I like special waters, except Borjomi, which takes like drinking a liter of cold semen.
I suspect Megan has thoughts on this subject.
which takes like drinking a liter of cold semen.
And who among us can't identify with that?
I am SO OUTRAGED that Le Creuset of America won't take my call at 1am Eastern!
Oh, you know what semen tastes like, Stanley.
8: Sure! Just not a liter of it, chilled.
Artisanally hand-warmed ounce-sized (at best!) shots of semen are much more common among my fellow travelers, is all.
11: "Have you tried the White Russian?"
I sure hope Btock shows up in this thread.
Not any meaningful way. I notice the difference in water in different places sometimes. Kinda like nonchlorinated water. Wouldn't pay that kind of money for it.
11: With an ad campaign featuring General Jack D. Ripper.
Locked in an icy vault for over 10,000 years, 10 Thousand BC (TM), is the world's finest luxury glacier water from the remote and environmentally protected Coastal Glacier Range in beautiful British Columbia Canada. This precious live resource is literally bottled to "inspirational music" since research shows water has a memory. Glacier water is recognized the world over for its unsurpassed natural purity, high ionic content and ability to slow the aging process. Only the purest water optimally hydrates the body, reduces anxiety, heightens brain functions and stimulates everything from plant growth to the human sex drive.[emphasis added]
i dunno, people are still buying 'good' vodka for reason other than 'siberian oil tycoon'
The only thing i notice about water is i can't make good, non-mealy beans at my parents house, probably because of the salt from the water softener.
Lots of stuff on pricey Parisian water bars in the late eighties or early nineties. I'm pretty sure I read about copy cats in London and NYC.
3 Texture as well?
21.2: It has an unpleasant viscosity, but is not as sticky.
Hey yoyo,
Of course you shouldn't answer if you don't want to, but can I ask you more about you? I've seen you around for years, but never gotten a good sense of you, besides that you're funny. Is there a rough portrait of you that you wouldn't mind telling us?
If you don't want to, I take back the question and hope it didn't bother you.
Megan, what on earth is wrong with you?
Right now the thing that is most wrong with me is that I don't know anything about yoyo. I was hoping to fix that.
I had to stop watching because it was actively making me stupider. Thanks a lot, Neb.
Not by at least an inch, last he checked the cock-photo file.
11 That must be the secret behind pastis. Mix it with water, alcohol, and licorice flavoring and it would taste and look just like that stuff.
But I thought the girthier petioles were to be avoided?
I subscribe, however perverse it may seem, to the sentiments contained in 24. I kind of suspect yoyo is a guy I knew in high school.
The truly wise can diverge from the principles propounded to the novitiate.
hm, of course. i live in an ohio city with excess lead in the water, though this probably did not cause my space cadet add. i spent too much time in law school looking at pictures of rocketships on the internet instead of writing a resume so now i've lots of time to read psychopharmacology articles and shop for belts. i like to scientifically cook thoroughly inauthentic dhals and drink assam teas. five years ago i probably would just have listed a bunch of bands; life's emotions are just reflections of the pure Forms of music
If i answered the wrong question, i don't mind other ones. i don't spontaneously talk about myself; i only have opinions, along with my recycled oscar wilde humour structures.
Only the purest water optimally hydrates the body, reduces anxiety, heightens brain functions and stimulates everything from plant growth to the human sex drive
I'm not sure I want my drinking water to stimulate plant growth.
I like the water which comes from British Columbia, which is a three-day journey by yacht.
Is this recent? I thought the bottled water backlash was in full effect... They could easily have found an environmental activist to "balance" the piece by mentioning all of the evils of packaged water.
All I want is an end to the back and forth with the server when I ask for a large glass of tap water, room temperature, no ice. Folks are welcome to their hand-crafted artisanal waters, or the bottled pthalate loaded water shipped halfway across the world. I'm just thirsty, and would like to drink some water without freezing my brain.
41: Bottled water makes your nuts shrivel up like raisins and gives you moobs. Women are fine drinking it, but men should stick to whiskey.
I've wanted to try a strategy of acting phenomenally excited to even have the option to try tap water. "Oh! You have tap water? That sounds lovely. I'd like some of that, thank you."
