Hello America

So, my penultimate stop, the vibrant boom town of Cleveland Mississippi, home of Delta State University, my improbable friend Ian (it's not improbable that we're friends, he is just improbable as a human, in all respects), and precious little else. Cleveland is a small, entirely note worthless grouping of approximately twelve thousand individuals, 2600 of them enrolled college students. Not much happened while I was here- mainly I spent my time with Ian's roommates, a motley crew whose total numbers constantly shifted (it took me about a week to nail down whom of those who consistently spent the night actually lived there in a legally binding way- there's this general crowd of about half a dozen folk who sleep over at least several nights a week, sometimes in a bedroom and sometimes on the couch), and who have the standard collegiac appetite for intoxicants and video games. Outside of reliving my glory years as a wastrel on Ian's couch, there were only a few events/people who brook notice.

Mr. Ian

Ian's father also lives out there, but in a town with a population of about eight (that's not a joke either). Mr. Ian is a certified Southern Culture expert, and immediately upon my arrival drove me here:

Which is awesome, but had absolutely no segue or planning at all. Ian wasn't even around, his dad just drove up and asked if I wanted to go for a ride, which could be creepy in other circumstances, but with one of Ian's clan is merely predictably random. In addition to unannounced trips to presumed graves, we also took a couple of better planned trips out to Mr. Ian's house, which is an old sharecropper's house that has seen little revamping since it's construction save running water. We spent the evening in the time honoroed southern tradition of shooting shit with guns, then drinking and playing with fire all night.

Fire preeeetttyyy

The Pig Poke

Apparently in an effort to impress on me how wierd the south actually is, DSU threw a yearly festival, called the Pig Poke, a day or two after I arrived. The Pig Poke is a thing where all the well-off white people in town slaughter everything porcine in a twenty mile radius and cook it in a field, while drinking poorly and dancing unfortunately.

The South is weird

Turns out that the Greek system is huge in southern college culture, to the point that even the band nerds have their own frat. In addition to being super weird by Yankee standards (yes, they still call us that), it seems to have driven the preppy frats to even further levels of bro-ness in order to compensate. That means that shit like this is pretty prevalent;

Pictured: still a thing here.

La Cabana

No words. Should have sent...a poet

If, for some godawful reason you ever find yourself in Cleveland Mississippi, perhaps through some sort of self-imposed exile or as the result of a catastrophic bus crash that leaves you stranded and paraplegic, this is the one shining bastion of comfort. Two for one margaritas on happy hour, an extensive vegetarian menu of items as large as a small child, and a staff that drinks on the clock. Nuff said.

As a final comment on Cleveland, allow me to show you where Ian and his roomies went to pay rent;

I'm not kidding.

After ten days in college town limbo, the Ian's and I drove the four hours to New Orleans, and the first city I've spent more than a couple weeks in since June.

Final Thoughts: Mississippi

This isn't the first time I've visited the delta, so it wasn't much of a revelation, but the South is definitely a different kind of place from the rest of this country.  When I first got to Greenwood (the closest train station to Cleveland), I had to find a laundromat before I got in the Ian's car (there was a bedbug scare in Brooklyn- apparently that's a thing now). I ended up chatting with a guy hanging outside of a sandwich shop he owned with his brother, who gave me a ride to a laundromat run by a friend of his. All this started because I waved at a stranger as I was walking pass. This is not a thing that happens literally anywhere else on this continent. The south is super weird, and often uncomfortably xenophobic in every conceivable manner, but for every off-putting, gut-wrenching offense to equality and humanity that you find here (and you find them whether you're looking or not) there's a polar opposite trait, equal in intensity but on the other side of the scale, possessing a strangely magnetic charisma. This polarity makes it difficult to decide how I actually feel about this region, but certainly keeps it from being dull.

Guh, holy crap, it's already been a week? I swear to god I just blinked. Shit's moving pretty fast right now, but we'll get to that. I was on the way south from NYC last time we talked, if I remember correctly. Let's start back up there.

