This is a little out of order, it fits back with the Toronto stories, but I just had to catch myself up and make sure I told you about this one, before I forgot...
Labour day long weekend in Toronto spells A-I-R-S-H-O-W. Fine if you’re an ‘Anorak’ and you like sitting around in the cold and wet (in your anorak) inhaling jet fuel all morbidly waiting for something to crash – but it’s not everyone’s cup of tea. Where T and T live, it means a weekend of ‘CROOOOOAAAHHHH’ as jets fly overhead and rattle the windowpanes.
Sticking around in Toronto was not an option so we hit the open road in the Honda (incidentally the long lost Canadian twin of my own black Honda), in search of small town adventure. We were off to paint the town Beige! T had presented me with some options of where we could go, but as I hadn’t heard of any of them, I asked her husband (also T) to decide. He chose, Bobcaygeon.
Bobcaygeon is a little town in the Kawartha Lakes region of east-central Ontario and the name of a single by Canadian band, the Tragically Hip. Although I’d never heard either reference, T+T assured me that Candians all know the song Bobcaygeon and so it would be a quirky place for us to visit – like saying you’ve actually been to Bonnie Doon.
It rained most of the way there, and most of our first afternoon. We secured lodgings with Joyce, who could have been the fifth Golden Girl, a lovely Canadian lady who’d lived at the little inn on the edge of the lake her whole life. Her parents had owned it before her and Joyce, as the name might foretell, was no longer a girl.
We whiled away our rainy afternoon eating butter cakes (deliciously deadly), and deep fried pickle (not so delicious) at an unremarkable sports bar in the main street. On Joyce’s advice we enjoyed a delicious meal at the local Chinese and took a stroll around the village after dinner.
In the space of five minutes, we saw, not one but two shooting stars right in the main street of Bobcaygeon - the first I’d seen in 13 years. Is that because since then I’ve lived in cities, or because I don’t bother to look at the stars anymore, like I did when I was wide-eyed and 17?
We toyed with the idea of calling it a night, but decided instead to head to the another inn which had a bar and some pools tables for a quick drink and a few frames. Lets just say, it’s lucky we weren’t playing those uniquely Australian pool rules where you have to run around the table with your pants around your ankles, or that might have happened to me while I was playing T.
The pool table seemed to work fine, while we were playing. Tenille exhibited the famous spider pool stance. A body shape so angular and sculptural, that her husband wrote a poem about it. After we’d finished playing and we decided to let the locals have a game, the pool table decided it was swallow the balls and not release them. There was much jiggling and rocking of the pool table, T extracted half a kilo of chalk squares, but still the balls wouldn’t release.
At about the same time a large group of girls who would have been 19 top end, took over the bar. What had been a quiet local drinking hole in a sleepy fishing town was suddenly transformed into a bad surburban nightclub, complete with bad modern R’n’B hits.
Where there are young, stupid drunk girls – young, stupid, drunk, opportunistic boys soon follow. It didn’t take long before the small bar was run of its feet quite literally. The barmaid was in a complete flap and an assortment of random helpers tried to restock the fridges in the dinky little bar faster than they were being emptied. And then somebody switched on the Karaoke machine.
We hadn’t even noticed they had one. But the girlies did. And so began an hour or more of painful modern R’n’B hits sung badly and with no performance. The secret to karaoke is that you actually have to know the words to what you’re singing or most people can’t actually sing and keep up with the bouncy ball.
We’d had a few drinks and T and I decided we wanted to sing something. But the young kids had decided they had a ‘closed shop’ on the Karaoke machine. Annoyed, we persisted in trying to win over the girlies to let us sing one song, but they kept insisting that they were singing the next song on this CD etc. It was painful to listen to as Karaoke generally is. And then they made the fatal mistake of playing, Rapper, Vanilla Ice’s 1990 hit, Ice Ice Baby. These kids weren’t even born when this song topped the charts and brought hip hop to a mainstream worldwide audience – they had heard it though and were trying to sing along, but they didn’t know the rap.
They’d pushed us too far, and watching them butchering what should have been a classic Karaoke moment, was too much to bear. T and I barged to the microphones and I said, “I actually know this song” and grabbed the microphone out of some kid’s hand and started rapping. I’ve always had a great memory for obscure and useless details (that never extended to the periodic table of elements unfortunately) but I did remember all the words.
With crowd pleasing 1990s hip hop moves T and I belted out,
To the extreme I rock a mic like a vandal
Light up a stage and wax a chump like a candle
Dance go rush to the speaker that booms
I'm killing your brain like a poisonous mushroom
Deadly when I play a dope melody
Anything less than the best is a felony
Love it or leave it you better gain weight
You better hit bull's eye the kid don't play
If there was a problem yo I'll solve it
Check out the hook while my DJ revolves it
And so we continued to the end of the song. The young kids had stopped their yahooing and were actually getting in to T and my rap, dancing along. When we finished, there was much applause and “That was really awesome”. Little did they know that while they were busy being conceived I’d been rapping along to that one at the year 7 disco.
After that, getting a hold of the mike for another powerful duet, this time of Gloria Gaynor’s “I will survive” complete with ‘hot hot hot’ disco moves was not so difficult. We’d won over the rude, badly dressed, talentless kids with our intimate knowledge of early 90s hip hop. Because everything old is someday cool again.
Monday, September 27, 2010
Whitehouse black sniper
I arrived in DC and got that ‘arriving in San Fran’ feeling all over again. Sketchy neighbourhood, lots of sirens (which were to be a recurring theme during my three days in DC.) This time though, I put on my big girl knickers and just toughened up. I could have spent my first afternoon and night holed up in the spare room of Ayeh’s house, or I could go out exploring. With only a week before I had to head back to OZ, I wasn’t going to waste any more time being a big sooky-la-la.
I walked from Ayeh’s house to the subway at 4.30pm with vague plans to go to the National Mall, maybe the Whitehouse. In the fifteen minute walk to the subway, I was the only person ‘without’ colour that I saw. It was such a contrast from so much of the America I had already experienced.
I bought a subway ticket and minutes later popped up at the Navy monument. I wandered down in the general direction of the Whitehouse and stumbled across the Hoover Building – FBI headquarters – completely by accident. There’s something a little bit James Bond about peering at the security tagged employees emerging from the Hoover Building – after all, they’re FBI. They do however, look absolutely nothing like James Bond (any of the versions). They look mostly like geeky CITEC employees (Kieran, naturally I don’t mean you).
I continued walking along Pensvylvania Avenue and soon I was again face to face with another iconic slice of Americana – the Whitehouse, with black snipers. Since 9/11 I understand that security is a big deal in the US, but black snipers on the Whitehouse? Way to go to ruin a good photograph!
I snapped lots of images of bright blue sky contrasting the gleaming white structure of the Whitehouse with black suited spidermen toting machine guns darting around on the roof. Personally, I think they should get the Whitehouse snipers some white uniforms. I’m surprised nobody else has thought of this yet. Think about it. For starters, it would my much cooler in summer, it would be much better for tourist photographs, and to a certain extent, they’d be camouflaged, which surely would aid in their task, don’t you think? I wonder if Obama has fixo-grams? Perhaps I should send this in to the Whitehouse suggestion box?
After a few photos it was starting to get dark, and being a traveling day, I was starving due to my self-imposed ban on crappy, overpriced airport food. I decided on dinner at a place called Poets and Busboys, a famous bookstore slash restaurant slash political meeting point which was unfortunately 20 blocks away – but I needed the exercise. After a delicious meal of meatloaf and iced tea I was back at Ayeh’s place.
Ayeh is another lovely airb’n’b host – my last for this trip. Strangely not crazy, not even odd. Just a sweet Iranian born overeachiever. She’s working for a think tank in DC while also completing her PhD in Economics. Like I said, classic overachiever. The only things she had in common with the other Airb’n’b hosts was the whole no cooking thing – and the stove-top kettle (which Missy explained to me in Texas is due to the fact that they all have coffee makers and don’t drink tea – so the kettle is really a decorative piece rather than a functional kitchen gadget).
I walked from Ayeh’s house to the subway at 4.30pm with vague plans to go to the National Mall, maybe the Whitehouse. In the fifteen minute walk to the subway, I was the only person ‘without’ colour that I saw. It was such a contrast from so much of the America I had already experienced.
I bought a subway ticket and minutes later popped up at the Navy monument. I wandered down in the general direction of the Whitehouse and stumbled across the Hoover Building – FBI headquarters – completely by accident. There’s something a little bit James Bond about peering at the security tagged employees emerging from the Hoover Building – after all, they’re FBI. They do however, look absolutely nothing like James Bond (any of the versions). They look mostly like geeky CITEC employees (Kieran, naturally I don’t mean you).
I continued walking along Pensvylvania Avenue and soon I was again face to face with another iconic slice of Americana – the Whitehouse, with black snipers. Since 9/11 I understand that security is a big deal in the US, but black snipers on the Whitehouse? Way to go to ruin a good photograph!
I snapped lots of images of bright blue sky contrasting the gleaming white structure of the Whitehouse with black suited spidermen toting machine guns darting around on the roof. Personally, I think they should get the Whitehouse snipers some white uniforms. I’m surprised nobody else has thought of this yet. Think about it. For starters, it would my much cooler in summer, it would be much better for tourist photographs, and to a certain extent, they’d be camouflaged, which surely would aid in their task, don’t you think? I wonder if Obama has fixo-grams? Perhaps I should send this in to the Whitehouse suggestion box?
After a few photos it was starting to get dark, and being a traveling day, I was starving due to my self-imposed ban on crappy, overpriced airport food. I decided on dinner at a place called Poets and Busboys, a famous bookstore slash restaurant slash political meeting point which was unfortunately 20 blocks away – but I needed the exercise. After a delicious meal of meatloaf and iced tea I was back at Ayeh’s place.
Ayeh is another lovely airb’n’b host – my last for this trip. Strangely not crazy, not even odd. Just a sweet Iranian born overeachiever. She’s working for a think tank in DC while also completing her PhD in Economics. Like I said, classic overachiever. The only things she had in common with the other Airb’n’b hosts was the whole no cooking thing – and the stove-top kettle (which Missy explained to me in Texas is due to the fact that they all have coffee makers and don’t drink tea – so the kettle is really a decorative piece rather than a functional kitchen gadget).
The Robie House
I felt guilty about spending so much time in Macy’s yesterday, when there is so much more to see in Chicago. So I planned a full itinerary of cultural excursions for my last full day in the windy city. I started out early at the Chicago Art Institute down at Millennium Park. Another fine American Gallery with a very impressive collection of French impressionists. Between the Chicago Art Institute and the Met I think their combined collections could rival my favourite, the Musee D’Orsay in Paris. But then again, maybe it’s just been a long time since I was last in Paris. Sigh.
After lunch I headed out to the suburbs to the edge of the University of Chicago to my pre-booked tour of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Robie House, touted as his finest example of Prairie Style residential architecture. Being in the suburbs, it was a bit tricky to get to, but I had a brilliant plan. I would catch the el most of the way there and then just hop a cab from the El station right to Robie House. Perfect – in theory.
I arrived at the el station out in the suburbs with 40 minutes to spare before the tour started. After missing out on a few things in San Fran and New York, I’d made sure I had booked ahead when I was still in Toronto. So, I wandered out of the el station onto the main street to hail a cab. Hmmmm, no cabs. Hmmm. 10 minutes ticked by. Hmmm. I went and asked the station security guards if they knew the number for a local taxi company. They looked at each other unhelpfully and said no, the didn’t know the number for a cab. Hmmm turned into a huff.
So I went back outside and spent a further 15 minutes trying to catch the phone numbers of cabs whizzing past the el station with passengers in them. A highly unsuccessful pursuit. Time was ticking by, now I had only 10 minutes until the tour started and I was still at the el station.
I went back inside and asked the station master if he knew the number for a cab, he didn’t but they looked something up in a phone book and gave me the number of a local supplier. I called the number. Nobody answered. I called a few times, and nobody answered.
I went back inside and asked to see the phone book again, and this time called Yellow Cabs. They said they could get a cab to my location in about 20 minutes or so. That would be 10 minutes after the tour had already started. ‘Don’t bother, I replied’.
Now I was really pissed off. I was actually furious. Furious at all the useless people standing around who don’t know something as simple as the number to call a cab. I know it’s not their job to help me. But they’re all just mooching around and I have shelled out $50 for this tour and it’s the last tour of the day on my last day in Chicago.
I walked back inside, mad as hell now to ask the station manager where the bus outside goes to. I said I wanted to go to the Robie House at which point the young guy who had helped me with the phone book said, “Why didn’t you say that in the first place – you just catch the number 55 bus across the street and walk two blocks”. Grrr. I ran across the street to wait for the number 55 bus. The tour had already started five minutes ago. Then a vacant cab started driving towards me. I practically stood in the middle of the road to flag it down and arrived flustered at the Robie House only 15 minutes late. Fortunately they were able to catch me up to where the rest of the tour group was at – in the children’s playroom.
In the early 1908 Fredrick Robie, commissioned Frank Lloyd Wright to build a grand home for him, his wife and two children at the edge of the University of Chicago. Frank Lloyd Wright created a masterpiece for the family that even now reveals a level of domestic innovation that’s still not mandatory in all new homes – like a ducted vacuuming system. The final bill was $58,500 which roughly translates to about $1.3 million in today’s money.
The home was completed in 1910 and included a three car garage. This is at a time when the model T Ford had only been around two years. One bay of the garage included a mechanics pit and the another included a carwash. A carwash!
Inside the home, the custom dining table designed by Wright included plinths at each corner that housed electric lamps. Electric lamps built into the dining table in 1910 people. The original shower, which has been restored in the home is an industrial-looking contraption that features a series of chrome pipes that circle and loop around. The pipes have a series of jets coming from them so the bather, stands in the centre and water spurts from jets in every direction at various heights to wash you quickly and efficiently – again, lets not forget this is Illinois in 1910!
The home is a masterpiece. Both in terms of the craftsmanship and use of materials – the different types of wood etc, and also in terms of the pure innovation for the time.
The tour was definitely a highlight from my Chicago leg and I’m glad that I persevered with the challenging transport arrangements to get there.
And then it was Friday night, my last night in Chicago. Patrick whom I’d met at the Green Mill the night before had told me not to make plans, that if I wasn’t doing anything, he’d like to take me to some places that most tourists wouldn’t know about.
He called in the middle of the taxi incident to ask if I’d like to go sailing from Monroe Harbour at 6pm. Having missed out on sailing at the Hamptons, I said ‘yes’. Getting to Monroe Harbour was a cinch after my adventures earlier in the afternoon. So I waited for Pat and whoever else was coming sailing, it had sounded like maybe it would be a group of his friends? He got stuck in traffic and arrived eventually, with an older guy, Captain Dan, who turned out to be his dad.
So the three of us went sailing out on Monroe Harbour on Patrick and Captain Dan’s yacht as the sun set over Chicago. It was definitely a magical experience and a completely unexpected adventure in Chicago.
After a few hours we sailed back into the harbour and Patrick and I went out to a bar in Wicker Park, near I was staying. Who knew five blocks up from the sketchy Polish triangle near where I was staying were a throng of uber trendy bars and clubs? And so after a kind of unfriendly start, I managed to find some really friendly locals in Chicago and as always, ended up on a crazy, unplanned adventure with local folks.
After lunch I headed out to the suburbs to the edge of the University of Chicago to my pre-booked tour of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Robie House, touted as his finest example of Prairie Style residential architecture. Being in the suburbs, it was a bit tricky to get to, but I had a brilliant plan. I would catch the el most of the way there and then just hop a cab from the El station right to Robie House. Perfect – in theory.
I arrived at the el station out in the suburbs with 40 minutes to spare before the tour started. After missing out on a few things in San Fran and New York, I’d made sure I had booked ahead when I was still in Toronto. So, I wandered out of the el station onto the main street to hail a cab. Hmmmm, no cabs. Hmmm. 10 minutes ticked by. Hmmm. I went and asked the station security guards if they knew the number for a local taxi company. They looked at each other unhelpfully and said no, the didn’t know the number for a cab. Hmmm turned into a huff.
So I went back outside and spent a further 15 minutes trying to catch the phone numbers of cabs whizzing past the el station with passengers in them. A highly unsuccessful pursuit. Time was ticking by, now I had only 10 minutes until the tour started and I was still at the el station.
I went back inside and asked the station master if he knew the number for a cab, he didn’t but they looked something up in a phone book and gave me the number of a local supplier. I called the number. Nobody answered. I called a few times, and nobody answered.
I went back inside and asked to see the phone book again, and this time called Yellow Cabs. They said they could get a cab to my location in about 20 minutes or so. That would be 10 minutes after the tour had already started. ‘Don’t bother, I replied’.
Now I was really pissed off. I was actually furious. Furious at all the useless people standing around who don’t know something as simple as the number to call a cab. I know it’s not their job to help me. But they’re all just mooching around and I have shelled out $50 for this tour and it’s the last tour of the day on my last day in Chicago.
I walked back inside, mad as hell now to ask the station manager where the bus outside goes to. I said I wanted to go to the Robie House at which point the young guy who had helped me with the phone book said, “Why didn’t you say that in the first place – you just catch the number 55 bus across the street and walk two blocks”. Grrr. I ran across the street to wait for the number 55 bus. The tour had already started five minutes ago. Then a vacant cab started driving towards me. I practically stood in the middle of the road to flag it down and arrived flustered at the Robie House only 15 minutes late. Fortunately they were able to catch me up to where the rest of the tour group was at – in the children’s playroom.
In the early 1908 Fredrick Robie, commissioned Frank Lloyd Wright to build a grand home for him, his wife and two children at the edge of the University of Chicago. Frank Lloyd Wright created a masterpiece for the family that even now reveals a level of domestic innovation that’s still not mandatory in all new homes – like a ducted vacuuming system. The final bill was $58,500 which roughly translates to about $1.3 million in today’s money.
The home was completed in 1910 and included a three car garage. This is at a time when the model T Ford had only been around two years. One bay of the garage included a mechanics pit and the another included a carwash. A carwash!
Inside the home, the custom dining table designed by Wright included plinths at each corner that housed electric lamps. Electric lamps built into the dining table in 1910 people. The original shower, which has been restored in the home is an industrial-looking contraption that features a series of chrome pipes that circle and loop around. The pipes have a series of jets coming from them so the bather, stands in the centre and water spurts from jets in every direction at various heights to wash you quickly and efficiently – again, lets not forget this is Illinois in 1910!
The home is a masterpiece. Both in terms of the craftsmanship and use of materials – the different types of wood etc, and also in terms of the pure innovation for the time.
The tour was definitely a highlight from my Chicago leg and I’m glad that I persevered with the challenging transport arrangements to get there.
