Okay, so I merely hoisted it out of a styrofoam cooler. Anyway, it’s a Carolina wreckfish, and you can catch it at Blackbird and other Chicago restaurants on its other natural habitat, the plate.

I may not have caught big scary fish, but I have caught a lot of cool footage during three visits to Supreme Lobster and an assortment of other fish-related interviews and adventures. I’ve still got a couple of interviews to reel in (fish puns inevitable here) so the next Sky Full of Bacon won’t be done till the end of this month. But all this fishy business is going to result in two podcasts on different aspects of the fish trade, with the next one to follow about a month later. And if you’re a chef, there will (probably) be a special event held by Supreme Lobster in conjunction with a premiere screening of the second one.  So watch for details about that.

In the meantime, thanks to Serious Eats for linking the La Quercia podcast, which boosted it by almost 300 views to 4th most viewed to date.

Pssst— I’m looking for sources.

Specifically, I’m looking for a Sky Full of Bacon-type subject or two to shoot in the next couple of months, while things are still green and growing.  Then I’ll have stuff to edit over the, well, less green months.  The many, many less green months in Chicago.

What kind of subject?  Well, what matters with Sky Full of Bacon is less the newsworthiness of something than the qualities that make it great video.  Seeing an interesting process— whether it’s making prosciutto or tromping around foraging in an urban setting— makes for great video.  But most of all what makes for great video is interesting people.  People who are committed to something to the point of being obsessive, like the indefatigable Oriana is about Asian pears.  If it’s a complex story (how fair are fair trade garbanzo beans?), it should be a print story, probably.  If it’s a fascinating person to hang out with for 15 minutes, that’s a Sky Full of Bacon subject.

It’s not that I don’t have some of these in the pipeline already— I do.  But I figure you, the reader, might know of something too.  If you’re a chef, maybe there’s a supplier who’s an interesting, deeply committed character.  Or whatever.  As past podcasts suggest, if you’re doing something interesting, invite me along and cool video may come of it.

If you have an idea, email me at mikegebert at gmail dot com.

Fulton says moo.

Exactly a year ago today, the first Sky Full of Bacon podcast, How Local Can You Go?, was made public here and, a couple of days later, here. There was content at this blog before then, but that’s really the beginning since the main and serious point has always been the videos; the blog is just what musings come to me along the way.

So where do we stand a year later? On the whole, I’m very happy with the response. My previous venture into food video, the Gorilla Gourmet video on Maxwell Street (here and here, in two parts), had sold about 150 homemade DVDs back in the day (plus an unknowable number of viewers on cable access), so getting hundreds and even thousands of viewers for some of these videos has really been encouraging (and proof that the internet is better citizen media than anything that came before it).  I won’t rehash the numbers (since I just did that here) but basically it’s juuuust shy of 20,000 total views by my best guess; to update that post slightly, both halves of There Will Be Pork are now over 1000 views, and the La Quercia one has continued to climb and now ranks #5 overall. (On the other hand, honesty forces me to acknowledge that episode 6 of The Cheeseburger Show has finally beaten total online viewings of any Sky Full of Bacon podcast, thanks to being linked on Fark. Imagine trying to tell Colonel McCormick “Good news, sir! The Chicago Tribune got linked on Fark!”)

That points to the downside, which is that building that audience is still a handcrafted process that doesn’t quite start over with each new video, but close enough. Each time, I have to go out and cadge links, embeds, referrals, etc. from both blogs and existing media.  Some might find it ironic that new media turns out to be so dependent on old media for driving traffic, but I’m not surprised and I always conceived Sky Full of Bacon as something complementary to existing food media, not a rival to it.

Actually, that’s one thing that has changed a lot.  My initial business plan (scribbled on a toothpick wrapper) was that some publication would want to stick its branding on Sky Full of Bacon and use it as a way to show its advertisers it had a foot in new media.  Well, two minutes after I launched it, print publications all went into this big death spiral bankruptcy panic which they may or may not live to come out of.  Needless to say, helping me turn my hobby into a business fell well down their to-do list.  Arguably, it would make more strategic sense than ever for them, to have a new media partner aggressively marketing itself and them… but they’ve got more immediate fish to fry.

So I quickly went to Plan B: do this for fun and see what happens.  Will it ever be a business, a brand?  Who knows?  I find it hard to believe that this kind of hand-to-mouth way of gaining an audience will remain the paradigm forever; I have to think that the ad biz will find ways to spend its clients’ money online, and that just as radio networks formed out of the dozens of individual stations that dotted the country in the 20s, networks built around audiences interested in this or that will gain momentum.  Perhaps in five years the model will be that Sky Full of Bacon will have a sponsor, or be part of an online food video network that has sponsors, and that network in turn will buy space for an embed on a zillion food blogs, payment based on how many views it gets at each site, and guaranteeing the videos placement all over the web.  Or something like that.

For now, it’s enough that it gives me a way to be part of the discourse about food in Chicago and show that food TV doesn’t have to be game shows and gimmicks.  It’s enough to have some skin in the game of whatever media is going to turn into, rather than watch it happen from the sidelines.  It’s enough to have you, dear reader-viewer.