Chicago

So it's roughly a thirty hour Amtrak ride from NYC  to Greenwood Mississippi, where I was gonna meet up with my southern folk. My particular trip had a twelve hour layover in Chicago, from eight to eight, which was one of the reasons I chose that ticket. I've never been to Chicago- my only contact with the city has been mobster movies and one boss I used to have who I always secretly suspected to carry a switchblade (Adam knows who she is), so the first thing that struck me is how incredibly beautiful the town is. Chicago lives right on the edge of Lake Michigan, and I mean right on the goddam edge;

like park your boat at the office close

a fact that they have embraced whole-heartedly. It's like the city started at the shore, and just radiated in a half-circle out from there. Here, check these out

That's a left-to-right of the edge of town. There's a little park, then water. It's just this giant wall of huge buildings that abruptly stops, and then there's some water. 

That park that I mentioned is no slacker either

They took their time with this one, and actually created a really pleasant, relaxing space, instead to sodding an empty lot and putting a plaque up. This was true of everywhere I went in Chicago (disclaimer- that only includes an area roughly two miles in radius from the train station)- it's one of the few places that actually feels like an honest to god City, not just some town that got big. Not just any city either, but a real place with solid, palpable character and history. Look, I'm tired, just look at this shit and you'll get my drift

pictured: how it's done

The whole place has a very particular feel to it, and I mean to come back someday and really get to know Chicago. It seems like it'd be worth it.

Oh, also I did this for a while

We now return you

...to your regularly scheduled program.  Sorry about that, got to New Orleans and got busy. You know how it is.

Since it's been a couple of weeks since I updated all y'all, and my wandering is over (for now, at least), I'll stretch out the updates covering NYC to NOLA over a few posts so you guys have something to look forward to throughout the week. Today's episode:

New York: Final Thoughts.

The weirdest thing about NYC is how much it is exactly what you think it is. Whatever your impression of what you think NYC would be like, you're probably right, or at least you can find a part of the city where you're right (except you Dad. New York is not like Gotham City). The reality of the place matches the impressions given by media in a way that is unique among the places I've been. 

Since the place is kind of large, I'm gonna break this down a bit.

The subway, first off- that thing is fucking incredible. No, seriously. Just think about it. I know the NYC subway system gets a lot of shit, including on the previous entry on this very award-winning blog (just because I made the award myself and held the ceremonies in a greyhound station with a wino I paid in taquitos as the MC doesn’t mean it doesn’t count), and it’s all true- it is miles and miles of damp, poorly maintained underground cavern that uniformly smells of urine and occasionally involves a public poll by drunks on whether or not Canada’s a state, but you can get anywhere in the US’s largest city, anytime day or night, for $2.50.

2.50. 24 hours. I have *never* been to a place where that’s true before or since. You can’t get around Eugene for any cheaper than that, and you sure as hell can’t do it at 4:00 in the morning. That is goddam brilliant.

The crowds- This is a no brainer. The city has a metro population of roughly nineteen million people as of the 2010 census, a little over six percent of the people who live in the entire damn country. And, at least in Manhattan (Brooklyn is a little better, but not much), you get the exact crowd movements you expect. People start crossing at intersections, not when the light turns, but when the pedestrians on one side reach a critical mass and claim the street as their own (it looks a lot like penguins trying to decide if the water's safe to swim in). Walking around during the day is like entering a river- the pace of travel is pre-set by the momentum of the crowd, and you're just kind of swept along until you get back to a bank.

The prices- once again, hell yes, but contextually. In poorer areas like the Buchwick, a lot of things are pretty cheap- you can get a meal for a few bucks if your not overly nutrition-conscious, and beer is almost back down to west coast levels. Trendier areas of Brooklyn, like Williamsburg, get pricier, but not much more than Portland levels. It's Manhattan that you have to watch out for- nine dollar well drinks and 15 buck french fries abound (they had truffle oil). And it's not just consumables- one of the reasons I didn't hit up many of the touristy things is that they charge out the ass for ev. ery. thing. Twenty bucks to ride an elevator at the Empire State Tower. Tickets to see the rubble of the WTC. Anything that people will pay to see, in NYC they'll have to. 

Except the coffee. The coffee is really cheap, like 75 cents a cup cheap, and almost uniformly awful.

