It's been another week, and, because my last blog post was one of general observations instead of following the trip, I'm once again behind my travels. This blogging is a bit like keeping my room tidy - if I did a little each day it would be no problem at all, but I always let it heap up until there is lots to do in one big session. On the other hand, this highlights exactly why people who keep their room excessively tidy are boring - if I published a couple of sentences each day, I'm pretty sure no one would read this blog.
We left off on in Chicago, I think, after a long day of driving up from the South. Chicago is one of those cities - world famous, a big city even in a country of big cities, setting for many movies and tv shows - yet I didn't really have any preconceived image of Chicago. That is in part, I think, because Chicago lacks an iconic image - it doesn't have that one post card picture that everybody knows is Chicago, the way New York has the Statue of Liberty, LA has the Hollywood sign, Paris the Eiffel tower, et cetera.
It does have the bean, which may in time become that image. Officially known as Cloudgate, you've probably seen it movies. The Bean is a large, rounded metal structure shaped like a bean, that reflects the surrounding skyline, as well as the hundreds of tourists standing around its base gawking at their distorted reflections and trying to take tricky photographs of themselves and the buildings behind them. Well, when in Rome, as they say, and Kate and I couldn't resist visiting the bean more than once to join the gawkers and tourists marveling at this brilliant piece of public art.
Crucial to the success of the Bean is the city's architecture, which is so roundly reflected in the silver. Architecture, as it turns out, is something Chicago fancies itself as rather good at, and the amazing array of skyscrapers that make up America's most impressive skyline is in fact Chicago's true highlight.
It is a vast skyline. To walk from the 110 floor Sears tower to the 96 floor John Hancock Centre would take close to an hour, and those two giants are well inside the boundaries of downtown. On either side, and for all the ground in between, the skyscrapers continue, most rising a more reasonable 50 or 60 floors, but with several bigger ones than that jumping around the place.
Chicago, in fact, claims to have invented the skyscraper, and was the first city where high rise, steel skeleton buildings took off. The reason for this was, truth be told, largely one of timing - one of those periods where everything came together at the right time to transform a city.
With Lake Michigan to the East and rivers to the North and South, Chicago has always been pressed for space. In 1871 the city was beginning to feel the constraints of its geography. At the time the city was built almost entirely of wood, and the engineering techniques of the day meant that buildings were supported by their walls, and the higher they went, the thicker the walls had to be. Then, on the outskirts of the city, a cow kicked over a lantern and its barn caught fire, and the fire spread to neighbouring houses. Two days later and just about the entire city had burnt down. (As it turns out the cow story is still told, but apparently not true - the actual cause of the fire is unknown).
Chicago was faced with rebuilding the entire city, and at that exact time in history, a number of other things were happening. Steel was becoming a viable form of construction material, allowing Chicago to rebuild without the wood that, understandably, was considered too dangerous now. By using an internal skeleton, builders had found a way to increase the height of a building without wasting half the footprint on ever thicker walls. That allowed for a tall structure, but several things still had to come before buildings could practically be more than four of five stories. At various places in the world people developed the elevator, modern plumbing and electric lighting, all of which are essential to a skyscraper. So just as the technology to build skyscrapers emerged, Chicago was rebuilding, in an area where up was the only sensible place to go for more space. And so the huge urban canopy that now puts Chicago into permanent shade and wind began to take shape.
THe rivers have long since been passed as geographic boundaries. All that steel also allowed for the building of bridges, and Chicago boasts of having more opening steel bridges (32, I think) than any other city in the world. A cruise along the river system is today the best way to see much of the amazing architecture of Chicago. The other way is to see it from the top, from the observation platforms atop some of the tallest buildings. Sears Tower, at 110 stories, is the tallest building in the USA (it lost the World title to Petronas Towers in Malaysia, which has since been surpassed by buildings in Taipei and Dubai), but we choose to view the city from level 96 of the John Hancock centre. The reason for this was simple. You can pay $14 to go to the top of Sears, or you can go to level 96 at John Hancock for free, on the proviso you buy at least one $14 cocktail. Its not a very good cocktail, but still a cocktail. I should thank Jules for this tip.
Next stop from Chicago was Sandusky, Ohio, home of the Cedar Point theme park. Cedar Point bills itself as America's roller coaster capital, and it fully lives up to that hype. As I think most people know, and my blog may have made clear, Americans don't really do understatement. If they are going to build a roller coaster park here, you can bet your life that its going to be big - really big. Remember the days of visiting Wonderland in Sydney, or even Luna Park - after you'd ridden the roller coaster it always seemed there weren't that many exciting things left to do? Well, Cedar Point has solved this problem - with more roller coasters than any normal person could ride in a day. Throw in log rides, the classic tower drop ride, giant swings and more, and you have almost infinite ways of simulating the feeling of being dropped from a great height and then being hurled around at high speed. Flagship attractions include the Millennium Force Coaster, which, at 310 feet tall, was the tallest coaster in the world when it was built (2001), and the Magnum Coaster, which was also the tallest coaster in the world when it was built in 1989. Taller than both of them now is the Dragster Thrill Racer, which is unlike any roller coaster in the world, in that it reaches its top speed at the start, before climbing a 400 foot, vertical arch and plunging back down the other side. Powered by magnets in the same way as high speed rail lines, it reaches 120 mph in just 4 seconds at take off. Its a 22 second ride - after a 1 hour wait - but its worth it. I've tried to attach a video to the bottom of this blog, but it is giving me some technical difficulties, so apologies if it isn't working.
On more sedate lines Cedar Point also offered mini golf, which was a good chance to give churning stomachs a rest, and play the latest installment of the Great Escape Mini Golf Challenge, in which O'Brien held a 2-1 lead going into the game. It wasn't O'Brien's day however, as the accurate short range putting that had served her so well in Washington back in May deserted her, and Albrecht managed to play a 1 under par 42 to win by 7 shots. It's two all now, and the decider looks likely to be played on my old home course, the Seehausen mini golf course.
You probably couldn't find a bigger change in pace than from the Dragster Thrill Racer of Cedar Point to the horse and buggy of Amish country, but that was where we headed next. The Amish are spread around a few rural areas of Ohio and Pennsylvania. They are known as the Pennsylvania Dutch, but they came from Switzerland - because they spoke German they become known as Deutsch, which at some point morphed into Dutch. The Amish are committed to maintaining their traditional farming lifestyle - they reject technology such as cars and mobile phones and dress like something out of Little House on the Prairie. Ironically their determination to isolate themselves from the modern world has made them a major tourist attraction, and it seems that the Amish are more engaged in running restaurants and bed and breakfasts than farms these days. I noticed the ban on technology didn't extend to electronic cash registers. That was emblematic of Amish country as a whole. It is pretty scenery, and the people riding around in their horse and buggy and sporting chest length beards provide a curious spectacle, but that's about it.
We have arrived in Washington, DC now, but that again warrants a post to itself, so I reluctantly leave the blog still not quite up to date. Look out for the Philadelphia and Washington entry in a couple of days.
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
"Do I tip a tow truck driver?" and other conundrums of the American way of life
Spending an extended amount of time in a foreign country always gives you a chance to see how people in another country go about some of the everyday parts of life differently, and inevitably throws up a few things that seem like they could be brought back home, as well as a few that make you grateful you live wherever you do. In the USA there are so many things done just a little bit differently to Australia or Germany, and I wanted to take a chance to record a few of those things, and perhaps promote some of them back home.
First and foremost, the cultural norm that follows the traveler is the tipping culture. Everyone knows that waiters and bar staff work for little or no hourly wage and live from tips, and its an easy custom to adjust to - add 10% as a minimum, a little more if you are satisfied, and more again if you are particularly happy. I know people have strong opinions about tipping in Australia, but I have to say I come down in favour of the American system here. The service is almost universally very good - not just because of the extra incentive that the tip provides, but because people who find it difficult to be friendly or otherwise don't make good waiters quickly find they can't make any money in this industry and move on. My only objection to the tipping culture in restaurants is that it allows a restaurateur to basically shift all the patronage risk in his labour costs onto the employees. That might be a wonderful economic policy in terms of flexible workplace relations, but it does seem harsh that if an employer over staffs a restaurant, the waiters are the ones who take the loss. Similarly, the waiter bears the brunt of dissatisfaction, regardless of the cause. If my meal is bad, or takes too long, I am unlikely to tip as generously, and the waiter, rather than the kitchen, will suffer the consequences. On the other hand, the waiter gets a part of the upside. If the restaurant does particularly well, the waiters probably earn far more than they could in Australia.
