Chinese Broccoli

In October 1995 a Canadian guy by the name of Scott Rumble stopped me from punching out a really annoying girl at a Guided By Voices show in London, Ontario. (Her, throwing elbows and hair; her friend, throwing herself inexplicably at guitarist Mitch Mitchell.) Three years later I'd take him up on his offer to crash at his four-square apartment in Burlington, the city where my grandfather died: I distinctly remember crossing the border at Port Huron in a slate-grey fall, and driving round a twilight bend on the 403 near Waterdown where I pulled over and told Scott I was nearby.

"We'll put some tea on for you," he said. I was moving to Canada and I really had no idea what I was doing.

Continue reading "canadian thanksgiving (no really)" »

Posted by liz at 06:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Two years ago I watched the slowest week of my life go by when the person I had knowingly signed on "for worse" with began to take my leave. Jeff was fine (and I use the term liberally for someone who suffered infection and fluid buildup and clinical depression and a million other quality-of-life-siphoning complaints) for almost all of the months between his diagnosis and his death. He stayed out of hospital, for the most part. He travelled. He wrote, and worked, and called his friends back, and despite almost getting picked up by the community services van for a bit of jaundiced park-bench napping that one time, walked and rode the streets of Toronto with just as much ownership and capability as he ever had.

We went to Vermont and ate cheese, threw parties, boated around Chicago's looming buildings, sat in a balcony for the Gang of Four, all kinds of crazy things people who are in the accelerated process of dying maybe do not always manage. And then there was the night he was shaking, this was not new, this was a thing he did, because part of the thing that was killing him was infecting him, and the part of the thing that was infecting him made him sick, shake, tremble; it's called "the rigors" and it puts you through them indeed. He began to shake and I offered Arrested Development DVDs, hot tea, the emergency room, a cat; he opted for the first and did not decide to check in for the final checkout until mid-day next day when I was supposed to be swimming and instead I met him at the hospital where Susie, who will be married in less than two weeks and is a friend I am so glad to have carried over into post-hospital life, took his blood pressure and said, "You know, I think you might be staying here this afternoon."

Continue reading "time stands still for a moment, flows backwards, moves forward again" »

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Running into Chris (20th St)
World Trade Center made of staples
Phone call on Fulton Street, Saturday morning
Running into Fred (G train platform), and then running into Davey with Fred (donut store)
Post-Sonic Youth pizza at Anna Maria's (2nd annual)
Kyle and Ed on shift together at Cafe Grumpy
Carrie Atwood!!
Swimming at Coney Island
Running into Robert (Union Square)
The paper hats on the Russian girls at Net Cost

Oh, and you know. Everything else.

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June 8-9: TORONTO TO MONTREAL

The afternoon of the Toronto show starts a bit forebodingly: I'm having coffee with Amber when I realize it might be good to bring the band some sandwiches. There's no food near the venue tonight—but I'm next to Arabesque, an awesome Middle Eastern cafe. We head in there and I order six sandwiches but before I leave, the biggest spring storm I've seen in ages rolls right over top of us: suddenly the lights are flickering, making it hard for the owners to spread hummus and baba ganoush, and suddenly I'm outside helping shag wicker chairs from the outdoor part of the cafe as they threaten to blow into College Street. I come home completely soaked. Screw this. I'm taking a cab to the venue... (did I mention I'm carrying an electric griddle in a duffle bag?)

...the cab, apparently, of Toronto's "fastest driver from point A to point B", a.k.a. the Grey Lion, a.k.a. a near-crazed guy who talks nonstop (when he isn't singing me the alphabet), and is excited we're going to the Phoenix because that's a rock club and he really likes rock and roll music, though not as much as Soca, because he's in a Soca band (of course) and then he starts singing that. As he runs the second or third red light, he exclaims "The city is losing a lot of revenue not charging me for all these infractions!" and cackles away. I feel like I'm on an adventure in bizarro land, only I'm actually in my own city this time.

The plan tonight is to make pancakes live onstage with Awesome Color. I'm not sure where or why we hatched this plan—Minneapolis I think. It's not uncommon for Awesome Color to have guest stars onstage with them, but since I'm not musical at all we decided to play to my strengths I guess and just have me make breakfast.

I haul my gear into the Phoenix, Awesome Color aren't here yet so I say hi to competing tour-blogger and fellow Can't Stop the Bleeding contributor David. He asks me how I got backstage and I say I still have my laminate from the week before. He pauses. "That's not supposed to work."

My planning isn't perfect but the Phoenix pancake party goes over pleasantly: I should've warmed up the griddle earlier, and possibly also brought another jar of pure maple syrup—but overall a few dozen audience members got a fresh blueberry pancake. Besides a huge number of random dudes (ladies don't really seem to attend Dinosaur concerts) I remember giving pancakes to J and David, and my friends Matthew and Zenia who were in the front row, and Pete, and Kieran, Adrian, random members of Uncut, and, finally, to Peter and Fernando, old friends in from Rochester and Northampton respectively who rolled into town mid-set—Fernando as a surprise. Michael noticed his old roommate in the crowd immediately, but played it cool. Michael plays it cool like that.

(Someone would later tell me that a security guard at the back of the Phoenix was overheard to say:
"I heard a girl up there is making pancakes on the stage. Never seen that before. And I've seen a lot of things.")

My pal Matthew, the lifetime Dinosaur fan standing in the front row, also happens to run the best cafe in Toronto, so in the morning it wasn't too hard to talk the band into a pre-Montreal coffee jaunt. Mercury Organic Espresso Bar is a "rock and roll" coffee shop—Matt's in a band himself and is always stoked to have touring musicians come in. This beats stopping at a random Tim Horton's for breakfast any day.

We decided to convoy up to Montreal with Fernando in the Awesome Color minivan and Peter and I in his Miata. The skies couldn't have been clearer and more perfect, the temperature was in that sweet spot, and the top was down. The drive to Montreal is between five and a half and six hours, but much like driving through South Dakota, at least every sign for any possible tourist attraction (or road work) is funny.

12:00: Allison texts me from the Awesome Color van after we pass a tourist sign with two tempting options.
"Do we want to visit the Nuclear Info Centre or Pingle's Fun Farm? Hmmm"

12:45: We stop at a Sunoco in Cobourg. I've only been back on tour for an hour and a half and I purchase a tube of Pringles and a donut. Maybe I should reconsider this idea of going on tour with Magik Markers in the fall. Or go on Herbalife or something in the meantime. (Do they still have Herbalife?)

The weather continues to be perfect and sunny and Peter and I are listening to R. Kelly.

2:15: Should we stop at Maize Quest, or Mrs. McGarrigle's Mustard Hut?

As we pass through the town of Dorion, an incredible swirl of cottonwood issues forth from the sky. It's like driving into a snowstorm, or watching one of those space-warp screensavers.

5:10 Almost in Montreal now. We're still convoying with Awesome Color, who are in front of us, with the windows cracked a little. We still have the top down. I turn to Peter and ask, "Did you just smell pot?" He didn't, but I'm pretty sure. I text message Allison, "You dudes burnin' one up there?" but there is no reply. When we all arrive at the club half an hour later she's laughing. "Nice text. You could smell that?"

Montreal is suffering through Grand Prix this weekend which means there are wacky Euro dudes everywhere and loud Ferraris and Lamborghinis, and St-Laurent is partially closed off so that racecar fanatics can party in the street. Peter is excited to see some sweet rides but he's probably still coasting on the glow of seeing a Lancaster bomber fly across us on the Don Valley Parkway in Toronto. ("That's what we used to bomb the shit out of Germany" — Peter Hughes) Now, it's happened to me more than once—maybe more than twice—with Peter where we'll be hanging out and he'll first hear, then see, some crazy rare warplane go overhead, identify it, and then tell me something like "That's the only one in North America!" or better, "That's the only one in North America and it lives in such and such city and I've flown in it." What are the odds of a plane that there's only one of on the continent flying over the guy who knows what it is in some random city at the right time? Coincidences like that happen to me plenty I guess, but not from THE SKIES.

