Travel Writing for Locals, Part Two: The Long Beach Edition

Hi there, chums!

This is a creative non-fiction piece I wrote about seeing my friends' band, Lazy Mary, play at a biker bar. I'm putting it up for publication this week. If any of you readers know of publications that might be interested in this, inform me, please. Also, If you're interested in checking out Lazy Mary and discovering many new indy sound-goodies find Long Beach's own, Mountain Man Records.

Alright here we go, and-a-one, and-a-two:

Arrive Alone, Leave with Three: Lazy Mary at the Max Steiner’s Bar, Long Beach.

There’s feeling alone and then there’s walking in a unsafe part of town at night and approaching Max Steiner’s bar. Which was painted black, and had what appeared to be a bear out front, looking grizzly. I didn’t know if I’ll feel more comfortable inside or outside.  At the door, the bear turns out to be a biker doubling as the doorman who checks my ID. He said there’d be a hundred dollar entrance fee, little lady. “I’ll spend it at the bar,” I said, walking in. He said I could “spend it right here”. I’m not really sure what that meant.

Inside, there weren’t small clusters of twenty-somethings like I had expected a at “Noise Rock” show. Instead, there were rows of pool tables like grass covered burial mounds and lots of middle-aged bikers that looked like they’d like to put me under one of the real thing. I kind of squirmed inside but walked tall.

I spotted Kendall, half of Lazy Mary’s line up and rough-tumble drummer, in the throws of the endless adjustments that happen before all concerts. She looks exactly how she looked in high school, true to form. I greeted her and she handed me her drink tickets.  One of the things I find really endearing about Lazy Mary is that not only do they manage be the only band with a female in it on the very worthy independent label, Mountain Man Records, but they’re an all-female band. And, more importantly, seem to be an integral part of Long Beach’s pretty lively Indy Music scene - and they can’t even buy drinks yet.

I went up and ordered myself a margarita (I can never resist), plopped my self down on one of the torn bar stools, swiveled around, and surveyed. So they serve Bud here, was my first thought, looking at the museum’s worth of neon advertising on the wall adjacent to the one-step stage. A little gallery. On closer inspection, the bar’s patrons probably use to populate metal shows, long grey hair and leather abounded. The guy helping set-up, whom I assumed was the owner, seemed distinctly Long Beach-ian. An encouraging sort with a constant smile buoyed up by the wrinkles on his face. This, paired with the endless affirmative nod he had, combined to form a demeanor I haven’t really seen outside of California. Staunchly good-natured, aggressively laid back. The other patrons were a variety of bros, bikers, and tanned folk. There was Bud on tap, wood paneling, trucker hats, MMA fighting on TV, BMX/extreme sports gear and fishing regalia tacked to the walls. Almost zero lighting. A sign stapled to the wall next to me said, “If assholes could fly, this place would be an airport.” I sipped my margarita. Sweet and sour mix.

The singer-guitarist, Melody, walks into view from out of the dimness and I chat with the two band members. Standing together we’re a female pile of hand-knitted, thrift-stored, funny hair growin’, make-up-less, boot-wearin’, cat-eye glasses-havin’ goodness.

When they walked up on stage, it didn’t take long for the cat-callers to start a-hollerin’. Lazy Mary drowned them out with tunes, unconcerned. Melody and Kendall are not softies: Melody’s voice waivers from a epherial ghost-warble to wailing grunts and high pitches, piston bass drum rolls and guitar riffs like the energetic rumbling of a combustion engine. Sometimes set off by counter melodies, distorted and soft like the release of steam from a pressure valve. The old metal heads pay closer attention. Melody isn’t wearing a skirt anymore but a battle kilt. Drum clashes, string explosions. Sound shrapnel. Pride bleeds out of me, heads bob.

