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JRadhirsch

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The Great American Road Trip

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Day 18: Local in a Strange Land

New York, United States

My mini vacation from my roadtrip continued today and will continue into tomorrow. Or did it? A visit from one of my mother's best friends, who has been an aunt to me form many years was accompanied by a trip to Brooklyn's Chinatown for Dim Sum.
We then meandered down the street passed food vendors with their live fish flopping about in Styrofoam coolers, the dusty air of ginseng sellers, the eggy aroma of pastry shops and many a pirated DVD amidst the hustle of eager shoppers looking for the right ingredient for that night's dinner at the right price.


Did you drink your Happy today?



permalink written by  JRadhirsch on September 18, 2008 from New York, United States
from the travel blog: The Great American Road Trip
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Day 16, part 4: Coast to Coast

New York, United States

3,892.0 Miles

Oakland to New York City

16 States in 16 Days:

California >
Nevada >
Oregon >
Idaho >
Montana >
Wyoming >
South Dakota >
Minnesota >
Wisconsin >
Illinois >
Indiana >
Michigan >
Ontario >
New York >
Pennsylvania >
New Jersey >
New York (again)

permalink written by  JRadhirsch on September 17, 2008 from New York, United States
from the travel blog: The Great American Road Trip
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Day 16: Niagara Falls into the long arm of the law

Niagara Falls, Canada

I left Toronto bright and shiny and headed towards Niagara Falls. There are two sets of falls: the Canadian Falls, shaped like a horseshoe; and the American Falls in a straight line. The Canadian side offers the best viewing point as you can see both falls clearly. What surprised me the most was how close you can get to the Canadian Falls. The picture above was taken without a zoom. If I had wanted to I could have jumped into a barrel and been submerged in touristy wetness in seconds. It certainly is beautiful to boot. As the USA was only a couple hundred feet away I picked up a cell signal, email, and Twitter from Canada. I called loved ones and marveled in being in two places at once. Having drunk in the beauty, I got back in my car and drove towards Peace Bridge which connects Canada and Buffalo, NY.

Peaceful it was not. Something about my answers to the border guards questions pissed him off. His tone and demeanor changed mid sentence instantly informing me that I was to be further questioned and that my car was going to be searched. I'm still not sure what I said or did, but man he turned into a real jerk. What a difference between Canadian and American Border Guards. Canada was all "Eh", and America was all "Fuck Yeah!, unless we don't like you, in which case, Fuck You!" The intensity of the questioning room was well, intense. There are dozens of well armed, shaved headed, testosterone fueled officers who love to stare you down and intimidate you. One poor kid also pulled over in the room with me asked to go to the bathroom and was denied several times. When they weren't looking, he went anyway and that really got their goat. I was asked a slew of questions, asked for my keys and then told to wait. He came back with my car key, stamped a piece of paper and instructed me to hand it to the officer outside. That officer turned out to be the guy who originally got pissed off at me. He had this dejected/accusatory/shocked look on his face and pointed towards my car. When I got to it I found the passenger door ajar and the contents riffled through. Gee, welcome home. I went on this trip looking for America and found the ugly side right here at its edge. The filling is great, it's just the crust that sucks. The arrogance mixed with machismo in dealing with perceived threats is an ugly stain on this country. There is no reason why I couldn't have been treated with an ounce of respect while still getting the information they needed and preventing Global Thermonuclear War. I would hope that in their job they would see the folly in injecting personal feelings and emotions, but I guess that's what happens when you give guys guns and tell them its their job to protect America at all costs.

permalink written by  JRadhirsch on September 16, 2008 from Niagara Falls, Canada
from the travel blog: The Great American Road Trip
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Day 16, part 2: Upstate

Buffalo, United States

Elizabeth Abram cured my angry American woes. Liz and my sister Cara were best friends in High School. She is in her second year of Medical School in Buffalo, president of her class and just an all around impressive human being. I'm so glad that she emailed me to see if I was coming through Buffalo. I got the grand tour of this former industrial powerhouse from someone who knows how to give a good tour.
We first went for World Famous buffalo wings at Anchor Bar.
I LOVE buffalo wings and often rate a pub based on it's wings. I used to think the secret to true Buffalo wings is the sauce. The official "secret" recipe is this: one part Frank's Red Hot Sauce to one part butter. Want it hotter? less butter. less hot? more butter. Places that didn't use this formula made bad wings in my view. Now I know. While that is still true, it wasn't until I had unfrozen Chicken wings deep fried at Anchor that I had the real deal. Anchor butchers its own chickens. They aren't frozen and the meat is extra juicy because of it.

