Hmmm

Confusion: it seems the general claim amongst Vancouver geographers is that the epicentre of the Skid Row district shifted from 100 East Hastings, to 100 West. So fair enough. Yet the notoriously dodgy corner when I was there was still Hastings and Main, much further East in city terms. So how does that work? Maybe I’ll just think of it in general ‘downtown eastside’ terms and be done with it.

This book is awesome though- it’s really interesting and takes gentrification to a whole new level. Mmm geek glee.

Oh Busdriver, you are so good, I want to go back to San Francisco and see you again. Or listen to you while flicking my arm in the car on the way to L.A. Though not actually have to go to L.A. again.

Though I have seen Butcher Boy and Bobby McGees are playing Lee Rosy’s in October, which I was very excited about as I love all 3 elements there, but still- it’s not quite the same.

On a side note, Peter Petrelli is beautiful, as is James Marsden, but we’ve decided that’s just with swoon-worthy 50s hair, as well as top-notch singing and dancing skills. Aces.

Green green country camping

Mmm Green Man was good. I got back a few hours ago ( after train trauma) and now am squeaky clean, but with coconut in my hair.

The weather was fairly hideous, but not too bad.I must remember to take more jumpers/scarfs/mittens to End of the Road. I saw everyone I’d expected to, all were lovely. My favourite new discovery was Gilbert, it was all Sigur Ros with more talking. Though having listened online this evening it doesn’t sound as special, which only prompts me to keep a keen eye on future live shows instead. Lovely setting, polite people, knitting tent and banjos, bubbles everywhere, lots of Chai, lectures on animism, too many children ( all angelic blonde, why?), very very delicious food. A bit of mud but not too much considering how much it rained ( though those first few cold slaps of mud on upper leg always makes me jump). It was great to see Ellie, Luke and Hannie, though I did spend most of my time with my trusty accomplice Tom but I’ll be seeing lots of the others as soon as I’m back in Nottingham. The site was a really nice size- enough so that there were quiet garden discoveries to keep you busy, but easy enough to pop back to tent for more layers/vodka. I kept thinking I saw people I knew. Two of these times I was correct.

There are deer in our garden.

Yeh!

GreenManGreenManGreenManGreenMan. I’m rather excited. Naturally I haven’t packed yet, such things most likely won’t occur until the few minutes before I have to leave in the morning. But who needs to worry about how much you can fit/carry in a backpack when you’ve spent 6 weeks living out of said object?

But mmmmm mud, grease, wonderful music, lovely camping friends. Grand.

So as it stands…

…it turns out not going to that Jeff Wall talk at the VAG was a bit of a mistake. But I remember I had some sort of essay deadline for the Monday and I was going to Victoria or Portland but oh, fool.

Somerset is lovely and it helps that we have a beeaaaauutiful view and ancient woodland. Yum.

Last weekend my lovely friend Anna plonked me on her guestlist+1 for Tales of the Jackalope, ( and the night before I saw Prince, 80s kitsch dance party, hella yeh etc) about 15 minutes from Tom’s so off we went. Most of the day was spent lying around in grass and chuckling, ho ho, at scenester types but The Fall were so fun. Oh and Joelly and Joe were there! I enjoyed the look of sheer drunken shock on their faces when we launched on them. Naughty. I’m reeeaaaallly looking forward to festivals this year. Though would like to go to others as well as Green Man and EOTR. The question remains to be seen whether seeing Bill Callahan in a soggy field will be as good as in a tiny record store with magnets of transvestites between us. I’m sure it’ll still be magic. Old wise-eyed Bill.

It’s funny, I’ve been really really busy this summer, doing lots in the week and then travelling to visit various people on weekends. I’ve found since coming back that I no longer have much patience with London. That said,  I’m off there tomorrow. To the Buffalo Bar for Twee As Fuck, which sounds very me, though the name makes me undergo a mighty mighty cringe. I fear there may be a bit of cashing-in occuring. But I shall have a little tipple, watch the Bobby McGees and dance my legs down to the knees.

