THE LIGHT IN FRONT

Those of you who know me well have probably had to withstand my unending praise about Burning Man and my constant attempts to explain it at some point in our conversations. Now, you have to endure a blog post about it.

Describing what Burning Man is like to someone who has never heard about it, or even anyone who’s never been there, is a completely useless endeavor. It is a week spent living so differently from the regular parameters of common life, so removed from anything considered normal, you might as well try to explain to a blind cave shrimp, through interpretive dance, what color tastes like. It is a sheer onslaught of pure creative energy, a place where literally anything can (and often does) happen, and which fills your memory with anecdotes and imagery that’s hard to acknowledge as having actually happened (ie: “I wanted to go to that party, but I was kidnapped by unicorns on my way up.” – real quote from my friend Dylan this year, regarding an actual occurrence, not a hallucination).

My rambling descriptions to others would often end in a call to action to stop fucking around and come next year to see for yourself, a gesture often met with lots of positive reactions but very little commitment. Year after year me and my friend Andres were the only people in our group of friends to consistently attend the festival, and it was pretty much impossible to get new people to commit. This finally changed in 2009, where the PR contingent grew to a respectable 7 in number, and we finally had the delight of watching virgin burners from back home immerse themselves into this magical new world.

One week in the desert at Burning Man provides you with enough experiences to fill up an entire month, so I won’t bother going through a play by play of what I did each day. I can attempt to piece together a loose string of anecdotes and provide a few pictures (none of them taken by me), and maybe finish off with a general summary. Again, MAKE SURE YOU CLICK THE LITTLE GREEN WORDS to receive audiovisual supplementary goodness. So, onwards to random quips:

- Mad minivan scramble up from Los Angeles. After several iterations of traveling arrangements kept forming and dissolving, we finally settled on renting a 7-passenger minivan to carry the entire PR crew + our friend Liya, who is now legally considered Puerto Rican (8 or more hours of continuous exposure to one or more Puerto Ricans affords you this luxury). We departed on Sunday night, watching the northern LA mountains around us go up in massive fires, and drove straight up to Reno for about 10 hours. Our song of choice to make our entrance in Black Rock City? The Olympic Theme, of course.

- No sooner do we park our wonderful minivan in an appropriate spot, the thing completely stops working. Simply won’t turn on. Engine doesn’t turn over, some electronics work fine. Jumping the battery does nothing. We have absolutely no idea what the hell is wrong with the van, and we realize that until we solve this problem, we are pretty much stuck in Black Rock Desert. Our immediate plan of action was to promptly ignore the situation, decide to worry about it when the week draws to an end, and fix ourselves some delicious rum and cokes.

- Our camp structure was on a whole other level this year. We had a large 32′ dome structure for general gathering and music lounging, one trusty mongolian yurt for hookah, tea, and naptime goodness, a large truck trailer that had been converted into a full-service kitchen, a full size freezer, a kegerator with 7 kegs, several modular tunnel shade structures that provided cover for dining areas and sleeping quarters (generic tents), and several more unique personal spaces (small domes, hexayurts, teepees). To top it off we had an outrageous 20K generator powering the shit out of everything, including a monstrous sound system in the dome. Finally, we made a drastic change of name and camp theme this year, going from the generic True Prophet, to the very specific The Phage. This fit in perfectly with this year’s Burning Man theme, Evolution, since bacteriophages are an essential component to biological diversity worldwide. Also, they are fucking cool looking and awesome to build sculptures of.

- Our art car, Strangelove, did not get approved to ride on the playa because, I’m not kidding, the front part of it looked too much like a truck. I mean seriously, this thing has been driving at Burning Man for 4 consecutive years with no problem, everyone loves it, it offers rides to kids from Kidsville to go get ice cream, and has even driven Burning Man’s founding father (Larry Harvey) around the playa, and they didn’t want to fucking approve it this year cause it looked like a truck? ‘Fuck outta here. We improvised with some leftover blue fuzzy fabric we had around and covered the hood and fenders with it, real ghetto solution, but it did the trick and the car was approved:

- False Profit, one of our affiliate camps, held their traditional Tuesday night party and properly kicked shit into high gear. Dozens of art cars parked in a tight hub around masses of people, with spectacular music playing all night and marathon dancing sessions going off everywhere. Fire dancers doing their thing, costumes out in full force, lasers everywhere, the False Profit party is pretty much the perfect way to say “Welcome to Burning Man” real early in the week, with the full knowledge that shit will only get more and more awesome as the week goes along. Best DJ of the night? Mimosa, hands down. Check some of his stuff on his myspace page.

- Post False Profit party chill session in the yurt. This russian dude Sasha there was going off on the most hysterical comedy streak I’ve seen in a while, making us laugh until our faces hurt and our eyes just bowled over with tears. My belly hurt for days afterwards. “It’s Moscow time… ALL THE TIME!”, “What are you guys smoking? A tricycle?!?”… it was just dozens of you-had-to-be-there one-liners coming at us rapid fire, with no chance to catch our breath. I hadn’t laughed so hard in ages.

- At some point in the night, some of the members from out camp went and fucked with False Profit’s Budget rental trailer, making it say Phage instead. The next day when we woke up to find out their retaliation involved parking said truck right in the middle of our camp, interrupting the whole flow of things. We then responded by removing panels from some of False Profit’s hexayurts so that they would get filled with dust. I believe a truce was declared soon after that, and the truck was removed.

- Hanna (yes, Badlands Hanna) continuing to hold her spot as one of the raddest human beings alive by convincing people to go check out a non-existent Farmer’s Market somewhere near Center Camp. People would just take off hoping to find some delicious fresh fruit and veggies and come back confused and sorely disappointed.

- Rumors had it that the Death Guild, creators of the Thunderdome, a BM staple since god knows when, would not return this year. Not only did they return in full force, but someone even covered the top sign with a giant, ultra-lame Hot Topic logo. It was one of the funniest running jokes I saw on the playa all week.

- New camp member and sick-ass DJ, Ryan aka: Sharps, consistently throwing down ill sets at our dome, on the art car, wherever. Dude busted out a full-on trippy reggeaton set on one of our daily cruises on Strangelove that blew my fucking mind, and continued this trend throughout the week.

- Wednesday night, our camp hosted an open-playa party next to Fishbug, a large scale fire installation that neither looks like a fish or a bug, but nonetheless shoots fire from several points in its body and is therefore considered fucking awesome. After hours of troubeshooting, Andres had finally gotten the lights on Strangelove working, which combined with a massive sound system setup, converted the art car into a pretty damn impressive DJ booth. On the visuals, we had a number of VJ’s projecting imagery on a screen next to Strangelove, including Mindshare Labs’ David Guttman running his sound-activated installation, Sonic Stalagmites. Nearby, a lit platform facing the screen invited participants to step up and play with a set of joysticks that would make the visuals react along a number of different variables (rotation, speed, effects, etc.) It was a pretty fucking incredible setup. Here’s a few pics from the night:

- Go ahead and listen to Sharp’s DJ set that night, one of the earliest in the night, but hands down one the best. Wait a few minutes for it to warm up, (there’s a fun surprise at 5:00 minutes in), tell me that ain’t a fucking party. He built up some sick momentum that was unfortunately squandered by lesser DJ’s afterwards.

