These are the words, images, and beers that inspired the GBH Collective this week. Drinking alone just got better, because now you're drinking with all of us.
READ.// “Even so, many people may be unsure if they want an arm put round them by Johnson, who increasingly looks like the photo snapped through a departing prison van window at the end of a particularly disturbing criminal trial. He is possibly the only person in the country who has relished the closure of hairdressers, providing him with the perfect cover for not having his affectation trimmed.” In times of collective—indeed national—insanity, it is always reassuring to find someone respected, talented, and using their platform to speak absolute sense. Marina Hyde, who I firmly believe to be the best columnist in the U.K. at the moment, is pretty much single-handedly accountable for my sanity right now. With furious logic and impressive humor she demolishes every politician who dares step out of line, and with the current government that means she hasn’t left her keyboard since March.
LOOK.// I’ve just discovered Sarah Cooper’s wonderful mimic videos of Donald Trump, but how she physically embodies both the man and the absurdity of his words is magnificent. If only the subject matter weren’t so life-or-death.
DRINK.// The Cheshire Brewhouse’s DBA Burton-Style Bitter
Ordering all my beer online over lockdown has led to some wonderful discoveries, chief among them The Cheshire Brewhouse. Run by the enigmatic Shane Swindells, who likes to promote his beer by singing in Twitter videos, the brewery makes great modern beer but more importantly fantastic heritage recipes. His Burton-style Bitter is allspice, earth, caramel, and pepper—as deeply untrendy as it is richly delicious.
READ.// “Texts, too, were useless. To one friend I had sent a screenshot of Sinead O’Connor’s statement ‘I had been a Muslim all my life and I didn’t realise it’ with no further comment. The tesserae failed to form a picture, merely sat in the sun and winked. It seemed to mirror the fracture of information that had led us here in the first place – hence the people who appear actually to believe that the virus is being spread by 5G. I understand it. It would make so much sense if the internet was the thing that gave me this.” Writer Patricia Lockwood—best known for her poem “Rape Joke,” her memoir “Priestdaddy,” and that one tweet about her cat Miette—has mastered the art of writing for and about the internet. In her new personal essay for the London Review of Books, she turns her gleeful, sardonic, and mildly deranged talents to the topic of lockdown- and COVID-induced lunacy.
LOOK.// I never used to watch much TV, but quarantine has changed that. The most recent series I’ve devoured is “The Great,” a 10-part, semi-fictionalized account of Catherine the Great of Russia, starring Elle Fanning in the titular role and written by one of the screenwriters behind the Oscar-winning “The Favourite.” It’s sumptuous, depraved, anachronistic in all the right places—and it has one of the best final scenes I’ve ever watched.
DRINK.// Ayinger Kellerbier
Yesterday, I went to the pub. The Earl of Essex in Islington, namely, one of my most cherished London watering holes. This wouldn’t have been notable in The Before Times, but I hadn’t been since 2019—and, apart from the mandatory hand sanitizer, the spaced-out seating, and the table service, it still managed to feel warmly familiar. I ordered a pint of the masterful Ayinger Kellerbier—then a pint of Five Points Best, then a mini bottle of Oude Myrtille Sauvage Tilquin—and felt like something was once again as it should be.
READ.// “It’s not just pad Thai or mapo tofu, and it’s not just Bon Appétit. It’s the way a story from the New York Times, ostensibly focused on the fruit of Thailand, is centered from a Western, white worldview and casually reinforces racist clichés and ideas of otherness, as dissected by the writer Osayi Endolyn. It’s the way selecting stories to publish inevitably means selecting which stories not to publish, so certain chefs’ stories never get told, cookbooks never get published, and ideas disappear without ever getting seen.” From her blog “Not Eating Out in New York,” to her cookbook “The Food of Taiwan,” and now her current work as a freelance journalist, I’ve been following Cathy Erway’s writing for almost 15 years. It has influenced the way I cook, think, and write about food. Her latest story from Grub Street shines a light on the whitewashing in food media. This story is an essential read that you should not miss.
LOOK.// I generally dislike fireworks. Between the stress they put on animals and the fact that many veterans are triggered by the sound, they just don’t seem to be worth the trouble. However, there is a very small part of me that enjoys the danger of it. Humans playing with explosive, unpredictable fire, and the childish joy such recklessness can bring. Colin Boyle captures this joy with his work for Block Club Chicago.
DRINK.// 3 Floyds Brewing Co.’s Kinder Gott Yeager
I’m not the biggest 3 Floyds fan. I have told and retold the story of how an Alpha King torched my palate and broke me from my former hop habits. I’m a critic, maybe a hater. That being said, its Kinder Gott Yeager is remarkable. Thick with spicy, grassy hops (and not without a touch of dried-fruit bitterness), balanced with a formidable malt presence, this beer is a damn delight. Delightful enough to shut up the crabbiest of shit-talkers. Trust me.
Curated by The GBH Collective