More difficult, as far as tipping goes, is knowing where to stop. Waiters and bar tenders are obvious, which did lead me to theorise that you should tip when the service is separate from the good you are paying for - so I pay for the drink, and tip for the pouring and bringing of the drink. But that does not cover taxi drivers, where the service is all I'm paying for, yet they clearly expect tips. Most troubling was the tow truck driver, where I didn't pay for the service at all, other than the $90 we paid for AAA membership at the start of the trip. If you receive a service from a club that you are a member of, provided by a contractor not actually employed by that club, do you tip? Even when you decide that a tip is appropriate, how do you know how much to tip, when you can't use a percentage of the price as a guide?
Unfortunately, you never actually answer any of these questions, because no-one ever gives you feedback on a tip. I gave the tow truck driver 10 dollars, but I have no way of knowing whether he drove off thinking a) that was fair, b) awesome, I never usually get tipped, c) I can't believe he only gave me $10, or d) who does this guy think he is, some sort of big shot who thinks I need a tip - I probably make more than him, judging by his crappy car.
Essential to the tipping culture is another oft commented upon facet of American life - all the money looks the same. At first this drove me to distraction, and I am still prone to thinking I have a well stocked wallet, only to find out at a very inconvenient time that I have 15 one dollar bills and nothing else. But when you think about the tips, it suddenly makes sense. You are forever handing over notes to people for minor services, from serving you a drink to getting your car or your bags to providing the live music (Bands here generally play for tips only - which is probably a part of what makes the live music culture possible). In those situations it is convenient that all the money looks the same, because it allows you to decide how much to tip far more discreetly - no one knows I've given them a single dollar until I am far enough away to avoid an awkward moment.
Still on the subject of money, less convenient is the American habit of displaying prices that do not include fees and taxes. Each state levies its own sales tax - even individual cities have their own taxes. On top of sales tax there can be a 'bed charge' ($3.50 per night in New York), an amusement tax (9% in Chicago) or any manner of extra charges. Unless you have both an encyclopedic knowledge of federal, state and local taxes and a genius level IQ, it is impossible to know what the final price of any particular item is going to be. Published prices adhere to the principle of making every thing end in 99 cents, so after taxes you forever end up paying amounts like $8.43. This in turn means you collect mountains of 1c coins. The USA mints 40 million 1 cent coins per year, at a cost of $80 million. This is one area where Australia has clearly found a better solution. In NZ they even got rid of 5c coins.
Moving away from money to one of the travelers other great concerns - coffee. Every time I leave Australia, I realise how good the coffee culture in Sydney is. Australia is the exception, rather than the rule, in serving espresso coffee in every last cafe. Outside of the very big cities, cafe lattes in the USA are largely limited to Starbucks and a few imitation chains. Even here in Chicago a standard breakfast cafe is unlikely to serve you a cappuccino. Fortunately, Starbucks is everywhere, and you rarely have to go a day without getting your fix. Unfortunately, the coffee at Starbucks is not excellent, and there is no such thing as full cream milk - 2% milk is the best you can hope for.
One thing about Starbucks here is that when I say its everywhere, I really mean that. Obviously its in all the big cities, on almost every block, but far more delightfully, there is a Starbucks at most truck stops on the long interstate drives, and in every little rural town. That is where I think Starbucks went wrong in Australia - if they'd put their shops at Pheasants Nest and Sutton Forrest, serving coffee to all the passing city folk who don't want to even enter the Coolibah Cafe, instead of competing with a thousands coffee stands on Pitt Street and Collins Street, they probably wouldn't have had to shut them all down.
Another quirk of American life is the four way stop sign. When you come to an intersection between two smaller streets there is often a stop sign in every direction. If you were to apply the Australian interpretation of a stop sign, then when two cars approach from right angles at the same time, they would both have to stop and wait until the other one went, meaning they would be stuck at the stop sign forever. In America, you stop at the stop sign and let one car go, then the next car has to stop and let you go. It's simple enough, but it took us a while to work out, and led to some strange looks from other motorists as we firmly refused to budge while there was a stopped car on the other street. Once you figure it out, it works, but its pretty obvious that a better solution would be that invention that is completely absent from American roads, the roundabout.
By far America's worst habit has to be the imperial measurement system. Here is some history for you. A pound was traditionally measured in grains - one pound was the weight of 7000 grains of standard cereal. After starting with 7000, its natural that you would divide this into 16 ounces, meaning there are 437.5 grains in an ounce. Clearly this is a measure of weight, not volume, which is why a fluid ounce, which is how they measure drinks here, has no relation to the ounce weight. A fluid ounce is 1/128 of a gallon, which, logically enough, is 231 cubic inches. The origin of the inch is uncertain, though the earliest known definition seems to be that an inch is equivalent to three barleycorns. 36 inches make up a yard, and 1760 yards give you a mile. In case you can't do this in your heard, that means there are 63,360 inches in a mile, or 190,080 barleycorns.
America is fully committed to this system though. As with roundabouts, soccer, and gun control, it seems that the very fact that the rest of the world has figured it out makes supporting this system a point of national pride in the USA. Deep down I suspect there is probably a hint of defensiveness because they know that they have missed something here and they don't want to admit it. The irony of it all is that since 1959 all the imperial measurements have been measured in metric terms. The official measure of a yard in no longer 108 barleycorns - its actually 0.9144 meters.
I don't want to end on a negative note, so I've saved America's best habit for last - the people's amazing friendliness to strangers, and their willingness to make proper conversation with anyone they meet. I first noticed this in Central America, when we were stuck on a plane in El Salvador for a few hours. While we sat there and read our books, it was clear the many Americans on the flight were making friends with their neighbours. I suspect this much might happen in Australia, but after a few exchanges and the odd shared sarcastic remark, people would get back to their own friends, or their Ipods. The Americans on the other hand, by the time we were back in the air, were exchanging phone numbers and email addresses and making plans to have dinner back home in a few months time.
We've tried to be open to this approach, which doesn't necessarily come naturally to me, and we've seen American friendliness first hand, on too many occasions to count. In Seattle a family (Canadian, but to be honest, it really is pretty much the same thing) we met on the plane offered to show is round Vancouver; in Las Vegas we chatted for 30 minutes with two guys next to us at a bar, just because they were sitting there and introduced themselves. In Austin the friends we made watching the World Cup had offered us a place to stay within half an hour of meeting us, and invited us straight to their 4th of July celebrations.
It seems to me that this is the true irony of America. From the outside it seems determined to be different, proudly rejecting the world's favorite past times and better innovations, but from the inside, it seems more open to other people and ideas, be they from out of town or overseas, than any country I've ever been to.
First and foremost, the cultural norm that follows the traveler is the tipping culture. Everyone knows that waiters and bar staff work for little or no hourly wage and live from tips, and its an easy custom to adjust to - add 10% as a minimum, a little more if you are satisfied, and more again if you are particularly happy. I know people have strong opinions about tipping in Australia, but I have to say I come down in favour of the American system here. The service is almost universally very good - not just because of the extra incentive that the tip provides, but because people who find it difficult to be friendly or otherwise don't make good waiters quickly find they can't make any money in this industry and move on. My only objection to the tipping culture in restaurants is that it allows a restaurateur to basically shift all the patronage risk in his labour costs onto the employees. That might be a wonderful economic policy in terms of flexible workplace relations, but it does seem harsh that if an employer over staffs a restaurant, the waiters are the ones who take the loss. Similarly, the waiter bears the brunt of dissatisfaction, regardless of the cause. If my meal is bad, or takes too long, I am unlikely to tip as generously, and the waiter, rather than the kitchen, will suffer the consequences. On the other hand, the waiter gets a part of the upside. If the restaurant does particularly well, the waiters probably earn far more than they could in Australia.
