Noah continues his cross country road trip.
In my last trip log, I left off with Michelle and I saying farewell to our friends, Mark Jenkins and his lady friend Sandra, and then continuing our treck up north towards Pennsylvania's largest city, Philadelphia.
It only took us an afternoon drive to get to the City of Brotherly Love (from philos "loving" and adelphos "brother"), which I had actually never been to before, but was excited to finally check out. I guess the place is pretty special for Michelle, and she luckily had a lot of friends there that could take us around and show us a good time. They made sure we had a place to crash and that we'd be able to load up on all of their favorite things during our 4 day stay. Those being: water ice, Wawa iced tea, foul beans, pretzels, fake/vegetarian cheesesteaks, Yuengling beer ... and everything else they have that is good there.
I had never heard of "Wawa" before, and wasn't actually impressed as much as everyone else, but since then I've noticed on multiple occasions, people with real life "Wawa" tattoos ... Must be an especially popular convieniance store. I found this particular photo on google, but seriously, I've seen a bunch of those inked geese around, especially on the east coast. While we were visiting we holed up in West Philly with Michelle's friend Tim and all of his unique and awesome housemates. All were way nice, and hopfully they let us come back again some time. Hey you guys! If you're reading this you should know that our place is always available if you ever come travel in this direction.
That tall, blue building with the spire is known as One Liberty Place, and the one to it's right is it's younger sister, Two Liberty Place. One Liberty Place was locally famous for being the first building to break the "gentlemen's agreement", which was not to exceed the 548 ft (167 m) height of the William Penn statue on Philadelphia City Hall built in 1901. In breaking this "agreement", the so-called "Curse of Billy Penn" was born - a Bambino-like hex that supposedly affects the city's professional sport franchises. Since One Liberty Place was completed, Philadelphia's major sports teams (the Phillies, the Eagles, the 76ers, and the Flyers) have failed to win national championships.
Another thing I noticed about downtown was that there were a lot of sculptures that resembled small, everday objects. This included a giant clothes pin, a domino, and a Sorry game piece.
Every city's gotta have one of these.
Philidelphia's dirty street water ... Atleast it looks kinda cool.
I also noticed an unusual amount of fruit stand trucks in Philly. I think we bought some stuff more than a few times from this one in particular. Super cheap.
One of the first things we stopped to look at on our way in was this Pep Boys mural. I don't know if that's Manny, Moe, or Jack, but I get more of an Adolf impression myself ...
I also saw these two really awesome murals of a boys choir.
Aren't they great/slightly creepy?!
There was also a fair amount of graffiti in Philly, which in my opinion, is usually a good thing. For the most part, it was either silly or atleast really creative, which kinda reminded me of my home in Seattle, or of the huge amounts of graffiti in SanFrancisco, CA.
FARTSKIN
Sick shades.
This one is mediocre, but I always get stoked on people painting characters rather than just a single, scribbled catchy word.
One major highlight of our stay in Philly was the time we spent at the Mütter Museum. This place was soooooooo, so so, SO awesome. If you ever have the oppurtunity, GO. The Mütter Museum is a museum of medical oddities, antique medical equipment, and biological specimens located in the College of Physicians of Philadelphia. The original purpose of the collection was medical research and education, but today it is used as a museum for the general public. Basically it's a freak show. Up above is a picture of some dood's 5'-long colon! He had a disease called "Mega Colon" aka, Hirschsprung's Disease, which is caused when a portion of the colon's nerves don't develop correctly. Because of that, the muscles don't recieve any signals to push the shit on through, causing chronic constipation and a HUGE stretched colon. When the dood died they preserved it and took out "2 pails full of excrement!"
There was also a fair amount of really cool artwork there, so I picked up a bunch of postcards to send to some people back home. This one is a "plate from Tabulae scelete et musculorum corporis humani (Leiden, 1747) by Bernard Siegfried Albinus. Drawn by the renowned artist Jan Wandelaar."
This hand in a jar had gangrene, and was one of the original donations given to the museum.
These are skeletons of a 3'6" dwarf next to a 7'6" giant. Amazing.
Here's another print, or plate, "from Planches Anitomiques du Corps Humain by Francesco Antommarchi (Paris, 1826) and illustrated by the Comte Charles Philibert de Lasteyrie. The author was Napoleon's physician, and this copy once belonged to Napoleon's widow, Empress Marie Louise."
This here is a wax model of a woman with a horn (cornu cutaneum)! The horn was succesfully removed after six-years growth from Madame Dimanche, a Persian widow, in the early 19th century. Gnarly! They have some of the strangest of the strange things at this museum ... everything from deformed fetuses in jars, to the malignant tumor removed from President Grover Cleveland's hard palate, to the conjoined liver from Chang and Eng Bunker (the original Siamese twins), to a fat, dead lady who had so much fat that it saponified as she decomposed and she pretty much turned into a giant black bar of soap. My stomach turns every time I think of it, but in a good way. It's a must see.
