chinese broccoli

columbus, continued.

riding high on the fumes of that dangerously crowded show at bourbon street, the magik markers posse wants, we think, nothing more than to continue overeating after the gig, so we head to dirty frank’s, a hot dog restaurant/bar open late downtown that ron house hipped me to. this kind of joint, if it were in brooklyn, would be instantly ruined by any number of malevolent factors, but in a place like columbus or milwaukee, a paradise like this can thrive: a huge list of inventive — even multicultural! — hot dogs (sonoran? pacific northwest? all they need is scandinavian), great cheap beer list, mysterious array of slushie drinks, and good god, a side of salt and pepper fried leeks. no one is hungry either when they arrive or once we leave, but we are all somehow pleased and satisfied without passing out completely. word!

when we get back to bela’s house at a million o’clock, we find he is still awake, waiting up to tell us a joke, and show us to our sleeping places. i make a nest in his daughter’s play tent, and sleep wonderfully. mental note: tour with fairy princess tent.

pete and i are the two in the group up “early” and go for a nice spring walk to one thing i really want to do in columbus: visit a coffee shop opened a few years ago by a couple of guys from the late great band gaunt, named after one of their albums, and reputed to only operate on two french presses. the music side of me and the coffee side of me can’t think of anything more awesome than this, and it is even greater and more iconoclastic than i imagined, especially when they give me a super heavy “why are you taking pictures/who the fuck does this girl think she is” vibe upon my whippin out the camera. luckily i don’t get my ass kicked, and anyway the place is fantastic, they are great, etc. their off-the-gridness is refreshing after all the people (kind friends included) who corner me to talk about oh, i dunno, the hot new gossip in the grinder industry, when to tell the truth some mornings i’d just as soon have any kind of cup of coffee with rad people and talk about music and cars. i like being a nerd as much as the next guy, but this whole morning becomes one of the best parts of the trip.

me and p-unit hang out here a long time, probably longer than they want us to, and take jovan’s advice to eat at northstar, a local-sustainable-medium-fancy place where no one orders the thai-style turkey burger, and we hit the road to the mistake by the lake.

cleveland

“you’re sure you just want us to let you out anywhere random in the middle of downtown cleveland??” asks worried elisa, but, it’s fine, i assured her: i’m kinda into that. the band wants to check out the rock and roll hall of fame, but wandering downtown CLE sounds much awesomer to me, without much notion of a plan. i head towards lake erie — or at least i think i do — to check out the view. though i don’t get too far, i do get a splendid aerial view from a parking structure, and minutes later accidentally run into my friend todd from pittsburgh, at his hotel, which i have completely randomly sat down in the lobby of to steal internet for a moment. i had already planned to have dinner with todd before the markers show, but didn’t know where he was staying. after convincing him i wasn’t stalking him, we have a long amazing dinner conversation about family and christian bikers over sausage samplers and cheddar-stilton-ale soup at great lakes brewery, and then he whips out a free hotel rewards certificate he has and donates the slightly roadweary magik markers a deluxe hotel room for the night, blowing everyone’s mind kinda.

the venue is a crazy place in west cleveland called “now that’s class”, maybe i’m forgetting an ellipsis somewhere, and they feature a skate ramp, and microwave taquitos among other things. the show is great, and for some reason there are a lot of wasted people in cleveland on a wednesday night, both at the show and wandering around the middle of abandoned downtown alone in tuxedos. (hope you’re okay, dude.)

by dawn, the sense of spring we’d been building up recedes a little bit: ice drifts in on lake erie, and as that’s too cold to swim in i have a dip in the doubletree pool. we take a rainy excursion downtown to the world’s strangest remaindered book shop, make another great lakes/sausage stop, and we’re out.

buffalo

we’re well out of sheetz country now, and it’s a little weird to be back in new york state but nowhere near and nothing like home. an underrated place with what seems like a dim future, buffalo is still one of my favorites, a fondness long honed over my years in toronto, when this was the nearest version of “america” to me — not that it’s anything like the rest of the united states, just the kind i am the most familiar with. past the granaries that made it queen and the railway station i’ve crawled top to bottom of is humble downtown buffalo — wait, is that the clang of the light rail subway? — and we arrive at soundlab where we are immediately offered some “fuckin good root beer” by a guy who claims not to be the promoter or bartender but sort of also is. soundlab is buffalo’s experimental music home, and tonight there are legit, out, opening acts who seem to unify the room more than much of what we’ve seen so far. my storyteller friend scott comes out and it is awesome to see him, as well as a few other buffalo-proud and sorta mysterious types. here is a typical bustling street scene.

we load out and load up for canada, are gratefully and a little bewilderedly plied with about 300 more bottles of saranac root beer for the road, and get in the car just after john accidentally maybe alienates a dude (“he’s not gay, he just ran away when I kept saying ‘Homo F Kennedy’”) and we’re over the border in no time, immigration far more excited by the imminent arrival of larry king and whoopi goldberg (not together) into ontario than magik markers. looks like we’ll roll up on my former town at about 4:30 am, which is about as good a time to arrive someplace you’re unsure about as any.