More difficult, as far as tipping goes, is knowing where to stop. Waiters and bar tenders are obvious, which did lead me to theorise that you should tip when the service is separate from the good you are paying for - so I pay for the drink, and tip for the pouring and bringing of the drink. But that does not cover taxi drivers, where the service is all I'm paying for, yet they clearly expect tips. Most troubling was the tow truck driver, where I didn't pay for the service at all, other than the $90 we paid for AAA membership at the start of the trip. If you receive a service from a club that you are a member of, provided by a contractor not actually employed by that club, do you tip? Even when you decide that a tip is appropriate, how do you know how much to tip, when you can't use a percentage of the price as a guide?
Unfortunately, you never actually answer any of these questions, because no-one ever gives you feedback on a tip. I gave the tow truck driver 10 dollars, but I have no way of knowing whether he drove off thinking a) that was fair, b) awesome, I never usually get tipped, c) I can't believe he only gave me $10, or d) who does this guy think he is, some sort of big shot who thinks I need a tip - I probably make more than him, judging by his crappy car.
Essential to the tipping culture is another oft commented upon facet of American life - all the money looks the same. At first this drove me to distraction, and I am still prone to thinking I have a well stocked wallet, only to find out at a very inconvenient time that I have 15 one dollar bills and nothing else. But when you think about the tips, it suddenly makes sense. You are forever handing over notes to people for minor services, from serving you a drink to getting your car or your bags to providing the live music (Bands here generally play for tips only - which is probably a part of what makes the live music culture possible). In those situations it is convenient that all the money looks the same, because it allows you to decide how much to tip far more discreetly - no one knows I've given them a single dollar until I am far enough away to avoid an awkward moment.
Still on the subject of money, less convenient is the American habit of displaying prices that do not include fees and taxes. Each state levies its own sales tax - even individual cities have their own taxes. On top of sales tax there can be a 'bed charge' ($3.50 per night in New York), an amusement tax (9% in Chicago) or any manner of extra charges. Unless you have both an encyclopedic knowledge of federal, state and local taxes and a genius level IQ, it is impossible to know what the final price of any particular item is going to be. Published prices adhere to the principle of making every thing end in 99 cents, so after taxes you forever end up paying amounts like $8.43. This in turn means you collect mountains of 1c coins. The USA mints 40 million 1 cent coins per year, at a cost of $80 million. This is one area where Australia has clearly found a better solution. In NZ they even got rid of 5c coins.
Moving away from money to one of the travelers other great concerns - coffee. Every time I leave Australia, I realise how good the coffee culture in Sydney is. Australia is the exception, rather than the rule, in serving espresso coffee in every last cafe. Outside of the very big cities, cafe lattes in the USA are largely limited to Starbucks and a few imitation chains. Even here in Chicago a standard breakfast cafe is unlikely to serve you a cappuccino. Fortunately, Starbucks is everywhere, and you rarely have to go a day without getting your fix. Unfortunately, the coffee at Starbucks is not excellent, and there is no such thing as full cream milk - 2% milk is the best you can hope for.
One thing about Starbucks here is that when I say its everywhere, I really mean that. Obviously its in all the big cities, on almost every block, but far more delightfully, there is a Starbucks at most truck stops on the long interstate drives, and in every little rural town. That is where I think Starbucks went wrong in Australia - if they'd put their shops at Pheasants Nest and Sutton Forrest, serving coffee to all the passing city folk who don't want to even enter the Coolibah Cafe, instead of competing with a thousands coffee stands on Pitt Street and Collins Street, they probably wouldn't have had to shut them all down.
Another quirk of American life is the four way stop sign. When you come to an intersection between two smaller streets there is often a stop sign in every direction. If you were to apply the Australian interpretation of a stop sign, then when two cars approach from right angles at the same time, they would both have to stop and wait until the other one went, meaning they would be stuck at the stop sign forever. In America, you stop at the stop sign and let one car go, then the next car has to stop and let you go. It's simple enough, but it took us a while to work out, and led to some strange looks from other motorists as we firmly refused to budge while there was a stopped car on the other street. Once you figure it out, it works, but its pretty obvious that a better solution would be that invention that is completely absent from American roads, the roundabout.
By far America's worst habit has to be the imperial measurement system. Here is some history for you. A pound was traditionally measured in grains - one pound was the weight of 7000 grains of standard cereal. After starting with 7000, its natural that you would divide this into 16 ounces, meaning there are 437.5 grains in an ounce. Clearly this is a measure of weight, not volume, which is why a fluid ounce, which is how they measure drinks here, has no relation to the ounce weight. A fluid ounce is 1/128 of a gallon, which, logically enough, is 231 cubic inches. The origin of the inch is uncertain, though the earliest known definition seems to be that an inch is equivalent to three barleycorns. 36 inches make up a yard, and 1760 yards give you a mile. In case you can't do this in your heard, that means there are 63,360 inches in a mile, or 190,080 barleycorns.
America is fully committed to this system though. As with roundabouts, soccer, and gun control, it seems that the very fact that the rest of the world has figured it out makes supporting this system a point of national pride in the USA. Deep down I suspect there is probably a hint of defensiveness because they know that they have missed something here and they don't want to admit it. The irony of it all is that since 1959 all the imperial measurements have been measured in metric terms. The official measure of a yard in no longer 108 barleycorns - its actually 0.9144 meters.
I don't want to end on a negative note, so I've saved America's best habit for last - the people's amazing friendliness to strangers, and their willingness to make proper conversation with anyone they meet. I first noticed this in Central America, when we were stuck on a plane in El Salvador for a few hours. While we sat there and read our books, it was clear the many Americans on the flight were making friends with their neighbours. I suspect this much might happen in Australia, but after a few exchanges and the odd shared sarcastic remark, people would get back to their own friends, or their Ipods. The Americans on the other hand, by the time we were back in the air, were exchanging phone numbers and email addresses and making plans to have dinner back home in a few months time.
We've tried to be open to this approach, which doesn't necessarily come naturally to me, and we've seen American friendliness first hand, on too many occasions to count. In Seattle a family (Canadian, but to be honest, it really is pretty much the same thing) we met on the plane offered to show is round Vancouver; in Las Vegas we chatted for 30 minutes with two guys next to us at a bar, just because they were sitting there and introduced themselves. In Austin the friends we made watching the World Cup had offered us a place to stay within half an hour of meeting us, and invited us straight to their 4th of July celebrations.
It seems to me that this is the true irony of America. From the outside it seems determined to be different, proudly rejecting the world's favorite past times and better innovations, but from the inside, it seems more open to other people and ideas, be they from out of town or overseas, than any country I've ever been to.
Monday, July 19, 2010
Discovering the Deep South
We're heading out of the South today. I'm blogging from the car again, as we pass through the farm fields of Indiana, en route to Chicago. It is a route that, before the trip, we might have expected to represent a return to civilization, out of the redneck states of Mississippi and Tennessee back to the big smoke. Having been through the South now however, I am sad to be leaving. The redneck reputation is fairly deeply ingrained, perpetuated not least by the television shows that come out of the East and West coast cities, but a visit to the South does a lot to dispel those notions.
It took me two days to recover from the night out on Bourbon St - a recovery made harder by the unrelenting heat and humidity, but we still managed to get a better look at New Orleans, or N'awlens, in the local drawl, and Nu Awlins to other Americans, in that time. We were based in a tiny, character filled hotel just outside the French Quarter. Character filled was the website description, which is obviously usually a red flag - unless you consider clogged drains and stained curtains character - but this time it was true. Beads and ornaments filled the rooms, there were small ponds with fish in them decorating the outdoor common area, as well as rusted farm equipment hanging from the walls, and just enough insects in the shared bathroom to make for a memorable stay. The other noteworthy aspect of our hotel was that it was one block back from Elysian FIelds. If you were in my 10th grade English class, and you have an exceptional memory, you might remember Elysian Fields as the street where A Street Car Named Desire was set. I kept an eye out for an appropriate place to fall to my knees and scream "Stella!", but, fortunately, there was no place that really stood out.