And then it was Friday night, my last night in Chicago. Patrick whom I’d met at the Green Mill the night before had told me not to make plans, that if I wasn’t doing anything, he’d like to take me to some places that most tourists wouldn’t know about.
He called in the middle of the taxi incident to ask if I’d like to go sailing from Monroe Harbour at 6pm. Having missed out on sailing at the Hamptons, I said ‘yes’. Getting to Monroe Harbour was a cinch after my adventures earlier in the afternoon. So I waited for Pat and whoever else was coming sailing, it had sounded like maybe it would be a group of his friends? He got stuck in traffic and arrived eventually, with an older guy, Captain Dan, who turned out to be his dad.
So the three of us went sailing out on Monroe Harbour on Patrick and Captain Dan’s yacht as the sun set over Chicago. It was definitely a magical experience and a completely unexpected adventure in Chicago.
After a few hours we sailed back into the harbour and Patrick and I went out to a bar in Wicker Park, near I was staying. Who knew five blocks up from the sketchy Polish triangle near where I was staying were a throng of uber trendy bars and clubs? And so after a kind of unfriendly start, I managed to find some really friendly locals in Chicago and as always, ended up on a crazy, unplanned adventure with local folks.
Monday, September 20, 2010
Alan Gresik Swing Shift Orchestra
This fits back in the Chicago entries before Savannah....
You know from the whole ‘bright pink cleav incident’ (as it has now entered common parlance), Chicago seemed a little sketchy and unfriendly at first.
Days two and three changed all that. I’d like to scratch the record on Chicago and report that the folks of the mid-west are indeed super friendly.
Day 2 I got trapped in Macys for hours – some problem with the doors whereby I could go in, but then I got confused in piles of discounted jeans and couldn’t seem to find my way clear for three hours. As I said to mum on the phone later in the day – it was a bit of a red-letter day for me. For the first time in my life I tried on several pairs of jeans that fitted straight away. No half a foot of denim to cut off the bottom. I almost shrieked with joy in the changeroom, ok I did actually do a silent ‘dance of joy’. I was a little over-excited with the saleslady who laughed and thinks I should call my momma more often, because if I was her daughter, she’d be real worried about me traveling around by myself. I couldn’t decide on the Calvin Kleins or the DKNYs – so I bought both. That’s two pairs of jeans that look like they were custom made for me for less than $100 US. Bargain!
After my spot of retail therapy I headed downtown to the John Hancock Centre’s observation deck to get a good look around Chicago. Nicknamed, ‘Big John’, it’s a modern looking black building more youthful looking that it’s 1960s birthday. Sure it’s not the tallest building in Chicago – that would be Sears Tower, but Sears Tower is in the middle of nowhere on the edge of town. What exactly is there to look at from there?
In the early afternoon I headed back to my little room in the B’n’B to rest up before my big night at the Green Mill jazz lounge in Lincoln. My good friend Ritch had been very insistent before I left fair Brisvegas that I had all the details for the Green Mill. When I did a Google Map search of the location on the infamous day 1, it seemed about 40 minutes drive away from where I was staying. On the basis that I’d be returning home in the wee hours of the morning, I almost didn’t go. Until Kapra, the innkeeper told me that the cab ride would only be about 20 bucks. Nothing, in the grand scheme of things.
The Green Mill Jazz Lounge was easy to find when I stepped off the EL. Bright green flashing lights everywhere. I slid inside past a dude with a scary-looking mo’ hoping to grab a bite to eat and a good spot at the bar before the gig kicked off at 9pm. Except, they didn’t do food at the Green Mill, so I dined on chips and pretzels – not ideal, oh and a couple of French Martinis – so there’s fruit there?
The Green Mill is an old gin joint that hasn’t really changed since the 1920s. An original jazz lounge that had been a speakeasy during prohibition. Behind the bar were photos of Al Capone and his associates in the Green Mill during the 1920s and at 8pm the barman lit a green candle in front of the photos creating a sort of ‘gangster shrine’ to the bar’s former underworld patrons. Slowly the bar started filling up as the 9pm kick off approached.
Slowly a large group of musicians dressed in black started shuffling in the side door carrying their instruments. I hadn’t noticed earlier that there was space for no less than 13 band members at the front of the stage. An older grey-haired man in a black tuxedo took the microphone announcing the Alan Gresik Swing Shift Orchestra
and they sprang into life.
Trumpets, trombones, drums, piano, saxophone – you name it all kicked in. And so did the swing dancers. Old and young, couples started to take the floor before the band Lindy hopping and swinging in time with the old time tunes. Apparently Thursday is the best night of the week to go – as it’s the only night of the week that they have swing dancing.
An American guy called Patrick, was kind enough to ask me to dance, and all that I had learned in the six or so swing dance classes I’d taken in the Valley five years ago had escaped me. I was out of time, bumbling along, but fortunately Pat was patient. And so we swung the Green Mill on Thursday night.
At the end of the last set sometime after 1.30pm, I headed out in the night in Lincoln to get a cab across town. It was a little nerve-wracking as I had no idea how to get home from where I was, completely reliant on the cab driver’s knowledge of the area to get me home. Again, as we most tense moments in this trip – nothing to worry about. I was soon tucked up in by bed at the Two Urns B’n’B, with the image of the gleaming instruments filling my head.
You know from the whole ‘bright pink cleav incident’ (as it has now entered common parlance), Chicago seemed a little sketchy and unfriendly at first.
Days two and three changed all that. I’d like to scratch the record on Chicago and report that the folks of the mid-west are indeed super friendly.
Day 2 I got trapped in Macys for hours – some problem with the doors whereby I could go in, but then I got confused in piles of discounted jeans and couldn’t seem to find my way clear for three hours. As I said to mum on the phone later in the day – it was a bit of a red-letter day for me. For the first time in my life I tried on several pairs of jeans that fitted straight away. No half a foot of denim to cut off the bottom. I almost shrieked with joy in the changeroom, ok I did actually do a silent ‘dance of joy’. I was a little over-excited with the saleslady who laughed and thinks I should call my momma more often, because if I was her daughter, she’d be real worried about me traveling around by myself. I couldn’t decide on the Calvin Kleins or the DKNYs – so I bought both. That’s two pairs of jeans that look like they were custom made for me for less than $100 US. Bargain!
After my spot of retail therapy I headed downtown to the John Hancock Centre’s observation deck to get a good look around Chicago. Nicknamed, ‘Big John’, it’s a modern looking black building more youthful looking that it’s 1960s birthday. Sure it’s not the tallest building in Chicago – that would be Sears Tower, but Sears Tower is in the middle of nowhere on the edge of town. What exactly is there to look at from there?
In the early afternoon I headed back to my little room in the B’n’B to rest up before my big night at the Green Mill jazz lounge in Lincoln. My good friend Ritch had been very insistent before I left fair Brisvegas that I had all the details for the Green Mill. When I did a Google Map search of the location on the infamous day 1, it seemed about 40 minutes drive away from where I was staying. On the basis that I’d be returning home in the wee hours of the morning, I almost didn’t go. Until Kapra, the innkeeper told me that the cab ride would only be about 20 bucks. Nothing, in the grand scheme of things.
The Green Mill Jazz Lounge was easy to find when I stepped off the EL. Bright green flashing lights everywhere. I slid inside past a dude with a scary-looking mo’ hoping to grab a bite to eat and a good spot at the bar before the gig kicked off at 9pm. Except, they didn’t do food at the Green Mill, so I dined on chips and pretzels – not ideal, oh and a couple of French Martinis – so there’s fruit there?
The Green Mill is an old gin joint that hasn’t really changed since the 1920s. An original jazz lounge that had been a speakeasy during prohibition. Behind the bar were photos of Al Capone and his associates in the Green Mill during the 1920s and at 8pm the barman lit a green candle in front of the photos creating a sort of ‘gangster shrine’ to the bar’s former underworld patrons. Slowly the bar started filling up as the 9pm kick off approached.
Slowly a large group of musicians dressed in black started shuffling in the side door carrying their instruments. I hadn’t noticed earlier that there was space for no less than 13 band members at the front of the stage. An older grey-haired man in a black tuxedo took the microphone announcing the Alan Gresik Swing Shift Orchestra
and they sprang into life.
Trumpets, trombones, drums, piano, saxophone – you name it all kicked in. And so did the swing dancers. Old and young, couples started to take the floor before the band Lindy hopping and swinging in time with the old time tunes. Apparently Thursday is the best night of the week to go – as it’s the only night of the week that they have swing dancing.
An American guy called Patrick, was kind enough to ask me to dance, and all that I had learned in the six or so swing dance classes I’d taken in the Valley five years ago had escaped me. I was out of time, bumbling along, but fortunately Pat was patient. And so we swung the Green Mill on Thursday night.
At the end of the last set sometime after 1.30pm, I headed out in the night in Lincoln to get a cab across town. It was a little nerve-wracking as I had no idea how to get home from where I was, completely reliant on the cab driver’s knowledge of the area to get me home. Again, as we most tense moments in this trip – nothing to worry about. I was soon tucked up in by bed at the Two Urns B’n’B, with the image of the gleaming instruments filling my head.
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
Ghostly Savannah
Every night that I walked around Savannah I would see no end of kitsch ghost tours at dusk. You know the kind, an old hearse converted into an open top bus, a ghoulish looking guy (who is probably ugly enough without the makeup to scare the average punter) as the driver etc. A local had recommended that I tour the Bonaventure Cemetery while I was in town, so I booked a cab and set off.
The cab driver clearly smoked in the cab anytime there weren’t any passengers in it. He was a wheezing, bandana-wearing nutter. Just perfect. So we got to talking about the cemetery and completely unprompted he starts telling me about the ghost living at his house.
Apparently thirty years ago or more the wheezing cab driver was living in a different house somewhere on the outskirts of Savannah and was digging up part of his yard with plans to build a garage. He's digging away when he comes across the human remains of a confederate soldier (complete with rifle, which he kept) and a 12 year old Indian girl. Since then, the Indian girl has haunted the cabbie, even moving with him to his new house.
She sleeps in the middle of his bed and if he tries to sleep there too, she pushes him in the night or takes the blanket right off the bed. So he sleeps on the couch, and has done so for years. “But it’s your house”, I protested, he said he’s tried various things over the years, but she just wants to push him out of his bed.
True or not, it was a entertaining tale for the ride to the Bonaventure Cemetery. We arrived and I entered through the gates to the 100 acres of cemetery on the edge of town that used to be an old cotton plantation that edges down to the river. The boulevards of the cemetery are planted with massive oak trees which were part of the original plantation some 200 years ago, now dripping with Spanish Moss, like most of Savannah. After the ghost stories in the cab, I was a little apprehensive about my Sunday afternoon stroll alone in the cemetery.
More tourists arrived soon and the cemetery lost some of its ghoulish feeling, as I shook off more of the cab driver’s ghost stories, but after two hours I was well and truly done and walked back the front and waited for another cab.
Back at the B and B, I thought I’d continue with the ghoulish theme and since it was my last night in Savannah, I booked in for a walking ghost tour. They’re a dime a dozen, but this was one was reviewed in Tripadvisor as actually scary with knowledgeable guides.
The tour guide was your classic strange theatre-restaurant type employee. About 40,with obviously dyed Grecian 5000 black hair in a bit of an Elvis coiff with sideburns and black goatee. He was of course dressed from head to toe in black and wore Bono style 'not really black' sunglasses. Altogether odd-looking, but I guess it’s OK in his line of work. His name was Nicodemis and unfortunately he was Australian. I say unfortunately, because he’s not the country's finest ambassador – and his appearance, combined with the lame jokes and accent had some of the other tour guests grimacing. When I say ‘other guests’, I really mean me.
What started off lame quickly became more than a little spooky as night fell over Savannah and we criss-crossed the squares and the cemetery listening to stories of tragic suicide and accidents. Things really stepped up a notch when we went to the abandoned hospital which hasn’t been used in forty years. It’s on the edge of Forsyth Park and according to our guide, during the Yellow fever outbreak the hospital dug a series of mortuary tunnels under what is now the park and just buried the victims in it as they didn’t know what to do with them and we’re afraid the number of dead bodies would scare the townspeople. When he showed us the trapdoor beside the hospital that ran across the road, I think we all took a step back and found a new level of respect for the weirdo leading our tour.
The tunnel ends at a local doctor’s house who is a Mason (as most of Savannah’s influential leaders are) and is locally infamous for his ‘natural causes’ death certificates. Apparently he’s the man in town to go to when you have an aids related death in the family you’d like to keep on the 'down-low'.
After the hospital we wound back through the streets of Savannah exploring more sites, but they became so creepy that I couldn’t even walk up the stairs of some of the old abandoned houses and look inside the windows, I was too scared. But I wasn’t the only one.
It was a very quick walk, more like sprint from the end of the tour back to the B and B, and once I was safely inside drinking my milk and eating my cookies, I was glad that I’d left the ghost tour ‘til last. If you’re ever in town, I highly recommend it.
A couple of ghost story links for you…
Wesley Espy 1902 - 1934
The son of a federal judge, Wesley Espy’s untimely death on Calhoun Square was painted as a fall from a tall porch at the Espy home. It is more culturally held that his father was tangled up with a Georgia bootlegging family during prohibition and that Wesley became the associate of a gangster’s girlfriend and that his death was a retaliation. According to our tour guide Wesley was returned home to the front porch hanged with his testicles in his top pocket.
The soldier in the DeSoto hotel
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12494679/
According to our guide the soldier climbed up the side of the building through the ventilation duct as a dare after heavy drinking at a bar just around the corner.
The tunnels under the park
http://www.savannahbest.com/savhist/tunnel.htm
The cab driver clearly smoked in the cab anytime there weren’t any passengers in it. He was a wheezing, bandana-wearing nutter. Just perfect. So we got to talking about the cemetery and completely unprompted he starts telling me about the ghost living at his house.
Apparently thirty years ago or more the wheezing cab driver was living in a different house somewhere on the outskirts of Savannah and was digging up part of his yard with plans to build a garage. He's digging away when he comes across the human remains of a confederate soldier (complete with rifle, which he kept) and a 12 year old Indian girl. Since then, the Indian girl has haunted the cabbie, even moving with him to his new house.
She sleeps in the middle of his bed and if he tries to sleep there too, she pushes him in the night or takes the blanket right off the bed. So he sleeps on the couch, and has done so for years. “But it’s your house”, I protested, he said he’s tried various things over the years, but she just wants to push him out of his bed.
True or not, it was a entertaining tale for the ride to the Bonaventure Cemetery. We arrived and I entered through the gates to the 100 acres of cemetery on the edge of town that used to be an old cotton plantation that edges down to the river. The boulevards of the cemetery are planted with massive oak trees which were part of the original plantation some 200 years ago, now dripping with Spanish Moss, like most of Savannah. After the ghost stories in the cab, I was a little apprehensive about my Sunday afternoon stroll alone in the cemetery.
More tourists arrived soon and the cemetery lost some of its ghoulish feeling, as I shook off more of the cab driver’s ghost stories, but after two hours I was well and truly done and walked back the front and waited for another cab.
Back at the B and B, I thought I’d continue with the ghoulish theme and since it was my last night in Savannah, I booked in for a walking ghost tour. They’re a dime a dozen, but this was one was reviewed in Tripadvisor as actually scary with knowledgeable guides.
The tour guide was your classic strange theatre-restaurant type employee. About 40,with obviously dyed Grecian 5000 black hair in a bit of an Elvis coiff with sideburns and black goatee. He was of course dressed from head to toe in black and wore Bono style 'not really black' sunglasses. Altogether odd-looking, but I guess it’s OK in his line of work. His name was Nicodemis and unfortunately he was Australian. I say unfortunately, because he’s not the country's finest ambassador – and his appearance, combined with the lame jokes and accent had some of the other tour guests grimacing. When I say ‘other guests’, I really mean me.
What started off lame quickly became more than a little spooky as night fell over Savannah and we criss-crossed the squares and the cemetery listening to stories of tragic suicide and accidents. Things really stepped up a notch when we went to the abandoned hospital which hasn’t been used in forty years. It’s on the edge of Forsyth Park and according to our guide, during the Yellow fever outbreak the hospital dug a series of mortuary tunnels under what is now the park and just buried the victims in it as they didn’t know what to do with them and we’re afraid the number of dead bodies would scare the townspeople. When he showed us the trapdoor beside the hospital that ran across the road, I think we all took a step back and found a new level of respect for the weirdo leading our tour.
The tunnel ends at a local doctor’s house who is a Mason (as most of Savannah’s influential leaders are) and is locally infamous for his ‘natural causes’ death certificates. Apparently he’s the man in town to go to when you have an aids related death in the family you’d like to keep on the 'down-low'.
After the hospital we wound back through the streets of Savannah exploring more sites, but they became so creepy that I couldn’t even walk up the stairs of some of the old abandoned houses and look inside the windows, I was too scared. But I wasn’t the only one.
It was a very quick walk, more like sprint from the end of the tour back to the B and B, and once I was safely inside drinking my milk and eating my cookies, I was glad that I’d left the ghost tour ‘til last. If you’re ever in town, I highly recommend it.
A couple of ghost story links for you…
Wesley Espy 1902 - 1934
The son of a federal judge, Wesley Espy’s untimely death on Calhoun Square was painted as a fall from a tall porch at the Espy home. It is more culturally held that his father was tangled up with a Georgia bootlegging family during prohibition and that Wesley became the associate of a gangster’s girlfriend and that his death was a retaliation. According to our tour guide Wesley was returned home to the front porch hanged with his testicles in his top pocket.
The soldier in the DeSoto hotel
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12494679/
According to our guide the soldier climbed up the side of the building through the ventilation duct as a dare after heavy drinking at a bar just around the corner.
The tunnels under the park
http://www.savannahbest.com/savhist/tunnel.htm
Snippets from Savannah
I’m in an airport lounge, again. It’s a familiar pattern in this trip, but I have the ‘take my shoes off, unpack the laptop, remove hat’ routine down pat now. I don’t even leave my passport at the security counter anymore, like I did that one time at O’Hare, ooops.
So I’m waiting at Savannah airport for my flight to Georgia for a world-record flight change of thirty minutes before my connecting flight to Washington DC leaves. Will my bags change flights too? Do I jinx the situation by even typing this?
Savannah is a great slice of the deep South, and a good slice of Key Lime Pie and Peach Cobbler to boot. MMMM. Take everything you’ve ever heard about Savannah. Then double it. Add whipped cream and a cherry on top and that’s how beautiful Savannah really is. It’s a ‘wow’ city. It really is. Between the beauty of the city and the room in my B and B, I started to get the feeling like I had stowed away on someone’s honeymoon. It was just too cute to be true.