- I debuted my endlessly amusing and utterly pointless robot laser arm. The glove part of it worked beautifully (minus the pinky finger laser which would never stay on), but the arm part of it, which consisted of several glowing EL wire “cables” running down from my shoulder to my hand, lasted all of 8 minutes before one of the battery cables snapped due to strenuous dancing inside of a giant pillowcase (exactly as it sounds, folks). I couldn’t be fucked afterwards to solder the cable back on, so I just forged ahead with the glove.

- At one point during our Strangelove travels through the city, we encountered a fellow with a floating camera… can’t remember if it was a balloon or a kite, but it definitely soared over us and took pictures/footage that should be making its way to the internet somewhere. He had some sort of system rigged up where the camera could travel up and down the string, and using an RC remote control he could pivot and pan the camera lens at will. It was one of the raddest things I saw on the playa this year. You can see some of the artist’s work here, but 2009 pictures haven’t been uploaded yet.

- Our camp was visited at one point by a mad scientist who brought equipment to create bismuth crystals inside our dome. At first we were like ‘meh’ as he prepared his setup and explained the process, but then he started pulling out some fucking incredible things out of the heated liquid metal and we all got very interested in what he was doing and gathered around the table. These crystals are astounding, they adhere to 90° edges and the results, created right in front of our eyes, look like miniature buildings and architectural structures:

-Thursday night, probably my favorite night of the week, due to a lethal combination of tuxedoes and psilocybin. We had a tremendously epic night sky above us, with a moon just one day shy of being full, and wispy clouds creating an incredible halo effect around it. We caught a bit of a thumping-ass set by Bassnectar (probably my favorite live DJ act ever) at Root Society, but honestly, the energy that night was not for dancing, but rather for running around like a little kid and playing with/climbing on every single thing we came across. We toured the night away on Strangelove, stopping at random spots to get off the car and play around with the surrounding silliness:

- Ed Hsu, a kickass artist from our camp, had set up a killer projection system from the top platform on Strangelove, from which he could project a “canvas” onto anything and do all kinds of digital graffiti to fuck with the environment around us.

Those domes not looking pretty enough? Draw new facades on them:

Not dancing hard enough? Try to follow the brushstrokes:

Art car bullying pedestrians around? Make it stop, draw a pedestrian crossing on the ground, and let the hippies cross:

It was super awesome and endlessly entertaining. He would write messages to people walking by, draw creatures to attack them, etc. Very simple but very effective.

- At one point late in the night, Nicole made an observation and uttered a phrase that eloquently captured the absurdity and surrealism that Burning Man constantly subjects you to. We were taking a break, sitting in Center Camp for a while, playing with a giant ball made entirely of Winnie the Poohs, when Nicole looks up and casually says “There is a ninja dancing with a hula hoop in front of us”. We look up, and no question about it, there is a hula-hooping ninja dancing in the middle of the room. We all nodded quietly in complete understanding.

- A word about sleeping. Sleep was accomplished, as usual, via passing out in random comfortable places for 20min – 4hr naps at a time, a technique which I’ve found to be wonderfully effective in maximizing time awake without submitting to exhaustion. This is apparently called polyphasic sleep, and I’ve found my rhythm to adhere closest to the Everyman pattern. It’s a bit weird to get into at first, and can be jarring when returning back to the default world, but it’s hands down the most efficient way to rest at Burning Man without being completely burned out at the end of the week, in my opinion.

- Friday was most notable for an absolutely spellbinding sunset drive on Strangelove, with a live onboard performance by Dr. Toast that just swept everyone up into deep hypnosis. The dust was rising with moderation, yet we ended up out in the deep playa, dancing gently in the dusty fog to soundscapes like this, arms outstretched and gliding, as the sun slowly disappeared over the horizon. A wonderful moment of mellow magic amid a week of hyperstimulating mania.

- Shortly after sunset, art cars began congregating around the Raygun Gothic Rocket, a rad large-scale piece sitting out in the open playa. Rumor had it that it was actually gonna take off, which I didn’t believe for a second, but given the fact that also didn’t believe a few years ago that someone would set off a 1000-ft mushroom cloud explosion, I had to at least entertain the possibility. We rolled up on a very haggard Strangelove and waited for a long time for the show, but the wind and dust were picking up considerably, and since whatever was gonna happen would probably involve a lot of fire, “lift-off” kept being endlessly delayed.

Eventually Strangelove, weary after 4 years of hundreds of hippies crawling all over it, began to collapse right under us. The front frame holding the generators broke off the chassis, and the principal back frame (making up the rear platform and supporting the dome) began bending right before our eyes. Weird disagreeable sounds started coming out of all sorts of structural elements in the car, and we evacuated everyone off it immediately. We returned back to camp without seeing the rocketship lift off, gently walking alongside Strangelove and bringing her comfort in her last moments of life. Strangelove was declared dead a few minutes after reaching camp. RIP Strangelove, by far my favorite thing about Burning Man, ever. It’s hard to describe the perfect ambiance this car brought together (anyone who rode it for more than 20 minutes understood it perfectly), and it’ll be much harder to recreate it next year with a our new art car.

As for the rocketship, I heard it eventually did a big fireworks thing, but we were too busy mourning the loss our beloved art car to care.

- Most of the early day Saturday was spent resting, in anticipation for going all out as soon as the Man was set on fire. Shortly after lunch, the weather decided to test us out a little and raised some dust and wind, never quite achieving dust storm status, but certainly reminding us who’s boss around those parts. We heard about a hip hop party happening not too far from our camp, so we grabbed our dust goggles and bandanas and headed off in search of adventure. The hip hop party (which was awesome) became the start of a bar crawl around nearby streets, where we gathered up a decent buzz drinking assorted mixed cocktails and bugged out on sights like this crazy giant spider machine.

- As the evening began to approach, we decided to head back to camp to get a bit more rest in before the night’s events. Expecting to find our camp filled with resting bodies and people preparing dinner, we instead found a full-on, balls-out reggeaton street party brought by our resident DJ, Sharps. I couldn’t fucking believe it. Our sound system was set up to face the street, and people were just going off in the middle of it, dancing and cavorting in the dust cloud, hidden behind dusty goggles. We of course hopped right in and had a fucking blast, until dinner was announced and everyone headed inside to eat. Once again, Sharps brought the Awesome™ to our doorstep.

