This is a personal list, nothing more
Greatest novel: The Mayor of Casterbridge, Thomas Hardy. This one was declared by Uncle Fester, who has impeccable taste in all things and is not known for backing off of declarations such as the ..
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Greatest album: Again, Fester made the claim, and I agree: Astral Weeks, Van Morrison. Here is Jimmy Guterman on this masterpiece.
Greatest film: Ordet. Thanks to my son Eliot, the film auteur, for this recommendation. Danish. Black and white. Religious. Go figure. Still, floored me more than any other movie.
Greatest Car: 1974 Dodge Dart with a slant six.
Best taqueria: La Cumbre, Valencia between 16th and 17th, San Francisco
Best bar: Tosca, Columbus St. San Francisco (one must drink a Negroni, neat, while listening to a Caruso aria on the juke box after eating at the ….)
Best Chinese: Brandy Ho’s, Columbus and Pacific, San Francisco, across the street from Tosca. Smoked ham.
Well, at least we agree on the greatest car.
Novel: Master & Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov. If you can find a better book about satan taking over leningrad in the early soviet union and the crucifixion of Jesus — go buy it.
Movie: Spirited Away by Miyazake. The best metaphor about the corruption of the Japanese ideal ever.
Album: Gasoline Alley by Rod Stewart. Best. Country. Album. Ever. And everyone thinks it’s rock and roll.
As to food & bars, I defer to you…
As fortune would have it, my first car (in 1989) was a 1974 Dodge Dart Swinger, powder blue. On a busy road in Raleigh on Sunday the alternator locked up, but the belt kept spinning over the frozen post, resulting in a vast plume of sulphurous burning rubber suddenly jetting into the car through the AC vents. A spectacular demise.
(Surely could have salvaged the part at a junkyard somewhere, but I didn’t have a penny to my name so I gave the car back to my girlfriend’s uncle. All class, me.)
I have to disagree on the Taqueria and throw Taqueria Cancun into the mix…all time favorite of mine in SF…19th and Mission…La Cumbre is nice, but I swear by cancun
The list is a little left-centric? No Big Apple? ; )
Next time you are in town, give a call and I will take you to some of my favorite bars food spots in NYC…my combo is dinner at Balthazar and then whiskey at DBA in the east village or wine at The Tasting Room
Car – the 911…after all of these year, the design lines are still pretty much the same
Album: King Crimson’s “Red” or Eno’s “Before And After Science”
Food: Larsen’s in Menemsha (pickup at the pickup window — seating on the sand watching the sunset)
Book: The Tao of Physics
Film: Koyaanisqatsi
Car: 911SC (agreed – timeless)
Wife: Mine.
Best Taqueria locally has to be Carrburitos in Carrboro, right at the end of Franklin St. right before it intersects with Rosemary.
Anytime you want to go, let me know. I love that place.