The people are friendly, the city is easy to navigate and so long as you stay away from River Street where all the tourists hang out, the food is great.
I ate my body weight twice over in good, southern food while I was in town, and today I am waddling. Yesterday after touring the Mercer Williams house, the one where Jim Williams from Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil fame, shot the kid in the study, I went to stand in line at Mrs Wilkes’. It’s a Savannah institution, originally a boarding house, it’s now famous as the place the locals go and stand in line for at least an hour, to share bowls of food and communal tables for lunch.
So I stood in line, and made some new friends from Georgia and Chicago. And we waited, and waited. Fortunately it was a lot cooler today as I think it would have been tough going if it was in the 90s (Farenheit) that is. Finally it was our turn to walk into the basement of the row house on Jones Street for lunch. Nobody knew exactly what we’d find or how much it was going to cost – but they lined up down the street on reputation alone.
Once inside we were seated at big tables of ten. And then the food started rolling out, bowl by bowl.
Mashed potato, creamed corn, succotash, squash, collard greens, pickles, coleslaw, mashed sweet potato, black eyed peas, lima beans, rice, kidney beans, jumbalya, bbq pork, gravy, stuffing, and then they brought out the fried chicken. Mountains of it. Staff at Mrs Wilkes’ wear t-shirts that say, “If the Colonel’s chicken was this good, he wouldda been a General”. Oooooh that artery-clogging goodness. You couldn’t eat it everyday – but you know what they say at Paula Deen’s, ‘Get some South in your mouth’. On my way out I was tempted to tell the folks that had been waiting in line for more than a hour in the hotter part of the day that the kitchen had just run out of fried chicken – but I’m not that cruel. And they’re all bigger than me, and hungry.
On Sunday morning in Savannah, I rented a bike and within 10 minutes had ridden straight off the quaint pictorial tourist map. I later found out the word is, “don’t go west of Abercorn street”, ah, what you don’t know can’t hurt you, right? So I rode my bike straight into the black neighbourhood they don’t put on the Savannah postcards. It was Sunday morning so every now and then I’d ride past a church full of singing Baptists praising the lord on this fine morning. Every now and then, I’d catch the doors opening and a late arrival slipping into church in their finery. This was the Savannah I’d been hoping to see. The deep South unchanged in some ways over the last hundred years.
I rode along streets full of southern style houses that are of a similar style to those in the historical district, just smaller, in shabbier condition and without shiny cars parked on the curb. I got a lot of attention, a really white girl, riding through the ‘bad’ part of town on a Sunday morning in hot pink shorts. I waved to everyone I passed and got lots of “Good mornin’ Misses” and “Fine days” as I rode around the neighbourhood. I didn’t ride off the map intentionally, but in hindsight – I’m glad I did. It was a nice foil to the picture-perfect historic district downtown. At no time did I feel unsafe or uneasy – everyone was perfectly friendly and kind. Back at the B and B later, couples who were visiting were asking whether it was safe to ride a bicycle around Savannah – they were planning on driving their car. Sheesh people, why don’t you see if the Pope-mobile is free this weekend. People from the North seem to get scared in the South, but as Eric, the waiter at Lady and Sons explained, they’re not going to mug tourists – the whole town depends on them for income. They’re more likely to mug him.
A word on Eric. He was the fast-talking Georgia boy working the upstairs bar at Lady and Sons, Paula Deen’s famous restaurant downtown. If you’ve never heard of Paula Deen, don’t feel bad, I hadn’t either until I came to Savannah. She’s huge in the US and has her own cooking show and series of books etc, and shockingly white teeth. Eric was your regular wise-cracking bartender, who I bet does well for tips. Two women probably in their forties were also at the bar eating dinner while I scoffed my fried green tomatoes. They had been sharing banter with Eric during the meal and one joked that since they were both in town for the next few days, maybe they’d come round to Eric’s tomorrow night for dinner, what would he cook them. To which he replied, “Do yer like dawgs?” We all assumed he meant hot dogs and the ladies said, “yeah sure”. He replied, “good cause I’ve got two of them.” There was a pause and then we started laughing realising that he meant he has two pet dogs at home, not that he was going to cook hot dogs if we came around for dinner. Eric looked puzzled and the ladies explained the mix-up. There was some back and forth between Eric and the ladies along the lines of “well we are in the south, anything is possible down here”. To which Eric replied loud enough for the whole bar to hear, ‘I would maybe dayte ma sister but I would never cook a dawg.’ The rest of the bar hadn’t heard the first part of the story and out of context the bar full of tourists turned to stare at Eric. I laughed so hard I thought I might fall off the stool, and even now as I retype it, I’m still laughing.
So I’m waiting at Savannah airport for my flight to Georgia for a world-record flight change of thirty minutes before my connecting flight to Washington DC leaves. Will my bags change flights too? Do I jinx the situation by even typing this?
Savannah is a great slice of the deep South, and a good slice of Key Lime Pie and Peach Cobbler to boot. MMMM. Take everything you’ve ever heard about Savannah. Then double it. Add whipped cream and a cherry on top and that’s how beautiful Savannah really is. It’s a ‘wow’ city. It really is. Between the beauty of the city and the room in my B and B, I started to get the feeling like I had stowed away on someone’s honeymoon. It was just too cute to be true.
The people are friendly, the city is easy to navigate and so long as you stay away from River Street where all the tourists hang out, the food is great.
I ate my body weight twice over in good, southern food while I was in town, and today I am waddling. Yesterday after touring the Mercer Williams house, the one where Jim Williams from Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil fame, shot the kid in the study, I went to stand in line at Mrs Wilkes’. It’s a Savannah institution, originally a boarding house, it’s now famous as the place the locals go and stand in line for at least an hour, to share bowls of food and communal tables for lunch.
So I stood in line, and made some new friends from Georgia and Chicago. And we waited, and waited. Fortunately it was a lot cooler today as I think it would have been tough going if it was in the 90s (Farenheit) that is. Finally it was our turn to walk into the basement of the row house on Jones Street for lunch. Nobody knew exactly what we’d find or how much it was going to cost – but they lined up down the street on reputation alone.
Once inside we were seated at big tables of ten. And then the food started rolling out, bowl by bowl.
Mashed potato, creamed corn, succotash, squash, collard greens, pickles, coleslaw, mashed sweet potato, black eyed peas, lima beans, rice, kidney beans, jumbalya, bbq pork, gravy, stuffing, and then they brought out the fried chicken. Mountains of it. Staff at Mrs Wilkes’ wear t-shirts that say, “If the Colonel’s chicken was this good, he wouldda been a General”. Oooooh that artery-clogging goodness. You couldn’t eat it everyday – but you know what they say at Paula Deen’s, ‘Get some South in your mouth’. On my way out I was tempted to tell the folks that had been waiting in line for more than a hour in the hotter part of the day that the kitchen had just run out of fried chicken – but I’m not that cruel. And they’re all bigger than me, and hungry.
On Sunday morning in Savannah, I rented a bike and within 10 minutes had ridden straight off the quaint pictorial tourist map. I later found out the word is, “don’t go west of Abercorn street”, ah, what you don’t know can’t hurt you, right? So I rode my bike straight into the black neighbourhood they don’t put on the Savannah postcards. It was Sunday morning so every now and then I’d ride past a church full of singing Baptists praising the lord on this fine morning. Every now and then, I’d catch the doors opening and a late arrival slipping into church in their finery. This was the Savannah I’d been hoping to see. The deep South unchanged in some ways over the last hundred years.
I rode along streets full of southern style houses that are of a similar style to those in the historical district, just smaller, in shabbier condition and without shiny cars parked on the curb. I got a lot of attention, a really white girl, riding through the ‘bad’ part of town on a Sunday morning in hot pink shorts. I waved to everyone I passed and got lots of “Good mornin’ Misses” and “Fine days” as I rode around the neighbourhood. I didn’t ride off the map intentionally, but in hindsight – I’m glad I did. It was a nice foil to the picture-perfect historic district downtown. At no time did I feel unsafe or uneasy – everyone was perfectly friendly and kind. Back at the B and B later, couples who were visiting were asking whether it was safe to ride a bicycle around Savannah – they were planning on driving their car. Sheesh people, why don’t you see if the Pope-mobile is free this weekend. People from the North seem to get scared in the South, but as Eric, the waiter at Lady and Sons explained, they’re not going to mug tourists – the whole town depends on them for income. They’re more likely to mug him.
A word on Eric. He was the fast-talking Georgia boy working the upstairs bar at Lady and Sons, Paula Deen’s famous restaurant downtown. If you’ve never heard of Paula Deen, don’t feel bad, I hadn’t either until I came to Savannah. She’s huge in the US and has her own cooking show and series of books etc, and shockingly white teeth. Eric was your regular wise-cracking bartender, who I bet does well for tips. Two women probably in their forties were also at the bar eating dinner while I scoffed my fried green tomatoes. They had been sharing banter with Eric during the meal and one joked that since they were both in town for the next few days, maybe they’d come round to Eric’s tomorrow night for dinner, what would he cook them. To which he replied, “Do yer like dawgs?” We all assumed he meant hot dogs and the ladies said, “yeah sure”. He replied, “good cause I’ve got two of them.” There was a pause and then we started laughing realising that he meant he has two pet dogs at home, not that he was going to cook hot dogs if we came around for dinner. Eric looked puzzled and the ladies explained the mix-up. There was some back and forth between Eric and the ladies along the lines of “well we are in the south, anything is possible down here”. To which Eric replied loud enough for the whole bar to hear, ‘I would maybe dayte ma sister but I would never cook a dawg.’ The rest of the bar hadn’t heard the first part of the story and out of context the bar full of tourists turned to stare at Eric. I laughed so hard I thought I might fall off the stool, and even now as I retype it, I’m still laughing.
High-heel cowboy boots
According to Wikipedia – Atlanta airport is the busiest in the world in terms of passenger numbers - some 35 million people pass through each year.
I’m sitting in Atlanta airport waiting for my connection to DC. I can hear the familiar sound of a passenger running. To the left he emerges, running, and pushing a stroller rocketing a small toddler. The handles of the stroller are laiden with a big Louis Vuitton handbag and another large carry-on tote bag.
The next thing you know he starts running back past me in the other direction, this time without the stroller. A few moments later the familiar sound starts again. He’s running past me a second time from the original direction with a second stroller. Hmmm, strange. Moments later a woman in high heel cowboy boots starts running a few metres behind him. And the little airport vignette all comes together.
They’re obviously late for the flight – understandable – it’s a huge airport. They each have a stroller to push with a kid in it, and because she’s wearing stupidly high boots she can’t run and push her stroller in time for them to make the flight. Instead of taking off her damn boots and running through the airport barefoot, they leave one of their kids in the stroller unattended at the boarding gate in the busiest airport in the world. Hmmm. God bless America – some of them need all the help they can get.
I’m sitting in Atlanta airport waiting for my connection to DC. I can hear the familiar sound of a passenger running. To the left he emerges, running, and pushing a stroller rocketing a small toddler. The handles of the stroller are laiden with a big Louis Vuitton handbag and another large carry-on tote bag.
The next thing you know he starts running back past me in the other direction, this time without the stroller. A few moments later the familiar sound starts again. He’s running past me a second time from the original direction with a second stroller. Hmmm, strange. Moments later a woman in high heel cowboy boots starts running a few metres behind him. And the little airport vignette all comes together.
They’re obviously late for the flight – understandable – it’s a huge airport. They each have a stroller to push with a kid in it, and because she’s wearing stupidly high boots she can’t run and push her stroller in time for them to make the flight. Instead of taking off her damn boots and running through the airport barefoot, they leave one of their kids in the stroller unattended at the boarding gate in the busiest airport in the world. Hmmm. God bless America – some of them need all the help they can get.
Saturday, September 11, 2010
September 11, 2010
I’d almost forgotten today was September 11th. It had been another late night in Chicago followed by an early start to catch the planes to Savannah. Yep, I was flying from O’Hare airport on September 11.
I say I almost forgot, until I saw the TV screens in the airport waiting lounge with the sound turned way up so you could barely hear the gate boarding announcements. I listed to Laura Bush and Michelle Obama speak in Pennslvyania about the heroes that overthrew flight 93. As the first lady said, this was 40 people from all walks of life who collectively decided to save the lives of thousands of people they would never meet and overthrow the highjackers in doing so, losing their own lives. It was pretty powerful stuff in the airport lounge. The mood was sober.
Then there were the military personnel. In Chicago our flight was boarded by about 12 brand new navy recruits all spic and span and waving goodbye to their parents – they’re kids the average age is 18 and off they trotted onto the plane in their brand new whites.
We changed planes at Atlanta, Georgia to make the connecting flight to Savannah. This time we were sharing our flight with eight army personnel in combat uniform that looked like they were returning home for some R&R.
Then the cheering started. I didn’t know what was happening at first, but I soon cottoned on. First class wasn’t full. So after they’d already settled into their assigned seats in coach, the air hostess went and got the soldiers and one by one they collected their things from the overhead lockers and walked slowly up the plane to the pointy end, amid cheers and continuous applause from all of the passengers to take their seats in first class. Nicely done Delta Airlines!
I say I almost forgot, until I saw the TV screens in the airport waiting lounge with the sound turned way up so you could barely hear the gate boarding announcements. I listed to Laura Bush and Michelle Obama speak in Pennslvyania about the heroes that overthrew flight 93. As the first lady said, this was 40 people from all walks of life who collectively decided to save the lives of thousands of people they would never meet and overthrow the highjackers in doing so, losing their own lives. It was pretty powerful stuff in the airport lounge. The mood was sober.
Then there were the military personnel. In Chicago our flight was boarded by about 12 brand new navy recruits all spic and span and waving goodbye to their parents – they’re kids the average age is 18 and off they trotted onto the plane in their brand new whites.
We changed planes at Atlanta, Georgia to make the connecting flight to Savannah. This time we were sharing our flight with eight army personnel in combat uniform that looked like they were returning home for some R&R.
Then the cheering started. I didn’t know what was happening at first, but I soon cottoned on. First class wasn’t full. So after they’d already settled into their assigned seats in coach, the air hostess went and got the soldiers and one by one they collected their things from the overhead lockers and walked slowly up the plane to the pointy end, amid cheers and continuous applause from all of the passengers to take their seats in first class. Nicely done Delta Airlines!
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
Bright pink cleavage
It was inevitable that I would have this day. That one day in 42 when you think, sod this, I could almost go home right now. Yep, today was that day.
After a late night of beers and great pub food with T and T at the Local in downtown Toronto, I set my alarm for 5am. After all, I needed to be checking in at 6.30am at the airport. T was generous enough to offer to drive me and was going to set her alarm to 5am aswell, until I pointed out how ridiculous it was for her to get up so early when she really just needed to chug down some coffee and could drive me to the airport in pajamas if it got to that. T agreed and set her alarm to 5.30am.
I had a terrible night sleep. 2.15am – bolt upright, mad scramble for watch to check time, reassuring sigh – stacks of time, back to sleep. 3.25am repeat. 4.15am repeat. And then zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. Until T gingerly opened my door at 5.35am to see me still asleep. The alarm hadn’t gone off. Darn. Instead of a leisurely breakfast, shower and final pack – it was again, a madwoman’s scramble.
I arrived at the airport still on time and just made it to the gate in time to board the short leap across the lakes from Toronto to USA. Incidentally, they process you for US immigration and customs in Canada and then you just swan off the plane at O’Hare. I was trying to think of how to exploit the loopholes as I pushed my suitcase along lengths and lengths of moving walkways. Cash stowed away in the body of the plane from a previous flight? Hmmm.
Despite the new luggage arrangements. Little Black Sam now lives with T and T – and that’s all I’m going to say about that – and I don’t want any correspondence on the subject, I caught the CAT into Division where the little Google map I had printed out showed the location of the B&B.
Somewhere between getting off the subway and getting above ground, I lost the map. I couldn’t even go back underground to look for it, because I couldn’t heft the suitcase back down the three flights of stairs to the subway.
I had remembered from the brief glance below ground that it was two blocks off the main arterial. But which one? The subway stop was essentially at a triangular intersection of three arterial roads.
Without a map, I just asked a lady waiting for the bus. She wasn’t really sure but thought it was right of where we were. So I walked about four blocks to the right with the luggage. Couldn’t see it. So I asked the local barber. He had no idea.
I realized I must have walked too far. It must be in the other direction. I called in at a cool record store that was just putting the finishing touches on being tragically hip for the day. They didn’t know either.
Helpful Chicago. Real helpful.
So I walked back to where I had started and two blocks in the other direction to the Bank of America. And I asked there. They consulted with eachother on the subject and said it was about three blocks further along in the same direction I was headed.
I walked about six blocks. Nothing. A service station. I hefted my bags across the road, now starting to suspect that maybe people were just being unhelpful on purpose. Is this was they do to strangers in Chicago? I was starting to getting really annoyed, not to mention hot and exhausted. In the service station I asked to see a map. She told me I needed to go in a different direction. To which I asked to see a map. I was now really sick of all of these local people giving me different directions to a street I knew was within a four block radius of my starting point.
I looked at the map. Greenview appeared to be two blocks North of my starting point and so far I’d just run up East and West. Darnit.
So I walked back to where I’d started from again and soon found the place. The mildly eccentric innkeeper opened the door and explained that my room wasn’t ready yet but took me across the road and five houses down to another house where my room would be. And we climbed a really steep narrow flight of stairs to get there. After pulling and pushing my suitcases around the neighbourhood for the last hour – that’s really just the kind of fun I was looking for.
I pulled out the parcel gear I was posting back to OZ and headed back to the post office (I knew where that was after my morning of orienteering), almost snarling at the locals as I passed my 'friends at the Bank of America' etc, and then headed downtown to go see about an architectural boat tour.
I waited and waited and waited at the sketchy polish triangle bus stop. A small triangular roundabout with a small fountain and a permanent residential population of about seven. Great.
Finally I jumped aboard the bus, stuck my 3-day transport card the wrong way in the reader and it got chewed up. The helpful driver explained that he could give me a form to fill out and they’d send me a new card in about 5 days. Pity that would be two days longer than I was spending in Chicago.
I rode into town and organised tickets for the boat cruise, which was great. Really up my alley and a great way for me to orient myself in the city. Except that it was warm and sunny and I was so tired from barely sleeping last night that I kept almost dozing off in my seat. Darnit.
After the boat ride I thought a little walking and some shopping might cheer me up. So I popped into Nordstroms. After much swanning around in the shoe salon I found a bunch of fabulous frocks and started hefting them into a changeroom.
I pulled off my top and recoiled at the sight of a fluorescent pink cleavage. Huh? What the? In all of my exertions this morning hefting the luggage, the cheap and cheerful pink Indian scarf had stained all of the skin around my neck and décolletage. Perfect. Just wonderful. I could have cried.
