We’re open today (5 to 11), and Chelsea behind the bar doesn’t even follow football. I’m all about the LA Galaxy, now. Waiting for the Donovan-Beckham intrasquad clash of titans.

In other news, we sold about a case of Temptation yesterday (nod to Blair and friends who made a game effort to run us out of it), so our revised projections are 2 more Temptation Sundays left. Thanks to everyone who came in, it was good fun in spite of the day’s civic events.

Our fish is now wild-caught Mexican grouper.  We have cold-smoked Mexican diver scallops, too, they’re really good.
On cask is Green Flash Imperial IPA.

The BCS football game will be on in the bar.  Chelsea professes ignorance of all football, but I think she took the Gators and the points.

We still have some Ossabaw bacon left, and we have our special of house-cured pastrami on hand made rye with Dutch Mondrian cheese and Anaheim aioli.

C’mon…you know you’re hungry again. 

And Cal basketball on in the bar at 9, from Alaska.

Did you know there were so many flavors available in coffee? The folks at Counter Culture do. This is in their cupping/tasting room, as part of their training materials for their customers (i.e., us).

Here’s one of the two roasters at Counter Culture.

Mmmmm….coffee. I did in fact have to be restrained at this point. Thankfully there wasn’t a beer tank nearby, or I would have run in circles till I dropped dead, like the dog in the Devo song (or in the poem in Ancient Rome, whatever).

Making coffee for me in the tasting room. I think this was my fourth cup in the first 20 minutes I was there.

Does Counter Culture have a coffee break room? You bet!

After a couple days in Durham and surroundings, it was off to Knoxville to see the Sunsphere. And as a totally random streak of luck would have it, my alma mater Cal Bears were slated to play the local university in gridiron football, that very weekend.

First thing Saturday morning, we conducted a competitive spot check of the local bars. They passed.

The Vol Navy was in the house…er, on the river.

We of course had to have our picture taken with a large, inflatable Smokey, which is, if I recall correctly, a hound of some kind that serves as the mascot for the university’s teams. While you can’t quite make it out in at this resolution, I believe that the pup’s “sweater” is signed by Philip Fulmer. I can’t remember why we thought having Shellie (on the right) in there would improve this photo, but for some reason it worked out that way. Interestingly, the captain of the boat wouldn’t let us opposing fans set foot on deck, because the one time she had done so, the Volunteers had lost. In the event, her superstition was not contradicted, as the Vols ultimately beat the Bears by a score of 3,000,000 to 18 (approximate).

Neyland Stadium is really nice. We learned that it’s pronounced “Nee-Land”.

Many people don’t know this, but the Unversity of Tennessee has the nation’s leading Gratuitous Punctuation department. I met several Professors of Superfluous Quotes and a PhD candidate in Plural Apostrophes.

We were a veritable OCEAN OF BLUE…

… or maybe not so much.

There was a beatiful sunset on both the stadium and the Bears’ preseason top-10 ranking.

Meanwhile back at the (Cane Creek Farm) ranch, the only goats were actual goats.

The piedmont area outside of Mebane is really beautiful. Here are some of the Cane Creek Farm pigs grazing.

These pasture-raised pigs are curious and friendly. Plus they seem to get on well with the chickens.

We took six pigs to fulfill their life’s purpose. Here a couple of them are hanging out in the trailer as we get ready to go.

It was, of course, a great trip to both NC and TN. And we still have some of both the pork and the coffee I brought back, so come on in and try some.

We’ll be hosting viewing of all the World Cup games that are left, including the 8am games on Friday and Saturday.

Sorry I missed those of you who came in on Monday and Tuesday, but I’m looking forward to being here for the remaining matches.

The first-ever 30th & Upas derby was held today, with us taking on Bluefoot in a coed indoor match in North Park.  The Linkery prevailed, 7-6, very much against the pace of play.  (I think the shot advantage was something like 40-10 in favor of Bluefoot.)