A few blocks from Elysian Fields lies Frenchman Street, which our hotel owner described as Bourbon Street for locals. This was much more what I had pictured of New Orleans - a series of small jazz clubs and cajun eateries. No plastic cocktails or t-shirt vendors, but still with plenty of life going on indoors as the bands started to get the crowd involved. We also did what, to judge by the line, every tourist in New Orleans must do, and had breakfast of beignets and cafe au lait at Cafe du Monde. A beignet is essentially a donut, but by giving it a french name, changing the shape, and covering it in icing sugar, you create an essential cultural experience, instead of junk food. They were good though, definitely worth the 20 minute wait and reduction in the capacity of my arteries.
The two things that the world has heard so much about when it comes to New Orleans - Hurricane Katrina and the Gulf oil spill - were conspicuous more by their absence than any evidence. I had heard and read that the city is still devastated by the hurricane, but there was no carnage to be seen. This is partly because the old city was built before people had the technology, or the desire, to build levies and construct a city below sea level. As a result the French Quarter and surrounds were not flooded during the hurricane. But even driving around other parts of the city we didn't see any evidence of the storm. Maybe we didn't look in the right places, or maybe the recovery has finally gotten into action. As for the oil spill, because you can't actually see the coast or the swamp lands from the city, we didn't see the oil. And as far as claims, never ceasing in the media here, that the gulf seafood industry is going to be destroyed, there was again very little to support that. There is still shrimp and crab on every menu, and at cheap prices. Whether that seafood is coming from somewhere else now, I couldn't say, but the restaurants seem unaffected.
Jazz and deep fried food apart, the other noticeable thing about N'awlens is that the local people all say hello to you as you pass on the street. I have to confess to being a bit too cynical for this at first. Several times when we passed conspicuously poor people, of which there are plenty in New Orleans, who stopped to ask how we were going I just assumed they were about to ask us for some money - but they never did. It seems that in New Orleans, and this turned out to be the case throughout the south, it is perfectly normal to greet every person you meet on the street with a lazy 'how y'all doin' today?'. And you are expected to answer and ask back, not merely nod and smile. It takes some getting used to, but it quickly makes you feel genuinely welcome in the city.
From New Orleans we turned north, and headed into Mississippi, first stop Vicksburg. Vicksburg was the site of one of the key battles of the civil war, as its location on a hill above the Mississippi made it the crucial point for controlling the river, which was the main highway for the Southern states. Today the entire battlefield has been turned into a memorial, with a seemingly endless array of plaques for every unit that fought, and, as an added bonus, a couple of people dressed up to reenact firing a civil war rifle for the tourists. We may know the civil war as the war America fought to end slavery, but in Mississippi it is seen slightly differently, as the war in which the South fought for independence, which was crushed by the tyrannical Yankee north. Hence Vicksburg is known as the city where the dream ended, and the memorial focuses on the bravery of those who endured to siege, with barely a mention of slavery.
The interesting thing about that point of view is that, while it's considered politically incorrect in the North, it's probably closer to what happened than the slavery narrative. I picked up a few books on the civil war, and was intrigued to find out that when it started Lincoln had no intention of abolishing slavery in the South. The Emancipation Proclamation, by which Lincoln declared the slaves free, did not come until well into the war, and was intended mainly to give the war weary north a new cause and a morale boost, and to convince Britain and France, where slavery was deeply unpopular, to stay out of the war. Still, the South was completely dependent on slave labour, so it's hard to see them as freedom fighters.
From Vicksburg it was on to Clarksdale, a small town that lays claim to being the home of the blues. Amongst other things, Clarksdale provided us with a chance to see how far we would actually follow our GPS navigator, regardless of the absurdity of its directions. I am mildly embarrassed to admit that I did turn off the road into a field, where there was clearly neither a hotel nor a road, because that is what the GPS told me to do. Technology, a wonderful thing.
When we eventually found our intended hotel, we almost turned around. A corrugated iron shack, a few rusted, abandoned cotton pickers and a heap of scrap metal were all that greeted us at what was supposed to be the Shack Up Inn. If ever we were going to be greeted by an angry farmer pointing a shotgun at us (perhaps with his flirtatious daughter in the background), this was going to be the place. Cautiously, we opened the rusted door, only to stumble into a large, welcoming bar, with a live music stage and a few neon beer signs. They pointed us to the next door lobby, and it became clear that the ominous looking abandoned farm machinery was all part of the decoration for what was actually a very nice little B&B (Bed and Beer - the world's oldest one, they claim). Clarksdale's surprises didn't end there. It may be a small cotton farming town in the deep south, but its a long way from what those factors might cause you to expect. Instead of the local BBQ joint we ate escargot in an oak paneled dining room owned by Morgan Freeman, then caught some live music in a modern art gallery next door.
From Clarksdale we left Mississippi and entered Tennessee, starting with Memphis. Although its a comparatively large city, Memphis maintains the same Southern friendliness as the small towns in Mississippi. It also shares the heat, and the unbelievable humidity. Good for growing cotton, it's not that pleasant for walking around. First stop in Memphis was Graceland, home of Elvis. Apart from touring his mansion, which, while clearly a product of the seventies, is not as huge or tasteless as you might expect, we saw his car collection, complete with the tractor used to do the gardening on the 13 acre property, and his custom made private jets.
Elvis may be worth a visit, but Memphis' most impressive venue by far is the National Civil Rights Museum, in the converted motel where Martin Luther King was shot in 1968. The civil rights story is so difficult to reconcile with the universal friendliness of people, black and white, that seems to mark the region today. Back in the 1960s it seems people were less welcoming, to judge by the footage of violent riots that rocked the region when schools and buses were desegregated. It is hard to describe it in a blog, but if you are ever in Memphis, make sure you visit the museum. It really is a moving experience.
Memphis has its own version of Bourbon Street - Beale Street. Though it houses fewer t-shirt dealers and no strip clubs, it is still a raucous strip of road dedicated to live music and on-street drinking, and full of places claiming to be the home of BBQ and or rock and roll. By this point it was dawning on me that our trip around the South had become overwhelmingly focused on music. At each city we visited the first order of business was to find the best live music joints and compare to the last town. It turns out that the defining feature of the entire region is its dedication to live music, which can be seen in absolutely every bar and restaurant.
Memphis, as the stomping ground of Elvis Presley and Johnny Cash, claims the title of birthplace of rock and roll. If you take the self proclaimed titles of all the places we visited, you have the world capital of live music (Austin), the home of Jazz (New Orleans), the birthplace of the Blues (Clarksdale) and Rock n Roll (Memphis), and the capital of Country (Nashville). From that list it becomes fairly clear that a huge proportion of the music played around the world today has it origins in about a 40 year period, from 1920-1960, in this one region of the USA.
Last stop in the South was Nashville, where we only stayed one night, but that was enough to explore Nashville's entertainment district and compare to Memphis and New Orleans. More extraordinary music, but the BBQ did not match the quality of Memphis. Apart from bars, Nashville's main business seems to be cowboy boots. I briefly wished I lived somewhere that would actually allow me to wear cowboy boots, but I resisted the temptation to purchase a pair.
Nashville was meant to be our last stop in the South, but maybe that famed southern hospitality was not done yet. So friendly was the South that it found a way to stop us leaving, though arguably the means was not that friendly. As we headed up Interstate 65 from Nashville towards Cincinnati, our car, once known as Yes Man, shook a little, then emitted a little smoke, and then stopped entirely, smoke billowing out from under the bonnet. Kate did well to guide the dead car from the highway to an exit and a safe shoulder, but that was as far as the newly named 'No Man' was going. Luckily we had a AAA membership, and we had stopped outside a hotel that let us use their phone. In Australia, I would expect the car to be at the garage for at least a couple of days, and, given it was a Saturday, we thought our trip was hitting a major snag. In Goodletsville, Tennessee however, the mechanics are apparently a bit more efficient - though no cheaper. Three hours, nine hundred dollars,a new fan and new radiator later, we were back on the road.
We've arrived in Chicago now (it took me more than a state of driving to write this!) which looks like a very nice city. We are in part three of the journey now - the big cities of the the North East, with Washington DC, Philadelphia, New York and Boston still to come. It's always nice to hear something from back home too, so if anyone has any news at all, I'd be happy to hear it. I have a terrible habit of failing to reply to email, but I promise I will reply to anything you send me from now on!