Following that we went on a tour of Buffalo in her Miata. I used to have one and miss it on a trip like this. Not having a roof is a godsend on a road trip. We zoomed around the city and found our way to Babeville, a converted church that is owned by one of my most favorite Punk/Folk artists Ani Difranco. She and her label, Righteous Babe Records bought the decaying building a few years back as part of the cities reinvestment initiative and have converted it into a performance space and art gallery. Liz is planning her 30th birthday party which gave us a perfect excuse to get a tour of the space and poke around. I could hear Ani in a back room in a meeting, but didn't want to barge in. They did a beautiful job with the church. This is the Righteous Babe logo in Mozaic down in one of the bar spaces.

We tooted around a bunch more and then said our goodbyes as I headed through the rest of "upstate" on my way to the city of New York


permalink written by  JRadhirsch on September 16, 2008 from Buffalo, United States
from the travel blog: The Great American Road Trip
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Day 16, part 3: On my way "home"

Binghamton, United States

New York is a very large state, yet, they insist on calling everything north or west of New York City "upstate." I lived for the first 18 years of my life in this state, but ventured upstate extremely rarely, and had never been to most o fit, including most of what I drove through today. The names of towns were burned into my psyche, but usually with the prefix SUNY. When you live in New York and apply to state schools, names like Buffalo, Binghamton, Oneonta, Purchase, and Utica recall the terror of SAT tests, essay questions and hormones gone rampant. Now I was able to attach visuals to a few of them. Rolling tree covered hills, brick smoke stacks, and blue collar bars now replaced scantron forms and shaded checkboxes.
I stopped for dinner in Binghamton at a place called Sharkey's
who specialized is something called Spiedies, a local delicacy of heavily marinated pork cubes on a skewer. They were delicious, but didn't photograph well. They also had a steamed clam offer of a dozen for 4 bucks. Those were more photogenic.
And also delicious. Well, anything drowning in clarified butter is delicious.

the trip down through New York actually passed through Pennsylvania and New Jersey before crossing back into New York. The trip actually passed within 10 Miles of my parent's summer home in the Pocono mountains and I considered pulling off the highway and spending the night there, but pushed on to Staten Island.


permalink written by  JRadhirsch on September 16, 2008 from Binghamton, United States
from the travel blog: The Great American Road Trip
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Day 14 and 15: Toronto

Toronto, Canada

I've gotten to spend quite of bit of time (relatively) in Toronto and have really fallen in love with this city and it's people. This town loves it's arts and supports it. For example, The circus that KGD helps run has quite the healthy audience that keeps coming back even though they don't advertise. There are a ton of performing arts organizations all over town representing a wide variety of styles and they all seem to be doing well. The nightlife seems particularly active outside of theater as well.

KGD, Marc, Hillary and I went on a field trip to Kensington Market which is best described as a more authentic version of NYC's West Village. They had awesome thrift shops and I came away buying a shirt and two pairs of pants. I could have easily spent a lot more money and had to remind myself that I didn't have a job. Everything was reasonable and offered a much wider selection than anything we have back in the Bay Area's second hand shops. The neighborhood was filled cool shops and cafes. There was this car on thew street that acted as a planter box.

And a great raw food cafe that had a true living garden on the roof.

This over priced painting spoke volumes to me.
as did this street poster

While relating my cheese curds fascination to Hillary, she clued me in to Poutine, a local variation on Gravy fries what come with Cheese Curds. As you will remember, I had Cheese Curds in Wisconsin, Deep Fried Cheese Curds in Michigan, and now I needed to complete the Curd Trifecta with Poutine. (pronounced Poo-tin, btw) We hunted the city for the best ones, and came up short, only finding gravy fries with shredded cheese in several places. This one had what is called Montreal Smoked Meat on top. It looks gross, but it was quite delicious.

My second full day here I opted to play tourist and went to the CN Tower, one of the "seven wonders of the modern world" Much like The Empire State Building in NY, you can pay them a bunch of money to ride an elevator to an observation deck, unlike the Empire State Building, there was only one teller, and I wasn't hassled and hustled at every opportunity to buy some other deluxe package or map variation.
one of the nice things about the CN tower is that they have a section that has a glass floor so that you can see all the way down. I loved watching people freak out over their fears of falling while in a very safe environment.
I spent the rest of the afternoon walking the streets of Toronto getting a pretty good feeling for the town. I rode the subway for a spell and then walked back to KGD and June's house. Later that night we went to Dirty Bingo hosted by a Drag Queen who gave out sex toys as prizes. I won an inflatable sheep, but gave it to KGD since I was playing his card at the time. I have always loved Bingo. When in Vegas its my game of choice and it was nice to see another variation on a game that I keep thinking I need to have at my bar on slow nights.

