Originally published at Pump It Up! a Revival ModCast. You can comment here or there.
Anyway, I thought I had uploaded that last cast I promised, and while i technically uploaded it, I didn't post it. Aw! :-( So now that I have a real, working computer, and four copies of my novel left-over from my book-signing in August, and a whole lot of other fun things, I can resume updating this every Monday.
Originally published at Searching for the Young Soul Rebel. You can comment here or there.
[This post is image-heavy, if you're my friend Eleni or Cynthia or somebody else more blind than I am, hopefully I've inserted enough verbal humour to make up for these huge blank spaces you might be getting with your low-and-no-vision computer equipment.]So, my weekend in Phila began Thursday 29 October 2009 at 12.40pm, as my room-mate and I headed to Akron, Ohio, in hopes of spending a few hours in Devo Town before I hopped a bus to Philadelphia. Let me tell you all, northern Ohio, outside the densely populated urban areas, is (for all practical purposes) nothing but corn fields.
Now this photo is not mine, but in all honesty, when you've seen one cornfield, you don't need to see another. When you've seen over two-dozen cornfields, on the other hand.... You've found yourself either in Northern Ohio or in that never-ending driving scene from "Manos": The Hands of Fate:
...and yet, sometimes other people wonder why I hate living in rural areas.
Now, unlike the opening sequence for one of the most abysmal films ever put to celluloid, rural Northern Ohio does occasionally break up the cornfields with neat little things that you won't ever get to see anywhere else. Things like this little cemetery that I had Scott drive back so that I could go get photos:
Yes, you are reading that properly — outside of Sandusky, Ohio, you too can see the Faust Cemetery. The Faust Cemetery is not on any Google Maps, and I'm not even sure how to find it again — the only way I know for sure is "don't take the Ohio Turnpike". In the Faust Cemetery is buried:
...Darwin T. Arthur, aged 93 years. Survival of the fittest, indeed!
Only thing funnier than the Faust Cemetery is Hell, Michigan — because on your way to Hell, in Pinckney, Michigan, you will encounter the LaVey Insurance Agency, established 1923, and the road to Hell is, I shit you not, Darwin Road.
But I digress....
So, after seeing all there was to see at the Faust Cemetery, Scott and i got back on the road, passed around Sandusky, and on the other side, we found an exit off the freeway urging us onward to:
...the Hermes Winery of Sandusky, Ohio. We had to stop — it was a moral imperative that on my way to a weekend of mayhem, I stop and taste mightily of the wines named for the God of Travels (Amongst Other Things). For a dollar each, I tasted their sweet red and sweet white and bought my friend 
Gavin, who I had planned on seeing, a bottle of their "Recession Red" (also appropriate to Hermes, if you ask me — doubly so when the proprietors described it as "very dry", because that shit's hilarious).
So, we make our way out of the winery before I manage to spend all of my vacation budget drinking sweet reds, and we get back on the road, passing many more cornfields on the way to Akron. Thankfully, we ended up passing Cleveland on the way Akron-bound, so that broke up the cornfields considerably, but realising how short on time we were, we didn't stop through, and by the time we reached Akron, we didn't even have the time to pass by Mark Mothersbaugh's old high school, and being out-of-state (technically) and having very little cash on us, we were even thwarted in our attempts to get anything to eat (long story short — no, our Visa cheque cards were not options at the time).
The Akron Greyhound station is beautiful, but has this "snug" feeling because it doubles as the depot for the city bus lines. I had something to eat from the vending machines, enjoyed the view of this hot young guy, and then my bus came.
Change buses in Pittsburgh, service stop in Harrisburg, blah blah blah.... By the way, Pittsburgh us a stunning city, especially at night, but unfortunately houses less than a million people and is therefore unsuitable for living.
I got to Philadelphia well enough, all my luggage intact, et cetera, but that's not the funny part. So, OK, the city bus for Philadelphia is conveniently across the street from the Greyhound depot — my plan was to get a one week bus pass when I got to town, so this looks like I've hit some kind of jackpot. Unfortunately, I would have fared better walking around the building than I did taking all of my luggage with me (and I'm sorry, I couldn't have travelled any lighter, because I'm very particular about my pillow and I had to bring my hair dryer) around the interior of the building just to find the desk I was supposed to buy this at. By the time I find the desk, my spine has become very cross with me, but I trek on because my CouchSurfing.com host has no car himself and therefore could not meet me at the station, so I had to make my way down to Market & 40th by myself.
When i finally get to the Market St. & 11th subway station (by the way — in Chicago, people call the metro train lines by the colour on the transit maps, in Phila, they call the train by the main street the route is on; this is not the only unusual thing I've discovered about the Phila city trains), I discover than my week pass is not working. Why, you may ask? Apparently the South Eastern Philadelphia Transit Authority (or the "SEPTA", which may be one of the more unfortunate acronyms as it reminds those of us who've lived in rural areas before of the "septic tank"; but it's also Latin for Seven, which is Apollon's number, and Apollon cares fuck all for public transit, that's Hermes' domain — but then this trip has proved to have some unusual deity associations before I even arrived in Phila), has decided that a "One Week Pass" is good only from a named Monday to a named Sunday, and they stop selling passes for the current week on Wednesdays. I've arrived in t
own on a Friday and am scheduled to leave the following Monday — which is the day the pass I was just sold is scheduled to begin. Unfortunately, if you go to the SEPTA's website, you'll discover no information about how these "one-week passes" are designed to work, so it's not my fault that I didn't know this ahead of time. Furthermore, if you do the math, buying four One Day Passes would have been unacceptable, so I was making my way around the city on tokens — but unlike the Ann Arbor Transit Authority tokens, buying tokens actually saves you money in Philadelphia!