Dinner is Vietnamese subs from Cao Thang, a place my foodiste friend Mark recommended. A bunch of us grab these coriander-filled delights and try to eat them in a super sketchy lurker park and then give up and run back to the club before someone punches us out.

Backstage, epic pen-pals Peter and Lou are catching up while Awesome Color soundcheck and suddenly Lou says—"Is that J?"—and we all go upstairs to see J jamming alongside Derek. Murph is playing drums set up behind Allison. Lou wanders over to his bass and suddenly Awesome Color are a double-power-trio; it sounds incredible, and my ears hurt after taking a bunch of pictures way too close. This is gonna be great—possibly even better than the Ween show around the corner.

The show is one of the best I've seen on the tour and the room (boxy, rubbery, and somewhat intimate) sounds surprisingly excellent. Awesome Color finish their set with the Lou/Murph/J super double trio infusion, and it's fucking great. Dinosaur's set kinda rages. I kept waiting for them to play something I wasn't that interested in so I could go to the bathroom, but the hits just kept on coming—best version of "Forget the Swan" I'd heard across Canada, and everything else excellent too. Derek and Allison stood sidestage preparing to run out and stagedive at the very end, but as Derek put it, "I was about to go during Mountain Man but I didn't realize it was only two and a half minutes long. And then it was over." Ah well, next tour.

And outside, in the capital of Lurkerville, Quebec, the bands took their leave for the rest of the tour—Dinosaur off to syrupy Vermont, Awesome Color to Boston and then home, and my new Toronto pals Uncut back to the YYZ. With awkward handshakes and waves for some, and hugs for other new friends, I was sad to see it wrap up, too. But I was tired. I had a sunburn. And I was ready for the 24-hour poutine place and to head back to Ariel and Sibylle's and watch their cat and dog have sissy-fights. Which, by 4am, I had accomplished—a perfect night to end the perfect trans-Canadian boondoggle? Absolutely. A prochaine, guys.

Posted by liz at 02:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

May 30: MINNEAPOLIS

It seems like I'm always passing through Minneapolis without staying very long, but few towns could be as welcoming as this one, with its broad streets and broader vowels, a million neon signs and weird bars and friendly people. I wake up and say hi to Emily, whose house we are staying at (along with her rad husband Nathan, who is on a train to Buffalo at the time) and join her on her second-storey deck to bask in the sun and breeze of one of the nicest mornings I've seen in a long time. The band slowly wakes up and filters out to join us—along with Tyson and Addie, two huge, mellow, loving dogs. It's extremely pleasant in every way, especially in the way that we do not have to drive 9 hours today.

Michael, who is the sort of dad of the band, escapes early to go get an oil change and a burrito as big as his head, while the rest of us sit and pet dogs and laze around and I even get some work done. (Oh yeah...work!) Eventually Allison and Davey and Derek head off in search of a Guitar Center and an Original Pancake House, while Michael hits the skate park down the road. I selfishly demand that Emily drive us all the way to St. Paul to scope out the finer coffee establishments of the Twin Cities—and she generously does this even though she doesn't like coffee or even driving as much as I do.

Luckily the first place we roll up to—Kopplin's Coffee—is all about making up for that Tim Hortons I had to drink, and the sandwich board outside the store says something about trying their Clovers (dude!) and the first sign I see inside the store says something about trying their feature espresso—49th Parallel Epic (dude!!). The barista seems a little withdrawn but when I tell her my ristretto is actually a little better than the ones I had at the actual roastery in Vancouver...she suddenly becomes my pal. The owner also becomes my pal, and also a Christian motorcyclist into photography, and everything is idyllic and grand while Emily and I work on our laptops side by side until a customer alerts me there is water POURING out of the air conditioner onto the outlet that has my power supply plugged into it. Um, uh-oh!

We head out in search of the other cafe, Black Sheep, where we share a tuna melt and a bizarre signature espresso (basil-infused whipped cream, homemade caramel, espresso and star anise) and continue our bursts of intense conversation about life, marriage, phobias, mutual friends, how you change when someone important to you dies, etc., punctuated by periods of working on computers and occasionally getting more coffee. There's nothing like that feeling of picking up right where you left off with someone, as if in mid-sentence, even after a couple of years, and I'm really just so happy to be sittting in this cafe in the sudden summer torrential downpour with Emily in this midwest of my upbringing.

The whole Minneapolis/St. Paul thing is pretty weird, by the way—it's basically one city, but it's also two, and I don't really understand how or why such a thing happens. Especially without, you know. A state line in between them. Emily asks the barista something about directions back to "downtown", and then has to correct and explain she's going back to Minneapolis and not downtown St. Paul, and I think the whole thing is very surreal. Both cities do have their distinct feels, too—I just don't really understand why.

Back at the house Emily and I regroup and collect her friend Jake and head for the Triple Rock—who for some generous midwestern reason are going to feed me dinner again—and we order up a bunch of large-portioned food and hang out before the show starts. I completely love Minneapolis for being even more Chicago than Chicago and also being trapped in 1990 or something musicwise. Only here will I see, in 2007, dudes hanging out in Screeching Weasel and Cows t-shirts while Naked Raygun is playing on a bar's jukebox. If I ever really want to pick up a guy really into mozzarella sticks and Breaking Circus, I'm totally moving here.

The club is hot tonight. And by hot I mean the temperature is extremely high and the audience is so sweaty there seems to be about an inch of liquid on the floor throughout the room. It's pretty disgusting. I get to the front and dance around a lot for Awesome Color—who are so affected by the heat that Allison throws up immediately after her set in the nearest recycling bin. During Dinosaur I stick to the back of the club, harassing Rob and Davey at the merch table.

One more thing about Rob is that besides being a former ICP roadie and a smartass, he's industrious: yesterday he talked the shuttle driver at Holiday Inn into driving him to the laundromat. ("Since you guys don't have coin-op machines and I don't want to send my socks out for dry cleaning for $3 a pair...maybe your shuttle driver could take me to the dollar wash?") That's something even *I* might not think to pull off. Davey looks like he is going to pass out from the humidity, and Michael and Allison and I escape to the other side of the bar for a little while (during "Feel the Pain") and play Lord of the Rings pinball which is so insanely off-level it's only fun to play because the room is air conditioned.

Tomorrow I will fly home to Toronto and leave these guys to drive to my hometown (which there's no way I could just breeze through on a tour, so I'll have to plan a real trip myself for very soon) of Chicago. Though I spent most of the day with Emily and moved out of the van already, it's a little weird to think I won't be hearing Davey or Allison wisecracking every day, or hearing the blip of Derek's phone when his girlfriend text messages him, or seeing Michael guide this band through city after city with his amazing mixture of diligence and serenity.

To all of you: thank you so much for taking me on the road with you and showing me this crazy Canada, and not minding too loudly when I wanted to go to the weird local bakery instead of the Taco Bell, and for teasing me for using the internet too much and strangely making me feel so welcome and like I fit in even though you never let me carry anything. Derek, you are incredibly sweet for someone who plays such a mean guitar, and I'm sorry if I've made you realize how delicious fancy coffee can be. Davey, I could listen to your southern Ohio enthusiasm all day long, and your unwavering willingness to sleep on floors so that others can have beds, or sit on piles of blankets so that others can have seats, all the while working so hard to make everything run smoothly for the band while demanding no credit or limelight at all—what an awesome human being you are. (Someday we'll go to the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome and feel the "dome blow".) Allison, I can't believe I just got to watch you drum for seven straight shows, as it is one of the most fucking awesome things I have ever seen in my life, and on top of that you're one of the coolest people ever and I am so totally going to make you give me that tour of Flint this summer. And Michael? When we met on the internet in 1994 like the unashamed geeks we are, and you moved to Ann Arbor and lived in that apartment on Pauline and our friendship was mostly awkward conversations about cats and contemporary indie-rock? I had no idea you would one day emerge into such a completely self-posessed, amazingly loving person, still quiet in "real life" but able to totally come out of your shell on a stage—and crazy enough to eat the leftover half of your veggie po' boy at only 9:30 in the morning (now THAT is some bravery).

