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daughtersofhorror · 3 years

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Bessie Stringfield by spiral sheep Via Flickr: Bessie Stringfield's life is the stuff of which legends are made. Bessie has been mentioned in books, magazines, newspapers and television documentaries. In 1990, when the American Motorcyclist Association opened its Motorcycle Heritage Museum, Bessie featured in its inaugural exhibit on Women in Motorcycling. A decade later the AMA created the Bessie Stringfield Award to honour women who are leaders in motorcycling. In 2002, she was inducted into the Motorcycle Hall of Fame. Bessie, or BB as she was known among friends, described over 60 years of motorcycling: "I was somethin'! What I did was fun and I loved it." In the 1930s and 1940s Bessie made eight long-distance, solo rides across the United States. Speaking to a reporter, she dismissed the idea that "nice girls didn’t ride motorcycles in those days." She was also seemingly fearless about riding through the Deep South when racial prejudice was a tangible threat. Born in Kingston, Jamaica, in 1911, she was brought to Boston as a young child but was orphaned by the age of 5. "An Irish lady raised me," she recalled. "I’m not allowed to use her name. She gave me whatever I wanted. When I was in high school I wanted a motorcycle. And even though good girls didn’t ride motorcycles, I got one." She was 16 when she climbed aboard her first motorbike, a 1928 Indian Scout, and, despite having no prior knowledge of how to operate the controls, Bessie proved to be a natural. She insisted God gave her the skills. "My [Irish] mother said if I wanted anything I had to ask Our Lord Jesus Christ, and so I did," she said. "He taught me and He’s with me at all times, even now. When I get on the motorcycle I put the Man Upstairs on the front. I’m very happy on two wheels." She was especially happy on Milwaukee iron. Her one Indian notwithstanding, Bessie said of the 27 Harleys she owned in her lifetime, "To me, a Harley is the only motorcycle ever made." At the age of 19 she began tossing a penny onto a map and then riding to wherever it landed. Bessie covered all of the 48 lower states. Her faith got her through many nights. "If you had black skin you couldn’t get a place to stay," she said. "I knew the Lord would take care of me and He did. If I found black folks, I’d stay with them. If not, I’d sleep at filling stations on my motorcycle." She folded her jacket on the handlebars as a pillow and rested her feet on the rear mudguard. Using her skills and can-do attitude, she also performed trick riding in carnival stunt shows. Between her travels, Bessie wed and divorced six times, declaring, "If you kissed, you got married." She and her first husband were deeply saddened by the loss of three babies and Bessie had no more children. On divorcing her third husband, Arthur Stringfield, she said, "He asked me to keep his name because I’d made it famous!" During the Second World War, Bessie worked for the army as a civilian motorcycle dispatch rider. The only woman in her unit, she completed rigorous training maneuvers. She learned how to weave a makeshift bridge from rope and tree limbs to cross swamps, although she never had to do so in the line of duty. With a military crest on the front of her own blue Harley, a "61," she carried documents between domestic U.S. bases. Bessie encountered racial prejudice on the road. On one occasion she was followed by a man in a pickup truck who ran her off the road, knocking her off her bike. She played down her courage in coping with such incidents. "I had my ups and downs," she shrugged. In the 1950s, Bessie bought a house in Miami, Florida. She became a licenced practical nurse and founded the Iron Horse Motorcycle Club. Disguised as a man, Bessie won a flat track race but was denied the prize money after she took off her helmet. Her other antics, such as riding while standing in the saddle of her Harley, attracted the attention of the local press. Reporters nicknamed her the "Negro Motorcycle Queen" and later the "Motorcycle Queen of Miami." Late in life, Bessie suffered from symptoms caused by an enlarged heart. "Years ago the doctor wanted to stop me from riding," she recalled. "I told him if I don’t ride, I won’t live long. And so I never did quit." Before she died in 1993, at the age of 82, Bessie said, "They tell me my heart is three times the size it’s supposed to be." An apt metaphor for this unconventional woman whose heart and spirited determination have touched so many lives. Text mostly © 2002, American Motorcyclist Association, and adapted from here: home.ama-cycle.org/forms/museum/biopage1.asp?id=277 www.motorcyclemuseum.org/halloffame/hofbiopage.asp?id=277