- Soon after dinner, there was a MAJOR crashing session involving a large part of our camp. Tons of people just straight passed out wherever they found a little corner to lie down. The week had taken an undeniable toll on people, a burden heavy enough to make them completely ignore and dismiss the main event of the week, the burning of the Man. While most slept, the rest of us decided to climb as high as we could in our camp structures (crow’s nest on the dome, top of the kitchen truck) and watch the Burn from afar. We got a great view to a great Burn, highlighted by a very stubborn Man that refused to fall from its pedestal until nearly fully consumed by the flames.

- We all hit up another power nap after that to gather energy for an upcoming all-night dance session beginning at midnight. I didn’t have much trouble waking up, but getting everyone else up was next to impossible. I was extremely excited to hit up a Bassnectar/Freq Nasty back-to-back set at Simpler Times, an absolutely awesome sound camp on the opposite side of the city, and wasn’t gonna let these sleepyheads ruin my plans. Eventually I managed to coax everyone up except Andres, who was clearly in another fucking dimension of tiredness. We all got into our costumes/best threads and headed out for some dancing.

- To my chagrin, we arrived about halfway through Bassnectar’s set, but still caught enough of his usual bass thumping sonic assault to get us warmed up and ready for Freq Nasty. Or so we thought. Freq Nasty arrived, looking like a fucking space alien, and proceeded to melt our faces off with an hour and half of some of the most immense intergalactic dubstep I’ve ever heard. He opened his set with this track, which made everyone’s jaws drop, then simply went up from there, taking us into a sonic bass-driven journey beyond this solar system. It was fucking incredible.

To quote Bassnectar: “Well for one, it’s a pretty new thing for humans, being able to control frequencies that oscillate so low. Until just recently, I’d bet you could only feel true sub-throbbage during an earthquake or thunderstorm, or a heartbeat in the womb maybe, I don’t know. To pulverize a mob of people with mega-low frequency waves of energy is extremely overwhelming, and to BE pulverized by it is extremely addicting”. Puerto Rico has yet to be assaulted by this sound on a big scale, and considering the 3-years-late-to-everything way of trends (musical, fashion, etc) back there, I estimate it won’t happen until 2011. Oontz oontz oontz shit at the same bullshit Coors Light parties will continue to reign supreme until then.

- After that crazy set we wandered around some nearby spots, but never found another groove to settle into. Tired and danced out, we grabbed a ride from a passing art car back to our camp. I actually wanted to stick around for another performance by Bassnectar at the same place during sunrise, but my legs were jelly and we had to strike camp the following day. It’s too bad, cause by the looks of this video, Bassnectar spun a fun and groovy set.

- Sunday was spent striking down our camp and getting ready to leave Black Rock City. We had originally planned to stay until Monday, but pretty much the entire rest of the camp had switched plans to leave Sunday afternoon, making that extra night stay pointless. It was here we remembered our car still wasn’t working, and we spent quite a bit of time squaring things out with the car rental company and finding a tow truck that would haul us back to Reno (not a simple thing to do when you’re in the middle of a desert). Thankfully, this marked Burning Man’s first year with limited but decent cell phone service, and we were able to work things out. We spread the PR contingent across several cars, while I rode in the tow truck cabin. I slept most of the way to Reno.

- We stayed at some weird, ultra tacky, neon-laden hotel called the Atlantis. We had the van towed to a remote parking spot for easy pick up by the rental company, then took turns taking massive showers and ordering unsafe amounts of room service food. We then passed out to the gentle sounds of a nature show about Death Valley on TV.

- Next day we wake up to a killer brunch and some final arrangements to get the van picked up by the rental company, and we squared out transportation options for its former crew members. Once we had things straightened out and got rid of all stress, we receive notice of a great After Burn party happening at another nearby hotel that was populated almost entirely by Burners at the time. When we arrived I could hardly believe my eyes and ears. A giant pool, surrounded by sand in faux beach style, with a large bar next to it hooked up with misters that cooled you down while you ordered a drink. On top of that, a full DJ setup facing the pool, with Mimosa playing another unbelievable set. I couldn’t have asked for anything more perfect after a week of dry desert. We drank, danced, and partied all day, then headed up to someone’s room at the hotel to drink, dance, and party some more… and eat pizza. We took off later that night, after everyone had napped and sobered up, for a long overnight drive down to LA.

Looking back on what I’ve written down makes me realize there’s still soooooo much left to talk about, but I should wrap things up. Again, Burning Man proves to be a consistent pinnacle of awesomeness, while still providing very different experiences and surprises every year. This year, the major new source of delight was spending time with my PR friends and watching them experience this remarkable event for the first time in their lives. I’ve told myself several times that 6 years is all I’m gonna do, and then I would move on to spending my vacation time somewhere else. Yet my 6th year in a row is coming up, and with my newfound proximity to the event, I find it very hard to believe it’s gonna be the last. Burning Man is a small slice of heaven on earth, and it’s not easy giving it up once you’ve discovered it.

You should totally come next year.

This.

This was the very first thing I saw when I opened the tent in the morning. Fucking rabbits everywhere! How awesome is that?

I chased a few of em around and ended up at the edge of camp where the grass was a little bit taller. Off in the distance, some decidedly crazy rock formations littered the horizon. I cracked open a wheat ale and cheered to what would surely be my most bizarre birthday ever. That’s right. I turned 29 years old that day. No time to waste, we had breakfast and devised a plan for exploration.

Reading the maps and brochures, we saw there was a much more primitive camping area somewhere far into the Badlands, and we were definitely intrigued. We decided to get in the car and head straight there to scope out the situation, and catch a few sights on the way there.

We quickly realized how fucking nuts this place was a few minutes into the drive. Along each side of the road, the vastest landscapes you could possibly ever imagine unfolded into infinity. Pictures couldn’t capture the sheer enormity of the space around us.

The scenic drive at Shenandoah was pretty phenomenal, but this was on a whole other level. This was like traveling into a Dali landscape on Ambien, totally fucking crazy stuff. We also ran into some recently-introduced herds of bighorn sheep, some of them sporting marker collars:

There were even some getting some grub by the side of the road:

Look at those balls.

Those are sensational!

It took us about an hour to get to the general area of the second campground. The paved street had given way to a dirt-and-pebble road, and vast prairies and meadows had replaced rock formations around us. I started seeing an increase in insects smashing against the windshield of the car, and some of these were quite considerable in heft and size. Eventually it became totally out of control… it was plain to see that I was smashing into piles and piles of these things, so I stopped to see what the hell were these creatures.