I didn’t. Instead I explained to the helpful sales lady why I wouldn’t be trying on the clothes and left. In search of exfoliating scrub.
I trudged back to the sketchy Polish triangle and settled into my little room to have a shower and scrub off all the pink. Despite much scrubbing it hasn’t come off. And so I plan to cut my losses and have an early night and a dinner of peanut m&ms and museli bars. Tomorrow I am determined to resume this trip with a renewed spring in my step. If it wasn’t almost a bit x-rated, I would have taken a photograph of the fluorescent pink cleavage. That’ll teach me for wearing bright colours. Scarf has been unceremoniously dumped in bin.
After a late night of beers and great pub food with T and T at the Local in downtown Toronto, I set my alarm for 5am. After all, I needed to be checking in at 6.30am at the airport. T was generous enough to offer to drive me and was going to set her alarm to 5am aswell, until I pointed out how ridiculous it was for her to get up so early when she really just needed to chug down some coffee and could drive me to the airport in pajamas if it got to that. T agreed and set her alarm to 5.30am.
I had a terrible night sleep. 2.15am – bolt upright, mad scramble for watch to check time, reassuring sigh – stacks of time, back to sleep. 3.25am repeat. 4.15am repeat. And then zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. Until T gingerly opened my door at 5.35am to see me still asleep. The alarm hadn’t gone off. Darn. Instead of a leisurely breakfast, shower and final pack – it was again, a madwoman’s scramble.
I arrived at the airport still on time and just made it to the gate in time to board the short leap across the lakes from Toronto to USA. Incidentally, they process you for US immigration and customs in Canada and then you just swan off the plane at O’Hare. I was trying to think of how to exploit the loopholes as I pushed my suitcase along lengths and lengths of moving walkways. Cash stowed away in the body of the plane from a previous flight? Hmmm.
Despite the new luggage arrangements. Little Black Sam now lives with T and T – and that’s all I’m going to say about that – and I don’t want any correspondence on the subject, I caught the CAT into Division where the little Google map I had printed out showed the location of the B&B.
Somewhere between getting off the subway and getting above ground, I lost the map. I couldn’t even go back underground to look for it, because I couldn’t heft the suitcase back down the three flights of stairs to the subway.
I had remembered from the brief glance below ground that it was two blocks off the main arterial. But which one? The subway stop was essentially at a triangular intersection of three arterial roads.
Without a map, I just asked a lady waiting for the bus. She wasn’t really sure but thought it was right of where we were. So I walked about four blocks to the right with the luggage. Couldn’t see it. So I asked the local barber. He had no idea.
I realized I must have walked too far. It must be in the other direction. I called in at a cool record store that was just putting the finishing touches on being tragically hip for the day. They didn’t know either.
Helpful Chicago. Real helpful.
So I walked back to where I had started and two blocks in the other direction to the Bank of America. And I asked there. They consulted with eachother on the subject and said it was about three blocks further along in the same direction I was headed.
I walked about six blocks. Nothing. A service station. I hefted my bags across the road, now starting to suspect that maybe people were just being unhelpful on purpose. Is this was they do to strangers in Chicago? I was starting to getting really annoyed, not to mention hot and exhausted. In the service station I asked to see a map. She told me I needed to go in a different direction. To which I asked to see a map. I was now really sick of all of these local people giving me different directions to a street I knew was within a four block radius of my starting point.
I looked at the map. Greenview appeared to be two blocks North of my starting point and so far I’d just run up East and West. Darnit.
So I walked back to where I’d started from again and soon found the place. The mildly eccentric innkeeper opened the door and explained that my room wasn’t ready yet but took me across the road and five houses down to another house where my room would be. And we climbed a really steep narrow flight of stairs to get there. After pulling and pushing my suitcases around the neighbourhood for the last hour – that’s really just the kind of fun I was looking for.
I pulled out the parcel gear I was posting back to OZ and headed back to the post office (I knew where that was after my morning of orienteering), almost snarling at the locals as I passed my 'friends at the Bank of America' etc, and then headed downtown to go see about an architectural boat tour.
I waited and waited and waited at the sketchy polish triangle bus stop. A small triangular roundabout with a small fountain and a permanent residential population of about seven. Great.
Finally I jumped aboard the bus, stuck my 3-day transport card the wrong way in the reader and it got chewed up. The helpful driver explained that he could give me a form to fill out and they’d send me a new card in about 5 days. Pity that would be two days longer than I was spending in Chicago.
I rode into town and organised tickets for the boat cruise, which was great. Really up my alley and a great way for me to orient myself in the city. Except that it was warm and sunny and I was so tired from barely sleeping last night that I kept almost dozing off in my seat. Darnit.
After the boat ride I thought a little walking and some shopping might cheer me up. So I popped into Nordstroms. After much swanning around in the shoe salon I found a bunch of fabulous frocks and started hefting them into a changeroom.
I pulled off my top and recoiled at the sight of a fluorescent pink cleavage. Huh? What the? In all of my exertions this morning hefting the luggage, the cheap and cheerful pink Indian scarf had stained all of the skin around my neck and décolletage. Perfect. Just wonderful. I could have cried.
I didn’t. Instead I explained to the helpful sales lady why I wouldn’t be trying on the clothes and left. In search of exfoliating scrub.
I trudged back to the sketchy Polish triangle and settled into my little room to have a shower and scrub off all the pink. Despite much scrubbing it hasn’t come off. And so I plan to cut my losses and have an early night and a dinner of peanut m&ms and museli bars. Tomorrow I am determined to resume this trip with a renewed spring in my step. If it wasn’t almost a bit x-rated, I would have taken a photograph of the fluorescent pink cleavage. That’ll teach me for wearing bright colours. Scarf has been unceremoniously dumped in bin.
Tuesday, September 7, 2010
From notthecaptain the Torotonto adventures
As promised to get the full classic American adventure, you need to refer to Not the Captain the blog of my old friend and Canadian hostess with the mostess, T. Check it out T, is a Walkeley Award winning journalist people - so hers is a darn good read!
http://thecaptainand.blogspot.com/
That reminds me Kiz, do we still have the video of T accepting her award? She hasn't seen it and neither has her husband. AK, Cobes? Do you guys have it on video?
http://thecaptainand.blogspot.com/
That reminds me Kiz, do we still have the video of T accepting her award? She hasn't seen it and neither has her husband. AK, Cobes? Do you guys have it on video?
Monday, September 6, 2010
Guest Toronto blogger - 'Not the Captain'
For those who don't know, I'm staying in Toronto with T (Not the Captain) and T her husband, so for a guest blogging perspective of the Toronto leg of this classic American (& Candian) adventure, check out http://www.thecaptainand.blogspot.com/
T will be special guest blogger on 'from sea to shining sea' in coming days. Stay posted....
T will be special guest blogger on 'from sea to shining sea' in coming days. Stay posted....
Mill Street Brewery Tasting Notes
T and I ventured to the Distillery District of Toronto today as part of our all day town adventure. The Distillery District is just that, except it's home to a stack or original breweries that make beer and not spirits, but in and amongst all the old red brick breweries are now gallery spaces, chi chi apartments and cafes etc. We took an 'old school' approach to the district with an afternoon of tastings - 7 beers, ales and stouts in total, with a palette cleansing Quesedilla to refresh us between samples. Our notes, for your future reference and enjoyment are dutifully transcribed below:
Fruit Beer
What they said:
Fruit beer is made from a blend of cherries, raspberries and strawberries and a pale beer, allowing the wonderful flavour and colour of the fruit to dominate the taste and aroma, supported by the fine beer flavour.
What we said:
Smells like candied apple. Honeyed amber colour, slightly mahogany. First bite of fruit followed by a beery fruitiness. Sour tartiness. One pint to share with friends. Visit fruit beer town - not a place to live.
Belgian Wit
What they said:
The soft texture and colour of this unfiltered beer comes from the use of wheat. Coriander, orange peel and a special yeast produce the fruity flavours. The refreshing cloudiness gives rise to the term Wit or white beer.
What we said:
Hazy wheat / pee coloured. Smells kind of sweet, like guest soap. Very zingy to start, dwindling to minimal aftertaste. I can taste soap - not good. Ageing woman in a low-cut top: giving too much away, with nothing to follow. Did not finish the tasting glass. Bathe in it maybe, but don't drink.
India Pale Ale
What they said:
IPA's were high in both alcohol and hops to survive the long hot voyage from Britain to India. Traditional English malts and hops give this copper brew a roasted note with a strong hop bitterness and flavour.
What we said:
Golden amber colouring. Tastes like popourri. More body than Stella. I think it's a bit 'myeah?'Beer for beer's sake. Drink for free, but don't pay for it.
Helles Bock
What they said:
A pale, strong German lager brewed with 100% Organic malt and hops. Helles has a frothy white head which gives way to a sweet malty flavour with hints of currants and oranges.
What we said:
Looks and smells like straight up beer, but not nearly as pungent as the Veebs of the world. T says, I like it: It's beer with wheat beer, but it hasn't moved in with wheat beer. It's friends with WB and happily so. Sweet aftertaste. I quite likes it. Not a girlie beer. Tangy aftertaste. An easy drinking-mans beer. Not a Gucci beer. It's a solid beery beer.
Pilsner Lager
What they said:
Our organic, German-style continental lager has a deep golden hue, with a malty nose. The first taste is sweet but leads quickly to a dry hoppy bitter finish.
What we said:
Looks and smells like beer. Beer that is comfortable with being a beer, This is not a beer dressing in florals. An easy-drinking beer. Take to a bbq beer - a real crowd pleaser. The dressy t-shirt of beers. The immigrant of beers* (T needs to explain this)
Extra Special Bitter
What they said:
Mill Street ESB uses only traditional English ingredients: Marris Otter malt, and Fuggles and East Kent Goldings hops. This copper coloured ale has a malty body with hints of chocolcate and black currants.
What we said:
Dark honey coloured beer. T is smelling dark honey, I am smelling a buffet of non-sweet deserts - cinamony, caramely, pastry. Sadly has gone flat while tasting other beers. T agrees there is a toffee aftertaste. A mealy Christmas day beer. The winner of N's tasting plate.
Cobblestone Stout
What they said:
This traditional style Irish Stout has that familiar creamy pour, with a roasted malt flavour with a hint of roasted walnuts and chocolate. Select imported hops are used to dry out the finish of this ale. (Only available in kegs).
What we said:
Looks dark and rich. T thinks it smells caramelly stout with coffee. Nat thinks it has a real chemical smell, a bit like synthetic carpet. Doesn't smell as rustic and country as it looks. Soft to start, followed by an avalanche of texture. A bit watery after food (Quesedilla with salsa), boo. Definitely a destination beer. One doesn't land here accidentally. N is not a big fan, but not a big fan of stouts in general. Could do with a bit more upfront. The pre-tasting of Coffee Porter doomed this beer. Just cannot compare.
These tasting notes were dutifully transcribed during the tasting process and therefore are a true and accurate recording of the experience, rather than a hazy memory of a beery afternoon in the distillery district.
If you've tried any of these beers, what do you think? Do you agree? Disagree? Is the Pilsner Lager the dressy t-shirt of beers? Or are we making a mockery of a sacred brew?
Fruit Beer
What they said:
Fruit beer is made from a blend of cherries, raspberries and strawberries and a pale beer, allowing the wonderful flavour and colour of the fruit to dominate the taste and aroma, supported by the fine beer flavour.
What we said:
Smells like candied apple. Honeyed amber colour, slightly mahogany. First bite of fruit followed by a beery fruitiness. Sour tartiness. One pint to share with friends. Visit fruit beer town - not a place to live.
Belgian Wit
What they said:
The soft texture and colour of this unfiltered beer comes from the use of wheat. Coriander, orange peel and a special yeast produce the fruity flavours. The refreshing cloudiness gives rise to the term Wit or white beer.
What we said:
Hazy wheat / pee coloured. Smells kind of sweet, like guest soap. Very zingy to start, dwindling to minimal aftertaste. I can taste soap - not good. Ageing woman in a low-cut top: giving too much away, with nothing to follow. Did not finish the tasting glass. Bathe in it maybe, but don't drink.
India Pale Ale
What they said:
IPA's were high in both alcohol and hops to survive the long hot voyage from Britain to India. Traditional English malts and hops give this copper brew a roasted note with a strong hop bitterness and flavour.
What we said:
Golden amber colouring. Tastes like popourri. More body than Stella. I think it's a bit 'myeah?'Beer for beer's sake. Drink for free, but don't pay for it.
Helles Bock
What they said:
A pale, strong German lager brewed with 100% Organic malt and hops. Helles has a frothy white head which gives way to a sweet malty flavour with hints of currants and oranges.
What we said:
Looks and smells like straight up beer, but not nearly as pungent as the Veebs of the world. T says, I like it: It's beer with wheat beer, but it hasn't moved in with wheat beer. It's friends with WB and happily so. Sweet aftertaste. I quite likes it. Not a girlie beer. Tangy aftertaste. An easy drinking-mans beer. Not a Gucci beer. It's a solid beery beer.
Pilsner Lager
What they said:
Our organic, German-style continental lager has a deep golden hue, with a malty nose. The first taste is sweet but leads quickly to a dry hoppy bitter finish.
What we said:
Looks and smells like beer. Beer that is comfortable with being a beer, This is not a beer dressing in florals. An easy-drinking beer. Take to a bbq beer - a real crowd pleaser. The dressy t-shirt of beers. The immigrant of beers* (T needs to explain this)
Extra Special Bitter
What they said:
Mill Street ESB uses only traditional English ingredients: Marris Otter malt, and Fuggles and East Kent Goldings hops. This copper coloured ale has a malty body with hints of chocolcate and black currants.
What we said:
Dark honey coloured beer. T is smelling dark honey, I am smelling a buffet of non-sweet deserts - cinamony, caramely, pastry. Sadly has gone flat while tasting other beers. T agrees there is a toffee aftertaste. A mealy Christmas day beer. The winner of N's tasting plate.
Cobblestone Stout
What they said:
This traditional style Irish Stout has that familiar creamy pour, with a roasted malt flavour with a hint of roasted walnuts and chocolate. Select imported hops are used to dry out the finish of this ale. (Only available in kegs).
What we said:
Looks dark and rich. T thinks it smells caramelly stout with coffee. Nat thinks it has a real chemical smell, a bit like synthetic carpet. Doesn't smell as rustic and country as it looks. Soft to start, followed by an avalanche of texture. A bit watery after food (Quesedilla with salsa), boo. Definitely a destination beer. One doesn't land here accidentally. N is not a big fan, but not a big fan of stouts in general. Could do with a bit more upfront. The pre-tasting of Coffee Porter doomed this beer. Just cannot compare.
These tasting notes were dutifully transcribed during the tasting process and therefore are a true and accurate recording of the experience, rather than a hazy memory of a beery afternoon in the distillery district.
If you've tried any of these beers, what do you think? Do you agree? Disagree? Is the Pilsner Lager the dressy t-shirt of beers? Or are we making a mockery of a sacred brew?
Thursday, September 2, 2010
The rest of the Hamptons
Wandering around Southampton looking for the Hertz rent-a-car office gave me the first taste of what the rest of the Hamptons are like, the big villages of Southampton and Easthampton. It’s pretty close to what you see on television, a bit like Beverly Hills transported to the beach. Everyone under 40 is very designer shabby, all flip flops and big sunglasses and $200 t-shirts in horribly bland colours. Everyone is trying to dress designer down. It’s amusing but I’m not buying into it. For starters, I look terrible in billowy grey t-shirts. I like to match. I like colour. I like tailoring. I like to look neat and tidy. I’m going to wear whatever the heck I want, and I don’t care about the rest of you.
Shopkeepers are exceptionally rude. S tells me they are generally pretty cranky this close to the end of the season.
Apart from the shops, there are lots of high-end seafood joints and nannies pushing whining kids around in fancy prams. Oh and it’s a great place to see retro roadsters. Lots of old lavender suited gents driving around in vintage Mercedes convertibles and rollers from the 1950s.
Easthampton is the trendiest of them all, but quite frankly, I didn’t think much of it. There are the usual shops, high-priced restaurants and gelato bars. And it would literally kill these people to say thank you if you hold a door open for them or acknowledge that we’re all breathing the same air today in town. Rude, rude, rude.
Compare this to Sag Harbour. In my first three minutes of stepping off the Jitney and pulling out my map and spinning around in a 360, a local-looking guy asked me if he could help me find something and pointed me in the direction of home for the next few days.
Then there were the lovely guys who sat next to me at the bar while I ate dinner at the New Paradise Café. New Yorkers. Both very impressed that I’m traveling by myself. One has a close friend who is Australian, Peter Lowy, and so has met quite a few Australians over the years. He’s always joked with Peter that he’s so successful in business in New York because of the accent. Before leaving for dinner somewhere else, they asked Howie at the bar to take good care of me.
Then there was the lovely Colombian local who chatted to me for hours and bought me drinks at Murphy’s dive bar in a back-street of Sag Harbour. W (S’ boyfriend) had drawn me a detailed map of where to go to dinner and how to get Murph’s afterwards. Murphs is a one room lean-to of a bar in an old shack in a backstreet of Sag Harbour. It’s such a contrast to the main street, which looks like it’s straight out of a movie set. Yet, anyone and everyone drinks at Murphs. There were the kids who all knew eachother because their parents have summer places here and they’ve spent their holidays in Sag Harbour for as long as they can remember. The locals, like the lovely Columbian and apparently according to S a lot of famous people swing past Murph’s to have low-key drink without all the attention. Before he died, JFK Jnr was often a regular at Murph’s when he was in town.
In town on Sunday morning I also read that Steinbeck lived in Sag Harbour for a time in the 1950s as well as Arthur Miller and Jackson Pollack. Steinbeck wrote the Winter of our Discontent one cold summer in Sag Harbour. He probably had a few drinks at Murph’s with Arthur Miller.
So I spent my days driving around in the Cobalt, walking along the beaches, driving past the most gorgeous homes I’ve ever seen, street after street, swinging into little art galleries and boutiques, checking out the local lighthouse etc. In a word, it was really low-key bliss. Oh and because it’s only $8.99 for a six pack, I bought Caronas and corn chips that I’d crack open in the back garden of S’s place while I told her about my day and watched the sun dip down over the back hedge. But I think the experience would have been very different had I not been staying in Sag Harbour and not staying with locals.
On Sunday I had to take the car back, so I couldn’t join in the sailing, which I think Buddy was a bit miffed about. So I watched them set off and swam out to a pontoon, which I soon found out was a private pontoon. Reaffirmed by the lady who also swam out to the pontoon complete with bathing cap, to ask me if I was a friend of the family’s, because this was their private pontoon after all.
...and that was the Hamptons!