We had a rash of no-shows due to the Radiohead concert and unknown other reasons, so we asked random folks around the arena to play with us.  One of them was an impressive woman named Caitlin (sp?), the hero of our side, who served as goalkeeper/striker.  Yes, at the same time.  She had a lot of impressive saves, which she followed with 4 points in the final minute to put the Linkery ahead at the end.

It was frankly a bit unfair since we had never met her before the match, but it was a derby so we didn’t dwell on that.  Our ladies had no substitutes and played the whole 44 minutes each, and that was impressive as well.

Postgame drinks were at the Foot, which now has Guinness on tap (well done, friends!) and it’s safe to say Bluefoot are very much looking forward to the rematch on the 8th of August.  Our plan is to either improve or stay lucky.

Just to confirm for everybody, we will in fact be open at 6:55 am on Thursday morning, to show the US-Ghana game and the Italy-Czech Republic games simultaneously.  (The game starts at 7am.  The ads that say it starts at 6:30 are lies, that’s just to get you to tune in to the pregame coverage.)
We’ll have food available as well as drinks. (Specific food menu will depend on who’s working the grill.) We’ve had great crowds for both the US games and we expect to have a good time watching our team go through.

Here the schedule of all the World Cup games we’re showing.

We didn’t get our usual delivery of Stone Smoked Porter bottles this week — and we are plumb out of it now — but we will be tapping a cask of it on Sunday.  Last year, Father’s Day was a great day for us, a lot of neighborhood folks bringing their Dads in and having a great time, so we’re happy to have a cask to add to it.

For the World Cup Soccer fans, we’ll open at 8:30am to show Australia-Brazil and then France-South Korea (both in HDTV) and we’ll have some food available in the morning.  (Probably biscuits & gravy and the late-nite menu, but that’s not certain.  BTW, the crepes on the late-nite menu are fantastic.)  By noon, we’ll be in full swing, and the cask will definitely be tapped by then.

Thanks to the many folks who got up early and came in to watch the World Cup with us this weekend. Despite our home country’s disappointing showing on Sunday, it was fun for us to have so many passionate fans in for all of the games. We were going to put photos up of everyone watching the Germany-Costa Rica game on Friday, but then we realized most of you probably were missing work for a “dentist appointment” and we didn’t want to get anyone in trouble.

We’ll keep showing most of the games (find the schedule here) and hoping for a more lively performance from the US against Italy.

We’ll be hosting Australia v. Japan at 6am, and of course US v. Czech Republic at 9.  We set another TV up in the dining room for the US game in case it gets too crowded for the bar.

My World Cup hero so far is Mars, who decided to come in every morning at 6 the last few days and make biscuits & gravy and also cook our late nite menu.  She’ll be in on Monday morning, too.

Speaking of the late nite menu, I had the ham & cheese crepes for the first time on Friday morning and I can heartily recommend them.  We’re using Vande Rose farms’ “city” ham, which is first rate.

The World Cup starts tomorrow and I am seriously excited about it. We’ll be showing almost all the games, of course.

People see that we’re into soccer and so forth and ask if we’re European, or what. So I’d thought I’d take a couple lines and explain why I like soccer in general, and the World Cup in particular.

I’m not one of those folks who think that we as Americans should feel bad about ourselves ’cause we’re not as into soccer as the rest of the world.

There are a lot of really good reasons soccer isn’t the US’s most popular sport. We’re a big country with lots of other things going on. We’re physically a very long way from every major soccer country except Mexico — contrast that with, say, the Netherlands which is a short train ride to about a half dozen major soccer countries. Plus our own major sports, particularly football, are also very compelling. I don’t buy the line that American football is an inferior sport. It’s awesome.

All that said, there’s something really great about us participating — at a high level — in the world’s most important sport. Nothing brings people together like football. (That sentence required the World English word for the sport — “soccer” just wasn’t going to cut it there.)

In the last World Cup in 2002, I was in Korea (where many World Cup games were held) right before the tournament started, and then I traveled through Europe while the Cup was going on. On both sides of the globe, because I knew a little bit about soccer and the American team, it immediately gave me a way to find common ground with the people I’d meet.

