Tales & Trails of a Traveling Wiseguy

Once the very twee trade show I supported on Thursday got going it was fine. I think it was mostly the organizers who looked like they just stepped out of the picture on the cover of Hipster Monthly. The attendees and my fellow vendors were dressed more typically for tech— at least for middle managers and sales people in tech. There were no t-shirts or hiking boots to be seen. (It's well known in tech that engineers wear hiking boots because a mountain might spring up in the server room at any moment. That's how you get servers in the clouds! 😂)

My colleague, Al, and I noticed two unexpected things about our setup right about. First, in many of the timeslots we had two interviews. The organizers' idea in asking for two of us to staff the event was that they'd pair us off. Our expectation was that we'd work as a team, not "divide and conquer". Second, pretty much all the other vendors in the vendors room had pull-up banners and small give-away items. Our events person sent us no supporting materials.

One of the conference organizers stopped by and kindly asked how things were going. I mentioned the two issues above, framing them as issues of miscommunication and asking if they could be made clearer next time. The first, about the divide-and-conquer approach, the organizer agreed her team could communicate more clearly. The second, about banners and handouts, she countered, "I only told your company events person, like every single time we talked, to send such materials."

Our first interview timeslot, with a double booking, came and went... with nobody arriving to talk to us. We weren't entirely surprised. We know there's going to be some no-show rate with these things. We used the time productively. I caught up on additional work stuff that was piling onto my plate while Al attended one of the tech leadership seminars.

"They keep saying something that sounds like MLMs," Al texted me. "I'm not sure how that's relevant to software."

"That would be LLMs," I answered. "Large Language Models. A term describing modern AI technology. You can't go 5 minutes in a tech conversation today without AI and LLMs being mentioned."

"You're not kidding," Al chuckled. "I've been here 20 minutes and they've already mentioned it at least 10 times."

Al rejoined me for the second interview timeslot. That person blew us off, too. 🙄 But someone on our dance card for later in the day came over and asked if she could chat with us sooner. We were happy to agree as that removed another double booking and allowed us to work as a team in conversation.

The rest of the day continued similarly. We had another few no-shows but we also had two drop-ins by people who weren't on our dance card but expressed interest in learning about our company and products anyway. We welcomed all comers.

Al skipped out at 3:30. He had a flight home to catch. Things were slowing down in the late afternoon so I told him I'd be fine covering the rest of the day. Indeed it was slow, with one no-show and one more drop-in in the last 90 minutes.

At 5pm there was a small reception. The hors d'oeuvres looked good so I decided to stay long enough to make a dinner of it before heading home. 😅 I was ready to roll by about 5:45pm, called a ride with Lyft, and was home around 6:30.

San Antonio Travelog #5
The Pearl - Sun, 28 May 2023, 6pm

After visiting the Alamo this morning we were ready for lunch. Again we ate Tex-Mex food, this time at a promising looking restaurant next to our hotel. Again like yesterday, it was good. And again like yesterday it left us feeling so full, overstuffed really, even though we thought we ate normal sized portions. We returned to our room next door at the Holiday Inn to rest a bit. But soon we were ready for another walk. This time we'd head north along the Riverwalk, the opposite of the direction we've gone on multiple forays so far, with a few detours up into the city.



Walking north from our hotel exposed us to a different side of the Riverwalk. Just steps to the south of our hotel is the loop, the main part of the Riverwalk in the tourist sense. It's line with hotels, restaurants, bars, and shops. It's like the New Orleans Bourbon Street of Texas, with raucous revelry in the evening.

To the north the Riverwalk is much quieter. There are only a few hotels along the river here, and also only a few noisy restaurants. The Riverwalk cuts through some underdeveloped sections of town. While there's occasional blight above at street level, down at water's edge it's just nature. And the occasional art installation, like that bower of concrete trees.



We followed the Riverwalk almost 2 miles north to an area called the Pearl. It's an old-is-new development where a repurposed old industrial area, centered around the San Antonio Brewers Association (the large brick building in the photo above), is joined by retro apartment blocks built around a number of restaurants and a small astroturfed park. Although we felt demographically slightly out of place, being older than the 20- and 30-something age range that dominated this 21st Century yuppie-hipster development, we enjoyed the break from the "And here's where they serve a 13-shot margarita!" banal debauchery of the downtown Riverwalk area.

