the village (within the Philadelphia city limits) where we live. The town is mostly residential, high-end but not over-the-top (like the Hamptons have been and Nantucket has become, to our chagrin), with a small but very attractive shopping area (Third Street), a beautiful fresh water lake in the heart of town, and a quiet beach (by Jersey Shore standards) with only sand, surf, and a boardwalk on which you can only walk -- no bikes (except 6-9am), no amusements, no food. It's a bit late in our Philadelphia careers to be "discovering" Spring Lake, but we're glad we did, and we'll go back -- probably this summer.

Some highlights:

*The Black Trumpet: This restaurant, located in the Sandpiper Inn on Atlantic Avenue (right across from the beach, but on a side residential street with little ocean feel), was warmly welcomed by The New York Times when it first opened in 2005, is still Zagat's top pick on the Shore, and was our innkeeper's "don't miss" pick. This BYOB (wine tip below) knows how to handle steaks (a bone-in filet, perfectly charred outside and pink inside, with Yukon smashed potatoes rich with bacon and cheddar, and broccoli rabe) and lobster (the "tower of lobster" special with a tail poached in saffron beurre blanc and two claws, all of the meat perfectly cooked). Now if only the venue matched the food...

*Joe's Deli (aka "Joseph's Delicatessen" -- no webpage but they're on Facebook): Joe's is on Warren St., within a block of the train tracks and adjacent to Egan's Liquors (very good wine buys and helpful staff -- stop here on your way to any of the numerous BYOBs on the Shore). The Valentino clan hails from Gagliano, Sicily, and they turn out great Italian sandwiches piled Carnegie Deli-high for half the price (and half of one of their sandwiches will get you through the afternoon). My favorites were the Sicilian (prosciutto, excellent house-made mozzarella -- bring some home -- and roasted peppers on a sub roll) and the Calabrese (four different hot cold cuts including sopressata and capicola topped with hot cherry peppers on a sub roll -- had to take my Prevacid a couple of hours early that night). They also offer fresh entrees (on our first visit, chicken francese, eggplant parmagiana, and pastas) and soups and sauces in the fridge and freezer. New Jersey Magazine named Joseph's "best Italian deli" and "best lunch" in 2007, and it's so good I could almost forgive them the DiMaggio, Berra, Mantle, and other Yankee paraphernalia that threatens to take over the place. (Apologies to Yaz and Ted and Carlton.)

*Skuby & Co.: Never have I so enjoyed visiting a menswear shop where so few of the items fit me. This shop, on the small and attractive Third Street downtown retail strip, features a beautifully edited selection of suits, sportswear, shoes and accessories by makers like Robert Talbott, Thomas Dean, and Robert Graham. They promise they can deliver a Coppley Canadian-made custom suit in 7-14 days (I plan to drag my son over there when he drives from Boston to LA to get him fitted). I did come home with some great bow ties and pocket squares to mix up the formal wardrobe a bit. The owner Bill Skuby is not someone with whom I share political beliefs (judging from his bad Obama jokes) but I do admire his great taste in casual and business casual clothing.

A little more on Asbury Park: I'm really intrigued. The downtown area was brimming with life on a Saturday night, its restaurants, coffee and ice cream shops, and retail storefronts hopping. There's still a pretty big dead zone (they call it the "redevelopment zone") between downtown and the beachfront, but it's starting to fill up with attractive townhomes. And the beachfront is something weird and wonderful -- the remants of the old casino now used for auctions and other events, some of the old hotels restored to past glories (of the Twenties and Fifties), the retail and restaurant spaces jammed, and the great old Jersey Shore clubs going full-tilt. There's a huge outdoor summerstage at the Stone Pony where you can see the back of the band from the street and hear the performance for free from blocks around. The Wonder Bar was featuring Leon Russell and Steve Forbert over the weekend (the Asbury Park Home for Aging Rockers). The town is the home of New Jersey's most highly regarded local newspaper (the Press) and seems to be making all the right moves. When we go back to Spring Lake, we'll spend some time here, too.

What's This "(Le) Poisson Rouge" Thing?

For those who want to know more about (Le) Poisson Rouge, the fascinating music venue in Greenwich Village that recently celebrated its first anniversary (and where Ann and I saw a great contemporary big band last week), here's a nice piece by Anthony Tommasini in The New York Times. Music - Feeding Those Young and Curious Listeners - NYTimes.com. When you're in New York, add it to your list of to-do's. It deserves your support.