Manhattan as seen from the commuter train, which actually acts as a pretty apt metaphor for the NYC experience when you don't have any money

It’s pretty easy to see why New Yorkers can be so self-absorbed by their town- being in that place, it’s easy to forget the rest of the world exists. According to Wikipedia, two of NYC's nicknames are "The Capitol of the World" and "Center of the Universe." Yup. And that's really the way a lot of people there seem to view it; not just as a separate country, but as the place that everyone else is looking in at, so why should they bother looking out? There is so much going on, and so many different cultures and tribes and nations in the city itself, and so many problems and controversies, you lose perspective on the rest of the world without really noticing it. Almost anything you’re looking for can be found in NYC without trying that hard, which is pretty awesome in one way, but also makes it worryingly easy to expend all your energy on local issues and jettison the rest of the globe. This is the first time I've ever really been in a city quite so all-encompassing; in the Northwest, you can see the wilderness from any where. Even downtown Portland has mountains and forests clearly visible. This is a truism of most places, actually. Albuquerque is ringed with mountains, Denver has a river in the middle, Chicago (I went to Chicago, btw. More on that later) is on the shore of a great lake. NYC, however, despite having two major rivers and an ocean interrupting the cityscape, is still it’s own self-contained urban world. 

This is what Brooklyn thinks a park is

You can walk for days without leaving the city. It becomes your universe, and you start to forget that it ever ends.

That about sums it up

I left New York on the Amtrak, after once again getting lost on the subway, (unlike airports, train stations still let you sprint onto the train with all your baggage if you’re running late. It’s very dramatic) a two night ride with a twelve hour layover in Chicago, which means I got to be in Chicago. Tell you about that next time though.

Little worm in the Big Apple

Monday 9/19

So, instead of the Amtrak, which only goes to NYC from Pittsburgh once every fortnight (I'm guessing), I snagged a ticket on the Megabus, a service available out east of which I was informed by my wonderful mother (a couple of other friends told me later that they totally knew about it, but “forgot”. Because they clearly secretly hate me) which is cheaper than the Amtrak and, technically speaking, a million cajillion times better than Greyhound. And the busses are double decker! Just like that one that Dr. Who was totally once on!

OOOoooowweeeeeoooooooo! WWeeeeeoooorrrrooooooo!

The downside to the Megabus is that they don’t have stations, per se. What they do have is signposts, with teamsters in snazzy vests who advise you to wait in the Greyhound lobby but “don’t mention the word Megabus”. Which is totally what I did, because I love the greyhound atmosphere so, and because I didn’t want to carry around the giant backpack I have been living out of since March any more. As a result, I didn’t get a great feel for Pittsburgh, but I did see this

It's like seeing a unicorn

Anywho, after making a few friends in the Greyhound lobby (now I know what an eye socket looks like without an eyeball! Yay learning!) I dragged my castle back to the Megabus curb and embarked for the city that the muppets made famous.

Tuesday 9/20

I arrive in NYC a little after midnight, which I would normally call Monday in this context, but that would be doing an injustice to how much quality time I spent getting to know New York in the first hours of Tuesday. I disembarked in Manhattan, near Penn Station but, in true Mega fashion, on the curb where the bus pulled up. 

Sidenote- if you ever get bored with life, ride the top story of a double-decker through New York traffic at night when the driver’s on a schedule. 

My friends, being poor people, live waaaaay out in Bushwick, a part of Brooklyn which can charitably be said to have a lot of character, most of an hour’s ride on the subway. On the bright side, the subway operates all day and all night. On the dark side, I would be riding the subway all night.

Exactly as weird as you think it is

And I do mean all, or at least much of, the night, since, surprising no one, I immediately got lost. Turns out that there are often two different entrances on either side of the road to the subway, each of which, much like the sides of the street above it, go in opposite directions, a fact that I did not immediately grasp. So, after successfully riding the train for several stops in the wrong direction, I left the subway to ask Elliott, a young man with the patience of a saint and the hairstyle of a prophet to please tell me how to escape from Manhattan (see what I did there?), since cells don’t work in the Subway (turns out it’s underground). After having the idea that different things go to different places explained to me in small words, I descended to try again.