So Awesome Color, as you set out to tap the limitless promises of I-94 for the next few days, let's not say so long. Let's just say, "I'll see you in eight days eating pancakes in my living room."

Posted by liz at 10:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

May 29: WINNIPEG TO MINNEAPOLIS

With Winnipeg continuing to provide nothing tempting at all, and Minneapolis being a 9 hour drive (with a border crossing) away, we settle in for our last Tim Horton's breakfast stop. I try one of them there breakfast sandwiches—it's actually pretty good. I'm doing a better job at eating something reasonable such that I might feel somewhat human later in the day. When possible.

We drive through Manitoba farmland under grey grey skies, Utility poles and infinite overcast landscape. Listening to Bad Moon Rising.

10:50: A truck with "truck testicles" passes us.
10:51: A bus with a handwritten license plate passes us. It's literally written in marker where the license plate would be, right on the bus. Very low-budget, these Manitobans.

11:50: I spend $40 on binational novelty socks, postcards and maple creme cookies at the Emerson, Manitoba duty free store. In the parking lot Allison and Davey and I see a ground squirrel and then a little black shrew, which I chase with my camera until she runs under a fence and smuggles herself across the border. We are now crossing into the USA at Pembina, North Dakota, with five gym socks drying on the dashboard.

At customs they pull us aside into the building and have us sit in the little white room while they supposedly search the van. We empty our pockets onto a big stainless steel table, and they confiscate our cell phones for twenty minutes. I'm pretty sure they didn't even really search the van much at all, they just wanted to see if we would crack under the pressure of being re-interviewed and made to wait in the little room. That or they just wanted to make some long-distance phone calls. We are released without incident after about a half-hour wait.

In North Dakota, the clouds have parted for sunny plains and the Cult's "Love Removal Machine" is on the radio and Davey is pumped.

Michael remarks that the USA means the freedom to have shitty roads. At least the speed limit is 75 here.

2:00: We stop for gas at the Superpumper gas station in Grand Forks, ND. (And I forget to listen to my favourite Joel Phelps song to commemorate this.) At the gas station I see that Old Dutch Chips in the US have no anthropomorphic cartoons on 'em whatsoever. They're the exact same chips trying to look all classy. Putting on airs, says I.

Allison emerges from the ladies' room at Superpumper and announces that instead of French Ticklers in the vending machine they have Freedom Ticklers. I try to buy one with $0.75 CDN in quarters but the machine rips me off. At the register I buy some Mrs. Freshley's Red Velvet Snack Cakes and a Gatorade (they were out of Andy Capp SUPER Hot Fries) and I mention the machine's malfunction.

Liz: Um, I tried to buy something in the machine at the bathroom but it just took my money and didn't dispense anything.
Superpumper Clerk [hands me $0.75 USD, earning me $0.05 cents CDN in PURE PROFIT!]: Here you go. Don't put this back in the machine if it's broken.
[Superpumper clerk turns to female coworker and suggests she go in and try to fix the machine]
Superpumper Clerk: Which item were you trying to buy again?
Liz: Um. Freedom Tickler.

Around 3:00 I finally bust out the iPod and listen to an episode and a half of This American Life while drifting in and out of sleep. When I wake up it is pouring down rain on the blurry boring vistas of I-94. There is nothing to see and there feels like even less to do. I grudgingly decide I will get some work done, but the battery on my laptop is low due to having kicked the adapter out of the wall last night in my sleep in Winnipeg. I attempt the clunky scary power inverter I brought along for just such times—but it won't fit in the van's cigarette lighter. Oh well. I go back to the default activity of eating out of sheer boredom.

5:00 As if to welcome us back to the USA, we see a bald eagle.

6:00 The band has an argument for the last 30 miles of our drive, but it's one of those arguments where everybody is just grouchy and actually really loves each other. Frankly these dudes get along really well, especially for people having to suffer through days of 8+ hour drives.

Minneapolis is awesome, though the club is in a strange part of town (all Somalians and mentally ill white people) and I don't have much motivation to wander off and do stuff. I check email on from some stray wireless signal somewhere on the street and a mentally ill white guy walks past me and says, "It's Karl. With a K." I nod at him and he says, "Thank you."

The Triple Rock is intimate and small but their sandwiches are anything BUT small. The club is nice enough to hook me—the interloper!—up with free food, and I eat the most amount of anything I've had in days, a veggie po' boy spilling out with potatoes and cheese and onions and stuff. More than one person either laughs at me or points at my food, and that's without me even finishing it! Awesome Color and Dinosaur are both excellent, again, but I don't dance or take pictures because I'm just burned out, and also full. After the show I find out that there is a competing tour diary being kept by David, Dinosaur's tour manager, and also that all of Dinosaur Jr. are really weirded out that the people in Awesome Color are sports fans.

We spend the night at Michael's and my friend Emily's amazing house in Northeast Minneapolis—they have set up beds for us in their *screening room* (!)—and Allison and I stay up a little late drinking and looking up things like "funny tornado" and "karate chimp" and "kangaroo kick" and "otters holding hands" on YouTube while everyone else snores. Pretty wild rock and roll times!

Posted by liz at 08:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

May 28: SASKATOON TO WINNIPEG

The show in Saskatoon is really really good for both Dinosaur and Awesome Color. I take lots of pictures and in the morning notice that I keep getting music stuck in my head every day, and then I'll eventually realize it's an Awesome Color song and get excited since I'll get to hear it later that day!

Up at 7:30am for a long drive to Winnipeg. I still like Saskatoon quite a bit even in the misty morning—admittedly our hotel room has a very romantic view of the bus station. And in a fabulous stroke of luck, the other good cafe in town—Cafe Sola, founded but no longer under the proprietorship of Jimmy O.—is literally two blocks from the hotel. (So is the YMCA, actually, but screw that.)

My macchiato is a little sketchy (what kind of coffee is this again? I'm too sleepy to even notice) but I grab drinks for all the coffee-inclined in the band (sorry, Michael—I shoulda brought you a tea) and also turn up the two-day-old Saturday Globe and Mail, which I'd been unable to find for purchase anywhere in Edmonton on actual Saturday. The relevance of this is that the Books section has a fresh cryptic in it! Unfortunately it's even harder than last week's (I'll have to get home to Toronto and Sasha for help.) I mail a heap of postcards outside the bus station and we hit the road.

10:20: Driving down a 2-lane road in rural Saskatchewan in the rain listening to The Who.

Out here the only food option is often A&W. And unlike American A&Ws, they don't even have seasoned curly fries. The band is eagerly anticipating their return to freedom tomorrow. In the meantime, Derek orders french fries and chocolate milk for breakfast at an A&W in Yorkton, Saskatchewan, and it costs him $5.

Derek: I didn't realize Wendy's had a little maple leaf on the sign up here.
Davey: That's how they let you know they don't have the dollar menu.

[Manitoba, and we cross into Central Time, this time for real.]

Only 2 more provinces and 3 territories left for me to see! Someone want to take me along on their tour of Newfound and Labrador?

1:50: Allison and I, amazingly, finish the Saturday New York Times crossword together. AWESOME! I high five her and whoop a little too loudly and Derek asks me politely to be quiet.