I made a point of explaining to Phila locals how great they had it in public transit, especially when compared to Ann Arbor. First, buying tokens for the SEPTA saves you a minimum of 55¢ a trip — AATA tokens save you nothing, and so nobody knows why they even exist, but they do. Go ahead, do the maths! AATA has no reason to mint tokens, but they mint them because... well, hell if I know! Half the BoBo idiots in this gods-forsaken gentrified shit-plantation are convinced that this town is "the Manhattan of the Midwest", so it probably makes people think that they've got "a little slice of NYC" to have tokens for the bus. Furthermore, while the city trains in Phila may have a six hour block between midnight and 6am where they don't operate (much like the Los Angeles
city trains), at least the SEPTA has the major bus lines operating on a Night Owl schedule at the same price — the AATA buses, on the other hand, are completely inoperable between 10pm and 6am, mondays through fridays, and between 6pm and 8am on Saturdays and Sundays, but instead offers "nigh ride cabs" for $5, a shared cab ride where you may very well be waiting as much as two hours for your ride to show up, and oh by the way, you better live within the city limits and not ten blocks just outside it, like I do, because if you live in Pittsfield or Ypsilanti, you're getting left at the White Castle and you're hoofing it back home. I explained this to every single local who dared complain about how much "the SEPTA sucks" in my ear-shot (all of four people), also taking care to point out that Ann Arbor is so much a "college town" that the town's population drops by about a third in the summers — and considering how many of this town's population is therefor
e "students", the asinine AATA hours make even less sense! My only real complaint about the SEPTA is how the weekly passes work — but I've also been spoilt by Chicago's weekly fare system (I'd complain about the trains if not for the Night Owl buses), so all things considered, the SEPTA is actually pretty good.
But I digress again.
So, I buy a fistful of tokens and get down to Market & 40th, and my spine has finally told me "enough of this bullshit, dude! shower and nap! ASAP!" So I decided to call my host and see if he's willing to meet me at the corner, grab my duffel, and walk to his place with me. It was only four or five blocks, but really, carrying that duffel, I was not going to make it. I will gladly admit that I can be a wuss at times like this, but I also had a 20lb growth compressing my spine for almost fifteen years; I'm allowed to be a wuss.
So, I got to my host's place safely, dumped my stuff in the drawing room, and headed upstairs to take a shower. Now, my host is a college student, living in a house with three other college students, all men. For a bathroom used full-time by four college blokes, it's actually pretty clean -- there's some long-term calcium and rust in the sink, and the shower had maybe a month's worth of built-up crud, and OK, their organisation could use a little work, but it was actually pretty clean, considering that it was a house occupied by four ostensibly heterosexually-inclined college-aged men.
After my nap, I decided to go back downtown, attempt to return my useless transit pass, and then head to South Street & 4th, to Crash Bang Boom (formerly Zipperhead), because that was where The Dead Milkmen were going to have an in-store acoustic performance. I got there pretty early, but just early enough to discover that though the in-store was at 8pm, they were handing out wristbands at 6.30pm, and only enough to fill the store to capacity; so I talked to the owner and his employee a little about my travels, bought some patches, and resuled exploring South Street for the next hour and a half (until 5.45, to guarantee me a place in line for a wristband). Here are some photos of some of the cool things I saw on South Street:
This is an adorable punk rock couple I saw just outside Crash Bang Boom — unfortunately, they were being much cuter before I got the camera out and asked them to re-enact their cuteness. Still, this photo is pretty damned cute.
This is some awesome graffiti I saw in an alley two doors or so from this Indian restaurant called "Marakesh" I smelled from the street-end of the alley. Yes, the door to the restaurant is in the alley, but this graffiti made for the better photo: "R.S.V.P. SATAN BLACK SABBATH BITCHES" That about says it all, don't you agree?
I have no idea how anybody is supposed to ride this bike, and I know how hard it is to read the text just under the handles, but it says "PIMPIN". This was on another side-street off of South, across the street and down a bit from this kick-ass antique store in the building from an old temple, at least I presume that's what it was, cos it had a Star of David and some Hebrew script on the side of the building. In the antique store is a sectioned-off area with a sign that says "MOD GIRL VINTAGE CLOTHING" -- very little of which is actually "Mod", but plenty of which is cute enough and none of which seemed to be boasting pseudo-Manhattan deadstock prices [*coughStarVintage*cough*].
Other neat things about South Street is that there are no less than THREE record stores that specialise in reggae and ska — which makes me wonder why I didn't see any more Trad/Trojan Skinheads than the two that showed up to The Dead Milkmen concert at The Trocadero, but I'm not going to complain too much because it's not like I actually went out looking for them, either.
So, 5.30pm rolls around, and i make my way back up South to 4th again, turn the corner, and omfg, line! A line filled with studded leather jackets and squatter flaps and cute skinny punk rock boys like this one:
mmmm... I remember this one well, too. I remember that I longed to touch him inappropriately — because sometimes a BAAAAAAD touch can be a REALLY REALLY GOOOOOOD touch.
So me and the cute punk rock boys get our wristbands and then the owner tells us to go and bug other people for the next hour-and-a-half and "no, you can't loiter in front of the store, cos if I get fined, I'm sending you the bill and banning you from the store for life". Having nothing else planned, I wandered across the street to a building labelled "Underground Art Museum" — but apparently this sign is old, because the building now houses a yoga and massage and this sweet old hippie sort of lady works there, and she offered me tea and listened to some of my stories about my many travels.
At 7.45pm, I headed back out to the punk store, and Rodney Anonymous is out in front being entertained by somebody's kid. So, then at 8pm, the owner of Crash Bang Boom let us all in (those of us with wristbands, anyway), and we all sat on the floor and the band played an acoustic set. Here are some really shitty photos from that:
And here are some pretty decent videos shot by a fellow by the name of "Dirty Sanchez" from the Dead Milkmen message board:
After the performance, I talked to the band a little bit, after all, aboiut ten years ago, I interviewed Rodney Anonymous for the now-defunct small-press scene 'zine I worked on that only just barely made it to the first issue, and I've been e-mailing with Joe since his performance in Toledo on September 16th. I went back to my host's place pretty much right after the in-store event, but first I managed to get some walking directions back to the Market Street (BLUE LINE!) subway from Joe. Joe drew me a crude map in a sharpie on the back of my print-out receipt for my Greyhound fare. As Joe drew this crude map, there formed a semi-circle around us by other people at the store and I managed to blurt out "I'm hopelessly in love with him, because he makes me feel like I'm a decent height for a man younger than eighty and older than twelve" (for those not in-the-know, I'm 5'2" and Joe Talcum is 5'4") — this made Dean laugh a little, and upon that slight laughter, I sudden
ly realised that I actually said that rather than just thinking it, and it is those awkward moments of unintentional speaking that often make for some of the best stories of my life.
