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• Album Reviews , Artist Interviews , Reviews

At Last a Truth That Is Real: Sweet Trip’s Roby Burgos on the Band’s Journey and Their New Album

• By: Joe Hoeffner
• June 2, 2021

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My parents, bless them, didn’t know why I was so excited. I told them that I would be interviewing someone from a band called Sweet Trip, a band whose music I’ve loved and admired for some time, and they were happy for me. But they didn’t quite get why I was grinning from ear to ear like I had gotten a shiny new bicycle on Christmas morning.

My friends online, on the other hand, knew exactly why I was so excited. When I told them I was interviewing Roby Burgos from Sweet Trip, we hit the caps lock key and communicated through gibberish keysmashes like “SGHFHFGHSDGHGGHKGH,” occasionally punctuated with a joyous “I KNOW! ” or a long, exultant “AAAAAAAAAA!” I consider myself a professional at this point, but no one should be so jaded that they can’t allow themselves the occasional giddy fanboying session. I was thrilled.

Those two different reactions illustrate what makes a band like Sweet Trip so special. Founded in the early 90s by San Francisco musicians Roberto Burgos, Valerie Cooper and Viet Le, Sweet Trip has released only four albums in almost thirty years of existence, but each one is beloved by their passionate online cult following. “We get a lot of DMs telling us this music saved them,” said Cooper in an interview with Sonemic , and it’s easy to hear why people have such intimate emotional connections with this music. From the futuristic utopian sounds of Halica and Velocity : Design : Comfort to the more straightforward dream pop sound of You Will Never Know Why , there’s a tenderness to Sweet Trip’s music, a sense that someone is sharing a secret with you. Sometimes it’s joyfully noisy, other times it’s stark and melancholy, but it’s always tremendously comforting. (I made my personal list of the best Sweet Trip songs, which you can find here .)

When Sweet Trip returned this year with their new album, A Tiny House, In Secret Speeches, Polar Equals , it felt like reuniting with an old friend. It’s been twelve years since You Will Never Know Why , and after the tumult and catastrophe of the past decade 2009 feels like a half-remembered dream. But A Tiny House makes it feel like it’s been no time at all: it’s an album that could have come out in 2012, and in this case that’s very much a good thing. After the release of “Things to Ponder While Falling,” a single that felt like a swan song, I thought I might never hear new music from Sweet Trip again. Listening to A Tiny House and hearing those familiar lush, evocative chord sequences, with Cooper’s silvery coo singing through the air…well, I’m not too proud to say that I came close to tears.

This is not to say, of course, that Sweet Trip has stagnated. Instead, A Tiny House feels like a culmination, containing elements of the three previous albums while carving out an identity of its own. You’ll find buzzing electronics (“A Tiny House”), swooning dream pop (“Snow Purple Treasures”), and sprawling, shapeshifting song structures (“Polar Equals”). More than anything, though, you’ll find warmth, tenderness, and optimism, in the most colorful and eclectic album of Sweet Trip’s existence. It’s impossible to pick a favorite album of theirs, but it might be this one.

I interviewed Roberto “Roby” Burgos about Sweet Trip’s beginnings, its journey through the years, and how it ended up here.

When you first formed Sweet Trip, what were your ambitions? Was there an end goal you had in mind, or did you just want to make music and see what happened?

When we started we had no ambitions whatsoever other than to make and play music, and like you said, to see what would happen. In fact Viet, who was an original member, had to push us to be more ambitious about the music we were making, and to embrace the potential we had. If it wasn’t for him, I personally would have been just happy as a bedroom musician, because at the time, I wasn’t thinking big at all. To me there were two goals that I cared to achieve: to make the music that I wanted to make; and secondly to make music that both Viet and Valerie, especially Valerie, would like. Valerie has always been a huge inspiration for me, and her approval always meant the world to me. She is the only person I care about the most to impress. Beyond that, to me, it was all a matter of chance and circumstance – if it is well received then, great! Otherwise, carry on.