Oh nice. Just another good ol’ locust invasion. I cannot possibly describe how many of these were around. They would lift off by the hundreds in front of the car, scattering desperately this way and that, a big number of those not quite making it out of the way before my car barreled through. We actually ended up having to traverse this road often, and each time it was straight unabashed and unavoidable genocide levels of massacre. My grill quickly became a instrument of gore and death:

I estimate, without an ounce of hyperbole, that I murdered somewhere between 2500-3000 specimens during my stay there, maybe even more, and I know for a fact that it didn’t even register on the overall population. There were millions upon millions of these little guys everywhere.

Thankfully these were relatively chill grasshoppers, maybe an inch and a half at the longest, and lacking the crazy destructive swarming tendencies some of their relatives have. They basically stayed hidden in the grass until you walked through, and would occasionally land on your stuff, dispelled with a quick shoo.

As we got closer to the campground area, this awesome sign dutifully warned us of the very real dangers of deranged bison attacks. I can’t get enough of this face:

AAAARARRARRAARARGHHFFLGHH!!!!!!

We eventually found the campground set deep into the prairie, with what else but a giant prairie dog town bordering the entrance. I’m sure I don’t need to sell you on how awesome these little guys are, but here’s a reminder:

The other camp had bunnies, but overall I give the prairie dogs a slight advantage in radness factor. They were also chowing down like crazy on the plentiful grasshoppers so they were kinda fat too. This was one of many reasons why we immediately understood that it was imperative to switch camps over here. Most of the spots were empty, with just a handful of people around, but space was limited… we had to haul ass back across the park to the first camp to strike down the tent and bring it over here.

I reluctantly murdered a few hundred more grasshoppers on the way there and back, and in the meantime found a good spot for the obligatory panorama (click to enlarge):

^ Click it for giganto blowyourmind-o-vision ^

Two hours later, we were back in our new setting, and our tent was up and running.

We sat down for a quick snack, and were often visited by friendly grasshoppers. This one was especially friendly, not so much because he was fond of humans, but because he had no hind legs to hop away with:

Then we took off for a short walk up the nearest hill, to take a good overhead look at our camp. Click on the image to see a bigger version, see if you can find the Superyaris and get a sense of scale:

It was a heavenly grassland paradise. I couldn’t ask for a more idyllic setting for my birthday.

We chilled on that hillside till close to sundown, then headed back down to get going on a knockout megameal: pasta in ginger-carrot sauce, with fresh veggies and thai curry cashew nuts. We gorged ourselves on extreme yummy, then sat back to watch the night sky take over. Hanna had finally revealed a birthday surprise she had been teasing me about, which turned out to be a crazy little book with a collection of legends and unique occurrences in the nearby Black Hills, home of Mt. Rushmore and a place with an incredibly colorful past. We read a couple of entries aloud, and finally made it a plan that we would stay at least one night there during our trip; it sounded pretty damn magical.

Rains seemed to be a complete non-issue that night, so we took the risk of removing the rainfly on the tent and kept the whole thing open for maximum natural exposure (so much for the policeman’s advice about rattlesnakes). We drifted asleep under a giant blanket of stars, wondering what adventures awaited the following day.

Note: I wrote about 4 hours worth of blog stuff the other day and when I hit “save draft” the whole shit got erased. Shortly after that, I punched things.

So up we get in Wisconsin for a quick coffee and 10 hours of ass haulin’. The drive was about as long as it sounds, but was nevertheless punctuated by several moments of interest.

The first was my first (and only) stoppage by a police officer for speeding, a few hours into Minnesota. To some extent I wasn’t too stressed when I got caught cause it often happens to people on these roadtrips. Somewhere on this drive you cross a threshold where cars on the road around you completely disappear and you have no proper frame of reference for average traffic speed. It’s very easy to keep accelerating without really feeling it, and before I know it a cop Mustang is flashing his lights behind me. I figured what the hell, get a ticket and take it easy from now on.

Officer pulls up, wearing an impressive Wilford Brimley moustache, and says “Wow, Puerto Rico, that’s a long way from here!”. Once again, my license plate sparks debate, in this case a very positive one. He was immediately interested on how the hell a PR car ended up in Minnesota, and when I told him the tale of the trip, as well as our plans to get to the Badlands, he lit up with smiles. Turns out he camps there often, and the traffic stop ended up with him sharing stories and tips for our stay there (”Tons of rattlesnakes!”). He let us go with a warning and a good luck. Big ups to the garita for saving the day.

A few hours after that we hit up Sioux Falls for a quick stop at a co-op and a late lunch. We committed the cardinal sin of getting groceries while hungry, so we logically bought more food than we could possibly consume for the entire stay. Thai curry cashew nuts? Are you kidding me? Gimme a pound of that shit. Armfuls of fresh fruit and delicious organic stuff, it ended up being a great thing for me, since afterwards I inherited the hefty leftover bounty and enjoyed it for days afterwards. Thanks for the hookup, Hanna.

We also came across an absolutely majestic wind farm with gigantic windmills as far as the eye could see:

The day crept along and sundown was imminent while we were about an hour and a half away from the Badlands. Not only that, but a terrific shitkicker of a storm was brewing from the south, and was quickly taking over the sky:

We had only one last stop to make, to fill up on gas and get a few last minute items. We stopped at a station about 10 miles away from the entrance to the Badlands. The wind picked up considerably while I was pumping gas, and as sharp raindrops started pelting my head, I became extremely concerned about the conditions in which we would have to set up a tent later on. I was about to hop in the car and tear ass down the road when Hanna comes back from a building next to the gas station, telling me I HAVE to go see something real quick. I explain we have to get out of there NOW, but she convinces me it’ll be worth the extra 2 galons of water I would have dumped on me by the sky later.

So I follow her into this building, which was some sort of western art gallery/wild west museum, full of stuffed buffalo heads and shit with feathers on it. We go all the way to the back, avoiding some protruding antlers along the way, and reach an unassuming doorway on the back wall, which Hanna prompts me to open and look inside.

I twist the handle and step into another fucking dimension.

In front of me was an entire ancient wild west town, with horse stables, bales of hay, a sheriff’s office, bars with swinging doors and windows for drunkard defenestration, you name it. All there in perfect pristine condition, the main street laid out in front of me with rows of buildings on each side, rolling hills on the far end, and an ominous sky beginning to thunder above it all. Apparently some rich dude way back wanted to preserve this town, which originally resided in another land, and thus transported every single original still-standing building to this new location, hidden behind a gas station. Super fucking awesome and totally worth the delay, but due to the urgency of leaving I was not able to grab my camera for a few pics.

We peel out of the gas station/taxidermist art gallery/wormhole into the past and cover the last short leg to the park entrance. By then, darkness had fallen in, and the storm had begun to rage… the outlook was pretty dismal. Even though the rain wasn’t too terrible, the winds would make it impossible to set up a tent. Unsurprisingly, there was no one at the entrance present to charge us the $10 we were supposed to pay for a 7-day pass, so we just passed through and headed to the main camp, which was supposed to be about 6 miles in from the park entrance.