It took me two days to recover from the night out on Bourbon St - a recovery made harder by the unrelenting heat and humidity, but we still managed to get a better look at New Orleans, or N'awlens, in the local drawl, and Nu Awlins to other Americans, in that time. We were based in a tiny, character filled hotel just outside the French Quarter. Character filled was the website description, which is obviously usually a red flag - unless you consider clogged drains and stained curtains character - but this time it was true. Beads and ornaments filled the rooms, there were small ponds with fish in them decorating the outdoor common area, as well as rusted farm equipment hanging from the walls, and just enough insects in the shared bathroom to make for a memorable stay. The other noteworthy aspect of our hotel was that it was one block back from Elysian FIelds. If you were in my 10th grade English class, and you have an exceptional memory, you might remember Elysian Fields as the street where A Street Car Named Desire was set. I kept an eye out for an appropriate place to fall to my knees and scream "Stella!", but, fortunately, there was no place that really stood out.
A few blocks from Elysian Fields lies Frenchman Street, which our hotel owner described as Bourbon Street for locals. This was much more what I had pictured of New Orleans - a series of small jazz clubs and cajun eateries. No plastic cocktails or t-shirt vendors, but still with plenty of life going on indoors as the bands started to get the crowd involved. We also did what, to judge by the line, every tourist in New Orleans must do, and had breakfast of beignets and cafe au lait at Cafe du Monde. A beignet is essentially a donut, but by giving it a french name, changing the shape, and covering it in icing sugar, you create an essential cultural experience, instead of junk food. They were good though, definitely worth the 20 minute wait and reduction in the capacity of my arteries.
The two things that the world has heard so much about when it comes to New Orleans - Hurricane Katrina and the Gulf oil spill - were conspicuous more by their absence than any evidence. I had heard and read that the city is still devastated by the hurricane, but there was no carnage to be seen. This is partly because the old city was built before people had the technology, or the desire, to build levies and construct a city below sea level. As a result the French Quarter and surrounds were not flooded during the hurricane. But even driving around other parts of the city we didn't see any evidence of the storm. Maybe we didn't look in the right places, or maybe the recovery has finally gotten into action. As for the oil spill, because you can't actually see the coast or the swamp lands from the city, we didn't see the oil. And as far as claims, never ceasing in the media here, that the gulf seafood industry is going to be destroyed, there was again very little to support that. There is still shrimp and crab on every menu, and at cheap prices. Whether that seafood is coming from somewhere else now, I couldn't say, but the restaurants seem unaffected.
Jazz and deep fried food apart, the other noticeable thing about N'awlens is that the local people all say hello to you as you pass on the street. I have to confess to being a bit too cynical for this at first. Several times when we passed conspicuously poor people, of which there are plenty in New Orleans, who stopped to ask how we were going I just assumed they were about to ask us for some money - but they never did. It seems that in New Orleans, and this turned out to be the case throughout the south, it is perfectly normal to greet every person you meet on the street with a lazy 'how y'all doin' today?'. And you are expected to answer and ask back, not merely nod and smile. It takes some getting used to, but it quickly makes you feel genuinely welcome in the city.
From New Orleans we turned north, and headed into Mississippi, first stop Vicksburg. Vicksburg was the site of one of the key battles of the civil war, as its location on a hill above the Mississippi made it the crucial point for controlling the river, which was the main highway for the Southern states. Today the entire battlefield has been turned into a memorial, with a seemingly endless array of plaques for every unit that fought, and, as an added bonus, a couple of people dressed up to reenact firing a civil war rifle for the tourists. We may know the civil war as the war America fought to end slavery, but in Mississippi it is seen slightly differently, as the war in which the South fought for independence, which was crushed by the tyrannical Yankee north. Hence Vicksburg is known as the city where the dream ended, and the memorial focuses on the bravery of those who endured to siege, with barely a mention of slavery.
The interesting thing about that point of view is that, while it's considered politically incorrect in the North, it's probably closer to what happened than the slavery narrative. I picked up a few books on the civil war, and was intrigued to find out that when it started Lincoln had no intention of abolishing slavery in the South. The Emancipation Proclamation, by which Lincoln declared the slaves free, did not come until well into the war, and was intended mainly to give the war weary north a new cause and a morale boost, and to convince Britain and France, where slavery was deeply unpopular, to stay out of the war. Still, the South was completely dependent on slave labour, so it's hard to see them as freedom fighters.
From Vicksburg it was on to Clarksdale, a small town that lays claim to being the home of the blues. Amongst other things, Clarksdale provided us with a chance to see how far we would actually follow our GPS navigator, regardless of the absurdity of its directions. I am mildly embarrassed to admit that I did turn off the road into a field, where there was clearly neither a hotel nor a road, because that is what the GPS told me to do. Technology, a wonderful thing.
When we eventually found our intended hotel, we almost turned around. A corrugated iron shack, a few rusted, abandoned cotton pickers and a heap of scrap metal were all that greeted us at what was supposed to be the Shack Up Inn. If ever we were going to be greeted by an angry farmer pointing a shotgun at us (perhaps with his flirtatious daughter in the background), this was going to be the place. Cautiously, we opened the rusted door, only to stumble into a large, welcoming bar, with a live music stage and a few neon beer signs. They pointed us to the next door lobby, and it became clear that the ominous looking abandoned farm machinery was all part of the decoration for what was actually a very nice little B&B (Bed and Beer - the world's oldest one, they claim). Clarksdale's surprises didn't end there. It may be a small cotton farming town in the deep south, but its a long way from what those factors might cause you to expect. Instead of the local BBQ joint we ate escargot in an oak paneled dining room owned by Morgan Freeman, then caught some live music in a modern art gallery next door.
From Clarksdale we left Mississippi and entered Tennessee, starting with Memphis. Although its a comparatively large city, Memphis maintains the same Southern friendliness as the small towns in Mississippi. It also shares the heat, and the unbelievable humidity. Good for growing cotton, it's not that pleasant for walking around. First stop in Memphis was Graceland, home of Elvis. Apart from touring his mansion, which, while clearly a product of the seventies, is not as huge or tasteless as you might expect, we saw his car collection, complete with the tractor used to do the gardening on the 13 acre property, and his custom made private jets.
Elvis may be worth a visit, but Memphis' most impressive venue by far is the National Civil Rights Museum, in the converted motel where Martin Luther King was shot in 1968. The civil rights story is so difficult to reconcile with the universal friendliness of people, black and white, that seems to mark the region today. Back in the 1960s it seems people were less welcoming, to judge by the footage of violent riots that rocked the region when schools and buses were desegregated. It is hard to describe it in a blog, but if you are ever in Memphis, make sure you visit the museum. It really is a moving experience.
Memphis has its own version of Bourbon Street - Beale Street. Though it houses fewer t-shirt dealers and no strip clubs, it is still a raucous strip of road dedicated to live music and on-street drinking, and full of places claiming to be the home of BBQ and or rock and roll. By this point it was dawning on me that our trip around the South had become overwhelmingly focused on music. At each city we visited the first order of business was to find the best live music joints and compare to the last town. It turns out that the defining feature of the entire region is its dedication to live music, which can be seen in absolutely every bar and restaurant.
Memphis, as the stomping ground of Elvis Presley and Johnny Cash, claims the title of birthplace of rock and roll. If you take the self proclaimed titles of all the places we visited, you have the world capital of live music (Austin), the home of Jazz (New Orleans), the birthplace of the Blues (Clarksdale) and Rock n Roll (Memphis), and the capital of Country (Nashville). From that list it becomes fairly clear that a huge proportion of the music played around the world today has it origins in about a 40 year period, from 1920-1960, in this one region of the USA.
Last stop in the South was Nashville, where we only stayed one night, but that was enough to explore Nashville's entertainment district and compare to Memphis and New Orleans. More extraordinary music, but the BBQ did not match the quality of Memphis. Apart from bars, Nashville's main business seems to be cowboy boots. I briefly wished I lived somewhere that would actually allow me to wear cowboy boots, but I resisted the temptation to purchase a pair.