Oh dear god.

Now can I just say that though I have been reading the Potter since I was a very young tyke, I am not normally the kind to indulge in indepth analysis theories or even bother talking about it much, as many of my friends hold an utter dislike for such literature ( in principle it seems, rather than ever bothering to read it). What I am about to say here shall indeed follow the above pattern but I simply wish to say, having just finished The Deathly Hallows:

That last chapter ( that I really want to believe must have been plonked on the end as some careless afterthought for the sake of my own sanity) was so disgustingly unnecessary that it made me want to weep with anger. Whyyyyyyy? Ugh.

Toronto

Ah Toronto, our last port of call.

I had been here once before, when I was a young tyke. All I remembered from then was the heat, the shiny buildings, maple ice cream with sugar cage, seeing lots of Claes Oldenburg and a Louise Bourgeois exhibit that gave me nightmares. I had fun then but to be honest, when Tom and I were thinking about our trip we thought we’d effectively miss out Toronto, just visiting to get our flight back. Instead we arrived in time to have 2 nights there, thus have a full day to play and I really enjoyed it

- Queen Street, which was right next to our hostel, was actually pretty great. There were many Becky-places. Also, so many fabric and button shops.

- The first night we went to eat at Swan, which was awesome. Very delicious and a seemingly endless tolerance for refilling our glasses of water. The second was Thai. I had curry pad that. oh ho, and lychee juice. Well done.

- The CN Tower was far less interesting than I remembered, but taller than the Vancouver Observation Tower.

- We also went to the Hockey Hall of Fame, but we couldn’t find any Canucks stuff, which made us sad. After asking, it turned out there was one rubbish ’sweater’ from the 70s. Hmm.

- The Hidden Cameras played The setlist wasn’t too special, but the performance was. Mmmmm. And since it was a homecoming show, some of their parents were there.

- And after a visit to the music shop with me deliberating over banjos, rather abruptly, that was that. We caught out plane home, and home we are. Home for me of course, is now Somerset and due to close proximity to Glastonbury, I expect the area is going to be somewhat chaotic over the next few days. It’s strange being without all the lovely tall buildings and bustling city life. I have a feeling that at least for a while, our conversations shall be frequently punctuated with ‘But where are the <insert North American detail here>?’ Nevertheless the summer should be grand, with a great deal of festivals ahead and general pretty-country-summer-glee. And since Somerset is close to the coast, ocean fun will still remain. Though I expect I shall, despite my best efforts, still be prompted to ask: ‘But where are all the mountains?’.

Montreal

I just realised I might as well finish the tales of the rest of our travels.

Well yes, after New York, shimmy off to Montreal did we.

To begin with, obviously when going to Montreal, a key idea should be the Francophone element, particularly when I’ve learned of Quebec separatism and my friend is over there to learn French. Of course such thoughts had crossed my mind but it wasn’t until we reached the train station from New York that we thought ‘wait a minute, neither of us speak French!’. I knew that many people in the area would be bilingual, but since to simply speak in English would be to miss the point, not to mention rude, we did our best to piece together our limited gcse vocabulary. I think we did ok. Maybe.

- For the duration we stayed at my friend Claire’s house. It’s a sweet little house with fun rooms and fluffy cats, if a little hot and it was good to see Claire again, hurray! On the first night we we went to Vinyl to dancedancedance- Nottingham throwback ahoy. It was joy.

- We did lots of sitting around in parks. I got many insect bites again, grumble. But we ate picnics, watched baseball games, and listened to people playing pretty songs. The first afternoon we went to a gathering thing with Ginsberg on the record player. There was a large sheet of paper for some sort of time capsule thing. Whilst some people were writing cliched ( forgive the lack of accents, I can’t work out how to insert them ) statements and quotes that they deemed to be ’significant’, Claire and I drew pretty pictures that were far more interesting. Though I’m not sure many people understand my silly little sketches.