We would've enjoyed a casual dinner out on the green at the Pearl except we were still stuffed from lunch. I did have room to drink a beer while we walked, and then both Hawk and I bought ice cream before we turned to head home. With covering about 5 miles on this trip, plus the walking earlier today to, around, and from the Alamo, we'll have enough exercise to burn off at least some of the calories.

For Round 9 of my Beer Tasting 2022 project I went on the road and went live. Instead of buying beer in six-packs from retailers, who get it from distributors, who get it from brewers, I went straight to the source. I reached out Thursday to a friend, Jeremy, I haven't seen in over 2 years due to Covid, and he suggested we meet for Happy Hour at a new(ish) local brewery in Sunnyvale, ShaKa Brewing.

"Huh, why haven't I seen them?" I wondered. Then I mapped their location and understood. They're a very small brewery, located in the middle of a low-grade industrial park on the east side of town. They're only open to customers one day a week, Friday, 4-8pm. And "open" means they open the garage door and set out a few folding tables in the parking alley.



What ShaKa Brewing lacks in ambience it makes up for in hospitality. As I walked up and started looking around, one of the proprietors greeted me and started explaining what beers they offer.

"Are you 'Sha' or 'Ka'?" I asked. I knew from reading their website that the business name comes from combining the two men's first names, Shawn and Karl.

"I'm Shawn," he said, expressing surprise that I knew their backstory already. It wasn't that hard; their website isn't that big... unless you read legal disclaimers page, which accounts for, like, 99% of the site's word count.

Shawn showed me a menu of the 5 beers he and his partner brew. One was sold out. It was the stout, which would've been my second choice. They had my first choice, the Riley Red ale, so I was happy.

I started with a pint of red ale and waited around in the parking alley for Jeremy to arrive and a table to open up. This is where the hospitality vs. ambience factor became important because there is zero ambience here. You're sitting (unless you're standing) in an alley with a bunch of wrecked cars that the custom body shop around the corner hasn't gotten to working on yet. Fortunately a table did open, so I could at least sit while chuckling at the wrecked cars, though Jeremy arrived almost half an hour late.

As for the red ale... it's good stuff. It has all the good characteristics I expect in the category. And it's light on hops flavor. I dislike the sour taste and mouth-puckering nature of a heavy hops bill. Some red ales are made with heavy hops, as heavy hop flavor is, sadly, the "it" thing for craft beer drinkers right now. Well, I don't dress like a hipster with skinny pants and clown-sized brown leather shoes, and I don't care for hipster beer that tastes like cough medicine.

BTW, Jeremy likes those hipsters beers. He predictably started with the brewery's IPA. But even their IPA was relatively low on the bitterness scale, more an English IPA than an American brutalize-your-taste-buds IPA. I know because he offered me a taste of his. I wouldn't want to drink a whole pint of it, but at least it wasn't spit-it-out sour.

As the brewery is open just one evening a week the owners make it count by inviting a rotating cast of food trucks to set up in the parking alley. This past Friday's food was Venezuelan. We put in an order for a couple of arepas while starting our second pints.

For my second round I sampled a pint of Sunnyvale Pale Lager. Like the red ale it was available on tap. That made it seem fresher than opening a can... though I think the cans are actually bottled on demand so they're virtually as fresh as having it poured straight into a glass.

The lager was surprisingly good. I say that because I'm generally "meh" on lagers but I enjoyed this one. It had subtle floral/fruit aromas noticeable as I lifted the glass to my mouth. Those come from the yeast and are a sign that a lager has been well crafted. It had a rich enough character to pair well with the food.

Speaking of food, the arepas were fantastic. They're corn meal patties, cut open in pouches like pita bread at a Greek restaurant, stuffed with combinations of meat, cheese, beans, and/or plantains. It was delicious. They were expensive, though. And because of my inner cheapskate (habits from childhood die hard) I only ordered one. It was less than half a meal. So while I enjoyed the food very much I don't think I'd want to seek out this food truck again to pay $35 for a full meal... served through a mesh window and eaten while sitting in a parking lot.

We wrapped up the evening around 8:30. The brewery was cool about letting folks stay a bit late. I think they kind of had to because the food truck in the parking lot was so slow. Each of us took home a mixed 4-pack of cans. I bought 2 cans of the red ale, because for me that was clearly the winner of the set, plus a can of the lager because I want to try it again, plus a can of the golden ale I'd like to try. Jeremy and I went our separate ways, agreeing to do this again at ShaKa Brewing, possibly as soon as next week.