#motorbike #jamaican #jamaican american #african american #usa #americana #history #historical #motorcycle #motorcyclist #motorcycling #goggles #woman #black history #photo #vintage #portrait #harley #boots

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fashionbooksmilano · 6 years

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Dylan/Schatzberg

Skira, Milano 2018, 262 pagine, 250 illustrazioni a colori, ISBN 9788857239163

euro 55,00*

email if you want to buy :[email protected]

Il primo libro che riunisce gli iconici scatti di Schatzberg fatti a Bob Dylan, all’apice della sua carriera: i ritratti di studio, le fotografie in sala di registrazione, le rarità, i concerti.

Nel 1965, Jerry Schatzberg, già ben affermato attraverso il suo lavoro con le riviste, incontrò un giovane Bob Dylan che era all’apice della sua fama. Dylan invitò il fotografo nello studio dove stava registrando un album che sarebbe diventato Highway 61 Revisited, che includeva Like a Rolling Stone, canzone che avrebbe guadagnato il primo posto nella classifica di “Rolling Stone” dei cinquecento più grandi successi di tutti i tempi. Le fotografie di Schatzberg catturano Dylan durante uno dei momenti più cruciali della storia della musica e includono le riprese di quello che sarebbe probabilmente diventato il suo più grande album, Blonde on Blonde. Immagini essenziali e intramontabili, che non solo resistono alla prova del tempo, ma sono anche diventate visivamente sinonimi di uno degli artisti più importanti del XX secolo. Dylan ha venduto oltre cento milioni di dischi ed è uno degli artisti più venduti di tutti i tempi. Ha ricevuto numerosi premi tra cui undici Grammy Awards, un Golden Globe Award e un Academy Award. È stato inserito nella Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, nella Minnesota Music Hall of Fame, nella Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame e nella Songwriters Hall of Fame. Jerry Schatzberg (1927) è un fotografo e regista. Prima di dirigere film, negli anni settanta, era già un affermato fotografo professionista. Il suo lavoro è apparso in molte riviste tra cui “Vogue” e “McCall’s”.

orders to: [email protected]

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#Bob Dylan #Jerry Schatzberg #Highway 61 Revised #Blonde on Blonde #Like a Rolling Stone #photography books #libri di fotografia #fashionbooksmilano

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nanowrimo · 7 years

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NaNo Prep: Make a Box for Your Bully

As we dive into NaNo Prep season, we’ve talked to some participants to get the inside scoop on how to best prepare for November. Today, author Mur Lafferty shares how she manages to make her inner editor be quiet:

I'm writing a new book now. I hate it.

This is standard, whether you're a pro or a beginner. The idea in my head was so glorious and perfect, but the minute I put it into words I feel like a finger-painting four year old, except kids take more pleasure in their creation than I do. Nah, this is drek.

And I hear them, the little whispers in my ear: "This is crap. Just quit. No, not just this book, you should quit it all, stop calling yourself an author. Go back to corporate America and make room for someone else who's more talented." I turn my head and sitting on my shoulder is a little person shaped like a potato. It's lumpy and ugly and has a permanent smirk on its face like it knows it's better than me.

This is my bully, my constant companion, my internal editor––and I would bet my next advance (that isn't coming, remember, because this book is crap and definitely won't sell) that you have one similar to it.

My bully's name is Travis, by the way. But I'm not here to talk to you about Travis the bully potato. I'm here to talk about your potato, or whatever your editor looks like, and to talk about how to prep for the novel you are going to write in November.

1. Identify your bully.

As I said, mine is a potato. No, I don't know why it's a potato, shut up. You might follow standard pop culture mythology and make yours into a devil, or an angel with black wings, or a little version of you, with a goatee, dressed like a delinquent. Incidentally, your muse is usually the one on your other shoulder. Mine isn't another vegetable, although it would be balanced and tidy if it were a pretty vegetable maybe like a fennel bulb with long flowing hair. But it's more like a friendly fairy that is easily harassed into silence by Travis the Potato. Freaking Travis, man. I hate that guy. But anyway, once you identify your bully, and realize that what it's telling you is all lies, you can accept that you're not realistic when your subconscious says to quit; you're just having fear. Doubts. And that's normal.