Which is how I found out that my bank cards don’t work with the NYC transit system. Coincidentally, if anyone needs to find an ATM near 60^th and Broadway, I am now your go-to guy (it can be a little tricky). After arriving in the hood at a little past four am (feel free to do the math there), I was met by Elliott and Dan, two upstanding young men who would selflessly devote the next week of their lives to my entertainment and edification

Pictured: people who can legally vote, drive, and own firearms

At a local twenty-four hour chicken shack, which is something of a landmark where they live

This is Kennedy's. It would become the spoke my time in Brooklyn revolved around

Since the bars were closed, we had no other option than to find a local store with a somewhat looser than average grasp of liquor laws for a sixer of Tecate and, as Dan termed it, “stoop it”.

And that was my first night in New York.

Tuesday Proper

After a leisurely morning/early afternoon, I ventured out into the Bushwick neighborhood, which was…new.

Pictured: not the NorthWest

The place itself sits on what my friends explained is the frontline of gentrification. They are the first caucasian/asian (caucasianian? ascasian? ascockian? You decide!) people to move there as far as they could tell, but Broadway street marked a geographical turning point, where north of that was more and more occupied by layabout 20-somethings on their parents’ dime (hi!) and south of that was still like that one scene in Brother From Another Planet (you know the one, it has dancing). After walking around for a bit to acclimate, Elliott took me to a bar/café called Goodbye Blue Monday, which is basically an ex-pat club for northwesterners; they have PBR by the can and the pint, a bunch of worn out couches, a vinyl collection, and an extensive vegetarian menu. After soaking up a little familiarity there, I ventured back on the subway to meet the main attraction for my NYC trip, Ms. Ana Lady Bro

Seen here critically misunderstanding the purpose of public art

After she got off work at the Bill Cunningham Show (it’s awful, I’m told), she showed me around Manhattan a little bit, guiding me to such sights as the Empire State Building Lobby

Cost to go to the top: 22$

the main staircase of the New York Public Library

The rest of the building was taken up with a black-tie event

and Time Square

Was cooler back when it was full of hookers

After which she promptly had to go to bed, since she’s the only one of us who had a for real job at the time.

Wednesday, 9/21

Today I helped Elliott buy pants!

No, really, that was the main event. Elliott needs a job, and so he needs pants you can’t see his junk through, so we went here

A huge Williamsburg thrift shop. Williamsburg, it turns out, is the Place To Be for the young’uns. This entire burrough is like Alberta up in Portland- it’s unreal. I don’t know why hipsters are moving west, when they have their very own bio dome out here. Anyway, blah blah pants whatever pizza! Elliott bought me lunch at this little Italian café place a couple blocks off, presumably as a thank you for looking at the hole in his crotch so much, and I had real New York pizza for the first time, satisfying a fantasy I have had since the first time I saw the first scene in the first TMNT movie

Take a knee.

Holy jesus fuckstick crapwaffle, what the shitreef have I been stuffing my face hole with all these years? That was a religious experience in my mouth. It was like, for a moment, the silken shades of the world parted and I could see the angels dance. It was really good. Don’t listen to any of the “New York” style crap you see all around you, it’s a petty lie to make themselves feel better. It really is that different from the source, and now I can never eat pizza again without it just being a cruel mockery of what I once so briefly touched.

AAAaaaaanyway, we met back up with Ana for a mo, who had to be an adult and go to bed, so we headed back to Bushwick where the malt liquor is cheaper than soda for a relaxing evening at home. Later that night I was treated to a moment that I feel can only happen in Brooklyn; a young latina woman argued in Spanish with the middle eastern owner of a deli about how much my six pack should cost. It was the American dream.

Thursday 9/22

This was actually a really laid-back day, the majority of which I spent at GBM drinking coffee and internetting. I had originally planned to leave on this day, but since Chris’ car troubles had taken a day off what would already have been a short day, this would have left me with less than two full days, which I felt was unacceptable. So, because Amtrak is awesome (sometimes, in this specific context) and Ana and Elliott have no real sense of personal space (more on that later) I moved my ticket to Monday for no extra money.

IT IS NOW LATER

Here, check this out

That is a one bedroom apartment in Brooklyn. It’s actually pretty nice- not huge, but comfortable, with a lot of natural light, dishwasher, full range, in a secured building. Overall, quite a nice place for a person.

