Beer and Young Hitler

Wednesday night, I borrowed Larry's bike and took the bus downtown to meet my friends Ryan and Quinn. Ryan was an ASU alum who like me, started working after he graduated, but unlike me, stayed here and is now a registered architect. He and Quinn have just started an organization aimed at raising awareness for the urban possibilities of Phoenix.

Phoenix's bus system is crude but effective. Buses tend to run in straight lines all the way across the city grid, and although they only run every hour they're fairly on time. If they had more frequent buses, you might actually have a usable system. For example, most people's destinations do not lie on a straight line from their houses. If you need to change buses, then you need to factor in the potential 58 minutes of waiting for the second bus. Given that the first bus only runs hourly, you can easily imagine that it would take several hours to make a journey that takes less than 30 minutes by a direct car.

Anyway, I was taking the bus because the proposal was to bike to different bars around downtown. Ryan and Quinn met me close to Ryan's place and we biked first over to Angel Trumpet Ale House. It's a combination of my favorite things- local craft beer, national and international craft beer, all on tap, downtempo, lots of tables, industrial but warm, and an adaptive reuse project. What's on tap is written on a giant chalkboard stretching the full length of the bar. Great beers.

Afterwards, we biked over to the Crescent. Apparently the former home of the crescent ballroom, this music venue is apparently the night equivalent to Lux, and an epicenter of hipster culture. Good drinks as well, and a nice vibe, but definitely a young hipster place. Good chips and salsa too.

Biked back to the bus stop and loaded my bike on the next bus south. It's getting cooler here at night. The night ride along the canals was a bit chilly just in my long sleeve shirt.

I started reading The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William Shrier. I'm trying to get a perspective on Germany and the lead up to contemporary history- after all, these are the grandparents of the people running Germany now. It's an interesting read so far. Hitler is a bigger monster than I imagined, although I was shocked to find out that he was recommended to architecture school (but never applied) and that he designed the Nazi standards. The banners, the eagle and wreath, the Roman imagery, he also selected the flag design from submissions. Forget artistry and architecture, Hitler was a born marketer, was a genius of branding. He tapped into the market, studied other brands, understood the value of experience in swaying people, and tightly controlled the Nazi brand. It's too bad he in other ways he was an idiot, and a raging jingoistic racist.