- One day we went to Tam-Tams. It seems to be basically a drumming party, with not particularly interesting rhythms. But the joy was this scary scary scary woman, who I may have thought was ace if she wasn’t so immensely creepy. She was probably in her 70s and seemed to be having a jolly good time, dancing alone with the drummers. Normally I’d think this was great but the manner in which she did it was fear and scared us lots. We realised this was down to: 1) The possessed-style shakin’ move she kept bringing out and 2) The fact that her hair did not move.

- We climbed Mont Royal, the mountain, but as Claire said, it’s more of a hill than a mountain.

- One day we went and got bagels and then wandered to the metro, where it turns out we couldn’t buy tickets, so we walked to the Old Town. It wasn’t that far really, probably only about 40 minutes walking normal pace but it was incredibly hot which made it harder. We stopped for many drinks But even once we got there we found it hard to do too much in the heat.

- We went to a gig to see a girl Claire likes. She wasn’t bad and had a lovely accent but we all found the main act, Peter Katz, desperately dull. The bar was also very confusing, as you had to buy beer and spirits from separate people at the same bar. One of the bar staff also got told off for letting me pay with money instead of special beer tokens. Weird. Once back at the table, I began making a paper boat, which soon turned into a group-effort-paper-coastal-scene. Good stuff. We then went to La Salla Rosa, which I wanted to see because it’s a fun tapas place where virtually every band I like that plays in Montreal seems to appear. Claire didn’t like the sound of the experimental night going on ( though I thought it sounded interesting though it would have been half way through anyway) but we stayed for a drink and it was fun.

I still have to write about Montreal but…

On a side note, as I sat on the train I was thinking back over lovely gigs I’ve attended this year, and remembered the joy of Hidden Cameras show at Richard’s and also how Hidden Cameras are indeed from Toronto so it was appropriate listening. Upon arriving in said city, we realised they’re also playing here tomorrow night. Yeh! Good work. Much dancing.

New York Yo’

Hello hello. I am on the train to Toronto, having been to New York and Montreal since we last spoke. Welcome. The train’s actually almost over, thus I do not have long to write but I needed to finish my copy of Garp you see. Except somehow along the way, since the purchase of said book, I managed to lose the third from last page. Hmmmm. It was battered when I bought it, but I was still saddened upon this discovery in the park yesterday.

Anyhoo, New York. It was rather fabulous really. Getting to the hostel was a bit of a struggle but the place we stayed in was nice, despite the staff being slightly useless.

On the first day we managed to make it to Bang on A Can, an experimental festival, where Yo La Tengo were playing, though we missed fun people Tom had wanted to see beforehand . It was in the World Financial Center oddly enough, but it worked pretty well. I was also happy because I found a cd that I’d been trying to buy in Vancouver. It was in the recommended section of the great Zulu record store for ages, with a sweet description about being good to wake up and like a Spanish Boards of Canada, but when I went in to purchase it, alas the recommended section had changed and all I could remember was the cover, but not artist or album title. Anyway I both saw and bought it and all was well. That night we also went to a restaurant we’d read about called Bubby’s. It was awesome, despite the ridiculously heavy rain. It was fun though, the sort of rain that encourages jumping in puddles, since you’re already soaked.

We went to the ol’ Moma. It was good but rather predicable. I preferred Chicago gallery fun.

We went to another restaurant called Public. It was set up like a library. The menus were on clipboards and they had yellow pencils serving as business cards, that reminded me of my favourite pencil when I was in primary school. You know how when you’re little and you have your little pencil case and there’s always a favourite pen or pencil? Well maybe that was just me. Anyway, the food was pretty good but perhaps overpriced. I had lovely duck though. What was even more exciting however, was the discovery of a rice pudding bar on our way home. My only experience of rice pudding was when I was at First School and refused to eat it due to its resemblance to vomit. But for some reason upon discovering this place I felt inspired: ‘We must go!’ I cried and so we did. We got raspberry and classic with chocolate chips and oh ho it was good. Rather surreal though, to walk outside and see people sitting on street curbs eating rice pudding. So it was all school-themed joy.