Tomorrow I'm off to Niagra Falls and then to meet Liz Abram, my sister's best friend from High School who lives in Buffalo. While there I'm going to try and see the home Ani DiFranco's label Righteous Babe Records and eat some genuine Buffalo Wings before the long drive to my childhood home in Staten Island. Once ther I will have driven Coast to Coast and will have gone the furthest away from Oakland before turning back and driving home. I see Justine in less than a week and I'm very excited for that. It's about time that I get to share in this adventure with someone I love. I can't wait!

permalink written by  JRadhirsch on September 15, 2008 from Toronto, Canada
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Day 13: Rain Rain Rain

Toronto, Canada

The iphone told me that it would take me 8 hours to reach Toronto. FAIL. 12 hours. and all of it soggy, overcast, and down right wet. I walked to my car outside Joy's apartment to find it nearly flooded.
Some of the upholstery like the floor mats were soaked and luckily I didn't have anything valuable in the floor of the car. I dried it out some and kept the air conditioning on for the remainder of the day to act as dehumidifier. The rain had dine a number on the roads as well, with this poor sports car stuck in the flooded out freeway
The rest of the drive as I said was long and rainy. I stopped at a fast food place called Culver's for luch as I had never heard of them before, kept seeing them all through the midwest and their featured burger was called the butterburger. It was okay. I don't know why I felt the need to eat fast food, but it seemed very midwest to me and so, when in Rome..... One thing they featured on the mune was deep fried Cheese Curds. I needed to find out more. not so good. no squeak and really heavy. too heavy. Cheese Curd=yum, Deep Fried Cheese Curds=gross. I had a lovely "chat" with the customs agent at the border who let me through wishing me good fortunes on my trip and sailed in to Canada. This is now officially the Great (North) American Road Trip. The rain continued and I proceeded to get turned around outside Toronto. Very confusing highway system up here in the north. I finally found my way to my destination, the Gravity Center, a circus performance space converted out of an old Vaudeville house via warehouse space. My friend and fellow Lost Penguin (the name of our Burning Man camp) Kitchen God Dave (KGD for short, or just Dave) co hosts a monthly cabaret called the Lunacy Cabaret in Toronto and I got there for the second half and then after party. I felt like I was at home. no really.
This was thew wall in one of the performer's rooms. He also had an amazing collection of creepy clowns
and we spent the night hanging out with lost Penguins old and new. Some who had just been to the burn for their first time and were on their way back to Australia, some of whom I had camped with a few years back from Toronto, and some I had never met before, but knew who they were via camp lore. It was really great. One a Penguin always a Penguin. Ark Ark.

permalink written by  JRadhirsch on September 13, 2008 from Toronto, Canada
from the travel blog: The Great American Road Trip
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Day 12: Illinois

Chicago, United States

I can't see everything in this trip and the past few days have pointed that out to me even more clearly. My original plan was to go North from Sioux Falls, SD into North Dakota, and then through Winnipeg, Canada on my way to my friends in Toronto, but the more I kept looking at the map, the more The US midwest kept calling me and the less the northern coast of Lake Superior. Thing is, I knew I wasn't going to have enough time to hang around and smell the roses as it were. I'm really glad I did come through as I got to go to Baraboo and see the Forevertron and eat Cheese Curds, but it meant that I was only with my hosts a night each. I left Madison for a full day's drive through rainy Illinois.
The only thing I took pictures of on my drive was this silo with Pumpkin
I got to Chicago and sat in as much traffic as it took to get to Chicago. 2 hours to get to Chicago and 2 hours sitting in Traffic (at 1pm on a Thursday no less.) I met up with my friend Joy
whom I used to work with at CalShakes in Berkeley. Joy is an amazing person. She's super smart and really enjoys the ridiculous. She's also very political and is on a one woman mission to save animals from cruelty. She rescued this awesomely sweet pit bull named Rosetta Cheese when we first met and it was just as nice to spend time with Rosetta. Such a good dog. Joy gave me a tour of the Theater company she's working for, Steppenwolf and while there I ran in to a Jim Ingalls, a Lighting Designer whom I have the utmost respect for. I most recently worked with Jim at ACT on a movement based piece last year, but for years admired his work while a student at Emerson and then working for various theater and dance companies. He's the best of the best and one of the nicest and most considerate people out there. What a treat to hang out with people I know, love and haven't seen in a while on this trip. Later that night Joy and I went out for Ethiopian food and I got the dime tour of Chicago. It was the first city I had been to that reminded me of Downtown Manhattan. I got a little home sick for New York and understood why Chicago was such a beloved town. After dinner we caught a showing of the new Coen brother's film Burn After Reading which I loved, though not as much as some of their other films.

