Grapvine Market is now carrying Vosges chocolates. Cute little "purses" of Red Fire and Gianduja, and Red Fire and Black Pearl candy bars. The Red Fire Bar is fabulous -- the best executed "chocolate and chili" combination I have *ever* had. (Why did a Chicago company beat Texas to this? Shouldn't some local chocolatiers think about developing some chocolates with Texas ingredients? I'd love to see a line of chili chocolates featuring different types of hot chilis combined with chocolate...)

The black pearl bar, which I have not tried yet, has wasabi in it -- yep, I said wasabi. I'll let you know how it is, but Ike (cheesemonger/gourmet manager at Grapevine) said it was surprisingly good.

Did I mention I was the one who request Ike get them? And that he's selling them for $1 less than the bar at Hotel San Jose, the only other local source?

Vickie Howell and Knitty Gritty, mentioned here yesterday, also makes the Austin Chronicle this week. Read the article here.

Austin Country Limits is a nicely done photo-blog of the Austin area. My favorite is this view of the umbrellas at the Oasis.

Austin hipster Vickie Howell hosts knitting show on DIY channel. I haven't seen Knitty Gritty -- "It's not your Grandmother's Knitting Show" -- but it's a good move for Austin creative craft community. Unfortunately, It's filmed in LA.

Rumour has it that other DIY shows may come out of Austin in the near future.

Newest fashion accesory to hit the streets of Austin: The bright yellow LiveStrong bracelet. So much packed into such a little package: affordable (just $1), summer color, cool font, jelly-like texture reminescent of the 80s, and let's not forget the cause (the Lance Armstrong Foundation). Get them all over town -- Chuy's and PureAustin Gyms both have them (and I'm sure you can find them at plenty of other places).

On Howard Dean

It's worth noting that a local company, Convio, is running the Deanforamerica.com site for Howard Dean, most importantly his fundraising efforts. They've raised $7M this quarter, with over $800,000 yesterday. The opinionjournal.com had an interesting bit on the fundraising yesterday.

This campaign is fascinating from a technology perspective, because they are using "best of breed" technology all over the place. They've got a blog running on Moveable Type, they are using meetup.com to organize local meetings, they've got a .tv site for media clips (not sure this is best of breed), in addition to the Convio software which is managing their main site and fundraising (and "friend-raising" where people get their friends to donate).

I'll also note that Lieberman and Carey both host through Convio as well, although they obviously don't get it as well as Dean does.

So I read the most horrifying news. Of course, it's so surreal I have trouble believing anyone is actually serious about it. So here it is. According to the Austin Business Journal, a group of investors is proposing a casino (yes, I said casino, as in Las Vegas) for Austin. Yuck. The proposed place is at Red River and Ceasar Chavez. (Didn't we just finish cleaning up downtown less than 10 years ago?) Of course, casinos not being legal in Texas, the first order of business is to legalize gambling (start a lottery and it's all downhill from there). Luckily for us, there are 24 *other* proposed casino sites in Texas, so there's plenty of potential money to hire vetern Lege PR (read lobby) firm Christian-Hubble to get the issue to a statewide vote.

Oh yeah. Did I mention that the Austin development is being led by Barry Keenan, who (and I quote) "says he is prohibited from ownership in a casino due to his conviction in the 1963 kidnapping of Frank Sinatra Jr., when he was sentenced to life in prison plus 75 years. The courts later changed his sentence to 12 years and he was released on parole after four and a half years." Although this story sounds familiar, I can't remember what the deal was. I'll see if I can find out and let you know.

Here's the story of the Frank Sinatra Jr. Kidnapping. According to the article, Keenan rationalized he'd be doing the Sinatra family a favor by kidnapping old blue-eye's son, as it would bring them closer together. What a dumbass. About as dumb as trying to get a casino in downtown Austin.