That short trip was about as intense an introduction to the Badlands as you can get. We were in total darkness and completely unable to see anything beyond the reach of the headlights. The only indication of what lay around us came with the frequent flashes of lightning that would outline eerie rock formations in the distance, giving the distinct impression of walking straight into Mordor.

We reach the camp, and to our surprise, quite a few people had settled in, weather be damned. We nabbed what appeared to be a good spot, at least from what we could tell in the darkness. Miraculously enough, no sooner do we get out of the vehicle that the weather clears up, the winds die down, and rain barely registers (the darkness stays though), and so we got the tent up in no time, followed by a quick delicious meal. We fell asleep knowing we were deep into the Badlands, but we were clueless as to what actually lay around us.

I had no idea what to expect the next morning when the sun woke me up and I opened that tent zipper.

I took off after recording the Detroit footage, and decided to stop about 3 hours short of Chicago to stay at a motel to soak up a bit of internetting. Shortly the next morning I completed the trip to Chicago, with absolutely no plans whatsoever except picking up my friend Hanna at the airport at 6:30 in the afternoon.

I had a fairly massive bag of laundry to do, so after a quick lunch it was off to see where my GPS would take me to get it done. A couple of missed calls by it (several closed places, and a few that had no coin-op service), I finally found one in what appeared to be a mostly Latino neighborhood. Got all my shit cleaned and ready to go, including the Silly Shoes, which by now had acquired a smell rivaling that of bigfoot’s dick. It’s the only drawback in what have become the raddest, most comfortable shoes I’ve ever worn in my life.

The cleaning (and finding a place to do it) took a hefty amount of time, and by the time I got out I basically had a chance to maybe catch a single landmark before 6:30 rolled by. I drove by the Sears Tower, where I had heard a new attraction had recently opened. Called The Ledge, it consists of a glass enclosure on the 103rd floor where you step in, look at the vast city below you, and immediately piss your pants in fear. Unfortunately, it was a Sunday, and there was a fair line of people waiting to go up, so instead I decided to go to Millenium Park and check out the amazing giant shiny egg there:

Called “Cloud Gate”, this thing was a fucking trip for sure, it was hard to stop looking at. And going underneath it and looking up was a hell of a mindfuck. Here’s a bit of it in motion, see if you can spot me in the reflections:

Right as I was shooting that bride and groom, I got the text from Hanna that she’d arrived in Chicago, and I took off to pick her up. Hanna was gonna come join me for an adventure in the South Dakota Badlands, which were still about 14 hours away, so after a bit of deliberation we decided to not stay in Chicago for the night, but instead drive as far as we possibly could through the night in order to be able to get to the Badlands the following day at a reasonable time.

But first, we had to get some dinner. We had a craving for Indian food (best fucking food in the universe), and bit of google mapping and a random pick later, headed to a Indian/Pakistani corner joint that seemed low key and delicious.

Two seconds after we stepped in, we realized this was a far realer deal than anticipated. Massive beards, kufis, zero women, and zero white people, this was an intensely Muslim eatery, with completely unpronounceable names for food made up of several different kinds of sludgey material. After an interesting and somewhat succesful attempt to communicate with the guy behind the counter, we picked a bowl of stuff that contained chicken, another bowl of stuff that contained lamb, and a plate of naan bread, and proceeded to stuff ourselves silly to our heart’s content. Blissful stuff, those dudes sure know how to make tasty amorphous food matter.

While on the way out, we checked out some newspapers and publications on a table near the door, where I caught a lovely 1/4 page ad for a conference titled “THE FALL OF CAPITALISM AND RISE OF ISLAM” with a picture of a scary looking Muslim castle on it. Um, maybe next time.

We set the GPS for Rapid City, SD, and took off into the night, heading north to Winsconsin. Around midnight, we decided to start shopping around for motel rates, found a reasonable spot, and crashed for the night. We still had around 9-10 hours to go the following day.

Little did we know we were gonna embark on a 4-day trip into one of the most surreal (and largely ignored/unknown) landscapes known to man, the Badlands of South Dakota. Massive storytelling coming up next.

On my way from Toronto to Chicago, I decided to swing past Detroit and go crazy with the camera. I’d heard that Detroit was looking pretty surreal these days, with rows upon rows of abandoned buildings everywhere, and nature slowly creeping back and reclaiming the land.

I spent about two hours there just shooting stuff… I fucking love this camera, and I’ve been having a ton of fun with it; expect more stuff like this coming up for Badlands and Yellowstone.

Big ups to Rus from Savannah who hooked up the info to locate good spots to shoot. This is Detroit today, a snapshot of the decaying America we all hope we never get to see.

Off I was to depart the lands of America and enter, however briefly, Canadian territory.

However, there was one small thing I had to do before I crossed the border. I was gonna drive through Buffalo, NY, so it was imperative I stop by for buffalo wings.

Jim in Albany had recommended I choose Duff’s, a spot apparently very famous for their badass wings. The fame was well deserved, these were some of the best wings I’ve ever had, definitely the best buffalo-style. A 12-pack of spicy bitches later, I was off on the road again, to make a quick stop by Niagara Falls before I continued to Toronto to meet yet another Friend from The Internet, and frequent blog commenter (see many of the past posts), Mike.

Mike had mentioned the Falls had a better view from the Canadian side, so I decided to cross the border before I stopped there. All went smoothly, save for the border guard tripping balls over the PR license plate on my car. Apparently, only a handful of cars from PR must have ever crossed this border, cause they don’t even have PR listed in their database; the guy had to write I was from Pennsylvania (PA), in order to be able to log me in their records… not sure how that works out.

So soon after I crossed I headed just next door of the border to catch Niagara Falls. It was packed like a motherfucker, with the closest parking spot about a mile away from the river’s edge, and charging $18 Canadian for it. I said fuck that and parked briefly in a spot that could well have been a valid parking spot if it wasn’t for the half dozen signs that clearly said it wasn’t. It was close enough for me to dart out and get a few quick shots and some slo-mo tests with the new camera. 5 minutes later I was back in the car and on my way.

I arrived at Mike’s in the early evening. Found a suitable spot for the Yaris nearby, and without wasting a second, Mike was out the door with me in tow to go check out some spots around. We walked up Kings/Queens street and checked out some fucking amazing graffiti around… Toronto must not give much of a fuck about graffiti cause there was a lot of it in plain view, all amazing pieces that must’ve taken hours to complete. I’m guessing it was all legal walls cause there was no way there would be so much of it, and of such quality, if it was prohibited.

During this walk I came to the sad conclusion that ATMs in Canada are racist towards PR banks. I was unable to get cash anywhere, and I had forgotten to round some up on the way to Toronto. Mike was all kinds of awesome and spotted me with Canadian $ while I worked the situation out.