Nashville was meant to be our last stop in the South, but maybe that famed southern hospitality was not done yet. So friendly was the South that it found a way to stop us leaving, though arguably the means was not that friendly. As we headed up Interstate 65 from Nashville towards Cincinnati, our car, once known as Yes Man, shook a little, then emitted a little smoke, and then stopped entirely, smoke billowing out from under the bonnet. Kate did well to guide the dead car from the highway to an exit and a safe shoulder, but that was as far as the newly named 'No Man' was going. Luckily we had a AAA membership, and we had stopped outside a hotel that let us use their phone. In Australia, I would expect the car to be at the garage for at least a couple of days, and, given it was a Saturday, we thought our trip was hitting a major snag. In Goodletsville, Tennessee however, the mechanics are apparently a bit more efficient - though no cheaper. Three hours, nine hundred dollars,a new fan and new radiator later, we were back on the road.
We've arrived in Chicago now (it took me more than a state of driving to write this!) which looks like a very nice city. We are in part three of the journey now - the big cities of the the North East, with Washington DC, Philadelphia, New York and Boston still to come. It's always nice to hear something from back home too, so if anyone has any news at all, I'd be happy to hear it. I have a terrible habit of failing to reply to email, but I promise I will reply to anything you send me from now on!
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
Bourbon Street
The pianist is finishing his solo - I can tell only because its getting faster, and my limited experience of jazz tells me that most solos finish with a flourish. As the flourish comes the crowd clap - enthusiastically, but not wildly, because, as we are about to find out, its the trumpeter they have come to see.
Right on cue, as the claps for the pianist fade the trumpet starts. The double bass and the drum never stopped, but they get no credit here. Again, the music starts gently and builds. A flourish here and a crescendo there, each met with far increasing applause by the crowd. Even with my limited experience and poor ear I can tell the trumpeter is very good. By now his fingers are moving so fast they are no more than a blur, but the music is controlled, rhythmic, and never misses a note.
We have some friends with us who are musically inclined, and undoubtedly better judges than me - and they too are enraptured. Like the rest of the crowd, Jono and Jacinta are mesmerized, tapping along almost subconsciously and joining the spontaneous applause that breaks out sporadically. I have to admit that I take my cue for these outbreaks from the rest of the crowd - I can't predict when the mid-song applause becomes appropriate. It must be something that comes with a sense of rhythm and tone.
We are in a jazz club on Bourbon Street, in New Orleans famed French Quarter. The club is exactly as I had imagined clubs on New Orleans' most famous street to be: a small bar, live jazz on stage in front of a couple of rows of wooden chairs and tables, in an aging French colonial style building - good enough to let me forget the offense of paying $7 for a Bud Light. Well, its almost what I expected - apart from the brilliant trumpeter the rest of the band is middle aged and white, which I have to admit it slightly different to my mental picture.
While the bar, Maison Bourbon, is just right, it is in truth an exception rather than the rule on Bourbon Street. A quick glance at the audience reveals that most of them are in their thirties or older, clearly enjoying the refuge that the jazz club provides from the hustle and bustle of an entertainment district that more closely resembles Khao San road in Bangkok than any quarter in France that I ever been to. There are still parts of New Orleans to visit for its rich history and live music scene, but Bourbon Street is not one of them. I'm told that it hasn't been for quite some time. While there are still plenty of bands playing on the street, the music venues are outnumbered by t-shirt stalls, strip clubs and beer barns, and the revelers are more likely to be celebrating a bachelor, or bachelorette, party than soaking up Louis Armstrong.
It comes as a surprise to me, but apparently New Orleans has long been a rival to Las Vegas as a drinking and partying venue for college kids, frat and sorority houses and anyone else from the big cities looking to cut loose for a weekend. I didn't realize it was a legendary party town before I came, but when the facts change… Well, it was time to get involved.
A unique feature of Bourbon Street is the presence of take away cocktail vendors. Each of the famous t-shirt stores also sells the local favorite, a Hand Grenade, in souvenir, grenade shaped cups. Once they are empty, you can take the cups into any bar and they will refill them for you (for an exorbitant fee, of course). If the Hand Grenades are not your choice of poison - and in truth, after you've had one of these sickly sweet, vile green concoctions, they probably won't be - bars will happily let you take any drink you buy with you. There is usually someone stationed at the door to pour your drink into a plastic cup for the road.
The fact that you can take your drink with you has an interesting effect on the street, in that most of the partying happens on the outdoors, rather than in the bars. That's convenient, because the building facades and the architecture are the other great attraction of the French Quarter, so you can enjoy both the history and the party at the same time.
The buildings on Bourbon Street are all in the same style - old wooden buildings, two stories, and a balcony on the second story. The balconies are full of people throwing necklaces of plastic beads to the people below. Originally a Mardi Gras tradition, and still only worn that day by the locals, the beads are considered part of the New Orleans experience by the tourists now and are a feature year round. The people on the balconies enjoy the scene they create by throwing them down, while the recipients, who I suspect never realized they wanted beads, suddenly see an indispensable, and free, souvenir, and crowd around shouting for more. In many ways the beads seem like a reflection of New Orleans as a whole - once a meaningful tradition, now somewhat corrupted by the demands of the tourist industry, but enjoyed by all.
On leaving the the jazz club we join the throng on the street, buy some take away Hand Grenades and watch Kate and Jacinta eagerly amass a large collection of beads. The take-away culture makes a pub crawl here not only easy, but essential. A shot of jaegermeister at a bar with a mechanical bull tempts us inside, but the line for the bull looks long, probably because the bull seems to rock so gently that, even with the help of copious amounts of alcohol, everyone manages to ride out most of the bull's time.
Eventually we reach a bar with dueling pianos, where Kate wants to try out the two step she was taught in Texas. She tries to show me how its done, but suddenly its not as simple as it was in Texas - there is no answer to the age old question of whether the instructor or the student is to blame, but our two step seems to contain many steps, few of them in time with each other. At the pianos a woman, comfortably in her fifties, has become enamored with, alternately, the piano players and a group of young guys wearing matching t-shirts. Even in New Orleans, a fifty year old woman jumping on stage and beginning to remove her singlet top causes a stir. The crowd watches with the voyeuristic fascination usually reserved for a car crash, torn between wanting the woman to stop and save some dignity or take it all off and give everyone a funny story to take home (or blog about). She stops at the last possible moment and disappears into the crowd, only to return later having swapped tops with one of the matching t-shirt brigade. She looks at him expectantly, apparently ready to ignore the thirty year age difference. He looks uncomfortable, both from wearing a woman's tank top and as a result of the situation that seems to be developing around him.
It's past 2 am when we decide to call it quits, but the street shows no sign of abating. We are far enough from our hotel to justify a taxi, but can't resist walking all the way back down Bourbon Street one more time (and picking up a hot-dog from a street vendor on the way). The hand grenades are still pouring freely, the beads still flying from balconies, and, as it is finally cooling down to a bearable temperature, the party will continue all night.
Right on cue, as the claps for the pianist fade the trumpet starts. The double bass and the drum never stopped, but they get no credit here. Again, the music starts gently and builds. A flourish here and a crescendo there, each met with far increasing applause by the crowd. Even with my limited experience and poor ear I can tell the trumpeter is very good. By now his fingers are moving so fast they are no more than a blur, but the music is controlled, rhythmic, and never misses a note.
We have some friends with us who are musically inclined, and undoubtedly better judges than me - and they too are enraptured. Like the rest of the crowd, Jono and Jacinta are mesmerized, tapping along almost subconsciously and joining the spontaneous applause that breaks out sporadically. I have to admit that I take my cue for these outbreaks from the rest of the crowd - I can't predict when the mid-song applause becomes appropriate. It must be something that comes with a sense of rhythm and tone.
We are in a jazz club on Bourbon Street, in New Orleans famed French Quarter. The club is exactly as I had imagined clubs on New Orleans' most famous street to be: a small bar, live jazz on stage in front of a couple of rows of wooden chairs and tables, in an aging French colonial style building - good enough to let me forget the offense of paying $7 for a Bud Light. Well, its almost what I expected - apart from the brilliant trumpeter the rest of the band is middle aged and white, which I have to admit it slightly different to my mental picture.