Musical Notes: Darcy James Argue, Lidia Kaminska

Darcy James Argue's Secret Society: Last Wednesday, Ann and I trekked to (Le) Poisson Rouge, a much-lauded, artist-owned, eclectic performance venue in Greenwich Village (on the site of the old and revered Village Gate), to see and hear Darcy James Argue's Secret Society, an 18-piece big band that performs the intricate compositions of its 33-year-old, Vancouver-born namesake. His pieces are inspired by history, literature and current events, and his introductions (and, on this night, dedications) of each piece set the stage, and sometimes prefigured the story arc, for each of the 7-to-12 minute works that followed. The orchestrations are densely layered and sonically rich, without many gimmicks but with some interesting innovations (including effective use of electric guitar and bass clarinet). You'll hear influences of Mingus, Miles and Frank Zappa, among others, but this really is new-generation big band -- a genre that Argue has dubbed "steampunk." Try to pick up on his complicated time signatures, and recognize how heroic his rhythm section really is. All About Jazz did this nice article and interview, and the New York Observer offers this appreciation. More about the band and its leader -- along with free downloads and the chance to buy their CD -- at the Secret Society's website. The recordings are good, but this is a band that must be seen, not just heard, as the complex interplay of the musicians as they wrestle with the complex charts is part of the fun. (This video shot from the back of the house in the same venue during a 2008 appearance will give you a small taste of that.) Seek them out live. And thanks to The Wall Street Journal for the tip.

Lidia Kaminska: The public radio program Performance Today included Lidia's performance of Scarlatti’s Sonata in D minor, K. 141, from her December 7 concert at the Trinity Center for Urban Life in its July 2 broadcast. The accordionist's concert was presented by Astral Artistic Services, and Ann and I were co-sponsors of the event. It may be too late to hear the rebroadcast of this episode on your local public radio station (check the Performance Today website), but you may still find it archived online by your favorite local station.

Is Vancouver the Most Beautiful City in North America?

Vancouver has a unique setting where the mountains meet the sea, and the city's main peninsula provides extraordinary views of both from a Hong Kong-like forest of highrises, from houseboats moored in marinas, and from many hillside neighborhoods. We stayed at the Fairmont Vancouver Hotel, right by the downtown waterfront, our corner room view of Burrard Inlet and the mountains bisected by Canada Place (Canada's Expo '86 pavilion that later became its convention center and its cruise ship terminal). The brand-new green-roofed Convention Center adjacent to Canada Place actually enhanced the view toward Coal Harbor and Stanley Park.

We had not been to Vancouver in 20 years, but had very positive memories of the place. The city has grown beautifully over the years, and we found it to be highly walkable, the streets lively, the retail attractive, and the "don't go there" zones pretty much limited to Downtown East Side, an unfortunate neighborhood that's the center of the regional drug trade and that we skirted by on one walk and rode through on a couple of taxi rides. This area is Vancouver's most notorious urban problem, and apparently years of discussion haven't yielded much progress. But a phenomenal new residential highrise with a red exoskeleton is being build on a block being reclaimed from the pushers and addicts, and hopefully represents a big step forward in changing the character of the neighborhood.

Some highlights of our stay:

Food. At a wine bar called Salt, on Blood Alley in Gastown (OK, would salt, blood and gas lure you to this place?), we had one of the most fun dining experiences since our visit to Jamie Moyer's Wine Bar in Toronto last year. The menu consists of a wall-sized chalkboard featuring about a dozen charcuterie, a dozen cheeses, and a dozen condiments, which you can order for about $5 a serving and pair up with flights or full pours from a huge list of wines and sherries, with the best of B.C. wines (from the province's Okanagan [OKA-uh-NOG-gin] region prominently featured). The four of us put ourselves in our sommerlier's hands, and she brought each of us three different portions of food, each accompanied by a pour. We sampled all twelve plates and wines around the table, and left with a lot of notes about future wine and sherry purchases.