When they start packing up, there was a smattering of applause. I whooped and stomped. One man drunkenly repeats how good they were. As we start walking the drum barrels, symbol stands, cases, and wires to the car, people silently watch us pass. Their faces cued up like they were looking into microscopes, trying to decipher a tiny unknown. Maybe they didn’t understand Lazy Mary. But if they didn’t get some synapse stimulation from, at least, the honesty of a performance like this, and, at most, respect for the fearlessness creativity of these two, then yes, there’s definitely something missing. A soul.

Leaning against the black-painted brick in the crisp California darkness, I Melody sell a 7” to someone that doesn’t own a record player, “that’ll be three dollars”. We cram into Kendall’s sedan with all the equipment. Bent knees, drum-kit joints. She crank up the stereo as if the car runs on it and we drive off into the night, spoils in hand. Music-powered. Empowered.

Where's my megaphone?

Chums,
      For those of you paying attention to this little cranny of the internet, I have a bold and exciting announcement to make: I'm starting a wee writing project. I hope to have a novella written and illustrated by the end of next year. So expect a lot more posts or, at least, more posts - which isn't setting the bar very high considering the complete parental neglect I've been subjecting this blog to. If it were a child, it'd be in state custody by now. What follows should be excerpts from the untitled novella and other writing asides.
     

      Now for a picture of me loafing around California: 

Cheers!

     

Treating Trash like Tea Leaves: the Divinations of an Amateur Archaeologist

Travel Writing for Locals; or, Urban Anthropology: Biking the Debris of Wicker Park and Pilsen

Most people are not concerned with the ground except for the sake of avoiding stumbling or stepping in sticky unwantables. Maybe it’s my limited training as an archaeologist that spawned my interest in what’s under my feet. I don’t know but I sure do walk looking down a lot, much to the chagrin on my fellow sidewalk-users, I’m sure. What I’m noticing is that the streets, the contents of the gutter, the filling of the trash cans can tell you as much about the character of a neighborhood than the normal, up-looking way of travel.

Most people will not argue with the idea that your objects say a lot about who you are. What you surround yourself with, what you purchase to be the back ground of your life, to cover your body, how many things you have, and how much you value them says a lot about your character. Most people are familiar with this idea by way of “Fight Club”, “the things you own end up owning you” - or, more appropriate to this context, defining you.

I think a more accurate way of judging the nature of an individual or a demographic might be what they throw away. After all, the things you buy to be the background of your life are just that, a play set, an idea about yourself that you construct and carefully collect for the people in your life, your audience, to see and use to establish ideas about your personality, your values - is your home reused vintage or band-spanking’ new mod; Hummer or Smart Car?

 The things that you buy for your own personal and private consumption, the things that eventually end up being disposed of in your trash are not part of the performance of yourself in the same way as the things you keep. Therefore, they may be a little more honest, more revealing. Fast food refuse, baby diapers, beer cans.

In the same way, the character of a neighborhood can be elucidated by its refuse, it’s environment. I didn’t dig through any public trashcans for this article but I did take a peek into a few in each borough. Most of the litter in Wicker I saw on the ground was cigarette butts outside bars or bottles dropped in a moment of drunken carelessness from the active bar scene. When I peeked inside a trash bin in Pilsen’s Harrison Park, on the corner of 18th Street and Damen Avenue, I found it stuffed with dried cornhusks from the tamale vendor down the block. The next one I looked into had the disassembled limbs and dented face of a bludgeoned piñata pony, undoubtedly left over from the recent Mexican Independence Day celebration on 15 September. Since my survey was limited, it didn’t reveal anything that even the most unobservant local wouldn’t notice about each neighborhoods’ general demographic: Wicker serves a trendier, younger bunch, while Pilsen houses a Hispanic, working class population.

But if we broaden our scope to the other elements of the ground - yes, there are others -  we can see more subtle happenings.

