The Mid-Atlantic

So I know I haven't been keeping up with this. I hardly have any internet access so I'll just do a quick recap.

I spent four nights with my homeboy John in Jersey City (aka one PATH away stop from Manhattan and a pretty cool place in its own right). He is also the sole member of the (amazingly good) indie folk act Soul of Jonas. I met him in Rome last year and he invited me to stay with him. In New York I did the usual stuff, wandered the Lower East Side, got lost in the Met and the MOMA, ate in incredible delis, pizza places and Chinese dumpling shops. In a Puerto Rican neighbourhood I had a Tamarind shaved ice from a street vendor. It was incredible. In Williamsburg, Brooklyn we saw a bunch of bands (Anoushka or something like that, Sticks and Stones and something else I can't remember but who were awesome nonetheless). That neighbourhood is absolutely ridiculous. Imagine Queen West between Bathurst and Ossington and multiply it by sixteen. Harlem was also awesome. I spent about 15 minutes debating whether to buy a limited edition Diplomats T-shirt but didn't because they only had them in double XL.

In Philadelphia I danced all night Saturday (Low Budget of Hollertronix, Mark Ronsson) and on Sunday went to see Espers, Bright Black Morning Light and Marie Sioux in a Unitarian Church. They were all quality Psychedelic Folk of the Joanna Newsome, Animal Collective, Devendra Banhart vein.

DC is pretty awful. I got ripped off by a cab driver, stayed in a shitty hostel and missed most of the Smithsonian because it was flooded. The rain was the hardest I've ever seen, like a tropical downpour. The city also felt like a police state, with bag checks, dogs and metal detectors in every building including the public library. Plus everywhere there were reminders of mass slaughter: the Vietnam and Korean Memorials, the museum of the American Indian, the air and Space Museum (including the Enola Gay), the Holocaust memorial and the Museum of American History (which was actually closed but I can imagine). In front of the Whitehouse I chatted with some Grandmother types and torture victims in the rain as they observed the UN's international day against torture.

I met some really interesting people at the hostel. A veteran who claims he was the victim of a covert US government program showed me piles of documents proving that he has microchips embedded all over his body, has had his life intentionally ruined and is perpetually on the run. When he heard I have a journalism degree he gave me all kinds of phone numbers. I ended up on a party line with a bunch of other people just like him.

I also met a guy from UC Berkeley who is researching covert government biological tests from the sixties. This guy was more legit with actual access to the National Archives and stuff. Then there was the Lebanese/German guy who has a PHD in something to do with Native American music and is in DC working at the Smithsonian and the Berlin Anthropological museum. He had a native (Indian) accent because he learned english on a reserve in North Dakota. We drank beer together.

Baltimore (aka Mobtown) was cool. I had Sushi there and wandered clueslessly through the "Ghetto." The fourteen hour overnight bus ride to Charleston South Carolina was not cool. Torturous actually, but an interesting cultural experience. There were two transfers: one at 2 AM and the other at 6. Imagine the tiny Greyhound station in Richmond Virginia at 2AM after ten busses have rolled up and about 800 sleepy, angry people are trying to find the right place to catch their transfer south. The crowd is all black with some latinos and one or two white people. The white people though (and I'm not making this up) were so strange looking. They all had weird lips, and strange bowl cuts, dressed in oversize sweat suits and had the most vacant expressions on their faces like they were mentally disabled.

Charleston South Carolina is gorgeous. The hostel where I'm staying is an old house with two porches and a hammock. I borrowed a bike from one of the staff and rode through a neighbourhood of nineteenth century wooden houses all with peeling paint, grandmas on the stoop and little kids on lowrider bikes (everyone is black). At the beach there were sand dunes, marshes and herons.

Everyone here is maaaad cool. I think we're going out to eat soul food now and listen to a blue grass band. Later I'm going to sit on the porch and drink beer.