Shopkeepers are exceptionally rude. S tells me they are generally pretty cranky this close to the end of the season.
Apart from the shops, there are lots of high-end seafood joints and nannies pushing whining kids around in fancy prams. Oh and it’s a great place to see retro roadsters. Lots of old lavender suited gents driving around in vintage Mercedes convertibles and rollers from the 1950s.
Easthampton is the trendiest of them all, but quite frankly, I didn’t think much of it. There are the usual shops, high-priced restaurants and gelato bars. And it would literally kill these people to say thank you if you hold a door open for them or acknowledge that we’re all breathing the same air today in town. Rude, rude, rude.
Compare this to Sag Harbour. In my first three minutes of stepping off the Jitney and pulling out my map and spinning around in a 360, a local-looking guy asked me if he could help me find something and pointed me in the direction of home for the next few days.
Then there were the lovely guys who sat next to me at the bar while I ate dinner at the New Paradise Café. New Yorkers. Both very impressed that I’m traveling by myself. One has a close friend who is Australian, Peter Lowy, and so has met quite a few Australians over the years. He’s always joked with Peter that he’s so successful in business in New York because of the accent. Before leaving for dinner somewhere else, they asked Howie at the bar to take good care of me.
Then there was the lovely Colombian local who chatted to me for hours and bought me drinks at Murphy’s dive bar in a back-street of Sag Harbour. W (S’ boyfriend) had drawn me a detailed map of where to go to dinner and how to get Murph’s afterwards. Murphs is a one room lean-to of a bar in an old shack in a backstreet of Sag Harbour. It’s such a contrast to the main street, which looks like it’s straight out of a movie set. Yet, anyone and everyone drinks at Murphs. There were the kids who all knew eachother because their parents have summer places here and they’ve spent their holidays in Sag Harbour for as long as they can remember. The locals, like the lovely Columbian and apparently according to S a lot of famous people swing past Murph’s to have low-key drink without all the attention. Before he died, JFK Jnr was often a regular at Murph’s when he was in town.
In town on Sunday morning I also read that Steinbeck lived in Sag Harbour for a time in the 1950s as well as Arthur Miller and Jackson Pollack. Steinbeck wrote the Winter of our Discontent one cold summer in Sag Harbour. He probably had a few drinks at Murph’s with Arthur Miller.
So I spent my days driving around in the Cobalt, walking along the beaches, driving past the most gorgeous homes I’ve ever seen, street after street, swinging into little art galleries and boutiques, checking out the local lighthouse etc. In a word, it was really low-key bliss. Oh and because it’s only $8.99 for a six pack, I bought Caronas and corn chips that I’d crack open in the back garden of S’s place while I told her about my day and watched the sun dip down over the back hedge. But I think the experience would have been very different had I not been staying in Sag Harbour and not staying with locals.
On Sunday I had to take the car back, so I couldn’t join in the sailing, which I think Buddy was a bit miffed about. So I watched them set off and swam out to a pontoon, which I soon found out was a private pontoon. Reaffirmed by the lady who also swam out to the pontoon complete with bathing cap, to ask me if I was a friend of the family’s, because this was their private pontoon after all.
...and that was the Hamptons!
A note on car rentals
We HATE HERTZ. We love Avis. I booked a car online with Hertz to pick up from Southampton on Friday afternoon. I booked GPS, not a luxury in my case but an absolute necessity. Hertz will take your reservation. They just can’t seem to be able to provide you with what you’ve ordered. No GPS on any of the cars they had in their lot. After much, huffing and puffing and ‘Maybe you could take this car tonight and we can see if we can swap it tomorrow at an undefined time for a car with GPS but I can’t guarantee anything”, I said, “Thanks very much, but I’ll just cancel the whole deal and if you can let me know the number of the taxi that would be great.”
Five minutes later I arrived at Avis where they could hook me up with a car for the same price, and GPS. I told them that I’d just come from Hertz where they couldn’t deliver on the order, so I got a special deal on the Chevy Cobalt. It was no pony, but it was a coupe with a rear spoiler, but not being local, I don’t know whether a Chevy Cobalt is a cool car or not, or whether it’s just like getting a hyundai Excel with a spoiler? Shane advice?
Five minutes later I arrived at Avis where they could hook me up with a car for the same price, and GPS. I told them that I’d just come from Hertz where they couldn’t deliver on the order, so I got a special deal on the Chevy Cobalt. It was no pony, but it was a coupe with a rear spoiler, but not being local, I don’t know whether a Chevy Cobalt is a cool car or not, or whether it’s just like getting a hyundai Excel with a spoiler? Shane advice?
I heart the Hamptons
Love it or hate it – you gotta go to the Hamptons, and when you do, stay in Sag Harbour. I stayed there because it was the only place in the Hamptons that I could find an Airb’n’b place but in hindsight – it was the best possible choice. The cranky New Yorkers were right about one thing though – you need a car if you want to see it all, or maybe a yacht?
My first night in the Hamptons, I was quickly whisked away from the house by my host S. to her art gallery on Shelter Island - a tiny piece of the Hamptons jammed between the North and South forks accessible only by boat.
En route we picked up beer for the gallery party and we stopped by Buddy and Cynthia’s place to pick up S’ boyfriend W. Buddy is one cool guy. S, W and Buddy are all mad sailors. Buddy has Sag Harbour’s unofficial yacht club in a huge shed at the back of his summer place where he lets everyone store their boats during the summer. Three times a week through summer Buddy organises fiercely competitive sailing comps in the harbour.
We had to go to Buddy’s to pick up W, who was at Buddy’s after sailing to drop the boat back. Buddy and Cynthia were about to sit down to dinner, and the next thing you know, there I was chowing down on salmon watching the sun set over Shelter Island on the back deck of Buddy and Cynthia’s place right on the water – magical! Pinch me.
Buddy and Cynthia live closer to New York City during the rest of the year but they have two places at Sag Harbour for the summer. The place I went to and another place down the road which is kind of a bunkhouse/party house for their kids, so they can bring their friends home for the college for the Summer. Cool huh? According to their daughter Maggie, she's always getting in trouble for not bringing people home for the weekend to help crew Buddy's boat.
We had to make a hasty exit from Buddy and Cynthia’s to grab the barge over to Shelter Island before S was late for her own opening party. Not before, Cynthia marked me on the wall in the kitchen and wrote my name and the date and Buddy made vague plans to involve me in Sunday’s sailing comp.
The gallery party was a hoot! Sometimes I feel like I’m not really doing the holidaying so much as watching other people on holidays and sniggering and stifling giggles at all that I see and hear. The gallery party was definitely one of those occasions.
The opening was actually hosted by Karen, a glamazon that owns the gallery next to S’ and hosts entertainment at her gallery every Friday night of 'the season'. Tonight’s special entertainment was a very modern mix of images projected on a wall inside the gallery, with interpretive dancers and a DJ spinning random sounds to accompany it. In a word, it was terrible. I’m sorry, but modern interpretive dance is the biggest wank on earth. I like art, I like modern art. But I draw the line at interpretive dance. This was interpretive dance to random groaning sounds and scratching and bird noises and other crap. It was hideous. But that’s not even the best bit.
Have you ever walked past Ralph Lauren and seen a summer collection of sorbet coloured menswear? Models wearing lemon coloured jeans with mauve sweaters teamed with peppermint shirts. I often wondered who bought that stuff? I’m sure they sell a stack of gelato coloured polo shirts but I always wondered who bought the rest of the gear that always seemed to end up at the Harbour Town outlet store – surely this kind of stuff was really one item at a time wear? No? Now I know. It’s all sold to wealthy 65 year-olds in the Hamptons that actually wear it as complete ensembles. So picture this for live entertainment - I’m watching this complete garbage of a performance surrounded by wealthy old men in lavender sweaters teamed with peppermint jeans and white trousers with lemons sweaters. As I said earlier, between the performance and the outfits, and don’t get me started on what the women were wearing, there were a few times when I had to suddenly look away as a derisive smirk formed from the corners of my mouth. It was fantastic.
After the garbage performance – which I of course lied through my teeth and said I enjoyed, even hamming it up to talk about the energy of the dance and the flow between structured movement and free-flowing forms (while vomiting on the inside), we milled around outside and drank S’ beer. I chatted mostly to her friends - not a lavender jumper among them. There was the artist who is showing in her gallery at the moment and her husband who were really fun, S’ intern for the summer, Chip – a local real estate agent and Frank, a local interior decorator who specializes in mid-century pieces – hmm an interior decorator in the Hamptons oh how I want Frank’s job. Frank and I had a brief chat about the price of mid-century furniture in the US compared with Australia (which piqued Frank’s interest, again, I’m thinking about shipping containers!).
At about 11, we decided to pile into Chip’s Landrover and head for the uber cool bar Sunset at Sunset Beach. Now there’s a few cool ideas I could steal to rival the coolest bars I’ve ever been to on the Gold Coast, Noosa or Sydney. Friday is the quiet night so we just chilled out on the lounges by the fire pit – very cool indeed. And that was pretty much, the first 10 hours in the Hamptons taken care of.
My first night in the Hamptons, I was quickly whisked away from the house by my host S. to her art gallery on Shelter Island - a tiny piece of the Hamptons jammed between the North and South forks accessible only by boat.
En route we picked up beer for the gallery party and we stopped by Buddy and Cynthia’s place to pick up S’ boyfriend W. Buddy is one cool guy. S, W and Buddy are all mad sailors. Buddy has Sag Harbour’s unofficial yacht club in a huge shed at the back of his summer place where he lets everyone store their boats during the summer. Three times a week through summer Buddy organises fiercely competitive sailing comps in the harbour.
We had to go to Buddy’s to pick up W, who was at Buddy’s after sailing to drop the boat back. Buddy and Cynthia were about to sit down to dinner, and the next thing you know, there I was chowing down on salmon watching the sun set over Shelter Island on the back deck of Buddy and Cynthia’s place right on the water – magical! Pinch me.
Buddy and Cynthia live closer to New York City during the rest of the year but they have two places at Sag Harbour for the summer. The place I went to and another place down the road which is kind of a bunkhouse/party house for their kids, so they can bring their friends home for the college for the Summer. Cool huh? According to their daughter Maggie, she's always getting in trouble for not bringing people home for the weekend to help crew Buddy's boat.
We had to make a hasty exit from Buddy and Cynthia’s to grab the barge over to Shelter Island before S was late for her own opening party. Not before, Cynthia marked me on the wall in the kitchen and wrote my name and the date and Buddy made vague plans to involve me in Sunday’s sailing comp.
The gallery party was a hoot! Sometimes I feel like I’m not really doing the holidaying so much as watching other people on holidays and sniggering and stifling giggles at all that I see and hear. The gallery party was definitely one of those occasions.
The opening was actually hosted by Karen, a glamazon that owns the gallery next to S’ and hosts entertainment at her gallery every Friday night of 'the season'. Tonight’s special entertainment was a very modern mix of images projected on a wall inside the gallery, with interpretive dancers and a DJ spinning random sounds to accompany it. In a word, it was terrible. I’m sorry, but modern interpretive dance is the biggest wank on earth. I like art, I like modern art. But I draw the line at interpretive dance. This was interpretive dance to random groaning sounds and scratching and bird noises and other crap. It was hideous. But that’s not even the best bit.
Have you ever walked past Ralph Lauren and seen a summer collection of sorbet coloured menswear? Models wearing lemon coloured jeans with mauve sweaters teamed with peppermint shirts. I often wondered who bought that stuff? I’m sure they sell a stack of gelato coloured polo shirts but I always wondered who bought the rest of the gear that always seemed to end up at the Harbour Town outlet store – surely this kind of stuff was really one item at a time wear? No? Now I know. It’s all sold to wealthy 65 year-olds in the Hamptons that actually wear it as complete ensembles. So picture this for live entertainment - I’m watching this complete garbage of a performance surrounded by wealthy old men in lavender sweaters teamed with peppermint jeans and white trousers with lemons sweaters. As I said earlier, between the performance and the outfits, and don’t get me started on what the women were wearing, there were a few times when I had to suddenly look away as a derisive smirk formed from the corners of my mouth. It was fantastic.
After the garbage performance – which I of course lied through my teeth and said I enjoyed, even hamming it up to talk about the energy of the dance and the flow between structured movement and free-flowing forms (while vomiting on the inside), we milled around outside and drank S’ beer. I chatted mostly to her friends - not a lavender jumper among them. There was the artist who is showing in her gallery at the moment and her husband who were really fun, S’ intern for the summer, Chip – a local real estate agent and Frank, a local interior decorator who specializes in mid-century pieces – hmm an interior decorator in the Hamptons oh how I want Frank’s job. Frank and I had a brief chat about the price of mid-century furniture in the US compared with Australia (which piqued Frank’s interest, again, I’m thinking about shipping containers!).
At about 11, we decided to pile into Chip’s Landrover and head for the uber cool bar Sunset at Sunset Beach. Now there’s a few cool ideas I could steal to rival the coolest bars I’ve ever been to on the Gold Coast, Noosa or Sydney. Friday is the quiet night so we just chilled out on the lounges by the fire pit – very cool indeed. And that was pretty much, the first 10 hours in the Hamptons taken care of.
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Riot at Folsom Prison
As I was leaving New York I caught the news headlines at the airport. Seven people were injured in a riot at Folsom Prison, New York - perhaps they're finally sick of drinking that yeller water?
Friday, August 27, 2010
Checking out of the Chelsea Hotel
When I say, "Checking out of the Chelsea Hotel", In this case, I mean it literally, not metaphorically as many including poet Dylan Thomas have literally 'checked out' of the Chelsea Hotel. With such a long rock'n'roll and literary history, the rooms I have to say are a little on the 'vanilla' side. Or perhaps that just because I'm traveling on the cheep cheep?
The guests are interesting though, the most interesting are the permanent residents who are a kooky brand of New Yorkers. All grey and designer shabby and intense.
My room had a fireplace which had been boarded up - pity - that would have been really cool, and a kitchen including a full size oven and cooker. What anyone is ever going to cook in the Chelsea apart from Crystal Meth, I don't know, but if you're inclined to bake pies during your stay, you can. The bathroom looked surprisingly like mine at Riverton Street - except blue instead of pink.
The lobbies and stairwells are filled with original artworks that give the place that feeling of a worn bohemia. The best part about staying at the Chelsea is the intimation that you're somebody kooky too. I was walking out of the lobby the yesterday in de riguer jaunty trilby and people on the street ducked down to see under the brim of my hat in case I was somebody famous, or more likely notorious. Pretty funny huh?
PS. This is a blog people - it's a two-way street, when I ask you guestions, I expect an answer.
This entry is proudly brought to you direct from the downstairs lobby of the Hotel Chelsea, better known as the Chelsea Hotel, West 23rd Street, New York, New York.
Hamptons here I come....
The guests are interesting though, the most interesting are the permanent residents who are a kooky brand of New Yorkers. All grey and designer shabby and intense.
My room had a fireplace which had been boarded up - pity - that would have been really cool, and a kitchen including a full size oven and cooker. What anyone is ever going to cook in the Chelsea apart from Crystal Meth, I don't know, but if you're inclined to bake pies during your stay, you can. The bathroom looked surprisingly like mine at Riverton Street - except blue instead of pink.
The lobbies and stairwells are filled with original artworks that give the place that feeling of a worn bohemia. The best part about staying at the Chelsea is the intimation that you're somebody kooky too. I was walking out of the lobby the yesterday in de riguer jaunty trilby and people on the street ducked down to see under the brim of my hat in case I was somebody famous, or more likely notorious. Pretty funny huh?
PS. This is a blog people - it's a two-way street, when I ask you guestions, I expect an answer.
This entry is proudly brought to you direct from the downstairs lobby of the Hotel Chelsea, better known as the Chelsea Hotel, West 23rd Street, New York, New York.
Hamptons here I come....
Monday, August 23, 2010
A boring day of errands in NYC
I got to that point when you’re traveling that you seriously consider wearing swimwear under your clothes instead of wasting precious time doing laundry. White-on-white was closed yesterday, so today laundry became mission critical. Today was another day of sight-seeing in my glad rags (as my mum would call them), because all of my other clothes are at white-on-white–still. I am contemplating getting them to deliver my clothes to me from across the street at 7am tomorrow so I can loll about in my robe – that would be very NYC of me wouldn’t it? But practical too – otherwise i’m going to have to put dirty clothes on to go and get my clean laundry – it doesn’t make sense.
On the advice of Dr K, I rested the bung ankle yesterday by chilling in the loft all morning with my fellow loftees M and Mr S, before venturing out in the pouring rain to Times Square for a Sunday afternoon Matinee. It’s well worth lining up for discount tickets. The line moves quickly until you get stuck behind groups of four people right at the ticket window who find out that the show they wanted to see has sold out while they are in the line and haven’t agreed on a plan B. Talk about frustrating!
I had wanted to go and see South Pacific, but according to the spruikers hovering around the line, it was sold out.I later found out from M that they always say that, but it’s not really true. Instead, I snapped up a ticket to my plan B for 40 per cent off, La Cage Aux Folles starring Kelsey Grammer (aka Frasier). It’s the French musical comedy ‘the birdcage’, you’re probably familiar with the Robin Williams movie where the gay couple play it straight to impress their conservative politician father of their daughter-in-law to be – it was hilarious, very well acted. Plus you get a one part Broadway musical two parts French riveria drag show, so lots of feathers and high-kicks all for the one low price. It was a great way to spend a rainy Sunday afternoon and I slunk back to the loft just in time for M to wait on me hand and foot with cucumber infused vodka, an ice pack and left over Indian food. I think she misses her son.
Today M left for the beach – since it was raining in NYC and all. I’m going to miss her, and the coffee, as I’ve sort of watched her do the drip filter coffee straight into the enormous buckets they call mugs here at the loft, but I’m pretty sure I’ll stuff it up tomorrow.
So I dropped the laundry in at white on white. They told to me pick it up after 6pm – what they didn’t tell me was they close at 7pm – so all my clothes except a hoodie and what I’m wearing now are across the road all locked up.
Since weather.com predicted thunderstorms all day I thought a spot of window shopping in Midtown might be a good way to keep out of the elements. I arrived at the front entrance of Bloomingdales five minutes before they raised the shutters and wandered into the massive emporium of everything lovely amid strains of Frank Sinatra’s New York, New York – it's like they knew I was coming and timed it perfectly to hit 'play' on a massive tapedeck somewhere behind the scenes. The gleaming black and white tiles and friendly staff, fresh faced for the day and not yet worn down by Italian tourists who insist on haggling over the ticket prices. Ah, retail!