2. Grab it!

Once you can identify and spot the wily bully, grab it with all your might. It's like a nettle, which I have never seen, but I hear you have to be firm when you grab or else you'll get stung. Instead of grabbing nettles, grab that bully by its potato and don't let go. It will whine. It will fuss and squirm. It will tell you that without it, you will write something terrible and not even know it. That's OK, just don't let it go.

3. Get a box.

We've been talking metaphorically up to now. No, I don't really think a potato named Travis sits on my shoulder. But I'll admit I sometimes do something physical to shut it up. I'll close the office door. I'll turn up music so I can't hear it. Or I'll get the time-out box, which is a little chest on my desk. The bully goes into the box while I write, and I promise I will let it out when I'm done. It can complain and insult me all it wants, I can't hear it from the box. So either imagine your box, or heck, get yourself a real box. NaNoWriMo is not for the faint of heart, and the sturdy-hearted writers have boxes, dang it.

(Aside––why am I talking so much about potatoes? Because the bully is what will keep you from your novel. If you've failed NaNoWriMo in the past, then you know that unless something catastrophic happened, you quit because you had doubts, or fears, or just wasn't sure what to write next and you let the blank page––the bully's cousin––get the better of you. Before you write word one on your book, you must decide where to put that bully, or it will do all it can to stop you.)

4. Spread the word.

What you're doing is a big deal, a large venture, and if you're in the USA, then it's happening during a major holiday as well. You will have a greater chance to succeed if you tell the people close to you what you're up to, and what it means to you. That last part is key. You're not just trying out a new hobby, you're challenging yourself to accomplish something at a pace that some pro writers find difficult to maintain, much less beginning writers. If your family, friends, roommates, etc, don't respect that, it's going to be much harder on you. Establish a time you want to write daily and then request help from those close to you to give you the space you need. And if they don't help you, call them all potatoes and slam the door.

5. Make an outline. Or don't.

Outlining can be quite useful. It gives you a roadmap that you can follow as you work on your book. If you don't know what to write that day, then the outline should point you in the right direction. However. You might be like me, and the thought of writing an outline makes you want to take all the advice that the muffled potato in the box is still shouting at you: quit quit quit. It's possible that maybe outlining isn't for you. And that's ok. Some prefer maps. Some can't fathom the shape of the story until they're out with a flashlight, making their way through it, only knowing what to write when their light falls on it. That's how I prefer to write. So yeah, make an outline. Unless that isn't something that works for you.

6. Don't fall into the rabbit hole of advice. Even this one.

I'm a pro writer (that still feels weird to say) and I still get paralyzed when looking up advice and tips and tricks instead of actually writing. Many beginning writers have been halted in their tracks when they come across writing advice that goes counter with how they do things. "If you don't do [X] then you're not a real writer," is my favorite. It makes me want to find my knives.

I'm betting you know more than you think you do about how to do this. The rules are simple: get to 50k by the end of the month. For most, that means writing daily. That may not work for you. For others, 10000+ words on the weekend may work. Worried that your Rashomon-style retelling of King Lear, only in present tense, second person, and set in the far future isn’t going to work? Write that thing! Don't get bogged down wondering if your writing is good or your are doing it right or even if the story is salable. Or readable. The bully is in the box, remember, and you don't worry about the quality of what you're writing anymore.

Which brings me back to the beginning, where I'm working on a new book right now. It's drek, probably, but I don't mind. My bully is in the box, and I'm not worried about it because this is a first draft, and our one job for a first draft is to get a story on the page. We can worry about the details later. That's what December is for!

Campbell-winning author Mur Lafferty is a freelance writer, editor, and podcaster whose life consists of spinning plates and hoping they don't fall. Her latest books are Six Wakes and I Should Be Writing, and she co-edits Escape Pod magazine. In the last few years, she has lost the Hugo Award and been inducted into the Podcaster Hall of Fame. She lives in Durham, NC, with her husband and daughter.