While the bar, Maison Bourbon, is just right, it is in truth an exception rather than the rule on Bourbon Street. A quick glance at the audience reveals that most of them are in their thirties or older, clearly enjoying the refuge that the jazz club provides from the hustle and bustle of an entertainment district that more closely resembles Khao San road in Bangkok than any quarter in France that I ever been to. There are still parts of New Orleans to visit for its rich history and live music scene, but Bourbon Street is not one of them. I'm told that it hasn't been for quite some time. While there are still plenty of bands playing on the street, the music venues are outnumbered by t-shirt stalls, strip clubs and beer barns, and the revelers are more likely to be celebrating a bachelor, or bachelorette, party than soaking up Louis Armstrong.
It comes as a surprise to me, but apparently New Orleans has long been a rival to Las Vegas as a drinking and partying venue for college kids, frat and sorority houses and anyone else from the big cities looking to cut loose for a weekend. I didn't realize it was a legendary party town before I came, but when the facts change… Well, it was time to get involved.
A unique feature of Bourbon Street is the presence of take away cocktail vendors. Each of the famous t-shirt stores also sells the local favorite, a Hand Grenade, in souvenir, grenade shaped cups. Once they are empty, you can take the cups into any bar and they will refill them for you (for an exorbitant fee, of course). If the Hand Grenades are not your choice of poison - and in truth, after you've had one of these sickly sweet, vile green concoctions, they probably won't be - bars will happily let you take any drink you buy with you. There is usually someone stationed at the door to pour your drink into a plastic cup for the road.
The fact that you can take your drink with you has an interesting effect on the street, in that most of the partying happens on the outdoors, rather than in the bars. That's convenient, because the building facades and the architecture are the other great attraction of the French Quarter, so you can enjoy both the history and the party at the same time.
The buildings on Bourbon Street are all in the same style - old wooden buildings, two stories, and a balcony on the second story. The balconies are full of people throwing necklaces of plastic beads to the people below. Originally a Mardi Gras tradition, and still only worn that day by the locals, the beads are considered part of the New Orleans experience by the tourists now and are a feature year round. The people on the balconies enjoy the scene they create by throwing them down, while the recipients, who I suspect never realized they wanted beads, suddenly see an indispensable, and free, souvenir, and crowd around shouting for more. In many ways the beads seem like a reflection of New Orleans as a whole - once a meaningful tradition, now somewhat corrupted by the demands of the tourist industry, but enjoyed by all.
On leaving the the jazz club we join the throng on the street, buy some take away Hand Grenades and watch Kate and Jacinta eagerly amass a large collection of beads. The take-away culture makes a pub crawl here not only easy, but essential. A shot of jaegermeister at a bar with a mechanical bull tempts us inside, but the line for the bull looks long, probably because the bull seems to rock so gently that, even with the help of copious amounts of alcohol, everyone manages to ride out most of the bull's time.
Eventually we reach a bar with dueling pianos, where Kate wants to try out the two step she was taught in Texas. She tries to show me how its done, but suddenly its not as simple as it was in Texas - there is no answer to the age old question of whether the instructor or the student is to blame, but our two step seems to contain many steps, few of them in time with each other. At the pianos a woman, comfortably in her fifties, has become enamored with, alternately, the piano players and a group of young guys wearing matching t-shirts. Even in New Orleans, a fifty year old woman jumping on stage and beginning to remove her singlet top causes a stir. The crowd watches with the voyeuristic fascination usually reserved for a car crash, torn between wanting the woman to stop and save some dignity or take it all off and give everyone a funny story to take home (or blog about). She stops at the last possible moment and disappears into the crowd, only to return later having swapped tops with one of the matching t-shirt brigade. She looks at him expectantly, apparently ready to ignore the thirty year age difference. He looks uncomfortable, both from wearing a woman's tank top and as a result of the situation that seems to be developing around him.
It's past 2 am when we decide to call it quits, but the street shows no sign of abating. We are far enough from our hotel to justify a taxi, but can't resist walking all the way back down Bourbon Street one more time (and picking up a hot-dog from a street vendor on the way). The hand grenades are still pouring freely, the beads still flying from balconies, and, as it is finally cooling down to a bearable temperature, the party will continue all night.
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
Texas - boot scootin', toobin' and BBQn'
Texas is bigger France. So say quite a few bumper stickers and souvenir t-shirts on sale throughout the state. That may be the case, but with less than half the population of France, a large part of the vast state is made up of useless nothingness, barren land covered in shrubs that doesn't seem to be used even for farming. Those were our observations during the 7 hours on I10, the interstate highway that takes you from Southern New Mexico to the Texas Hill Country, where we saw nothing - even fast food outlets were few and far between.
Apart from the wide expanse of nothingness, the other notable part about the Texas highways has been the confirmation of one fairly odd stereo-type. The street signs, including the big Welcome to Texas sign at the state border, are indeed riddled with bullet holes. I'm not quite sure how the bullet holes get there. My theory was that they are shot by drunken hooligans leaning out of the car as they pass the signs. Kate's slightly less scary theory is that they are used by people on the adjoining properties as target practice. Although that means they are shooting at the road, which is actually not less scary at all.
Fortunately, once you arrive in Hill Country, the area around Austin and San Antonio, all that changes very quickly. As we arrived, Hurricane Alex had just made landfall, and Texas was being doused by torrential rain. With little to no change in the temperature, it made for ferocious humidity, but it also went some way to explaining why the shrub and dirt give way to green lawns and fruit orchards. It's peach season at the moment, and just about every house we passed had a sign at the front offering buckets of fresh peaches to passers by.
The Hill Country is where guide books tell you to find 'the real Texas', and there are indeed plenty of people in cowboy hats and boots, big cars and dance halls. But that is where the stereotypes just about end. These towns are popular weekend get aways for couples and families from the cities, so for every cowboy hat there is an antique store, and those boots mainly walk around wine tasting bars and bed and breakfasts.
The first thing that struck me, for obvious reasons, is that the entire region is overwhelmingly dominated by its German heritage. I didn't even know that Germans settled Texas, but it turns out that they did, and they left plenty of evidence behind them. The towns have names like Fredericksburg and Gruene (pronounced Green), and streets like Eichen Strasse. 'Wurst and Kraut' are on every menu, and in Gruene there is even an annual 'Wurstfest', held in the Wursthalle.
Having said all that, this is no Leavensworth (the Bavarian town near Seattle), which tries to capture and replicate German culture. The Texas hill towns are self consciously unique, they simply have German heritage.
Still in search of the real Texas, we had to check out the Gruene Dance Hall. The dance hall is the centre of the community in these towns, and the Gruene Dance Hall claims to be the oldest in Texas. Inside it was much as the name suggests, a big hall dedicated to music and dancing. The bar at the front served $2.50 beers, while the packed crowd enjoyed a live country music dance, most of them still wearing the big hats and boots. I had hoped to see line dancing, but I'm told in Texas its more about the two step, and there were lots of couples getting their dance on. With old car number plates and street signs hanging from the walls, wooden floorboards and a pool table tucked in the corner, you couldn't have gotten a much more iconic American bar.
From Hill Country we headed to Austin, the officially proclaimed capitol (that's how they spell it here) of Texas, and the self proclaimed capitol of live music. That is all well and good, but, as ever, the first order of business was to find a good place to watch Germany play (and embarrass, as it turned out) Argentina in the World Cup. Some goggling turned up Cuatro, a bar near the university, as the home of soccer in Austin, and the meeting place for the German community to watch the World Cup. So off we went.
After the game it was almost an appropriate time to have a beer, and I was certainly in the mood to stick around and celebrate, so we decided to stay at the same bar to watch the upcoming Paraguay v Spain match. In the build up to the game we got talking to a couple, Erin and Mateo, who were there to support Spain. Americans have been almost universally friendly to us, and these guys were no exception.
Kate asked them what the typical thing to do on July 4 (the next day) was, and they told us they usually just 'float the river'. Floating the river means hiring a couple of tire inner tubes, packing a cooler full of beer (the cooler gets its own tube) and floating down a river for a couple of hours, drinking the beer and making merry. Australians who have visited South East Asia might recognize as a favorite activity in Laos too.
Extending American hospitality to new heights, Erin and Mateo kindly invited us to come and float the river with them and their friends on July 4, an invitation we were very happy to take up.
