Big Rick's Wine Country Saturday Soundtrack PODCAST 6 17 23

The Wine Country Saturday Soundtrack podcast features fun music and great information, including stories about San Francisco's Anchor Brewing only being sold in California now and their limited edition Christmas beer being discontinued. There are plans for a wildlife overpass on Highway 101 in Santa Cruz County. World Book Encyclopedia is still in print, and Toyota plans to release an electric car with a 621-mile range by 2026. There are also prank phone numbers to give out on bad dates. Tune in to the Wine Country Saturday Soundtrack every Saturday at 99.3thevine.com for more fun music and great information. It's the Wine Country Saturday Soundtrack Podcast. You know, on Saturdays, we play fun music and we feature great information at 993thevine.com with me, Big Rick Stewart, and music from my time at Live 105 and at KFOG. We also mix in some stories that I find kind of interesting, whether it's local music or food or tech or just kind of some cool things I think you ought to know about. It's always lots of fun. Fun music and great information happens every Saturday at 993thevine.com. And the Wine Country Saturday Soundtrack Podcast features great information like this. It's the Wine Country Saturday Soundtrack, fun music and great information here at 993thevine.com. I do not like this story. I do not like talking about this. There's lots of things happening in San Francisco. Seems like none of them are very good. What do you mean? You're talking about like hotels just closing, people just walking away, and then the big shopping mall, Westfield, that one evidently is like going away and just stores are closing and all kinds of things. Well, this isn't like a store that's closing. And if you're in California, well, you're still gonna be able to get yourself some of this great beer, but some of their limited edition beer is not gonna be happening. All right, Eater says, San Francisco's legendary Anchor Brewing is only going to be sold in California from now on. They're also making some changes to their annual Christmas beer, their Christmas Ale. They're just not gonna make it anymore. What? They've been making that forever, since 1975. All right, just a small amount will be for sale at the San Francisco Chasing Room, but they say it is unlikely to return. San Francisco Chronicle says that the owners of Anchor Brewing say they're just pulling back distribution from the United States and the limited Christmas beer kind of just basically a big hassle to make, so they're not gonna make it anymore. Oh, man. Anchor's team has a great history in San Francisco. They started way back in 1896, and then Fritz Maytag took it out of bankruptcy. He's, yes, related to the Maytag Appliance family, and he made beer for a long time. He started it in 1965. He sold it in 2010 to a couple of guys, and then Sapporo has owned it since 2017. No longer available around the country, but available in California, and the Christmas Ale is gone. 86, unless you head down to the Chasing Room, which I guess is a pretty good idea. That is some good Christmas Ale. It's always kind of spicy and a great cold night kind of sipping beer. Whatever. I'm Big Rick Stewart, the Wine Country Saturday Soundtrack. It happens right here at 993thevine.com. I'm Big Rick Stewart. It's the Wine Country Saturday Soundtrack. Fun music and great information. Do it every Saturday here at 993 the Vine, and thanks for tuning in. Down in Santa Cruz, they're gonna build a new overpass for Highway 101 and you're saying, so what? I mean, like, big deal. Who cares about an overpass? Ah, but this one is different. This isn't for you and me. This is an overpass for wildlife. Well, this comes to us from the Santa Cruz Sun Sentinel, and they're proposing this for Highway 101. It's kind of near San Juan Bautista, south of the city of Santa Cruz, but in Santa Cruz County, and what happened was there was this place called Rocks Ranch, and the Land Trust of Santa Cruz County bought this for $17 million. It had been looked at for development for homes or whatever, but now it's not. It's not gonna be developed, but they say, you know, it'd be great if we could connect across Highway 101 so the wildlife could go back and forth between these places. Seems like a great idea, so they're looking into this. The plan is for Caltrans to build a wildlife crossing for mountain lions, deer, bobcats, badgers, foxes, and, you know, whatever else is down there, to go over four lanes of speeding traffic up Highway 101. Of course, it's not gonna get hit by cars. It's about 160 feet wide. They're gonna have grass, brush, rocks, logs, and trees, and, of course, fencing, and they're talking about doing a study this year and maybe completing everything by 2028. This isn't the first place this has ever happened, but it's kind of the first one in Northern California. I think it's a great idea. Put some, you know, cameras up there so we can, you know, watch