Sweet Trip came about in the Bay Area music scene, which doesn’t necessarily get the same degree of attention as New York or Los Angeles. Is there anything unique about the Bay Area that shaped the band as we know it today?

I cannot compare the San Francisco or Bay Area scene to others. That said, I feel that the San Francisco scene in a way is pretty open minded and welcoming to new ideas. I don’t think the Bay Area has shed the culture of inclusion completely, even if it sort of feels like it is heading in that direction at times. As cliché as it sounds, the Bay Area is quite a melting pot of cultures and ideologies, and even when there are scenes that are kind of exclusive, like in any other place on earth (which is pretty unavoidable), there is still room to embrace other ideas without much judgement. I think that growing up in that environment helped us embrace and nurture all the different musical influences that shaped our lives, and helped us not to feel confined to what the flavor of the day was or is.

Your early albums, Halica: Bliss Out v. 11 and Velocity : Design : Comfort , are fusions of two genres, shoegaze and IDM, that are seen as, if not dated, then of a certain time and place. But upon re-listening to them while prepping for this interview, I was struck by how they still sound so futuristic and out-of-time. How did you approach the fusion of those elements? Did you see commonalities in their sounds or approaches to music?

Halica is definitely coming from the heels of shoegaze because that style of music was fresh and extremely important to us when we were writing the songs that ended up in that record. At the same time we were really deep into the rave, electronic music underground, particularly drum and bass, and artists like Autechre, Seefeel. and Aphex Twin, just to name an obvious few. I feel that for a part, the sound of Halica came out of necessity. We had bigger ideas that we couldn’t conceive because we didn’t have the equipment to make them a reality – but we had some drum machines, and we could kind of, sort of, make some of the sounds we had in mind with guitars and lots of effects. In a way it became a compromise, like, if we can’t have huge drums and lots of strings, then we know we can sort of mimic that with shoegaze-like guitars, and IDM inspired drum patterns.

By the time we started working on Velocity : Design : Comfort , we had already grown used to this mismatch of genres and way of working that it sort of became second nature for us to abuse that combination when appropriate. I also think that the approach also made us more confident to include many other types of influences into our music.

As far as commonalities between shoegaze and IDM, yes we do see that, and we also see commonalities in many other styles and genres of music.

Although You Will Never Know Why has a more straightforward dream pop sound, there’s a real sense of wistfulness to the whole affair, right down to the title. Was it a conscious stylistic choice, or was it something that just happened?

You Will Never Know Why just happened. It wasn’t planned to sound this way or that. During the time that most of the songs were written, a lot of things were happening in life that influenced the tone of the record thematically. It is a very dark record, not in a goth, doom sort of way, but still not very positive. The despair, the immense amounts of regret, anger, loss, that were felt during that time does show in most of the songs. The title definitely speaks of that despair. It’s like crying to the heavens, “why is this happening to me?”, and the heavens rudely answer back, “you will never know why…”

There was a twelve-year hiatus in between the release of YWNKW and your latest, and in those years, to put it mildly, a lot of stuff happened. Did the tumult of the past decade have any influence on your latest album, directly or indirectly?

We honestly only became aware of the excitement around our little band one or two years before we reconnected in 2019. While the love, support, and well wishes from people have been extremely lovely and encouraging, the main influence for the new album was Valerie and I reconnecting after so many years – we missed each other dearly. The tumult of recent years did help us get back together, so we are beyond grateful for that.

I understand that overanalyzing the cover art can be a shallow move, but the cover for A Tiny House, In Secret Speeches, Polar Equals is an interesting departure from the futuristic design of VDC and the hand-drawn minimalism of YWNKW . What were you trying to get across with the art as a representation of this particular album?

Haha. First of all, when it comes to Sweet Trip, always lower your expectations.

A few things came about the decision of the Secret Speeches cover. First of all, aside from Halica , we never felt like we had a lot of say when we had to work on the VDC and YWNKW covers. For VDC , we had a really vague idea of angularity and architecture, and the designers just went with that. A few hiccups happened in the process but we let them be and thus we settled on the original artwork we have now. For YWNKW , Valerie and I were again pretty vague and pretty indecisive about what to do, and after not being able to make up our minds, Aaron Porter, who played bass with the band for several years, just decided that enough was enough, and went ahead and made the hand drawn blade. We went along with it.