This seems like as good a place as any to add that I've been watching the Made in Spain cooking show on dvd and in just about every recipe I have a moment of shock when the chef says, "like this!" in his lovely Spanish accent and I hear, instead, "... laydeez!"
The faggy waiter
Really, Knecht?
Why would he lie about the waiter being faggy?
Another possible strategy: bore the shit out of the water with a long disquisition on how wonderful local water is for a locavore like yourself, how there's no better way to prime your palate with the taste of the region, so that you can better comprehend how the chef's flavors mix with the unique background implied by the local terroir and on and on and on.
bore the shit out of the water
I thought the expression was "plowing the sea".
Huh. I had meant waiter, but if you could keep it up long enough that the water was bored as well, perhaps it would gain some mineral water-ish qualities.
I have to say that the drinkability of tap water varies immensely IME. At home you can disguise the rough stuff by making tea; in restaurants not so much. I'm a soft water drinker for choice, and in a London restaurant I have to order bottled or I won't enjoy my meal.
But Schweppes will do fine.
I've been places where the tap water smelled strongly (to my nose) of sulphur. I was not inspired to drink much of it.
That said, those places have not generally overlapped with places that I've gone to fancy restaurants, and if Mr. or Mrs. Fancy Restaurant can't buy a water filter, maybe they ain't so fuckin' fancy.
The best restaurant water I've ever had was at an embarrassingly hipsterish high-end meatatorium in California (that I've discussed before, in the context of their bacon-based desserts) which served tap water enlivened with a subtle infusion of sage. Really, really tasty!
I was wondering if any of the waters were outright flavored. Although I'd still roll my eyes, it'd be less forceful.
re: 53
Yeah, I'm not really a big fan of hard water. I've gotten used to it after moving down south, but for a long time I missed Scottish tap water. Which is really very nice. Soft, and with minimal treatment compared to, say, London water.
But soft water is annoying to shower in, because the soap won't wash off. So is really hard water, because it stains your tub. So I'll probably turn to the bottled stuff in the end.
18 makes me want to kill someone.
Be sure to play inspirational music, because research show that corpses have a memory.
Sifu's strategy is better than mine, which is to instruct the waiter to take a pint glass, go to the faucet, fill the glass, bring it to me. I find that the more detailed the instructions the less likely the waiter is to try to upsell me on fancy frippery like ice.
Also, I totally read 55 as about waiters.
57: May I suggest Bryan Caplan?
57: I blame the people who made that idiotic What The Bleep Do We Fail To Shut Up About movie.
54: Iceland, man. The entire country smells like rotten eggs, and the water reeks. Lovely place, lovely people, but stinky, stinky, stinky.
61: I like ice. I don't drink room temperature water very often.
64: I love ice lots and lots and lots. I used to have a six-tray-a-day habit but I'm better now.
Funny, but I usually rarely perceive condescension when being offered bottled water at restaurants. More often, there's a slightly embarrassed, tentative tone to the question, "I'm sorry, but I have to ask this, because it does wonders for our profit margins..."
but if you could keep it up long enough that the water was bored as well, perhaps it would gain some mineral water-ish qualities
Careful though it might turn on you after you drink it, "research shows water has a memory."
Since they closed the Wendy's by my office, I hardly dine out anymore.
63: You get the landscape that looks like it should be populated with elves and quantities of geothermal energy sufficient to sustain the entire nation's economy, you have to pay the price in hot showers that smell like bad eggs.
66: I avoid restaurants where condescension seems like it might come with the meal, so I haven't encountered it much. What I do routinely encounter is a slight incredulity that I prefer the option that is simplest, cheapest, and least conspicuously consuming (consumptive?).
Since they closed the Wendy's by my office, I hardly dine out anymore.
Poor you. I love Wendy's water.
66: But sometimes you frequently perceive condescension? (n.b. I am the last person who should throw this rock given the glassiness of my own abode.)
69: I know! I took a long drive with my Dad on a road that ran through a huge fresh lava field (the road was brand new, the old one having been buried by lava). Just two feet from the edge of the road was rock so brutally sharp and twisted that you couldn't walk on it without falling and when you did you'd be all cut up. I was 11 or so, more than willing to tolerate stench just to see a landscape straight out of Tolkein. Plus, geysers!
75: lighten up--I think JP must have been assuming that Wendy is all grown up by now, heebie. He wasn't thinking about anything dirty between you and a little girl.