So on July 4 we headed to their place, in San Marcos, a town outside Austin that is built around a university campus, and after the typical setting up delays that reminded me very much of trying to get out on the BBQ boat in Sydney, we headed to the river. Its a pretty organized set up, with a fleet of those typical yellow school buses on hand to carry people up river, where they drop in and start the two to three hour float back to the car park.
You can probably just about picture it from there, but there were two unexpected things. Firstly, there are turtles all along the side of the river, and secondly, in parts of the river there were rapids. Nothing that would really bother you in a canoe or kayak, but from tube level its a bit different. The technique, as I learned the hard way, is to make sure your bum doesn't hang below the bottom of the tube. There are some pretty sharp rocks down there.
With the sun coming out, they beers cold, and all of our group proving to be greet company, it was one of the best days we've had in America, and we weren't done yet.
Once the tubing was done, we headed back to Erin and Mateo's place for a BBQ, some more beers, and even a quick game of basketball. My only real contribution to basketball was to make up the numbers and then complain about the massive blister developing on my bare feet (which is still there, by the way) but it was fun.
Since then, back in Austin, we've taken in some of the famous live music, which really does go on in pretty much every bar in town, and had some of the best meals ever.
BBQ is a way of life down here, but it is not quite what we know as BBQ in Australia. While people do BBQ at home, there are also many restaurants dedicated to serving the best BBQ in town. At these places, there is one large fire pit where the food is cooked over hot coals. I haven't asked, but I'm pretty sure a gas BBQ would not be tolerated here. The meat is basted in BBQ sauce and then whole slabs of ribs, beef brisket and sausages are thrown onto the pit.
We ate at Salt Lick last night, one of the area's most famous BBQ restaurants. BBQ lore decrees that the meat does not taste right from a brand new pit, so before a pit is serviceable, it needs to be used for a while. At Salt Lick, they refurbished the giant BBQ pit recently, and for an entire year they cooked on it every night and donated the food to the homeless, before it was ready for restaurant use. I don't know why that was necessary, but I can't argue with it, because the food was amazing. A huge plate of meat, with a small side of kraut, potato salad and pickles (you can see the German influence here pretty clearly too).
That is enough Texas for now. We are headed back to Cuatro in an hour or so to watch Germany take on Spain. For those of you not following the soccer blog, let me simply give you this tip. Whoever wins this semi will win the World Cup.
Apart from the wide expanse of nothingness, the other notable part about the Texas highways has been the confirmation of one fairly odd stereo-type. The street signs, including the big Welcome to Texas sign at the state border, are indeed riddled with bullet holes. I'm not quite sure how the bullet holes get there. My theory was that they are shot by drunken hooligans leaning out of the car as they pass the signs. Kate's slightly less scary theory is that they are used by people on the adjoining properties as target practice. Although that means they are shooting at the road, which is actually not less scary at all.
Fortunately, once you arrive in Hill Country, the area around Austin and San Antonio, all that changes very quickly. As we arrived, Hurricane Alex had just made landfall, and Texas was being doused by torrential rain. With little to no change in the temperature, it made for ferocious humidity, but it also went some way to explaining why the shrub and dirt give way to green lawns and fruit orchards. It's peach season at the moment, and just about every house we passed had a sign at the front offering buckets of fresh peaches to passers by.
The Hill Country is where guide books tell you to find 'the real Texas', and there are indeed plenty of people in cowboy hats and boots, big cars and dance halls. But that is where the stereotypes just about end. These towns are popular weekend get aways for couples and families from the cities, so for every cowboy hat there is an antique store, and those boots mainly walk around wine tasting bars and bed and breakfasts.
The first thing that struck me, for obvious reasons, is that the entire region is overwhelmingly dominated by its German heritage. I didn't even know that Germans settled Texas, but it turns out that they did, and they left plenty of evidence behind them. The towns have names like Fredericksburg and Gruene (pronounced Green), and streets like Eichen Strasse. 'Wurst and Kraut' are on every menu, and in Gruene there is even an annual 'Wurstfest', held in the Wursthalle.
Having said all that, this is no Leavensworth (the Bavarian town near Seattle), which tries to capture and replicate German culture. The Texas hill towns are self consciously unique, they simply have German heritage.
Still in search of the real Texas, we had to check out the Gruene Dance Hall. The dance hall is the centre of the community in these towns, and the Gruene Dance Hall claims to be the oldest in Texas. Inside it was much as the name suggests, a big hall dedicated to music and dancing. The bar at the front served $2.50 beers, while the packed crowd enjoyed a live country music dance, most of them still wearing the big hats and boots. I had hoped to see line dancing, but I'm told in Texas its more about the two step, and there were lots of couples getting their dance on. With old car number plates and street signs hanging from the walls, wooden floorboards and a pool table tucked in the corner, you couldn't have gotten a much more iconic American bar.
From Hill Country we headed to Austin, the officially proclaimed capitol (that's how they spell it here) of Texas, and the self proclaimed capitol of live music. That is all well and good, but, as ever, the first order of business was to find a good place to watch Germany play (and embarrass, as it turned out) Argentina in the World Cup. Some goggling turned up Cuatro, a bar near the university, as the home of soccer in Austin, and the meeting place for the German community to watch the World Cup. So off we went.
After the game it was almost an appropriate time to have a beer, and I was certainly in the mood to stick around and celebrate, so we decided to stay at the same bar to watch the upcoming Paraguay v Spain match. In the build up to the game we got talking to a couple, Erin and Mateo, who were there to support Spain. Americans have been almost universally friendly to us, and these guys were no exception.
Kate asked them what the typical thing to do on July 4 (the next day) was, and they told us they usually just 'float the river'. Floating the river means hiring a couple of tire inner tubes, packing a cooler full of beer (the cooler gets its own tube) and floating down a river for a couple of hours, drinking the beer and making merry. Australians who have visited South East Asia might recognize as a favorite activity in Laos too.
Extending American hospitality to new heights, Erin and Mateo kindly invited us to come and float the river with them and their friends on July 4, an invitation we were very happy to take up.
So on July 4 we headed to their place, in San Marcos, a town outside Austin that is built around a university campus, and after the typical setting up delays that reminded me very much of trying to get out on the BBQ boat in Sydney, we headed to the river. Its a pretty organized set up, with a fleet of those typical yellow school buses on hand to carry people up river, where they drop in and start the two to three hour float back to the car park.
You can probably just about picture it from there, but there were two unexpected things. Firstly, there are turtles all along the side of the river, and secondly, in parts of the river there were rapids. Nothing that would really bother you in a canoe or kayak, but from tube level its a bit different. The technique, as I learned the hard way, is to make sure your bum doesn't hang below the bottom of the tube. There are some pretty sharp rocks down there.
With the sun coming out, they beers cold, and all of our group proving to be greet company, it was one of the best days we've had in America, and we weren't done yet.
Once the tubing was done, we headed back to Erin and Mateo's place for a BBQ, some more beers, and even a quick game of basketball. My only real contribution to basketball was to make up the numbers and then complain about the massive blister developing on my bare feet (which is still there, by the way) but it was fun.
Since then, back in Austin, we've taken in some of the famous live music, which really does go on in pretty much every bar in town, and had some of the best meals ever.
BBQ is a way of life down here, but it is not quite what we know as BBQ in Australia. While people do BBQ at home, there are also many restaurants dedicated to serving the best BBQ in town. At these places, there is one large fire pit where the food is cooked over hot coals. I haven't asked, but I'm pretty sure a gas BBQ would not be tolerated here. The meat is basted in BBQ sauce and then whole slabs of ribs, beef brisket and sausages are thrown onto the pit.
We ate at Salt Lick last night, one of the area's most famous BBQ restaurants. BBQ lore decrees that the meat does not taste right from a brand new pit, so before a pit is serviceable, it needs to be used for a while. At Salt Lick, they refurbished the giant BBQ pit recently, and for an entire year they cooked on it every night and donated the food to the homeless, before it was ready for restaurant use. I don't know why that was necessary, but I can't argue with it, because the food was amazing. A huge plate of meat, with a small side of kraut, potato salad and pickles (you can see the German influence here pretty clearly too).
That is enough Texas for now. We are headed back to Cuatro in an hour or so to watch Germany take on Spain. For those of you not following the soccer blog, let me simply give you this tip. Whoever wins this semi will win the World Cup.
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