It really is.  It’s been great to have an appreciative audience who has enjoyed along with me seeing how this developed.  Sometimes I’m as surprised as you— as I’ve noted, it just became kind of a locavore series by accident (you shoot in your region, you’re talking local) and the emphasis on pork was really accidental, too, despite the name.  There’s no great plan of what the next 20 will be, I just shoot whatever’s interesting that presents itself and I take a style from the subject matter to some degree.  I’m a little surprised it’s as earnest as it is, since I’m known to be a pretty funny and sarcastic guy, but most of the people I’ve interviewed, I’ve admired to some degree, and I’ve seen no reason to get Michael Moore-satirical on their honest efforts to make great food in a reasonably ethical fashion.  I kind of expected to be doing something breezier and goofier, but you don’t go to a place like La Quercia and experience all that and then cut it down to two minutes with wacka-wacka gags in it.  So it is what it is, as they say in Hollywood (to excuse whatever monstrosity they’ve made now).

As for the blog, this afterthought, I appreciate everyone who actually checks it to see whether I’ve eaten somewhere, made something, or am ranting about media today.  It’s even less planned and more take-what-comes than the videos, so thanks for being interested in it at all.  Year 2 begins today, a new podcast (the first of the long-promised fish series) will be along in a couple of weeks I hope, I’ll be demoing making bacon at the Baconfest in Chicago in October, and who knows what else the second year will bring.  Thanks in advance for checking it out as it comes.

Because Lord knows I have been today, watching episodes of a podcast called “Scotty Got An Office Job.” Scott Iseri is a theatrical sound designer and freelancer who got an office job (and has now, apparently, lost it, though I have some doubts as to whether that episode was a put-on) and immediately started making deadpan little goofy comedy shorts, mostly surreptitiously on his laptop’s built-in camera. They’re of the you’ll-either-find-this-hilarious-or-stupid variety, and so far his sense of absurdity (personal and office-related) has me hooked. Here’s a good example:

Unlike a lot of internet comedy things… they’re really, really well edited. (I know that’s a strange thing to say about something that was basically in one take, but see a bunch and you’ll see how crisp his comedy timing and filmmaking timing is.) The easiest way to see the lot of them is here.

An Orange Cream Hershey’s Kiss to everyone, as we tick off some happy milestones (feel free to jump to review of Taxim below if this insider stuff isn’t interesting): first off, the new podcast about La Quercia just passed 1000 views after about two weeks of being publically viewable.  And it’s chugging right along, so I expect it to be one of the more widely picked up and viewed in the end.

The first of the There Will Be Pork videos just passed 1000 too, and the second one is almost there.  (I knew those would draw a smaller audience because many would be turned off by the meatcutting and slaughter footage, but it’s satisfying that they’ve finally reached that milestone, or will shortly.)

And not too long ago, the urban foraging podcast passed an astounding 6000, which so far as I can tell makes it the most-watched piece of online food video journalism anybody in Chicago has done, especially impressive in that it’s just little old me and most of the others have the backing of some larger media outlet.  (Big big thanks to the many media outlets who have supported me even though I’m not in house, especially my most constant supporters Mike Sula and Kate Schmidt at the Reader, Helen Rosner at Menu Pages, Chuck Sudo at Chicagoist and Michael Morowitz and Rob Gardner at The Local Beet.)

All in all, that means Sky Full of Bacon is closing in on 20,000 views in its first year, which if not beyond my wildest dreams, is certainly firmly among them. Also highly encouraging is the fact that the videos keep steaming along; they don’t die off in interest after a month or two.  In fact, as planting season came round again and interest in Earthboxes and that kind of container gardening continues to boom, the very first podcast, How Local Can You Go?, popped up again and has drawn about 25 new views a week.  That’s really motivating to me, knowing that these things have a life that just keeps on running.

Here’s the ten podcasts so far ranked by views to date on Vimeo (each one also has a certain 100-ish number of iTunes views, but this is the easy way to track actual viewings by actual people):

1. 07: Eat This City (6,086)
2. 03: The Last Brisket Show (3,344)
3. 01: How Local Can You Go? (1,752)
4. 04: A Head’s Tale (1,462)
5. 02: Duck School (1,056)
6. 05: There Will Be Pork pt. 1 (1,020)
7. 10: Prosciutto di Iowa (1,006)
8. 05: There Will Be Pork pt. 2 (991)
9. 08: Pear-Shaped World (888)
10. 09: Raccoon Stories (737)
(to see them, click Video Podcasts in Categories at right)

Thanks to all who have participated, supported, and last but not least, watched and enjoyed.

P.S. Dozens of you have asked about the Sky Full of Bacon totebag I’m seen holding below in the post about the Printers Row Lit Fest. Dozens? Okay, so the actual number was zero, but anyway. Since it’s farmer’s market season, what could be cooler than a bag from your favorite food podcast? Get them here.

The scariest food promotion ever.

Definite sign of the Apocalypse: me suggesting that you follow my Twitter feed.