And, because that "hopelessly in love with him" bit was 100% absolutely true, I have saved that crude map:
As I left the store, Rodney and Mrs Anonymous (credited as Vienna Linderman on their album Burn Witch Burn) followed me, cos apparently they live along the way. They then decided to tell me about where all the cool local cemeteries are at, and so I told them about Faust and about Hell, Michigan, and as they turned down their alley, Rodney said "and now here's something really spooky; it looks like we're turning into an alley here, but if you turn around and hold your head just right, it looks like we've walked through this wall" — which is oddly dad-like humour for a man who has no children.
The next day: Hallowe'en
I make my way downtown in time to met the aforementioned Gavin and her girlfriend Renee at the Greyhound station. They've arrived in town fifteen minutes late but that aside, with no real issue. We then walked the twenty-odd blocks from 10th to 30th on our way to lunch at Powelton Pizza for cheesesteaks. At 30th, my spine starts arguing with me, and I make it clear to Gavin & Renee that I can't walk any-more, so we token up our pockets and take a trolley to 38th and Market (two blocks from where my day started!) The trolleys are described by Gavin as "sardine cans on wheels", and I really can't argue with that; this was one of the more unpleasant one-way public transportation usages I've ever had, as it was the fi
rst time in the whole weekend I thought I'd be crushed to death.
At Powelton Pizza, I give Gavin her wine and Renee decides to treat me to a steak and we meet another friend of theirs we were planning on meeting up with. We then did a whole lot of sitting around and sharing stories about ex-room-mates and ex-employers and other crazy people we've known, and then the other friend had to take off, and Gavin and Renee had to get back to the Greyhound station, and it was about time that I needed to get in line for The Dead Milkmen. On my way to The Trocadero, i picked up a copy of Philadelphia's City Paper, which featured a Dead Milkmen cover story:
The Trocadero is an old vaudeville theatre (I can tell from the acoustics in the place alone — not that I was raised by ex-theatre people and trained in voice from the age of three or anything) situated in Phila's Chinatown district less than a stone's throw from the beautifully gaudy Chinese Arch, on (wait for it....) Arch Street; right next door to The Trocadero is a Malaysian restaurant (a Malay place... in... Chinatown... eh, whatever) that The Dead Milkmen crowd was spilling out in front of, so in hopes of advertising their awesome food, the restaurant sent a waitress out to offer free samples of some tasty appetizer I never learned the name of, so I shall call it "Fried Bits" (bits of what? "Oh. Formerly living tings....")
When The Troc finally let us all in, I get my insanely overpriced TicketBastard print-out ticket scanned (serious, $2.50 to download a PDF and turn on my printer — and the PDF had adverts on it! They're getting paid to charge me to use my own printer — and this is on top of the $5.50 "TicketMaster fee" $1 "venue fee", and $4.25 "processing fee", bringing my $18.75 admission to $32 — needless to say, I made damned sure I got to the in-store performance the day before, so that it felt like I was getting my money's worth.) After locating the gents' lavvies, I bought a set of ear plugs and then went upstairs to the bar. At the bar, I bought myself some whiskey and then went to go sit and watch the first round of Secret Cinema shorts and the first band, The Tough Shits, in the balcony bleachers. As I'm s
itting down, I hear "How you enjoying the city so far?" behind me — it's Joe! And he's taunting me! Well, OK, maybe Joe isn't evil enough to taunt me, and I was wearing my shirt that said "FAGGOT", so it's possible that he honestly thought he was being nice by promptly sitting next to me in the bleachers.
The Tough Shits were good in the way The Dead Boys were good, and since Stiv Bators was a god among men, I did enjoy the obvious influence. Then more Secret Cinema shorts and then the band Live Not On Evil, which is fronted by the owner of Crash Bang Boom. Live Not On Evil are pretty good, kind of in a more 45 Grave vein than the Christian Death one that they're compared to on Last.FM.
Speaking of 45 Grave, previously, the most rambunctious mosh pit I've been in over the last fifteen years of punk shows has been Penis Flytrap (fronted by Dinah Cancer of 45 Grave) at their Las Vegas show in 2003; Amino Acids, a band I've seen live four times now, and Bella Morte, who I've seen live two or three times, usually attract crowds that gets really rowdy, but seriously, Amino and Bella fans can't hold a candle to the way Dinah Cancer can work a crowd into a frenzy.
...or so i thought, until I made my way down to the standing room of The Trocadero to see The Dead Milkmen. This was the first time that the pit and the crowd actually had me afraid that I would be crushed to death — and if I'm going to be crushed to death by cute punk boys, I'd rather we were all naked and in a massive orgy, not fully clothed at a concert. Needless to say, being the first ever casualty of a Dead Milkmen concert is an unacceptable way to die, in my opinion, so I made my way to the furthest outskirts of the pit and got up against a wall, where I managed to get these three even shttier photos:
And some guy about four feet in front of me and a minimum ten inches taller than me got this video:
I also managed to get a photo of this guy, who said his friend made these shirts:
Now, us real hardcore Dead Milkmen fans know what this is all about. If i said too much, I'd ruin it, but I can still say that if you have no idea what this all means, get yourself a copy of The Dead Milkmen album Metaphysical Graffiti and listen to the whole thing, because the little spoken segues of Rodney's keep getting funnier as you hear more of them. The last one is a hidden track colloquially known as "Cousin Earl", and then this shirt will make sense. I suppose you can just listen to "Cousin Earl", but trust me, the segues interspersed throughout the record make "Cousin Earl" that much funnier.