Sadly, the worst thing that happened over the course of our entire road trip, also happened to happen in Philly ... I hate this story, but I must tell it. One night, Michelle and I, and all of the people we were staying with, decided to go over to some worker-run bar just down the block. It was this supper tiny cramped place above some Ethiopian restaurant (that we ate at the day before), and we figured I could prolly get in, even though I was a minor. Well, it worked. I had a beer and a shot, but unfortunetly the room with live music was too cramped, so we decided to go hang out in the hallway. There, some guy who worked there told me I had to move into the pool room because there was no drinking allowed in the hall (even though he himself had a Pabst in hand ...) Whatever, I didn't want any trouble, so we all moved over a room. In there were 2 pool tables where these two older, shit faced, Ethiopian guys were playing some game involving chess pieces and pool balls. I have no idea what the game was, but I was intrigued. I decided to take a picture and maybe introduce myself to the guys to figure out what was going on. I guess it just seemed like the right tourist thing to do. INSTEAD, the guys flipped out once they saw the camera flash, and told me that I must remove the film in my camera and have it destroyed! Obviously they were paranoid of somthing, and obviously they didn't know how a digital camera worked ... I told them I'd delete the picture, which I did, but for some reason they decided to get their sweaty faces all up in my what-the-fuck-is-going-on face, and get into a yelling match with me! We cursed at eachother for a long time, a tug of war with my digital camera insued, and they believed the only way to destroy the photo of them was to smash the camera on the floor! Yes, they actually believed this logic ... Anyway, I got hella nervous, I guess someone saw a knife, people were yelling, I was scared I was gonna get busted for being under age, and I think I was about to get into my very first (bar)fight. Things were looking real shitty, but I was doing my best to try and act like I had a grip on the situation until randomly, about 5 minutes into it, the bar's manager showed up (who was also one of the guys playing live music)... He calmed things down a little bit, showed the morons how a digital camera worked, and showed them that there were no pictures of them on my memory card. They actually seemed to enjoy looking at my pictures of the Lincoln Memorial, which ticked me off even more, causing me to curse at them again, getting me kicked out of the bar. It was a nightmare, and I actually had a hard time sleeping for days afterwords. My words of advice, DON'T EVER GO TO THE RESTAURANT CALLED ABYSSINIA, OR THE BAR UPSTAIRS CALLED FIUME, on 45th and Locust st. The doods from the restaurant downstairs were ass holes, and the people running the bar didn't know how to handle the situation. I mean, the workers were drinking in the hall, they didn't check ID's (not always a bad thing, heh heh), and they let shit faced douche bags throw their weight around, causing fights like this. Someone later mentioned to me that apparently those 2 guys were part of some sort of Ethiopian mob or somthing, which is kinda hard for me to believe, but whatever. All I know is that they were A-holes, and that I will remain forever bitter!
Anyway, the whole Ethiopian mobster photoshoot incident totally turned me off, and out of fear, I imidiatly stopped taking as many pictures from that point on ... One night our friends were having a large house-warming party, and we all hung out on the porch and ate chips and drank beer and mango rum while swapping stories with random Philadelphians. I met a ton of crust-punks who were drinking from Franzia wine bags that they had ripped from the box, and I saw one dood pass out with a ton of orange puke on his shirt. It was fun. Sadly, I was too worried I might offend someone by taking their picture, so the only photos I got from that night are of some random wheat pastes I saw while walking around drunk that night, not from the party itself.
I love the huge ass snake in this one, and the wear and tear seems to work well with the images.
We kept driving by this place and so finally I had to go get a picture of this boarded up door, painted like an un-boarded up door. Does that make sense?
One night while we were out on a beer/movie run (Pee-wee's Big Adventure), I found this piece laying out in the street. I thought it was really cool, but there was no way we could keep fitting more stuff into our tiny car, so I hung it up at the house we were staying at. Ironically, today at work I found the same exact painting being thrown away!
We also checked out the Italian Market, a place in Philly that Michelle and I'd never gone to before. They had an amazing cheese store and a pasta shop where we got some really delicious ravioli. After a stop at that vegetable truck I mentioned earlier, we cooked a delicious meal for the folks we were staying with.
The market was a lot different than I had expected, in that not only did it sell meats and cheeses and produce or whatever, but because there were also a ton of venders there selling everything from weird little toys like this action figure, to dishwashing scrubber pads, to sets of puffy stickers in the shape of Michael Jackson. Yes, Michelle bought some of those for a dollar.