After Bloomies I headed on up to Prada where despite their unhelpful attitude I treated myself to some new perfume. For the last year I’ve been saving for this trip and when I ran out of perfume three months ago I just started using using random testers , samples of whatever was going and leftovers from my trip to Grasse seven years ago (not still at it’s best). You see, I can be frugal when there’s a higher purpose involved. When it comes to breakfast foods, I’m as brand loyal as they come. Kellogs Crunchy Nut cornflakes every day for at least five years, and now Carmen’s Deluxe Fruit Museli – every morning. However, when it comes to fragrances, I’m a floozy. I rarely take home the same once twice, and now it's Prada something infused with Tuberose. Hmmm, just the scent to mask the overwhelming smell of pee in the New York subway this summer.
Even now, hours later, it still irks me that I bought something from Prada today. Five overstuffed sales assistants chatting away to eachother while I stood for five minutes at the fragrance counter being ignored. When I finally got served again, there were conversations about my drivers license photo and how it looks nothing like me. The general consensus among staff at Prada Fifth Avenue is that the short hair is ‘fun’. Hmmph.
Earlier in the week while I was performing some official duties as international photographer for French speaking tourists at the top of the Rockefeller Centre my Tiffany necklace snapped and broke. Talk about timing. So continuing with my list of errands today, I popped upstairs in the Fifth Ave store made famous by Breakfast at Tiffanys and they organized to fix it. It will be ready by 5pm today. No charge, oh, and they cleaned it so it sparkles and recommended a great place to have lunch nearby. Very helpful Tiffanys, you could teach those monkeys at Prada a thing or two. Since I couldn’t remember the zip code for Broadway downtown for the purposes of the service card, they just made my address details the same as the stores’ – if you need to mail me anything today please post it to my new address - C/O Tiffany & Co, Fifth Avenue, New York, New York.
On the advice of Dr K, I rested the bung ankle yesterday by chilling in the loft all morning with my fellow loftees M and Mr S, before venturing out in the pouring rain to Times Square for a Sunday afternoon Matinee. It’s well worth lining up for discount tickets. The line moves quickly until you get stuck behind groups of four people right at the ticket window who find out that the show they wanted to see has sold out while they are in the line and haven’t agreed on a plan B. Talk about frustrating!
I had wanted to go and see South Pacific, but according to the spruikers hovering around the line, it was sold out.I later found out from M that they always say that, but it’s not really true. Instead, I snapped up a ticket to my plan B for 40 per cent off, La Cage Aux Folles starring Kelsey Grammer (aka Frasier). It’s the French musical comedy ‘the birdcage’, you’re probably familiar with the Robin Williams movie where the gay couple play it straight to impress their conservative politician father of their daughter-in-law to be – it was hilarious, very well acted. Plus you get a one part Broadway musical two parts French riveria drag show, so lots of feathers and high-kicks all for the one low price. It was a great way to spend a rainy Sunday afternoon and I slunk back to the loft just in time for M to wait on me hand and foot with cucumber infused vodka, an ice pack and left over Indian food. I think she misses her son.
Today M left for the beach – since it was raining in NYC and all. I’m going to miss her, and the coffee, as I’ve sort of watched her do the drip filter coffee straight into the enormous buckets they call mugs here at the loft, but I’m pretty sure I’ll stuff it up tomorrow.
So I dropped the laundry in at white on white. They told to me pick it up after 6pm – what they didn’t tell me was they close at 7pm – so all my clothes except a hoodie and what I’m wearing now are across the road all locked up.
Since weather.com predicted thunderstorms all day I thought a spot of window shopping in Midtown might be a good way to keep out of the elements. I arrived at the front entrance of Bloomingdales five minutes before they raised the shutters and wandered into the massive emporium of everything lovely amid strains of Frank Sinatra’s New York, New York – it's like they knew I was coming and timed it perfectly to hit 'play' on a massive tapedeck somewhere behind the scenes. The gleaming black and white tiles and friendly staff, fresh faced for the day and not yet worn down by Italian tourists who insist on haggling over the ticket prices. Ah, retail!
After Bloomies I headed on up to Prada where despite their unhelpful attitude I treated myself to some new perfume. For the last year I’ve been saving for this trip and when I ran out of perfume three months ago I just started using using random testers , samples of whatever was going and leftovers from my trip to Grasse seven years ago (not still at it’s best). You see, I can be frugal when there’s a higher purpose involved. When it comes to breakfast foods, I’m as brand loyal as they come. Kellogs Crunchy Nut cornflakes every day for at least five years, and now Carmen’s Deluxe Fruit Museli – every morning. However, when it comes to fragrances, I’m a floozy. I rarely take home the same once twice, and now it's Prada something infused with Tuberose. Hmmm, just the scent to mask the overwhelming smell of pee in the New York subway this summer.
Even now, hours later, it still irks me that I bought something from Prada today. Five overstuffed sales assistants chatting away to eachother while I stood for five minutes at the fragrance counter being ignored. When I finally got served again, there were conversations about my drivers license photo and how it looks nothing like me. The general consensus among staff at Prada Fifth Avenue is that the short hair is ‘fun’. Hmmph.
Earlier in the week while I was performing some official duties as international photographer for French speaking tourists at the top of the Rockefeller Centre my Tiffany necklace snapped and broke. Talk about timing. So continuing with my list of errands today, I popped upstairs in the Fifth Ave store made famous by Breakfast at Tiffanys and they organized to fix it. It will be ready by 5pm today. No charge, oh, and they cleaned it so it sparkles and recommended a great place to have lunch nearby. Very helpful Tiffanys, you could teach those monkeys at Prada a thing or two. Since I couldn’t remember the zip code for Broadway downtown for the purposes of the service card, they just made my address details the same as the stores’ – if you need to mail me anything today please post it to my new address - C/O Tiffany & Co, Fifth Avenue, New York, New York.
The peeps I meet in NYC
So I’m staying in an enormous loft apartment on Broadway in NYC, with C a New Yorker for life who appears to be a wealthy Jewess who is in the process of divorcing her husband a well-known Italian Psychoanalyst and her son. From what I can gather C is a sociologist and has actually escaped the loft with her friend S for the weekend to S' farm (40 acres in upstate New York). Leaving me in C's words, "Lady of the manor' for the weekend. People, I feel like I’m living in a copy of Vanity Fair magazine.
Staying at the loft is also Mr S, from Brisbane, Highgate Hill to be exact who likes yoga, hiding in his room and owns a bunch of companies. Funny how you travel to the other side of the world to hang out with people who live ten minutes drive down the road from you at home. I haven’t seen much of Mr S, he keeps to himself and has a bunch of friends in NYC so only seems to pop home for showers and sleep (occasionally).
Since I arrived C’s friend from college M has also been staying here at the loft. I really like M. I’ve made a new friend, purely by accident. M is maybe mid forties, a Berkley graduate with most of a PhD in archeology who reads Latin and Greek (naturally), lived in Rome etc and now lives in Baltimore with her husband who’s in emergency medicine and her son. C hopes her son will continue Latin and Greek at school so they can read the classics together and go on archeological digs. M is really funny and has lead such an interesting life, everyday I end up sitting at the breakfast table yakking away while she makes me coffee and I don’t end up setting off ‘til 11am. C has left today since it’s raining anyhow, but has invited me to join her and her husband at their place at the ‘beach’ in New Jersey where they usually spend the ‘season’ i.e. summer.
It’s a bummer that I already have plans otherwise what an experience. Still as M says, if my itinerary doesn’t pan out to be all that I hoped for I’m welcome to join them at the beach for flounder and martinis until the end of summer. Hmmmm, very tempting.
As karma would have it I did something nasty to my ankle the day I arrived in NYC and until today have been hobbling and shuffling all over New York. Combined with the jaunty trilby, it’s been enough for most people to give me a wide berth. With American healthcare what it is, I bought the equivalent of a tube of deep heat and tried as much as possible not to walk on it too much.
Fortunately though, when you’re staying with a Drs wife, she can just dial hubby and shazam, an over the phone consultation with the good Dr in Baltimore. Nice, very nice. Met another lovely Dr today, a cowboy shirt wearing grey-haired chiropractor who stops by the bar at Grand Central Station every night on his way home to have a few martinis with the locals and his wife. Ah the life, I keep meeting people who have all the ducks lined up in exactly the right order. Today I was the good Drs unexpected guest for a light dinner of French martinis and aranchinis at the bar Grand Central Station. This holiday life would kill me eventually but how long would it take? Really? There’s vitamin C in the pineapple juice in the French Martinis, it’s not all bad.
Staying at the loft is also Mr S, from Brisbane, Highgate Hill to be exact who likes yoga, hiding in his room and owns a bunch of companies. Funny how you travel to the other side of the world to hang out with people who live ten minutes drive down the road from you at home. I haven’t seen much of Mr S, he keeps to himself and has a bunch of friends in NYC so only seems to pop home for showers and sleep (occasionally).
Since I arrived C’s friend from college M has also been staying here at the loft. I really like M. I’ve made a new friend, purely by accident. M is maybe mid forties, a Berkley graduate with most of a PhD in archeology who reads Latin and Greek (naturally), lived in Rome etc and now lives in Baltimore with her husband who’s in emergency medicine and her son. C hopes her son will continue Latin and Greek at school so they can read the classics together and go on archeological digs. M is really funny and has lead such an interesting life, everyday I end up sitting at the breakfast table yakking away while she makes me coffee and I don’t end up setting off ‘til 11am. C has left today since it’s raining anyhow, but has invited me to join her and her husband at their place at the ‘beach’ in New Jersey where they usually spend the ‘season’ i.e. summer.
It’s a bummer that I already have plans otherwise what an experience. Still as M says, if my itinerary doesn’t pan out to be all that I hoped for I’m welcome to join them at the beach for flounder and martinis until the end of summer. Hmmmm, very tempting.
As karma would have it I did something nasty to my ankle the day I arrived in NYC and until today have been hobbling and shuffling all over New York. Combined with the jaunty trilby, it’s been enough for most people to give me a wide berth. With American healthcare what it is, I bought the equivalent of a tube of deep heat and tried as much as possible not to walk on it too much.
Fortunately though, when you’re staying with a Drs wife, she can just dial hubby and shazam, an over the phone consultation with the good Dr in Baltimore. Nice, very nice. Met another lovely Dr today, a cowboy shirt wearing grey-haired chiropractor who stops by the bar at Grand Central Station every night on his way home to have a few martinis with the locals and his wife. Ah the life, I keep meeting people who have all the ducks lined up in exactly the right order. Today I was the good Drs unexpected guest for a light dinner of French martinis and aranchinis at the bar Grand Central Station. This holiday life would kill me eventually but how long would it take? Really? There’s vitamin C in the pineapple juice in the French Martinis, it’s not all bad.
Sunday, August 22, 2010
Use dem legs bhoy
I was walking back from Gather in the early evening of suburban Berkeley when I came across football practice. Now to me, US footballers look humorous at the best of times. All that padding up top and those leggings down bottom only works to exacerbate the oddity of their shape. All triangular, like a slice of pie. Now that you have that mental image, imagine the padding and the bobbly helmet on the body of a rag tag bunch of eight or nine year old boys. Hilarious! Parents and friends lined the outside fence of the park where 10 or 11 different teams practiced maneuvers and passes. Feeding straight into all the cultural stereotypes, one poor kid was slowly jogging off the center of the field wailing while his dad was yelling from the sidelines above all the cheering of well meaning parents, “Boy you din’t get in der and use yor legs bhoy – you gotta use dem legs bhoy dats what dem for.” No pressure kid.
Thursday, August 19, 2010
Drinks in NYC with MIchael Jackson
I can scarcely believe I’ve already been in New York three and half days. Hence the lack of blogging – this is the city that never sleeps.
Day one I arrived in the late afternoon to the loft on Broadway in Tribeca (triangle below canal street, is what it stands for), and met my Airbnb host C and her good friend M. C is a quintessential New Yorker, full-on, bossy (in the nicest possible way) and always offering helpful suggestions about the best places to go.
After three and a bit days in New York a summary of my observations are thus:
• The world’s concentration of good-looking men of all ages have been scouped up from around the globe and transplanted to one rather small island, Manhattan
• New Yorkers are friendly and helpful
• I am a novelty and I love it, I have a quote, ‘cute accent’ and am ‘super sweet’
• Every airbnb host is a little bit nuts in the nicest possible way.
• I can see why they sell so many ‘I heart NY’ t-shirts and it’s not because you can buy them for the bargain price of $2.99 in Times Square.
My first night in NYC, C directed to me to a great Mexican in Tribeca where I had a fabulous meal of black eyed peas and chicken washed down with lashings of good’n’strong white Sangria and the fabulous gossip of the young kids that worked at Louis Vuitton who were sitting at the next table.
From there I zig-zagged through the neighbourhood accidentally stumbling into Grenwich Village and a little cocktail bar in Commerce Street for a Strawberry Julep. I am quickly discovering New Yorkers are a friendly bunch, and soon started chatting to none other than a white Michael Jackson and his friend who was from Brooklyn and wholesaled flowers.
New Yorkers are impressed that anyone would travel so far to visit them and as you might expect, aren’t sure that anything exists beyond Sydney – and they like to be reassured they are nice people.
I wandered back to Tribeca in late Friday evening not the slightest bit concerned for my safety. Fortitude Valley is more dangerous late at night than downtown NYC in my opinion. On my way back I stumbled across N.Moore Street which I took as a very good omen for the remainder of my trip in the big apple.
Day one I arrived in the late afternoon to the loft on Broadway in Tribeca (triangle below canal street, is what it stands for), and met my Airbnb host C and her good friend M. C is a quintessential New Yorker, full-on, bossy (in the nicest possible way) and always offering helpful suggestions about the best places to go.
After three and a bit days in New York a summary of my observations are thus:
• The world’s concentration of good-looking men of all ages have been scouped up from around the globe and transplanted to one rather small island, Manhattan
• New Yorkers are friendly and helpful
• I am a novelty and I love it, I have a quote, ‘cute accent’ and am ‘super sweet’
• Every airbnb host is a little bit nuts in the nicest possible way.
• I can see why they sell so many ‘I heart NY’ t-shirts and it’s not because you can buy them for the bargain price of $2.99 in Times Square.
My first night in NYC, C directed to me to a great Mexican in Tribeca where I had a fabulous meal of black eyed peas and chicken washed down with lashings of good’n’strong white Sangria and the fabulous gossip of the young kids that worked at Louis Vuitton who were sitting at the next table.
From there I zig-zagged through the neighbourhood accidentally stumbling into Grenwich Village and a little cocktail bar in Commerce Street for a Strawberry Julep. I am quickly discovering New Yorkers are a friendly bunch, and soon started chatting to none other than a white Michael Jackson and his friend who was from Brooklyn and wholesaled flowers.
New Yorkers are impressed that anyone would travel so far to visit them and as you might expect, aren’t sure that anything exists beyond Sydney – and they like to be reassured they are nice people.
I wandered back to Tribeca in late Friday evening not the slightest bit concerned for my safety. Fortitude Valley is more dangerous late at night than downtown NYC in my opinion. On my way back I stumbled across N.Moore Street which I took as a very good omen for the remainder of my trip in the big apple.
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
I heart Berkeley
The more places I stay, the more I am unwraveling a common thread linking the Airbnb hosts – a certain underlying bohemia. Andy was no exception. He’s a New Yorker who has been living in Berkeley for the last six years. According to Andy, it’s not so much Berkeley as the house that’s kept him there that long.
The house was cool, I’ll give you that, a shingled cottage with a loft and skylights it was pretty unique in suburban Berkeley and combined with the laid back University town atmos, a bit like Cambridge, there’s a lot to like. On Andy’s advice I headed straight downtown on foot to check out the University campus and spent a great afternoon in the warm sun watching students kick footballs and throw Frisbees to the eachother in grassy courts surrounded by Hearst this and Guggenhiem that hall. The longer I’m hear the more I realize Americans with cash like to get their names on things. It was hard to stifle the giggles when the passing professors were wearing Birkenstocks with socks. Yep, this is Berkeley alright. It may be 40 years since the university made a name for it’s freewheelin’ and freethinking academics, but even now they’re still decidedly left of center.
Berkeley campus is visually really beautiful. They’re building a new extension of the Naval Architecture wing, in a style sympathetic to the building’s original simple wood structure. I also love a university that has or has had a whole wing devoted to naval architecture. Continuing my zig zag I pass a big grove of Eucalypts which I keep encountering in the US and each time provides a reassuring whiff of home as I walk past. According to the historian Laura in LA, California grew a whole lot of Australian Eucalypts as they were planning to mill the timber for railroad sleepers but that didn’t really work out, so instead there are just clumps of gum trees sans the Koalas dotted about the state.
After another afternoon of zig-zagging and some time on the grassy knoll (not The Grassy Knoll, just a grassy knoll) I headed over to Berkeley’s hip new restaurant Gather. I had a fantastic meal of roasted eggplant. I like eating food, but I’ve just tried to describe the flavours of the meal and I just can’t interpret the tastes in a way that captures the unexpectedly unique flavours. The concept of the restaurant is local organic produce which is the big thing in northern California. I later find out Andy has a very small financial interest in the restaurant and his friends own it. They’re on a winner, do yourself a favour and stop by if you’re ever in town.
If only I could find a way to work in Berkeley I can see that it’s the kind of place you could easily find yourself for six years.
The house was cool, I’ll give you that, a shingled cottage with a loft and skylights it was pretty unique in suburban Berkeley and combined with the laid back University town atmos, a bit like Cambridge, there’s a lot to like. On Andy’s advice I headed straight downtown on foot to check out the University campus and spent a great afternoon in the warm sun watching students kick footballs and throw Frisbees to the eachother in grassy courts surrounded by Hearst this and Guggenhiem that hall. The longer I’m hear the more I realize Americans with cash like to get their names on things. It was hard to stifle the giggles when the passing professors were wearing Birkenstocks with socks. Yep, this is Berkeley alright. It may be 40 years since the university made a name for it’s freewheelin’ and freethinking academics, but even now they’re still decidedly left of center.
Berkeley campus is visually really beautiful. They’re building a new extension of the Naval Architecture wing, in a style sympathetic to the building’s original simple wood structure. I also love a university that has or has had a whole wing devoted to naval architecture. Continuing my zig zag I pass a big grove of Eucalypts which I keep encountering in the US and each time provides a reassuring whiff of home as I walk past. According to the historian Laura in LA, California grew a whole lot of Australian Eucalypts as they were planning to mill the timber for railroad sleepers but that didn’t really work out, so instead there are just clumps of gum trees sans the Koalas dotted about the state.