I went on Facebook and Twitter with skepticism. Facebook I could at least see some rationale for, it was not unlike LTHForum in its social interaction, Twitter seemed totally illiterate and ADD by comparison, a receptacle for the most banal and evanescent of brain farts.

Yet I have to admit after using both for a month or so I actually prefer Twitter. Part of the reason is that Twitter isn’t overrun with quizzes (“Which Nazi war criminal are you?”) But the anonymity and simplicity of simply scribbling something up there and people can either follow or not seems more useful and less fraught with baggage than having to decide, do I want to be this person’s friend, do I want to know this much about them, etc. Give me the zipless tweet, I can just see what’s happening in others’ worlds without having to commit to anything. (It helps, of course, if you only read Twitterers with a certain gift for the droll, 140-character aphoristic Tweet, like my old new media colleague Stephen Strong. I would surely feel different if all my Twitter contacts were 22.)  I still have one big reservation, which is not putting anything that really matters on a platform owned by somebody else; my serious content will always be somewhere I control.  But I see some point to sharing the ephemeral and trivial there.

So anyway, if you want to see what’s happening in my world without commitment, follow me here. I promise to keep the signal to noise ratio fairly high and construct a version of my persona which seems to be enjoying the Chicago restaurant scene on a busy, bon vivant level, even if I have to stay home eating ham sandwiches to do it.

Mike Gebert, creator of Sky Full of Bacon and a founder of LTHForum, will host and moderate a conversation with Tom Standage, author of An Edible History of Humanity and business editor of The Economist, Saturday June 6th at the 25th Printers Row Literary Festival, from 10:30 to 11 am at the Good Eating Stage presented by Jewel-Osco.

An Edible History of Humanity shows how food has been an important shaper of culture from the earliest days of seed cultivation to today’s global food-transportation system. Sky Full of Bacon is devoted to exploring what food means in people’s lives and how they use it to express their values and culture, so it should be an interesting and wide-ranging conversation.

At 2:15 the same day on the Good Eating stage, hot dog authors Bruce Kraig and Bob Schwartz, hamburger author Andrew Smith and moderator Kevin Pang will talk fast food icons. So c’mon out for some great food chat.

For more info: The official guide to the Lit Fest will be printed in a special section in the Friday, May 29th issue of the Chicago Tribune and the website is updated frequently.

The John Mariani saga so far, for those who haven’t been following along:

So a bunch of people including Sky Full of Bacon sniped at elite foodwriter John Mariani as he came to Chicago to tell us which of our restaurants met his high standards, some of them Twittering his antics as they happened though one of the best comments was this David Hammond LTH post; MenuPages summed up the controversy in a post temperately entitled “Why Does Everyone Hate John Mariani?”, which got so many comments attacking or defending him that first Mariani’s Esquire editor responded, and now Mariani himself has.

So basically Mariani’s rebuttal comes down to, blogs got no journalistic ethics.  Says the man whose defense is basically that even though he writes one of those hype-y magazine list things (“Best New Restaurants”), which would normally be the province of a critic, they gave him a different title so he wouldn’t be bound by the ethical requirements of a critic while still meeting the magazine’s minimum requirements for sensationalism, publicity and trendiness.

There, blogs, now you know what to aspire to as you clean your act up.

The La Quercia podcast would be done except for one more interview which has involved chasing a famous chef around the world like Inspector Fix chasing Phileas Fogg.  (Oh yeah, right, there’s something called the Restaurant Show going on right now.  Sure there is.)  Remember that this was the one that I did before the fish one I’d originally planned to do next… because it would be easier to finish up quickly.  Har har, it is to laugh.

Anyway, the La Quercia podcast will positively drip with lascivious prosciutto porn when you finally get to see it, hopefully next week, and not only is it awe-inspiringly porky in its own right, but your patience in waiting for the next one (and I know it’s practically all you could think about, day and night) will be rewarded with a special bonus Bacon Bit… in an entirely different medium than video.  So see you after the holiday weekend with all of that, I hope.

In the meantime, here’s some cool news: I upgraded my Vimeo service to their new Vimeo Plus, which means that true HD videos can be embedded right here and viewed from skyfullofbacon.com. (Before, the ones here were of somewhat lower quality, though still way better than blurry YouTube.) This applies retroactively to all the past podcasts as well; I’ve also made them bigger here to maximize your total viewing experience (though to see them in their fullest, hugest glory, you need to download the entire Quicktime file, which you can do at the Vimeo page; you have to register at Vimeo, and then you’ll see Download at the lower right of the page. The iTunes version is also the full-res file.)

Well, I spent a lovely day indoors editing prosciutto porn for you people, but meanwhile Mike Sula is meeting your food video needs by posting this video of cheesemaking in Wisconsin (which, as the second cheese video he’s posted, keeps making it harder and harder for me to do one).

Making cheddar at Grassfields Organic Cheese from mike sula on Vimeo.

Here’s the story it goes with. You could find the story from his blog post about the video, but you’d have to look very closely to find the link to the video from the story, so Sky Full of Bacon does it all for you. Incidentally, when you finally see my prosciutto porn… the footage of Paul Virant in that one was shot the very next day after Sula’s footage of Paul Virant in this one. Weird, huh.