There are three people living there currently, plus me. These are friends who are already thrice the recommended occupancy, and thought “why wouldn’t we want Alex there also for four more days?” My friends often live on that razor’s edge between awesome and certifiable.

Friday, 9/23

Ana invited me out to meet her aunt, in town from San Fran, which I’m sure was only coincidentally connected to the fact that she had left her ID at home. So I got my first exposure to the New York nightlife and it is…almost exactly like it is everywhere else, except louder. While NYC certainly will never suffer from the Albuquerque doldrums, nightlife within my socio-economic bracket is not distinguishably better or worse than elsewhere, except that bars are open til four there. That’s better.

Ana’s aunt is really cool, and not just because she bought our drinks. She stands as a reassurance that it is still possible to be dry, sarcastic and overall delightful past forty, and I’m glad Ana was willing to introduce me to family (something my friends often seem understandably hesitant to do). Unfortunately, she *was* still over forty, so she left pretty early, leaving Ana and I unsupervised for the rest of the evening.

Saturday, 9/24

After a solitary early afternoon re-examining my life choices in a little French style café (the owner has an outrageous accent and is rude to customers) called the Athom, Ana took me out to lunch, because I am a mooch.

Picture included, and taken, entirely because the material makes Ana uncomfortable. Hi Ana!

Our evening entertainment consisted of a birthday party at a bar under the Williamsburg bridge where they have bbq grills out back open for use, which I was way more impressed with than I probably should have been. After watching a bunch of lesbians shake their groove things (always entertaining), we strolled down to the East River, which looks like this at night

Then, home.

Sunday 9/25

Since we hadn’t yet, we decided to do some actual New York touristy crap today. First, Ground Zero! (Yes, I also hate that that’s a tourist thing, but I still wanted to go). We didn’t actually go to GZ, because it turns out you have to register on line to go look at the rubble, but we did go *past* ground zero! Here’s a picture of the partially built replacement tower

It's the short one in the background

Next up, Wall Street, to see the protests and take a deep whiff of the Will of the People!

Turns out the bulls had barricaded Wall Street proper off expressly to avoid the People’s aromatic Will.

Last but not least, Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty

God I hate you, Manhattan

The ride was 13$, or approximately three times how much money I had, so that didn’t happen either.

We did manage to stumble across the protestors on the way back, living (ironically) in a privately owned park where the cops couldn’t arrest them for being, but could literally encircle them completely so the tax-paying public wouldn’t come in contact with them

Also, we ate at the café across from the building that was the cover for that one Led Zeppelin album!

 The album that looks like this!

Monday 9/26

Dan and Elliott were both occupied with recovering, Ana was at work, nothing for it but to shoulder the pack and hump it to the subway system (got lost again), and then into Penn station for the long trip to Mississippi to see the last, but certainly not least (in esteem or physical size) of my friends, Bitty.

NYC as viewed by commuter train; an excellent visual metaphor for being poor in New York

Brooklyn, Brooklyn take me in

Let's see, where did we leave off? Oh yeah, the Athens hand over. I spent my last two nights in the booming mid-America metropolis of Athens Ohio with my bosom buddy Chris

or Big Sexy as he's known in the biz

who took me out on two major activities, both on Saturday because we are bad at budgeting our time. First thing, which is pictured above, was a long, rambling and largely directionless hike around/near scenic Dow Lake in Stroude State Park, the nearest large body of water to where we were. It was quite pleasant, but the high point for me was the similarity to the shady, underbrush choked woods of my youth

Add Tang powder and some half-burned flares we found, and I'm eight again

After aimlessly wandering in the wilderness for a bit (literally- a couple hours in Chris admitted that he had no idea where we're going or which direction the car is in), we stumbled across the parking lot, and headed out for Activity Number 2: a University of Ohio FootBall Event. OU, where Chris went to grad school, was playing Marshall, a school known for losing it's football team many years ago in a horrific plane crash, an event frequently cited by the OU fans heckling the current Marshall team. 

