Author: Nichelle

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savannah

How Savannah Does Tech: GeekEnd

GeekEnd Banner

Over the weekend, I went to GeekEnd. Recapping a three-day conference is harder than recapping a single season of Game of Thrones. There are few too many characters, and I wish could rewind to remember the best quotes.

It’s best for me to do this in reverse order starting from Saturday’s night after party and going back to Thursday.

The after party was fun.  I had never heard of the band French Horn Rebellion which was kinda like Bastille or Capital Cities but with the french horn as the lead instrument.  The music was very danceable but a little too “on the nose” of 80s music. They definitely can move the crowd.

All events were either at The Guild Hall or at Chromatic Dragon which around the corner. This was very convenient. It helped retained attendees, and you could easily go back and forth from one conference session to another.

The last panel I attended was the social media analysis bootcamp.  Lindsey Johns of Flutter Media and Ashlee Perkins of Forge[X] gave the audience members and me great advice on using Facebook, Twitter, Instagram.  I also learned about what types of Twitter post (ones with photos) get more attention.  I was so inspired that I started tweeting more from my Gnatty Savannah twitter account.

The “What’s Beyond Email” was cathartic. It was a safe space to rant about everyone’s frustration with email. The panel which was moderated by Kevin Lawver, offered suggestions on how to make email less painful.

” Email is a giant bucket of sad” – Kevin

“Don’t use email for conversation” – Katheriin Liibert  of Fleep

“Don’t place information in a place that’s hard to find.” Steve Ross of Oak. Works

“Use Slack or Chat Ops” Josh Nichols of GitHub

The founders of Selfie On A Stick are Bravo tv show waiting to happen.  Jacqueline Verdier and Dominic  Suszanski may be an overnight success story, but there have sharp business and promotional skills that any entrepreneur could employ.

If you don’t have any customers, you don’t have a business.”  Jacqueline Verdier, CEO of Selfie on A Stick

The gift bag included a Tattly robot tattoo. I love Tattly temporary tattoos so this was a score.

At lunchtime, you could eatup and meetup.  After meeting John from Urban Savannah and having a couple of sliders and hot dogs from Sly’s Sliders, I wandered back inside to hear Renay San Miguel of Georgia Public Broadcasting talk about the changing landscape of media. Basically, everyone is a publisher.

LittleBits, which is a startup that create DIY electronics for kids and adults held a workhop.  Eric Sharpe is the Savannah Chapter Leader for littleBits.

Friday,  I listened to the panel of start-ups and pivoting before I had to leave for work.

Thursday, I checked out The Pitch Circus which was like Shark Tank meets the New York Tech Meetup.  Brian Bason, former CTO of Niche, has a new start-up Bark which won the Pitch Circus.  Green Badger came in second place.  Tommy Linstroth of Green Badger is a  cloud-based Saas for the management of LEED construction projects.

I had a great time at GeekEnd meeting new people, learning new stuff and thinking about how I can use technology to solve problems.

PS. Check out the Storify of my tweets during GeekEnd.

 

 

 

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art business savannah

Crafternoons At Starlandia Art Supply

Starlandia Art Supply

Starlandia Reclaimed Art Supply

Starlandia Creative Supply is an art supply and craft store that sells new and reclaimed art supplies. It opened at 2438 Bull Street four months ago, right around the time I moved to Savannah. I love shopping in the store for DIY interior design ideas, and it is a great space to spark creativity.

Employing a business model similar to a clothing thrift store, you can donate art supplies for credit and then use the credit to shop in the store.  There’s everything from canvas and picture frames to buttons and tennis balls.  Anything  that inspires artist to create is at Starlandia. The store is bright and colorful and it is like the Willy Wonka factory of art supplies.

One of the things that make Starlandia a great addition to Savannah creative community is that it provides an opportunity to reuse and upcycle items and facilitate recycling. What may be considered to be scraps to one person becomes inspiration to another.

Recently, I had the pleasure of spending the morning crafting with the owner of Starlandia, Clinton Edminster. We made a vision board and I wrote about it in the September issue of Well FED magazine.

Starlandia will be hosting crafternoons for the next two Saturdays (October 17th and 24th) to help Savannahnians make their Halloween costumes. There will be lemonade, cookies and hot glue! Work on your upcoming Halloween costume, or try a variety of different Halloween Decoration crafts to add some spook to your Pumpkin Day Celebration.

 

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food savannah

Gospel Dinner Cruise on The Savannah River

Gospel Choir on Dinner Cruise

Soul Food Dinner

On Monday evenings in Savannah, you can be uplifted and filled with the sounds of gospel music and delicious soul food.

During a two-hour dinner cruise on the Savannah River, both tourists and locals can enjoy a spirited evening hosted by Savannah RiverBoat Cruises .

Last Monday, I was invited to go on the dinner cruise and I had a wonderful time.  The ship itself is spacious, so this is a great way for big groups to gather together and eat dinner.

