Randoms

Here's a rare post which will cover all three aforementioned topics...AND MORE!!!

First and foremost - I'd like to welcome all the nice people who happen to be fellow-acquaintences of my buddy Craig Unterseher, who just recently moved down under to Melbourne, Australia. He'll be documenting his travels on his very own blog, http://www.darkhorse-au.blogspot.com/ (and he put a link to this one on his) so check it out if your jonesing for some koala-talk. Mrs. Architecturefootballandfood and I went to grad school with Craig, and he basically got us our current jobs, so we're pretty close to the kid. Seeing the back of him was hard, but we know that he's going to love Melbourne and we wish him all the best, as I'm sure all of you do as well.

ARCHITECTURE:

Frank Gehry, my not-so-favorite architect, has a new proposal for a tower to do in the downtown financial district of Manhattan, steps away from where our friends used to live, and where Mrs. Architecturefootballandfood used to work. And it's odd for me to say - but this tower, I love. I love the basic simplicity of it, but the intense detailing, adding up to be so much more than the sum of all its parts. I usually don't like Gehry's stuff recently, but this one excited me from the moment I laid my eyes on it.

FOOTBALL:

After my last week's post documenting only a small portion of a VERY large list of potentials for Newcastle to pick up in the transfer window, we have made some movement this week. Unfortunately, it's movement in the wrong direction. Instead of adding to our already small squad, we're subtracting from it. Emre, our enigmatic attacking central midfielder has been sold to Fenerbahce. Reports say, however, that we've gotten 8m pounds for him, and after buying him for less than 4, that's quite good business. So while I'm not happy that our squad has gotten smaller, I am happy that A) we're reportedly getting a good amount for him and B) we haven't sold him to another premiership club. Now here's the bad news - another report says we've only got 2m for him. That would be crappy.

Further news is that we've also sold Damien Duff to rivals Sunderland for 5 million, the same amount we paid for him. He's a great player and a great guy, and it'll be good for him that he won't have to move his family, only going over the river. But I hope, now being a rival, that his injuries will increase and he'll rot on their bench like he did on ours, so he can't score against us!

FOOD:

Bacino's of Lincoln Park: The Mrs. and I went up to Lincoln Park this afternoon to frequent one of the few Dairy Queen's in the city of Chicago proper. (I want to keep this portion of the post about Bacino's, but for the record, Dairy Queen still has the best chocolate milkshake I've ever had. If anyone debates this, please leave a comment because I'm on a mission.) So while up there, we were walking down Lincoln Ave, and we kept finding these great looking places to eat, and finally decided on Bacino's. I had never heard of it before, but it was completely crowded, and pizza didn't sound half-bad to either of us. Once we got in, the decor wasn't much to get excited about, but it did have fully-open front windows, giving it a great early-summer lunch experience. We were both happy to see thin crust on the menu and went for a 12" with anchovies and mushrooms. (Who here likes anchovies? I never even had them until about 2 years ago and just assumed they were horrible because they get so much bad pub. But if you haven't had them, I highly suggest it because they're gloriously salty and wonderful.) The beer selection was top notch, with a bunch of strange and interesting drafts, as well as a huge list of domestic bottles and an equally intriguing import bottle list. It made today just a little bit better.

Side note - Bacino's claim is that they're "heart healthy" pizza but I don't really see how or why. I didn't ask any questions and it certainly didn't taste "heart healthy." But I will go back in a HEART-BEAT. (SCORE!!)