AngeLog

Into the Oregon woods

Driving through the Oregon woods is the scary stuff of fairy tales. Scary in a good way. It’s damp, dark and misty. Slimey, slippery and quiet. Tread carefully for Mulder or Scully might be hiding behind a tree. On the road west from Eugene to Florence there’s a forest of young fir trees (Siuslaw National Park) with moss so thick it drips from the branches. The damp roads must never have a chance to dry and the fog hangs in the tree tops like carefully placed Halloween decorations.

Growing up with a small patch of Australian bush up the road I never understood why the woods were supposed to be scary. The bush has always been a place of adventure, discovery and good times. Warm, dry and bright with a strong eucalypt scent and the comforting buzz of insects. I never once found a trail of breadcrumbs or scary bears looking for porridge.

Back in Siuslaw, the road through the forest curved on and on – even tunnelling through a mountain – before ending up by streams, rivers and finally the coast. We drove through small towns which were variations on a theme with a few quirks thrown in. One town had an eBay shopfront where a power seller (TM) was dispersing to the world the goods of computer-illiterate locals.

We spent our first night of the road trip in the seaside town of Port Orford. It was remarkably smaller and darker than Google Maps told us (things always look bright and easy on Google Maps). Despite arriving at our B&B at 5.15pm it was well and truly pitch black. Being from the city, I can’t remember the last time I saw this much darkness, however it fitted in nicely with the wood fire and the home-made cookies at the beautiful Compass Rose B&B.

We headed straight out to dinner (”restaurants close at 8pm around here”) at Griff’s On The Dock, a slightly kooky place recommended on the Thorntree forum (”ask them what’s fresh and order it”), and by the B&B owner. The place reminded me of a tiny truck-stop – all red and white tablecloths, busy walls and a waitress with all the charm of your no-nonsense school canteen lady. Our table quickly filled with clam chowder, salads, calamari, halibut, steamed clams, garlic bread and beer from nearby city of Bend. The place really was right on the dock, a shack amongst boats, although we were oblivious to them as we curved down the ramp towards the sea. Like going through digital camera photos the morning after a party, we drove back to the dock to see just what we had done the night before.

Arriving to a town in darkness – especially one too small for a walkable strip or streetlights – means you need to wait til morning for it to reveal itself. We woke to see sunshine streaming through the forest and a view through to the marshes and a lake. It was a beautiful and secluded spot. Walking around the forest on a sunny day was nothing like the scary misty forest of the previous day. The ground felt like thick Persian carpet and there were soft textures in all directions. There were birds, salamanders, and deer hoof prints, although it wasn’t until we were leaving that we saw actual deer frolicking by the side of the road.

The dramatic coast of Oregon and the beaches of Port Orford are best left to photos – even my amateur ones.

New York

Driving into NY from DC had the city slowly creeping up on us in darkness. Firstly industrial, then suburban sprawl, sometimes a mixture of both and finally the traffic jam as the bridges and tunnels of Manhattan filled with people entering the city for the evening.

It’s the fourth time I’ve been to NY yet it still takes me a moment to get used to the pace. Stay to the right. Walk without making eye contact. Speak up when spoken to. Know your order when you get to the counter. Don’t stop suddenly on the pavement.

Of course, breaking any of these rules will get you nothing more than a scowl from the people around you. You soon realise it’s all a game and the more you play the more addictive the city becomes. Soon you’re crossing against the lights ahead of the locals and cursing the subway gate when it doesn’t let you through on the first swipe. You start reacting without a thought and become an unaffected urban-dweller.

Needless to say, the buzz of NY was a welcome relief after a couple of days in DC. Driving into Manhattan that night to the endless blocks of tall buildings, busy sidewalks, colour, grit and dirt woke us from our DC slumber.

The East Village would be our home for the next four nights in a warehouse called East Village Bed & Coffee. It’s a simple and excellent idea: own a warehouse in a hip neighbourhood, put a few rooms on each floor, let it run like a share house complete with little signs telling you to clean up after yourself. Provide bikes to share and a dog, Mango, to greet you when you get in.

