Come as you are

This morning I donned my plaid flannel shirt and headed out to the new Nirvana exhibition (entitled Taking Punk To The Masses) at the Experience Music Project in Seattle.

Starting with the history of punk rock in America from the early 80s onwards and moving through the genesis of Nirvana in Aberdeen, Washington to their subsequent world renown, the exhibits include copious oral histories from major players at the time.  Ian MacKay of Minor Threat and Fugazi was an engaging and amusing guide to the ins and outs of alternative and punk culture in the States in the 80s and there was also significant input from the head of SubPop Records (Nirvana's first record label) and, endearingly, their receptionist (as she put it, who sees more of what goes on than the receptionist?!).  Krist Novoselic, Kurt's family and many other people who were on the periphery as Nirvana rose to fame have contributed a huge number of items, from the cardigan Kurt wore throughout 1992 to an In Utero angel stage prop.

I found the whole exhibition fascinating and it sparked many memories, but it was also bizarre seeing a subject so dear to my heart and so essential to my personal development being treated as a museum exhibit.  Wow, guess this means I really am old!  Odd, too, were the Japanese tourists taking photos of t-shirts I used to own and grey-haired old men looking askance at Butthole Surfers and Bikini Kill albums. 

Watching video footage of Nirvana performing In Bloom and Breed at the Reading Festival moved me almost to tears.  I haven't yet worked out what I was crying for: Kurt's lost potential or my lost youth.  This whole trip has reminded me of who I was and who I can be.  It has brought home to me what my priorities are in life.  As I wrote in my notebook whilst watching Kurt wail, "Rock and roll bitch!"

The centre of the world

I seem to have spent this trip seeking out the off-the-beaten track neighbourhoods; the places where you can find twenty kinds of organic hemp seeds but not a chain in sight.  I continued this trend today with a visit to Fremont, a neighbourhood to the north of Seattle whose slogan is 'Fremont: the centre of the world'.  The Sunday market there was a joy to behold, similar to Spitalfields but less frantic and much cheaper.

I rifled through old printing blocks...

I considered buying beautiful vintage handkerchiefs, but couldn't get past the vintage snot factor...

I spent a happy ten minutes searching through toy blocks, trying to decide what I wanted to spell.  Lack of some letters led me to plump for the simple...

I had fun making words from scrabble tiles, eventually deciding that the following would look good framed on a wall...

Meanwhile Richard has been at a baseball game, cheering on the Boston Red Sox against the Seattle Mariners.  I'm sure it comes as a surprise to no-one that I went shopping instead.

On the move again

I’m writing this on the last train of my journey: no more bizarre Amtrak rules (the trains are run along the lines of a communist state); no more being delayed for hours as we wait for a freight train to pass by; no more gazing out of the window at everything from awe-inspiring mountain ranges to downtrodden trailer parks.  I’ll miss the trains and would take another long-distance trip in a heartbeat.  If you enjoy time for quiet reflection and can cope with sitting still for 3 days stretches, this is definitely the method of travel for you.

We had beautiful weather in Portland (in fact, apart from the hideous 40c heatwave in New York and the daily thunder storms in New Orleans, the weather has been fantastic throughout my whole trip) but are now heading to rainy Seattle.  Richard will be happier without the sun but I’m going to be cross if, after 3 ½ weeks in flip flops, I have to wear proper shoes for the first time.

The last few days have included:

A visit to the famous Voodoo Donuts (slogan ‘The magic is in the hole’, and offering such delights as the cock & balls donut and the maple glazed topped with bacon).

A hike in Forest Park, the largest urban forest in the USA.  Measuring over 5000 acres and containing 70 miles of hiking trails, it was easily reached on foot from our hostel but feels like you are plunging into wilderness.  

A 15 mile bike ride along the waterfront loop whilst suffering from a cider-induced hangover.

Many conversations about the riots.  The bartender in our ‘local’ (the blame for the aforementioned hangover can be laid squarely at his door) was particularly interested in discussing the causes and implications of the shitstorm that hit the UK last week.  The guy at the smoothie shack, meanwhile, was scathing about David Cameron and so earned himself a nice tip.

Changes

Being in Portland is a bit like being in my brain, circa 1998.  If I'd come here when I was 19 I really wouldn't ever have left, so closely does the city and it's inhabitants reflect my concerns and interests at that point in my life.  For example, the downtown actually has skate lanes and routes for skateboarders and after walking and cycling, it's definitely the most common way to get around.  Everyone has tattoos and piercings, everyone wears vintage clothes and record and book stores are more common than Starbucks (which is really saying something: there's a Starbucks on practically every corner here in the US).  Portland is also affordable and therefore attracts musicians, artists and activists who can't afford the rent in other big cities: walking around the various neighbourhoods you're as likely to see a Republican bumper sticker as you are a pig flying past.

