Who doesn’t love beer and hot dogs? The Red Hot, a place specializing in sausage and brews is slated to open on 6th Avenue later this year. The ink on the lease has yet to dry, but the wheels are in motion. Earlier, I asked the proprietor of The Red Hot and author of the recently minted blog Beer and Hot Dogs a few questions about The Red Hot.
Some Questions. Some Answers.
SR = sparkrobot.com, TRH = The Red Hot
SR: What is The Red Hot?
TRH: “Your new favorite Tacoma hangout”
SR: Where is The Red Hot?
TRH: 2914 6th Ave, Suite B, intersection of 6th and Junett. It used to be the old dollar store. 1 block away from 6th and Pine (E-9, masa, Asado, etc.). Across from Schucks.
SR: What’s the deal with Beer and Hot Dogs?
TRH: Whats not to like?
SR: touche
TRH: Theres wine, pinball, tv, and atmosphere, natch. And nachos. And no lame jukebox
SR: that’s key
TRH: If you want to take your girl out, eat a legit dog, listen to T. Rex, be surrounded by Tacomacentricity, maybe catch a game on the tube, not listen to the horrible sound of a pool cue slapping the ground, and not be surrounded by knuckleheads all at the same time, you will like The Red Hot. Oooooh, and play pinball.
SR: 10-4. Sounds like it will be cool, unpretentious… Tacoma. So, why Tacoma?
TRH: Why not. It’s the city I live in, the city where I’ve decided to stay. There’s not a lot of suburban guilt that you find in Seattle, where a lot of bars tend to preach the blue-collar lifestyle. People who are blue-collar do not need to be reminded they are blue-collar. They just want a cool spot to hang out. And there’s hot dogs there. Whats not to like?
TRH: I. Heart. Tacoma.
SR: Nice. Good idea for The Red Hot teeshirts. I want a 60% cut. We’ll talk about this later.
TRH: what idea
SR: I. Heart. Tacoma.
TRH: thats my idea
SR: not anymore!
TRH: you get a free one, thats it
SR: When do you expect to unleash The Red Hotness on the Tacoma?
TRH: Hopefully mid-summer. I’d like to say end of July, but with waiting on paperwork to be processed, it could be August.
SR: Killer. Your family is to blame for creating the successful martini lounge concept, the One Ten Lounge out in Port Orchard. That’s really cool place. Will there be similarities?
TRH: Yeah. Our family doesn’t take shortcuts in our business. We don’t rip people off, or pretend to be something we’re not. It will have some of the lounge characteristics that are not common with “taverns” or “taprooms”. We try to create something that we would go to. It will be a comfortable place to go to, with atmosphere unlike any in the area. Plain and simple.
SR: So, what are we talking about? ballparks and pbr? let’s talk about beer and hot dogs, let the people hear a little bit more about what they can expect to eat and drink.
TRH: Street style hot dogs…not blistered up tough tubes of meat like at convenience stores. Chicagos, Coneys, Veggies, etc. Natural dogs, and skinless for aficionados of every ideal. Homemade chili (NO BEANS!!!), and homemade southern slaw will be in house. Cheap eats for the lunch-time crowd. Cheap eats for the anytime crowd.
TRH: Yeah, PBR will be on tap, but so will Fish Organic IPA. And other local breweries will be represented. It’s looking like 8-9 handles, with some bottles. It will absolutely have Rainier on tap, ice cold (it should be a requirement for every bar in Washington to serve it, even though it moved away…a matter of principle!), as well as a cider. Wine to be served in glass tumblers, because really…who else in the world serves a drink in a snooty piece of stemware besides America? I hate snooty.
SR: What’s the deal with roller derby in Tacoma?
I’m coach for the Homewreckers, a team on the Dockyard Derby Dames Roller Derby league. We have a exhibition going on during Art on the Ave, I believe, in July. We just had tryouts and got some more talent and fresh faces on the league. My team is now a 15 person squad. The next bout should be going down end of July or August. The Homewreckers are 1-0 so far and I think we’re also sending a League squad down to Vegas for a big derby event.
SR: Rollerderby. Beer. Hot Dogs. What else does Tacoma need?
It needs to keep building its communities like it has been doing…it needs for some people to get the idea of competing to be another Seattle or Portland out of its minds…it needs Girl Trouble to be played out of every church tower on the hour…and it needs for everyone to come down to the Red Hot and hang out.
SR: cool. anything else?
TRH: i dont guess so. my blog is blowing up
SR: i’ll drop that too
TRH: can i read it before you post it?
SR: why? are you my editor?