And as the US progressed through the tournament, when people found out I was American, they immediately wanted to talk about it and to show their enthusiasm for the American’s progress in the sport — at least up to a point. I’ll always remember the German train ticket vendor who sadly shook his head about our upcoming game with Mexico: “It was a good run but now it will be over.” I tried to explain that we’ve usually been outplaying Mexico outside of Mexico City, but he was having none of it — we are American, we don’t play soccer, that was it. I just enjoyed the conversation and got on my train. And of course the US won the game.

I watched the final match, between Germany and Brazil, in the “college district” (sort of) of Munich, where there were a lot of Latin bars. Hundreds of South American immigrants to Germany were there, along with hundreds of German Germans. Both sides were singing songs, drinking beer, eating sausages, and having a great old time, and there was no tension beyond the friendly rivalry. The Germans repeatedly sang a song for their spectacular goalkeeper, Ollie Kahn. When he then made an error which cost Germany the match, the Latin fans sang it back, mockingly, and everyone in the crowd laughed.

Afterward, the Brazilians rolled their party truck into the street, turned up the dance music, and everyone boogied in the street. Young people from all over Munich started streaming into the area to party with the Brazilians. Girls were dancing on their balconies in the apartments above the street. It was the coolest spontaneous street party I’d ever seen — and it was the losing country.

That’s what soccer can mean to people, and the fact that the US gets to be a part of it is a great opportunity for us to get to share something important with people from the other countries of the world and to celebrate sport and fun with each other.

As far as the games themselves go, I believe the US can do well even though we’re in a tough group. I’ve been thinking for quite a while that Brian Ching is going to be a big star, and I predict that he is going to be the US hero of this tournament. And I don’t think that only because he’s a fellow native of Hawaii. Though it’s cool.

World Cup viewing begins on Friday at 9am with Germany v. Costa Rica in HDTV.

Merguez sausage comes available late tonite or tomorrow (Monday).

Biscuits and Gravy tomorrow (Monday) nite 9pm to 11pm. It’s every Monday nite, but for whatever reason I’m really excited about it today.

Ray at Night is Saturday.

As most of you know, we’re really stoked about the upcoming soccer World Cup. Here’s the schedule of games we currently expect to show. Many of them will be on in HDTV, as noted below. We have 2 TVs at our bar, so we can show all the matches.

If there’s a game you’d like to watch with us, but we don’t currently plan to show it, email me at jay@thelinkery.com. If you want to come in, we’ll open up. We’re suckers that way.

When we’re open before noon, we have a limited food menu available. Mostly it depends on what the bartender feels like cooking.

Friday, June 9
9am Germany vs. Costa Rica
noon Poland vs. Ecuador

Saturday, June 10
6am England vs. Paraguay HDTV
8:30am Trinidad & Tobago vs. Sweden HDTV
noon Argentina vs. Ivory Coast

Sunday, June 11
9am Mexico vs. Iran HDTV
noon Angola vs. Portugal
Not currently planning to show Serbia-Montenegro vs. Netherlands 6am

Monday, June 12
6am Australia vs. Japan
9am United States vs. Czech Republic
noon Italy vs. Ghana

Tuesday, June 13
9am France vs. Switzerland
noon Brazil vs. Croatia
Not currently planning to show South Korea vs. Togo 6am

Wednesday, June 14
noon Germany vs. Poland
Not currently planning to show Spain vs. Ukraine 6am
Not currently planning to show Tunisia vs. Saudi Arabia 9am

Thursday, June 15, 2006
9am England vs. Trinidad & Tobago
noon Sweden vs. Paraguay HDTV
Not currently planning to show Ecuador vs. Costa Rica 6am

Friday, June 16
9am Netherlands vs. Ivory Coast
noon Mexico vs. Angola HDTV
Not currently planning to show Argentina vs. Serbia-Montenegro 6am

Saturday, June 17
8:30am Czech Republic vs. Ghana HDTV
11:30am Italy vs. United States HDTV
Not currently planning to show Portugal vs. Iran 6am