Another quirky fact that Mike informed me of was that Toronto was having a garbage strike, and trash cans and dumpsters hadn’t been attended to in about 18 days. Funny enough, I didn’t notice the overflowing trash cans until he told me. Maybe it was cause I’m used to living in a place where trash piles up on a regular basis, and where people have absolutely no qualms about committing fucking atrocities like the Noche de San Juan disaster at Ocean Park. I’m pretty glad I missed that, cause I would’ve fucking exploded if I saw that in person. 6/24/09, Never Forget.

Next up, a quick stop at Poutini’s, where I was to try out the authentic Canadian cuisine they call
poutine, but which I call Bowl of Crazy Shit. Basically, poutine is french fries smothered in gravy and tossed with a large helping of cheese curds. It sounds super gross, and looks even grosser:

…but goddamn if it wasn’t fucking delicious. That shit fell like a ton of bricks into my stomach, and I was surprised to see that my circulatory system was functioning properly and that I retained the basic motor functions required for walking. We then left  to head down the street and find a place adorably named The Bovine Sex Club. Unfortunately, it did not contain fornicating cattle, but it did have an impressive crowd of people who were obviously far cooler than I was. Tattoos, piercings, gravity-defying hair, inhumanly tight pants, you name it. The place itself was awesome, with walls covered in all sorts of craziness like mannequin heads, TV’s, bikes, pieces of plumbing, etc. A rockabilly band was holding it down, keeping the punks and mods moving while we sat a bit back and had a couple of beers. Very rad place that made me feel thoroughly unhip.

We called it a night after that. Mike hooked me up with a hammock he has hanging in his living room (how awesome is that?) and I had the best sleep in days.

The next day, Mike had to go to work (this is a given), and I was set to go out exploring Toronto on my own. Mike however had been rad enough to make me a little map pointing out all the rad shit I could see in a day taking a big loop into the city, as well as pointing out the places to miss (upscale touristy shop streets, overly hipster locations, and an area defined by Mike as “Gaytown”). Both Alan in Albany and Mike had been emphatic about the Art Gallery of Ontario being the #1 must-see spot if I only had a day to explore, so I set a beeline for that and grabbed a bus. I got off a bit early to walk through the graffiti alleys in better daylight (it was evening the day before) and snap a few flicks:

…then I crossed through Chinatown (those that know me would know why), finally found (after about 8-9 tries) an ATM that was mercifully willing to give me money, and finally arrived at the AGO. This place was HUGE. A lot of it was dedicated to Canadian art, which is probably as lame as it sounds (I didn’t check it out), but it also housed some amazing contemporary art collections and had a special exhibit on surrealism. Unfortunately, pictures were not allowed unless it was outdoors or an area bathed in natural light, so pictures are scarce. It did have this fucking awesome wooden staircase in it though, one of the apparently 3 things you can take a picture of in the museum:

My time was mostly spent in the top floors with the contemporary art. There were too many amazing pieces to cound, including a series of totem poles made out of golf bags (with animal faces and everything), a big furry magnetic block with “hair” made out iron filings, and an entire bathroom (including faucets) made of string and see-through fabric. My absolute favorite piece though, was “Stretch #1″ by sculptor Evan Penny, and it blew my fucking mind. I couldn’t take a picture of it, but The Internet™ provides:

Now, sure it looks trippy in that image on your monitor, but I can’t even begin to explain how much this thing fucks with your head when you see it in person. The artist (seen standing next to the sculpture) has been studying digital and photographic image distortion techniques for quite some time, and now sets out to recreate these in 3D at fairly large scales. The thing is, these are hyper realistic, with individual tiny hairs making up the stubble and blue veins and capillaries visible under the skin. Whatever angle you approach it from, you see a perfect photographic distortion, like you took a picture of a normal guy and squeezed it in Photoshop… but you walk around the whole thing and the illusion is PERFECT. Your mind stops comprehending what it sees, it wants to believe it’s a 2D image, but depth cues and the multiple viewing angles throw that impression off until your visual cortex overheats; you can almost feel the neurons in your brain struggling to keep up. It registers a very distinct perceptual and psychological impression on you, I don’t think I’ve ever reacted so strongly and so physically to a piece of art. Check out more of this guy’s stuff, it’s fucking unbelievable. Fuck Ron Mueck (guy who makes giant realistic people, you may have seen his stuff in a PowerPoint slideshow your cousin sent you… right after the guy who does the sidewalk chalk illusions), this dude’s on another level.  Peep this page for more pictures and angles of Stretch #1.

Another super impressive exhibit, which I thankfully could take pictures of, was by Giuseppe Penone. This dude basically digs into old trees and finds the young tree within, then carefully carves out the “old” wood to expose it. At first I thought the guy was just carving a tree shape out of the big slabs of wood, but careful analysis revealed otherwise. You know the knots you find in the grain on pieces of flat wood? Those aren’t just cute little oval markings, those are actually cross-sections of branches that existed when the tree was younger. This guy carves and follows the knots to the core of the tree, revealing branches long ago swallowed up by the thickening tree trunk. Super fucking badass, check it out:

Finished up with a tour of the surrealism exhibit, which was a nice bookend to the Dalí Museum I had seen at the beginning of the trip. Interesting to see the other artists in the movement get some shine; Dalí was just too badass and completely overshadowed pretty much all of them, basically making surrealism synonymous with his name.

After the AGO mindblowingness, I went for  long walk to at least catch the Royal Ontario Museum from outside, cause I heard it looked pretty crazy. It certainly did:

It was too late to go inside, even though the Dead Sea Scrolls were in exhibit and I really wanted to check those out. However I had just spent more than 4 hours in the AGO, needed to get some lunch, and needed to find some wi-fi for blog updating. Mike came out of work and met me at a Starbucks, where the poor guy had to wait for like an hour before I finished up (sorry about that dude). We walked down the street, found a camera store where I got myself a cheap but sturdy tripod, then headed back to Mike’s place, where we spent a few hours picking random records from his extensive collection and throwing them on the turntables to see what showed up. My fave was these dudes who exceeded all levels of goofy whiteness, and had incredible song titles such as “Favourite Shirt” (The name of the band escapes me, Mike, if you’re reading this, maybe you can help me out).

I can’t remember exactly when this happened, but at some point we went out for a quick beer at a place that had a ridiculous selection of beers worldwide. This is just one side of the beer list:

We were pretty beat that day and decided to take it easy after that. The next day I was set to take off to Chicago (via Detroit), and I wanted to stop by a camping store nearby to cop a better sleeping bag for the cold mountain nights at Yellowstone, and also grab a vastly superior backpack for backcountry camping. We woke up to a pretty nasty thunderstorm that didn’t last long, headed to the store and got my awesome new stuff, then said my farewells to Mike. Mike is a seriously awesome person, who not only perfectly outlined a comprehensive yet condensed Toronto experience, but was also willing to help me out when ATMs were being unfriendly, AND gave me an awesome mini sandbag tripod which is the fucking coolest thing in existence. Big ups Mike, I owe you many.

