Josh Shear

Over at Outspoken the other day, Lisa Barone wrote about some etiquette for working at coffee shops. Basically, it's how to grab some focus while not being a jackass to other customers, and, more importantly, to the business you're patronizing.

You should read that post, then come back; I'll tell you my favorite coffee shops to work from in the Syracuse area.

1. Recess Coffee. Recess is tucked in the Westcott neighborhood and is open late. There's free on-street parking within a block, although during the school year it can get tough to find parking since the students who rent in the area are stuck parking on the street. They roast their own coffee, and it's clear they're coffee drinkers, because the coffee's really good. They also have creative hot chocolates that bring a lot of people back. They don't have a ton of electricity, so bring a fully charged laptop. And bring headphones; the music can sometimes get a little loud.

2. Freedom of Espresso, Franklin Square. For me, this is the most comfortable of the Freedom stores to work from (and one of two to make my top five spots in town). It's comfortable, has electricity all the way along one wall, and, with the exception of the fact that without fail someone will make or take a really loud phone call during the day, it's the quietest cafe in town. The wifi is stable, parking is plentiful, and if you need a little inspiration, there's a statue of Benjamin Franklin across the street and the CreekWalk about 50 steps in the other direction. There's also a hot dog cart at lunchtime. Word.

3. Funk 'n' Waffles. Funk has the strongest coffee in town, and really good food. Seriously, where else in town can you get fried chicken & waffles? They have overstuffed chairs, plenty of electricity, very stable wifi...the only thing that makes me shy away from going there is the parking. It's on the SU hill, so you're either going to pay a fortune for parking or walk a mile. It's great for consolidating trips up there, though.

4. Cafe Kubal. Kubal is another place that roasts its own coffee and clearly is run by coffee lovers. They also make brilliant sandwiches. It's open before 8 a.m., which makes it a winner for me, since I like to get going early. There's plenty of free parking, too. Unfortunately, it's tiny, the machines can get loud, and it can get crowded. The electricity per capita is really good, if you can get a seat.

5. Freedom of Espresso, Fayetteville. The only real problem with this Freedom store is the wifi is iffy. They have plenty of large leather chairs, and a long counter space in front of the window that is meant to be workspace – it has electricity for every seat, and a space between the counter and the wall for cables. Plenty of free parking next to the store and in the back.

Tomorrow, it being Friday, we'll get your happy hour on with my favorite bars to work from.

photo credit: Ballistik Coffee Boy

Well, civically. You don't have to be in the under 40 set to join the 40 Below Civic Engagement Task Force in a social networking event tonight at 5:30 p.m. at World Martini Bar, 134 E Genesee Street, in Hanover Square (map).

Check out the Facebook event page. There's no need to RSVP. Just show up, bring people, meet people, you get the idea. No fee for the event, just whatever you opt to purchase.

Dolce Vita, a restaurant with an eclectic menu I really enjoy, is going local for its food, and they'll be featuring many local beers and wines. They're launching their local menu at a private event for Syracuse First, with tickets available for $35 for Syracuse First members and $40 for non-members. Here is the invite.

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Dolce Vita has created a “Local Menu” and has offered to give Syracuse First members a first taste!

This private event will feature a three course menu of Local Cuisine with beef from Nancy Lorraine Hoffman, poultry from Crossman Farms, and vegetables from CNY farmer’s market.

Dolce Vita’s “Local Menu” is part of their one year anniversary celebration (also in June) called “We’ve taken you around the world, now we’re taking you the place you least expect.” Everything served as part of this menu has been produced locally within the CNY and Finger Lakes region.

“Launching Local” Details:
When: June 2, 2010. Happy Hour starts at 5:30, Dinner at 6:30
Where: Dolce Vita, 907 East Genesee Street, Syracuse NY 13210
Why: Living local, loving local, launching local!
Price: Tickets are $35 for Syracuse First members and $40 for non members.
*Price includes a three course meal, presentations of the menu, specials on local wines and beers, entertainment and raffles!

Tickets can be purchased with credit/debit card by calling Dolce Vita at 315-475-4700 or via cash or check at the Syracuse First Networking event on May 27th or at the restaurant.

Additional Info:
*Space is limited! Purchase your tickets today to be sure you can participate in this great event!
**Please note that gratuity is not included in the price and we encourage you to tip the hardworking Dolce Vita staff !