permalink written by  JRadhirsch on September 12, 2008 from Chicago, United States
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Day 11: Pie

Osseo, United States

Wisconsin. Land of Norse and cows. How I love both. I started out my trip across Wisconsin in the tiny town of Osseo thanks to a sign on the freeway talking up Norkse Nooks, a restaurant and bakery. Norske is a multiple blue ribbon award winner for it's pies at the National Pie competition.
I had some Norwegian pancakes for breakfast with Lingonberries and they were yumm.
I followed it up with a slice of Sour Cream Raspberry pie which was also very yum. Horray for the Norske.

permalink written by  JRadhirsch on September 11, 2008 from Osseo, United States
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Day 11 part 2: CHEESE

Baraboo, United States

If you thought the moon was made of cheese, you'd be wrong. Wisconsin is made of cheese. I visited a cheese factory in Mauston Wisconsin and bought a 4 year old cheddar, a wedge of Sheep's milk Truffle cheese and the ultimate in Wisconsin cheese: Cheese curds. Also known as Squeeky Cheese for the sound it makes when you bite into it. Imagine the sound of two balloons rubbing up against each other and that's what it sounds like. Salty, queeky and yummy. I love cheese curds. I found out that you need to eat them within 24 hours of their being made or it loses its freshness and squeek. The fresher, the squeekier.

Those other two places were discovered by impulse. My real destination was Baraboo Wisconsin. Baraboo is where the Barnum and Bailey Circus started and wintered for many decades before being bought by the Feld family and moving to Sarasota, Florida. They have a museum called Circus World. It is also home to the fantastical scrap sculpture garden called Doctor Evermore's Forevertron.

I'll talk about the Forevertron first as it was my priority and the first place I visited today. Finding the forevertron is difficult. My directions listed the following: "On Hwy 12 between Baraboo and West Freedom, behind the salvage yard and across the highway from the munitions plant." There are no signs for it, just a few steel sculptures near the side of the road that hint at it's existence. I pulled into the drive way only to be met with a locked gate. There was a small washed out sign that told me to call Elenore. So I called her and she told me she was halfway to Madison, but that I could pull into the surplus yard next door, walk through their back lot and into the garden, but that I shouldn't climb on anything. She wasn't kidding. I walked through all this refuse and caught a glimpse of a very tall fantastical looking sculpture looking like something out of an apocalyptic disney land hiden amongst what looked like wild forest. Once I hiked through overgrown vegetation, I came upon 2 acres of rusted steel menageries and whimsical welded Jules Verne-esque futurist machinery. There was a little planning on its layout, but pretty much stuff was everywhere. with little thought to its placement. The whole grounds were overgrown and I'm sure there were many more pieces that I couldn't see hidden under brush and tall grass. My pictures do not do it justice. Go look it up and see someone else's attempt to document it. Here's a selection of the best of what I took.This represents about 1% of what is there. The forevertron alone made this trip worth it. please, come see this place. You won't believe it.

Also in the yard (and an excellent segue to the Circus World Museum) was this awesome Clown Car. Read the back inscription. Priceless.

Across Baraboo I found the awesome Circus World.

As it was a Wednesday in September at 3pm I had the whole place to myself. It was very creepy. Lots of circus music being piped in with no one to hear it. The museum was great though. Amazing displays of floats, costumes, clowns, animals and the world's largest collection of circus wagons.

Fuck Yeah!
They have 2 whole buildings dedicated to the restoration and display of hundreds of beautifully carved and painted circus wagons, most of which had the full life history of each explaining which circus and when they were used and what act or animal it was used to display. I didn't take enough pictures. oh well. They also had life masks of some famous clowns who then painted their own faces.
Later that night I met up with my couchsurfing hosts Rachel and Nick who were awesome. I so love couchsurfers. They just moved here and were as excited to see Madison as I was. We didn't get to see much as I wasn't able to stay that long, but we went out to dinner at a very Wisconsin restaurant where I had Mac and Cheese with grilled rings of bologna. Oh, and a can of Schlitz. i wish I had more time in Madison. I very much want to come back.

Today head to Chicago to visit my friend Joy who moved there to work for the Goodman Theater. I don;t think I'll get to see much Chicago, but then I'm off to Toronto to see my Burning Man campmates KGD, June, and who know who else. I should drive through Buffalo on my way down to New York on the 16th (?) and then finally see pick up Justine who I miss terribly on the 20th in DC.

permalink written by  JRadhirsch on September 11, 2008 from Baraboo, United States
from the travel blog: The Great American Road Trip
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