things and see what crosses and all that good stuff. It should be great. I love this idea. Hey, thanks for hanging out with me. It's the Wine Country Saturday Soundtrack. Fun music and great information. It happens right here every Saturday at 993divine.com. It's the Wine Country Saturday Soundtrack. Fun music and great information. I love reading these stories over at The Points Guy because, I don't know, it seems like a great job to work for the website The Points Guy because you get to do all these fun things. Like, what if you're an adult and you love just being a kid? How come I'm thinking of Bob Salem right now? I have no idea. But you love all the kid stuff, but you don't necessarily want to spend a whole cruise with a bunch of kids. But you want to have all the fun that the kids get to have. Guess what? The Points Guy says Virgin Voyages. This is the place. And if that's what you're looking for, this would be Neverland. They say it is, without a doubt, the best cruise line for adults who like to have a great time. Carousel-style sea creatures, free ice cream and candy, 24 hours a day. Wow, that's amazing. They have lots of board games on ships and they have Twister and Giant Chess. Daily activities on these Virgin Voyages include dodgeball tournaments, 80s-themed workouts, 90s boy band dance classes, summer camp arts and crafts, and dozens of kids' favorites like Candyland, Mousetrap, Hungry Hungry Hippos, and more. And yep, there's lots of adult events as well, beverages and some karaoke rooms and more. So if you think you want to act like a kid, you haven't quite grown up yet, or you want to kind of regress for a week or so, then maybe you ought to check out Virgin Voyages. Check out the Point Sky website for more information. It sounds like a lot of fun. It's the Wine Country Saturday Soundtrack. Thanks for hanging out with me, Big Rick Stewart. Fun music and great information every Saturday here at 99threetofvine.com. It's the Wine Country Saturday Soundtrack. It's the Wine Country Saturday Soundtrack. Fun music and great information with me, Big Rick Stewart. I love this story because I didn't actually think, if you would have bet me, I would have said, no way does that still exist, but someone still prints an encyclopedia. And Ars Technica at the website, they bought one and did this whole review of it. The only physical encyclopedia still in print. Now, if you're really young, you just use Wikipedia or whatever. But it's all based on encyclopedias, which was this collection of knowledge about kind of everything with photos and illustrations and more. And it would be in multiple volumes, and it would take up this giant wall space, and it was kind of an honorable thing to have the collection. I remember they used to sell them at grocery stores, and every week or whatever, you would get the latest volume and have your collection built up. So who is still doing this? World Book in Chicago. They first published in 1917. You can still buy World Book encyclopedia. So somebody bought one. So what is this like? Well, it's pretty substantial. The 2023 version spans 17,000 articles, over 14,000 pages, and 22 volumes. You've got a fair amount of shelf space there, right? They have over 25,000 photographs, illustrations, and diagrams. How much does it cost? It's about $1,200 for the whole thing, kind of investment. At Amazon, you might be able to find it cheaper. So here's what I like, though. The person that bought this said, they thought maybe they would introduce this to their kids. They'd never used a print encyclopedia. And the person that wrote the article, when I showed this to them, they looked at me like I was an alien, and they had no interest whatsoever in paging through a paper book encyclopedia of 22 volumes. We should look it up on the internet, or better yet, you know, use your voice command. Find out whatever it is you need to know. But if you want to have one, World Book is the place. I like that. Kind of interested in checking one out. Hey, it's the Wine Country Saturday Soundtrack. Fun music and great information here at 99threedevine.com. It's the Wine Country Saturday Soundtrack. Fun music and great information here at 99threedevine.com. Have you gone to get a Coca-Cola lately, and you know, open the door, it's the Mini Mart or the 7-Eleven or whatever. How many Coca-Colas are there? That would be a good Jeopardy question, because you know what? I don't know what day it is. It changes all the time. There's all of these new drinks on the shelf. I have no idea what they are, because Coca-Cola's been coming out with these Coca-Cola limited edition drinks. And I've had a few of them, and they're kind of okay. A lot of them are just, it just seems like they're super, super, super sugary kind of a sweet drink. Actually, some of them are kind of yucky. Okay, but there's a new one. Tasteofhome.com has done a taste test for us. Coca-Cola Ultimate, they say. The latest limited edition drink from Coca-Cola. And they say it's aimed at gamers. And it's supposed to taste like, this is what they say, experience points. What? This was created in collaboration with Riot Games, the publisher and developer of League of Legends and all kinds of fun games. So Coca-Cola Ultimate is kind of a lightly tropical, almost floral scent. I don't know about that. My Coca-Cola. I want it to taste like Coca-Cola. But they say it doesn't taste as chemical as some of the other kind of weird flavors they've had. They say, are you ready? It seems almost like cherry cinnamon with that kind of a vibe, a little spicy. And they're kind of thinking it's along the lines of Dr. Pepper. Okay, I like Dr. Pepper. Might give this one a try and check it out, as long as it's not like a super sugary, sweet, bubble gum, kind of limited Coca-Cola. That one went away. Well, that's a good thing. All right, so check out this new Coca-Cola Creations drink if you're a gamer or not. And let me know what you think. It is Coca-Cola Ultimate. All right. And pew, pew, pew, play some video. I'm Big Rick Stewart. It's the Wine Country Saturday Soundtrack. Here at 99threetofwine.com. It's the Wine Country Saturday Soundtrack. Fun music and great information. I'm Big Rick Stewart. Hey, have you been waiting to buy an electric car, thinking, well, I need to go at least 600 miles on a charge and that'll never happen? Well, you better start saving your pennies because Toyota says by 2026, they are going to have a car with a 621 mile range. That is totally like incredible. They say that they've got this new technology. So it's a more durable, energy dense, nickel, cobalt, lithium ion battery with a 621 mile range. And check this out. A fast charge time of just 20 minutes, which is like, you know, way faster than overnight. What's in or whatever, right? They're working on all this technology. They say it's happening. A technological breakthrough, they say. It overcomes the longstanding challenge of battery durability. And they're even working on a new research facility in Michigan near Ann Arbor. They're investing $50 million in this to kind of make sure that it works and it's focused on the battery evaluation. Don't know about the vehicle it'll be in yet or, you know, what it's going to be called or anything or the prices, of course. But they say by 2026, it's not that far away, a 600 mile range Toyota. Wow. Why don't you check that out? I'm Big Rick Stewart. It's the Wine Country Saturday Soundtrack at 99.3thevine.com. It's the Wine Country Saturday Soundtrack, fun music and great information here at 99.3thevine.com. I'm Big Rick Stewart over at the website MakeUseOf. How about this for a headline? The best prank phone numbers to hand a bad date at the end of the night. Because, you know, sometimes you're like, yeah, here's my number, I guess, yeah. And then you're like, oh, you don't want to give out the real number. But I don't know. I know some people used to give out like mortuary numbers. That was definitely a message. Okay, these aren't quite as mean as that, but these are actually pretty funny. You could get a backup phone and have a number, but forget that, try these. So this is over at MakeUseOf. So I'm not going to give you the number, because this is all confusing, but you get the idea. You can give out, this is good, Santa's personal hotline. Yes, that's a real number. And, you know, when they call you, well, you get Santa Claus, or a recording and all that good stuff. Definitely a good prank number. There's a Stranger Things, you know, the TV show? There's a Stranger Things hotline. You can give that one out as well. And this is one I really like. There's an emergency Hall & Oates hotline, they call it. And this is a fake number, if you want maybe like a little bit of entertainment with your rejection. Because you call this Hall & Oates hotline, and the people can choose from four different songs they can hear on this hotline. They can choose the Hall & Oates songs, One on One, Rich Girl, Man Eater, you know, okay, that's maybe appropriate, and Private Eyes, the Hall & Oates. The Hall & Oates hotline, that would be another option. Or, you know, the local mortuary, if you really, really want to send that rejection message, I don't know. Or your friend's phone number. I'm getting devious now. All right, let's all behave ourselves. It's the Wine Country Saturday Soundtrack. Fun music and great information, here at 99.3thevine.com. Well, those are some stories that I have featured on the Wine Country Saturday Soundtrack. Tune in at 8 a.m. every Saturday at 99.3thevine.com. I'm Big Rick Stewart. Hear music from my days at Live 105 in Cape Fog, some current songs, lots of surprises, and more. It's always lots of fun. We have a 10 at 10, a Beatles brunch at noon. It happens all day. The Wine Country Saturday Soundtrack, and the Wine Country Saturday Soundtrack podcast. Tell your friends, and thanks for listening to this podcast, and thanks for checking out 99.3thevine.com.