James McNew gives you the rundown on the Charlottesville, VA burger scene
Charlottesville, VA: I grew up there, from age 7 to 20. I’ve lived in Brooklyn for much longer than that, but I suppose Charlottesville is technically my hometown; I’m not really sure how that works. It’s a town up to its neck in history – um, how about Thomas Jefferson and his kick-ass house Monticello, the University of Virginia, etc. Former Twin-Tower Ralph Sampson majored in communications at UVA, and Olden Polynice was arrested there. Dave “Dave Matthews Band” Matthews was positioned there for a few strategic years (after I left, thank god), but he didn’t grow up there. His manager has since bought most of the town and he lives in Monticello now. Also, a bomb scare happened at a Rolling Stones concert at the new stadium a few years back – my Mom was at that show.
In a lotta ways Charlottesville is to VA as Austin is to TX: a lot of obnoxious but also plenty of good. I didn’t care for growing up there, but I can appreciate it now. I never cared at all about any of that powdered-wig history junk. I liked watching Ralph throw down, but was repulsed at grown-ass drunk men (“Alumni”) stumbling around town in vomit-stained orange corduroys on game days. And fuck a Dave Matthews. This town was placed on the map solely by The Happy Flowers (and also their prior incarnation as The Landlords ), WTJU, and burgers.
Jeremy Fish catches a fish in Seattle. Shot by Gavin Heslet. Thanks to Ryan at the Seattle Fish Market for being the man!
Aesop Rock, Rob Sonic, and DJ Big Wiz document their recent trek to Osh Kosh, WI to rap and eat at Perkins.
A gift from Blockhead to you all – here’s a remix of “Yesterday Is Here” by Tom Waits. Enjoy.
Check out Blockhead’s site
Photo shot in Panama by Kristine S. via cuteoverload
Some amazing footage of the Forever Young Senior Rock ‘N’ Roll Choir rehearsing in Olympia, WA, brought to you by Mrs. Kimya Dawson.
Coro wins for email of the day: “I realized that you wanted to launch the blog soon, so to help commemorate, I took the afternoon and made a little bat drawring for you. Its some rocker shit with a flaming bat, done in like a fantasy illustration style. hope you like! -C36″
Download the BIG version. Make it your desktop. Profit.
LA Raw Ponks: Party for the Kids. Photos by Chrissy Piper
Check out more of Chrissy’s work at www.chrissypiper.com
Toronto comedian Nick Flanagan predicts San Francisco’s dark, stinky future.
Oh, that golden gay town, “Frasiskey”. Who doesn’t love it? Homophobic people and people who think 1960-1995 sucked (I’m referring to ‘our parents’ and ‘kids these days’ respectively) don’t, and that’s not going to change in 2025, AKA ‘futuretime’ . What does change is the homeless people, who have devolved to the point of becoming pure ectoplasm. Last surviving Ghostbuster Dan Aykroyd will make a publicity appearance there, but he catches gout after being slimed, and later dies of unrelated causes. The homeless’ de-evolution to ectoplasm was gradual. It started with the tops of their heads and the bottoms of their feet becoming overly slimy, then their lips fell off. Then it spread to their butts.
In 2025, people in San Francisco still dress like a bad combination of ’90s white person, ’60s latino musician and some kind of 1987 attempt at ‘man/machine’. It’s hard on the eyes. Even harder on the eyes are the advertisements for San Francisco tourism. “Come See The Ugliest Rockers Since Ric Ocasek”, “Breathe The Goo”, “Be Surprised By The Filth” are some, with the most popular being “The Mental Time Machine Capital Of The World”. The 10 horrific earthquakes that have happened here since 2011 keep destroying these ads.
Earthquake-wise, things have been hard. Right now the entire Tenderloin is in a fissure. Many Vietnemese restaurants have had their businesses literally tumble into a hole. Luckily, they are a hardworking, resilient and Vietnamese people, and have resorted to catapulting their delicious sandwiches and soups into the hands and mouths of their loyal customers.
The big San Francisco trend in 2025 is ‘longest boarding’, wherein 40 year old men travel around on 60 foot long skateboards, sometimes bringing their dopey children along for the ride. They then pull up to the entrance to the internet and hop inside.They’re inside this article as I write this.
-Nick Flanagan, www.twitter.com/xflansx
Photo by Abbey Jordan.
Lindsay Irving from the California Academy of Sciences offers up some fantastic bat facts.
In honor of the murdered 900 bats from which this blog gets its name, I decided to dedicate this inaugural post to our fellow furry mammalian cousins, BATS. I work in a research lab at the California Academy of Sciences which is a natural history museum in San Francisco that contains, among public exhibits, a planetarium and a huge aquarium, over 28 million biological specimens in its collections. These specimens range from plants, to bugs, to jars of fish, reptiles, amphibians, and you guessed it…bats. Gathered from the far reaches of the globe, biological specimens represent the record of what we know exists on this planet.
In an effort to supply a sandbox for what I hope proves to be a multifarious and growing mix of contributors, I, with the help of Alex Tarrant and Justin Metros, have created 900bats.com. Original writing, photography, artwork, audio, and video content from varying sources will be posted regularly.
Massive thank you to Jeremy Fish ( sillypinkbunnies.com ) for the illustration, and Alex Pardee ( zerofriends.com ) for the logo.
Best,
Aesop Rock