Author Photo by JR Blackwell.

Top image licensed under Creative Commons from Monica Müller on Flickr.

#nanowrimo #nano prep #nanowrimo 2017 #by oll guest #mur lafferty #writing

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melanierae-blog · 5 years

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Veleiro

Visit my Blog Martha MGR’s Blog

Posted by Martha MGR on 2008-09-05 20:49:21

Tagged: , SuperShot , platinumphoto , “Magicotouch” , SearchTheBest. , BEJ* , ABigFave , AnAwesomeShot , Damn! I Wish I’d Taken That!!! , TheUnforgettablePictures , NaturesElegantShots , WorldWideLandscapes , BlueRibbonWinner , Another Diamond , flickrdiamond , FlickrElite , OvertheExcellence , FlickrsBest , GoldenHeart , GoldDragon , GoldenHeartAward , GoldStarAward , DiamondClassPhotographer , World’s Art Gallery , MY WINNERS , flickr GOLD , *Free NATURE* , **Brilliant~Eye~Jewels* , SHINING☆STAR , The Unforgettable Pictures ~ , VVoVV , Kartpostal , Cherry on top! , SHOW THE BEST , Breathtaking , The Unforgettable Photographer , Hall Of Fame , Perfect Picture , The beautiful image TOP , Un instante, una historia , Shot Book , bestcapturesaoi , artofimages , click; , patagonica/ , LANDSCAPESDREAMS , TheLoveProject , Double Dragon Awards , BaúdeImagens , Chapeau , ThePhotoDistillery , PHODDÁSTICA!!! , 700awards , 200faves , BRAVO , Reserva Especial; , Vernissage; , 2M´s ROYAL STATION; , 3M’s Royal Flowers; , 4M´s Photographic Dream , 100+commentgroup , Martha MGR , Martha Maria Grabner Raymundo , MMGR , Martha MGRaymundo , +1000 Views

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enchantedtigress · 5 years

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Hands by Dzung Viet Le Via Flickr: - 1st Place Photo of The Month- April (May-8-2010) in Platinum Heart Award Group. - 1st place in the Weekly Contest Week 44 in Exposition Group. - 1st Place Winner Theme Contest "Black-White/Blanco-Negro" in Viva la Vida group. - 1st Place Winner Theme Contest: "Black & White" and displayed on Front Page of "Give me a thrill" group. - 1st Place Winner Theme Contest #592: "Le mani", Group "◕‿◕SONIAGALLERY◕‿◕CHALLENGE-SFIDE◕‿◕". - GOLD Medal Theme Contest #48: "HANDS - MANOS - MANI" and displayed on Front Page of Art of Images group. - Winner: "Beautiful Capture of The Human Hand Contest" and displayed on Front Page of the Beautiful Capture Group. - 2nd place winner at our 23th batch “TOP Admin's Choice Pics” in The Knight And His Pricess group. - 2nd place winner "Black and White" Contest in "Günün En İyisi - The Best of Day" group. - 2nd Place Winner January Contest Winners 2011 of PLANET EARTH IN BLACK AND WHITE group. - 2nd Place Winner Theme Contest: "Art in Black and White" and displayed on Front Page of "***Shining Pieces Of The World!" group. - 3rd place winner Theme contest B&W 62 of 500x500 group. - Picture for the "Admin's choice of the three best 5+ pictures" within the flickr photocontest Hall of Fame.

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technato · 6 years

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Chip Hall of Fame: Intel 4004 Microprocessor

The first CPU-on-a-chip was a shoestring crash project

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Photo: Intel

Intel 4004

Manufacturer: Intel

Category: Processors

Year: 1971

< Back to the Chip Hall of Fame

The Intel 4004 was the world’s first microprocessor—a complete general-purpose CPU on a single chip. Released in March 1971, and using cutting-edge silicon-gate technology, the 4004 marked the beginning of Intel’s rise to global dominance in the processor industry. So you might imagine that the full resources of Intel—still a fledgling company at the time—were devoted to this groundbreaking project. But in fact, the 4004 was an understaffed side project, a crash job that nearly crashed, one simply intended to drum up some cash while Intel developed its real product line, memory chips.

