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| Anywhere I roam Where I lay my head is home... Carved upon my stone: 'My body lies, but still I roam' (Hetfield / Ulrich) |
Saturday 24 December 2016
Sunderland, England
Wednesday 21 December 2016
Brooklyn, NY
Brooklyn is chronically, achingly hip. It is the Home of the Hipster. It is truly Hipster Heaven. It makes Camden Town look like South Shields. There isn't an unbearded man in sight. Sniffer dogs track down non-organic foodstuffs; underground server farms and hacker networks are deployed to neutralise all electronic devices other than latest-generation Apple products. Office workers, heterosexuals, and people wearing unripped jeans are regularly subjected to violent pogroms and chased out of town with pitchforks.
This particular adventure is now at an end, and I think it'll be quite a few years before I do any more USA road-tripping. Other continents beckon for the next trip...which will be a lot sooner that you might think...
Merry Christmas, in the meantime.
At this time of year Brooklyn is also cold. Excruciatingly cold. The kind of cold where you step outside and think 'ooh, that's nice & fresh' and then three blocks later you're reaching up to check that your ears are still there. I pulled my hoodie up over my head, thinking that I might thereby stay warm and also blend in with the local delinquents: however, on catching my reflection in a shop window, all I saw was Obi-Wan Kenobi. I'd forgotten about the beard, as well as the ears. I ended up walking over the Brooklyn Bridge during a snowstorm at minus 7 degrees C, which is not an experience I recommend. By the time I got into Manhattan, my beard had literally formed icicles and my extremities were disappearing off the map of my nervous system one by one. Just as I was beginning to hallucinate about alien quadrupeds that I could slice open and disembowel and curl up inside of, I found a nice warm woolly jumper in a hip alternative bohemian clothes shop (TJ Maxx) for $10. Yes, I'm a cheapskate. But it's the continual hunting of such bargains that allows me to save up for these adventures in the first place.
This particular adventure is now at an end, and I think it'll be quite a few years before I do any more USA road-tripping. Other continents beckon for the next trip...which will be a lot sooner that you might think...
Merry Christmas, in the meantime.
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| Journey's end |
Thursday 15 December 2016
Dallas, TX
Some places are easy to imagine in all weathers. The brochure pictures of Machu Picchu always depict blazing sunshine, but when I got there in 2012 the mountain was shrouded in light fog and yet that seemed equally apt. Similarly, New York feels like New York whether it's sweating under blue skies or shivering under Christmas snow. The same goes for New Zealand, with its four seasons in one day, as the song goes.
But somehow I had only ever imagined Dealey Plaza in Dallas to be basking permanently in bright sunshine, with green grass and clear blue skies and Jackie Kennedy's pink dress glowing in the lurid high-saturation blur of the Zapruder film. There was something eerie and unsettling about arriving here on a grey and misty December morning to find the Grassy Knoll looking like any old roadside verge I might find back home. Also - and this may just be me - I'd always assumed that the road was flat, but in fact it slopes quite sharply downhill.
The whole thing - the plaza, the Grassy Knoll, the distance to that sixth floor window (remember that Americans call the ground floor the first floor, so in British terms it's only the fifth floor) - is smaller than you might think. That sixth floor is now a museum where you can pay $14 to go and check out the view that Lee Harvey Oswald had through his rifle sights. I didn't bother. It was ghoulish enough just to watch all the idiot tourists outside, grinning inanely for their selfies as they posed at a location famous only for a man having had his brains blown out there. A couple of blocks away, an exact replica of the open-top presidential limousine sits permanently parked by the roadside and you can pay $5 to be photographed sitting inside it. It all reminded me of my 2008 visit to Tuol Sleng, a preserved Khmer Rouge prison in Cambodia from which almost nobody got out alive. There were English ra-ra girls in Ugg boots, smiling and preening for selfies next to the torture racks, with dried bloodstains still visible on the walls behind them. People, mostly, are morons.
While I'm being a grumpy old man (it happens from time to time)...here in Dallas I had my first ever taste of big-league basketball and it wasn't great. I was dismayed to find that they play constant loud music over the tannoy, while the ball's in play. For instance, when the away team is attacking, you get either the 'Jaws' theme or a military-style drumbeat for the crowd to chant 'De-fense!' over and over again. As soon as the whistle blows, the annoying loud music is replaced by annoying loud commentary. It never stops. And yet there's no real drama to the action: one team runs left and scores, then another team runs right and scores, and repeat, ad nauseam. I left after the end of the first quarter. The stadium was half-empty anyway. Needless to say, refreshments and merchandise were both ruinously expensive.