NY highlights (in small bite-sized chunks)

The food:

Porchetta has six stools and a huge lump of slow roasted pork. The shop front, about 2.5 metres wide, resembles that of an old-fashioned butcher’s with clean white tiles and a big glass window (see for yourself in exhibit A). The pork, slow roasted with garlic, rosemary and fennel, is served either on a roll or on a plate with beans and greens. We also got a chicory salad on the side and crispy potatoes with burnt ends. These ‘burnt ends’ were delightful little shavings of crisp pork – a fairy floss for the meat lovers of the world. Wash it all down with fresh lemonade.

Joe’s Shanghai has been doing soup dumplings, or xiao long bao as they’re known in Sydney, since the mid-nineties. They’re large, highly soupy and are served with the traditional vinegar and shredded ginger. Not quite to the standard of Din Tai Fung in Sydney or the even better Hu Tong Dumpling Bar in Melbourne, but a still a reliable feast. The ma-po tofu on the other hand more closely resembled the American-Chinese food we’d had in the past, too sweet and not enough chilli.

Some French restaurant on Ave A: I love that in NY you can go out for dinner at 10.30pm on a weeknight without feeling rushed or lonely in the restaurant. The food here was fine without being spectacular, but the real joy was its cosy local vibe which somehow made the wine taste better and the moules and frites just what I was looking for.

The outdoors:

The High Line is a new public garden made on top of an disused elevated railway line which once served the meat-packing district. It currently runs from around 8th St to 20th St but it will expand further north with it’s hardy plants interspersed between train tracks and stylishly formed concrete.

The artificial rolling hills and horse and carriages of Central Park are all a bit twee, but the size and placement of this park is hard to ignore. Walking through with the tips of buildings sticking out behind the trees makes the experience feel almost like a movie set. The weather turned cold so we wussed out on the original plan to cycle all the way through it.

We walked through Tompkins Square Park everyday and NY is spotted with little local parks like this one with a many fenced off areas serving different purposes. This East Village one is flavoured mostly with dog-owners and kid-owners, although later at night it seemed a little sketchy but was still harmless.

The culture:

The Tenement Museum is a lot like Susannah Place Museum in The Rocks area of Sydney; social history told through stories of the people who resided in the buildings. The tour starts in front of the bustling little shop on Orchard St with an introduction by the guide – not a dusty old guide, but a young hip one from Brooklyn – then proceeds into 97 Orchard St for the rest of the tour.

Doing The Met Museum and MOMA in one day would perhaps be ambitious for some, but we like to wander through somewhat aimlessly and then leave again before fatigue sets in. The Met’s scale, design and collection is reminiscent of European Galleries, and its setting right on Central Park makes it a beautiful tourist stop. MOMA is always satisfying with the permanent collection, sculpture garden and special exhibitions. We borrowed a MOMA membership card from our accommodation to get us into a member viewing on the new Bauhaus exhibition before it opened. I was so pleased with it that I’ve been carting the very heavy exhibition catalogue around with me since.

From my days of working for a museum I knew The Brooklyn Museum was the envy of all for its ability to experiment online and succeed. I didn’t realise just how much this approach carried over to their actual museum. We happened to be there for Target First Saturday where the museum is open for free until 11pm with performances and a bar. You may have been to after hours events at galleries before but I bet it wasn’t like this. The place was crammed with people of all demographics: the obligatory hip, young scenesters, Japanese tourists, African American families and older locals. It wasn’t about being seen or getting in for free, the museum has become a meeting place for the local community. People stopped to chat in crowded stairwells, kids ran around looking at African art, others lined up for over half an hour to see the temporary rock photography exhibition. While this happened up above in the wings, down on the ground floor a DJ was remixing Billie Jean to a crowded dancefloor and people peered through arches two storeys up to get a glimpse of the action. So the lesson here? Throw out the conservative approach to after hours exhibition viewings and instead let the public experience the museum in the way corporate venue hire clients do.

Washington DC, or, The Canberra Problem

First rule: if you’re going to take an overnight flight, make sure the destination is interesting enough to keep you awake.

In DC I found myself making the same excuses I make in Canberra and talking up the positives of the place. Yes, the parks are lovely and the museums are great but where is the city centre with some sign of life? North-west of Dupont Circle had a certain buzz in the evening and plenty of restaurants and bars. Georgetown was leafy and pretty but it verged on being painfully quaint.