...but yes, needless to say, I want one of these shirts and have been trying to find out who this guy is who made them (like hell I could hear anything at The Troc) so I can buy one off of him.
As I'm leaving The Trocadero, I get directions from these sweet guys dressed as Fred Flintstone and BamBam Rubble, and when I said "Hey, I'm visiting for the weekend from Ann Arbor", BamBam put a hand on my shoulder and said "Wait! I heard they were Straightening Out that town."
"That they are. It's an embarrassment to the city's legacy."
"Oh! You poor dear! [console console]"
My last day in Phila was spent parking my kiester outside a closed place on South Street and trying to sell my last four copies of New Dance and some SubGenius/Crap*Magnet buttons I have. I managed to sell a button and give away every business card I brought with me, but that was about it. Being Sunday, there really wasn't much else to do, so I made my way back to Chinatown and stopped at this restaurant and ordered some soup that I had with some hot tea while I finished Breakfast At Tiffany's (which is much better than the film, albeit far more bitter-sweet; though I'm sorry, I have to disagree with Capote, and I simply cannot see Marilyn Monroe as Holly Golightly). The sweet old lady at the restaurant boxed up the rest of my soup and when I went to pay the bill with my cheque card, she said that they normally only take cards for a $15 minimum; I then explained that I
didn't have enough cash and I was from out-of-town and started to look very worried, to which she responded "well, OK, I can make an exception for you," -- and then I wrote in a $2 top for an $8 bill. I figured it was the least I could do, since she had already decided to bend the rules. And hey, the soup, despite being filled with egg bits that I sat and picked out, was very much worth a 25% tip.
Back at my host's place, at 8pm-ish, I watched Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums to round out my day of bitter-sweet media. The next day, I showered, etc..., packed up the big stuff and took a walk around the neighbourhood to commune with that part of the city, then went back in, packed up the rest of my stuff and slowly made my way back to the Market Street subway (stopping for about a minute once every block), and with ample enough time to prepare for any Greyhound-related incompetence whilst getting my bags checked and waiting in line. I got there early enough that I didn't have to upgrade to Priority Seating, but instead had to spend that five dollars, I shit you not, on a soda and a packet of peanut butter crackers at the vending machines. The vending machines at Greyhound stations are typically pricier than they are anywhere else, but the Phila station Greyhound vending machines are the most expensive vending machines I've ever seen — $2.25 for a
Cocal-Cola and $1.90 for those crappy peanut butter cracker-wiches; the same peanut butter cracker-wiches that say "50¢" on the cellophane at any convenience store in the country and are only 75¢ at the Pittsburgh station — but I hadn't eaten yet, so I paid it and dealt with it.
All in all, I really enjoyed Philadelphia, and I'd have to say that it's kind of a coin toss between moving there or Chicago. What Chicago has in its favour is very slightly better public transit, twice the population, and an established Mod & Trad Skin scene (or at least an established one that I know about). What Phila has in its favour is cheaper rent, warmer weather, and honestly, the fact that when somebody says "you'll probably get stabbed in that neighbourhood" is not, in Philadelphia, the "no, really! I'm not a racialist!" way of saying "that neighbourhood needs more white people" — but then again, a city that's over 40% Black may just have that quirk. As much as I love Chicago, I can't make heads or tails out of why so many people are afraid of the Hyde Park neighbourhood, where my friend Shaun lives. I've seriously encountered people in Chicago who proudly se
lf-identify as "North Side Negroes" and then detail how they'd never be caught dead in Hyde Park when, in fact, Hyde Park is home to one of the city's best private schools and is where the Obamas lived before moving into The White House. It's a nice neighbourhood and for all the niceness, it's actually got pretty reasonable rents; I've walked around Hyde Park drunk as all get-out in the middle of the night and have felt and actually proved to be perfectly safe, so the only reason so many people are "afraid" of Hyde Park amounts to nothing more than racialism, if you ask me. So the fact that I wouldn't have to defend my neighbourhood for anything less than a genuine (read: not-bigoted) reason to my bar friends in Phila, and therefore less headache, speaks well of the town to me.
So, that was my weekend of The Dead Milkmen in Philadelphia. Great band, excellent performance, beautiful city, lovely people.
Edited to add:
Dean took this photo from the stage. I'm to the far right, in the black sweater and glasses; the very short and very red-faced one.
Originally published at Searching for the Young Soul Rebel. You can comment here or there.
[This post is image-heavy, if you're my friend Eleni or Cynthia or somebody else more blind than I am, hopefully I've inserted enough verbal humour to make up for these huge blank spaces you might be getting with your low-and-no-vision computer equipment.]So, my weekend in Phila began Thursday 29 October 2009 at 12.40pm, as my room-mate and I headed to Akron, Ohio, in hopes of spending a few hours in Devo Town before I hopped a bus to Philadelphia. Let me tell you all, northern Ohio, outside the densely populated urban areas, is (for all practical purposes) nothing but corn fields.
Now this photo is not mine, but in all honesty, when you've seen one cornfield, you don't need to see another. When you've seen over two-dozen cornfields, on the other hand.... You've found yourself either in Northern Ohio or in that never-ending driving scene from "Manos": The Hands of Fate:
...and yet, sometimes other people wonder why I hate living in rural areas.
Now, unlike the opening sequence for one of the most abysmal films ever put to celluloid, rural Northern Ohio does occasionally break up the cornfields with neat little things that you won't ever get to see anywhere else. Things like this little cemetery that I had Scott drive back so that I could go get photos:
Yes, you are reading that properly — outside of Sandusky, Ohio, you too can see the Faust Cemetery. The Faust Cemetery is not on any Google Maps, and I'm not even sure how to find it again — the only way I know for sure is "don't take the Ohio Turnpike". In the Faust Cemetery is buried:
...Darwin T. Arthur, aged 93 years. Survival of the fittest, indeed!