We had one day with lots of shopping ( thank you Tom). It was the best shopping I’d experienced all trip, very Becky-esque. Yum Soho, Tribeca and Greenwich Village. Boo to Williamsburg, which wasn’t as fun as we thought it’d be. My favourite shop was Greenwich Letterpress. I bought a coin purse and an ‘irked pincushion’ in the shape of toast, among other things. We also found Anna Sui! It was amazing. Such pretty things.

We went one night to see the Pipettes….twice actually. Once because they were doing an instore acoustic thing nearby and we wanted to see Monster Bobby playing beforehand. It was sad, he was originally meant to be supporting for the main Pipettes gig that night, but then he messaged Tom saying he’d been effectively chucked off the bill, but was playing solo at this record store. But when we got there it turned out he once again had been pushed down, so had to quickly play 3 songs before the Pipettes. The last time I saw him was when he was sheepishly emerging from my house as I returned home from lectures, after spending the night up with the boys I believe.

We also went to a baseball game! Oh ho. But the Mets lost so…meh. Some Philly fans stole our seats when we went to buy awful food. Tut. It was fun though, so much booing.

Other joy included the Staten Island Ferry and a picnic in Central Park. Mmmmm. I do like New York.

Chicago

I am finding this blog business very hard to keep up with. No time, no internet, too impatient to bother. *grumble*

Today I am in New York, but as I haven’t written about the past few days, I’ll try a quick one for Chicago:

- The Museum of Contemporary Art, as expected, is much more interesting than the Art Insitute of Chicago, which aside from the usual jazz I’m not particuarly fond of, didn’t have much else. I was looking forward to seeing some Ed Hopper again, but of course that one was on loan somewhere. The MCA however, had an awesome photography exhibition going on that was much like the Staged Photography jobby in Vancouver. Good stuff.

-Deep dish Chicago pizza is fabulous. So much delicious mozzarella.

- We went to a jazz club that is supposedly legendary, where Al Capone and Chaplin used to hang around. Sadly the band were awful. Lounge act dull, blah.

-We went to see some theatre. One night it was The Big Yellow Bus, at the Improv theatre. It was fun- a little creepy because the night we went they were filming for the travel channel, hah. But it meant that a lady was running around telling people to sit in the same area so that the audience looked full. Uncomfortably contrived :S The actual sketches were pretty fun, though it did sort of seem like when they had something funny, they then took it too far. I felt a little disheartened wondering if Chicago comedy was too much, wishing for a little more subtlety, which I suppose is very English of me. Fortunately a few das later we went to Second City to watch one of their touring companies ‘Best of’ shows. Again it was a series of sketches, some of them improv but it was much much better. Yay

- We also went to the Music Box theatre, it was one of these old Dream Theatres but not as large as most I’d imagine. We went to see Brand Upon the Brain! and it was great. Black and white, sort of set on a silent movie but with narration, a very creepy mother controlling her children and they all lived in a lighthouse. Afterwards I gave into my temptation to go see the Little Shop of Horrors, which was playing afterwards. When I heard about it I was all ‘eeeeeee’ because, you know, I love it. But as it turns out, watching it there wasn’t so fun. They were doing a sort of Rocky Horror Show thing with it, which again could have been fun, but it was just a bit ugh. It basically consisted of a cast running around as the movie was playing and acting out the scenes, but rather than singing they mouthed the words very very badly. So it was just distracting and rubbish, Tom scowled most of the way through because he hates all musicals, and I got very sleepy. So that part wasn’t such a success.

- We skipped the Sears tower and instead headed for the John Hancock tower, which is still very high but you don’t have to pay for the lift. So instead we spend out money on a drink at the bar there and watched Chicago from a great height.

There was lots more I had to say but I’m afraid my time has come to run away again. And I don’t have time to check if this makes sense.
New York is soggy.