I conclude (last of everyone here) that indeed, Old Dutch potato chips have nothing on Miss Vickies, despite the former's charming tendency toward anthropomorphically rendering its flavours: a salt guy with a vinegar buddy; a cheery slice of cheddar about to leap joyfully into his friend the tub of sour cream. (Note that the Old Dutch take on this motif is infinitely more creative than the local chips of my childhood, Vitner's, which manage to make completely implausible graphic assertions like that a bag of BBQ chips is a good sax player, or that a bag of Dill Pickle flavour can shoot hoops.)

4:20 Manitoba apparently has its own version of the Rural Crime Watch. Who's watching, anyway? And...why?

We eventually roll up into Winnipeg and it takes seemingly forever to get to the downtown, past kilometre after kilometre of dismal apartment building and strip mall. The signs on the bars and grocery stores and apartment buildings are gorgeous and dated—that golden age of cursive script and art deco lettering—but other than that, this town kinda looks like it sucks. No wonder the Weakerthans are whiney. (Just kidding. I really like the Weakerthans. But they're a little tiny bit whiney.)

We find the venue, the Garrick Theatre, which is downtown kittycorner from the Burton Cummings theatre (!!). The Garrick is a converted movie theatre and the bands play in Cinema 1, where a section of the centre seats have been taken out, though the left and right sections (most of which have no view of the stage, but people sit in them anyway) have been left. The backstage room is actually the old projector booth. The cinema is also physically connected to a hotel and a swimming pool and a "fashion mall". They haven't updated the marquee for over a month (Interpol: April 20. Weakerthans: April 28.) but they're not completely lazy—they've put up a scoreboard for the first game of the Stanley Cup Finals, made out of 8 1/2 x 11 sheets of paper that they'll be updating throughout the night. In fact, someone has already corrected the sign.

I still hold out a little hope for Winnipeg to be an interesting vibrant city with weird culture hidden in some nooks and crannies, but mostly it seems like a bust, and I can't really get my head around it. Luckily some of the pressure to look around and get a feel for the place is taken off by intermittent huge downpours, which are really super fun when you carry your laptop around in a cloth bag like a moron. I eat at a divey noodle place in the Exchange District and take in the strange comingling of generic '70s and '80s office buildings and beautiful historic properties with old painted advertisements slowly fading into brick and oblivion. (A spectre's haunting Albert Street, indeed.)

I'm carrying my camera on my way back to the club when a guy suggests I take a picture of a homeless bum, i.e. him, though he then admits he has a place to stay. And also that he makes a $600 pension from his time in Vietnam, and in fact he makes pensions from both the US and Canada, but he can't remember the word for "exchange" rate because, he explains, he's not right in the mind from where the Chinaman shot him, actually I think what he said was "I'm retarded from the little Vietnamese guy shot me straight through the head". The Chinaman shot him somewhere else. His name is Walter and he was really quite nice for a little while. As I take his leave he says, "Merry Christmas! Ho Ho Ho! And I'm a Hebrew!"

Back at the bizarro Garrick Theatre, I feel totally crappy and tired and like I might be getting sick, but Awesome Color hit the stage and I run to the front to take pictures and, you know, dance. And I just feel so happy and lucky to be here, watching great music, shooting crazy amounts of photos, even getting eaten alive by mosquitos in Edmonton—I mean, I could be friends with bands that aren't crazy enough to want to take a random pal on the road, or I could be friends with a band that totally sucks—but these shows are better and better everytime I see them, and on top of it they're amazing to hang out with and so kind and laid back and funny and they ROCK! And Michael will inexplicably say nice things about me onstage even though my presence is mostly just a drag on their fuel economy and force someone to sit on a fake middle seat made of sleeping bags. (Of course, he'll also invite all of Williamsburg over to my house to eat pancakes, but that has yet to pose a serious threat.) Anyway, rest assured the amount of fun I am having has not gone unappreciated.

What Winnipeg appreciates is another story, however. Weird town begets weird show. At the end of Awesome Color's set, Derek passes his guitar into the audience for members to jam on—this all goes pretty great until some otherwise emo looking dude grabs the guitar and then tries to smash it on the monitor! Later, a random fan will buy Allison and Derek each a Budweiser, and then someone will come up to the merch table and offer us a hit of acid. All kinds of sketchy people hang around the alleys after the show and several people remark that they are surprised the van didn't get broken into, or stolen. And though it's not Memorial Day in Canada, but that doesn't stop Allison and Murph from setting off a Thunder King firecracker in the alley after midnight. No less than three Winnipeg police cruisers come by later to check it out, and ask, "Did any of you hear a loud noise?"—but of course, officer, no...we didn't hear a thing.

Posted by liz at 03:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

May 27: EDMONTON TO SASKATOON

[How did I forget to mention the Edmonton post-show smoothie party?]

So last night in Edmonton I found out that Rob, the merch dude for Dinosaur, used to be employed by Michigan's finest joke-rap band, the Insane Clown Posse. I share this news with the others and Derek says that ICP rule and that when they tour they bring 4 semi trucks worth of Faygo with them.

I decide this morning to try and offset some of the bad tour lifestyle habits (...potato chips are a vegetable, right?) and grab an early morning swim at the Edmonton YMCA. It's pretty near the hotel, so I'm psyched to go—only I get changed and end up waiting, in my swimsuit, in the locker room, for 20 or 30 minutes, waiting for them to open up the pool. Eventually it turns out the lifeguard didn't manage to uh, make it in on Sunday morning (maybe he or she was one of those wild drunk dreadlocked goths outside on the street with us at 3:00am?) and furthermore, the person's phone number isn't even in service anymore, and no one will open up the pool! I entreat the desk attendant to make up for this by letting me into the Membership Plus changerooms so I could at least have a sauna or a whirlpool—but he won't, because "then I'd have to do that for everybody". I end up having a much crappier shower than I would had I just stayed at the Mariott. So much for healthy living. Anyway, guy at the Edmonton City Centre YMCA: I hate you.

10:45 We hit the road for Saskatchewan! Albeit a little late.

11:15: Three buffalo by the side of the road.

1:00: Hungry and still not having eaten all day, we stop to get food in Fuck All, Alberta. There is a Pizza Hut and an A&W and a new-mown grassy median, and not much else. The suspicious teen at A&W informs me there will be a three day wait on my veggie patty, so I am outta luck with the Swiss Veggie Burger Combo Meal. I order a poutine and eat it outside in the wind and get gravy in my hair.

2:39 CST (or so we think): We enter Lloydminster, Saskatchewan. Another new province collected. Lloydminster seems to be about the equivalent of Aberdeen, South Dakota.
The radio station here is THE GOAT 106.9FM.
Lots of the hotels in this part of the world have waterslides.
I see a Subway sandwich shop that clearly used to be a KFC/Scott's Chicken Villa. At the same time, Michael sees both a rainbow flag and a confederate flag.

At some point I wake up from a dream inspired by the reggae Michael is playing and he and I start discussing the Canadian provinces while everyone else is sound asleep.

Michael: Is there an acronym to remember the names of all the provinces by?
Liz: Is there one for remembering all 50 states?
[Davey suddenly wakes up from slumber and recites all 50 states in alphabetical order.]
Liz: Wow.
Davey: I know my freedom.

Around what I think is 5:30pm, we roll into Saskatoon. I hop out of the car, hoping to make it to what appears to be Saskatoon's fanciest espresso bar before it closes at 6. I walk a little bit to get there and immediately fall in love with Saskatoon. It's all wide and vast and kind of '70s mothballed and sunwashed; for some reason the downtown manages to look both abandoned and yet thriving at the same time, and there's just a certain something about the sky.