For Secret Speeches , Valerie and I agreed that this time around we couldn’t be lazy about things. It also helped that we didn’t have the support of other people in the group – we were the only ones making decisions this time around. We decided that we were not going to compromise anymore, and that this time around we would have to put more effort on other things aside from just the music. Secret Speeches is a record about love, romance, passion, and nothing else. We also realized that this record was sounding quite lush and saturated to us. We felt that we wanted to capture that on the cover, and one of the things that kept floating in our minds were album covers from the 70s because those covers are really rich, like a lot of classic romantic soft rock albums that came from that era (like Chicago, Paul Davis, etc.) We also realized that the peacock chair was used in a lot of those album covers and we thought it would be neat to do the same – to do something rich and romantic, and at the same time, cheesy and kitsch.

A Tiny House feels more varied stylistically than your previous records, and yet there’s a great sense of consistency to it all. Was there a thread that connected these different approaches together when you were creating them?

There was no thread, to be honest. We normally don’t plan anything out and just go with gut feelings and emotions. Maybe the consistency that people may hear is more attributed to maturity and having a better sense of what we want out of music.

My favorite song on this album is “Polar Equals,” which calls back to other shapeshifting songs in your discography, like “Velocity” or “Fruitcake and Cookies.” What was the creation of this song like? Was it always intended to be one whole song, or was it put together from different ideas?

“Polar Equals” was written sometime around 2015 and 2017 during a sleepless night. I was remembering a time when Valerie and I were practicing songs for YWNKW , and during a break she surprised me with two CDs she burned for me, one of her favorite Cocteau Twin songs, and the other of her favorite Durutti Column songs. I always cherished that moment, and on this particular evening I was longing for times when we would get together, make music, and hang out. I picked up the guitar, played a simple chord progression, recorded it, added more guitar parts, and that’s how that came to be. When we reconnected, I shared the song with Valerie and reminded her of that memory. She received it positively and voted hard for the track to be included on the record. It is an important track for us, hence why it is also referenced in the album title. The track is made up of three separate ideas that follow the same feeling, that of longing. It made sense to stitch them together like that.

What is the one key song on each of your albums, the ones that capture the essence of each record most succinctly?

“Fish” [from  Halica ] is definitely one that captures the excitement of realizing that we had something we felt was special, and it is the song that started it all for us. “International” is another one because we feel it covers all aspects of VDC – chaotic, lush, yet simple, and it embodies that emotional investment we made towards the whole record. We feel that “Conservation of Two” sets the tone for YWNKW well, that the rest of the songs on that record are going to portray us as vulnerable people. For Secret Speeches , I think that “At Last a Truth That is Real” embodies all the elements of love, devotion, romance, and passion that this record is about.

Do you have any plans for the future?

We hope to make more music and possibly play shows again. While things are a bit uncertain, those are things that we would love to do, for sure.

Joe Hoeffner

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The best album credited to Sweet Trip is Velocity : Design : Comfort which is ranked number 838 in the overall greatest album chart with a total rank score of 2,125.

Sweet Trip is ranked number 595 in the overall artist rankings with a total rank score of 3,041.

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Utterly unique and brilliant, the second and third albums are nothing short of masterpieces

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Sweet Trip Return With Two New Songs: Listen

By Noah Yoo

Dream pop/electronica band Sweet Trip have returned with a pair of new tracks. Listen to “ Walkers Beware! We Drive Into the Sun ” and “ Stab-Slow ” below. The former track will appear on Roberto Burgos and Valerie Cooper’s forthcoming album A Tiny House, In Secret Speeches, Polar Equals , their first LP in 12 years. It’s set to be released late spring 2021 via Darla.