Only thing funnier than the Faust Cemetery is Hell, Michigan — because on your way to Hell, in Pinckney, Michigan, you will encounter the LaVey Insurance Agency, established 1923, and the road to Hell is, I shit you not, Darwin Road.
But I digress....
So, after seeing all there was to see at the Faust Cemetery, Scott and i got back on the road, passed around Sandusky, and on the other side, we found an exit off the freeway urging us onward to:
...the Hermes Winery of Sandusky, Ohio. We had to stop — it was a moral imperative that on my way to a weekend of mayhem, I stop and taste mightily of the wines named for the God of Travels (Amongst Other Things). For a dollar each, I tasted their sweet red and sweet white and bought my friend Gavin, who I had planned on seeing, a bottle of their "Recession Red" (also appropriate to Hermes, if you ask me — doubly so when the proprietors described it as "very dry", because that shit's hilarious).
So, we make our way out of the winery before I manage to spend all of my vacation budget drinking sweet reds, and we get back on the road, passing many more cornfields on the way to Akron. Thankfully, we ended up passing Cleveland on the way Akron-bound, so that broke up the cornfields considerably, but realising how short on time we were, we didn't stop through, and by the time we reached Akron, we didn't even have the time to pass by Mark Mothersbaugh's old high school, and being out-of-state (technically) and having very little cash on us, we were even thwarted in our attempts to get anything to eat (long story short — no, our Visa cheque cards were not options at the time).
The Akron Greyhound station is beautiful, but has this "snug" feeling because it doubles as the depot for the city bus lines. I had something to eat from the vending machines, enjoyed the view of this hot young guy, and then my bus came.
Change buses in Pittsburgh, service stop in Harrisburg, blah blah blah.... By the way, Pittsburgh us a stunning city, especially at night, but unfortunately houses less than a million people and is therefore unsuitable for living.
I got to Philadelphia well enough, all my luggage intact, et cetera, but that's not the funny part. So, OK, the city bus for Philadelphia is conveniently across the street from the Greyhound depot — my plan was to get a one week bus pass when I got to town, so this looks like I've hit some kind of jackpot. Unfortunately, I would have fared better walking around the building than I did taking all of my luggage with me (and I'm sorry, I couldn't have travelled any lighter, because I'm very particular about my pillow and I had to bring my hair dryer) around the interior of the building just to find the desk I was supposed to buy this at. By the time I find the desk, my spine has become very cross with me, but I trek on because my CouchSurfing.com host has no car himself and therefore could not meet me at the station, so I had to make my way down to Market & 40th by myself.
When i finally get to the Market St. & 11th subway station (by the way — in Chicago, people call the metro train lines by the colour on the transit maps, in Phila, they call the train by the main street the route is on; this is not the only unusual thing I've discovered about the Phila city trains), I discover than my week pass is not working. Why, you may ask? Apparently the South Eastern Philadelphia Transit Authority (or the "SEPTA", which may be one of the more unfortunate acronyms as it reminds those of us who've lived in rural areas before of the "septic tank"; but it's also Latin for Seven, which is Apollon's number, and Apollon cares fuck all for public transit, that's Hermes' domain — but then this trip has proved to have some unusual deity associations before I even arrived in Phila), has decided that a "One Week Pass" is good only from a named Monday to a named Sunday, and they stop selling passes for the current week on Wednesdays. I've arrived in t
own on a Friday and am scheduled to leave the following Monday — which is the day the pass I was just sold is scheduled to begin. Unfortunately, if you go to the SEPTA's website, you'll discover no information about how these "one-week passes" are designed to work, so it's not my fault that I didn't know this ahead of time. Furthermore, if you do the math, buying four One Day Passes would have been unacceptable, so I was making my way around the city on tokens — but unlike the Ann Arbor Transit Authority tokens, buying tokens actually saves you money in Philadelphia!
I made a point of explaining to Phila locals how great they had it in public transit, especially when compared to Ann Arbor. First, buying tokens for the SEPTA saves you a minimum of 55¢ a trip — AATA tokens save you nothing, and so nobody knows why they even exist, but they do. Go ahead, do the maths! AATA has no reason to mint tokens, but they mint them because... well, hell if I know! Half the BoBo idiots in this gods-forsaken gentrified shit-plantation are convinced that this town is "the Manhattan of the Midwest", so it probably makes people think that they've got "a little slice of NYC" to have tokens for the bus. Furthermore, while the city trains in Phila may have a six hour block between midnight and 6am where they don't operate (much like the Los Angeles
city trains), at least the SEPTA has the major bus lines operating on a Night Owl schedule at the same price — the AATA buses, on the other hand, are completely inoperable between 10pm and 6am, mondays through fridays, and between 6pm and 8am on Saturdays and Sundays, but instead offers "nigh ride cabs" for $5, a shared cab ride where you may very well be waiting as much as two hours for your ride to show up, and oh by the way, you better live within the city limits and not ten blocks just outside it, like I do, because if you live in Pittsfield or Ypsilanti, you're getting left at the White Castle and you're hoofing it back home. I explained this to every single local who dared complain about how much "the SEPTA sucks" in my ear-shot (all of four people), also taking care to point out that Ann Arbor is so much a "college town" that the town's population drops by about a third in the summers — and considering how many of this town's population is therefor
e "students", the asinine AATA hours make even less sense! My only real complaint about the SEPTA is how the weekly passes work — but I've also been spoilt by Chicago's weekly fare system (I'd complain about the trains if not for the Night Owl buses), so all things considered, the SEPTA is actually pretty good.
But I digress again.