In what way?
Like with a teabag in it.
Would correct apostrophe usage in 71 be "Wendy's' water"? That looks pretty weird.
I'm guessing 71 was correct as-is.
Here's the important question: should Wendy be most properly known as a "foodie, restarauteur, or gourmand"?
This biographical article on a foodie, restaurateur or gourmand is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.
I like to drink from Wendy's fountain.
87: That was Dairy Queen, I think.
87: Looks like that was Dairy Queen.
I'd like to drink Dairy Queen's, um, tap... milkshake?
Dairy Queen's milkshakes brings Sifu to the yard.
And I'm like, it's better than Sonic's.
How many Welshmen does it take to drink a hedgehog mikshake?
The milkshake knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one important thing: that it drinks your milkshake.
57: Reading the post linked in the Nutshells post has put murder into perspective. I will reserve my homicidal intent for that jackass.
My tap water strategy is usually to try as hard as possible to convey the impression that I'm mortally offended they'd try to rip me off with their ridiculous bottled water. Which is fairly easy because it does in fact piss me off. I'm paying enough for the food and wine/beer, I'm not going to pay for bloody water.
Kraab, there are so many people deserving of murder that waiting for the perfect victim just means you'll die with your hands blood-free. Carpe diem, sister.
Ironically, and as the idiot newcasters in the linked video do, to their credit, mention at the end, NYC tap water is famously good.
102: Do we let Westchester have the good stuff?
Just two feet from the edge of the road was rock so brutally sharp and twisted that you couldn't walk on it without falling and when you did you'd be all cut up
That's what makes a'a a great ideophone.
102: I was going to pipe up and mention that, but I figured I'd give the NYC chauvinism a rest. But I really notice it when I leave the city -- lots of water has actively unpleasant flavors, and even the non-unpleasant water most places only makes it to neutral, rather than to actively good-tasting.
106: It's true; NYC tap water is affirmatively good.
Also, if you have trouble convincing someone that bottled water is worse than Hitler, try this.
106, 107: maybe so, but LA's tap water was judged tastiest in the world. (Which actually makes a lot of sense, as LA gets its water directly from the Sierras. Thanks, Owens Valley! I'm sure you didn't need any water.) (Also, curiously, most of the other cities in LA County don't get their water from the LA Aqueduct, so e.g. Pasadena or Santa Monica's water is inferior to that of LA proper.)
Cambridge, MA also has excellent tap water.
Our tap water turns the inside of a Brita pitcher all rust colored. Which is why I use a Brita pitcher.
I've never tasted bad tap water, except in deserts where the water is desalinizationalized. I always assume complaints about it are examples of brainwashed consumerism.
Boston's tap water is also very good, I should say. Possibly better than Cambridge (it comes from a huge reservoir, which apparently helps).
Edinburgh has delicious water, and lots of it.
If you are picky about drinking water, remember that asparagus and stillsuits do not mix.
18 is also pretty close to this.
I was thinking about home lab tests for basic food properties-- Ph of canned tomatoes for taste, but water hardness should be quantifiable. Mercury would be hard to test for in small quantitites, tests specific enough to detect PCBs would be tricky, but say residual antibiotics and certainly E. coli could be detected with a paper strip. Yet nobody sells these, instead there is a market for hysterical press reports based on lab tests of unknown accuracy.
Boston's tap water is also very good, I should say. Possibly better than Cambridge (it comes from a huge reservoir, which apparently helps).
Boston's tap water is the worst of anywhere I've ever lived, but everywhere I've lived has been known for having good tap water. (Except Boston. Are they known for that? It was perfectly drinkable, sure, but mostly tasted meh.)
(Actually, I'm mostly thinking of Somerville, not Boston, but wouldn't they get their water from more or less the same place? (Cambridge too, for that matter?))
but water hardness should be quantifiable.
It gets much harder once get to down to zero degrees Celsius.
118: Boston is known for having excellent water, and is in fact one of the five biggest unfiltered water systems in the country.
Incidentally, it has been my experience that pretty much everybody likes the tap water they grew up around (if they drank a lot of it), and finds tap water from other places a bit strange and not-really-preferable. I imagine that's how this discussion will go.