Sunday, June 18
8:30am Brazil vs. Australia HDTV
11:30am France vs. South Korea HDTV
Not currently planning to show Japan vs. Croatia 6am

Monday, June 19
noon Spain vs. Tunisia
Not currently planning to show Togo vs. Switzerland 6am
Not currently planning to show Saudi Arabia vs. Ukraine 9am

Tuesday, June 20
7am Ecuador vs. Germany HDTV
7am Costa Rica vs. Poland
noon Sweden vs. England HDTV
noon Paraguay vs. Trinidad & Tobago

Wednesday, June 21
7am Portugal vs. Mexico HDTV
7am Iran vs. Angola
noon Netherlands vs. Argentina HDTV
noon Ivory Coast vs. Serbia-Montenegro

Thursday, June 22
7am Ghana vs. United States HDTV
7am Czech Republic vs. Italy
noon Japan vs. Brazil HDTV
noon Croatia vs. Australia

Friday, June 23
noon Togo vs. France HDTV
noon Switzerland vs. South Korea
Not currently planning to show Saudi Arabia vs. Spain 7am
Not currently planning to show Ukraine vs. Tunisia 7am

Saturday, June 24
8am Round of 16 HDTV
noon Round of 16 HDTV

Sunday, June 25
8am Round of 16 HDTV
noon Round of 16 HDTV

Monday, June 26
noon Round of 16 HDTV
Didn’t make it in for 8am Round of 16 — apologies!
Tuesday, June 27
noon Round of 16 HDTV
not currently planning to show 8am Round of 16
Friday, June 30
8am Quarterfinal HDTV
noon Quarterfinal

Saturday, July 1
8am Quarterfinal HDTV
noon Quarterfinal

Tuesday, July 4 (open for the game only, closed the rest of the day)
noon Semifinal HDTV

Wednesday, July 5
noon Semifinal HDTV

Saturday, July 8
noon Third place HDTV

Sunday, July 9
11am Championship HDTV

For those of you who have asked, we will be showing the Champions League (Barcelona v. Arsenal) tomorrow (Wednsday) at 11:30am. We’ll be opening early for it.

The Commonwealth Games are taking place in Melbourne right now, I think they wind up on Sunday. The Commonwealth Games are basically like the Summer Olympics, except the only country allowed to play that’s really good at sports is Australia. So the whole thing is an absolute Ozfest, and not in the Black Sabbath kind of way. Pretty much you turn on the TV and there are Australians winning gold medals in something.

It’s about what you’d expect if the US held a Monroe Doctrine Games with all the Latin American countries. We’d lose baseball, basketball, and soccer, and then dominate the medal count in everything else. That’s what going on here, basically.

So with all the excitement about the games and the local heroes, we couldn’t miss the chance to see some international sport. We wanted to go to lawn bowls or (field) hockey, but both of those sports were sold out on the day we wanted to go. So we ended up watching squash, which turned out to be really exciting.

We saw some mixed doubles and men’s doubles matches at the center “show” court. Here’s South Africa losing to Malaysia in mixed doubles:

Several of the matches were very one-sided…I’m guessing that Malawi, for instance, just doesn’t have a huge squash-playing population to draw from. And it showed on the scoreboard.

We skipped one of the mismatches, and wandered into the “outer courts”, which had no stands area and were just like courts you’d find at a health club. There was a women’s doubles match going on, between an Australian team and a New Zealand team. I later read that the Kiwi team (Kitchen and Leevee) is the number one ranked in the world. It was a very exciting match! It went five grueling sets, and the Kiwis barely pulled it out. There were about a hundred spectators, standing and watching through the glass. Many of us in the back rows were standing on chairs and tables. The match finally ended around 10pm, and the competitors were roundly cheered by all.

Mad props to our neighbors at St. Augustine High School, who last nite won the Division III football championship for San Diego Section. Michael and I went to the game at Qualcomm Stadium and thoroughly enjoyed it. We also watched Carlsbad beat my alma mater Torrey Pines for the Division I title. A running back for Carlsbad named Antwon Dawson, who is listed at 5-foot-3, was an extremely impressive player.