As described by Ken Shirrif in a July 2016 feature for IEEE Spectrum, the increasing transistor count and complexity of integrated circuits in the 1960s meant that by 1970, multiple organizations were hot on the path to the microprocessor. Some of these, like Texas Instruments, had a lot more resources than Intel. So why did Intel, founded just a few years earlier, in 1968, cross the finish line first? It was largely thanks to four engineers, one of whom didn’t even work for the company. (For a lengthy version of this story from the engineers themselves, you can read their oral history panel, as captured by the Computer History Museum).

The first of the four engineers is Masatoshi Shima, who worked for Japanese office calculator company Busicom, which wanted to create a new computerized calculator. In April 1969, Busicom and Intel signed a provisional agreement for Intel to develop a custom set of chips for the calculator. Consequently, in June 1969 Shima and others traveled to Intel to discuss the plans in more detail. Shima proposed an eight-chip system: three chips to interface with peripherals such as the keyboard and printer, one chip to store data, one chip to store program code, and two chips that together would make up the CPU.

Photos: Left: Dicklyon/Wikipedia; Right: Marcin Wichary/Flickr

Masatoshi Shima at the Computer History Museum’s 2009 Fellows Award event, and the Busicom calculator that was the target application for the world’s first microprocessor.

Ted Hoff is the second engineer in our tale and was the head of the Intel applications department that was negotiating with Busicom. Hoff was worried that Intel would struggle to produce so many chips, especially because the system would require many pins per chip to interconnect, which would push the limits of the ceramic packing technology Intel was using. He proposed halving the chip count: one 256-byte program memory chip, dubbed the 4001, one 40-byte data memory chip, the 4002, a peripheral interface chip, the 4003, and one CPU chip, the 4004. The whole system—called the MCS-4—would be 4-bit, significantly reducing the number of pins needed to interconnect the chips. Hoff brought in engineer No. 3, Intel’s Stanley Mazor. Together Hoff and Mazor put together a set of specs for each chip and a proposed production schedule.

At a follow-up meeting in October of 1969, Intel made its counterproposal. Busicom was interested and Shima returned to Japan to prototype software for the new calculator to make sure the MCS-4 architecture would support Busicom’s needs. An agreement was made in February 1970, with Busicom planning its calculator rollout on the basis of Hoff’s and Mazor’s schedule. It was decided that Shima would come back to California to check on progress in April 1970. The chips were to be put into production on a staggered schedule from July to October 1970, starting with the 4001 and ending with the 4004.

However, unbeknownst to Shima and Busicom, the 4004 project had ground to a halt inside Intel in early 1970. The problem was that Hoff and Mazor were not chip designers—those people who can take specifications and create detailed logic-gate diagrams. Those diagrams, in turn, are used to work out exactly how and where transistors and other components are to be patterned on the physical chip.

In fact, there was no one at Intel who could take on the job, as the company was then focused on developing memory chips. Finally, Intel made one of the great hires of all time and introduced the fourth critical person in this story: Frederico Faggin, a young engineer uniquely suited to the job. At the start of his career, Faggin had designed and built a computer from scratch for Olivetti, in Italy. Then in the late 1960s, he had joined Fairchild Semiconductor, in Silicon Valley, where he made key contributions to the advanced metal oxide semiconductor (MOS) technology that Intel’s chips relied on. Faggin wanted to work in a more entrepreneurial environment than Fairchild, and so accepted an offer from Intel in April 1970.

On Faggin’s first day on the job, Mazor briefed him on the Busicom project. As Faggin wrote in his personal account of the 4004’s development for the Winter 2009 issue of IEEE Solid-State Circuits Magazine, when he saw the schedule: “My jaw dropped: I had less than six months to design four chips, one of which, the CPU, was at the boundary of what was possible.”

Photo: Paul Sakuma/AP

From left, Federico Faggin, Ted Hoff, and Stanley Mazor holding Intel 4004 processors at the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 1996.