Anywhow, no, Cambridge doesn't get its tap water from the same place as Boston. Somerville seemingly does, but has shitty pipe infrastructure. So there you go.
120: I think there's objectively nasty water out there, such that locals may not mind it, but recognize other water as better. (Someone mentioned sulfur above, which was my grandparents' place in the Catskills. A sulfurous ice cube melting into a Coke brings me right back there.) I remember Cambridge as variable -- generally innocuous, but with occasional days when it stank of rotting algae.
And there's objectively good water, that no one objects to much, like NYC.
In between, locals probably like their own water, as you say.
Our water comes from a rain-fed watershed just east of here. It's excellent, better than what I grew up with.
123: It's even been the subject of popular song.
122: that could be. And, having just gone and drank a big glass of it to test, I can agree that Boston water is better than Cambridge water. But man, cold Boston tap water on a winter day is god-damned delicious. I can see why people speak well of LA's water, but it doesn't compare to Boston's water in my book.
123: your city is mentioned in the link in 120.
The "it" that I drank a glass of in 125, by the way, is Cambridge water, not Boston water. I'm going by memory as far as Boston water goes.
I get misplaced nostalgia sometimes when I come across a town or a street called Sweetwater or some such. I figure there must have been a really pure spring there at one point, and now it's been drained or polluted. Which bums me out. But then a new song comes on the radio and I forget about it.
Buck used to work on Spring Street in Soho, and apparently the super in the building would complain that the basement leaked. (This is true in spirit, but possibly garbled in detail. There was some physical manifestation of a real spring somewhere, anyway.)
127: I thought "sweetwater" just mean no salt or alkali, not exceptional purity.
Somerville has middsie water; my folks' place out past KR's suburb has a truly nasty brand of domestic effluent. Nowhere east of the Mississippi have I tasted water that compares to that of the Bay Area.
Sweetwater
That's literally what I notice about NYC water as distinct from neutrally inoffensive water -- it's 'sweet'. Not as if it had been sweetened, but there's a subtle, clean flavor that comes across as sweetness. This is the kind of thing I'd dismiss as an idiosyncratic perception, except that it's all over the language.
132 to 129, except that I hadn't read 129 when I wrote it.
I like the taste of the water after you've been eating artichokes.
Coastal CA water and central CA water (unless it's piped in from somewhere else) uniformly sucks. When I was little, all of our water tasted distinctively of metal; now it stinks AND tastes bad.* And I do know good water...my dad's place in the mountains of New Mexico had the most glorious tap water I have ever tasted.
*I still drink copious amounts of it, though I do have one of those crappy Brita filters. I think that's more about getting it cold enough that the aroma is lessened, though.
The nastiest water I've drunk in the last thirty years since continental Europe got over chlorinating it all to death, has been in the east of England. If business or leisure takes you to Norwich, Ipswich or Cambridge I can furnish you with the names of several excellent local beers, and I would suggest you consider not just drinking but brushing your teeth with them as a last resort.
tasted water that compares to that of the Bay Area.
Thank the Sierras for that, too.
There's a heightened incidence of testicular cancer in MA near the sites of former tanneries. I am surprised that Boston's water is unfiltered-- is the source extremely deep?
I like the taste of the water after you've been eating artichokes.
I'll email you the next time I have an artichoke, to enhance your drinking pleasure.
138: dunno about deep, but it's huge.
132: I guess I've always thought of "sweetwater" as being used in dry places or seaside places as a way to say "You can drink this without dying or gagging."
in the last thirty years since continental Europe got over chlorinating it all to death
All sinks, baths, and toilets in Geneva had bright green streaks where the water came out well into the nineties. The water was completely safe and disgusting as a drink. It took me a while to get into the idea of drinking tap water.
Note that the list of the places with the best water, as well as the list of places with the biggest unfiltered water sources, is heavily dominated by big, old, central cities, and that the sources in question consist of surface water in rural, mountainous areas at some distance from the cities in question. This is not a coincidence.
135 gets it exactly right. Filtering the central coast water does help some, but it's not great.
Cambridge folks should go tour the water treatment facility at Fresh Pond this month. And if you're interested in the efflux end, Deer Island has tours on I think the first Tuesday of every month. Infrastructure!
I've never heard "NYC h2o=good" except in the context of pizza crust making.
