A visit to Rhinehall~

A view of the still from behind the bar.

Through a new membership based service similar to Groupon tall friend and I visited Rhinehall, a new apple Brandy distillery in Chicago. It's located in the Fulton Market area, which used to be entirely warehouse buildings (and where my mother would drive through to avoid traffic), but it's now home to many different breweries and small businesses, such as Goose Island, Intelligensia coffee, and where I get all my cards printed, Dot Press.
Sometime last year when I was considering working with a sourcing company to manufacture skirts and dresses for me, I traveled to a building across the street from Rhinehall, which didn't exist yet and the space was just a garage. Rhinehall has transformed it to a combination bar/brewery. The owners are super friendly, and apparently this place is hopping on Thursdays. We happened to visit on a Thursday where things were much slower, so we really got a change to converse with the owners and try literally all of their cocktail offerings.

Pictured here are a couple of their offerings.

The menu seems to be influx and the recipes for each item literally change every time they make it. The Brandy is very smooth, made entirely from local Michigan apples that they keep in huge pallets in the back. Pretty cool place, I look forward to seeing what they come up with. So far their spirits have only been used in restaurants, but they are starting to sell bottles of it in stores. They haven't been able to keep up with the demand, which is a great sign!
Rhinehall's bar is open Thursdays from 5-9PM and Saturdays 2-7PM.
The cocktails are reasonably priced between $6-$8.

I always support small local businesses, although sometimes I might not think the products are up to snuff. The pricing on Rhinehall's liquors themselves are a little high (running at around $50 for the grappa) but it makes sense given their small batch production runs. The owners of Rhinehall are originally from the Chicago area and are using recipes passed down through their family. Their use of historical recipes with a modern spin is very enjoyable.

A new direction...

While I was at Whole Foods we had the privilege of being shown about by the Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board. They rented us a school bus, took us to a couple creameries in south Wisconsin and also took us to New Glarus. The Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board does an unbelievable amount of publicity for their state cheese and value added milk products, as they should. They've got some seriously amazing cheese and it's getting better all the time. This past year the state of Wisconsin hosted the American Cheese Society's annual conference. I didn't attend (I was beginning to think my life wouldn't take me back to cheese), even though it was so close to me, in Madison! I've heard some really great stories about silly hang-outs with cheese makers from some of my new Cheesemonger friends (who hail from great places like Marion Street Cheese Shop in Oak Park and Pastoral here in Chicago).
Being from the Midwest, I hear all the time about how people love cheddar. It's a bigger deal here than in other regions, given our proximity to Wisconsin. Cheddar is lovely, it's a great cheese. Sometimes it's mild, sometimes it's sharp (oh boy, I'm really adding a lot to this conversation)... It's standard.
It's familiar.
Let's break outside of that box, said the cheesemakers at the place for the best and freshest cheese curds around! Roelli Cheese Haus has been a family business for generations, making cheddar. The current generation of cheesemakers at Roelli wanted to do something different, challenge themselves and make something beyond the standard.
They created Dunbarton Blue, which is a hard traditional cheddar style blue cheese.

Click the photo for a link to purchase this cheese.
It doesn't get much love at my place of employment (yet!) but it's a good cheese for people looking to break the mold. Somewhere in the annuals of my photo collections are pictures from their facility, but I'd much prefer to go back and take more. I love their cheeses, and it looks like they've even got some new ones, award winners! I just managed to snag a piece of Red Rock, which I'll try to post on soon.

Telling their story is important, but the main reason I'm stuck on this creamery right now (and thinking alot about them) is because of their proximity to Chicago.... oh and those cheese curds were really really good. and warm. and fresh.
It's not a bad drive, so I'm thinking that the tank, tall friend and I should take a trip over there. Headboss would like tall friend to learn more about cheese, and he isn't particularly inspired, so I think we have some cheese inspiring adventures ahead of us.
Almost a year ago I sat down to pen an entry that was supposed to be the restart of this blog.
Obviously that did not happen.
Recently I've found myself with quite a bit of time on my hands in front of a computer. There's so much I want to share and so many amazing interesting things happening in the world, that I think it's about time I began to attempt some sort of blog again. I also really love taking pictures. I haven't been doing much of that, and I really should. Editing all this down into some sort of conceptual theme is going to be a little difficult at first, but I think I'll manage.
I will focus on the things that are important to me. Cheese, animals (all varieties of flesh), tea, reenactment related weirdness and other such things... I'm trying to peg it with something, but for now it'll just be me!

Moving forward...