After another afternoon of zig-zagging and some time on the grassy knoll (not The Grassy Knoll, just a grassy knoll) I headed over to Berkeley’s hip new restaurant Gather. I had a fantastic meal of roasted eggplant. I like eating food, but I’ve just tried to describe the flavours of the meal and I just can’t interpret the tastes in a way that captures the unexpectedly unique flavours. The concept of the restaurant is local organic produce which is the big thing in northern California. I later find out Andy has a very small financial interest in the restaurant and his friends own it. They’re on a winner, do yourself a favour and stop by if you’re ever in town.
If only I could find a way to work in Berkeley I can see that it’s the kind of place you could easily find yourself for six years.
So long Frisco
Boy time flies when you’re having fun. Five days in San Francisco were swallowed up quicker than I eat ice cream coated in ice magic – and let me tell you – that’s fast. I spent my last day in the Mission, one of the most San Franciscan areas of San Francisco (with the emphasis on the Franciscan missionaries to be precise) - San Francisco’s Spanish heartland. I started out wandering the streets in a random zig zag as I like to do. Nature and the promise of churchly clean toilets lead me back to the original Mission church on Delores Street. Which was a good stop to soak up the neighbourhood’s history, seeing the old photographs of bullfighting in the square and later the hearses lined up outside the church delivering the bodies from the 1906 earthquake. The simple original building has Adobe (meaning sundried bricks made of clay – not portable document format) walls that were 4 feet thick, which withstood the 1906 earthquake. The more elaborate and newer Basilica that was built next door used more modern construction techniques and like many historic buildings in San Fran, didn’t stand up the shaking of 1906. What does this tell you people? Keep it simple, look backwards.
On the advice of Lonely Planet I sought out the famous Clarion Street alley graffiti. Disappointing people. I went to the southern end of the alley and the overwhelming stench of pee made it a really short visit. Plus the Grafiitti in the alleyways of Melbourne is much better – still I gave it a go.
I doubled back to Nob Hill for the last time to say my goodbyes to Cali – she was clearly crying on the inside to see me go. Assembled my 63 small bags and trekked over to Berkeley. So long San Francisco.
On the advice of Lonely Planet I sought out the famous Clarion Street alley graffiti. Disappointing people. I went to the southern end of the alley and the overwhelming stench of pee made it a really short visit. Plus the Grafiitti in the alleyways of Melbourne is much better – still I gave it a go.
I doubled back to Nob Hill for the last time to say my goodbyes to Cali – she was clearly crying on the inside to see me go. Assembled my 63 small bags and trekked over to Berkeley. So long San Francisco.
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
No Alcatraz, instead a hippie trail head full of zombies
Hmmm. Tourist season strikes again. It seems you need to book ahead for the Alcatraz tour during the summer tour season – like at least a week in advance. Guess I’ll just hit the hippie trail to Haight Ashbury instead.
It’s been a long time since the summer of love in 1967, but the dope is still lingering in the air of Haight Ashbury. In many ways it’s a lot like Nimbin. A social microcosm that’s a hangover from the 1960s, complete with ageing long-hairs that refuse to grow up who are now siphoning money out of young kids keen to experience the ‘dream’ and middle-aged hipsters trying to regain their youth.
I’d been reading about Haight Ashbury in books, so was keen to experience it for myself. It’s the place to buy dope, incense, tie-dye and t-shirts about dope and incense that are tie-dyed. It’s also the sight of the postcard row of houses on Alamo Square that you might recognise from the 1980s cheese-ball American sitcom, Full House. They’re playing it again on GO at the moment. I loved it then, but now it just seems so lame. Bob Saget the dad, has built a parable for the young kids into every episode that’s so transparent, Jesse is just a Fonzie wannabe ‘Have Mercy’ sounds suspiciously like, “Heeey’ to me and uncle ‘Joey’ is not funny – just lame.
Still I took a few pictures, not because I’m a fan of Full House (anymore), but because I’m a sucker for American architecture.
That was one of the best parts of my time in LA – taking a tour of mid-century American architecture in LA. Just me, Laura, the tour guide and American architecture historian and a whole lotta great houses and buildings conceived and constructed in the 1940s with curved glass panels for walls that would be an engineering feat today, let alone back then. It was geeky, but Lou, you would have loved it. Highly recommend it.
As Steinbeck would write, my dogs is tar’d (my feet are tired).
Yesterday I walked from Marina across the Golden Gate Bridge (what a way to help conquer a fear of heights) and down to Sausalito for lunch. Yes, I walked. Most tourists drove or biked. Some even caught cabs from San Francisco, but on Nic’s advice, I walked. You get to see the detail of a place on foot – but boy do I have buns of steel now! All those hills!
I love the story that some architects moved in quickly and were able to inject some style into the Golden Gate Bridge before the city engineers built another functional concrete pylon structure. And I love that they painted it orange. Would so many postcards be sold of a grey concrete pylon structure? Would they sell as many t-shirts? I doubt it.
Sausalito is another great little town – a bit like the Bay areas own Carmel. It’s another icecream, souvenir t-shirt and art village. I don’t know about you, but it’s not often that I stop off the beaten track for an icecream and a good ‘vista’ as the Americans call it and think to myself, “Hey that $6,000 painting would look good at my place, think I’ll buy it”. I don’t know, do people buy art on impulse Bill?
It’s been a long time since the summer of love in 1967, but the dope is still lingering in the air of Haight Ashbury. In many ways it’s a lot like Nimbin. A social microcosm that’s a hangover from the 1960s, complete with ageing long-hairs that refuse to grow up who are now siphoning money out of young kids keen to experience the ‘dream’ and middle-aged hipsters trying to regain their youth.
I’d been reading about Haight Ashbury in books, so was keen to experience it for myself. It’s the place to buy dope, incense, tie-dye and t-shirts about dope and incense that are tie-dyed. It’s also the sight of the postcard row of houses on Alamo Square that you might recognise from the 1980s cheese-ball American sitcom, Full House. They’re playing it again on GO at the moment. I loved it then, but now it just seems so lame. Bob Saget the dad, has built a parable for the young kids into every episode that’s so transparent, Jesse is just a Fonzie wannabe ‘Have Mercy’ sounds suspiciously like, “Heeey’ to me and uncle ‘Joey’ is not funny – just lame.
Still I took a few pictures, not because I’m a fan of Full House (anymore), but because I’m a sucker for American architecture.
That was one of the best parts of my time in LA – taking a tour of mid-century American architecture in LA. Just me, Laura, the tour guide and American architecture historian and a whole lotta great houses and buildings conceived and constructed in the 1940s with curved glass panels for walls that would be an engineering feat today, let alone back then. It was geeky, but Lou, you would have loved it. Highly recommend it.
As Steinbeck would write, my dogs is tar’d (my feet are tired).
Yesterday I walked from Marina across the Golden Gate Bridge (what a way to help conquer a fear of heights) and down to Sausalito for lunch. Yes, I walked. Most tourists drove or biked. Some even caught cabs from San Francisco, but on Nic’s advice, I walked. You get to see the detail of a place on foot – but boy do I have buns of steel now! All those hills!
I love the story that some architects moved in quickly and were able to inject some style into the Golden Gate Bridge before the city engineers built another functional concrete pylon structure. And I love that they painted it orange. Would so many postcards be sold of a grey concrete pylon structure? Would they sell as many t-shirts? I doubt it.
Sausalito is another great little town – a bit like the Bay areas own Carmel. It’s another icecream, souvenir t-shirt and art village. I don’t know about you, but it’s not often that I stop off the beaten track for an icecream and a good ‘vista’ as the Americans call it and think to myself, “Hey that $6,000 painting would look good at my place, think I’ll buy it”. I don’t know, do people buy art on impulse Bill?
Monday, August 16, 2010
Give the fatties more syrup
I promised to write a more detailed reminiscence of lunch in Carmel – well here goes. Now remember the context of this lunch. It’s the weekend of the Concours D’Elegance and the little designer seaside town is packed with Ferrari families, the wannabes and me.
I sit at the counter of a little café just off the main street and wait patiently for my BLT and coke. It’s about 11.30 so really the ‘brunching hour’. There are two tables of at least two families traveling together sitting near me. One table for the adults, blonde fluffy haired moms from the mid-west (I think), and checkered shirt dads. The other table is piled with kids. Fatties too.
The helpful waitress attempts to take the fatties some glasses of water and is intercepted by a checkered shirt dad. “No, they don’t need waters” he answers on their behalf. The waters are diverted back to the kitchen.
Slowly their meals start arriving. Pancakes, showered in icing sugar, plates and plates of them, then piles of waffles showered with icing sugar. These are the kids meals and are deposited onto the counter so the fluffy-haired moms can cut them up for the little fatties. A checkered shirt dad starts using his hands, tearing up the food with his fingers into bite size pieces like he was feeding a dog. Then they grab the syrup and start drowning the food. The fatties wait patiently for the food to drop. One kid gets a meal that isn’t obviously pancakes or waffles. It’s a pile of food coated in syrup and icing sugar and piled about 25 cm high on the dinner plate. I ask the waiter what it is, he says it’s the ‘special’ French toast. It’s deep-fried French toast, drowned in syrup and icing sugar. The fatties devour the solid sugar and fat.
In Australia this might constitute child abuse and someone would call the authorities – in Carmel on a sunny Saturday morning, it’s called ‘brunch’. One of the older fatties is chowing into a plate of waffles, stops and says, “Mom, mom, I want more syrup”, “Oh here you go honey” the fatty further drowns the waffles in syrup and continues to shovel the sugar.
It's like watching a train wreck. I want to go over and sit closer so I can hear what they're talking about - I'm finding it hard not to stare. Ah Americana, I love you.
I sit at the counter of a little café just off the main street and wait patiently for my BLT and coke. It’s about 11.30 so really the ‘brunching hour’. There are two tables of at least two families traveling together sitting near me. One table for the adults, blonde fluffy haired moms from the mid-west (I think), and checkered shirt dads. The other table is piled with kids. Fatties too.
The helpful waitress attempts to take the fatties some glasses of water and is intercepted by a checkered shirt dad. “No, they don’t need waters” he answers on their behalf. The waters are diverted back to the kitchen.
Slowly their meals start arriving. Pancakes, showered in icing sugar, plates and plates of them, then piles of waffles showered with icing sugar. These are the kids meals and are deposited onto the counter so the fluffy-haired moms can cut them up for the little fatties. A checkered shirt dad starts using his hands, tearing up the food with his fingers into bite size pieces like he was feeding a dog. Then they grab the syrup and start drowning the food. The fatties wait patiently for the food to drop. One kid gets a meal that isn’t obviously pancakes or waffles. It’s a pile of food coated in syrup and icing sugar and piled about 25 cm high on the dinner plate. I ask the waiter what it is, he says it’s the ‘special’ French toast. It’s deep-fried French toast, drowned in syrup and icing sugar. The fatties devour the solid sugar and fat.
In Australia this might constitute child abuse and someone would call the authorities – in Carmel on a sunny Saturday morning, it’s called ‘brunch’. One of the older fatties is chowing into a plate of waffles, stops and says, “Mom, mom, I want more syrup”, “Oh here you go honey” the fatty further drowns the waffles in syrup and continues to shovel the sugar.
It's like watching a train wreck. I want to go over and sit closer so I can hear what they're talking about - I'm finding it hard not to stare. Ah Americana, I love you.
Sunday, August 15, 2010
All things bright and beautiful this morning!
I’m planning to head out to Alcatraz today, but I’ve just discovered that my camera battery is dead. So I have to hang around the apartment while I wait for it to charge. Callie is meowing outside the door. We’re becoming better friends, I let her run around in my room when Susan is home, but when Susan leaves Callie is out the door.
Yesterday was my first full day in San Fran, and I know don’t what I was so afraid of. Clearly my entrée to San Fran on day one was the worst possible side of the town to see, and the rest is just like it is in the movies. Lots of sandal wearing, organic food eating trendies, driving volkswagens.
I wandered around Nob Hill and found myself completely by accident at Lombard Street with a flock of tourists. I wasn’t ever planning on going to Lombard Street – a tourist attraction famous for traffic calming – but since I found it by accident I snapped off a few photos with the Japanese tourists.
From there I headed down the hill to North Beach and the bohemian/Italian heart of San Fran. Lots of good strong Italian coffee smells for a change as I wandered along Colombus Ave to City Lights Bookstore.
When I was about 17 I started reading the beat novels and poetry of Ginsberg, Kerouac, Kesey, Ferlinghetti and Wolfe. Fascinated by the beat movement the counter culture and the hippie movement that followed this free-thinking in the 1960s. Since I couldn’t make it back to the Arthur Miller library and I missed out on the Steinbeck Center – I was determined to spend a good long visit at City Lights bookstore.
For those who don’t know, it’s a bookstore originally owned by San Francisco beat poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti and was the first place to publish Allen Ginsberg’s disturbing portrait of his view of American society – Howl. When he first wrote it in 1956, publishers refused to publish it and it was banned on the grounds of obscenity and it flashed red alarm bells with McCarthy’s House of Un-American Activities.
Since then City Lights pioneered the cause of free speech in all its forms and was an important fixture in the history of the beat movement, helping to get authors like Jack Kerouac and Ken Kesey published.
So I sat in an old rocking chair in the poetry room up on the third floor and read Howl from beginning to end for the first time and a few excerpts of Off the Road, Carolyn Cassady’s accounts of life with Neal and Jack (or Dean and Sal as you may know them from On the Road).
I’m not rushing for anything or anyone anymore. If I miss something, so be it. I’m not going to lurch all over town trying to fit absolutely everything in.
I finally settled on a small gift for Ben (who is the only other person I know who would have appreciated City Lights as much as me), and a book of letters between Allen and Jack, oh and a bumper sticker that says ‘Howl if you heart City Lights’.
I slowly wandered back to the apartment, working my calf muscles to the bone. San Francisco is no place for heels! and had a little nap before heading out to Golden Gate Park for the Outside Lands Festival and Kings of Leon.
It took ages to get there. And at times I felt so hopelessly lost that I considered turning back. Thankfully I didn’t. A little over two hours after I set out, I arrived at the right part of Golden Gate Park for the festival, with about an hour to spare before Kings of Leon took the main stage.
It was pretty standard as far as festivals go, but I was surprised at the amount of stuff people brought with them – like blankets and backpacks full of gear, and I was surprised by the lax security. In a country where you’re allowed to own a gun, there were no metal detectors on entry and no pat downs. Just a general look inside my bag, in theory I could have had anything in there.
I bought a tiny glass of wine (soon realised why everyone else was drinking cups of beer), and found a spot in the grass to soak up the festival vibe until the gig started. Like in Melbourne, San Fran has twilight in summer so the sun only starts going down at around 8.30pm.
Kings of Leon took the stage at about 8pm and played a great set of old and new stuff. All the songs you know from the radio like Revelry, Sex on Fire, and Manhattan and some new stuff that sounded a little bit country and went down well with the crowd.
I left at the start of the last song in the finale keen to get a jump on the departing crowd. Ha! N, you have no idea where you’re going. I should have followed the crowd. But no. My best laid plans didn’t really work and I ended up walking about 35 blocks through the streets of San Francisco before I was able to hail a cab for the rest of the ride home. Lucky I needed the exercise.
So I’m all set for my excursion to Alcatraz if only the camera battery would hurry up and charge. I’m a little overdressed for sight-seeing but it’s cold and I’ve just dropped off all my clothes at the Wash ‘n’Go before I run out of underwear and am forced to wear my swimsuit.
Camera battery is green – we’re good to go.
Yesterday was my first full day in San Fran, and I know don’t what I was so afraid of. Clearly my entrée to San Fran on day one was the worst possible side of the town to see, and the rest is just like it is in the movies. Lots of sandal wearing, organic food eating trendies, driving volkswagens.
I wandered around Nob Hill and found myself completely by accident at Lombard Street with a flock of tourists. I wasn’t ever planning on going to Lombard Street – a tourist attraction famous for traffic calming – but since I found it by accident I snapped off a few photos with the Japanese tourists.
From there I headed down the hill to North Beach and the bohemian/Italian heart of San Fran. Lots of good strong Italian coffee smells for a change as I wandered along Colombus Ave to City Lights Bookstore.
When I was about 17 I started reading the beat novels and poetry of Ginsberg, Kerouac, Kesey, Ferlinghetti and Wolfe. Fascinated by the beat movement the counter culture and the hippie movement that followed this free-thinking in the 1960s. Since I couldn’t make it back to the Arthur Miller library and I missed out on the Steinbeck Center – I was determined to spend a good long visit at City Lights bookstore.
For those who don’t know, it’s a bookstore originally owned by San Francisco beat poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti and was the first place to publish Allen Ginsberg’s disturbing portrait of his view of American society – Howl. When he first wrote it in 1956, publishers refused to publish it and it was banned on the grounds of obscenity and it flashed red alarm bells with McCarthy’s House of Un-American Activities.
Since then City Lights pioneered the cause of free speech in all its forms and was an important fixture in the history of the beat movement, helping to get authors like Jack Kerouac and Ken Kesey published.
So I sat in an old rocking chair in the poetry room up on the third floor and read Howl from beginning to end for the first time and a few excerpts of Off the Road, Carolyn Cassady’s accounts of life with Neal and Jack (or Dean and Sal as you may know them from On the Road).
I’m not rushing for anything or anyone anymore. If I miss something, so be it. I’m not going to lurch all over town trying to fit absolutely everything in.
I finally settled on a small gift for Ben (who is the only other person I know who would have appreciated City Lights as much as me), and a book of letters between Allen and Jack, oh and a bumper sticker that says ‘Howl if you heart City Lights’.
I slowly wandered back to the apartment, working my calf muscles to the bone. San Francisco is no place for heels! and had a little nap before heading out to Golden Gate Park for the Outside Lands Festival and Kings of Leon.
It took ages to get there. And at times I felt so hopelessly lost that I considered turning back. Thankfully I didn’t. A little over two hours after I set out, I arrived at the right part of Golden Gate Park for the festival, with about an hour to spare before Kings of Leon took the main stage.
It was pretty standard as far as festivals go, but I was surprised at the amount of stuff people brought with them – like blankets and backpacks full of gear, and I was surprised by the lax security. In a country where you’re allowed to own a gun, there were no metal detectors on entry and no pat downs. Just a general look inside my bag, in theory I could have had anything in there.
I bought a tiny glass of wine (soon realised why everyone else was drinking cups of beer), and found a spot in the grass to soak up the festival vibe until the gig started. Like in Melbourne, San Fran has twilight in summer so the sun only starts going down at around 8.30pm.
Kings of Leon took the stage at about 8pm and played a great set of old and new stuff. All the songs you know from the radio like Revelry, Sex on Fire, and Manhattan and some new stuff that sounded a little bit country and went down well with the crowd.
I left at the start of the last song in the finale keen to get a jump on the departing crowd. Ha! N, you have no idea where you’re going. I should have followed the crowd. But no. My best laid plans didn’t really work and I ended up walking about 35 blocks through the streets of San Francisco before I was able to hail a cab for the rest of the ride home. Lucky I needed the exercise.