In addition to releasing new music, Sweet Trip are also reissuing their 2009 album You Will Never Know Why with remastered audio and three bonus tracks on January 22. The band’s sophomore album Velocity : Design : Comfort has garnered something of a cult following in the years since its release, leading to a vinyl reissue last year.

Read Pitchfork’s list of “ The 30 Best Dream Pop Albums .”

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04-06 Roby Burgos accused of sexual

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5 places to find juicy, crispy fried chicken in the Ames area

W hen you bite into a great piece of fried chicken, the first thing you notice is the crispy exterior, quickly followed by the juicy, tender meat inside.

Over the past few decades, traditional fried chicken has been replaced on many restaurant menus by tenders, nuggets and other boneless options.

There are still some great, non-chain restaurants, though, where diners can find a “crispy on the outside, juicy on the inside” piece of chicken.

Whether you’re going out to eat, taking home a meal for the family or packing a basket for a picnic, a fried chicken dinner is a winner.

Here are five establishments in the Ames area that fit our “Winner Winner Chicken Dinner” list:

Cubbie's on Main

Cubbies on Main in Nevada loves cooking old favorites for its customers. When they opened Cubbies, the Stoeffler family began offering George’s pizza, based on the iconic recipe that restaurant used. Soon after, they also added George’s broasted chicken to the menu. During changes in George’s ownership over the decades, the broasted chicken came off the menu and hadn’t been available for years. “While we were getting ready to open, people were constantly asking me if we would have George’s broasted chicken,” co-owner Shannon Stoeffler said. “The broasted chicken’s cooked under pressure for an exact amount of time, and that makes the difference. It holds the juices inside the chicken.” Another iconic Nevada menu item Cubbies offers is the nachos that were locally famous at Minsky’s pizza.

Location : 1220 Sixth St., Nevada

Contact : 515-382-2700 or cubbiesonmain.com

Good & Quick

The convenience store at Good & Quick Tire and Auto Service in Nevada might not be the place you’d expect to find delicious fried chicken, but it’s well-known to customers, who travel distances just to get the golden, crispy meals. “People come up from Urbandale, Des Moines, Ankeny, Ames,” owner Charlie Good said. “We were picked second-best chicken in the state by KCCI three or four years ago.” The chicken is brought in fresh, double battered and fried fresh several times a day. Sides available include potato salad, mac and cheese, coleslaw, potatoes and gravy, baked beans and potato wedges. New to the menu on Mondays and Fridays are Cajun chicken tenders and Cajun potato wedges.

Location : 519 Lincoln Hwy., Nevada

Contact : 515-382-3462 or facebook.com/GOODandQUICK

More: Hungry for a great, juicy burger? Here are 5 of the best in the Ames area

Nite Hawk Bar & Grill

The Nite Hawk in Slater serves broasted chicken on its menu. During broasting, chicken is fried in a pressure cooker, which keeps the meat nice and juicy, said owner Curtis Cass. “We’ve got a breading that makes our chicken great. It’s the same breading we use on our tenderloins, and people love those too,” Cass said, referring to the breaded pork tenderloin recipe that made the Nite Hawk No. 5 in the Iowa Tenderloin Contest conducted by the Iowa Pork Producers Association in 2019. The Nite Hawk has a patio and occasional concerts. Its location near the Heart of Iowa and the High Trestle bike trails makes it a popular destination for cyclists. The bar and grill shortens its food menu on weekends; broasted chicken is offered after 5 p.m. those days and all day during the week.

Location : 105 Greene St., Slater

Contact : 515-228-3500 or nitehawkbarandgrill.com

Saints Avenue Café

Saints Avenue Café in Boone has a secret recipe it uses for the breading on its fried chicken, and it’s a secret that customers can’t get enough of, some even traveling from the Des Moines area for chicken dinners. “We are a buffet and we do have a sit-down menu as well,” general manager Bryan Messmaker said. Fried chicken is available on the buffet and menu as well as for carryout, delivery and catering. Recently, Saints Avenue catered 500 pieces of fried chicken to a business event with 250 people and received great feedback, he said. “Most of the food we have is homemade,” he said. “Our homemade mac and cheese is really popular too.” Even the green beans and corn don’t just come out of a can, Messmaker said. They get doctored up with extra ingredients.