A continuation of previously.

I've been thinking about the last place I was with all of this sewing thing. How I announced it, how I decided to tell everyone I was sewing things again, how that all came about. I remember starting to sew, learning how to use a sewing machine, one we just found in the vast expanses of my parents house. I remember attempting to make my first petticoat out of garbage we found in the house, and sewing through my finger. I began to work downstairs, and I figured out how to make bloomers. The first pair I ever made were striped, and Tori wore them for a photo that listed them on egl. I was one of the first to offer them so cheaply, the economy was better then, and people ate them up. I still have the LJ names, the addresses and the exact orders of everyone who bought something from me. It was all on index cards, so I could keep track of it from taking money to shipping it out. Postage usually only cost me a couple dollars, and at $12 a pair, I could legitimately make a profit.
When applying for schools, I made this collage of the things I had sewn:


I wasn't legitimately paying myself 'a living wage.' I have a concept of that now, what that really means, and as such I've begun to do cost analysis worksheets for Ick. It's part of my business plan, a really large part for me at least, to guarantee for myself that this is cost effective. To a certain extent, so far, it is. But the cost analysis relies on one key point: that we are actually making sales. If we are not, as we currently are not, then there is really no point in cost analyzing labor at all. If we are not making money, then we can not anticipate how much money it costs us to make each item, thus rendering this whole thing useless.
The point, to me at least, of making a business plan is for the individual creating the company to have an understanding of what all this requires. From the grand perspective of things, usually business plans are shown to potential loan givers to ensure that you have the experience etc in order to complete the business as you have decided to establish. I'm absolutely not affected by that right now, which is really sad, because there is no one to lend me any money. I have awful credit, because as my only current mentor put it, my debt to income ratio is bad. I have student loans that I literally cannot pay back because I'm in school and they won't even let me start to pay them back, let alone pay them out completely. Which seems not to be the right way to do it anyways? I don't quite understand all of this, so library books are teaching me lessons. I wish I didn't have class tomorrow or I would spend the whole day in the library with my computer to accurately write a legitimate business plan.
In a business plan you should try to compensate for your weaknesses. I'm a poor writer of this plan because I can't forsee in non-sarcastic clarity actual ways that I can prove my experience or anything of the like... Well, for now, it will be sarcastic.

Right now I'm having a huge issue of clarity. I thought my focus was very very specific, and I thought my competition to be specific as well. I thought, xyz american company will be my obvious competition. But there is no competition, none that's so obvious to say "yes, that company located at "www.this.com" is my competition for this business." This is a new and difficult situation, one that is not dependent on skill or quality like it used to be. It seems to be dependent on getting the most willing of consumers very quickly to a seemingly large stock of product. This seems to mean to me so far to get a website started, or at least a redirect to my etsy for now, and a larger stock of product.

I'm looking into contacting aeo lidia to do my web design. One of my old co-workers works now as a sales person at e page city, but I'm not really into their design. The first company looks like a better one, but it's still really really costly. And I still need to send the state their check for the starting of my LLC. I'm going to look for other options, but the amount of things that need to be looked into to make all of this complete is really complicated.

I don't have any answers but I have alot of questions. I don't have anyone really to talk to about this except Nick, and I am more grateful to have him(and his family) than I have ever been. You never realize how wonderful it is to have a best friend, one that you can tell everything to, until you are with that person pretty much 24/7. I know I give him alot of flack for how ridiculous he is sometimes, but at times like these when I'm working on something really hard and I really need to talk to someone about whatever, I'm so so so grateful to have him here. So many people are so self-centered (like myself, it seems) that I have trouble getting anything close to a conversation out of them, but Nick and I get along so perfectly sometimes I just can't believe we found each other.

That's all for now! Continued tomorrow, with something else that's been on my mind.

Currently Things as they are.