So the question I've been asking myself is: why and when did I change?  When did I take out my piercings, start covering up the ink and stop pretending I could skate?  I know that growing older is inevitable but is growing up also unavoidable?  When did my mortgage and plans for a new kitchen become more important than hanging out in dingy bars listening to bands?  Should I accept that at 33 and with a 'proper' job (and one in which, not coincidentally, I can't wear my piercings or flash my tats) I am beyond the Portland-style life that I lived so exuberantly in my late teens and early twenties?  These are the questions I have been pondering over the past few days.  Any and all responses or answers would be gladly received.

Keep Portland weird

The unofficial city slogan, seen on graffitti and posters throughout the area. 

We arrived in Portland, Oregon on Monday lunchtime and settled into our hostel in the Northwest district of the city.  Strolling around the neighbourhood made it very clear that Portland was my kind of city: beautiful Victorian houses on treelined streets filled with funky (but not pretentious) cafes and bars, bookstores and vintage clothing emporiums; the inhabitants all seeming to be in their 20s and 30s and wearing band t-shirts, intricate tattoos, sandals and beards (mostly just the men, but I'm sure one or two women also).  Portland isn't so much weird as simply awesome.  It's very bike-friendly (as Richard and I can attest to after a 14 mile ride this afternoon), left-wing and eco-conscious.  Book stores, vintage shops and clothing exchanges rule the highstreet (in fact, the only chainstore I've seen so far has been Macys).  In short, it's a kind of nirvana: a Hebden Bridge or Hay-On-Wye with 500,000 inhabitants.  When can I move here?

Yesterday I dumped Richard and went shopping on my own in the Hawthorne district, on the east bank of the river and a couple of miles from downtown.  Cool Cottons was my first  stop but I ended up leaving empty-handed, not because I didn't find anything I liked but because I liked everything.  There's just not enough room in my rucksack for endless yards of gorgeous fabric and as I couldn't narrow it down to just one, I moved on.  Presents of Mind further up Hawthorne Blvd was a treasure trove of interesting things: I love my new enamel bird necklace and this ace sticker and notebook.

Further down the street I really loved Murder By The Book, a store entirely devoted to crime & mystery novels.  My step-mum Andrea (who shares my taste for murder in fiction), would love it there.  Red Light Clothing Exchange relieved me of $10 for a great navy polka dot dress.  Naked City was stuffed with rockabilly dresses, studded belts, skull t-shirts and striped stockings; not exactly my style (although my rock chick friend Cara would adore it) but they also had this amazing 70s print dress hidden away on a rail.  $50 and it was mine.  Crappy photo I know, but this dress is so great that later that day a sales assistant in Macy's dragged it out of my bag, demanded to know where I'd bought it and disappeared with it to show a colleague.

I then headed back downtown and visited Beth Ditto's favourite vintage store, Fat Fancy Fashions.  As the name suggests, they specialise in plus size vintage clothing and it was quite a novelty to be too small for most of the items in the shop.  I did pick up a white & red striped top for $10 and only later realised it was from Sarah Jessica Parker's Bitten range.  I always was a Carrie fan.  Final stop of the day was the famous Powell's bookstore: a whole city block and nine rooms of books.  By the time I got there Richard had been browsing for two hours and it was another two till we left, weighed down with fifteen books between us.

A weekend in Eugene

Sorry Sarah, I know this photo kinda sucks.  Why didn't I take more?!

I met Sarah at my cousin’s wedding in Massachusetts four years ago and we clicked immediately (to be fair, it would be hard not to click with Sarah as she is just about the friendliest, loveliest person I know), so when I was planning a trip to the Pacific Northwest it was always a given that her hometown of Eugene, Oregon would need to be on the itinerary.  It was such a relief to get out of San Francisco and the wide smiles and handmade Union Jack sign with which Sarah and her son, Seamus, greeted us raised our moods a good few notches.

We packed a lot into 48 hours: a stroll around the Saturday market in downtown Eugene to look at the local crafts (including a good proportion of tie-dye, Oregon being where many of San Francisco’s hippies moved after the Summer of Love); a stop at a great bookstore, which we leave two books heavier; a visit to the beautiful new library for tea in the café; a picnic in the park whilst watching an unintentionally hilarious production of Cymbeline; a hike around the stunning Salt Creek Falls and Diamond Creek Falls; burgers and – joy of joys! – cider on tap at Northwest brewpub chain McMenamins. 

Diamond Creek

Most of all it was nice to kick back and relax for a weekend.  Hotels and hostels are all well and good but it was great to be in a home for a couple of days (especially as Sarah’s house is gorgeous and has left me full of ideas should I ever swap my Victorian terrace for a more modern place: her collection of vintage sixties & seventies furniture is incredible).  I loved Eugene too, which struck me as a very liveable town with a population heavily skewed to eco-conscious, left-leaning independent spirits.  Definitely my kind of place.