Location : 1312 S. Story St., Boone

Contact : 515-432-7399 or facebook.com/SaintsAvenueCafe

Sweet Caroline’s Kitchen & Cocktails 

Sweet Caroline’s in downtown Ames has a Nashville vibe that’s driven home by its menu, which includes some of the best fried chicken in central Iowa. Hand breaded and fried fresh to order, the chicken is available Southern style, with no heat added, or feel the heat with Nashville style. Chicken is accompanied by a choice of two "Farm Fresh Sides" from a selection of 16 comfort foods like mac and cheese, mashed potatoes and country gravy, buttered sweet corn and sliced cucumber salad. Sweet Caroline's menu includes other Southern favorites, like fried catfish, hushpuppies, meatloaf, shrimp po'boys and Nanner Puddin shakes. Named for the Neil Diamond song that’s synonymous with a Cyclone home win, Sweet Caroline’s features a full bar, a large menu and a courtyard patio.  

Location : 316 Main St., Ames

Contact : 515-802-4105 or sweetcarolinesames.com

More: Music on the breeze: 7 free and low-cost outdoor concert series to check out for the 2024 season

Ronna Faaborg covers business and the arts for the Ames Tribune. Reach her at [email protected] .

This article originally appeared on Ames Tribune: 5 places to find juicy, crispy fried chicken in the Ames area

Nick Jonas Hugs Daughter Malti, 2, During Theme Park Trip: See Adorable Photos

The 'Sucker' singer shared tons of cute pictures, showing off his fatherly side, as he spent a day at an amusement park with his in-laws.

Nick Jonas   is an amazing dad! The Jonas Brother, 31, shared a sweet moment with his two-year-old daughter  Malti  during a day out at a theme park on his Instagram on Wednesday, June 26. The “Burnin’ Up” singer shared three photos from their daddy-daughter day, with his wife  Priyanka Chopra’s   parents appearing in the final shot, where Malti met some of her favorite TV characters.

For the outing, Nick rocked a denim button-down shirt, a pair of black slacks, and white sneakers. He also accessorized with a set of shades. Malti was wearing an offwhite jumper, but in the second photo she matched her daddy with a denim jacket of her own. She also accessorized with a white cap. In the first photo, Nick was crouching down to give his daughter a hug. In the second shot, the two of them were holding hands as they walked by the water.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Nick Jonas (@nickjonas)

The last photo featured appearances from Priyanka’s relatives, including her mom, and they got to meet some of the characters from  Paw Patrol . Nick referenced meeting the cartoon characters in his caption. “We met  Paw Patrol ,” he wrote after a heart emoji. Priyanka commented on the post with a heart-eyes emoji.

Nick and Priyanka, 41, welcomed Malti via surrogacy in January 2022. Over the years, they’ve shared glimpses into their lives as parents, with tons of adorable photos and videos of Malti. Other than the amusement park trip, it’s clear that they both love taken part in fun activities with their daughter, like when the  Baywatch  actress shared a cute video of Nick playing with Malti in a ball pit, back in February.

As Malti has been getting older, Nick opened up about how much he’s loved getting to see her personality bloom in an appearance on the  Read the Room  podcast in November. “Her sense of humor and her ability to laugh at situations, and even her mischievous attitude, it’s great,” the  A Little Bit Longer  star said.

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Why saskatoon is an epic girls’ trip destination.

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Saskatoon offers an edgy twist on the traditional girls’ trip experience.

Looking for an adventurous alternative to a typical girls’ trip destination? Saskatoon, nestled in the heart of Saskatchewan, offers a refreshing departure from the usual script.

You can forget all about the overdone clichés like sandy beaches and luxury spas in this Central Canadian city. Saskatoon offers a decidedly different girls’ trip experience, where you can tap into your wild side and go off the beaten path with your BFFs. Expect a combination of adrenaline-inducing adventures, a vibrant food and drink scene, and unique wellness experiences you can’t find anywhere else. In other words, it’s got something for everyone in your circle.