So, I buy a fistful of tokens and get down to Market & 40th, and my spine has finally told me "enough of this bullshit, dude! shower and nap! ASAP!" So I decided to call my host and see if he's willing to meet me at the corner, grab my duffel, and walk to his place with me. It was only four or five blocks, but really, carrying that duffel, I was not going to make it. I will gladly admit that I can be a wuss at times like this, but I also had a 20lb growth compressing my spine for almost fifteen years; I'm allowed to be a wuss.
So, I got to my host's place safely, dumped my stuff in the drawing room, and headed upstairs to take a shower. Now, my host is a college student, living in a house with three other college students, all men. For a bathroom used full-time by four college blokes, it's actually pretty clean -- there's some long-term calcium and rust in the sink, and the shower had maybe a month's worth of built-up crud, and OK, their organisation could use a little work, but it was actually pretty clean, considering that it was a house occupied by four ostensibly heterosexually-inclined college-aged men.
After my nap, I decided to go back downtown, attempt to return my useless transit pass, and then head to South Street & 4th, to Crash Bang Boom (formerly Zipperhead), because that was where The Dead Milkmen were going to have an in-store acoustic performance. I got there pretty early, but just early enough to discover that though the in-store was at 8pm, they were handing out wristbands at 6.30pm, and only enough to fill the store to capacity; so I talked to the owner and his employee a little about my travels, bought some patches, and resuled exploring South Street for the next hour and a half (until 5.45, to guarantee me a place in line for a wristband). Here are some photos of some of the cool things I saw on South Street:
This is an adorable punk rock couple I saw just outside Crash Bang Boom — unfortunately, they were being much cuter before I got the camera out and asked them to re-enact their cuteness. Still, this photo is pretty damned cute.
This is some awesome graffiti I saw in an alley two doors or so from this Indian restaurant called "Marakesh" I smelled from the street-end of the alley. Yes, the door to the restaurant is in the alley, but this graffiti made for the better photo: "R.S.V.P. SATAN BLACK SABBATH BITCHES" That about says it all, don't you agree?
I have no idea how anybody is supposed to ride this bike, and I know how hard it is to read the text just under the handles, but it says "PIMPIN". This was on another side-street off of South, across the street and down a bit from this kick-ass antique store in the building from an old temple, at least I presume that's what it was, cos it had a Star of David and some Hebrew script on the side of the building. In the antique store is a sectioned-off area with a sign that says "MOD GIRL VINTAGE CLOTHING" -- very little of which is actually "Mod", but plenty of which is cute enough and none of which seemed to be boasting pseudo-Manhattan deadstock prices [*coughStarVintage*cough*].
Other neat things about South Street is that there are no less than THREE record stores that specialise in reggae and ska — which makes me wonder why I didn't see any more Trad/Trojan Skinheads than the two that showed up to The Dead Milkmen concert at The Trocadero, but I'm not going to complain too much because it's not like I actually went out looking for them, either.
So, 5.30pm rolls around, and i make my way back up South to 4th again, turn the corner, and omfg, line! A line filled with studded leather jackets and squatter flaps and cute skinny punk rock boys like this one:
mmmm... I remember this one well, too. I remember that I longed to touch him inappropriately — because sometimes a BAAAAAAD touch can be a REALLY REALLY GOOOOOOD touch.
So me and the cute punk rock boys get our wristbands and then the owner tells us to go and bug other people for the next hour-and-a-half and "no, you can't loiter in front of the store, cos if I get fined, I'm sending you the bill and banning you from the store for life". Having nothing else planned, I wandered across the street to a building labelled "Underground Art Museum" — but apparently this sign is old, because the building now houses a yoga and massage and this sweet old hippie sort of lady works there, and she offered me tea and listened to some of my stories about my many travels.
At 7.45pm, I headed back out to the punk store, and Rodney Anonymous is out in front being entertained by somebody's kid. So, then at 8pm, the owner of Crash Bang Boom let us all in (those of us with wristbands, anyway), and we all sat on the floor and the band played an acoustic set. Here are some really shitty photos from that:
And here are some pretty decent videos shot by a fellow by the name of "Dirty Sanchez" from the Dead Milkmen message board:
After the performance, I talked to the band a little bit, after all, aboiut ten years ago, I interviewed Rodney Anonymous for the now-defunct small-press scene 'zine I worked on that only just barely made it to the first issue, and I've been e-mailing with Joe since his performance in Toledo on September 16th. I went back to my host's place pretty much right after the in-store event, but first I managed to get some walking directions back to the Market Street (BLUE LINE!) subway from Joe. Joe drew me a crude map in a sharpie on the back of my print-out receipt for my Greyhound fare. As Joe drew this crude map, there formed a semi-circle around us by other people at the store and I managed to blurt out "I'm hopelessly in love with him, because he makes me feel like I'm a decent height for a man younger than eighty and older than twelve" (for those not in-the-know, I'm 5'2" and Joe Talcum is 5'4") — this made Dean laugh a little, and upon that slight laughter, I sudden
ly realised that I actually said that rather than just thinking it, and it is those awkward moments of unintentional speaking that often make for some of the best stories of my life.
And, because that "hopelessly in love with him" bit was 100% absolutely true, I have saved that crude map:
As I left the store, Rodney and Mrs Anonymous (credited as Vienna Linderman on their album Burn Witch Burn) followed me, cos apparently they live along the way. They then decided to tell me about where all the cool local cemeteries are at, and so I told them about Faust and about Hell, Michigan, and as they turned down their alley, Rodney said "and now here's something really spooky; it looks like we're turning into an alley here, but if you turn around and hold your head just right, it looks like we've walked through this wall" — which is oddly dad-like humour for a man who has no children.
The next day: Hallowe'en
I make my way downtown in time to met the aforementioned Gavin and her girlfriend Renee at the Greyhound station. They've arrived in town fifteen minutes late but that aside, with no real issue. We then walked the twenty-odd blocks from 10th to 30th on our way to lunch at Powelton Pizza for cheesesteaks. At 30th, my spine starts arguing with me, and I make it clear to Gavin & Renee that I can't walk any-more, so we token up our pockets and take a trolley to 38th and Market (two blocks from where my day started!) The trolleys are described by Gavin as "sardine cans on wheels", and I really can't argue with that; this was one of the more unpleasant one-way public transportation usages I've ever had, as it was the fi
rst time in the whole weekend I thought I'd be crushed to death.