I walk along the banks of the South Saskatoon River to the Mendel Art Gallery, a slightly inconceivable and great free arts centre that happens to have a) a fucking rad David Geary and Yuka Yamaguchi exhibit going on in the basement, and, inexplicably, a LaMarzocco GB5 dispensing 49th Parallel Epic espresso at the hand of Western Canada's most controversial barista, Jimmy O. I notice that the time is actually still Mountain Time and not Central, a mistake all of Awesome Color and Dinosaur seem to have made based on either the fallibility of road atlases or the stubbornness of Saskatooners. This allows me to spend a full hour drinking coffee and bullshitting, which is pretty alright, and I even have an Americano, which if you know me is actually pretty strange behaviour. In any case, can I just reiterate that I'm in the middle of freakin Saskatoon and I'm drinking 49th Parallel off of a LaMarzocco at 6:00pm on a Sunday? Can someone explain to me why I can't do this in Toronto, please?

Completely cranked on caffeine, I wander back out through the gallery and into Kinsmen Park.

At the park I see what appears to be a miniature Canadian Pacific train.

Liz: Hello, do you have a tiny train?
Park staff: Yes.
Liz: Can I ride on it?
Park staff [looks at me quizzically]: Yes you can.
Liz: How much will that be?
Park staff [looks at me with a mixture of pity and amusement]: $1

I sit on the train alone in the rain for awhile until I am joined by actual children. The miniature train does two loops around the park—through not a whole lot, mostly lilac bushes, past a game of softball, and through an Alice in Wonderland-themed tunnel—and then we return to the station. It rules almost as hard as the time I rode the tiny Amtrak train alone around Zilker Park in Austin, one trip before they shut it down forever. But I digress.

Back downtown, I kill time before the show hanging out backstage, occasionally sticking my laptop out the window to try and get the wireless signal from the Irish bar across the street. So I'm an addict. So what?

Outside, the sky is an unbelievable kind of electric-cerulean blue, rippling with clouds and so expansive and unending. I want to catch up on my email, watch bands, eat dinner, etc., but instead I run back for my camera and take a walk down to the end of 2nd Avenue South, to where there's a chain-link fence and some boards of lumber and a bunch of parking lots, and the whole thing is truly beautiful. It's just so open and glowing, and something about the way the sidewalks sit in such comfortable silence from their opposite sides of the wide western street, the way the neon and dust and sodium vapour kick up a kind of honeyed glow across this bruised downtown—I feel liberated and located, a strange sense of identity and connection in the middle of this slur of groggy travel and awful food and short-sleeping and that general sense of abstraction from everything back in the "real" world. I don't know what you've got, Saskatoon. But it's got me.

Posted by liz at 08:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

May 26: BOWDEN TO EDMONTON

Peeling out of Bowden we say goodbye to the snow on the ground and make tracks for Edmonton. Allison and I try and work on last week's Saturday Globe and Mail cryptic crossword. We get "Magnetic characteristic has boosted up fame (10)" and "They help you get through the jungle, chopping each stem (8)".

11:15: Driving through desert scrub listening to Oakley Hall.

11:39: We stop at the Donut Mill in South Red Deer, Alberta. Their version of Timbits/Munchkins are called Mill Bits. I buy a box of 45 Mill Bits for the van and a Venetian Creme donut. Tastes very much like being in Venice.

The moose debate continues as we drive along. Today the consensus seems to be that it was probably an elk, though I cling to the hope extended me by the drunk archaeologists at last night's show who assured me that February is moose calving season and we probably saw a youth moose of some variety. Note that Derek has revised his animal he would like to see to a beefalo.

12:52: Flat tire somewhere outside of Red Deer. Derek does a great job steering us safely off the extremely narrow oil truckers' highway onto a tiny gravel slope. Seeing if we can reinflate the tire. Hmm... is my CAA membership current?

12:57: Dinosaur Jr. tour bus blows past us while we're on the side of the road.

2:00: Waiting for CAA guy after failed attempts at both reinflating and unleashing the spare. I'm in the van barehanding mosquitos, of which there are about 44 million outside, and now also inside, the vehicle. The first 20 minutes of the breakdown were actually okay, but now we are hot and probably all have West Nile Virus.

4:30: Back on the road after a long visit to Weskatawin, Alberta, to pick up a new tire and some more West Nile Virus.

We enter another Rural Crime Watch Area.

Derek thinks he sees an interesting animal in a field, but it turns out to just be a dog.

Speaking of dogs, there are loads of pet spas and getaways in this part of the province. "Catnip Acres", etc. Where are their owners going? Besides ANYWHERE but here?

Edmonton is a little baffling in that "Who built this here?" sort of way. Allison feels right at home and says it takes her right back to Dort Highway in Flint, whereas to Michael it's a bit more reminiscent of Tulsa. A guy recommends me to check out the river valley ("It looks a lot like Boston, though I"ve never been to Boston.") which I do (and it doesn't) after downing three tasty cups of Intelligentsia espresso at Three Bananas, a lovely and way-too-nice-for-Edmonton cafe inexplicably located in sunny prime real estate right in the middle of a blandish civic square (think Toronto's Yonge & Dundas Square only with outdoor movie screenings and a bouncy castle.)

Tonight's gig is in a repurposed military citadel, which is totally rad, other than the fact that it is so crowded and sweaty and I am so tired that I don't really explore it. Both Awesome Color and Dino sound great in here, though—there should be more gigs in citadels. There are a lot of people with dreadlocks and slutty clothes dancing in the bar downstairs from the gig, and several of them hang out with us on the street until 3:00am while Allison and Derek and Davey try to teach J. Mascis to skateboard.

Posted by liz at 11:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

May 25: REVELSTOKE TO BOWDEN

For breakfast I buy Allison a Nanaimo bar in honour of our friend Andrew who is from there. She enjoys it and decides once tour is over she will be moving to Nanaimo and taking over stewardship of a private island.

The highlight of the drive from Revelstoke to Calgary, is, for a brief while, pulling over for fifteen minutes for road crews working on a rockslide on the Trans-Canada Highway. We all get out and take pictures and contemplate having a word with the driver of the Toyota Corolla who kept slowing down to 20km/h in every tunnel so far. It's pretty awesome to just hang out and stand around in the middle of the biggest highway in one of the biggest countries in the world, and I am just about to start doing yoga stretches in the westbound lane when the road suddenly opens again. Oh well.

Noon: We are driving through Glacier National Park listening to CCR. This is pretty excellent.

2:30: We cross into Mountain Time. We're listening to the Zombies, one of the singles collections. The Zombies are a longtime favourite band of mine but if you listen to their singles all at once while driving through the mountains staring out the window, you realize most of their songs are about the exact same thing.

1. I want you back.
2. I'm not over her, come back later.
3. Maybe I'll take you back, you never know.
4. You're not ready to date yet, call me later.
5. So you're really never coming back, huh?

Closure issues much, Zombies?

2:32: We cross into Alberta.

2:43: We realize that welcome centre was fake, and we really cross into Alberta. I have collected a new province! There is a sign saying we're extremely likely to crash into a bear for the next 15km.

3:04 WE HAVE SEEN A BABY MOOSE! I TOTALLY WIN!

3:05-3:15: [debate about whether this was really a baby moose or an elk, caribou, etc.]

4:10: Terrifying Indian gas station featuring two toilets back to back in ladies' room, no stall doors. (Allison and I go separately rather than together.) Sign on the Trans-Canada Highway warns we are now in a Rural Crime Watch Area.