Here’s how Saskatoon can make your next girls’ trip epic.

Get behind the wheel of a race car

Sutherland Automotive Speedway

Put your girls’ trip to Saskatoon into turbo mode at Sutherland Automotive Speedway. Located just north of Saskatoon, this nonprofit racetrack offers the chance to take a race car on a spin around a progressive banked oval track. Get your cameras ready—you’ll suit up racing-ready gear, climb through the window of a stock car, and take 10 exhilarating laps with a professional driver. Then, it’s your turn to take the wheel. You’ll switch places and press the pedal to the metal for a rush like no other—and unforgettable memories with your crew.

Have a picnic on a paddleboard

Paddleboarding and sauna sessions with Back2Nature Wellness and Adventures

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Elevate your girls’ trip in Saskatoon with a truly unique wellness. Back2Nature Wellness and Adventures , a woman-owned outdoor adventure company, offers the perfect blend of active restoration and natural beauty.

Its one-day stand-up paddleboard, brunch, and sauna retreat makes the perfect addition to a girls’ trip to Saskatoon. You and your friends will take a guided stand-up paddleboard trip on the serene South Saskatchewan River and float by the scenic city. When you work up an appetite, you can refuel right on your board with a picnic brunch box full of fruit, cheese, bread, and other nibbles from The Prairie Grazer .

After your paddle, you can hit the wood-burning barrel sauna to loosen your muscles. Dive a little deeper with oracle card pulls to spark heartfelt conversations and set the tone for the rest of the trip. Leave some room for s’mores by the outdoor fire!

Take a cocktail class at Lucky Bastard Distillers

Cocktail class at Lucky Bastard Distillers

In Saskatoon, your girls’ trip happy hour gets especially joyous at Lucky Bastard Distillers . Founded by a lottery winner, Lucky Bastard Distillers brims with girl power. It boasts one of Canada’s few female distillers. And its bottle labels and cans feature pin-up girl artwork created by women. It also focuses heavily on local flavors, relying on 100 percent Saskatchewan wheat for its famous vodkas.

You and your friends can go behind the scenes of this distinctive distillery on a free public tour, which includes up to three samples. Better yet, take a cocktail class in its 1,600-square-foot event room with tufted leather couches and sparkling chandeliers for a Prohibition-era vibe. Its resident mixologists can give you hands-on lessons on how to make spirited cocktails, like the Luck of the Draw, Lucky Bastard’s take on a Singapore Sling.

Taste outdoor-aged whisky in a flower field

Black Fox Farm & Distillery

Prefer darker spirits? Head to Black Fox Farm & Distillery —one of the few farm-to-still distilleries in North America. Founded by farmers, this distillery grows 90 percent of the ingredients used in their products. What’s more, it claims to be the only distillery in the world that ages its whisky barrels outside, enhancing flavors with the constant interactions between whiskey and prairie wood in fluctuating temperatures on the prairies. Take a tour to sample the whisky straight from the barrel.

Afterward, savor a crafted cocktail and wander through their dreamy flower fields, where you can hand pick your own bouquet—an idyllic addition to your Saskatoon girls’ trip itinerary.

See where the buffalo roam

Bison at Wanuskewin Heritage Park

Home to Canada’s oldest archeological dig site, Wanuskewin Heritage Park takes travelers back more than 6,000 years to a time when the thundering hooves of bison (also known as buffalo) echoed through the prairies and nomadic Indigenous peoples roamed the Northern Plains. The bison disappeared from this land around 150 years ago, but they were reintroduced five years ago thanks to a partnership between Wanuskewin and Parks Canada. You can now see the park’s conservation bison herd roam freely in the grasslands from a viewing platform—a sight that will leave you awestruck.

After seeing the magnificent creatures, head inside to the museum to learn about the Indigenous peoples who have called this area home for thousands of years and the importance of bison to their heritage. It also features phenomenal art galleries, regular dance and music presentations, and a restaurant focused on Indigenous flavors.