The marching band was my favorite part

This was only the second college sporting event I've ever attended (not including the REC sports dodgeball team I was on that one term), and it pretty much mirrored the first; a large, loud even that I wasn't nearly drunk enough for, with a tall, scraggly blonde guy telling me how cool it was (Tyler, I'm looking at you). The best part, hands down, was the fact that the ROTC fired a cannon whenever OU scored. Also, Chris took my picture with Rufus the bobcat

Judging by the quality, Chris was either mad at me or epileptic

That was the conclusion of my Athens adventure. Chris, because he's a good friend with no life, agreed to drive me to Pittsburgh PA the next day to catch my train to the Big Apple. We got up early Sunday, packed my stuff up, and hit the road.

And then this happened

Sometimes, the road hits back

That is Chris' cherry 2001 Dodge Stratus, minus two functional struts. Soooo, we shacked up for the night in a Motel Six, and waited for parts (they only had one strut at the Firestone shop, I guess because breaking *two* struts is just unheard of).

The photographic embodiment of a night in Washington PA

After waking up bourbon-hung over in a cheap motel with Chris, a circumstance that, while not planned, is certainly one that I always vaguely expected to arise some point in my life, we rolled back down to Firestone and finished the last twenty minutes of the drive into Pittsburgh, where I had traded my train ticket for a cheaper and more time-table accommodating Megabus ride. 

Final Thoughts: Athens.

Athens is, as mentioned, a small town with a population matched pretty evenly by the enrollment of the university there. The place is very pretty in a comfortingly familiar way, although I'm told that later autumn and winter are vastly different, as the leaves actually fall off out there. The night life is very active, and the history of the place is quite enchanting. I can understand why my friends have stayed there; if I was looking for something different than what I currently am, I could see myself sincerely enjoying living in Athens for some time. As it is though, Athens is too much like a distillation of the UO campus area in Eugene, a tincture of my early twenties, and I am specifically looking for a sharp departure from that life. So Athens, it's good to know you're out there, and I will return to visit, but for now you're mainly a reminder of what I don't want.

Currently typing this out in a cafe/bar in the cheap but livable part of Brooklyn, where I'll be staying 'til Monday. I'll catch you all up on that later though. 

The long dark night of middle America

I’ve been trying to think of how to sum up my Kansas experience here in typed format, and it’s causing me some consternation.  My trip in general, and Kansas City specifically, hasn’t been quite as episodic since New Mexico, in large part because I’ve switched from spending a night or two in random places to spending a week or more in specific places that my friends and family have settled in. In that light, you’ll have to forgive me if instead of detailing the last few days I spent in KC, I skip straight to the retrospective.

Final Thoughts: Kansas City (and surrounding areas), Kansas/Missouri.

This is a strange place that I found myself in. We on the west coast have at best a vague, unformed impression of the Kansas area of the country, something about corn and rednecks, an unbaked mash of southern and Prairie Home Companion stereotypes. Well, it turns out we’re not really right on that, but we’re not completely wrong either. Kansas City, which straddles the border between Kansas and Missouri (the place was named when it was still in Kansas territory, before the state borders were established- I asked) is pretty large, especially by the standards of its geographical context; it is roughly the same population of Portland, Oregon (which I’m slowly realizing is actually pretty big for an American city) in both city limits and metro area numbers, but takes up significantly more space, because there is no reason for it not to out here. As such, it does have quite a few things in the city proper to recommend it; some decent bars, including at least one microbrewery, noteworthy music scene (Eugene local band the Harmed Brothers came through during my stay), and an overall level of attractiveness I found quite surprising

Apparently Kansas City is known as “the city of fountains”, because it had to be known for *something*.

These things are true, however, exclusively of a very particular area in the downtown. The rest of the city has roughly the same level of spice as Lite Miracle whip.

KC seems to have the base level of culture inherent to any large city, and nothing more, or for that matter not even a new twist on standard cultural fare; everything here consists of the most default level of incarnation. Outside of the city center itself is nothing but miles and miles of suburbs. The only leisure activity out here is the house-party, the basement-party, the bonfire-party. It’s like a college crowd that outgrew college, but didn’t change anything else in their lives.