The food is plentiful, so there’s no need to bum rush the chafing dishes. It’s a buffet that will appeal to Southern soul food lovers. Vegans need not apply.  The menu includes macaroni and cheese, greens, fried chicken, candied yams and squash casserole. I especially liked the pulled pork. I went for seconds and ate it with some cole slaw and the cheddar biscuits. Yes, I said “cheddar biscuits”. These are not the ones from Red Lobster, but more like ones your grandmother made with cheese in them.  Yum! For dessert, there’s peach cobbler and banana pudding. The cobbler is worth the calories.

The food is good, but the gospel choir is great.  The Mass Production Ensemble sang familiar gospel songs that are American folk songs like “Amazing Grace” and “How Great Thou Art” as well as contemporary gospel like Hezekiah Walker’s “Every Praise“.  They also sang the “Happy Birthday” song (which is now legal to do) as well as love songs to the couples on board the ship who were celebrating wedding anniversaries. One couple had been married fifty years. Golden!

The season for the weekly riverboat dinner cruises is ending at the end of October, so you have three more weeks to indulge.  At 45.95 per person, the Gospel Dinner cruise is a great value for dinner, music and scenic views of the Savannah River.

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art savannah

October Savannah Art Walk

Art By Sabree

savannah art walk october

The collage above features artwork from Dana Richardson, Samantha Claar and Anthony Gomez who were some of the artists featured in the monthly Savannah Art Walk. The monthly Savannah Art Walk is an event that Savannah locals should attend. It’s fun, free and there’s wine. It reminds me of going to Chelsea on Fridays in Manhattan for art opening or Final Friday in Over-The-Rhine in Cincinnati. If you go to at least ten galleries, then you will be entered into a raffle at the end of the night. There’s a some nice prizes, and  I won a print from artist Sue Nichols. Yay!

Categories
food home cooking savannah

Recipe For Mexican Pulled Chicken And Reducing Food Waste

Mexican Pulled Chicken

Some people hate litter.
Some people hate smokers.
I hate food waste.
According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, roughly one-third of all food produced for human consumption each year ends up in the trash. How can solve hunger if all that food is wasted?!

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver did a great segment on his show about how food is wasted annually. There’s a new restaurant that just opened in Brooklyn that aims to reduce food waste. Przemek Adolf who I met a few years ago at Dara Furlow’s New Year’s Day brunch, opened his restaurant, Saucy by Nature, with the sole purpose of reducing food waste.

Which brings me to this recipe below. I like a rotisserie chicken from Kroger but I have to have a plan for it or I will end up wasting it. Menu planning is essential to reducing food waste. After eating the dark meat first, there was a lot of chicken left. My first thought was chicken salad, but I didn’t want that. Then I thought of using the slow cooker to make pulled chicken like pulled pork. I went to the store to pick up chicken stock and spotted a can of diced tomatoes with green chiles. My Dad told me that he has been adding tomatoes and green chiles to his famous chili, so I figured it would be good for my dish.

Here the recipe:
Leftover White meat from rotisserie chicken
1/2 of chopped onion
1 small jalapeno pepper
1/2 bell pepper (red, yellow or purple)
1/3 cup of chicken stock
1 can of diced tomatoes with green chiles (Rotel or any brand)
A bag of tortilla chips
Monterey or Pepper jack cheese.

Directions:
I chopped up some onion, a jalapeno and a half a purple pepper that I got from the farmer’s market and added to the slow cooker. Then I added the chicken stock. I was using a knife to the cut pieces of the chicken off the bone, but I got lazy and dump all the leftover chicken in the pot. My laziness was rewarded with a more flavorful chicken.

I had a few options of how to eat this Mexican pulled chicken. I could have paired it with rice, or gotten some potato rolls to make sandwiches or even used tortillas to make tacos. However, I decided to make nachos since that was a great way to share food with roommates and neighbor who stopped by.

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forsyth park people savannah

Savannah Picnic In The Park

Hooray For Hollywood

Linda Dancing

What’s the big deal about a picnic in the park? It’s a big thing when it is the annual Picnic In The Park when the Savannah Philharmonic plays. Annually, Savannahians convene at Forsyth Park with decorated tents,bringing picnic baskets and dressing up based on a theme. This year’s theme was “Hooray for Hollywood”. BTW, I learned that the song was actually written by Savannah native Johnny Mercer.

My friend Linda invited me to hang out at the tent where her friends, Brian and Jeanine who had created this wonderful tent which was like the outside of the theater where the Oscars happen. They had a red carpet, step and repeat and a concession stand with popcorn. There were even movie posters of the two most famous movies that were filmed in Savannah, “Forrest Gump” and “Midnight In The Garden of Good and Evil“.

Brian is a chef at a hotel here in Savannah.  He made chicken teriyaki skewers, stuffed mushroom, cantaloupe soup,  and  fingerling potato salad. He also brought as well as a fruit tray, a crudites tray and a cheese plate. With Jeanine’s attention to detail and Brian’s delicious food, they came in second place Yay!

I walked around a lot taking photos. It was one of the best people watching I have experienced in the four months I have lived here.