The original schedules were based on estimates suitable for designing memory chips—which use many repeating elements—rather than processor chips, which use complex and varied logic circuits. In addition, Faggin had no support staff and none of the tools and infrastructure that other companies had to help create and test digital logic designs.

A few days after Faggin’s start, Shima landed in the States for his progress check. Mazor and Faggin went to pick him up from the airport and bring him back to Intel. Shima was expecting to see a logic-level plan for the chips that he could check against the agreed-upon specifications. “Shima was furious when he found out that no work had been done in the five months and he became very angry at me…. It took almost one week for Shima to calm down,” wrote Faggin.

Faggin worked out a new schedule, and it was agreed that while Intel set about hiring more people for the project, Shima would stay for six months to help with the design. Faggin himself dived into 70- to 80-hour workweeks.

Faggin worked through the chips in order of complexity: the 4001 ROM, followed by the 4003 interface chip, then the 4002 RAM, followed finally by the 4004 CPU. Shima checked the logic of the chips and provided feedback on how they would fit into Busicom’s larger calculator design. At the end of 1970, the chip design was complete. Faggin added a personal flourish to the CPU’s layout: He placed his initials along the edge of the processor, a microscopic “F.F.” etched into every 4004 made. Busicom finally had a complete working set of MCS-4 chips in March 1971.

Photo: Intel Free Press/Flickr

Frederico Faggin and an enlarged picture of the Intel 4004 die. The 4004 had 2,300 transistors.

As Busicom had commissioned the chipset, it had exclusive rights to the design, preventing Intel from selling the 4004 to anyone else. But after some prompting from Hoff and others about the processor’s potential, Intel offered to give Busicom a break on the cost of the chips if Intel could sell the 4000 family for noncalculator applications. Busicom agreed, and Intel began advertising the 4004 in November 1971: “Announcing a new era of integrated electronics,” blared the ad copy—a rare case of absolute truth in advertising.

Chip Hall of Fame: Intel 4004 Microprocessor syndicated from https://jiohowweb.blogspot.com

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touristguidebuzz · 7 years

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Pot Tourism Is Cutting Into Denver’s Restaurant Profits, Workforce

Rioja Restaurant in Denver. Restaurant owners in Colorado say the rise in popularity of pot tourism is having a negative impact on their dining businesses. Jeffrey Beall / Flickr

Skift Take: When one sector of tourism blooms, it can have unforeseen impact on other sectors.

— Deanna Ting

It’s hard to think of an American city that isn’t experiencing a restaurant boom these days. Put Denver at the top of that list: By some accounts, 30 spots will have opened this spring, including the new Departure Denver, a popular Asian small-plates spot recently transplanted from Portland, Ore., and an outpost of the beloved New York bar, Death & Company on the way.

However, the city is facing a major problem as a result of one of its biggest recent tourism drivers. The pot industry is taking a toll on local restaurant work forces and in some cases, liquor sales. “No one is talking about it,” said Bobby Stuckey, the James Beard award winning co-owner of Frasca Food and Wine in Boulder and the soon-to-open Tavernetta in Denver. “But Colorado’s restaurant labor market is in Defcon 5 right now, because of weed facilities.”

Denver’s population has been steadily growing. In 2016, U.S. News & World Report ranked it as the best place to live in the country because of its proximity to the great outdoors, along with the tech boom, among other things. The city is particularly popular with millennials. A boom in restaurants soon followed, transforming a sleepy culinary scene into a particularly vibrant one. (Another reason for the expanding dining scene is the $54 million Union Station renovation, which opened in 2014 and brought a concentration of fine dining spots downtown.)

The demand for more restaurant workers dovetailed with the state’s pot boom. Since it was legalized in 2014, cannabis tourism has been big for Colorado, generating $1.1 billion in profit in 2016 and more than $150 million in tax revenue. Although a recent study shows pot tourism was down in 2016, as more and more states have legalized it, people spent more money on weed-related purchases in and around Denver.