Many hours of endless Canadian farms rolling past me, I crossed the border back to good ol’ USA (where I was asked nonchalantly if I was transporting marijuana) and entered the decaying ruins of Detroit, MI.

A very special post, the Detroit Apocalypse Tour, is coming up next, so keep your eye out. Till next time.

You wouldn’t believe it, but Albany was actually pretty fucking awesome.

A lot of it had to do with my hosts there, Alan and Jim, who besides going to all lengths to make my stay there a fun one, played an excellent and very succesful game of smoke and mirrors in order to make Albany seem interesting. So I can at least say Albany’s worth a visit, but only if you know Alan and Jim.

They didn’t waste any time as soon as I got there. For starters, Alan had made me three (3) CD’s of awesome music for my roadtrip. I think only two people have bothered to send me good roadtrip music after my call to action earlier, so shame on you guys. The dudes from Albany are cooler than all of you. I’ll let you think about that for a minute.

Secondly, I was handed DAS BOOT and immediately whisked away to a Beer Garden to fill it up and promptly empty it. Let me tell you folks, DAS BOOT is not something to be fucked with.

I can’t remember for the life of me what I filled it with, but it was dark and strong (8-9% alcohol) and awesome, and it gave me a pretty decent wallop. I would have had another one and gotten pretty damn hammered, but it was getting late, the place was emptying out, and I was still in the rush mode of staying just one night and moving on, so I had to take it easy lest I miss an opportunity to grab a good camping spot on my next stop, Ithaca.

Next morning I did my whole wake-up-too-late schtick, this time with a mild hangover, and had my portrait taken with the Superyaris by Alan, who is a pretty fucking sick photographer. He busted out this ancient looking camera, the kind you hide under a little black blanket to take a picture with, and snapped the flick. That’ll take a few days to get developed, so I don’t think we’ll get to see it until after my trip is over. I’m confident it kicks ass though.

I was about to head off to Ithaca but was convinced to have lunch (hard to say no to Indian food) and take a tour of the Capitol and the surrounding area, Empire State Plaza. I was definitely not expecting to be awed the way I was by it.

The place was designed by Oscar Niemeyer, an architect best known for designing the city of Brasilia in Brazil, which is easily one of the craziest looking places on earth:

Empire State Plaza was not much different. It was pretty rainy, so I didn’t catch many flicks:

And here’s some much better images that are not mine:

That crazy thing in the middle is a performing arts center, and is actually called The Egg. There’s a huge series of tunnels and interconnected offices underneath the whole thing, with old school elevators, incredible cast-iron gates, and epic stairwells. It was all very strange and interesting, I’m pretty certain I’ve never been in a place quite like that, and I’m glad I stuck around to see it.

I eventually took off pretty late to Ithaca, without having a clear idea of where I was gonna camp out at. Research revealed 3 major campsites near the town, and a call to my friend David helped reveal the obvious choice: Taughannock Falls. Thankfully, I made it there before sundown and there were still plenty of spots available… but that’s a matter left to the next post.

Providence, like Savannah, was relatively uneventful in the way that there really wasn’t anything to take pictures of. Also, I cut my stay short from the scheduled two nights there so that I could pop in an extra day between Toronto and Chicago coming up. Therefore, this is gonna be a short and rather boring post, and I apologize.

I arrived in Providence in the early evening, and met my old roommate Ramon, a crazy Dominican who is well on his way to become King of Providence, and the entire world soon thereafter. I got there just in time to catch a 7pm screening of Public Enemies, which was pretty badass, but fell short of greatness. Also, someone needs to teach Michael Mann how to shoot in digital and make it look good. Superman Returns looked great (though it was a shit movie), Apocalypto looked great too, Benjamin Button looked incredible, hell, even fucking Crank 2 looked amazing… all of them shot in digital video. But there were too many times in Public Enemies, usually in the nighttime shootouts, where it just felt like dudes in costumes running around with toy guns and recording it all on a handicam. There were bits and pieces in Mann’s Collateral and Miami Vice where the cheap video look popped up, but never as flagrantly as in this movie. Still, the solid pacing and structure of the film keeps it up above the fray. I digress… besides watching the film, we didn’t do much that night. Had some food at Kartabar, an old hangout run by a giant Lebanese dude who is almost cartoonish in his gangsterish appearance, then passed out at Ramon’s pad.

The next day Ramon had to go to work (as all my hosts have had to do), so I took the opportunity to do three key things.

One, I did a pretty hefty amount of laundry at the old coin-op where I used to do it in college.

Two, I wrote a lot of stuff for the blog.

Three, I drove around EVERYWHERE in Providence. It may not mean much to you all, so I won’t bore you with details, but it was incredible to revisit all the different spots I used to frequent nearly 10 years ago. Thayer street, my old apartment above ACME Video, Taste of India, the RISD beach, downtown Providence, you name it. A lot has changed throughout the years, some places almost unrecognizable, but it still drew up a huge amount of memories. College was fucking fun times, for real.

Those 3 things basically consumed my entire day, and since I had cut my stay short, I had to take off in the late afternoon. I went back and had an incredible steak dinner with Ramon and his girlfriend, said my goodbyes, and took off for the next stop, to meet up with yet another Friend from The Internet, Angry Alan, in Albany, NY.

Ah, New York City. A city I often claim to hate but always love to visit. That feeling got tested about a few miles before even entering the city, when I had to pay nearly $30 in rapid-fire tolls. It’s like paying entrance to some kind of amusement park. All other big cities are pretty chill, maybe $5-10 at the most in tolls to swing by, but no, NY has to be like “Oh yeah, we’re fucking New York City” and stiff you 3 times that.

Note: Unfortunately, I had to completely skip Philadelphia in order to get to NYC at a reasonable time, so no pictures of delicious Philly cheesesteak.

I had carefully arranged my schedule to make sure I hit the city on the weekend of July 4th, thinking there would be some good activity going on. And there certainly was a lot of activity, mainly right before I arrived, when apparently half the fucking city packed their bags and took the fuck off to the beach elsewhere. This meant that instead of places and streets being packed to the tits with people, they were packed to maybe just under the bellybutton. Disappointing at first, cause I realized there wasn’t gonna be too much outrageous partying going on, but it turned out to be fantastic, because for a change, New York was totally driveable and chock full of awesome parking spots everywhere.