I also tried atleast 3 different types of vegetarian hoagies during our visit, though I didn't try any from the world famous take out restaurant, Geno's. I really wasn't into the vibe this place was putting off ... There were actually bumper stickers stuck to the building that said things like, "Know how to read? Thank a teacher. Know how to read English? Thank a Marine." Not to mention that they sold "Freedom Fries!" What a bunch of meat heads ...
Another favorite Philly pastime was going to get water ice multiple times a day. Water ice is so good! It's kind of like a cross between a Slurpee and sorbet ... Not exactly creamy, but it doesn't have that crunchy, icey feeling you'd expect either. I got the pinapple flavor a lot, but I also heard that there was one place around that sold a kind with chocolate chips in it! Totally perfect for the fucking terrible humidity we were putting up with while we were on the east coast. Ugh.
I've been noticing the different types of bum scenes in most of the city's we've been passing through, and I've gotta say, Philly had a colorful one. I remember this guy passed out on a super uncomfortable looking concrete step, having gigantic, yellow, toenails. Bigger than any other toenails I'd ever seen before. I was left impressed. Speaking of bums, I might as well bring up alcohol. Philadelphia has the most fucked up liquor laws I've ever heard of! What is up with all those bogus rules and times you gotta buy by, and how come you can only get 6 packs at pizza places, and everything is sold seperatly, and everything's way more expensive?! Your liquor laws are proof alone that the west coast is the best coast. We also poked around the Reading Terminal Market, a huge indoor market kind of like Pike Place in Seattle, but with a wider variety of food. The Pennsylvania Dutch Amish people also run several bakeries and meat shops there, and the scene was bustling. One thing I noticed in particular is that pretty much all the Amish people I saw were exceptionally good looking, and they all seemed to have really nice skin ...
Another night Michelle's friend, Yoni, took us out to the Space 1026 Gallery, where the "Hang 'Em High" show was going on. The gallery had a ton of woodcut print pieces done by Cannonball Press, and lots of other great folks. Check out the pictures I got from that.
A massive, totally detailed, woodcut piece. I tried doing that shit (and with linoleom too) in an art class once, and it's no walk in the park.
Some details.
More details.
Poopy humor by Dennis McNett.
Diggin' this one, but I don't know who made it :(
Is this offensive?
A definite FecalFace favorite, Maya Hayuk.
Another huge piece,
and some of it's details.
This was supposed to be a "never-seen-before collaboritive 3D woodcut construction," that was all hyped up, but I wasn't really feeling it. What's that shape supposed to be all about? Later that night we got caught up in an insane thunderstorm, but thankfully we made it back to our friends place, safe and sound.
Luckily, since it poured buckets, it relieved us of some of the humidity and it made the sky look hella rad. I caught this shot on the way out to some restaurant Yoni took us to called the Kingdom of Vegetarians. Sooo goood. Get the Dim Sum all you can eat special.
After we greased up with all the dumplings and such, Yoni took us to an "art space" to check out some local bands. The building was closing because it needed to be torn down to expand the convention center, so the gallery was having a benefit show to help with the opening of their new place, but it was kind of poorly designed. Two of the bands featured a guy who used to build sets for the teevee game show Double Dare, but none of the music was very impressive ... Actually, listening to it was straight murder, but it did make for good people-watching!
On the way out I saw a white baby peen. Also, as an aside, while we were in Philly, a sorely-needed $681 materialized into Michelle's bank account. Leery, she called the bank and it turns out that in October, right after she started school and was super-inattentive to her bank account, they mistakenly took out $681 and somehow she didn't notice [oops]. Well, this month they were doing an annual book-balancing, and someone caught the error and gave her the money back. Awesome! The lesson is to pay close attention to your bank account ...
Finally we bid adieu to the fine city of Philadelphia and headed up through New Jersey to New York City. We got bombarded with close to $20 in tolls on the roads there, and spent most of the day waiting around in New York traffic.
Goddamn, New York City is huge.
Traffic was moving so slow where ever we went, but atleast it allowed us to do a little site seeing along the way. I thought this building under construction looked really cool. Anyone from NYC know if it's done yet?
I think that this wing looking graffiti (or are they tired eyes?) was right across the street, but the reason I took a picture of it is because I've seen that all over the country now! I've seen it in Seattle a few times before, in SF once, and now in NYC. Crazy!
Driving across this was way fun.
Yankee Stadium, which apparently is going to be replaced by a New Yankee Stadium in 2008/2009.