The richer parts of the city - Uptown, Turtle Creek, Oak Lawn - are spotlessly clean, but also depressingly bland and uniform. Bars and restaurants that make you feel like you're in a foreign hotel; shops that make you feel like you're in a foreign airport. Fortunately I can't afford to stay in the rich places, so instead I'm in an area called Deep Ellum which is a bit more bohemian. In a local bar called Dada, there was a costumed lady on stage staring vacantly into space. I sat at the bar and waited for her to start singing, or taking her clothes off, or both; but she didn't move. Perplexed, I got about halfway through a pint of Deep Ellum IPA before turning away from the bar to discover that the whole place had been booked out for a sketching class and she was the model. Doh.
One more stop to go on this trip. It's almost time to head home for the festive season. I wonder if I can find somewhere on America's east coast where I can fly home from, a place that one might associate with Christmas in some way?
But somehow I had only ever imagined Dealey Plaza in Dallas to be basking permanently in bright sunshine, with green grass and clear blue skies and Jackie Kennedy's pink dress glowing in the lurid high-saturation blur of the Zapruder film. There was something eerie and unsettling about arriving here on a grey and misty December morning to find the Grassy Knoll looking like any old roadside verge I might find back home. Also - and this may just be me - I'd always assumed that the road was flat, but in fact it slopes quite sharply downhill.
The whole thing - the plaza, the Grassy Knoll, the distance to that sixth floor window (remember that Americans call the ground floor the first floor, so in British terms it's only the fifth floor) - is smaller than you might think. That sixth floor is now a museum where you can pay $14 to go and check out the view that Lee Harvey Oswald had through his rifle sights. I didn't bother. It was ghoulish enough just to watch all the idiot tourists outside, grinning inanely for their selfies as they posed at a location famous only for a man having had his brains blown out there. A couple of blocks away, an exact replica of the open-top presidential limousine sits permanently parked by the roadside and you can pay $5 to be photographed sitting inside it. It all reminded me of my 2008 visit to Tuol Sleng, a preserved Khmer Rouge prison in Cambodia from which almost nobody got out alive. There were English ra-ra girls in Ugg boots, smiling and preening for selfies next to the torture racks, with dried bloodstains still visible on the walls behind them. People, mostly, are morons.
While I'm being a grumpy old man (it happens from time to time)...here in Dallas I had my first ever taste of big-league basketball and it wasn't great. I was dismayed to find that they play constant loud music over the tannoy, while the ball's in play. For instance, when the away team is attacking, you get either the 'Jaws' theme or a military-style drumbeat for the crowd to chant 'De-fense!' over and over again. As soon as the whistle blows, the annoying loud music is replaced by annoying loud commentary. It never stops. And yet there's no real drama to the action: one team runs left and scores, then another team runs right and scores, and repeat, ad nauseam. I left after the end of the first quarter. The stadium was half-empty anyway. Needless to say, refreshments and merchandise were both ruinously expensive.
The richer parts of the city - Uptown, Turtle Creek, Oak Lawn - are spotlessly clean, but also depressingly bland and uniform. Bars and restaurants that make you feel like you're in a foreign hotel; shops that make you feel like you're in a foreign airport. Fortunately I can't afford to stay in the rich places, so instead I'm in an area called Deep Ellum which is a bit more bohemian. In a local bar called Dada, there was a costumed lady on stage staring vacantly into space. I sat at the bar and waited for her to start singing, or taking her clothes off, or both; but she didn't move. Perplexed, I got about halfway through a pint of Deep Ellum IPA before turning away from the bar to discover that the whole place had been booked out for a sketching class and she was the model. Doh.
One more stop to go on this trip. It's almost time to head home for the festive season. I wonder if I can find somewhere on America's east coast where I can fly home from, a place that one might associate with Christmas in some way?
