Month: October 2020

Volcon Grunt: Big Wheel EV Motorcycle

This looks interesting: An all-electric off-road motorcycle with fat, fat tires and a retro headlight. The Volcon Grunt will hit 60 mph in 60 seconds and has a range of 100 miles. Added bonus: the Grunt is waterproof (IPX67) and, Volcon says, can be driven underwater.

The Grunt is, like most cycles, rear-wheel drive, but it looks a lot like the two-wheel drive Rokon motorcycle, a gas-powered go-anywhere grunt that has been around for over 50 years. The Rokon Trail-Breaker has eight-inch wide tires and hollow wheels that allow you to float it (sideways) over any stream too deep to ford. The Grunt is also analogous to the Yamaha TW200, a more traditional dual sport motorcycle with a seven-inch tire in the back. The TW200 does not float.

If you want an electric 2×2 motorcycle, the Ubco is your bike, although it tops out at only 30 mph and its tires look positively skinny compared to the other three bikes.

Volcon Grunt
Rokon Trail-Breaker
Ubco 2×2
Yamaha TW200

The Grunt will be $5,995, not bad considering the Ubco EV bikes start at $6,499. Wanna stick with gas? The most basic Rokon is $6,975 and a new Yamaha TW200 starts at $4,699.

Ode to the Holidome

So we were just talking about Holiday Inn (the movie) and now here’s a CNN feature on the Holidome – the indoor pool/amusement park/party center that was a feature of many Holiday Inns (the hotel chain) in the 1970s and 1980s. Yes, the actual hotel chain was named after the inn in the Bing Crosby movie.

Tiki bar, pool, and the other type of pool in South Dakota. Source: IHG/CNN.
Cheyenne, Wyoming: On the route of the Holidomes.

Buy Bing’s* Hudson Valley House and Make Holiday Inn Real

A colonial farmhouse in the Hudson Valley that, realtors say, was once owned by Bing Crosby is for sale for just under $1.5 million.

The New York house is not far from the Connecticut border, within reasonable commuting distance of NYC, and includes a barn and rentable cottages, so you could recreate the whole Holiday Inn fantasy for real.

8 Turner Mews, Hopewell Junction, NY.
Kick your cares down the stairs and come to Holiday Inn. Source: hookedonhouses.net.

The house is described as “a 1700s pre-revolutionary mansion which has undergone several major renovations. Originally built as a Dutch Stone House in 1743 it was made into a brick colonial in 1772. Then it was made into a Gothic Victorian at the turn of the century. Its final major renovation was as the center piece of an outstanding 600 acre beef farm owned by Bing Crosby.”

But wait – did Bing actually live there?

Continue reading Buy Bing’s* Hudson Valley House and Make Holiday Inn Real

High Point State Park, New Jersey

I’ve been in New Jersey a long time, but had never made it to High Point State Point. Up in the northwest corner and very close to both New York and Pennsylvania, the park surrounds, not surprisingly, the highest point in New Jersey. The obelisk was built in 1930 and is 220 feet high.

The land was donated to the state by Anthony and Susie Kuser in 1923. The Kusers, were, among many other things, ardent birders. In the early twentieth century, Anthony Kuser encouraged the (futile) search for surviving passenger pigeons by offering a reward for proof of their existence in the wild. The reward was never paid.

View from the base of the High Point memorial. Source: TCM
Cedar Swamp Trail at High Point State Park. Despite the name, the trail loops around a bog, not a swamp. Source: TCM

The Dryden Kuser Natural Area is within High Point State Park The Atlantic White Cedar Bog here is, at an elevation of 1,500 feet, thought to be highest bog of its kind in the world.

You Can Buy Dave Brubeck’s House in Connecticut

Jazz legend Dave Brubeck’s house has eight bedrooms, five and a half bathrooms, and at least four pianos. It’s not clear whether the latter, or the Nakashima furniture, is included in the $2.75 million price tag.

Brubeck East. Source: Larry Lederman/Town and Country Magazine.

Dave and Iola Brubeck hired an unknown young architect, Beverly David Thorne, to design their first house, completed in 1954, in Oakland, California. When they moved east, Thorne also designed their Connecticut house. He “often slept outdoors on the property in a sleeping bag while designing the house to chart where the sun emerged in the sky each day so he could best position the structure for maximum sun exposure during season changes,” according to Brubeck. The house was completed around the same time Thorne designed Case Study House #26 in California.

The adult Brubecks in their Connecticut house (the Brubeck children were required to stay outside). Source: Sears, Roebuck/www.jazzwax.com – Marc Myers.
Continue reading You Can Buy Dave Brubeck’s House in Connecticut

Ella Fitzgerald’s “Lost” 1962 Berlin Concert

Releasing this week: Ella: The Lost Berlin Tapes. Not to be confused with her legendary 1960 Berlin concert, or her other, formerly lost, 1961 Berlin concert, this is a never-before-heard-on-record 1962 live performance.

In her 1960 show, Ella Fitzgerald famously forgot some of the words to Mack the Knife and seamlessly improvised new lyrics. In 1962, those lines about Bobby Darin and Louis Armstrong are deliberately repeated, but there’s a different moment of “imperfect perfection” (or is it perfect imperfection?) as Giovanni Russonello describes in his New York Times review: “Ella: The Lost Berlin Tapes,” a newly unearthed 1962 performance. You can hear that song, and that moment, in the video below.

And here’s one more song from the ’62 concert: