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kquist.bsky.social
Queequist
@kquist.bsky.social
1K followers 1.5K following 5.6K posts
She/her. Friendly neighborhood anti-capitalist bartender & teacher. Book worm, angry idealist, shaker of cocktails/fists. I make drinks and I read things. Bay Area.
Formerly reading Don Quixote #dq25 🫏
Currently enjoying #AMonthOfDick
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kquist.bsky.social
In a bar. With a good DJ. And an amazing sandwich pop up.
And The Whale. 🐋
Poorly lit photo of a bar top with a big meaty-cheesy sammich in a basket and my copy of Moby Dick open next to it.
January 24, 2026 at 3:19 AM
kquist.bsky.social
Spotted on my way home, past the marina, while listening to the Big Read. 🐋

Our man is everywhere….
Street sign for Melville Square at the corner with Regatta Boulevard
January 23, 2026 at 11:56 PM
kquist.bsky.social
Wait! Team! Wikipedia has determined that the Moby Dick Coin is "trivial"! And does not meet standards of "notability" and may be removed from the site!! Uncultured bufoons!!🐋
The topic of this article may not meet Wikipedia's general notability guideline. Please help to demonstrate the notability of the topic by citing reliable secondary sources that are independent of the topic and provide significant coverage of it beyond a mere trivial mention. If notability cannot be shown, the article is likely to be merged, redirected, or deleted.
January 23, 2026 at 6:32 PM
kquist.bsky.social
My humble offering… 💜
A tube of gold bond healing lotion. I love this shit. Have used it for years after bartending shifts.
January 22, 2026 at 4:13 AM
kquist.bsky.social
I just saw Emily Watson play an absolutely evil nun in Small Things Like These and I think she could nail it. 🐋
Emily Watson as an evil nun, candles behind her somehow invoke an image of hellfire, over which she clearly reigns
January 21, 2026 at 2:52 PM
kquist.bsky.social
My favorite local dinosaurs 💜 🦃
A few urban turkeys on the side walk.
January 21, 2026 at 7:07 AM
kquist.bsky.social
If we're gonna start a Starbuck thread, I just have to include a shoutout to Ethan Hawke for a pretty good Starbuck in an otherwise lackluster Moby Dick (William Hurt as Ahab didn't quite do it for me) 🐋
Ethan Hawke, looking appropriately sea-worn as Starbuck in a version of Moby Dick.
January 20, 2026 at 8:23 PM
kquist.bsky.social
Oh. OOOOOH. Now that's a hot Ishmael. Maybe too hot? Like, he's gonna have to try real hard to seem goofy. I believe in him though.

Counterpoint: a more recent Tom Hardy could also be an excessively hot/doomed Starbuck. 🐋
Black and White photo of Tom Hardy from the early 200os where he looks like a sweet baby with these amazing little cherub lips. More recent Tom Hardy with a shaggy beard and a cigar. This man could be a whaleman, surely.
January 20, 2026 at 8:01 PM
kquist.bsky.social
BTW - I mentioned I downloaded that CLR James book on Melville that @chanda.blacksky.app posted about and I'm not far into it, but, fam, it goes hard. 🐋

(It's called Mariners, Renegades and Castaways)
Let us stop for a moment and with the vast knowledge that we have gained during the last twenty years place Ahab in some perspective. He is the most dangerous and destructive social type that has ever appeared in Western Civilization. James, C. L. R.. Mariners, Renegades and Castaways: The Story of Herman Melville and the World We Live In (pp. 8-9). (Function). Kindle Edition. For generations people believed that the men opposed to rights of ownership, production for the market, domination of money, etc. were socialists, communists, radicals of some sort united by the fact that they all thought in terms of the reorganization of society by the workers, the great majority of the oppressed, the exploited, the disinherited. Some there were, of course, who believed that the experiment, if made, was bound to result in tyranny. Nobody, not a single soul, thought that in the managers, the superintendents, the executives, the administrators would arise such loathing and bitterness against the society of free enterprise, the market and democracy, that they would try to reorganize it to suit themselves and, if need be, destroy civilization in the process. There are a number of writers, chiefly German, who have shown that they more or less understand the type. But there is not one ruler, foreign minister, state department representative or member of parliament, who, despite all the preparations for war yesterday against Nazism and today against Soviet imperialism, shows the slightest sign that he understands the enemy against whom he is preparing. It is the unique and solitary greatness of Melville that he saw and understood the type to the last degree and the relation to it of all other social types. How he was able to do this a hundred years ago, we shall also show but the first point is to understand the totalitarian type itself.
January 20, 2026 at 6:04 PM
kquist.bsky.social
Yes! 🐋

(Also, I am also really bad a at this. I have crossed that line into being Too Old To Know Actors Now and have the opposite of IMDB-brain).
Photo of Burn Gorman in costume for something where he looks appropriately evil/angry for someone like Flask in Moby Dick
January 20, 2026 at 4:12 PM
kquist.bsky.social
First nom - off the cuff - Paul Mescal.
I can see him as both a frustrated young school master, and enveloped in the strong arms of a savage harpoonneer. It's in the eyes. 🐋
close up shot of actor paul mescal
January 20, 2026 at 3:01 PM
kquist.bsky.social
Seemed the most fitting beer for my post-shift drink as I sit down to try to catch up on reading 🐋
A bottle of north coast Scrimshaw Pilsner sits in from of a copy of Moby Dick in a poorly lit bar.
January 18, 2026 at 4:13 AM
kquist.bsky.social
If you read all day and night for a bit you could still join us….
Schedule for a Month of Dick reading group- reading Moby Dick together on Bluesky during the month of January.
January 15, 2026 at 5:01 AM
kquist.bsky.social
What the fuck!?!
🐋
Thanks to the critical role that sperm whale oil played in making automatic transmission fluids and gear oils, car transmissions routinely lasted for the life of vehicle. Once alternative ingredients had to be found, transmissions began failing at unheard-of rates. Before 1972, less than 1 million transmissions failed each year; without sperm whale oil, transmission failures exploded to more than 8 million by 1975.
January 12, 2026 at 5:33 AM
kquist.bsky.social
Since I have a million things to do today I just took 4 diff "Which Moby Dick Character Are You?" quizzes and got 2 Ishmaels, a Starbuck and a Moby Dick.

Good morning! 🐋
Quiz result telling me I'm Ishmael, with a little heart lifting weights as the illustration. Lists qualities like open-minded, curious, sincerity, etc.. Another quiz result telling me I'm Ishmael with some weird line drawing of him (I guess). I forgot to capture the text from this result. Quiz result telling me I'm Starbuck, with what I assume is a still of Starbuck from one of the Moby Dick film adaptations. Lists characteristics like "voice of reason", and "use logic to define the world", "self disciplined" Quiz result telling me I'm Moby Dick - "everybody hates you but you honestly couldnt care less and you're literally just straight vibing, capsize a ship baby! get empowered!"
January 11, 2026 at 9:48 PM
kquist.bsky.social
When the world feels dark you can escape… or you can leeeeaaaan into it.
Paperback copy of Mike Davis’ Ecology of fear: Los Angeles and the imagination of disaster.
January 10, 2026 at 7:18 AM
kquist.bsky.social
Just as I suspected. The Leos of the sea. 🐋
Screen shot of the results of a personality quiz that determined that if I was a whale I’d be an orca.
January 10, 2026 at 6:32 AM
kquist.bsky.social
So, Dough-Boy, the steward?🐋
photo of the very round faced muppet bunson honeydew
January 9, 2026 at 9:20 PM
kquist.bsky.social
I was curious as to why the blue whale is only mentioned at the end of Cetology when Ish rattles off a misc. list, but actually the little-known Sulphur-Bottom whale was the blue.

Also I did not know that blue whales have yellowish bellies.

Please enjoy this blue whale skull from wikipedia.🐋
Blue whale skull set on its end, nose pointing to the ceiling. A man stands on it's frame, more than halfway up it's height and he's like maybe a little over a quarter of the height of the whole skull. Dear lord this a large animal.
January 9, 2026 at 8:26 PM
kquist.bsky.social
Uh-oh. Cetology art.

In this case, handmade art books, in folio, octavo and duedecimo sizes, of course. 🐋
www.carolinehack.com/cetology-ii/
a stack of navy blue, handmade, art books, in three sizes, with differnt whales on the covers.
January 9, 2026 at 8:02 PM
kquist.bsky.social
Here is another dog that is not mine. Little old man. Named Finn. Looks grumpy but it’s a LIE. If you start petting, you mustn’t stop. You. Must. Not.
Little brown and white terrier in profile. Little brown and white terrier with sorta grumpy looking old man eyebrows half asleep on the sofa. He would like you to let him please.
January 9, 2026 at 1:45 AM
kquist.bsky.social
Here is a dog that is not mine. Old lady, named Pixie. Maybe 2 teeth. Has to wear a hoodie to keep warm. Smaller than the cat. 2-3 thoughts max.
Tiny white Pomeranian in a fleece hoodie, small pink tongue lolling a bit due to no teefs. Same tiny white Pomeranian ina hoodie with tongue lolling nuzzling her head into a soft blanket very cutely.
January 9, 2026 at 1:41 AM
kquist.bsky.social
🐋 Learning Tashtego is from Martha's Vineyard, I wondered about his village, and am pleased to learn the Wampanoag of Gay Head (now renamed Aquinnah) are still there!

Please enjoy this photo of the stoic looking tribesman Amos Haskins who was a whaling captain of the Massasoit (1851) (link below)
old black and white photo in a gold frame showing a solid-looking native american man in a formal black jacket with white shirt and waistcoat looking straight at the camera.
January 8, 2026 at 8:58 PM
kquist.bsky.social
...while the "Moby" part is more murky...🐋
"By July 1846 even the Knickerbocker Magazine had forgotten its earlier version [of Reynold's article], reminding its readers of 'the sketch of "Mocha Dick, of the Pacific", published in the Knickerbocker many years ago...'. That account may well have led Melville to look up the earlier issue, in the very month he rediscovered his lost buddy of the Acushnet and fellow deserter on the Marquesas, Richard Tobias Greene, and began 'The Story of Toby' [the sequel to Typee]. May not 'Toby Dick' then have elided with 'Mocha Dick' to form that one euphonious compound, 'Moby Dick'?"
January 8, 2026 at 7:59 PM
kquist.bsky.social
🐋 Apparently the "Dick" part is pretty clear....
The name of Melville's most famous creation was suggested by an article by Jeremiah Reynolds, published in the New York Knickerbocker Magazine in May 1839. Mocha Dick: or The White Whale of the Pacific recounted the capture of a giant white sperm whale that had become infamous among whalers for its violent attacks on ships and their crews. The meaning of the name itself is quite simple: the whale was often sighted in the vicinity of the island of Mocha, and "Dick" was merely a generic name like "Jack" or "Tom" -- names of other deadly whales cited by Melville in Chapter 45 of Moby-Dick::
January 8, 2026 at 7:59 PM