Finally we arrive in Calgary. The show is at the University of Calgary in the student centre, which is labyrinthine and confusing in exactly the Spinal Tap can't-find-the-gig way you're thinking. Derek has his friend Laura, an archaeologist, pick him up and take him into town, and I hitch a ride to the nearest C-Train light rail stop where I take the train to some weird psuedo-hipster-but-not-really part of town and within minutes have talked someone into giving me a free cupcake and met a siamese cat named Boom Boom. Unfortunately Calgary peaked there, as the rest of the neighbourhood was pretty much closed, and it started to rain on me (and my computer, etc.) while I wandered leisurely into downtown. The transit is free throughout the downtown core, but I'm not sure why that's even necessary since it's only about six blocks long. They have one of those tall towers all the Canadian cities have, too. You never know when you might need one I guess.

Calgary is very new money/small town/weird vibe, the downtown being a strange combination of business district, awful and expensive restaurants, and cowboy stores. We were told Calgary is such a rich town that even people at McDonald's make $15/hour, which explains why all the hotels were so expensive we had to get the hell outta town after the show. Davey drove us through sheets of fog in oil country until we landed at a roadside motel in Bowden, Alberta—it was the one that didn't have an exotic dancing club attached to it, but I can't remember its name. If you're ever in the area, though, it should be pretty easy to find.

Posted by liz at 09:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Where to begin? Last year I finished up visiting all 50 states and I was thinking I might take a little time off. But in the continued interest of gathering no moss, etc., I asked my friends Awesome Color if they needed any help on their spring tour across Canada with Dinosaur Jr. They hired me on as a Canadian interpreter (who else is going to explain to them where to go to the bathroom or how to order wheat toast?), and on the road we went...

I jumped on in Vancouver after a 48-hour coffee debauch and an amazing Awesome Color set at the Commodore Ballroom. (Chased up by some serious troll rampaging on the Medieval Madness pinball down the road...) We hit the Trans-Canada Highway (my first time since age, uh...0?) and started driving over mountain mountain mountain mountain mountain. Fully caught up on the backstory, I will now turn to my notes and awkwardly switch to present tense so as to make this tour diary more thrilling and immediate.

May 24: VANCOUVER TO REVELSTOKE

Apparently the city of Salmon Arm, BC, is not a joke my friends were making up all day, and is in fact, a real place.

I am keeping a list of what kind of wild animal everyone is hoping to see.
I would like to see a moose.
Allison is hoping to see a bear, wildcat, wolf.
Davey would like to see a ram. Michael would like to see a mountain lion.
Allison would also like to see a bear catching a salmon in its paw. FYI.
Derek as a late add would like to see a buffalo.

I am repeatedly reminded by the band that as a Canadian/American dual citizen I am no longer accustomed to the freedoms shared by Americans. "You're only half free," they remind me. Threats have been made about my imminent demise in the upcoming metric wars. I get a slice of veggie pizza in Kamloops at a place next to a snowboarding shop, and it's actually pretty good.

Night is falling over the mountain lands and though we blow through Salmon Arm, we're beginning to think we won't make it all the way to Golden, our imagined halfway point for the night. (The next show is in Calgary, on the day after this.) It looks like there are some motels in a town called Revelstoke coming up, so I take out my phone and start calling around. Everywhere that's expensive I ask if there are cheaper motels in the area, and eventually I collect a lot of numbers to places that are all still a bit out of our price range, with mountain-town faux-fancy names like The Regent or (inexplicably if you're from Eastern Canada) Swiss Chalet. Eventually I get the number for a place called the Mountain View, who the woman at Comfort Inn assures me is "run by really, really nice people."

The woman at the Mountain View is extremely short with me on the phone. Yes, they have rooms, she says. And then quickly tries to hang up. "Wait! How much are they? For two people?" I lie. "That's $55." she says. "Okay, and what kind..." I start, and then she says, "Okay!" and hangs up. I'm starting to get a little nervous about this woman but her hotel is real cheap so we're into it. On arrival in Revelstoke we don't see the motel by all the others so I give her another call.

Liz: "Hi! Could you tell me how to get to your hotel?"
Innkeeper: "It's really hard to find."
Liz: "......okay. But where are you located exactly?"
Innkeeper: "Yeah, it's really hard to get to. It's back from the road. I'm tired of people complaining about it."
Liz: "Um."
Inkeeper: "Yeah, it's just really hard to get to."

Amazingly enough we find the motel and the woman is a little more mellow in person. Mountain View has been slow lately, she says, what with the weather and the rockslide. But she assures us the town is blowing up, poised to be the next Whistler even. We smile and nod, and as she hands us the keys to our "two-person" room, she adds— "Actually there are three beds!" she says, and shrugs apologetically. Davey and I exchange a glance and discreetly lead the rest of the band up to the nice, clean room that not only has beds for everyone, but is fully equipped with a cheese grater and potato masher.

In the morning we check out the downtown—not much action here at all other than a "Gift & Tanning Boutique" and a couple of Red Bull promo girls in a Mini Cooper wearing giant cans of Red Bull on their backs. Fucked up. I get an absolutely amazing apple fritter at some random bakery and we're off.

Posted by liz at 09:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

[Woman pointing at issue of Infiltration]
"Is that the tunnel in Toronto?"

 
[Hey Buddy table]
"We should get this for your father since he spilled bleach on his Duchamp shirt."

 
[Infiltration table]
"You're the Richard Burton of Urban Exploration!"

Posted by liz at 12:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

[Shitty pizzeria on Macdougal St.]
"If you head to Pittsburgh you might find him. In fact, they don't have bars in Pittsburgh. So good luck."
  

[5th Ave, Park Slope]
"You have to understand, I'm trying to be nice to white people."
  

[Cafe Grumpy, Greenpoint]
"You could always try a soy chocolate ice cream."
"Well I'm going to have to do something."
  

[Henry Street, Brooklyn]
"Ya get old."
"Fuck!"
  

[Veselka]
"I think Rastafarians are okay. So long as you don't try to fuck my girlfriend, I don't care."
  

[Elisa Ambrogio]
"I didn't leave Chicago to look like a dumbass."

Posted by liz at 11:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

[Balcony, Academy of Music, before Sonic Youth concert]
"Did you see the guy with the pot-bellied pig next to Alan?"

"No, I was just in there buying motor oil."

Posted by liz at 12:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

[Guy on Valencia Street shouting into cell phone]
"No, you tell YOUR sister to get it together. I'm not okay either."

[Tartine Bakery]
"And they threw their sofa right out the window onto Fell Street. No...it was a couple of years ago."

[Twin Peaks]
"Is that that blinking red light?"

[J Church streetcar]
"He's just claiming that he has an alcohol problem because nowdays it's like, 'Awwwwwww.'"

Posted by liz at 12:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

[Rochester Amtrak station]
"It's so much cheaper to go to the movies in Ecuador than here. Here it's six dollars but at home it's only four."

[Lake Shore Limited]
"Ladies and gentlemen, someone has found a cell phone in the train and they have brought it to me. If you could please check your purses and pockets and see if you do not have your cell phone, if you took your cell phone with you when you left your house last night, or this morning, or this afternoon, and do not have it anymore, you should come see me in the lounge car and you can describe it to me and if you describe it correctly I will give you this cell phone. To anyone thinking about perpetrating that this is their cell phone when they never had a cell phone to begin with, do not do that."

[Rao's Coffee, Amherst, Mass]
"No, I'm telling you. The guy who played Colombo killed his wife."

[Amherst Coffee]
"You know how the planes are in the East. They're like buses. They're dirty. I don't even know where Islip is. For all I know it's near Canada."

[Outside "Soup-Er Bowl" restaurant, Amherst, Mass]
"See, it's a joke on the name, because it's soup and they serve it to you in bowls."

Posted by liz at 06:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

My dear friend Paul, lover of old man bars, has an understandable fondness for unearthing special taverns and local spots while on a trip of any kind. Naturally, that has to do with the very best stuff of traveling—the thrill of stumbling-upon, the joy and cachet of what is unexpected and, for you the traveler anyway, temporary. (I once remarked to him that opening the door to a new bar is like opening a present—and I think that may be his favourite thing I ever said.)