I am trying to take a long hard look at myself. Re-examining things that through the past couple years I have forgotten and ignored.
I'm trying to find again those things that really make me happy, why I got started with all of this crazy school stuff in the first place.
The point where I left New York, and decided to come back here. What was making me happy then, what did I think I wanted to do with myself.
The past months I have been working at Whole Foods, as some of you might know, slinging cheese, you know, cutting cheese, wrapping cheese, buying cheese... all things cheese. Cheese is still a really strong inspiration for me, as all food is, but it's not my passion. It is a passion, but not the one that has kept me going.
When I left New York I came back to my parents house in a van. We took all my stuff, which had tripled courtesy of the overflowing New York garbage can, in a mini-van back to Chicago. Everything that had filled my tiny room/cell in New York fit in a mini-van. I worked on a paper throughout this road trip, the miles and hotels passed like they had never been. The only memory I have of this return is sending in a paper I had rather poorly written to one of my teachers because I had missed the last day to head home before the holidays. I remember standing, with a desk directly in front of me, looking out towards a window, onto some sad excuse for a courtyard in another standard issue motel. The only thing I remember after that is waking up in my parent's house, setting up my computer on the living room table, and laying down in PJs to watch Aria the Natural. Anime had really become my only standby. While there was a ton of stuff to do(it's New York), it wasn't always anything I wanted to do, could afford to do, or was old enough to do. This has been a problem for a very long time as people always take me for older than I am. Now that I am not limited by my years there really isn't anything I'd like to do, even though there is ton to do. My focus becomes very broad without limitations, and therefore I get nothing done.
Back to the couch, sitting there watching anime... at some point I heard from two important characters, my old boss at the South Loop cheese counter, and an old family friend at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
I must've thought to myself, "Well, it'd be good to have some money" and then... "why not go back to school here?"
Those decisions were quick and soon I was wrapped up in the whirlwind that was the last three years of my life, most of which I can't remember. From the late nights to the never-ending constant freak-out fear of the fashion department, I very quickly lost track of what exactly I was doing there in the first place. My artwork and fashion work just focused on brief instances, what I was interested in for short periods of time, not necessarily with any outcome. I'm going to try my hardest to go back through this work and reexamine it. In the flurry of school, I threw my artwork on the ground, in boxes, in the garbage, hidden in chains of file folders... I honestly don't know where most of it even is anymore.
Here I am. Last semester of college. This week is my Senior thesis set up, which once again, is another brief moment of fleeting interest. I'm going to do my best to document the process, but also another very important process that is much more directly related to my mental health.
Last year I decided to go back to work at Whole Foods. The decision came naturally, I was on seasonal at the Cheese counter. And I was extremely low on funds after the expensive fabrics I was supposed to be purchasing. I started back up again and very quickly found myself with a position within the administration. I thought this was grand for the first couple weeks. It was rough, hard labor, constant lifting and a never ending stream of condescending commentary.
"How are you going to lift those wheels?"
"Where's a man to help you do your job?"
"You mean, you are the only person to grab this order?"
Yes, Yes. Yes, Yes Yes Yes Yes.
I didn't think I'd be affected by it, I thought I would be stronger. That's always how I've thought of myself, but my return to Chicago had really changed many of my self-impressions.
I got sick, from weird things that grown-up people don't get sick from. The doctor kept telling me, your immune system must be really weak. I couldn't understand why at all...
Until I started getting these heart palpitations, which I'd never gotten before. I'd be sitting on the couch, watching TV, and all of a sudden, it was like I was running. My boyfriend, worried about me, sent me straight to the doctor as soon as we could. All the test results showed that nothing was actually physically wrong with me. It was the weirdest thing, for me, because as I soon began to talk to people, I was getting panic attacks.
Panic Attacks happen to people all the time. All people, all the time, apparently. There's no one I've talked to who hasn't had a story related to one of these things, but for me, for all I'd been through with getting beaten down by teachers, friends, whatever you could think of, never ever ever had I had something like this happen to me. So if this is really what's happening, why is this happening?
Three really obvious reasons:
1. I'm graduating... and then what?
2. I had five bosses at whole foods. Each of them can fire me, and they all contradict each other.
3. I hated absolutely everything about what I was doing with my life, and I could see no reason to continue doing it that could benefit me

Benefit me. I'm 21, I'm not 45. I'm not having a mid-life crisis at 21, right? But in a way, I was, and still am.
I had to reconsider what makes me really really happy, what I was doing then that I actually enjoyed. I'm still working on what precisely all that is, without dismissing it. Part of my training over these years was in cynical behavior, I am trained to deny certain things as legitimately making me happy. What I figured out is that (as silly as this sounds (see there I go dismissing it again!)) anime, sewing, and this silly 'living as a person from another time' type situation (ie. star wars costuming, world war II reenacting, 'lolita lifestyle'/victoriana/rococo) make me very very happy. Within each of these situations, in the present and the past, I have had some of the happiest times of my life, even when things were otherwise miserable.
There are particular situations I keep returning to as points of intense personal happiness.
1. Sewing lolita on commission for egl-people in my parents studio, listening to loud music, sometimes with Tori, sometimes late nights.
2. Running the anime club, or really just being there, running panels, being at Acen(oh yes, it's silly, but I really enjoyed myself)
3. Sewing all night for the Rockford reenactment when I finally realized that I was madly in love with my now boyfriend. the whole time there was fantastic... even now it makes me smile.
Of course the reasons for each of theses things are clear, each time, I made something or did something I was proud of. That pride was something I could carry with me and take personal happiness from. Sure the fashion shows at SAIC were great, but the constant fear that something was going to happen to my clothing or to me, or to my friends, made it all really miserable. And talking about everyone, judging yourself against them, really made me unhappy. I maybe made one real friend that whole time, everyone else... I'm not sure. Even still that one person I have a very hard time trusting.