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| The Grassy Knoll and the sniper's window. It was cold and grey the first time I came here (see text), but the weather was better the next day. |
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| Dallas by night, from the east |
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| Motorcycle, or possibly Batmobile |
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| NBA basketball: Dallas Mavericks v Denver Nuggets at the American Airlines Center. Meh. |
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| Edd vs Food #48 Velvet Taco, 3012 N Henderson Avenue, Dallas TX Two tacos in flour tortillas: 1. Crisp chicken tenders, Buffalo sauce, Danish blue cheese, ranch creme, carrots and micro celery. 2. Akaushi beef burger, peppered bacon, smoked cheddar, lettuce, onion, tomato, pickle and velvet sauce. |
Sunday 11 December 2016
San Antonio, TX
San Antonio is home to the Alamo, a focal point for the long and muddled history of Texas - which wasn't part of the US until 1845 - in relation to Spain, Mexico and the Native Americans. Ozzy Osbourne urinated on the Alamo, unknowingly and drunkenly, while on tour in 1982. He was accosted in mid-tinkle by a local policeman and legend has it that the dialogue went as follows:
Cop: (stern Texan drawl) "Goddamnit, Sir, how would you like it if I urinated on Buckin'-ham Palace?"
Ozzy: (sozzled Brummie mumble, still pissing) "I wouldn't give a s**t, mate."
From an English perspective, it's amusing how Americans get excited about things being a mere one or two hundred years old. In my blessed hometown of Sunderland, there's a church that was built in 674AD. In York, there are pub toilets containing dinosaur footprints. "There can be no true beauty without decay," as Uncle Monty once said.
I'd actually forgotten about the Alamo until I chanced upon it, wandering around downtown. It's funny how you can encounter notable places without even looking for them. Much earlier in this trip, heading north-west through New Hampshire on the way to the Hill Farmstead brewery, I found myself in Bretton Woods, which is where the post-war global economic settlement - the IMF, the World Bank, and all the rest of it - was cooked up by the Allies in 1944. Similarly, on a sunny day in Washington DC, I walked past a bland-looking hotel and I only just happened by chance to notice the name over the door. It was the Watergate. And I've also had an unexpected spell of walking the Appalachian Trail: Harpers Ferry in West Virginia is one of the few towns which the trail passes straight through.
On an even less interesting note, I've belatedly discovered that there are four places in the USA called Sunderland, and that already on this trip I've been within ten miles of three of them without even knowing it. (Vermont, Maryland and Massachusetts). The fourth is in Portland, Oregon: it's right next to the airport from which I flew to San Francisco last year. Talk about missed photo opportunities.
So anyway. Where was I? More to the point, where am I? Oh yes, San Antonio. The downtown area is small and sleepy. It's a very big city population-wise, but most of that is placid suburban sprawl. Tough-looking Latino types and white guys in flannel shirts cruise beat-up old pickup trucks along wide empty streets; dogs snarl at you from behind wire mesh fences. My motel room has a distinct tinge of 1970s brown-ness about it. Those of you who've seen 'No Country For Old Men' will understand why I've been having occasional nightmares about dodgy haircuts and compressed air.
Overall my three favourite states are Colorado and Utah (which are uniformly wonderful) and California (which has some manky bits but more than makes up for it with the good bits). Texas is pretty much up there with them: see my previous visits to El Paso, Austin, Houston and the Big Bend National Park. And more Texas is to come in the next blog. I'm still not going home yet.
Cop: (stern Texan drawl) "Goddamnit, Sir, how would you like it if I urinated on Buckin'-ham Palace?"
Ozzy: (sozzled Brummie mumble, still pissing) "I wouldn't give a s**t, mate."
From an English perspective, it's amusing how Americans get excited about things being a mere one or two hundred years old. In my blessed hometown of Sunderland, there's a church that was built in 674AD. In York, there are pub toilets containing dinosaur footprints. "There can be no true beauty without decay," as Uncle Monty once said.
I'd actually forgotten about the Alamo until I chanced upon it, wandering around downtown. It's funny how you can encounter notable places without even looking for them. Much earlier in this trip, heading north-west through New Hampshire on the way to the Hill Farmstead brewery, I found myself in Bretton Woods, which is where the post-war global economic settlement - the IMF, the World Bank, and all the rest of it - was cooked up by the Allies in 1944. Similarly, on a sunny day in Washington DC, I walked past a bland-looking hotel and I only just happened by chance to notice the name over the door. It was the Watergate. And I've also had an unexpected spell of walking the Appalachian Trail: Harpers Ferry in West Virginia is one of the few towns which the trail passes straight through.
On an even less interesting note, I've belatedly discovered that there are four places in the USA called Sunderland, and that already on this trip I've been within ten miles of three of them without even knowing it. (Vermont, Maryland and Massachusetts). The fourth is in Portland, Oregon: it's right next to the airport from which I flew to San Francisco last year. Talk about missed photo opportunities.