Opening the door to a faraway rock club, then, is a similar experience. You've driven several hours, hoping to catch a mere, say, ninety minutes of one of your favourite bands. You hope the club is great. The anticipation is both full of promise and dread. It could be awful, of course—you may have gambled an evening and a couple tanks of gas for a shitty PA and a short set—but for some reason it almost always ends up seeming worthwhile. You walk into the dive bar/abandoned swimming pool/converted church and catch your breath. OH YEAH, you look around and you think: It was definitely the right decision to come.

I'm not sure what the first long-distance rock trip I took was—I'm pretty sure I was planning to see the Buzzcocks in Minneapolis when I was sixteen, until the sound of that seven-hour haul was bad enough that my mom began to prefer my idea of just sneaking into the eighteen-and-over show in Chicago where I already lived. (In truth, my first away show was probably something in Wisconsin, though those of us in Chicago hardly considered that a roadtrip.)

And though roadtripping to see bands sounds like something I might've outgrown after college—after all those glorious "Hey, let's leave after class and we can be in Columbus to see the Coctails by 8:00pm!" moments—in fact I have not. In fact, it remains one of the funnest things I get to do from time to time. There's just something so much more vital and invigorating and decisive about going way out of your way to see a band you love than simply, you know, stumbling across town to see them and going to bed at a reasonable hour with your own cat. It requires a level of investment and dedication you've only achieved by already being a passionate fan; it requires you to hold yourself to a threshold of excitement and enjoyment that means you're already appreciating music in a more visceral, life-changing way than maybe the next guy. And, sure. You're a little nutty.

This past year, as I've re-embraced the freedom of doing whatever the fuck I want, I've taken even more delight in cross-checking tour schedules with baseball schedules, synchronizing out-of-town shows with the calendars of dear friends, and have generally tried to fully integrate the life of a vaguely responsible adult with the life of a 31-year-old music lover with a mostly functioning car and a flexible schedule. And you know, it has been so worth it. When a band you truly love is playing within reachable distance and you have the means to go—why wouldn't you hop in the car? It's not like they're going to be around forever (or in some cases, ever play this year's album again.) And there's something magical, too, about giving your favourite bands more than one chance on a tour—it's not just an opportunity to see different songs (like, dude, Sonic Youth totally opened with "Candle" in Pittsburgh) but it's an opportunity to see how different rooms and crowds and nights affect the same material, the same artists. And if you're seeing a band just once—they cruised past your town, you gotta see 'em in Buffalo or something—it can feel like you've simply expanded the perimeter of your usable world. And that's never a bad thing.

And I've had so many wonderful journeys to and from these concerts—talking with friends, reminiscing about music, trying to explain myself to customs officials—that I really hold a special category for the friends that have been passionate or game enough to join in on the fun. You know who you are, but you are especially Andy, Doug, Pete, Peter, Scott, Elena, Patrick—you dudes totally get it.

As to whether I'd have as much fun being actually on the road, that's hard to say. I've driven cross-country tons of times, and I've driven bands to their out-of-town shows—but combining the two in a real sense is a step I've never taken. Now, friends of mine occasionally make the odd comment about bringing me along—but until I learn a skill with vaguely more utility than, say, official tour knitter and love-advice giver, my days on the road may still be confined to a fading Volvo. But that's okay—so long as you all don't mind me popping up at a show here and there and don't secretly call me creepy for doing so—I can make do quite happily.

Ahem.

And now that you're done reading my romanticization of a life of road construction, dirty gross rock clubs and a truly fuel-inefficient way to have a good time: please continue on to Chinese Broccoli's first ever interview, with my good friend Andy—the only person I know who regularly makes driving eight hours roundtrip to see a good band seem about as effortless as walking to the corner for a pack of smokes.

Continue reading "Because I'm talkin' about the road" »

Posted by liz at 01:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

There are a lot of things people do in life to enjoy themselves, but I think the best of all worlds is that situation in which you no longer can tell the difference between when you're working and when you're playing. I prefer things at the extremes somewhat — and to me, there is no better way to play than to do something really intensely, go hard, pull out all the stops, and then suddenly realize that you're not working towards the relief of the outcome but within the joy of the process. To those I know writing something on deadline, in the middle of opening a store, or rushing around arranging the flowers — whatever it is they're doing that they've chosen to do, delighted in organizing, and are seeing to fruition, I often stop and remind them: this is the good part.

Yes, the part with the compliments and sleeping and sense of accomplishment is good too, but to my mind the process is to be savoured, because without that, what is there really? I don't enjoy things nearly the same way unless they feel earned, even if what I'm enjoying is just free time — and that probably comes from being a freelancer whose ideas of "free time" are oft polluted by pending to-do-lists and a 24-hour work clock. But going full bore towards something — sticky New York, blistered feet, scant on sleep, tying ribbons at the last second squinting into the full July sunlight — is just so fucking awesome.

And though I love my city tenderly, it takes only a couple of days in New York to forget much of my real life completely. Something about the city's full immersion, humidity, the wealth of amazing old friends I have there (and the lucky kindling of new ones), the near-ridiculousness of its specialization ("Oh, you can get that down in the three-ring binder district!") and the heated, star-crossed, truly swoony relationship I have with its landscape, streets, its names — something about it all just fits perfectly to me despite in so many ways violating my every understanding of logic and reason. It's pretty unspecial to be a non-New Yorker groaning on about how great and magical the city is, but it's not a conceit or a posture — in fact, I wish I didn't feel this way at all, as lord knows it would involve less second-guessing, less cliché, and sound less like the tortured whine of someone long hung up pathetically and endlessly on an old lover.

I think a lot about memory, location and continuity, and more than even on my trips home do I find a synthesis of those things in New York. (Truth be told, going to Chicago is more like a complete and total disconnect.) See, when I was nineteen I packed a couple of tuna sandwiches and drove twelve hours straight to New York City for the first time, off to visit a friend I'd made through music and mutuality. Dan lived on Long Island, and I got pulled over twice on the way to his house, but what I really remember is just how impossible it seemed to me that I had even made it there at all — you can't just pack tuna sandwiches in a cute little college town and hop in your Corolla and leave the midwest for somewhere so big on your own power, can you? I remember the huge rock cuts on the Ohio Turnpike and the long emptiness of Pennsylvania giving way to the sudden clutter and filth of Jersey and the biggest most beautiful rusting towering crazy things I had ever seen. Crossing over the George Washington Bridge seemed not like the tremendous hassle it does now, but like the bridge it really was: the opening of an epic gateway, the start of a new chapter of life that remains an ongoing strain on the senses and the heartstrings.

I can't even get into the histories, the lovers, the hot Julys and Coney Islands and spring breaks and chance encounters that make up my own mythology of the city and constitute my own ghosts. I could easily write for weeks without ever getting close to making sense or order of all it's added up to. But what occurs to me is that I found a place to love (even if it prefers to love me back with rats and urine stench and altogether too much humanity) at an age where things were changing; that I came into a revelation of a city at the same time as I was coming into myself, and that going there is a way of touching something that hasn't changed like everything else, that doesn't represent a part of my life that seems too-easily chaptered off. The city is faultlessly able to compress the past and future for me while constantly reminding me of life's potential and chance in a way that, generally, knocks me off my feet. I realize that part of the reason this always happens is because I just haven't given it enough time to break me down and completely sap the life out of me — not to mention my bank account — but what can I say. I'm a romantic. And if I have a chance to look at the world, even in brief flashes, through great-friends-glittering-bridges-
lavender-donuts-Brooklyn-street-names-long-walks-East-Village-willow-trees-
three-in-the-morning-cab-ride-colored glasses, well — can you blame me? I'm going to do it every time.