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Scroll around that map up there a bit. You see the "A" in a balloon? That sits outside a Barnes & Noble store in Syracuse (if you know the area, it's on Erie Boulevard East).

Across the street from that book behemoth you'll find Honeybaked Ham (a sort-of deli), a Subway, a Panera, a Best Buy, an Office Max, a K-Mart, and Fleet Feet (a runner's shop), among other things. If you spent some time scrolling around the map – which is zoomed in enough for you to tell – you won't see a crosswalk anywhere close to that Barnes & Noble.

I know firsthand, because if I leave my office and cut across the parking lots behind buildings and sneak by the cell phone store, I can walk directly across Erie to the bookstore. It winds up being about an 8 minute walk.

And to get across the high-traffic Erie Boulevard, you pretty much say a prayer and run (even if you're not religious – it's amazing how a 4,000-pound steel box at 45 miles an hour will help you find G-d). I've only made the walk a couple of times, and usually in early spring, the first time it gets warm enough to take a nice walk on lunch.

Joel Kidder apparently preferred walking to and from the Barnes & Noble as well, and on December 4 he was almost across Erie, having left the store, when he was hit by a car and died.

He was a lifelong learner, a professor emeritus in philosophy, and, it seems, an all-around nice guy.

This isn't just a problem for those of us who prefer to walk. If you take the bus around town, you have to cross Erie one way or the other to complete your round trip.

Kidder's unfortunate accident appears to be spawning a discussion about the days when there was a bookstore in downtown Syracuse.

If you put a bookstore there, it's on a bus route, it's safe and walkable, and people would go. There are also two nice book shops on James Street, in another wonderfully walkable neighborhood.

But I would love for the Erie East area to be walkable, as well. I live nearby, I work nearby. If you make only part of the city walkable, you still lose.

Happy hour and dinner on a Friday night can get stale. Last week, we mixed it up a bit.

Since we were arriving at different times, we met at our usual Friday haunt, the Blue Tusk. Rather than my usual Boddingtons (cold days) or 1812 Amber (warm days), I stepped out of my mold and tried Stone's Old Guardian. This is a barley wine from the people who make Arrogant Bastard Ale.

Old Guardian is a smooth wine that takes on the characteristics of an Irish red – slightly hoppy, with a little bit of a chocolate overtone. It's served in a 10-oz glass, and is a slow sipper.

The three of us then went on to Bistro Elephant, where we were seduced by menus, soft jazz, and a waiter who disappeared into the kitchen for two minutes to check the specials and came out with a 15-minute soliloquy.

I'll just get right to the goods here. We shared an appetizer of a spring roll filled with king crab legs and vegetables, served with a dipping sauce of rice vinegar with jalapeño peppers.

For dinner, M— had duck in a tamarind sauce, served with rice and paired with a pinot noir recommended by our server. J— had sea scallops the size of her head, served with mixed mushrooms and rice, and paired with a raspberry framboise. I had their house duck, served in a Grand Marnier sauce over mashed potatoes, paired with a bourbon old-fashioned.

Our desserts included a raspberry sorbet, a mixed-sorbet basket, and a chocolate cake with a molten center served with burnt sugar ice cream. They make all their sorbets and ice creams in-house.

I topped the evening off with a glass of Harveys Bristol Cream sherry, served the good ol' way (room temperature in a glass) at Clark's Ale House, famous for its roast beef sandwiches and for not accepting tips at the bar.

Both the Blue Tusk and Clark's are on All About Beer's worldwide list of 125 places to have a beer before you die.

Highly recommended, all the way around.

You're born, you die, and in between there's maintenance.

— Tom Robbins

The being born thing kind of happened to me, and the die thing is going to happen to me as well, so ostensibly, I'm probably in charge of the maintenance thing. I mean, one of the three isn't too much to ask of someone, right?

Clearly, I'm not real good at the maintenance thing. I watch my weight do weird things, I've been known at times to develop odd sleeping and eating habits, and I'll put my body through athletic feats it's not at all interested in. And after that, I get on my bike and ride 10 miles.

Dumbass.

So I've been eating better and trying to get on a regular sleep schedule (no TV's helping that, as it happens – not only am I not tempted to stay up and watch another History Channel special, I haven't been laying on the couch all day).

