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.// “Fitzgerald’s sardonic humor and his disquiet—the sense that ‘life is essentially a cheat and its conditions those of defeat,’ as he later wrote—give his best work moral realism and gravitas, grounding the flights of his prose. All those New Year’s partygoers seem to have forgotten that the revelry ends with Gatsby dead in a swimming pool, an obscene word scrawled on the porch of his preposterous house.” F. Scott Fitzgerald is associated with decadence and glamor, and the start of 2020 saw many Great Gatsby-themed parties marking the beginning of our own “Roaring Twenties.” In hindsight, that’s pretty regrettable—and as Sarah Churchwell writes in the The New York Review of Books, it’s also a fundamental misreading of Fitzgerald’s cutting social commentary.
LOOK.// This is gonna sound weird, but I am … obsessed with smells. In another life, I think I might have been a perfumer, and my own olfactory map of London includes the locations of my favorite, fragrant fig trees; crops of lavender; and the briniest spots along the canal. And so I particularly related to this multimedia piece, with photos by Ryan Young and text by Tejal Rao, of Rao’s own quest to discover what Los Angeles smells like, from neighbors frying onions to the freezers in Asian grocery stores.
DRINK.// Vinohradský Pivovar 13
A friend of mine recently asked if we had moved into Stout season—but for me, October is all about malty Lagers. This amber-hued Lager from Czech brewery Vinohradský Pivovar is exactly what I want this time of year. Bready, with distinctive notes of caramel that are matched by a good helping of hop bitterness, this full-bodied Lager is ideal drinking for when the autumnal chill starts settling in.
READ.// DMs between me and fellow GBH contributor Kate Bernot are almost always book recommendations. I think the next one I’m about to share with Kate (shh—don’t tell her!) is Our History is the Future by Nick Estes. This book chronicles the resistance to the Dakota Access Pipeline and through that paints a larger picture about Indigenous protest and resistance. I’ve been trying to be better about editorializing things so all I’ll say is that this book is absolutely incredible.
LOOK.// Eighth Generation is a Native-owned art and lifestyle brand. They produce beautiful wool blankets and a wide range of other striking pieces. As it gets colder, consider wrapping yourself up in one of their seasonally appropriate throws.
DRINK.// Hopewell Brewing Company’s Tropical Sour Ale
I don’t think I’ve had beer from an Indigenous-owned brewery like Bow & Arrow Brewing Co. or Skydance Brewing Co., and I’m hoping that changes soon. Lately, I’ve been asking myself a lot of questions about quality: what’s the actual target? I’m trying to define it not just by what’s in the glass (although I guzzled this Sour Ale like it was going to be ripped out of my hand at any moment) but by the people beyond. I’m aiming to be more thoughtful and ask more questions—beer doesn’t taste good when it comes from a shitty company.
READ.// “On a few occasions, shoppers have inadvertently come across their own lost items in the store.” Unclaimed Baggage in Scottsboro, Alabama is America's only retailer of lost luggage. It buys, in bulk, the suitcases that airlines have lost or failed to reunite with their owners, then sorts and cleans the contents and sells them to the public at steep discounts. Rare finds have included a xylophone from Neil Diamond’s 2008 world tour and the original Hoggle puppet from the 1986 film, “Labyrinth.”
LOOK.// The work that must have gone into Vulture's compilation of the 100 Most Influential Scenes in Animation History was surely grueling; imagine trying to distill the global history of beer into 100 commercial examples. The results are entrancing, though, especially because they're listed chronologically, allowing the viewer to watch the medium evolve literally before their eyes.
DRINK.// Cloudburst Brewing’s UltraWet IPA
The hop sorcerers at Seattle's Cloudburst Brewing make phenomenal IPAs; this UltraWet fresh hop beer with Simcoe and Sabro presented a hop experience unlike anything else I've had. True to its name, the hops are phenomenally … aquatic? They offer a quenching rush of eucalyptus, mint, and lemongrass, with an almost lactic, creamy flavor I can't stop thinking about.
Curated by The GBH Collective
