This agression will not stand

You might expect a place that is locally famous for serving organic eggs and coffee, as is the Phoenix hotspot Drip, to pay attention to the amount of trash their operation creates. We found this not to be the case a few weeks ago upon entering the unnecessarily small and exposed white garage that houses this business. Everything they do involves discarding bits of paper. The plates, napkins, cups, plate liners and silverware are all disposable. I expected the woman to write the order in dodo bird blood on a 4 foot slab of redwood and wash her hands in gasoline before pouring our for-here espressos into double thick too-large paper cups. The paper was not organic, and the espresso was fine. The sandwiches and stuff were excellent, and eating with plastic silverware is such a treat! Also, the plates and the (useful?) square lining them were paper, as were the napkins, which were not in a dispenser, and thus went wasted if they were unused by the patrons. They did have nice plastic holsters for the sweeteners, which we did not use. I don't lust after places like Moe's or Au Bon Pain that use plastic baskets lined with paper, but at least there is a bit of the experience that is not thrown away.

It turns out that Sioux Falls and Boise are pretty cool places. Sioux Falls has the confounding distinction of being the place where most people will say hi to you on the street, friendly, and then tell you that you don’t belong in their town, unfriendly. This happened three times in three days. The tenders at the Holiday Inn City Center bar seem to hate their jobs and are generally unpleasant to guests, who they may also hate. Don’t pay more than $55 a night for a room there, and restrict tipping and smiling to an absolute minimum. I mean, you’re serving alcohol and working in an international chain hotel…you’re going to have a little noise in the work place. Maybe they should open a bed and breakfast and restrict it only to road tripping seniors on their way to Mt. Rushmore. There is a great sandwich place called Kaladi’s that I’d highly recommend. Also, the falls.

Boise is paradise and features many coffee shops, most of which are excellent, and bars. The city is at the edge of the desert and is prairie on one side and mountains on the other. It is smaller than I expected after seeing such capitol cities as Little Rock, Madison and Baton Rouge. There are only 1.4 million people in the state of Idaho.