Categories
art savannah

Savannah Art Walk

Dana Richardson Art

savannah art walk attendees

The second Saturday of the month is the  Savannah Art Walk.  The Savannah Art Walk is a fun monthly art event where local artists are featured in galleries and stores.  The welcome reception was held at the Bohemian Riverfront Hotel, a boutique hotel on Bay Street with views overlooking the river. Red and white wine was flowing and it is where you pick up the art walk map.  Hosted by artist and entrepreneur Tiffani Taylor, a few of the local artists were on hand to talk about their work.  Then the walk started.  You have three hours to visit as many galleries as possible. The more galleries you attend, the better because if you attend 10 or more galleries, you are entered into a raffle that takes place at the Andaz Hotel.   I did,  and I won a sample of L’Occitane products. [My hands have never been this soft.]

I was excited to attend the walk since I met Tiffani Taylor at the beginning of the summer.  It was great to walk around and meet new people, talk to artists about their work and learn more about Savannah.  I was especially impressed at the art at Kobo Gallery. Coincidentally, one of the artists is my neighbors, Dana Richardson.

Anyway, I had a blast, and I highly recommend attending Savannah Art Walk every month.  In the past, I thought about getting a master’s degree in arts administration,  so this is not coming out of left field. I enjoy art, and I was a volunteer at the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati and an intern for an arts organization in college.  The art walk has also inspired me to curate a show of Savannah artists in New York. I don’t know how I can do it, but it’s possible.  I believe in infinite possibilities.

 

Categories
savannah

It Didn’t Happen To Me: The First Person Industrial Complex

Take A Book Leave A Book

Even Jonathan Ames doesn’t want to write about himself anymore. He said that when he was recently interviewed on Marc Maron’s WTF podcast. As much as I love to blog and express myself, I have always found the genre of online personal essays to be somewhat problematic. Don’t get me wrong; I enjoy a good memoir. The thing about a memoir is that there’s usually some distance between the events that happened and when you write about them. It could be a troubled childhood or adolescence or experiences in a band or working in New York City. A memoir is not normally a “hot take”, but a personal essay typically is.

XO Jane’s personal essays are under the vertical, “It Happened To Me”. I hate the name since it connotes that the essayists have no agency in their own lives. Though Catalog has been remarkable for cataloging all the angst of the twenty-something millennials living in Brooklyn. If these essays are oversharing, then it is just a result of our current pop culture.

I have been living in Savannah for less than four months and when I tell people I am a writer, the reaction has been interesting.  I have been asked how to get a book published and how to document a family history.  No one asks for my opinion or hot take, but if they wanted one, just give me a day and I could probably whip up something.

 

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forsyth park savannah

Be An Ally Any Day and Everyday

Savannah Pride

 

The crowd at Savannah Pride

Being an LGBT ally means more than being OK with gay marriage because you love “Modern Family”. Being an ally means you support LGBT issues and you speak out against LGBT injustice. Being an ally means being consistent. Today I volunteered at Savannah Pride, but I won’t wait until next Pride weekend to support LGBT.

When it comes to LGBT in popular culture and media, it is still mostly focused on the Gay White Male. That needs to change. A few years ago, I got to speak at a conference, Salon LGBTQ, and I spoke about how to be an ally in the social media streams. At the conference, I got a chance to re-introduce myself Riese Bernard, one of the founders of Autostraddle, one of the most popular and influential lesbian blogs.

“Orange is The New Black” has brought attention to lesbian women of color and transgender women, but there’s still a dearth of Black, Asian and Latino gay men. I bet most people have yet to see “Noah’s Arc” or even “Paris is Burning” which is the source of all current slang today. No shade. 😉

Anyway, I want to see more like people who look like me in the forefront of the LGBT movement.  Just like not all “skin folk is kinfolk”, not everyone who looks like an ally is actually one. #CaitlynWhatsGood

 

Categories
food savannah

Dora Charles And The Rehab of Paula Deen

Dora Charles

Dora Charles

Dora Charles who worked for Paula Deen for over twenty years is finally getting her due with her first cookbook, A Real Southern Cook In Her Savannah Kitchen.

I got a copy of the cookbook and it’s a great primer for real southern/soul food cooking. I was talking about the cookbook last week with Erika who is the Yelp Savannah Community Ambassador, and she said,

“Why does soul food have to be elevated?! It’s from the soul, so it is already elevated.”

I agree. Soul food does not have to elevated. The family recipes in Dora Charles’ cookbook will remind you what your Mudear or Auntie made for Sunday dinners. The book comes out September 8th. The New York Times’ Kim Severson interviewed Dora Charles, and she’s doing press at the Decatur Book Festival this weekend. Hugh Acheson blurbed her book, but I’m not sure how much promotion the book is getting in Savannah.

Savannah is still Paula Deen’s town. Coincidentally Paula Deen has a cookbook coming on September 8th as well, and it was announced that she will be one of the celebrities on Dancing With The Stars. It was ONLY two years ago that Paula Deen got in hot water for saying the “N-word”. More disgraceful is that she grossly underpaid the employees at her restaurant. Dora Charles was reportedly making only $10 an hour. Why is Paula Deen allowed to be on TV? Did she go to racial slur rehab? I don’t know Paula Deen. I don’t know what’s in her heart, but I do know what’s in her wallet-wads of CASH.