We also went to Sun Sui Wah, a Chinese restaurant in the city's Mt. Pleasant neighborhood, at the suggestion of our friend Rick, a global foodie whose recommendations have never disappointed us. We pulled up in front of an unprepossessing restaurant at the corner of a long retail strip and climbed the curved stairs to the dining room, where we walked into the middle of a 200-person Chinese wedding just as the bride and groom were posing for photos. We were led into a second huge dining room in the front of the restaurant, where the four of us were among the less than ten non-Asians in the room (a promising sign). Sun Sui Wah is best known for its roasted squab (a photo of one of them, roasted and head-on, sat prominently on a card like this on our table, causing some in our party initial trepidation)

and for huge Alaska king crab. We ordered both, starting with the pigeon - mercifully, and as a likely concession to our Western tastes, the squab had already been quartered, and its head retained in the kitchen rather than brought to table. It was dark, livery, and quite tasty. While we pulled at the bird, the head waiter stepped forward with our Alaska crab in a Tupperware tub - he grabbed it and held it up - "About six pounds, OK?" The crab looked energetic, so we approved, and within a few minutes it arrived steamed in garlic and cracked.


The University of British Columbia: This school has an almost unimaginably beautiful setting, occupying a huge backwards "D" at the end of the Kitsilano neighborhood in lower Vancouver. The on-campus Museum of Anthropology (MOA), about a quarter-century old, is a lovely concrete and glass exhibit space well suited to showing the totem poles, bentwood boxes, and food bowls of the First Nation peoples of BC, along with a remarkable permanent exhibit of European ceramics from the 18th-20th centuries and temporary exhibits that currently include photodocumentation of Samoan tattoos. Like seemingly everything else in Vancouver in these pre-Winter Olympic months, the MOA is currently undergoing renovation and expansion. After a pleasant lunch at the campus' Sage Bistro (UBC does seem unusually open to off-campus visitors), housed in an attractive concrete building that put me in mind of the Aspen Institute campus, we visited the Arboretum, a beautiful patch of BC evergreen forest and plantings from around the globe that now features a 1000-meter canopy walk atop a series of suspension bridges installed by Greenheart Canopy Walks, which claims to have pioneered this uniquely tree-friendly system of cables ("tree huggers"), poles ("tree kissers"), and Lego-like platforms that were remarkably stable and with high enough sides even for a tall guy like me.

The Waterfront: From our room and our hotel pool, we spent a lot of time just staring at the mountains across Burrard Inlet while, directly in front of us, an aeroaqua ballet of cruise ships, freighters, ferries, helicopters, floatplanes, fishing boats, kayaks, houseboats and other craft floated and flew in every direction. We took several long walks along the seawall, passing the residential towers of Coal Harbour (and wandering through some beautifully landscaped complexes like the Waterfront Residences at Bayshore), walking all the way out to the totem poles of Stanley Park and back.

Vancouver's attractions have us positing what life might be like in one of those highrises, or one of the numerous stepback midrises with large terrace gardens, or even in a houseboat. Photos from some of our tourists stops can be found here.

Alaska Cruise: Highlights

Our cruise about the Regent Seven Seas Mariner from Seward (where the Alaska Railway train dropped us off within a few yards from the ship) to Vancouver was a lovely ride. This is the largest cruise ship we've taken (700 passengers) and, while it lacked the intimacy of the Seabourn and Silversea ships we'd sailed in Europe, it was in great condition, having been updated within the last seven years, and its lounges and facilities were well-situated for great views fore and aft. We will consider Regent for future voyages, though the somewhat smaller, brand-new ship being brought online by Seabourn is very intriguing.

We spent little time in the towns were we docked en route (Sitka, Skagway, Juneau, and Ketchikan), opting instead to use our time on port for nature excursions. We trolled for salmon, took a helicopter tour to a glacier, went whale-watching and took a floatplane tour -- standard Alaska cruise fare, but lots of fun. (You'll find some photo highlights in my previous post.) Some highlights of the cruise follow.