Why waste my time on something I don't care about? Why waste my life away on something that will never find me actually important? I need to build my own self-worth and self-confidence again for myself, not for someone else, not to make my school look good, and definitely not for a gigantic corporation.

I decided to start sewing lolita again. I had entered SAIC with the intentions of starting a lolita brand. I had hired a Japanese tutor to teach me Japanese so I could go work in Japan, for a lolita brand. Each step of the process, I made something that basically had a lolita silhouette with some art-school crap on top of it. Those of you within the happier part of the lolita community may think that this final realization of my personal dream is great, while the trained cynics like myself start to mock. Why should I do this? Why me? Why now? I don't have answers to these questions yet, but I'm working on them, because I want to make sure that this is the right thing to do. I'm not making any money, and I probably won't for awhile, but as my mom so wisely said yesterday "You aren't making money, you are instead paying for your education." In having to buy business licenses, making mistakes, talking to people about this, etc etc etc I'm getting a very different kind of self-driven education. One that I'm really beginning to appreciate, even though I've only just started a couple days ago.

There you have it. I'm going to use this journal as a photo-journal/base for myself and this 'brand.' Be prepared for tons of photos with this awesome new camera I've purchased, and lots of complaining. I'm going to try my hardest to begin to write about how I am attempting to reinvent myself, within my personal style, and my mindset. And that's that!

Places I can't take pictures in.

On days when I don't run around town heading to all kinds of museums I can take photographs in, it's hard for me to write these entries. I just purchased a back pack to lighten up the load on my shoulders and that has also contributed to the total lack of picture taking I have been up to. I'm too afraid to put the camera in the front pouch and none of the clothing I own (so far) has pockets. Tomorrow is supposed to be the start of massive sale time, all through next week, so I hope to pick up some overalls. That should make things better.

On June 1st I headed to the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography. You aren't allowed to take pictures in that museum, but I really enjoyed the works on display. I had to pay a bit extra to see the current exhibition. It was worth it. I think that it is very important while I am in Japan for me to be exposed to Japanese artists. So many of these Japanese museums are focused on Western artwork. Especially the museums that cater to the western audience. I saw the work of Seiichi Furuya in the special exhibition at the museum, which was something I had never been exposed to. His photographic works were very stunning. They mainly surrounded his wife and his memories regarding her life before she passed away. You can see some of the pieces from the exhibition here. I don't want to steal them.
On the main exhibit floor was "The Samurai & I". This exhibit started with early photographic works in Japan and discussed the history of photography in Japan, mainly portraiture. It was really interesting to see some of the very early photography of real samurai. I was really moved by the concept of what occurs to an individual when they understand that their place in society may be at risk, that their lives may be at risk so they reach out to a foreign technology to preserve themselves. The photographs were pieces of these people's lives, although now we only sometimes know who they actually were.


That museum happens to be in the Ebisu beer plaza area. So I headed to the Yebisu Beer Museum.

The history of the beer is pretty remarkable. It started when foreigners essentially started making beer in Japan. These guys in particular imported absolutely everything from Germany so they could call their beer a German style beer. It was a super luxury for everyone to buy beer. But then in World War II all the beer makers were taken over and they could only make all the same crappy beer. In the 50s Yebisu came back and slowly helped Japan drink beer that wasn't a luxury item. That was the only thing I found interesting about this museum. Obviously I did not get a drink there.

I keep hopping between museums. It gets a little mundane to write about 'cause there really isn't anything remarkable about them... when I get home. When I'm there I'm really into it, but you know, you leave and you have some time to think about it and it's not as cool. I got lost and spent about three hours trying to find the Parasite Museum. This poor doctor was treating all these really poor people in post-war Japan. He became really good and finding and identifying different kind of parasites. His office discovered four new to the world parasites just in their patients. They are most know for the 8 meter long intestinal worm they also uncovered. Horrifying. The website says that this is a fantastic place to not be afraid of parasites but to learn about them, but I can't say I've ever been so terrified at a museum in my life. You can learn more about it at the website here I didn't bother to look at the website before I left, just tried to use my guidebook. Needless to say, looking at the building before you go definitely helps you find it.