The championship quadrupleheader is a fun event, I’d recommend it to anyone who likes high school football.

TV at the bar on Saturday…

Michael is hosting viewing of Ohio State-Michigan at 10am Saturday, with our full bar menu and a select food menu.

Jay is hosting viewing of the Big Game (aka Cal-Stanford) at 4pm Saturday, with full bar and kitchen menus.

See you then!

I’ll be hosting viewing of the Cal-USC game Saturday at 12:30 in the bar. Go Bears!

Notable sporting events to be shown at the bar this weekend include:

Sat 9:00a - Ohio State - Indiana (hosted by Michael)
Sat 9:00a - Portsmouth - Charlton
Sat 11:30a - BYU - Notre Dame
Sat 12:30p - USC - UW
Sat 5:00p - World Series Game 1
Sat 7:00p - SDSU - UNM
Sat 7:15p - Cal - WSU (hosted by Jay)
Sun 10:00a - Chargers @ Philadelphia (hosted by Jay)
Sun 10:00a - Newcastle - Sunderland
Sun 5:00 - World Series Game 2

…is at 10:15 am on Tuesday! What up with that? Apparently our boys are not a big TV draw nationwide.

In any event, we’ll be open in time for the first pitch. While the kitchen doesn’t technically open until noon, until then we’ll have some simple stuff (like sausage sandwiches) available. Along with, you know, beer.

…is at 4:00PM on Saturday afternoon. I’ll be hosting viewing at the Linkery, and we’ll have other bartenders as well, so it won’t be quite as crazy as Friday nite was.

By Saturday, our Padres will have clinched, too, we all hope!

Our beloved Adelaide Crows were defeated in the preliminary finals, but we’ll still be watching the Grand Final (Sydney v. West Coast Eagles) live, Friday nite at 9pm after the Cal game.

Apparently, Sydney hasn’t won since 1933, when they were still in Melbourne. Go Swans!

I’ll be behind the bar early Friday evening, hosting viewing of the Cal-NMSU football game starting at 6pm. Go Bears!

Apparently Cox Commercial doesn’t let its customers buy pay-per-view, not even if you’re willing to pay the extra cost for public viewing. Who knew?

Friday nite is Cal football at 6pm! I’ll be hosting at the bar for all my fellow Cal fans who want to watch us take on New Mexico State.

Saturday we’ll have Notre Dame-Washington at 12:30pm, followed by USC-Oregon and Arizona State-Oregon State.

We’ll show Ohio State-Iowa at 9am if it’s available — update soon.

Sunday, Patriots-Steelers at 1pm and Chargers-Giants at 5:30pm.

None of the morning (college or NFL) games this weekend strike us as of paritcular interest to the Linkery community, so we won’t open early for them. We’ll just open at noon…UNLESS anyone is particularly keen to watch Tottenham v. Aston Villa (English Premier League) at 9 am on Saturday. If so, send me an email (jay@thelinkery.com) or call the Linkery (619 255 8778) and let us know — I’ll open up for you and we’ll have sausage sandwiches, house made corn chips, and drinks available until noon when the kitchen opens in full.

For the rest of the weekend:
Saturday at 12:30 we’ve got The Ohio State University hosting San Diego State while, at the same time, Michigan State visits Notre Dame. While, deferring to local interest and the allegiance of our many Ohioan friends, we may start by screening some of that tilt, we suspect that the MSU-ND game will hold more interest. We’ll have to play it by ear.
The late games include Wisconsin-North Carolina and Florida State-Boston College. Perhaps we’ll get a visit by some of you Badgers.

Sunday at 1:15pm is Chargers-Broncos, hopefully it will be more satisfying than last Sunday’s Bolts game. Sunday 5:30 is Chiefs-Raiders.

This Saturday’s Cal game (v. Illinois) is apparently not televised anywhere, so we won’t be showing it. Next televised Cal game is Friday nite, the 23rd.