Savor Saskatoon’s adventurous culinary scene

One of the most memorable things to do on a girls’ trip to Saskatoon is eat. This city is filled with a mix of quirky and delectable restaurants worth writing home about—like Baba’s Homestyle Perogies . It’s the world’s only drive-thru pierogi restaurant. Its staff makes up to 10,000 pierogies and 3,000 cabbage rolls every day. People of Ukrainian descent comprise up to 15 percent of Saskatoon’s population, so sampling these tasty dumplings is a must if you want an authentic taste of the local culture.

Farm-to-table food at Odla

For more local and regional fare, head to Odla . Located in Saskatoon’s historic Broadway neighborhood, this farm-driven restaurant exclusively serves ingredients from the region, including house-made vinegar, which substitutes for citrus. Start with the sourdough bread and honey butter before digging into mouthwatering mains, like gnocchi with pea shoot pesto and whipped feta, steak frites with bone marrow mayo, and grilled trout with kimchi rosti.

Thirteen Pies

To end your girls’ trip on a high note, head to Thirteen Pies , a horror-movie themed pizza joint with tiki-inspired cocktails. The name of each pizza nods to the world of horror cinema (like “The Pies Have Eyes,” a pepperoni, provolone, and mozzarella pie). Splurge with add-ons like the everything seasoning crust and truffle honey dipping sauce—you won't regret it.

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Oilers, GM Ken Holland part ways after 5 seasons following their trip to the Stanley Cup Final

The Associated Press

June 27, 2024, 2:41 PM

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EDMONTON, Alberta (AP) — The Edmonton Oilers said Thursday general manager Ken Holland will not have his contract renewed, calling it a mutual decision between the veteran executive and the NHL club.

Holland spent the past five seasons as the Oilers’ GM and built a team that advanced to Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Final before losing to the Florida Panthers. His departure has been anticipated since Connor McDavid’s longtime agent, Jeff Jackson, took over as CEO of hockey operations last August.

“Over the past five seasons as general manager, Ken has not only built the Edmonton Oilers into one of the NHL’s best teams, but he has also established a deeply rooted foundation of success and a culture of winning that will continue well into the future,” Jackson said in a statement confirming Holland’s departure from the organization.

“Thanks in large part to Ken’s outstanding work, Edmonton has become a destination city for players around the National Hockey League.”

Holland, 68, spent 22 seasons as GM of the Detroit Red Wings, winning the Cup three times: in 1998, 2002 and 2008.

Building around McDavid and elite forward Leon Draisaitl, the Oilers finished the season looking like the potential champions many expected to see when Holland, who was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in the builder category in 2020, took over for interim GM Keith Gretzky on May 7, 2019.

But Edmonton’s rise to the top came in fits and starts, with Holland coming under fire over much of his tenure for building a top-heavy roster and failing to solve the team’s goaltending woes.

The Oilers lost in the qualifying round of the playoffs in the pandemic-shortened 2019-20 season, then were swept by the Winnipeg Jets in the ’21 postseason.

Edmonton appeared to turn a corner when it advanced to the 2022 Western Conference final before being swept by Colorado, but the team regressed the following season by losing in the second round to eventual champion Vegas.

Faith in Holland’s ability to build a winner in Edmonton was shaken to its core earlier this season when the Oilers stumbled out of the gate with a 3-9-1 record.

However, after Jay Woodcroft was fired and replaced as coach by Kris Knoblauch, the Oilers transformed into one of the league’s best teams, punctuated by a 16-game winning streak that was one shy of the league record.

And by the time the Oilers headed into Game 7 of this year’s Cup final, the team was getting solid goaltending from Stuart Skinner and contributions throughout the lineup, addressing two of the biggest criticisms levied against Holland.

Now the Oilers have a major hockey operations role to fill as they head into the offseason looking for a way to make the final step toward winning their sixth Stanley Cup title and first since 1990.

AP NHL: https://apnews.com/hub/nhl

Copyright © 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, written or redistributed.

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