So anyway. Where was I? More to the point, where am I? Oh yes, San Antonio. The downtown area is small and sleepy. It's a very big city population-wise, but most of that is placid suburban sprawl. Tough-looking Latino types and white guys in flannel shirts cruise beat-up old pickup trucks along wide empty streets; dogs snarl at you from behind wire mesh fences. My motel room has a distinct tinge of 1970s brown-ness about it. Those of you who've seen 'No Country For Old Men' will understand why I've been having occasional nightmares about dodgy haircuts and compressed air.
Overall my three favourite states are Colorado and Utah (which are uniformly wonderful) and California (which has some manky bits but more than makes up for it with the good bits). Texas is pretty much up there with them: see my previous visits to El Paso, Austin, Houston and the Big Bend National Park. And more Texas is to come in the next blog. I'm still not going home yet.
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| Downtown San Antonio |
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| San Fernando Cathedral |
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| The Alamo |
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| San Antonio Riverwalk |
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| Out on the Riverwalk a few miles to the north: a rattlesnake. Dead, and with its head bitten off, by assailants unknown. |
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| Edd vs Fast Food #14 Little Caesars The only mass-market budget pizza chain that I know of. For just $6.75 you get an unspectacular but edible 16-inch pepperoni. Those of you with kids may wish to keep this option in mind next time you're in the USA. One pizza like this will incur silence and sleep in at least two rugrats. |
Wednesday 7 December 2016
Asheville, NC
There are 50 states in the USA. North Carolina is the 19th state of this trip, and the 15th which has been new to me; my lifetime tally is now 40. I'll visit the other 10 eventually. I'm not sure when, though. Iowa and Nebraska do not greatly stir my imagination.
I'm here in North Carolina mainly because it's the second home of the Sierra Nevada brewery, whose California head office I visited last year. I won't bore you with beer talk: suffice it to say that everyone has their own private little vision of paradise, and this is very close to being mine.
Last year I did the Pacific Coast Highway, which is pretty much the world's greatest drive. Close behind in second place for me now is the trip north here from Atlanta across Georgia and South Carolina, through autumnal forests and hairpin-riddled mountains. My new rental car is a Chevy Camaro RS V6: not quite the beast that last year's V8 was, and nor is it in a colour I'd have chosen, but it still does 0-60 in 5.1 seconds and I'm not complaining.
(My previous Camaro was black and it had a wide rear end, so I called it Beyoncé. Now I've rented another Camaro, and I kind of feel like I'm cheating on Beyoncé. With a blonde, as well. I've called it Becky.)
After collecting the car in Atlanta, I drove east to Stone Mountain, which is a rather stark tautology. It's also a quartz monzonite dome manadnock. In layman's terms, a big geological zit in an otherwise flat area. Like Ayer's Rock in Australia, just smaller and less colourful. On the north face is the world's biggest bas-relief carving, a Confederate memorial, one of many monuments you see in this part of the world dedicated to the heroism and sacrifice of men who selflessly gave their lives in defence of, er, slavery.
I stopped one night in Athens, Georgia. There I ate soul food at Weaver D's, a tiny little café where the motto is 'Automatic For The People'. That's where the REM album of that name, omnipresent on the airwaves during my late teens, got its title. Weaver himself, a big sleepy black dude, still ladles out the grub and still repeats his slogan every time he rings the till. But he's clearly become jaded over the years, and now it just comes out as "Aumafuhpil". (Actually I've never really been a fan of REM, but my 'been there done that' list is a hungry beast and insists on being fed with new additions wherever I go.)
The car's going back to Atlanta airport, and that's where I'm flying out from. Not home, though. Not just yet.
I'm here in North Carolina mainly because it's the second home of the Sierra Nevada brewery, whose California head office I visited last year. I won't bore you with beer talk: suffice it to say that everyone has their own private little vision of paradise, and this is very close to being mine.
Last year I did the Pacific Coast Highway, which is pretty much the world's greatest drive. Close behind in second place for me now is the trip north here from Atlanta across Georgia and South Carolina, through autumnal forests and hairpin-riddled mountains. My new rental car is a Chevy Camaro RS V6: not quite the beast that last year's V8 was, and nor is it in a colour I'd have chosen, but it still does 0-60 in 5.1 seconds and I'm not complaining.
(My previous Camaro was black and it had a wide rear end, so I called it Beyoncé. Now I've rented another Camaro, and I kind of feel like I'm cheating on Beyoncé. With a blonde, as well. I've called it Becky.)