Posted by liz at 05:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I was trying to chase spring a few times too many, maybe: Montreal in May can be so perfect, the terraces, streets, up-up-uphill walks, the chocolatines, the fleurs. But instead it rained, and rained a lot, and I really oughtn't complain about it since it was only my first, second and third days of Montreal rain to the locals' seventh, eighth, and ninth.

I went to sell books to anarchists, something I've never done before to that scope and degree, and it was unusual and comforting and alienating and familiar all at once. It was in many ways just like the kind of zine show I'm used to here in Toronto, but it was one where you weren't allowed to bring peanuts in, the bathrooms were marked "gender-neutral", and it was unclear from the get-go which crime I was to be made to feel the most guilty for: being American, being from Toronto, or bringing in a cup from Starbucks. (Hey, it was 8:30am.)

Throughout the day, I was asked no less than four times if I (or Infiltration was a "collective". Really! Once I was asked if it was a feminist collective. Infiltration's been accused of being a lot of things, now—but never that. Sales to girls at zine shows got so bad that one year, Jeff and I put up a sign at the table saying "Infiltration is vagina-positive!". The sex-positive vegan punk chicks slowed down for just a little longer then, but they still kept going.

So what's so weird about being an American, a Torontonian, or a girl explorer? One thing that's interesting about festivals like the one I attended in Montreal is that, underneath the guise of inclusivity and equality, are a bunch of people that expect you to conform to their exact ideologies because you're part of the same counterculture. I have no problem with reveling in solidarity, mind you—but I think underground movements of any kind would work better if they embraced those of us that might be perceived as slightly different, part of other worlds, or even coming in from the (rainy, rainy, rainy) outside. (We'll talk more about Canadian anti-American racism later, as I'm much too tired right now.)

I wonder what the subversives think of poutine?

Posted by liz at 10:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I went away again for a few weeks, to Western Massachusetts, which I just learned to spell a few years ago, and to Vermont, which as always, is perfect. I had a wonderful time, and saw many good friends scattered along the way, and also enjoyed my second spring of the year as I sat under flowering pink things in Amherst and Northampton and was startled by ice on trees as I glided serenely along the Molly Stark Trail from coffee to maple syrup to pancake. (That's a lie. The maple syrup was actually in the coffee.)

Sometimes coming home is a little bit disappointing, especially if there's not another exciting trip planned soon, but this time I was happy to be back, and as I rolled up to Toronto on Monday I decided to drive through the Exhibition grounds because they're so strange, and pretty, and sprawlingly weirdly uniquely Toronto. It was good to be back and to embrace something especially special about my city. There was, I'll admit, a moment of reverie.

And then pretty much the first thing I saw was a pigeon eating horse shit off the ground.

Welcome home!

Posted by liz at 11:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

(Map by Jeff Chapman, 1988.)

Tote board:
3264 miles
11 days
13 states
0 trips to Starbucks

And thus the story closes with, if not a happy 50th state, a happy ending. I've seen every state in the USA by the tender age of 31. Not all of them were good, and some of them weren't even memorable enough for me to realize I'd already seen them (thanks again for the Delaware trip, Paul!) But the fun, as they say, is in the journey, and all the journeys have been good.

Continue reading "I've Been Everywhere" »

Posted by liz at 10:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

For some reason (hopeless romantic?) I fully expected my 50th state to be auspicious, adventurous, marked with excitement. This could possibly have been true if I'd touched down in Hawaii, driven to Alaska, or even crossed the Skyway Toll Bridge into Illinois. But alas, all I did was stumble foolishly into West Virginia.

This state pretty much sucks. Everyone who has been there will be unsurprised to hear my poor review. Frankly, I'd put it in my bottom ten United States. It's not a shock to see why I put off visiting it my entire life—I'd even come very close to going on two other occasions. And yet, it was on my list, and I had to go, and well. Now I've been.

I think I thought when I crossed the state line it was going to feel somehow exciting in a way that I'd feel I'd changed, grown, somehow morphed into a magical, more experienced being—kind of like you expect losing your virginity to make you feel, which it doesn't. This didn't either.

I crossed the border around 1:00pm on Thursday, April 6. I headed straight for the welcome center, planning to, if not actually pop a bottle of champagne, at least gleefully announce to the welcome center staff that I had now achieved my 50th state, and boy wasn't it exciting that that state was West Virginia! The welcome center turned out to be on a city street across from a Wal-Mart, and the woman at the counter was in an extremely bad mood. There wasn't even a sign-in book, or an offer of a free map, and all I got out of the woman herself were some gruff directions given to me in a tone that assured me I was a complete idiot for even considering going to Pittsburgh by way of Charleston.

The rest of my day in the state that professes to be "Wild, Wonderful" was equally uninspiring. Other than a fairly impressive gorge, I saw little more than grouchy hill people and a lot of brown barren mountains that weren't even pretty. The restaurant in Clarksburg that was recommended in Roadfood was closed by 5:05 pm. The state highways run 65 mph, slowing to only 55 for intersections. My cell phone didn't work in the entire state. And I saw a bumper sticker asking: "Do you worship animals, or God?" The best part of my day were some cherry blossoms I sat under in a McDonald's parking lot. And while that was really nice, it should give you some perspective.

Towards the end of my drive, I finally saw an Ontario plate for the first time in more than a week, and also, a license plate from Hawaii. Good lord must the people in that car have been so deeply, deeply disappointed.

Posted by liz at 10:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

I have tossed the idea around in my head for years that each state is somehow distinguishable from the one next to it. I don't know if this is romantic fantasy or not, but when I crossed into North Carolina, it smelled new. Piney, smokey, different than any place I'd been before. I'd never quite figured out what North Carolina was supposed to be like—a touch of the south, a touch of the Pacific Northwest—but it slowly unravelled itself to me as I drove north into a long, lingering, golden-pink sunset that lasted for a long, long time.

My route was such that I wasn't sure until the morning I left Charleston exactly what parts of North Carolina I would try to see. As it turned out, I let fate decide for me—Lalitree, the only person I seem to know in North Carolina, said she was free for dinner that night, so I routed myself up to Durham by way of a long slow drive up the Atlantic coast in South Carolina. I took a break in Myrtle Beach State Park, napping to the sound of a little girl using a metal detector on the sand. I waded far into the ocean and felt as happy as I had at any time on the whole trip.

Durham was dark when I reached it, a mystery of woodsy charm and strip mall blight. Lalitree gave me a little driving tour after our stop at a seemingly characteristic North Carolina indie-rocker tavern. (My view of almonds, by the way, is forever changed.) I visited with her at her house for awhile, came close to kidnapping amazing cat Gretzky, and then hit the road again to get a head start on my last big drive through state No. 50: West Virginia.

I spent the night in Winston-Salem at a Microtel, a chain I love, tipped off to me by the Coctails more than a decade ago. Microtel gives you a tiny, awesome little room, mostly clean, and certainly more comfortable than Motel Six. All the rooms have weird window-seats, which mean you could stow a third adult there, or your kid, or all your suitcases. They all also have free long distance and WiFi, and if you pay more than $50 you've done something horribly, horribly wrong. Microtel was lovely to me and in the morning I drove around Winston-Salem, had a cup of the local hippie coffee brew, and admired the oddly serene, jubilantly spring surroundings.

North Carolina would be the last state where I saw everything happy and in bloom, and if I have to wait a week or two in Toronto before I get to double-dip my spring experiences for the year, I guess I will, but right now, at home, where it's cold, I already ache for these trees and all their promise.

Posted by liz at 01:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Unlike pretty much all the states that came before it in this trip, South Carolina was (is, as I write this) very much as I expected. The road is a little roughshod, the tre