A Buzzier Gig

Now, young workers who once saw employment opportunities in the restaurant business are flocking to grow facilities and dispensaries. Bryan Dayton, who co-owns three popular dining destinations in the Denver/Boulder area — Oak at Fourteenth, Acorn, and Brider —feels it acutely.

“Our work force is being drained by the pot industry,” he said bluntly. “There’s a very small work pool as it is. Enter the weed business, which pays $22 an hour with full benefits. You can come work in a kitchen for us for eight hours a day, in a hot kitchen. It’s a stressful life. Or you can go sort weed in a climate-controlled greenhouse. It’s a pretty obvious choice.” Dayton is especially sensitive to these realities as he prepares to recruit talent for a restaurant, a Spanish-inspired steakhouse with a rooftop bar, slated to open in the fall.

Dayton has also documented a small decline in liquor sales that he attributes to people eating a pot-infused gummy bear and then forgoing a glass of wine or shot of whiskey. His alcohol sales are down about 2 percent, or $100,000, at both Acorn and Oak. He compared notes and found out that his distillers and distributors report sales down by about that percentage.

Hard to Compete

Jennifer Jasinski, a Wolfgang Puck alum whose Denver restaurant empire includes seafood-oriented Stoic and Genuine, beer joint Euclid Hall, and her flagship Rioja, agreed.

“Cooks take trimming jobs and make $20 an hour, but it’s not just that. Pastry chefs are in high demand in the pot world. Laced candies and gummy bears are sought-after treats when they are made well, so pastry chefs and cooks can make them for three to four times the money a restaurant can pay. All this just exacerbates an already tight work force in Denver.”

There’s no way restaurants can compete, she said. “We have tiny margins as it is.” Jasinski has seen a decline of more than 4 percent in beer, spirit, and wine sales at Euclid Hall, her restaurant that caters to the youngest clientele.

Stuckey echoed these sentiments. “A line cook, it’s not a highly paid position: a lot of work, lot of hours, very intense. And you’re having a bad week. It’s hard not to quit for a grow facility where you’re making several dollars more an hour.” He also said there’s no way to compete with the siren call of the pot industry. “If you make 10 percent profit in the restaurant business, you are in the hall of fame as a great operator. Compare that to most other businesses—and presumably the legal pot industry—where if you did 20 percent profit, you would be fired as the [chief executive officer].”

Stuckey estimates that at his Pizzeria Locale chain, someone departs for the pot industry every few weeks. He said labor departures have hit the area’s construction business equally hard.

“The economy here is booming, but there’s not enough construction workers to get the buildings constructed; they all want to work in grow facilities,” said Stuckey. “Everybody wants to hear funny stories about the pot industry, but it’s a serious part of the business.”

Michael Leibowitz, the Denver-based owner of Veritas Fine Cannabis, a growing company, plus some concentrate businesses and a retail dispensary, has been in the field for eight years.

“For the first six years, you could just put weed in a bag and sell it,” he recalled. “Now supply has caught up, and almost outstripped demand. We consider our brand to be high-end cannabis, and you need skilled workers to help achieve that.”

His cultivators start at $20 an hour, and he’s working on securing health-care benefits for his 50 or so employees. (Leibowitz said a lot of health-care providers don’t want to work with weed companies “yet.”)

Munchie Money

Still, there are unexpected upsides to the weed business, apart from the influx of tourist dollars it’s brought to restaurants.

“More hungry customers,” observed Dayton. Jasinski said that at her husband Max MacKissock’s pizza restaurant, Bar Dough, a chef came back to work after having quit. “He told my husband, ‘I made a bunch of money at the dispensary, I have my nest egg. I want to cook again.’”

Stuckey said that on the bright side, the pot industry has brought some discerning customers to his restaurant, Frasca.

“The owners of these grow facilities are pretty sophisticated, and they’re curious about what they’re drinking,” said Stuckey, whose wine program won him the Beard award. “If you’re into the differences between strains of weed, like Kush or Pineapple Express, or Incredible Hulk, then I have some old bottles of nebiollo that I want to taste you on.”