One thing in particular I was really excited to see was the Aleksandr Rochenko and Varvara Stepanova exhibit at the Teien Art Museum which happened to be down the street from the Parasite Museum and easily identifiable.

It sounded like a really cool thing. The museum was this Prince's house who had some complicated lineage and lived there with his wife. They had this art deco architect design the place, and it really shows. More information can be found on their website here.
The exhibition of this work was a partnership with Russia to bring these works to Japan for the first time. I was expecting (not knowing much about their work) many posters and graphic design work. The show encompassed all of the duo as artists and more. It was fascinating in that way. I didn't know they did lots of abstract painting, abstract photography and designs for plays, but they did. It wasn't as interesting to me from what I was anticipating seeing. The Japanese in there really ate it up though. There was a line of older people coming out of the gift shop into the hall. They all really wanted the book from the exhibit, which I wouldn't have dreamed of purchasing. I am really interested in the way the Japanese have taken Western culture and purchased it as a commodity. The reappropriate it as they see fit. They take it home and put it on their coffee tables. I guess we do the same thing with European culture for lack of our own American culture. I think this might be my theme for the year, but we'll see how things work out.

The gardens were beautiful. I hung out there for awhile 'cause it seemed to be the thing to do. There was a Japanese garden with it's obligatory pond and koi.

There was another section that was the Western section.

I hung out in these gardens for awhile before I headed back to the ranch. A suitable day, I'd say.

Ka-zooooo!

I decided to go to the Tama Zoo yesterday (because once again, it's admission was included in my Grutt pass!). It's a hike, about a two hour or so commute if you have a tendency to think that the Express train is more express than the Semi Special Express train (which I have now learned not to be true). There's some transferring involved and getting a bit lost within those two hours, but somehow I made it to the zoo train.

It's a train just for the zoo! Can you believe it?

I couldn't. But I enjoyed all the signs even if they were a little sun damaged.
The park is huge. They took over this giant piece of land and left many of the trees and stuff on it. It's really beautiful, even the entrance!

The inside of the zoo is HUGE. It's really hilly. There is also quite a bit of walking to get from place to place. I got a good exercise in.
I won't bore you with all the photos of animals I took, but here are some highlights!

Quail!

Hungry hungry giraffes!

Lazy kangaroos!

Snow leopard, upside down!

A tree of red panda!

Attack Yak!

The Human interaction with Peacock special exhibit

Majestic Tiger.

An Actual pack of Wolves

Pile of Snakes in a Tree.

This zoo has two really special things that make it amazing. The Tama Zoo has an extremely fantastic Insectarium. Their collection of insects is amazing. They also have an entire mega-room where you can hang out with butterflies and plants, much like the one at the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum in Chicago.

Huge!



The rest of the facility was dedicated to other kinds of insects most of which were really scary. And extremely difficult to photograph.


The absolute best part of the entire zoo was the Lion Bus. The Lion Bus travels through the Lion Park, which is this giant hole in the ground where the lions hang out.

To make things interesting, the park officials put a bunch of pieces of meat on the side of the bus. For many waiting hungry lioness

Many of the lions were just stretched out. They are actually really cats, you know.

They also go meow-wow.

It was a fun bus-ride, the only one I've taken so far. I enjoy seeing lions in their semi-natural habitat, but as with most zoos, some of them were pretty mangy. I felt really bad for one of the elephants who was just stuck out in the sun all day with really no water and a whole bunch of giant chains that were a little too reminiscent of circus side shows to me. He didn't seem to mind too much, but then again, my elephant is a little rusty.

A lonely morning.

I left Tokyo Decadance really shocked that it was light outside. I know the rest of you all-nighter experts wouldn't be too surprised by sunlight after a night of no sleep. I found it shocking. Here's a street full of people who shared my experience of staying up all night, only they were at a club down the street.

This is Meiji-Dori between Harajuku and Shibuya


I snapped some photos of Harajuku at 5:45 in the morning after Tokyo Decadance. It's really amazing to see an area usually PACKED with people so empty.

Notice there is no one outside of Laforet! wow! They knocked down the Gap in case you hadn't noticed.

Takeshita Dori just packed with no one.

I didn't really do much else, other than sleep.