I could just barely see New York's State Pavillion over some trees from where we were driving on the highway through Queens. I could also just barely see the Unisphere at the Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, but we had to press on and make it to our camp spot on Long Island. Originally I wanted to stay in the city for a day or 2, but I don't really know anyone in NYC, and to get a hotel would have been really expensive, plus we had to hurry so we could make it to Chicago in time for the Pitchfork Music Festival ... Hopfully someday I'll be able to go back for a couple days and I can check out the Guggenheim Museum or somthing. Anyone wanna put me up? I think it was around this point in the trip that we ran into the small community of Levittown. I decided to make a pit stop there, hoping to see somthing amazing, but since this is basically THE town that everywhere else is based on, it pretty much looks like any other suburb ... Check out this post I made last May about some really cool paintings based on the place.
Fortunately, after a much longer drive than I anticipated, we ended up at a really nice campsite on Long Island in the Wildwood State Park. I lived on the island when I was like 7, but I never really went back and forth between the city and there, so I guess I forgot how far it was. Anyway, the campsite was set back in an old coastal hardwood forest, and it was walking distance to a really nice beach. It was a shore on the northern end of Long Island, facing into the Long Island Sound. It was a nice way to end the day.
We made it just in time for the sunset.
The beach was a lot different than the kinds I saw over on the west coast at the beggining of the trip. Different types of vegetation, land forms, and even the sand had a different quality to it (much more chunky).
We saw a lots of people fishing out here, somthing I'd like to start doing again someday.
See? You can tell that the sands a lot coarser over here.
I think this was probably the furthest east that we went on the trip.
The next day we decided to go back to NYC and to check out Coney Island, which I think is actually a peninsula. Maybe it didn't used to be ...? Did you know this place used to be virtually overrun with rabbits, and rabbit hunting was common until the resorts and amusments were developed at the end of the Civil War? Speaking of which, for those of you who live in Seattle, why are there so many rabbits around Greenlake? But back to Coney Island. Here's the super famous Cyclone roller coaster (1927), which some still claim as the world's best wooden roller coaster.
And there's the huge ferris wheel, Wonder Wheel, which holds 144 riders, stands 150 feet tall, and weighs over 2,000 tons!
Coney Island definitely seems cooler in these pictures, but maybe that was because the midway was closed for a "special event" for about a billion kids all dressed in green for some summer camp thing.
More kids in green.
Even more kids dressed in green.
And all the busses they came in.
Regardless, the beach was nice and the boardwalk offered a lot of fried food. Speaking of which, if you didn't know, this is where that one famous hot dog eating contest is held every year. You know, the one that the Japanese competitive eater, Takeru "Tsunami" Kobayashi, keeps schooling everyone at. I looked up his records and the contest gives each contestant 12 minutes for each race, and he's had 6 consecutive wins, eating about 50 hot dogs per contest! Holy smokes that's foul!
I was totally impressed by this! It's called the Parachute Jump, originally called the Life Savers Parachute Jump from the 1939 World's Fair. It was the first ride of its kind, and I've actually never seen anything else like it. It's also often referred to as Brooklyn's Eiffel Tower.
How the ride works is, patrons were hoisted some 190 feet in the air and then dropped using guy-wired parachutes. This landmark ride, closed for years, was completely dismantled, cleaned, painted and restored, but there are varying opinions on whether it should reopen as a ride, or just stand as a symbolic structure. I say they go for it!
I took this picture of the beach from up on the pier. The pier had quite the assortment of characters by the way. Lots of fisherman, a guy doing card tricks, people taking pictures like me, bums, young people brown baggin' it. It was pretty cool.
Here's some of those folks fishing. My cave man instincts have totally been coming out lately. I wanna go fishing, and even the talk of the rabbit hunting made my ears perk. I don't get it. Anyone in Seattle wanna go?
What a view?! Look at all those huge apartments! After we were through with Coney Island we decided it was time to press on and to meet our new friend, Liam (whose name is not really Liam, but he wants me to call him that on the internets anyway, just to keep his true identity secret for whatever reason.) We waited in tons more New York City traffic and were left feeling kind of disenchanted with the whole thing, so we headed right up north to Syracuse, NY. New York State is really nice by the way, and so much different than the city. We passed through a bunch of hardwood forests and farms with really old farmhouses on them. I think a lot of them were growing peaches. Anyway, that's all I've got for now, but stay tuned for next time when I share stories of hangin' with Liam in Ithaca and Syracuse, and then moving on to Niagara Falls. All of which were waaayyyy more fun than I had imagined. I'm talking abandoned gun factories, fat male nudity, boat rides, waterfalls, etc. Should be good. In the mean time, if you're looking for more stuff to stare at, I've gotta blog post I had to put on my "myspace" because I guess it was too controversial for the Fecalfacers (who knew?!) It's full of very politically INcorrect found photos SOME of you MIGHT enjoy. Viewer discretion advised, as they say. Thanks for reading, leave some comments if you'd like, and I'll write more up soon. Buh-bye!
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