After collecting the car in Atlanta, I drove east to Stone Mountain, which is a rather stark tautology. It's also a quartz monzonite dome manadnock. In layman's terms, a big geological zit in an otherwise flat area. Like Ayer's Rock in Australia, just smaller and less colourful. On the north face is the world's biggest bas-relief carving, a Confederate memorial, one of many monuments you see in this part of the world dedicated to the heroism and sacrifice of men who selflessly gave their lives in defence of, er, slavery.
I stopped one night in Athens, Georgia. There I ate soul food at Weaver D's, a tiny little café where the motto is 'Automatic For The People'. That's where the REM album of that name, omnipresent on the airwaves during my late teens, got its title. Weaver himself, a big sleepy black dude, still ladles out the grub and still repeats his slogan every time he rings the till. But he's clearly become jaded over the years, and now it just comes out as "Aumafuhpil". (Actually I've never really been a fan of REM, but my 'been there done that' list is a hungry beast and insists on being fed with new additions wherever I go.)
The car's going back to Atlanta airport, and that's where I'm flying out from. Not home, though. Not just yet.
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| The Sierra Nevada brewery, Mills River, North Carolina. It's a 184-acre site, and you drive up Sierra Nevada Way to get to the front door. You don't have to drive. You can crawl over broken glass if you prefer. It's worth it. They let you leave cars overnight, as I did with Becky (see above). I booked the only AirBnb within walking distance. |
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| Off of REM |
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| Downtown Atlanta, seen from about thirteen miles away on Stone Mountain |
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| I don't know why this bar is called the 'Royal Peasant'. It genuinely appears to be just a combination of two random 'English' words. An example of a reciprocal equivalent would be the 'Superbowl Cadillac'. |
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| Continuing on the booze theme: the Jack Daniels distillery in Lynchburg, Tennessee. I got through a lot of JD in my mis-spent teenage years, and I still like a sip every now and then. Don't we all? |
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Edd vs Food #47
Heritage Farms green chile pork, creamy Carolina gold rice and Three Graces queso blanco.
Flavoured with cilantro and Sierra Nevada Otra Vez beer.
At the Sierra Nevada Taproom, Mills River, NC.
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Saturday 3 December 2016
Dollywood, TN
There are three car parks at Dollywood. They are not called A, B and C. They are called Applejack, Butterfly and Cotton Candy. As you might expect.
A grown man alone in Dollywood can only be taken for one of two things: gay, or a paedo. So today I wore my tightest T-shirt and clapped along with all the show tunes. There isn't anything in England comparable to Dollywood, as far as I'm aware. Is there a gap in the market for a camp-kitsch British theme park? Elton Towers, perhaps? Actually, Flamingoland is pretty camp. All those dainty little pink dudes, standing on one leg...
Here I was expecting to find some kind of colossal Dolly-glorifying ego trip, but in fact Dolly's name and image are mostly absent once you're past the entrance area. It's just a regular theme park, with big rides and overpriced food and plenty to keep the kids occupied. Anyway, it'd be hard to begrudge an ego trip from a woman who's seventy years old and only five feet tall.
If I had my own theme park, it would be called Edd-wood. Or if there was a theme park based on the lead actor from the TV series 'The Equaliser', it would be called Edward Woodward-wood...I'll shut up now, and let the pictures do the talking. Dollywood gets a thumbs up. My regular series of heroic manly adventures will be resumed in the next blog.
Here I was expecting to find some kind of colossal Dolly-glorifying ego trip, but in fact Dolly's name and image are mostly absent once you're past the entrance area. It's just a regular theme park, with big rides and overpriced food and plenty to keep the kids occupied. Anyway, it'd be hard to begrudge an ego trip from a woman who's seventy years old and only five feet tall.
If I had my own theme park, it would be called Edd-wood. Or if there was a theme park based on the lead actor from the TV series 'The Equaliser', it would be called Edward Woodward-wood...I'll shut up now, and let the pictures do the talking. Dollywood gets a thumbs up. My regular series of heroic manly adventures will be resumed in the next blog.
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| Dollywood |
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| This is the Dolly's Closet clothes shop - 'Her Style, Your Size!!' Also the Chasing Rainbows theatre. Shed Seven may yet sue. |
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| Dolly, I will. I will do all of these things. For you. |
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| Possibly this is a pun? |
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| Rollercoasters at dusk |
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| I looked up the actual King James Bible text for Philippians 4:6 and it reads: "Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God." I suppose "Pray More Worry Less" is a reasonable paraphrase of that. |
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| The WonderWorks museum in Pigeon Forge, just round the corner from Dollywood. |
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| Right back at you, D! |
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| This is how I got here, and this is how I left. In style. |
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