And I'm asking the good people down at Armory Massage to help me out with the stupid crap I do athletically.

When I wrote about my first visit, I mentioned that Melissa Heavener had found something in my hips I couldn't feel, and as I drove downtown Saturday morning for an hour-long session, I found it: my left hip was against the seat back, but my right hip wasn't anywhere close.

Melissa did a lot of work on my hips and lower back, and I feel like I'm learning to move again.

In general, actually, I'm learning a lot about my body. Where things are, where things were, where things are returning (hopefully).

And I'm learning something about massage therapy, which as a field is something new to me (it's relatively new as a specialty in general, actually). It's really an athletic challenge, and Melissa told me that most therapists can handle only 20-25 hours of massage work a week. Which, by the way, is a lot. Imagine if you spent three hours a day, every day, at the gym, not including your stretching, warm-ups, cool-downs, and refueling/rehydration breaks.

You'd be on the low end of that scale.

That's just crazy talk.

Anyway, I'm paying a lot more attention to my posture. And I may restructure my workstation at the office (although I've put it in a fairly comfortable setup, it turns out).

Libby takes care of her neighbors' cats sometimes.

Which is great, because one of those neighbors is Ryan Barwise, a trumpeter with the Syracuse Symphony, who came up with some tickets to last night's concert, which featured Edward Elgar, Gordon Jacob and Gustav Holst.

All three men were Londoners, and were contemporaries for a while.

The night started for us at The Mission for dinner. As we waited for a table, we met Lou Lemos, director of the women's choir that performs from backstage during the Neptune movement of Holst's The Planets.

Lou explained to us the timing of that direction. The conductor is leading the symphony, which is a fraction of a second behind the conductor, because you have to react to what you're seeing. Lou is backstage with a monitor, watching the conductor on a delay that's a fraction of a second behind the symphony.

And since he knows the choir will be a fraction of a second behind him, he has to direct a fraction of a second ahead of what he's watching on the monitor.

Elgar's Cockaigne opened the night. It's a bit of a ride, but if you tried to pronounce it, you might have realized it comes out sounding like "cocaine," which is apparently how they were spelling it before Daniel Webster's work made it back across the pond. This explains the ride.

Something I learned from the program: cockney sounds suspiciously close to cockaigne. As in, those dumb lower class schmucks are high all the time.

Guest conductor Peter Bay, who directs the Austin Symphony, showed more movement in front of that piece than you typically see on any four treadmills.

There was then a lot of shuffling around, and when the dust cleared, we were left with strings and flute soloist Deborah Coble for Jacob's Concerto for Flute and Strings.

I thought it was fun. Libby, not being a fan of the flute – and being a fan of percussion, which was conspicuously absent – appeared pretty closed to violence. (Not really. But she wasn't happy with it.)

During intermission, a screen came down to prepare for some NASA visuals to accompany Holst's The Planets (here's Jupiter, which can be rather regal).

I'm a fan of the piece, which apparently Holst figured would never be performed, so he wrote it for an "impossibly large" orchestra. Then he got all sorts of famous and miserable. The one thing I'm not crazy about is that the Neptune movement, which ends the piece, is like walking into the middle of a Phish concert after walking out of the Rolling Stones – the music's lovely, but it's been straight ahead rock and ballads all night, and all of a sudden you're in the middle of a sea of constantly modulating experimentation.

OK, that was overkill, but pretty artful for a Sunday morning, no?

I'm split between Mars and Jupiter as my favorite planets. I love a dark, evil overture (Mars was John Williams' inspiration for the Imperial theme from Star Wars), but I also love a majestic piece that doesn't wreak of Hail-to-the-Chief-like pomp.

This multimedia performance has been done a lot across the country, and while I like the idea, well, as someone who does some imagery and knows what's possible, I wasn't a big fan of the rear-projection visuals.

An animation flying out from earth to each of the planets at the start of each movement was pretty cool. But from there, it went downhill. A close-up of the planet being performed rotated in the background (except Saturn and Neptune, which were still images), while various photos and illustrations of the planet, or a Mars rover, or stars or the Milky Way, or whatever, were laid over the backgrounds, with no manipulation done.

Envision, if you will, having an 8x10 photo on the floor, and then laying a 4x6 on top of it.