I mentioned that KC takes up considerably more room than our own young-persons' retirement destination out west, and I wasn't kidding. The place has it's very own interstate system, forming a kind of crosshair, a circle with intersecting bisections around the metropolis, and god forbid you don't have a car. Most of the time Kevin and I spent establishing plans was sunk into finding someone with a car who wasn't working; where they were going didn't matter, we were just happy to be able to go somewhere. At one point, I needed to get into town to see a notary (more on that later), a ten mile trip from Lenexa. Google maps has a bus route option, which I love, but which informed me that the next city bus that could take us there didn't run for another four days.

The entire place is one big, homogenous blur of lite beer (seriously, it’s *all* lite beer; I was at one bar with six lite beers and regular Bud in the bottle. When the tender asked me ‘what kind of bar serves Pabst?’ I died a little on the inside) and the idle middle class. That may be why I’m having such a hard time nailing down anything to really say about the place itself- I could talk for days about my friend Kevin, the towering ginger blues-man, or his unassuming father Dave who stocks his fridge with cases of beer and frozen burritos (clearly, he is my hero), but the city itself is almost like a cypher, a huge place holder. A million people have all been thrown together here, but nothing happened. It's inert material. Even the people out here seem to dislike it, but never leave. It’s weird.

Anyway, busted my way outta that limbo, and into the boomtown of Athens Ohio. I ended back up on the Greyhound, sad to say, but that was entirely because Amtrak refused to run the route I wanted until three days later. Bussing on 9/11 wasn’t bad

Or at least wasn't any worse than bussing any other day

but I guess no one was worried about someone driving a bus into anything important. Athens is a small college town in the south of Ohio, home of Ohio University and something like twenty thousand townies. The town itself is pretty tiny, only a few miles across, but that seems to have allowed them to focus almost entirely on the bar and café district. Needless to say, I approve.

It’s also very pretty.

Small town America, but in a good way.

This place has been here forever, dating from back in the days when they simultaneously discovered that coal lights on fire and also happens to be all over the goddam place out here. Subsequently, the streets (which are often brick, for no real reason except it’s old-timey) are often lined with old-ass brick and brownstone buildings, and there are a shit-ton of graveyards out here.

There’s also an abandoned insane asylum. No, seriously. 

cuckoo's nest as fuck

It’s in a place called The Ridges, where I was guided on a lovely hike overseeing the town by the incomparable Ms. Sarah, and her small blonde friend Heather, up what is apparently the tallest peak in the county

 No, seriously. This whole half of the nation in just that flat. Also, that’s a view over the entire town

The asylum (and I’m not being non-PC here, that’s actually what it was officially called) operated for well over a hundred years, and just closed down in the 1980’s. One of Athen’s numerous graveyards is located right next door, where they buried the inmates by number instead of name.

What, I tried, it was dark. You want better pictures, get me a camera that’s not also a phone

There are, of course, a whole bevy of rumors surrounding the supernatural aspects of this place; Athens in general is apparently amongst the most haunted places in the country, although true to form I’ve seen nothing of interest that’s even vaguely inexplicable.

The entire town is, however, overrun with eighteen year olds. Since the population of the town is slightly less than that of the university, being here during the school year is a little like having an entire town composed of the West Campus neighborhood in Eugene. It’s a little surreal.

The Ohio University itself is also quite pleasant.

 This is the student union, which has a series of three escalators to compensate for the fact that it was built on a hill slope. I've ridden it a half dozen times already

As a UO grad, I’m a little thrown off by the unity of architecture out here, both in the sense that all the buildings looked like they belong to the same organization, and none of them look like shit.

In an attempt to avoid the interlopers, townies seem to mainly socialize through the fine art of the potluck. Sarah, who for some reason seemed more than happy to be seen in public with me (I blame an overly active social center of the brain combined with terrible character assessment abilities), escorted me to two different potlucks in a handful of days and that’s apparently on the low side. She informs me that on a good week she’ll average several potlucks per day.

I’m switching off today between my two Athens peeps, preparing myself for the tender ministrations of Chris. I’ll let you know what his side of the town looks like in a bit. For now, I’m still in a constant state of euphoria just being around trees on a regular basis.

Hello, old friends

-Alex

P. S.

Right, the notary thing. Through what I can only assume to be a grievous clerical error, I have been hired by AmeriCorp to rebuild houses in New Orleans for a year, starting October 10, and I had to get fingerprinted for an FBI background check. Sooooo, that's where I'll be for a bit.