Salmon in Sitka: We trolled for salmon in the waters off Sitka aboard the Sophia K with George and Raven, his black Labrador retriever, who took a liking to Ann. As we got to one of George's favorite spots, he pointed out a sea lion and said, "Have a look, because we're not going to fish where he's fishing." Apparently fighting a sea lion for a salmon catch is never a good idea. George found another spot where the herring were running, meaning that feeding salmon would follow. He set four lines with herring bait, and began circling. After a somewhat slow start, one of our three fellow guests reeled in a 10-pound coho, and shortly thereafter his wife reeled in another. When my turn came, Raven began racing back and forth and barking as a line off starboard began straining. I pulled the rod from the holder and began the dance, and within five minutes I had landed a 19 pound king salmon. This high-definition documentary of the battle lasts only 2 1/2 minutes, but is recommended only for close family members (zzzzz...). We landed a second king of similar size before calling it a morning. When we docked, a firm was waiting to clean, cut and flash-freeze 8-ounce portions of my king to be shipped home. In the weeks to come, we'll be serving planked salmon for 40, or maybe try to give some away.

Skagway and the Meade Glacier: Our helicopter flight to the Meade Glacier outside of Skagway was breathtaking. It was a crystalline day, and we were aboard a Euro AF350 copter operated by Temsco (they seem to have the tourist helicopter monopoly in southeast Alaska, but they run a tight ship). Copters part frequently for various glaciers, and our flight took about six or seven minutes across mountains and several beautiful valleys, including one steep green Eden aptly named Paradise Valley. The copter set down on a long flat stretch of Meade Glacier and, equipped with safety vests and grippy overshoes, we followed our guide for a 45-minute walk across 700-foot-thick ice that extended back another 30 miles to British Columbia. Ann scooped up a handful of glacier ice at some point, and several of us popped pieces in our mouths. "What does it taste like?" our guide asked. "Absolutely nothing," I responded. "That's right," he said, "that's several hundred year old water you're drinking. Perfect water. And any time anyone tells you that you're drinking 'glacier water' from a bottle, they're lying - now you're tasting the real thing."

The Mariner also made a several-hour visit to the Hubbard Glacier, getting us within a couple hundred yards of the face as we glided through silky-cold, silty water and ice chunks. We heard four or five cracks in the ice while we were facing the glacier, but we didn't witness a calving. What we did see were bald eagles and sea lions looking like little caraway seeds atop huge icebergs.

Whales in Juneau: We spent some time at the Mendenhall Glacier, which we approached through a rain forest rich with lichens and moss. As we ended our visit, a bear whom our guide described as a "black bear in his cinnamon fur stage" ambled across a small creek within an interestingly short distance. You can see him in the photos from the previous post. At a nearby harbor, we boarded the Navigator, a solid-hull aluminum boat with an inflatable ring around it, and sped off to Auke Bay, where our captain Bob said we'd have a very good chance of seeing humpbacks. As it turned out, we had the kind of afternoon that would make a National Geographic photographer's day - unfortunately, I am not that kind of photographer, so I'll have to do more telling than showing.

Before long, we'd begun spotting humpback flukes and spouts in the Bay, and it was clear that there was a sizable group of whales a few hundred yards away. Bob dropped a "hydrophone" into the bay, and turned up the volume. We were able to hear the whales signaling one another in a high-pitched, plaintive wail, and the sounds of several whales grew to a spooky crescendo. "This is gonna be good," Bob said. A few moments later, we watched in awe as about a dozen humpbacks rose up out of the water nearly simultaneously, each of their mouths full of hundreds of gallons of sea water that contained hundreds of pounds of herring, and then crashing their bodies back into the sea. We stood there in awe.

Bob explained that the whales were using a "bubble net" to catch the herring that were schooling in the bay. One of the whales would begin circling the school, exhaling to create a bubble net that would confuse and confine the fish. Then the whales would dive as a group, come up from underneath, and engulf them in their mouths, swishing their tongues to force out the water through their baleen while the herring remained trapped inside. They would then swallow their catch a few at a time through their throats that are about the diameter of a grapefruit.

Within 10 minutes, we began to see multiple flukes once again a few hundred yards off in another direction. Bob raced us off toward the group, dropped the hydrophone again, and once again we heard the crescendo of whale cries building - and within a few moments, we had a once-in-a-lifetime experience for the second time in a day, as the group of 12 breached for a second time and gulped jawsful of herring.

My camera managed to miss both of these moments, but here's a bit of footage of the whales' flukes and spouts and backs between and after the breaching. (If you stay on YouTube and search "whales auke bay" you'll see far better footage of these guys from other whale-watchers.)

