The Quickest Shenny You'll Ever Read

Dear Friends:

Greetings from South Dakota! N & I are flying back today from our annual trip to his onetime home, where something like 4 dozen of his 9 million relatives live, half of whom amass at Aunt Joan’s lakehouse each Fourth.

I’ve been here pretty much since our last issue, and what with all the seasonal cooking and drinks-making, and playing the family’s variation on Liverpool Rummy they call ‘Gorgeous’, and figuring out which of the 3 nearby Hy-Vees to run to, and bruising a rib hauling my 47yo ass up out of the water and into a wobbling speedboat, I haven’t had much time to write.

So this week’s issue is … let’s call it a photo essay? of Summer 2025? (Including an abrupt return of Things I Did Not Buy At The Antique Store.) Odds are this Shenny will be too long for email, so be sure to click on the relevant link at the bottom, or the above banner, to get all the goods.

Yours:
Dave

Endorsements

1. Aunt Carrol’s Pasta Cucumber Salad
Simple but brilliant, (N’s aunt) Carrol throws two summer salads together by adding pasta to her cucumber salad. This one (other than N’s orzo caprese salad with corn¹) is the cookout side I got seconds and wanted thirds of.

8oz bowtie pasta
1 lg cucumber, thinly sliced
1 lg vidalia onion (or 3 green onions), thinly sliced
1 1/2 tsp dried dill
3/4 cups white vinegar
1/3 cup water
1/2 cup sugar
1 tbsp oil
1 tbsp prepared mustard
1/2 tsp each salt and pepper

Boil pasta in salted water per instructions (about 12 mins). Drain and rinse with cold water until cool, shake or let sit until well drained. Stir pasta, cucumber slices, onion, and dill in large bowl. In a small bowl, whisk vinegar, water, sugar, oil, mustard, salt, and pepper until sugar is dissolved. Pour over pasta and stir. Chill at least 2 hours.  

2. Hayman’s Old Tom Gin
This one’s for gins and tonic you want to make a little fancy and a lot more smooth. I ordered a martini at the airport lounge in Denver and this was the gin they used:

The bartender kindly dug the broken empty out of the trashbin for me to snap that pic. It was one of the best martinis I ever had, and I grabbed a bottle when we got here. Then, less exhausted and airport-ragged, I realized Hayman’s was a bit less dry and more floral than I tend to like in a martini gin. But Jesus was it perfect with tonic. (The bartender said it’s also best in Tom Collinses.) And that label!

Shenny’s Super Summer Photo Essay

If I were on social media, these would be Insta posts I’d check a few times an hour to see how many likes they were racking up, but those days are behind me. Now I Substack, which provides its own metrics to obsess over.

In June I went to a Giants game by myself at always-pretty Oracle Park:

Where I learned CPR via jumbotron:

And also learned how grey my hair is in indirect ballpark sunlight:

N & I caught a screening of the Armando Iannucci and Sean Foley stage adaptation of Dr. Strangelove, with Steve Coogan in the Peter Sellars roles. It showed at the Vogue Theater, whose concessions counter had this very good (and effective, for me at least) tip jar:

I caught Esa-Pekka Salonen’s final concert as music director of the SF Symphony, with just Mahler’s 2nd on the program, with full chorus:

Longtime Shenny readers will recall my lifelong love of fireworks, so in South Dakota, I had to go shopping. Here are some Things I Could Not Possibly Buy at the Fireworks Outlet:

God I wish I was at the shoot for this photo. Bless this model.

Someone should make Gender Reveal Makeup Compacts: Is it eye-shadow or blush?

So confusing.

I did, however, buy some very good Roman candles:

And I couldn’t resist a slow stroll through our favorite antique store outside town. For the final time (though I can’t promise), here are Things I Did Not Buy There:

Kudos to whomever put that nativity figure there.

Bless the Dakota housewife who once owned this much-read edition.

N’s both surprised and a little mad I didn’t buy this one.

Finally, we made it to the lake. Here I am on a boat. Hat from TJ Maxx. Shades from Aunt Joan. Body from lifelong indoorsy-ness:

And here I am in the water:

Wherever your summer takes you, I hope it makes you as happy as I was in that lake.

This week’s still from a thing I watched is from One Crazy Summer (1986), which is sort of my Jaws.

1. I’d endorse, but as N told me there really isn’t a recipe he could share. ‘Just endorse adding corn to caprese salad,’ he said, if that helps. Anyway, his was the salad e v e r y o n e raved about all weekend long.