We hired bikes near the Washington Mall area to meander through the monuments and museums. I’m sure American tourists get a lot more from this place after hearing about it in school for years. My main connection was with the Lincoln Memorial where I remembered The Simpsons episode where Lisa went to him for advice. He certainly was imposing in real life. It’s a massive shrine that looks down upon the memorial pond.

The Smithsonian Air & Space Museum was next. It was huge, having to accommodate planes after all. We walked through some old planes and looked at space food sticks, so I can’t really say it was the most riveting museum experience. We then crossed the park to The Smithsonian National Gallery of Art, an imposing building, all stairs, columns and heavy doors without signs. This building was amazing, possibly more amazing than the art it contained. The rooms had the all the ambience and style of a European art gallery but without the crowds. A few rooms in was an indoor garden, green and lush with water features and garden furniture to sit and appreciate. Of course, more marble columns and a high skylighted ceiling.

Across the road at the east wing of the gallery is the contemporary collection. This one impressed with both architecture and content – Jackson Pollack, Jasper Johns, Mark Rothko and Roy Lichtenstein.

It took me a while to pinpoint what felt odd about all of the museums and then it clicked. The only people working in the museums seemed to be security guards. Security guards checking bags on the way in and more guards spread throughout the galleries. They were completely free of the usual information desks, membership signs or art students working between studying. If felt like no one was really curating exhibitions or enhancing the collection. They had a big pile of of great artefacts and art and so it’s just been housed in these museums and forgotten.

Of course, maybe I’d think differently if I’d slept the night before.

San Francisco – down the Mission

Walk down almost any street in San Francisco and you’ll come across someone talking to themselves. Not always crazy people, sometimes it’s people just talking to whomever will listen. Street car drivers, buskers, perky homeless people requesting a quarter, they all add to the ambience which is very different to anywhere I’ve been on the east coast. Maybe it’s the balmy but mild conditions year-round that give this sense that the street is a place to hang out, not just for getting from point A to point B.

Down in the Mission on a Monday night, waiting for a bus, a Cuban band plays unnofficially in a corner square in front of a supermarket. A couple start dancing in front of the crowd and passers-by jump up on park benches to get a better view. We’d just finished a burrito (shared because even a single burrito in the US is family sized) at Farolito Taqueria after discovering Artillery (24th and Mission), a shop full of gear by really local, as in Mission area, designers. At first glance I thought it was just a hipster-den, but beneath the surface it actually had some substance. I walked out of there knowing I was doing my bit for the local community by buying a bag, a dress and a t-shirt for Peter.

Speaking of hipsters, there’s about 10 times more of them in the Mission area since we were last there in April 07, particularly on Valencia. Not that I mind. More cool shops in addition to the bookstores and record stores we visited last time, lots of bike porn (although far too many fixies) and even a decent coffee place.
Given the general low standards of coffee in the US, Ritual Coffee Roasters was quite a find only hours after I got off the flight from Sydney. I ordered a machiato to go and the guy tried to convince me to have it in a real cup in the cafe “to keep the temperature high and not have any paper taste.” I somehow didn’t think their coffee would be so precious to deserve such treatment and I was right. What came was more like a piccolo latte rather than an espresso with a drop of milk, but it was perfectly nice, almost as good as the stuff around the corner from work. I couldn’t believe that people were lining up out the door only to order grande mochas. Surely the single origin goodness wouldn’t come through in a milkshake sized chocolatey coffee? Baby steps, baby steps.

But the hipsters haven’t taken over this area, rather, they sit nicely in the varied pot of cultures. While Valencia is becoming gentrified, Mission St is still full of local stores, and most importantly for me, cheap good food. Mexican, African American and Vietnamese still dominate the area named the Mission because the first outsiders to arrive, the Spanish in 1776, they set the local Native Americans to work building them a mission. It never really turned out so they ended up handing it over to the Mexicans who made something of the area. Two Mission Mexican meals into the trip, I’m grateful for it.

Chicago is amazing

This is one fantastic city. There’s something beautiful to look at in every direction – old and ornate terraces, new and shiny skyscrapers, tulips in bloom on the sidewalk and the fog covering up the tips of buildings.

And the people are nice, the food is good, the transport works. We’re just back from seeing an excellent play by one of my favourite playwrights, Harold Pinter, called The Betrayal which was on at the Stephenwolf Theatre. There’s still the Art Institute of Chicago and Millenium Park to go.

Can I stay here?