Inspiration: The remarkable blue color of the glaciers - the only color that the densely-packed glacier ice does not absorb - inspired us to consult with our bartender (once back on board) as to whether there is any such thing as a "glaciertini.". As he had never heard of one (nor had we seen one on any menus in our travels), we asked him to experiment with us. His first effort - vodka, blue curacao (an inevitable ingredient for color), and some fruit juice, was poured down the drain pretty quickly. But his second try -- gin, a splash of blue curacao, and shaved ice, shaken and poured, then hit with a splash of club soda -- had the glacial blue just right, and tasted like something we might actually consider serving. Therefore, you can consider that concoction to be the official Glaciertini. (TM)

Alaska Cruise: In Anchorage

I kept a lot of notes on the Blackberry during our terrific visit to Alaska and Anchorage but, thanks to my decision to go into full vacation mode, I didn't wind up doing real-time posts to TLRM. So instead, I'm going to finish up several look-back posts sharing our impressions of our destinations. Some Alaska photos are already up on my Facebook page (see earlier post), with Vancouver photos to follow later, and I plan to upload some short videos to YouTube and link them into these posts.

* Flew in to Anchorage on a Monday night, landing around 11:15 p.m. The sky was still as bright as dusk back home. They have 19 hours of daylight here just after the solstice - but only about six hours during the shortest days of the year... yikes! The abnormally long summer days and winter nights are probably not insignificant to the development of the Alaskan psyche. Pleasant late June temperatures around 60, which is what we encountered during most of the cruise.

* We stayed at the Hotel Captain Cook downtown. Our comment card was signed by "Walter Hickel, Jr., President," who I assume is the son of the Nixon-era Interior Secretary? It appears to be a waystation for cruise types at this time of year. It has a good location, right between 4th and 5th Streets, the two main shopping and entertainment streets downtown. After the fact, we heard from folks that "there's nowhere else to stay in Anchorage." Staff told us that the Captain Cook has a big spring and fall convention business (the Alaska Bar Assn. had an event there during our stay), and a lot of retail (a well-stocked Patagonia store to get you ready for the outback, a women's shop called Rosita's on 4th into which Ann disappeared but didn't do too much damage, which gave me time to write this, and some decent-looking crafts shops). Clean, well-maintained, and pleasant, and the lingonberry pancakes with reindeer sausage were tasty.

*Anchorage Museum at Rasmuson Center (6th and C) is a good place to kill most of an overcast day. Permanent exhibits include (i) the Alaska Gallery, a very well-done history of the territory beginning 10,000 years ago with some first-rate dioramas of dwellings ranging from the earliest natives to the prospectors of the early 20th century; and (ii) the Art of the North galleries, with over a century of predominantly landscape works chiefly by Anglo artists including the Brooklyn transplant (and Alaska favorite) Sydney Laurence. The current museum space is new, bright, and handsome, and a significant expansion next year will bring at least two new galleries. The Museum Cafe known as Muse is operated by the Marx Brothers, whose dinner-only Marx Brothers Cafe is located in one of the city's earliest cottages (circa 1917).

*We had a cocktail on the rooftop of the Captain Cook, where they serve more than 40 Scotches, and a pleasant dinner at Sacks Cafe, recommended in the June edition of Cooking Light Magazine (and therefore at the top of Ann's list).

*Verdict: A pleasant stopover, but certainly not a destination. The next morning, we boarded the Alaska Railway for a 4 1/2 hour scenic ride to Seward, from which our ship would embark.

*UPDATE: Meant to flag a nice little retail discovery we made, and one I had mentioned briefly on Facebook -- the Musk Ox Producers Cooperative runs a shop on H Street in Anchorage where they sell scarves, hats, earwarmers, and other products that capitalize on the heat-retention qualities of qiviut, the extremely lightweight underbelly wool of the musk ox. The wool is never dyed because it would harm the fibers, so you need to like greyish brown (though they have some products in an 80% qiviut/20% silk blend). Ann is in love with her new earwarmer. The Coop also runs a retail website.

Cruise Photos from Alaska

I won't have a chance to blog about our cruise to Alaska and our delightful visit to Vancouver until this weekend, but in the meantime here are some Alaska photo highlights from my Facebook page. Looking forward to providing more details about the trip, and some video, very soon.