So I’m all set for my excursion to Alcatraz if only the camera battery would hurry up and charge. I’m a little overdressed for sight-seeing but it’s cold and I’ve just dropped off all my clothes at the Wash ‘n’Go before I run out of underwear and am forced to wear my swimsuit.
Camera battery is green – we’re good to go.
Saturday, August 14, 2010
If you're going to San Francisco arrive by sea
So I’m holed up in my room in Susan’s place on Nob Hill, San Fran, escaping Callie the friendly cat. I’m not a cat person. While Susan was here, I pretended I’d ‘make nice’ with Callie. Now that’s she’s gone – to cat sit a bunch of sick cats (lord, I hope this sick cat owner lives in a house and not an apartment!), Callie is out. Callie is brooding in the hallway, plotting how she’s going to pee in my suitcase the one day that I forget to close the door behind me. Callie is a likeable kind of cat – don’t get me wrong, I’m just not a cat person. Callie is some weird special cat – with a fat tail and six claws on each foot – Susan did tell me, but again, I’m not a cat person, so in one ear and out the other. I can never tell Susan that I have a blog – she’ll find out the truth, that cats and I don’t mix. Sorry Clear, you have all the cats you want. Just don’t ask me to cat sit or pat ‘em.
Apart from Callie the cat – and I knew Callie lived here when I signed up to stay – Susan’s place is nice. It’s an old apartment in Nob Hill and because it’s not a real B’n’B or anything it was a bit to get used to initially. The shower is interesting – as foreign showers always are. Lonely Planet needs a guidebook on foreign showers, everywhere you go they’re different with their own special quirks – don’t get me started on English ‘electric’ showers with dials! CRAP!
It’s been a long day ‘on the road’ pardon the pun. A day of ‘closed’ stuff, which has been a bit disappointing. Last night I went to the Arthur Miller library in Big Sur to a comedy music and Improv night which was great. It was outside in the yard of the library amongst the Redwoods. With twinkly fairy lights in the trees and travelers and locals milled around a little stage drinking free tea and coffe or harder stuff they’d brought themselves. The comedy singer was mildly amusing – but the improv guys were great. Hilarious, politically incorrect and just really damn talented. I could only stay for the first set as I had to head back to the lodge before it got really dark as the goat-track of a road was hairy enough to navigate in the light, let alone in the pitch black of the Big Sur night.
After my lame attempt at an open fire in the cabin overnight, I set off a little later this morning straight back to the Arthur Miller library to soak it all up properly, and the apparently free Wi-Fi. As I rounded the bend I was surprised not to see any cars – til I saw the sign – Closed. Sigh. If I had of known it would be closed on a Saturday I would have spent more time last night. Ah, back ‘on the road’ then. Disappointing.
I stopped in a little way past the lodge to use the free wi-fi at Redwoods. I’ve starting to become adept at scanning roadside signs for the words ‘free wi-fi’. And uploaded the first batch of blog entries and pics before heading back out on the winding road to Carmel.
Carmel is a kind of designer cute seaside town, and as the Concours D’elegance in on this weekend at Pebble Beach just up the road, the streets were lined with luxury sports cars. Guys , seriously this was drool worthy. I parked the Pony beside three Masarati’s all in a row! I almost took a flyer off the windscreen of a powder blue ‘56 model Porsche for sale for just $20K. I spent a few moments seriously thinking through the logistics of getting the cash together, freighting it over etc, etc, ‘til I of course realized, the steering wheel would be on the wrong side. Hmmmm. Plus, I don’t really need a powder blue vintage Porsche, do I? This is where you’re all supposed to reassure me that the Honda is a great and practical car. Practical. Humph.
I had a great counter lunch in Carmel which I’ll write about in more detail – hilarious. Carmel today attracted an even more designer crowd than usual. It was like all the worst stereotypical elements of Main Beach on Tedder Avenue, times a million. Lots of men with facelifts in Ferrari jackets, just in case we didn’t realize they owned the cars they were driving. Lots of women who marry men for their Ferraris and the wallets that buy them. Hilarious! I took lots of photos of the cars. In hindsight I should have snapped off a few shots of the owners, that would have been far more entertaining.
From Carmel it was off to Monterey, and Cannery Row, which was a disappointing line of t-shirt shops and souvenir joints. I did two laps in the car and didn’t even bother getting out. I had to press on to Salinas to the Steinbeck Center and then onto San Fran by 4pm to get the car back. I was pressed for time.
I haven’t read Tortilla Flat but I’m assuming it’s a reference to the farming lands of Salinas. Desert hills bound a series of fields that stretch out in every direction growing corn, berries, garlic and more. At least 60 years on, you can see the hard working heart of the place is unchanged. And the landscape too, save for the automalls and strip malls – the curse of the modern American landscape.
The people of Salinas look hardworking and it’s hard to spot anyone who isn’t Hispanic.
I roll towards the Steinbeck Center, the shiniest, newest, modern looking building in town. The only real drawcard on an otherwise pointless detour from Highway 101. I park the Pony and am overwhelmed by carloads of well dressed locals in their party gear, gents in shiny suits, ladies in their best dresses with curled hair and lots of little girls in leftover first communion dresses. Looks like it must be a wedding. They all ride down in the elevator with me from the carpark and we walk in the same direction towards the Steinbeck Center. Except they walk inside to the wedding reception as I take in the bad news. “Sorry folks, the whole center is closed today from 2pm for a private function”. Huh? On a Saturday? An American man ahead of me starts mouthing off at the absurdity of the situation – that he’s come such a long way to see the place. Not as far as me pal!
I’m really disappointed. I stand outside the front doors a bit dazed really. The Pony goes back tonight. No more car. No way of coming back another day. My one and only chance, if I had have known I could have come before 2pm. Again, disappointed.
Some more people approach the front door as I announce that it’s closed. They look around and ask if I’ve come a long way – from Australia I say. They commiserate for me, surprised that Steinbeck is popular in Australia too. It’s funny how Americans perceive us. The majority of them are so insular they just assume we are too.
I walked away from the center a bit choked up that I’d come all this way to find out more about one of my favourite authors only to be so disappointed. On Shane’s advice I was planning on buying a copy of the The Pearl from the gift shop and everything. Perhaps next time I’m 100 miles south of San Francisco I’ll call ahead to check they’re open and pop in.
I called in at an automall to buy an American phone since I couldn’t figure out how to use the payphone and called ahead to tell Susan and Dollar car rentals that I’d be late.
Driving into San Fran to drop the car off downtown is like arriving in Paris by train. You start to wonder how the legends of the beautiful city could possibly be true as all you see in every direction is poverty and the mean, grim streets they wish they could pack away from tourists. I got so concerned at one point, that I tried to put the hood up at the intersection, only for the lights to change quickly resulting in me driving a block with the hood half up, half down.
Everywhere I looked people sitting in doorways, pushing shopping trolleys of their possessions around. I’m talking 20 or more people on each side of every street. It was like the worst scenes of hard luck from the movies. It makes Redfern and Brixton look like genteel suburbs. It’s freaked me out a little.
I have a rough guide from Nicole of places to check out while I’m in San Fran, but I’m not really well prepared.
After the big day of driving, and my unfortunate entrée into San Fran I’m really in no mood to go exploring the local ‘hood for dinner. So I’ve eated an apricot flan thingy that Susan made for me and a cup of tea. Tomorrow I’ll get up bright and early, swallow a teaspoon of cement and tackle San Fran worts and all. Tonight I’m just a little scaredy cat – holed up in my room, avoiding Callie. Night night.
Apart from Callie the cat – and I knew Callie lived here when I signed up to stay – Susan’s place is nice. It’s an old apartment in Nob Hill and because it’s not a real B’n’B or anything it was a bit to get used to initially. The shower is interesting – as foreign showers always are. Lonely Planet needs a guidebook on foreign showers, everywhere you go they’re different with their own special quirks – don’t get me started on English ‘electric’ showers with dials! CRAP!
It’s been a long day ‘on the road’ pardon the pun. A day of ‘closed’ stuff, which has been a bit disappointing. Last night I went to the Arthur Miller library in Big Sur to a comedy music and Improv night which was great. It was outside in the yard of the library amongst the Redwoods. With twinkly fairy lights in the trees and travelers and locals milled around a little stage drinking free tea and coffe or harder stuff they’d brought themselves. The comedy singer was mildly amusing – but the improv guys were great. Hilarious, politically incorrect and just really damn talented. I could only stay for the first set as I had to head back to the lodge before it got really dark as the goat-track of a road was hairy enough to navigate in the light, let alone in the pitch black of the Big Sur night.
After my lame attempt at an open fire in the cabin overnight, I set off a little later this morning straight back to the Arthur Miller library to soak it all up properly, and the apparently free Wi-Fi. As I rounded the bend I was surprised not to see any cars – til I saw the sign – Closed. Sigh. If I had of known it would be closed on a Saturday I would have spent more time last night. Ah, back ‘on the road’ then. Disappointing.
I stopped in a little way past the lodge to use the free wi-fi at Redwoods. I’ve starting to become adept at scanning roadside signs for the words ‘free wi-fi’. And uploaded the first batch of blog entries and pics before heading back out on the winding road to Carmel.
Carmel is a kind of designer cute seaside town, and as the Concours D’elegance in on this weekend at Pebble Beach just up the road, the streets were lined with luxury sports cars. Guys , seriously this was drool worthy. I parked the Pony beside three Masarati’s all in a row! I almost took a flyer off the windscreen of a powder blue ‘56 model Porsche for sale for just $20K. I spent a few moments seriously thinking through the logistics of getting the cash together, freighting it over etc, etc, ‘til I of course realized, the steering wheel would be on the wrong side. Hmmmm. Plus, I don’t really need a powder blue vintage Porsche, do I? This is where you’re all supposed to reassure me that the Honda is a great and practical car. Practical. Humph.
I had a great counter lunch in Carmel which I’ll write about in more detail – hilarious. Carmel today attracted an even more designer crowd than usual. It was like all the worst stereotypical elements of Main Beach on Tedder Avenue, times a million. Lots of men with facelifts in Ferrari jackets, just in case we didn’t realize they owned the cars they were driving. Lots of women who marry men for their Ferraris and the wallets that buy them. Hilarious! I took lots of photos of the cars. In hindsight I should have snapped off a few shots of the owners, that would have been far more entertaining.
From Carmel it was off to Monterey, and Cannery Row, which was a disappointing line of t-shirt shops and souvenir joints. I did two laps in the car and didn’t even bother getting out. I had to press on to Salinas to the Steinbeck Center and then onto San Fran by 4pm to get the car back. I was pressed for time.
I haven’t read Tortilla Flat but I’m assuming it’s a reference to the farming lands of Salinas. Desert hills bound a series of fields that stretch out in every direction growing corn, berries, garlic and more. At least 60 years on, you can see the hard working heart of the place is unchanged. And the landscape too, save for the automalls and strip malls – the curse of the modern American landscape.
The people of Salinas look hardworking and it’s hard to spot anyone who isn’t Hispanic.
I roll towards the Steinbeck Center, the shiniest, newest, modern looking building in town. The only real drawcard on an otherwise pointless detour from Highway 101. I park the Pony and am overwhelmed by carloads of well dressed locals in their party gear, gents in shiny suits, ladies in their best dresses with curled hair and lots of little girls in leftover first communion dresses. Looks like it must be a wedding. They all ride down in the elevator with me from the carpark and we walk in the same direction towards the Steinbeck Center. Except they walk inside to the wedding reception as I take in the bad news. “Sorry folks, the whole center is closed today from 2pm for a private function”. Huh? On a Saturday? An American man ahead of me starts mouthing off at the absurdity of the situation – that he’s come such a long way to see the place. Not as far as me pal!
I’m really disappointed. I stand outside the front doors a bit dazed really. The Pony goes back tonight. No more car. No way of coming back another day. My one and only chance, if I had have known I could have come before 2pm. Again, disappointed.
Some more people approach the front door as I announce that it’s closed. They look around and ask if I’ve come a long way – from Australia I say. They commiserate for me, surprised that Steinbeck is popular in Australia too. It’s funny how Americans perceive us. The majority of them are so insular they just assume we are too.
I walked away from the center a bit choked up that I’d come all this way to find out more about one of my favourite authors only to be so disappointed. On Shane’s advice I was planning on buying a copy of the The Pearl from the gift shop and everything. Perhaps next time I’m 100 miles south of San Francisco I’ll call ahead to check they’re open and pop in.
I called in at an automall to buy an American phone since I couldn’t figure out how to use the payphone and called ahead to tell Susan and Dollar car rentals that I’d be late.
Driving into San Fran to drop the car off downtown is like arriving in Paris by train. You start to wonder how the legends of the beautiful city could possibly be true as all you see in every direction is poverty and the mean, grim streets they wish they could pack away from tourists. I got so concerned at one point, that I tried to put the hood up at the intersection, only for the lights to change quickly resulting in me driving a block with the hood half up, half down.
Everywhere I looked people sitting in doorways, pushing shopping trolleys of their possessions around. I’m talking 20 or more people on each side of every street. It was like the worst scenes of hard luck from the movies. It makes Redfern and Brixton look like genteel suburbs. It’s freaked me out a little.
I have a rough guide from Nicole of places to check out while I’m in San Fran, but I’m not really well prepared.
After the big day of driving, and my unfortunate entrée into San Fran I’m really in no mood to go exploring the local ‘hood for dinner. So I’ve eated an apricot flan thingy that Susan made for me and a cup of tea. Tomorrow I’ll get up bright and early, swallow a teaspoon of cement and tackle San Fran worts and all. Tonight I’m just a little scaredy cat – holed up in my room, avoiding Callie. Night night.
All windswept and interesting
I was not sorry to be leaving LA. I edged the pony onto Sunset just after 7am ready for the big road trip. I had carefully punched the destination into the Sat Nav and was quickly on my way – to the freeway? Hmmm. Perhaps that’s just for the first 20 miles, then you hit the coast road. Hmmm, another 27 miles of freeway? Hmmm. This isn’t looking like the rollicking road trip I thought it would be. More like six lanes of traffic in each direction zooming with purpose. There are no fellow laconic travelers on this route. It took a while to realize Sat Nav was being efficient – not fun.
So I missed Malibu and a bunch of other small seaside towns, until I stopped at a gas station and bought a map! You know, those old fashioned pieces of paper that show a whole variety of potential journeys within a given geographical area. If only I’d had one of these antiques from the start – I could have avoided a tense hour on the LA freeways.
My mistrust of the Sat Nav grew. For the remainder of the day I purposefully ignored it’s commands with reckless abandon. I ended up driving the wrong way down a one way street in Santa Barbara (where I had breakfast), but the helpful locals shouted unintelligibly at me, so I figured it out just in the nick of time to swerve across three lanes of traffic headed in the wrong direction and right my course. It was early, not many people around in Santa Barbara at that time of day.
The main event, was a stretch of windy road between Cambria and Big Sur. Cambria was a cutesy little tourist village, a bit like Tambo, with lots of little antique shops. If only I had a shipping container handy I could have cleared out the village, shipped it over to OZ and opened a shop selling the gear at twice what I paid – so cheap. I looked longingly at two large turquoise lamps and imagined collecting them from the Pack and Send in Albion smashed to pieces. And so left them behind.
I really let 'the Pony' fly today. Consistently 20 miles over the speed limit until the roads got goat-track windy. I was almost hoping I’d get pulled over by the cops, just for the experience. But alas, no such adventure.
Intrigued by the Hearsts, mostly for the Patty – Charles Manson - Stockholm Syndrome connection – which lets face it is almost what makes them more famous now than Randolph's the billion dollar newspaper empire, I considered visiting Hearst Castle. Except a million travelers had the same idea and it’s one of those - park miles away, then pay us some money and we’ll bus you to the castle so you can’t get so much as a photo of the outside for free. No thanks.
Lucky I didn’t. Although I’d made good time flying along the flat roads, the goat track that took me to Big Sur was beautiful but the twists and turns made it a long journey. Dad, the road reminded me of that Lucille Ball movie The Long, Long Trailer – I’m sure they filmed it along there.
So I spent a glorious Friday afternoon zooming through the twists and turns in the pony, top down, wind in my hair, and my mouth, stereo blaring the Beach Boys and other trip appropriate American classics. I did briefly think about the girls at work, and Fridays in the office, and then I stepped on the accelerator and took off. Very liberating.
I am now developing a convertible tan.
So I missed Malibu and a bunch of other small seaside towns, until I stopped at a gas station and bought a map! You know, those old fashioned pieces of paper that show a whole variety of potential journeys within a given geographical area. If only I’d had one of these antiques from the start – I could have avoided a tense hour on the LA freeways.
My mistrust of the Sat Nav grew. For the remainder of the day I purposefully ignored it’s commands with reckless abandon. I ended up driving the wrong way down a one way street in Santa Barbara (where I had breakfast), but the helpful locals shouted unintelligibly at me, so I figured it out just in the nick of time to swerve across three lanes of traffic headed in the wrong direction and right my course. It was early, not many people around in Santa Barbara at that time of day.
The main event, was a stretch of windy road between Cambria and Big Sur. Cambria was a cutesy little tourist village, a bit like Tambo, with lots of little antique shops. If only I had a shipping container handy I could have cleared out the village, shipped it over to OZ and opened a shop selling the gear at twice what I paid – so cheap. I looked longingly at two large turquoise lamps and imagined collecting them from the Pack and Send in Albion smashed to pieces. And so left them behind.
I really let 'the Pony' fly today. Consistently 20 miles over the speed limit until the roads got goat-track windy. I was almost hoping I’d get pulled over by the cops, just for the experience. But alas, no such adventure.
Intrigued by the Hearsts, mostly for the Patty – Charles Manson - Stockholm Syndrome connection – which lets face it is almost what makes them more famous now than Randolph's the billion dollar newspaper empire, I considered visiting Hearst Castle. Except a million travelers had the same idea and it’s one of those - park miles away, then pay us some money and we’ll bus you to the castle so you can’t get so much as a photo of the outside for free. No thanks.
Lucky I didn’t. Although I’d made good time flying along the flat roads, the goat track that took me to Big Sur was beautiful but the twists and turns made it a long journey. Dad, the road reminded me of that Lucille Ball movie The Long, Long Trailer – I’m sure they filmed it along there.
So I spent a glorious Friday afternoon zooming through the twists and turns in the pony, top down, wind in my hair, and my mouth, stereo blaring the Beach Boys and other trip appropriate American classics. I did briefly think about the girls at work, and Fridays in the office, and then I stepped on the accelerator and took off. Very liberating.
I am now developing a convertible tan.
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