My friends at the new brewery downtown have opened their "Community Sampling Room" with great aplomb. I think it's wonderful how they took an old space and made it new again. The place was originally a warehouse, then a garage, and later a used car salesroom. With the renovation, they've found a new use for the space, but the kept the integrity (and grittiness) of the building. I'll drink to that!
The young ladies of the folk group "Sore Kittens" have become something of a house band there. They've been sounding great lately.
Allen and his partner Max were in town last weekend, visiting from Chicago. Pleasantly, Allen's parent's hosted a "Beer-can chicken and jello mold invitational," with invited guests encouraged to bring their own jello concoctions. You know, there really is a great deal you can do with jello!
Allen himself contributed this Lime Jello and Mandarin Orange Mold. He's doing well: assistant manager at a Tarzhay Store on the north side of Chicago.
The Fitch's brought this delightful Peach Jello Ring. See how tall and elegant it is!
The Volcanologist brought this impressive three-layer Strawberry Jello Surprise. Typical of him to know all about stratification!
Nessa won the Grand Prize for her Watermellon Jello Bowls. They were oddly but deliciously stimulating, if you know what I mean. Strictly for the over-21s. Nessa is moving from Iron Harbor this month - she's left her job with the social service agency and will be starting Nursing School in the fall. Good for her.
Go inside the green door to get to the green room: The Boathouse Theater green room is a little unusual in that it has canoes hanging overhead, and nautical ropes and other tackle on the wall. It gets a little crowded in the green room, especially before the start of the show. During the performance, however, actors are free to walk outside next to the water, if they please.
Last week, part of the cast for "Dandelion Cottage" filmed a little segment for a local public affairs and culture program that's broadcast weekly on one of our local channels. They tape the show in front of a live audience at the Rosewood Restaurant and Nightclub. The girls and I performed the first scene of the show, and the host of the show also did a short interview with our director. It's always interesting to observe how much goes on "behind the scenes" of even the most casual television production!
This is a test - I've not been able to add photos to my blog for some time now. I've been using the IE browser, but tonight I'm using OPERA itself, and it seems to be working out. We'll see.
Iron Harbor's last surviving downtown theatre, the Delft, has closed after 92 years of business. The new owners have vowed that they will preserve the marquee, but they've been vague about future plans for the location. Some combination of retail and restaurant seems most likely - a lot of people have said that the nanobrewery will be operating there at some point in the future. You know that I'm always glad to see new investment in our small town downtown, but I really do wish there was some way possible to operate a viable theatre space there.
Actually we have a lot of building activity in central Iron Harbor right now. More pricey new condos are going up on the lakeshore. The new hotel - okay, it's just a Hampton Inn - will be opening in midsummer. (Tragically, though, it won't have a bar, missing a great opportunity for waterside conviviality.) There's a new bus station under construction across from the history museum. And I'm really looking forward to the new microbrewery operation - the Ore Dock Brewing Company - completely separate from the nanobrewery - that is under construction in an old auto garage.
This is a photo of the bar at the Ore Dock: I "borrowed" it from my friend Jason Schneider, who is on the City Commission and who also has his own photo studio in town. (See how they've designed the bar to resemble an ore dock?)
A tropical heat wave! It's impossible to overdo the superlatives when talking about the weather in Iron Harbor today - it was the warmest day ever recorded in March! There have only been four recorded days in I.H. when the temperature has exceed 70 degreed Fahrenheit - and two of them were yesterday and today.
More details from the NWS: "A record high temperature of 78 degrees smashed the old record for today of 55 degrees set in 2010. The low temperature today was 54 degrees which smashed the warmest low temperature of 38 degrees set in 1968 and again in 2010. The normal high and low temperatures at this location for today are 35 degrees and 14 degrees respectively."
A normal low of 14 degrees? Yuck.
Here's how Marilyn Monroe coped with a Heat Wave in the 1954 film "There's No Business Like Show Business":
Did you know that Michigan was the birthpace of organized ski jumping in the United States? Nashini and I went up to Suicide Hill to see the 125th Annual Competition put on by the Hematite Ski Club. Competitors came from as far away as Ukraine and Finland, although the winner was a fellow from St. Paul MN.
(We're having a little bit of winter here, although really it's been quite mild by our local standards.)
But at least Elvis had entered the building - and was behind the bar at the Pub, where Nashini and I had repaired for a nosh. And then some nosey Parkers came by and insisted on interrupting our tete-a-tete. It's all good, yes?
A good time was had at the 2011 Upper Peninsula Beer Festival! Dance for beer! Florence and her mother Sam. You would never guess it, but Florence has been battling a brain tumor, and is still on chemo. My colleague Helmut and his partner Linda. Of course, beer is part of Helmut's Germanic heritage. Good people watching - those sure are tight jeans!
My Opera
My friends at the new brewery downtown have opened their "Community Sampling Room" with great aplomb. I think it's wonderful how they took an old space and made it new again. The place was originally a warehouse, then a garage, and later a used car salesroom. With the renovation, they've found a new use for the space, but the kept the integrity (and grittiness) of the building. I'll drink to that!
