PicoBlog

The Sir Francis Drake Hotel opened at the corner of Powell and Sutter Streets in San Francisco in October 1928. The 26-story building was erected at a cost of $5 million. It survived the Great Depression and became a favorite of celebrities. Once Prohibition was repealed in 1933, dining and drinking establishments began to open in the hotel, including the Persian Room and, starting in the 1940s, the Starlight Roof—as it was then called—on the 21st floor.

Welcome to It’s A Shanda, one Northeastern Jew’s quest to find a decent bagel in Seattle (and beyond). Along with free bagel reviews every Sunday, we also offer bonus posts each Wednesday. If you’re already subscribed, I hope you’ll consider upgrading to a paid subscription! Thank you for reading. If you want to find Andrew Rubinstein and his bagels, don’t go looking in Rubinstein Bagels. That sounds a bit counterintuitive, I know.

Bobby Housel and Barry Sabin are students at the University of Michigan pursuing dual degrees through the Ross School of Business and School of Information. They pride themselves on building communities that move the needle for the brightest builders at colleges nationwide through Founder’s Cupid. Housel: I love to create things, tell stories, and go on life-changing adventures. I think we learn the most about ourselves when we are pushed far outside our comfort zones.

2023 was a record year for Steam. Games worth $9 billion were sold (excluding microtransactions). This accounts for more than 580 million copies, with almost 14 thousand games released. The platform's peak concurrent users (CCU) exceeded 33.6 million. Game sales on Steam grew by 17.8% in 2023 compared to the previous year. The platform size in 2023 is twice as large as it was in 2019. Baldur’s Gate 3, Hogwarts Legacy, Lethal Company, Sons of the Forest, and Starfield - leaders on Steam in terms of the number of copies sold (I’ve excluded free games).

On October 17, 1977, three weeks after Steely Dan released Aja, production began on the film FM. Centered on a rebellious crew of DJs at the Los Angeles radio station QSKY, the Universal Pictures project was under the direction of John A. Alonzo, the esteemed cinematographer of Vanishing Point, Harold and Maude, and Chinatown. FM would be among what Rolling Stone in 1978 described as an “oncoming crush of rock films,” which also included the likes of Sgt.

SteelyKid started school in 2013, which was close to the peak of the freakout over “Common Core Math.” The inscrutability of the new standards for elementary school math was an endlessly recurring topic in late-night talk show monologues and frustrated Facebook rants from high-school classmates whose kids are a bit older than mine. Nobody seemed able to understand what was now deemed to be third-grade math, and everybody was pissed about it.

The big astrology news of this coming week already feels somewhat like old news. That’s because we’ve all been already in the swirls of it, it being the conjunction (union) between expansive Jupiter and inventive Uranus, which occurs exactly on Saturday, April 20. The ripples of this once-every-thirteen(or so)-year seismic alignment have been lending a background note of creativity or chaos (or both), for the last couple of weeks (if not longer).

Happy Friday! This week we take on the mighty steak haché, a mainstay of any half decent brasserie and a dish that takes many forms across many countries. Apologies to all the vegetarians, I’m going to bring you something in the next couple of weeks! I know it’s been quite meat/fish heavy recently… Let me know in the comments what you fancy learning next! We’ve got music from the fantastic Vampire Weekend and my take on Dune 2.

In this recipe I create the perfect pan sauce using hanger steak, however, you can use any thick-cut steak (even chicken) as the technique is versatile and the flavors are universal. For the steak, as previously posted, I always start in a low-temperature oven, bring the meat to 110F, then finish in the pan. This ensures a solid sear in a shorter amount of time AND also allows the meat to tenderize as it sits in the lower-temperature oven.