The best laid plans

Anyone who knows me will know that when it comes to planning trips, I make Owen Wilson’s character in The Darjeeling Limited (with his laminated itineraries and monogrammed luggage) look disorganised.  So when something goes wrong, as it did in San Francisco last Wednesday, I take it as a personal affront to my carefully typed schedule.

Things had been going pretty well in San Francisco but I’d definitely seen all I wanted or needed to.  The huge numbers of tourists made it hard to move around the downtown area without getting stabby and the equally large numbers of beggars, street corner ranters and itinerants did not make for a relaxing time.  I’d seen Golden Gate Park, the Haight and the Castro & Mission districts, rented a bike and cycled across the bridge to Sausalito… in short, all the things I had written on that schedule.  Ready to leave on Wednesday morning, Richard and I sat with our bags waiting to be picked up by the tour company with whom we were booked on a 3 day tour of Yosemite National Park.  We waited, and we waited…. and we waited some more.  The hostel receptionist eventually took pity on us and phoned the company to find out where our pick-up was.  In short, there would be no pick-up.  The tour company (Yosemite Bug Bus) had no record of my booking and the 3 day tour had been cancelled as not enough people had signed up.  Their attitude was a kind of "meh, what can you do?" despite the fact that I was clutching my confirmation email in my now-clenched fist.  So, with no way of getting to Yosemite and more importantly, with no place to stay for the next two nights, I had a mini-nervous breakdown in the lobby of the hostel. 

To cut a VERY long story short we did manage to find beds for both nights (the lovely staff at USA Hostels even gave us a discount for the Wednesday) and we signed up with a different company for a day tour to Yosemite.  All’s well that ends well?  Not quite.  Throw in a bus malfunction on the way back from the national park and the grottiest room in the grottiest hostel I’ve ever seen.  I wish I’d taken photos to capture the horror.  On the up side, Yosemite Valley is just about the most beautiful place I have ever seen.  Which made it even more of a shame that instead of three days there, we had three hours.

Further tales of the city

One place I did like very much in San Francisco was the GLBT museum in the Castro.  A small but perfectly formed space, the exhibits are wide ranging but all fascinating and I spent a happy couple of hours looking round.  My favourite things were a costume from the TV adaptation of Tales Of The City (which I enjoyed rereading whilst in San Francisco), and this fab poster from their archive of GLBT ephemera.

Tales of the city

A delayed train meant I arrived here in San Francisco at midnight on Friday night.  Collapsing into the hostel bed and enjoying the novelty of being on solid ground, I slept like a log and woke to find I'd slept through my alarm and therefore would miss the walking tour I was booked on.  Oops.  One quick call and I'd rebooked for Monday, so instead joined the hostel walking tour to acquaint myself with the local neighbourhood (or so I thought). 

A three mile march through Chinatown, North Beach, up to the Coit Tower and down to Embarcadero and the piers ensued, not quite the short stroll I had envisaged.  The tour was a good opportunity to get to know a few other travellers from the hostel, though, and after being left at Pier 39 we went to get some clam chowder for lunch.  Served in a huge sourdough bread roll (a bit like bunny chow, for my South African readers) the chowder was delicious: creamy and packed with seafood.  The sun was out, so we wandered along the pier and watched the sea lions basking in the sun and gazed across the bay to the Golden Gate Bridge, Marin headlands and to Alcatraz sitting in the middle of the water.

Yesterday took me to Golden Gate Park and on to the Haight district.  A quick visit to Amoeba records (quick because Richard arrives on Monday and will definitely want to shop there) threw up Wild Beasts' Two Dancers  for $1.99 and Resolver by Veruca Salt for $1!  The Haight reminded me a bit of Camden in London: tons of tourists, lots of drug casualties and homeless people, hippy shops and the smell of incense wafting around.  It was interesting to think about what it must have been like in 1967 but it's been thoroughly commercialised now.

Today I've been 'Cruising The Castro' on a walking tour which covered lots about LGBT history in San Francisco.  From the Castro, I walked to the Mission district down the hill and hit book gold at Dog-Eared Books (what a great name for a bookstore) where I found a Kristin Hersh autobiography I've been wanting for a while.  Community Thrifted is just up the road and if I'd realised everything was 50% off I could have come out at least 5 books heavier.  As it was, I limited myself to Out Of The Ordinary: Essays On Growing Up With Gay, Lesbian & Transgender Parents and a book about books.  Together, they set me back a whole $1.09. 

Now I'm waiting for lil' brother Richard to arrive later tonight.  I've been travelling on my own since leaving New York and really enjoyed it but it will be good to have someone to share all these sights and sounds with.

As seen from the train window

Empty highway in northern Virginia

Abandoned station building in Texas

River canyon in Texas

Mountains in New Mexico