At Powelton Pizza, I give Gavin her wine and Renee decides to treat me to a steak and we meet another friend of theirs we were planning on meeting up with. We then did a whole lot of sitting around and sharing stories about ex-room-mates and ex-employers and other crazy people we've known, and then the other friend had to take off, and Gavin and Renee had to get back to the Greyhound station, and it was about time that I needed to get in line for The Dead Milkmen. On my way to The Trocadero, i picked up a copy of Philadelphia's City Paper, which featured a Dead Milkmen cover story:
The Trocadero is an old vaudeville theatre (I can tell from the acoustics in the place alone — not that I was raised by ex-theatre people and trained in voice from the age of three or anything) situated in Phila's Chinatown district less than a stone's throw from the beautifully gaudy Chinese Arch, on (wait for it....) Arch Street; right next door to The Trocadero is a Malaysian restaurant (a Malay place... in... Chinatown... eh, whatever) that The Dead Milkmen crowd was spilling out in front of, so in hopes of advertising their awesome food, the restaurant sent a waitress out to offer free samples of some tasty appetizer I never learned the name of, so I shall call it "Fried Bits" (bits of what? "Oh. Formerly living tings....")
When The Troc finally let us all in, I get my insanely overpriced TicketBastard print-out ticket scanned (serious, $2.50 to download a PDF and turn on my printer — and the PDF had adverts on it! They're getting paid to charge me to use my own printer — and this is on top of the $5.50 "TicketMaster fee" $1 "venue fee", and $4.25 "processing fee", bringing my $18.75 admission to $32 — needless to say, I made damned sure I got to the in-store performance the day before, so that it felt like I was getting my money's worth.) After locating the gents' lavvies, I bought a set of ear plugs and then went upstairs to the bar. At the bar, I bought myself some whiskey and then went to go sit and watch the first round of Secret Cinema shorts and the first band, The Tough Shits, in the balcony bleachers. As I'm s
itting down, I hear "How you enjoying the city so far?" behind me — it's Joe! And he's taunting me! Well, OK, maybe Joe isn't evil enough to taunt me, and I was wearing my shirt that said "FAGGOT", so it's possible that he honestly thought he was being nice by promptly sitting next to me in the bleachers.
The Tough Shits were good in the way The Dead Boys were good, and since Stiv Bators was a god among men, I did enjoy the obvious influence. Then more Secret Cinema shorts and then the band Live Not On Evil, which is fronted by the owner of Crash Bang Boom. Live Not On Evil are pretty good, kind of in a more 45 Grave vein than the Christian Death one that they're compared to on Last.FM.
Speaking of 45 Grave, previously, the most rambunctious mosh pit I've been in over the last fifteen years of punk shows has been Penis Flytrap (fronted by Dinah Cancer of 45 Grave) at their Las Vegas show in 2003; Amino Acids, a band I've seen live four times now, and Bella Morte, who I've seen live two or three times, usually attract crowds that gets really rowdy, but seriously, Amino and Bella fans can't hold a candle to the way Dinah Cancer can work a crowd into a frenzy.
...or so i thought, until I made my way down to the standing room of The Trocadero to see The Dead Milkmen. This was the first time that the pit and the crowd actually had me afraid that I would be crushed to death — and if I'm going to be crushed to death by cute punk boys, I'd rather we were all naked and in a massive orgy, not fully clothed at a concert. Needless to say, being the first ever casualty of a Dead Milkmen concert is an unacceptable way to die, in my opinion, so I made my way to the furthest outskirts of the pit and got up against a wall, where I managed to get these three even shttier photos:
And some guy about four feet in front of me and a minimum ten inches taller than me got this video:
I also managed to get a photo of this guy, who said his friend made these shirts:
Now, us real hardcore Dead Milkmen fans know what this is all about. If i said too much, I'd ruin it, but I can still say that if you have no idea what this all means, get yourself a copy of The Dead Milkmen album Metaphysical Graffiti and listen to the whole thing, because the little spoken segues of Rodney's keep getting funnier as you hear more of them. The last one is a hidden track colloquially known as "Cousin Earl", and then this shirt will make sense. I suppose you can just listen to "Cousin Earl", but trust me, the segues interspersed throughout the record make "Cousin Earl" that much funnier.
...but yes, needless to say, I want one of these shirts and have been trying to find out who this guy is who made them (like hell I could hear anything at The Troc) so I can buy one off of him.
As I'm leaving The Trocadero, I get directions from these sweet guys dressed as Fred Flintstone and BamBam Rubble, and when I said "Hey, I'm visiting for the weekend from Ann Arbor", BamBam put a hand on my shoulder and said "Wait! I heard they were Straightening Out that town."
"That they are. It's an embarrassment to the city's legacy."
"Oh! You poor dear! [console console]"
My last day in Phila was spent parking my kiester outside a closed place on South Street and trying to sell my last four copies of New Dance and some SubGenius/Crap*Magnet buttons I have. I managed to sell a button and give away every business card I brought with me, but that was about it. Being Sunday, there really wasn't much else to do, so I made my way back to Chinatown and stopped at this restaurant and ordered some soup that I had with some hot tea while I finished Breakfast At Tiffany's (which is much better than the film, albeit far more bitter-sweet; though I'm sorry, I have to disagree with Capote, and I simply cannot see Marilyn Monroe as Holly Golightly). The sweet old lady at the restaurant boxed up the rest of my soup and when I went to pay the bill with my cheque card, she said that they normally only take cards for a $15 minimum; I then explained that I
didn't have enough cash and I was from out-of-town and started to look very worried, to which she responded "well, OK, I can make an exception for you," -- and then I wrote in a $2 top for an $8 bill. I figured it was the least I could do, since she had already decided to bend the rules. And hey, the soup, despite being filled with egg bits that I sat and picked out, was very much worth a 25% tip.
