Gummies and Orange Soda

Sunday, March 13-Wednesday, March 16, 2022: Boise, Idaho

“An armed society is a polite society,” my Uber driver tells me, unprompted, a few minutes into the nine-minute drive from the Boise airport to the Hilton Garden Inn at Spectrum shopping center. Unprompted, in that he offers the cliché in response to my very apolitical inquiry, “How do you like Boise?” He launches into a comparative lecture on the root of Chicago’s ills – again, unprompted – and is totally befuddled when I clarify that all of Illinois has had legalized concealed carry since, roughly, Moore vs. Madigan in 2013. This worldly knowledge of interstate policy dynamics he has derived from – he claims – having lived in all fifty states, despite having moved to Boise six years ago from Austin, where he lived for a considerable period of time. I’m not great with guessing ages – children from two to about thirteen are almost indistinguishable to me – but at that pace, he’d be about 300, which I’m confident he isn’t. He does say that all this purported wandering has taught him that “travel is the nectar of life,” which feels rehearsed, but at least is something on which we can agree.

He’s not done opining: while Boise’s great, he says, it’s rough because in the winter the temperature rarely climbs above five to tens degrees. Unless he’s speaking in Celsius – a habit he wouldn’t have picked up on his fifty-state sojourn – he’s coming in at about one quarter of the truth. He also gives me a complete breakdown of how Boise has evolved through the decades (of which, you’ll recall, he’s only seen .6). With this, he exhibits display two behaviors I’ll see repeatedly in Boise and other crunchy, up-and-coming towns facing an influx of outsiders: he’s a transplant who isn’t yet convinced he made the right decision; and he absolutely does not want to let me in on the secret, just in case he ends up staying. He never makes clear whether he’s packing heat in the car.

I spend almost three days in the area – very late Sunday to very early Wednesday – mostly walking (and occasionally Ubering – which is still cheap in Boise) between my hotel and my customer’s office up the road, and sitting in meetings at the latter. During a break between sessions, I bring up the barely-above-zero claim with of my customers. He confirms that it’s total BS – in fact, it almost never gets that cold – and he notes that the transplants say stuff like that because they don’t want others to follow them.

Then: while I’m here (when would I find the time?), he says I should totally check out Table Rock, a nearby, accessible, much-loved scenic hiking spot. But he tells me that, while it’s wildly popular, he personally doesn’t think much of it. It’s overrated. Now that he’s clued me into this thing locals do, I can’t be sure: is he telling me it’s overrated because he wants to convince me, indirectly, not to go, part of a grand scheme to keep crowds down? If so, why bring it up? Perhaps he knows I’d hear about it one way or another and has to make it seem like he’s being upfront. The alternative, given he’s both hard selling me on going and making it clear that he thinks the place is a waste of time, is that he really does hate Table Rock but thinks he has to mention it (again, knowing I’ll hear one way or another) but that this is the only way to convince me not to go without coming out and saying not to go. There’s some reverse psychology at play. We’ll never know.

The closest I get to the great outdoors is jogging up and down Overland Road. Not particularly beautiful – though you can see the mountains all around you from pretty much anywhere in Boise – but at least it is a decent straightaway. I also did some hotel pool swimming at the Garden Inn which, though not in a particularly hopping area, has the rare advantage of a twenty-four hour pool AND hot tub. That’s hard to beat when you’re traveling on a tight schedule and only at the hotel when it’s very early or very late.

The main sites I encountered to recommend – as is often the case during work travel – were in the food and beverage realm. In a town with both a sizable Mormon population and a growing hipster set, there’s a bit of tension: lots of breweries downtown, for example, but almost nothing open past ten PM, from what I could tell. The sweet spot in this balancing act for me, though: the non-alcoholic drinks were on point pretty much everywhere I went.

• Caffeina: The Overland Road expansion of a local downtown shop, it opens early – six AM – and still serves drip coffee in mugs. I don’t think I’ve had drip out of a mug at a coffee shop since before the pandemic. The house blend was great.
• Tucanos: The chain’s location along Entertainment Ave was my customer’s pick. Less frills than the Brazilian steakhouses I’ve been to in Chicago, but same concept (heaps of meat and a salad bar), and their house specialty Brazilian Lemonade – sweetened condensed milk, Brazilian lemons, whatever other fruit you want – was a hit. I had the mango. It was a special experience at my end of the table: six or seven people, all randomly seated together, at a business dinner, all not drinking for various reasons – health, addiction, religious (at least two different faiths), pregnancy – not only discussing it openly but getting to enjoy a house specialty.
• 10 Barrel Brewing Co.: Downtown Boise brewpub for the Bend, Oregon-based company. Good location, decent ambience. They didn’t have any non-alcoholic beers, but I tried a Cock ‘N Bull Ginger Beer, which claims to have been used in the original Moscow Mule. It was fizzy and flavorful.
• Diablo and Sons: The “craft lager and taco saloon” (?) has a prime spot downtown and a tasty, creative menu. I had the Idaho trout (pistachio mole, citrus mojo, grilled citrus, etc.) and my colleague and I split the burrata and fried Brussels sprouts to start. They serve house-made sodas – Boise strikes again! – and I tried two: the orange vanilla and the blueberry sage. Despite the name of this blog, I tried to order the blueberry sage one – I’m not into citrus and vanilla together – but the waitress accidentally served the orange vanilla. To make up for it, she brought the blueberry sage on the house. I appreciated the customer service, and that I got to try both despite my initial reticence. The orange vanilla ended up being awesome – the vanilla was subtle and didn’t mar the excellent citrus flavor – and the blueberry sage was a great combo, too.
• Barbarian Brewing Downtown Beer Bar: Yet another downtown outpost of a local brewery. A had a Hop Water, which was delightful. This being Boise, they also offered kombucha and a mocktail amongst the extensive beer list. My favorite feature was a “Barbaric Tums” gumball dispenser by the entrance.

Tess and I try to get a souvenir for our travel wall everywhere we visit, and I had a bit of trouble with Boise. The airport souvenir shop had a wall of model airplanes from all major airlines and some magnets. One said, “I Got Lit in Boise,” so I thought it might be a pun off of “getting lit” that was actually a reference to some local solar situation (I was still figuring out the true weather) or an electrical event. But when I asked the clerk if there was some Boise joke there, she told me that, no, “that’s like what young people use to mean ‘getting drunk.'” Another customer informed her that it is, now, old people who use the pun. And they both assumed I’d never even heard the expression. Apparently you could get the same magnet in any airport gift shop in any city; just swap out “Boise.” She recommended a big baked potato with butter magnet that was popular at another store at the end of the terminal, but I was short on time, so I settled for a Darth Tater. I hopped on the plane and got home in to play the pre-St. Patrick’s Day shows that night.