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.
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.
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.
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