Back at my host's place, at 8pm-ish, I watched Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums to round out my day of bitter-sweet media. The next day, I showered, etc..., packed up the big stuff and took a walk around the neighbourhood to commune with that part of the city, then went back in, packed up the rest of my stuff and slowly made my way back to the Market Street subway (stopping for about a minute once every block), and with ample enough time to prepare for any Greyhound-related incompetence whilst getting my bags checked and waiting in line. I got there early enough that I didn't have to upgrade to Priority Seating, but instead had to spend that five dollars, I shit you not, on a soda and a packet of peanut butter crackers at the vending machines. The vending machines at Greyhound stations are typically pricier than they are anywhere else, but the Phila station Greyhound vending machines are the most expensive vending machines I've ever seen — $2.25 for a
Cocal-Cola and $1.90 for those crappy peanut butter cracker-wiches; the same peanut butter cracker-wiches that say "50¢" on the cellophane at any convenience store in the country and are only 75¢ at the Pittsburgh station — but I hadn't eaten yet, so I paid it and dealt with it.
All in all, I really enjoyed Philadelphia, and I'd have to say that it's kind of a coin toss between moving there or Chicago. What Chicago has in its favour is very slightly better public transit, twice the population, and an established Mod & Trad Skin scene (or at least an established one that I know about). What Phila has in its favour is cheaper rent, warmer weather, and honestly, the fact that when somebody says "you'll probably get stabbed in that neighbourhood" is not, in Philadelphia, the "no, really! I'm not a racialist!" way of saying "that neighbourhood needs more white people" — but then again, a city that's over 40% Black may just have that quirk. As much as I love Chicago, I can't make heads or tails out of why so many people are afraid of the Hyde Park neighbourhood, where my friend Shaun lives. I've seriously encountered people in Chicago who proudly se
lf-identify as "North Side Negroes" and then detail how they'd never be caught dead in Hyde Park when, in fact, Hyde Park is home to one of the city's best private schools and is where the Obamas lived before moving into The White House. It's a nice neighbourhood and for all the niceness, it's actually got pretty reasonable rents; I've walked around Hyde Park drunk as all get-out in the middle of the night and have felt and actually proved to be perfectly safe, so the only reason so many people are "afraid" of Hyde Park amounts to nothing more than racialism, if you ask me. So the fact that I wouldn't have to defend my neighbourhood for anything less than a genuine (read: not-bigoted) reason to my bar friends in Phila, and therefore less headache, speaks well of the town to me.
So, that was my weekend of The Dead Milkmen in Philadelphia. Great band, excellent performance, beautiful city, lovely people.
Go forth and fill your libraries with media.
Seriously, thanks to everyone for being so amazing and patient. You are the reason I love Vox.
I was just told that the Amazon Conduit will be fixed by tomorrow. I will post here as soon as I get word that it's back up and running.
I know this has been frustrating and I am sorry there wasn't more I could do to make it less so. I really appreciate your patience though.
Cheers,
Originally published at Searching for the Young Soul Rebel. You can comment here or there.
youngsoulrebel: You know, I saw him shirtless in _Rebel Without a Cause_, but James Dean really wasn't that muscular:
OgdruJahad333: True. At least until people who learned to draw from looking at Tom of Finland started drawing him.
youngsoulrebel: LOL
Originally published at Searching for the Young Soul Rebel. You can comment here or there.
youngsoulrebel: You know, I saw him shirtless in _Rebel Without a Cause_, but James Dean really wasn't that muscular:OgdruJahad333: True. At least until people who learned to draw from looking at Tom of Finland started drawing him.
youngsoulrebel: LOL
Bad news. As many of you have probably noticed, the Amazon Conduit was not fixed in the last week's release. Unfortunately, there was an undetected bug that is preventing the conduit from working.
We are working on this bug fix and hope to have the Conduit back up and running this week.
I will keep you posted.
Thank you for being so patient.
So I cut. Twice in the last week. Before i left New York while being with Jay right after we had sex and today after he cut in the morning. I took the hottest bath and cut my leg open with a razor. Three little triplet cuts everywhere, bleeders, too. I am trying to make him feel responsible, i helped him out this morning and then slipped into cuttage myself this afternoon. I sat on the phone lulling him to sleep and the other way around "he can't have this conversation right now". I'm being submissive where i should yell at him that I DO need this conversation RIGHT NOW.
This is the moment where independant, self-sufficient women would dump the fag. This moment should have happend a while ago when I realized he's a pot smoking fuck up with no future ( which isnt true, hes too lucky not to have a future and his family adores him too much to let him not have one...hell always have something. )
I want to yell and shout firstly at him and how much i love him and second at my incompetence to differenciate my emotional layers. Am i hating him cause im pushing him away? Am i angry cause i cut? Am i angry cause i let him be part of this? Am i angry cause i want him to take care of all my brain defects? Am i upset cause its another round of "I take care of you but you wont take care of me?"?
I know instantly and always what other people need. My mothers example has programmed me to do this with males, females, friends, parents of friends, bosses and kids. I just know. It gets frustrating whenever its not return but i am in dire need of the same understanding.
Originally published at Searching for the Young Soul Rebel. You can comment here or there.
"I used to press dreams between pages like moths, like flowers. Lately they flutter in through my ear and, tired, out again through my mouth." -Alejandra R.
"Just had TV license inspector round. Was obviously confused by the fact that the reason I don't have a license is because I don't have a TV. 'So what do you do for entertainment?' ... 'well, arcane things mostly, like talking to other human beings, reading, listening to music, writing, and using my imagination.' '...oh right, just sign here then please (you freak)'." -David W.
"Diana F. smells like tacos and a ruben, depending on where you sniff. Yes, she has a hard time not wearing her food. Shaddup." -Diana F.