The music was amazing, but honestly, for a nearly 2.5-hour program, I would have preferred a 7:00 start time to an 8:00 start time. In all, I'll give the evening an 8, although I have to say bonus points were included for the company.

We finally managed to get all the model releases signed, and we can now present to you the video. Check it out, pass it along, embed it on your blog, donate to the cause, get these kids a skate park!

Those who know me, know I'm very active. It's not just the twice a week tennis, the occasional bowling league, the cycling around town, the summer softball league, and my preference for walking to places when possible.

I'm also active in CNYSPaRC, 40 Below and other things as they come up.

Often that stuff comes with lugging a laptop or two around with me, or sometimes books to tide me over while I'm between, say, a meeting and a hockey game.

All that activity came to a head in early February, when in the middle of a tennis match, my neck said, "we need to talk."

So I've been limiting my activity for a while, and finally, I decided to take a leap and do something I've never done before: get a professional massage.

Melissa Heavener at Armory Massage had signed up for a Twitter account and connected with some folks in the Syracuse area, and so I had at least a little peek into her personality and the information she was imparting to people, and her rates seemed reasonable enough (hey, you go find me some licensed professionals who charge $65 an hour for their time), so I got in touch.

I made a 30-minute appointment, though Melissa spent a fair bit longer than that with me, if you include a medical history, taking pre-massage questions, and a bit of after-care discussion and chatter.

I went in with very little in terms of expectations. My entire "experience" with professional massage had come from "Friends" and Rush Hour 2, not exactly, um, yeah, you see where I'm going with that.

After going over some medical history (definitely nothing invasive), she explained to me that the injury was probably the result of a bunch of things coming to a head, rather than an in-the-moment action.

Weight-wise, she said, "your head's like a bowling ball on a broomstick, and every bit you move your head forward, you double the weight."

Ouch. Think about that as you're setting up your computer monitor.

She then went on to explain that most neck injuries start at the pelvis. And if you look at my activities – from swinging a tennis racket or bat, to bowling, to swiveling one way or another to use a mouse – pretty much everything starts with motion at the pelvis and then works its way up.

She then went through an example of how the body transitions to new normals. If you're one of those people who typically speaks with the phone resting on your shoulder and your head bent far onto it, eventually, it hurts, and you start resting it in a different position, which then becomes normal. Sooner or later, you're walking around with your shoulders four inches higher than they used to be, and you're trying to figure out why you're sore.

Her explanation as to what she does, basically, was try to undo all the re-positioning harm people had done to their bodies, by working backward through the alterations, trying to get people back to their original positions.

So, we hit the table, and Melissa did what she does.

I was definitely able to feel the change as she started working on my left arm. She stopped to ask if I noticed anything, and I could tell that my right shoulder was higher than my left. It was also clear to me that she found some unevenness in my hips, though I couldn't for the life of me identify it.

Things I now know are normal after a massage, and that you should expect if you're going in for your first go: go hydrated. You're going to leave dehydrated, as the massage gets your fluids flowing, and your organs start working double-quick. You may get sore; it'd been a little over a month since I'd had a good workout, so I definitely felt a workout-type muscle soreness the next day. There was also some grogginess; Melissa had warned me of this, too.

I'm also more conscious of my posture, but it takes some effort, and it's not something I'm doing automatically yet.

The answer is yes, I'll be back.

And now, a little about Melissa and the business...

Melissa has been a licensed massage therapist since 2001 (here's what that takes in New York), and had her own business in Buffalo.

She moved to Washington, D.C., and worked for someone else, before returning upstate. She began working at Armory Massage, and then started to take it over in December of 2007.

The business is growing: after an interview yesterday, she took on a fourth therapist.

Since the office is (likely by the nature of the relaxation part of the work) very quiet-inducing, and as a social person, Melissa is starting to use Twitter and Facebook, and is looking to start doing demos (if you've got an office, give her a call) and to get involved a little more in the community and do some social networking.

I'm putting her business in the "downtown Syracuse business I'll be patronizing regularly" column.

Also, if you missed it, here's the Armory Massage Web site.

Photos used by kind permission of Melissa Heavener / Armory Massage

In case you missed it, Mike Williams is in my hometown this fall, taking classes at Springfield Technical Community College in hopes of getting back onto the Syracuse University football team in 2009. Ryan Miller interviewed him.