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organisemybiz · 8 years

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More than two years ago, I shared a couple of humorous images showing the languorous lifestyle of lazy bureaucrats. While those images were amusing, they didn’t really capture the true nature of bureaucracy. Image source: Nguyen Hung Vu – Flickr Bureaucrats For a more accurate look at life inside Leviathan, here’s a video showing an unfortunate woman trying to get a permit from a government agency. It should probably be accompanied by a trigger warning lest it cause flashbacks for readers who have been in the same situation. Very well done, I think you’ll agree. I especially like the subtle features of the video, such as the bureaucrat’s competitive desire to show his coworker that he won’t let a mere citizen prevail. And the part at the end showing the disappointment by all the bureaucrats also was a good touch. Sadly, the story in the video isn’t just satire. The Reality of Ridiculous First, there are many absurd rules that require people to get permission from bureaucrats in order to work. All those laws and rules should be repealed. If consumers value certification and training, that can be handled by the private sector. Second, it does seem as if bureaucrats relish the opportunity to torment taxpayers. I recall having to make four trips to the DMV when helping my oldest kid get his learner’s permit. Each time, I was told an additional bit of paperwork that was required, but at no point was I told all the forms and paperwork needed. Hence I had the pleasure of waiting in lines over and over again. Though I did learn as time passed. By the time my last kid needed his permit, it only took two trips. Since we’re on the topic of bureaucrat humor, regular readers know about the Bureaucrat Hall of Fame. Well, just as the Baseball Hall of Fame has a committee that looks back in time to find players who were overlooked and deserve membership, we need something to recognize deserving bureaucrats who somehow escaped my attention. And if we travel back in time to 2013, John Beale of the Environmental Protection Agency can clearly make a strong case that he belongs in the Hall of Fame. The EPA’s highest-paid employee and a leading expert on climate change was sentenced to 32 months in federal prison Wednesday for lying to his bosses and saying he was a CIA spy working in Pakistan so he could avoid doing his real job … Beale told the court … that he got a “rush” and a “sense of excitement” by telling people he was worked for the CIA … He perpetrated his fraud largely by failing to show up at the EPA for months at a time, including one 18-month stretch starting in June 2011 when he did “absolutely no work,” as his lawyer acknowledged in a sentencing memo filed last week. Though, in his defense, he wasn’t goofing off all the time. He also spent time trying to learn about new ways to hinder the private sector. … he used the time “trying to find ways to fine-tune the capitalist system” to discourage companies from damaging the environment. “I spent a lot of time reading on that,” said Beale. For what it’s worth, he probably spent most of his time figuring out how to bilk colleagues. Nor was that Beale’s only deception, according to court documents. In 2008, Beale didn’t show up at the EPA for six months, telling his boss that he was part of a special multi-agency election-year project relating to “candidate security.” He billed the government $57,000 for five trips to California that were made purely “for personal reasons,” his lawyer acknowledged. (His parents lived there.) He also claimed to be suffering from malaria that he got while serving in Vietnam. According to his lawyer’s filing, he didn’t have malaria and never served in Vietnam. He told the story to EPA officials so he could get special handicap parking at a garage near EPA headquarters … Beale took 33 airplane trips between 2003 and 2011, costing the government $266,190. On 70 percent of those, he traveled first class and stayed at high end hotels, charging more than twice the government’s allowed per diem limit. But his expense vouchers were routinely approved by another EPA official. Not surprisingly, the EPA took years to figure out something was amiss. After all, why care about malfeasance when you’re spending other people’s money? Beale was caught when he “retired” very publicly but kept drawing his large salary for another year and a half. Heck, I’m surprised the EPA’s leadership didn’t award themselves bonuses for incompetence, like their counterparts at the VA and IRS. P.S. Here’s a new element discovered inside the bureaucracy, and a letter to the bureaucracy from someone renewing a passport. Republished from the author’s website. Daniel J. Mitchell Daniel J. Mitchell is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute who specializes in fiscal policy, particularly tax reform, international tax competition, and the economic burden of government spending. He also serves on the editorial board of the Cayman Financial Review. This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article. The post The Secret Life Of Bureaucrats appeared first on ValueWalk.

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