• I'm at Ober Gatlinburg Aerial Tramway. http://4sq.com/b5Sj15 #

• We made it in around 3:30am! (@ Nolichuckey Bluffs Bed and Breakfast) http://4sq.com/967AjL #
• Hello foursquare. I said cracker Harrell not waffle house. (@ Cracker Barrell) http://4sq.com/94gXpV #
• I'm at Waffle House (1800 N. University, Lafayette). http://4sq.com/8xMYkE #

• AND! @comcast why do I have to wait 5 days for you to figure out that you overcharged me? Twice. On the same bill. #
• People warned me about @comcast but did I listen? No. After the bait and switch from 19.99 to 29.99 still got charged wrong on 1st bill. #

One of my friends and I were talking about her upcoming move to NYC, and she related to me that she was going to miss the BBQ from Texas.  She also regailed me with the story of how she went to some place last time she was there that claimed to have “real, Southern BBQ” and if you could prove you were from the South, you would get 25% off your meal.  Bonus.

She also told me it was some of the worst BBQ she had ever tried.

That got me to thinking about some of the bad BBQ places I have been to, and it made me think of some advice that I might impart to anyone who thinks they have a great idea for a BBQ joint.

1.  Don’t have more than one sauce.

This should be obvious, but obviously it is not.  If you have 19 different sauces, I can tell you right now they aren’t very good.  Sauce at a BBQ joint is the reason people go.  If you have 19, you haven’t perfected one.  The best BBQ places I have been to have one sauce and you either love it or hate it.  But the love runs deep and is loyal.  Ever notice how most awesome resteraunts have a signature dish?  Yeah, not 19 of them.  In BBQ, your sauce should be your signature dish.

2.  You better have kick ass sides.

See, we know you are over charging us for the meat and are only going to give us a small portion, so you better make up for it in the sides.  If I can taste better out of a box or a can, you are in serious trouble.

3.  You better serve all the fixins.

OK, so I may not even use them, but someone will, and if you don’t have them and/or you charge for them, well eff you buddy.  What am I talking about?  Well, like the bread to sop up the sauce you have now perfected, the pickles, the onions, the jalepenos, etc.  That’s the stuff of BBQ gods.

4.  You better have good corn bread.

Ok, well, you don’t need to HAVE corn bread, but if you do, it better be good.  Yes, it should be dense.  No, I shouldn’t be able to use it as a doorstop.  And it needs to be moist.  Don’t think compact play sand, think high quality potting soil.

5.  If you aren’t from the South, don’t pretend to be.

There is nothing wrong with a BBQ place that doesn’t have real, Southern atmosphere as long as the food is awesome.  But if you try to fake it, real Southerners will make fun of you.  Trust me, just easier to be yourself or open a Subway instead.

Just some opinions, but I think BBQ places should take notice.  My little part to keep bad BBQ off the streets.

A Celebration of Color

Yesterday the weather in Houston was just incredible, so I decided to see what was going on around town.  That’s when I found the Via Colori festival in downtown Houston.  It’s a free, yearly festival where lots of artists get together and do chalk drawings in the street.

Some of them were pretty simple, others were complex.  Some were done by one artist, some were done by several artists.  No matter how they were done, or what the subject matter was, one thing was certain: they were all inspiring.

I snapped some pic you can find here.

What happened to the site that was here before?  What happened to the posts about amazing people in the life of Chris Kiklas?  What happened to the tributes, the book reviews, the food reviews and the random commentary?

Several years ago when I first started working on this site, I was using a different, more expensive, blogging platform.  During the two years I used it, the site was hacked by the “Russian Mob” and lots of Islamic i-don’t-know-whats (because when they took over, the site was in Islamic), so I opted to move the blog to WordPress.

It took a couple months, but I was able to get all of my posts back and life was happy.  I had a great design that I loved, there was peace on Earth and everywhere I went, music played.

Then the host I was using decided to upgrade their platform, and as my scheduled upgrade day came and went, I was not upgraded.  For the next 6 months I had intermittent site connectivity.  When I was finally moved over, I could never reconnect with my database (which, by the way, was now empty).  So I had to start over.

I installed the software again and as I began playing around, I noticed the site was incredibly slow.  This started my week long transfer to a new host.

So here we are, in mid November, on a new host, a new platform and a new design.  Hopefully this time things will continue running smooth and I can enjoy posting again.

Thanks for sticking around.