Besides for the occasional sinkhole or uneven road repair, Wicker Park’s streets are in pretty good shape. Either recently repaved or, at least, readily maintained. A stain on the carpeting doesn’t make it not a luxury condo. And, overall, Wicker is a pretty well furnished neighborhood. It has plenty of the amenities that normally make their way into travel narratives: bustling bars, local restaurants, secluded coffee stops, non-commercial books stores, artists exhibits and lofts, trendy shops, vintage shops, ice cream shops, sex shops, you name it. This includes smaller amenities that indicate a larger budget (i.e., the namesake park provides baggie outposts for cleaning up after your dog). Over all, a fairly clean, consistent, and upstanding part of the North-side terrain.

In Pilsen, the topography is different. Suffice it to say, even my father, when visiting from out of town, noticed that as you head out of the North-side, past Lake Street, the streets really “turn south”. Punny as this might be, it’s true. The quality of the streets far enough west to be out of downtown and south of Lake Street, get noticeably poorer. A bike ride down Damen Avenue, south of Lake Street is a jarring experience. The trip down makes my modern bi-pedal feel like one of those 19th century, wooden-wheeled Bone Shaker bicycles: a little hard on the ass and jostling enough to knock the hoop out of your skirt, or your top hat to the ground, or whatever 1860s accoutrements suit you best. The ruggedness continues into Pilsen. Some of the underpasses are arguably impassable.

But on the Pilsen streets, after living here for three years, I’m noticing changes. (How could I not with my stalwart dedication to looking down?) A shiny, new bike lane just appeared on 18th Street, Pilsen’s major thoroughfare. A major repaving job just concluded on the long-in-need Blue Island Avenue between 18th and 21st Streets. This is a particularly important refurbishing because this small stretch of road makes part Pilsen’s major six way intersection, Blue Island Avenue, Loomis Street, and 18th Street. Here, the neighborhood’s main courtyard- a plaza in which a statue of the Mexican crest stands sentinel- as well as the useful Casa Del Pueblo supermarket, and the public library all reside.

The general consensus is that Pilsen is actively being morphed, werewolf-style, into a new Wicker Park. Once a shiesty neighborhood itself, Wicker was transformed in the last decade by new demographics seeking cheap rent. The installation of the Pink Line through Pilsen in 2006 as well as The University of Illinois at Chicago’s relocation near by, not only made Pilsen more accessible but more accessible to a different group of people. As a result, there has been strife over what some perceive to be the slow destruction of Pilsen’s Hispanic history. But the intricacies of gentrification are outside the scope of this article.

Whatever the sentiments, there is glaring evidence of Pilsen’s transition. Halsted Street, south of 18th Street has become the epicenter of a thriving local gallery scene, including The Chicago Urban Arts Society. Retro/Vintage shops, like Knee Deep, are popping up at various places on 18th Street, dappling a business-scape dominated by a robust selection of local cafes (my favorites are Kristoffer’s and Efebina’s). I saw a Zumba dance studio making residence in a storefront just this morning. The most Wicker-ish spot has to be a bar called Simone’s that boasts an arcade themed interior and a rotating menu of craft beers, brought to you by the owners of Logan Square’s The Boiler Room.

For Pilsen, its streets, the contents of its gutter, the filling of its trashcans say (in a Mexican accent) “flux”. Renovation may be giving this play set a new look, bringing in different scenes, dramas, and characters but, for now, at least, its trash speaks the truth: Pilsen’s Mexican culture is still hanging in strong (just ask that poor piñata pony). If you think this is a sad type of success and are disheartened by the thought of change, don’t take your cue from me - keep your head up, compañeros, there’s plenty of opportunity yet.

Haikus for spring and other mushy things

1) Fog-kissed flower trees
    Lake lulls like some love but our
    Blossom blooms again.

2) Fog on spring flowers

    Where the lake and city meet,

    You're somehow gentler.

3) Just grown blue

    Berries have the sweetest taste

    But leave the darkest stain.

Playing God

"Thou knowest not the image you create..."

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