### end ###
Man, After all that, I’m ready for a beer and a hot dog right now. “It’s so damn hot… milk was a bad choice.“
I’ve put up some photos of Carrie Akre and her band from last Saturday’s show at Jazzbones. The band was Carrie Akre (Hammerbox, Goodness) on guitar & piano, Martin Lund – bass, Jared Clifton (Radio Nationals) on guitar and Mark Pickerel (Screaming Trees, The Dark Fantastic) on drums.
Center of the stage
Secret to longevity
Being right up front
I found this scene at a benefit show at the Swiss Pub last Sunday, May 6th. The event was a fundraiser entitled “Fight Fistula!” and was arranged to raise money for education and efforts toward the erradication of Fistula worldwide. While I didn’t happen to catch his name, he was right up front dancing and a big hit with the ladies.
The band on stage is The Fucking Eagles from Tacoma. Though I missed some of the bands, I’ve posted several galleries of bands that performed that evening to Live Rock Photos.
One of the themes for issue JPG magazine’s issue 11 is “Are You Ready to Rock?”. Well, actually yes. Yes I am. I’ve submitted this photograph as my contribution to be considered by the community. If you’ve got a few seconds, head over to JPG magazine site and vote for this photo: Yeah, It Rocks! if you please. Registration is required to vote, but I promise you, with only 5 fields, the signup form isn’t all that intimidating. Thanks in advance for your support.
More information about Fistula
Obstetric fistula is a devastating childbirth injury caused by days of unrelieved obstructed labor that can easily be avoided through Caesarian section delivery – an option often unavailable to women in developing and third-world countries. In as high as 90 percent of fistula cases, the baby dies and the woman is left with chronic incontinence.
Sufferers are often cast out by their husbands and families and are frequently ostracized by their communities. Without treatment, fistula can lead to infections, kidney disease and death. Currently, two million women suffer from obstetric fistula.
More information about Fistula can be found on the web at the Fistula Foundation website.
Saturday night was roller derby night in the city of Tacoma. Perhaps you heard. The flat track roller derby team, Tacoma’s Dockyard Derby Dames rolled at the Soccer Center on Bay Street. Most anything you want to read about the event has already been written over at The Weekly Volcano’s Spew blog. I published a bunch of pictures from the event. Take a look at out Jules Doyle’s shots too, because he used way better glass than I…
The Soundview Trail opened last Saturday, May 5 with a Dog Walk and Fun Run. I did not run, because, um, yeah, that’s just not my thing. We did walk the 3.8 mile paved trail around the new Chamber’s Creek Chamber’s Creek Golf Course which is slated to be opened later this year (June 23rd). I do not golf, but the grass was looking really nice out there for anyone who does.
The trail is described as such:
Located in the northern part of the Chambers Creek Properties, Soundview Trail will meet with Grandview Trail at 62nd St Ct W and at Cirque Plaza making the two trails walkable as a loop.
Also noted:
Difficulty Level: Difficult (grades in excess of 10%)
Dude. I wish I had known that in advance. I think the English Bulldog would have appreciated some head’s up on the grade as well. Deciding to flat out quit at the top of the trail, I had to go get the car to come back and get her. Here are some photos from the trail.
Metroblogging Seattle: Tacomawatch: Safe empty of treasure
Well…no. After two hours worth of drilling the thing open, they found some wood chips, five paper clips, and a spider. (Now, perhaps the spider is the owner of the safe and we’re dealing with some sort of complicated magics here. It’s possible.)
Also, a link to the story in the PI.
Sunday, April 29th was Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day. A pinhole camera is essentially a camera in it’s very simplest form. There is no lens. Just a tiny hole to let light pass through an improvised camera body to film. I set out over the weekend just past and created my first set of pinhole images. I could tell you I knew exactly what I was doing, but I would be lying to you. I ended up putting expired Kodak Gold 400 in a Zero Image 135 I picked up from Freestyle. I sometimes used the light meter on my Nikon to calculate approximate exposure times for the pinhole. Mostly, I guessed.
Lo-fi from the gate, here are some of the photos: needle drop, forest, forest light leak, beached briefly, dash point, the vet, abandoned, cherries, sky light, the old girl, & thai. (Once the gallery is open, you can click on the right or left side of each image to move back and forward between the images.) Thanks for looking.
ABCNews.com redesigned their site. It’s terrible. Looks like they needed room for bigger ads and that drove the design decisions. Somebody also got a little carried away with the javascript animation too. Put all of this aside for a minute though and take a look at this screen capture from this morning. Four years to the day after the Mission Accomplished fiasco, “Bush Prepares to Veto the Iraq Bill”. Take a look at the implied trajectory of the soldier’s weapon in this collage. Looks like the photo editor is asleep at the wheel and some Photoshop, uh, wizard dropped a bomb of his own.