I immediately met up with my friends Guille, Nicole, and Eddy, and chilled for a while before crashing for the night. The next day I had scheduled myself a trip to the Museum of Modern Art, which I’d always wanted to visit. After the intense nature experiences, I was due for a bit of art review to balance it out. The place did not disappoint, packed with super influential landmark pieces I’ve been seeing in books since I was a little kid. Interestingly enough, it seemed like it was totally OK to take pictures, although I find the taking of pictures of famous pieces of art to be a supremely useless endeavor. Nonetheless, there were a few unsung heroes that I felt needed to get a bit more exposure.

For example, here’s a portrait of David Carradine:

This is obviously fucking brilliant work:

And this is a piece by Giacometti called “Disagreeable Object”. I think that’s a great name, because I very much disagree with it:

This was a room-sized installation where visitors marked their height and the date of visit, and over time, as thousands of people added to it, a fuzzy band built up lined around the room:

It was a very thought-provoking piece. Mainly, it made me think about how many of the low marks were made by children, and how many were made by midgets. Then it would make me giggle. I agreed with this piece much more than the previous one. Finally, we have OOF:

OOF.

My artist longings satiated, I met up again with my friends and headed to Central Park to chill for a while and do a bit of people watching. My favorite person was this dude who who showed up with a newspaper and dropped face-down a few yards away from us. He looked like a Mexican laborer. Dude opens his newspaper, and reads it for about 7 seconds before he looks up and stares at the girls around him while gently grinding his crotch against the soft grass. Unfortunately my camera had no video zoom, so you can’t appreciate the subtle hip motion, but at least you can see him in position here:

After the Park, we headed to the IMAX theater in Lincoln Square to watch a movie I’d be anxiously awaiting to see, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. I was super fucking pumped to watch another Michael Bay movie about giant robots punching each other on a giant screen, and had patiently waited to get to NY before doing so to make sure I got a true IMAX experience (there’s a lot of theaters out there being touted as IMAX, when in fact they’re just regular theaters with the screens shifted closer to the seats to appear larger). My excitement dwindled a bit when I got in and realized that the entire other half of the city who didn’t leave for the weekend had decided to come see Transformers at the same time I did. We had to sit in the very first row. In an IMAX theater. To watch Transformers 2. If you’ve seen the movie, you know it’s 2 and a half hours of being bludgeoned over the head with clanging metal, explosions, robot testicles, dogs humping, generally loud shit, and John Turturro in a thong. Thankfully it also contains a lot of Megan Fox ass, which looked truly fucking spectacular up on that screen. Despite the circumstances it was a pretty rad experience overall, it completely set a new bar for GIANT STUPID SUMMER MOVIE. Let’s see if 2012 can top it.

After having my brain melted, my ears imploded, and my neck twisted for nearly 3 hours, we headed back to rest a bit before heading out to get a bit of drinking going. We met up with my friend Selena and headed out to a bar called Nu Blu, which sounds like a brand of sunglasses you can get on TV. They had a really sweet jazz/lounge improv band going, and we proceeded to get hammered in an commonly expensive fashion:

I then violently passed out on the cab ride back home:

Apparently, I do this a lot.

Next day, we head out to check the Apple store, since I was in need of an extra battery for the Modbook that should come in handy out west, where electrical outlets will become much more scarce. Pretty trippy, ultramodern place filled with people who had no interest in buying a Mac but sure like playing with them pretty things.

After that, I wanted to go to B&H Photo, a giant photo supply warehouse that does a ton of business online, and whose single retail store resided in Manhattan. I had been eyeing a new camera that had me supremely intrigued, but was only available online. Only like 3 stores carry it in stock for retail, and they’re all in NYC. B&H was by far the most well-known of the three, and I was told it was crazy magical place run by a huge crew of Hassidic jews, which made it sound pretty interesting. So while I knew I wasn’t gonna be doing a lot of price haggling, I was excited about checking out the jewish equivalent of Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory.

Problem was, this place was about 30 blocks away from the Apple store. Plan A was to grab a cab or train there, but somehow Selena, who punches people for a living and is in remarkable shape, convinces me that we should walk there. I figured I’d been doing a lot of damn walking lately anyways and the exercise between drives could only be a good thing. So we walked, and walked, and walked. And fucking walked, until we got there.

And it was fucking closed.

I couldn’t fucking believe it. How could they possibly be fucking closed? Big retail store? On a Saturday on a big business holiday weekend?

Oh. Right. Saturday. Jewish people.

A big forehead slap afterwards, we grabbed a train to Queens to check out PS1, an offshoot of MoMA that showcases hip contemporary art, and which during the summer hosts a number of rad daytime parties in its outdoor areas. Every year they hold a contest for people to submit design proposals to build some sort of crazy structure and/or space to host said parties. Apparently, this year’s winning entry was a a series of big furry volcanoes. The vibe and space this thing created reminded me a LOT of Burning Man, so it was immediately awesome to me:

Really good beer on draft too, with DJ’s running sets all day. Saw some more rad art, met a few people from RISD I haven’t seen in years, and generally had an awesome time.

After a few hours, we headed back to get some dinner, which came in the form of incredible pizza. We had apparently lost track of time, cause we were only halfway on our food before fireworks started going off on TV. It was like “Oh shit. I guess we missed that”. Mostly I was OK with missing it, because after watching the Beijing Olympics opening ceremonies (the event where China dropped its pants and told the world to suck its mighty red dick) firework shows don’t really impress me anymore. It looked pretty cool though.

After some deliberation on what to do that night, there were apparently a few good parties going on in Brooklyn, we decide that we’re all old and exhausted and can’t handle extra night craziness, so we grab some booze and head up to Guille’s office rooftop for some chill skyline nighttime lounging:

Besides it being really fucking cold and me forgetting my jacket, it was a perfect way to end the day. I was pretty beat, and was scheduled to get moving to Providence early the next day.

Like all departure days, I tell myself I’ll get up at 7 to get on the road early, and end up waking up close to 10. I say goodbye to all the good folks who came out to hang, then head immediately to B&H Photo to get a second try at that camera. Sure enough, the place was open, and it was fucking EXACTLY like I had imagined it. Yarmulkas and curly sideburns everywhere, and crazy conveyor belt systems running in a million directions delivering packages everywhere in the store. I found the camera I wanted, fiddled around with it a bit, and instantly fell in love and bought it:

It’s a Casio EX-FH20, part of a crazy line of cameras that are able to shoot awesome slo-mo footage and have a huge array of options for shooting objects in motion. This thing can grab 40 full-size 9-megapixel images in just one second, and shoot video at up to 1000 frames a second, which makes it extremely awesome and fun to experiment and play with. It’s particularly well suited for outdoor/wildlife photography, which made it perfect for my needs. I’ve since had a chance to get to know it better and have shot some rad stuff with it. Expect more images and video, and less written stuff as the trip unfolds and I head out west.

I ended up leaving rather late for a 4-hour trip to Providence, land of my alma mater, RISD, to officially begin the middle leg of the journey. And that, folks, is coming in the next post.