Europe, Spring 2016, Part Two: Ola Catalunya/Bon Jour Catalogne

The war room, Gran Hotel Calderón, Barcelona

The unexpected extra day in Barcelona was good and bad news. Good in that I really like the city and now I had an extra day to do some of the things I'd never done, but bad in that I hadn't planned it and wanted to get on the road fairly quickly. After all, the next stop would be Perpignan, where I'd pick up a car and head into the mountains.

The room was ready, I did my customary three-hour nap, and woke up about 7. Still too early for a proper dinner, but not too early to think about it. I love me some tapas, but there's more than that happening around Barcelona, and I'm still learning about it. I had a list from some friends-of-a-friend who lived in the Gracia neighborhood, but I was still paranoid about carbohydrates. The cuisines I'd be negotiating over the next couple of weeks aren't too carby, but I still didn't want to blow the diet too soon. I needn't have worried. The best find on the list was El Nacional, which would be a tourist trap if so many locals weren't there. The concept sounds odd: four restaurants, four bars, all under one roof. Odd, but as I'd find out later, it works. I chose the fish restaurant, La Llotja, where I had the anchovies and then the clams and razor clams, as well as a green salad. They also, as many restaurants do, give you a bunch of olives to nosh on while you wait for your food. Spanish olives are the absolute best, and the never-ending ways of curing them and stuffing them are a delight: the garlic-cured ones and the chile-cured ones here knocked me out.

As did the beer and the walk home. I was already so spaced out by jet-lag that I'd missed this huge joint, located in a mid-block alley just three minutes from my hotel, but I enjoyed the walk up the Paseig de Gracia in the relative calm of a Tuesday night until I realized I'd have to walk all the way back. Ah, well, tomorrow was another day, and if jet-lag was doing its usual thing, I'd be awake early enough to pack it with activity.

Which is why I found myself climbing my first mountain in search of beauty. I was curious about the Fondació Joan Miró, because one-artist museums can be all over the map: consider the dozens devoted to the Surrealist charlatan Dalí, another Catalonian, or, indeed, Barcelona's Picasso Museum, which is a great collection of stuff created while Picasso was becoming Picasso, but nothing next to the Musée Picasso in Paris. Then there's the van Gogh museum in Amsterdam, which left me vaguely unsatisfied until I realized that he was terribly prolific and that the best versions of some of the paintings on display were in other museums. The Miró was better than that. He, too, was incredibly prolific, but he was also an abstract painter, not recycling scenes like Van Gogh's wheatfields, but trying one thing after another, chasing motifs and colors to see what worked. What I didn't know about the Fondació was that it was up one side of Monjuic, the huge hill capped by the MNAC, which I'd previously ascended by the series of escalators the city nicely provides on the approach from the Plaça Espanya. So I started walking down a street lined with electronics shops and bakeries, then a market in the middle of the street covered by tent-like structures (I didn't stop, fearful that I'd lose a bunch of time), and, after a bit, onto the Carrer Margarit, which led to my destination, but led to it up a fearful hill, which I gamely climbed.

The Fondació was a perfect introduction/overview of Miró's work: consisting of donations from his family, other artists, and museums who've put works on permanent loan, it shows how Miró developed, hanging out in Paris, befriending Alexander Calder, whose work has the same sense of play as Miró's, and struggling to come up with a personal style. Although we think of him as a painter, he also worked in textiles (there's a huge tapestry in one room) and sculpture, with some witty assemblages made from junk he picked up and painted bright colors sitting out on the terrace. I learned a lot about color here: he was obsessed with it, and worked hard at getting exact shades that would harmonize with each other. I stood for a long time in front of this:

The Lark's Wing Circled by Golden Blue Rejoins the Heart of the Poppy Sleeping on the Diamond-Studded Meadow

It's so simple you have to look at it a long time. Elsewhere there's a room devoted to the year Miró made a hundred works on paper, which shows a guy just bursting with ideas, and a fine collection of late works donated by a Japanese collector. In the basement there is Miró's own collection of art given to him by friends -- Yves Tanguy, Henri Matisse, Robert Motherwell, Robert Rauschenberg and others -- and some of the winners of the annual Miró Prize. I'm going to have to go back to this place next time, just to further absorb the bounty.

Staggering back to the exit, I noticed that I'd inadvertently done a smart thing: I'd arrived shortly after opening. The line was down the block by now, so I skipped out and walked back to C/Margrit to head back to the hotel. Do I need to tell you I got lost? Well, I did. Given that so much of Barcelona is a grid, the angled streets can throw you off. Or threw me off. Next thing I knew, I was looking at a big statue of Columbus, and a quick check revealed I was at the foot of the Ramblas, the touristy strip I avoid because of crime and tourists, one of which attracts the other. But I was exhausted and knew that if I traversed the entire thing, I'd be a couple of blocks from my hotel. I was also hungry as hell, and knew just how bad most of the tapas joints here were. So I soldiered on. 

This area had a bunch of these weird trees, which develop a kind of pot-belly and have huge fruits that look like cucumbers, which split open to reveal a cottony substance. I have no idea what they are. 

Finally, I was in friendly territory and instead of hitting the hotel and collapsing, I had lunch at Ciudad Condal, the tapas restaurant on the corner. It was insanely busy, since it was mid-afternoon, which seems to be lunch time for Barcelona locals. I had some of my favorites -- a couple of croquetas, white anchovies marinated in vinegar, and, from the daily specials menu, a mixture of vegetables with romesco sauce. This last was something I'd never had before: a luke-warm stir-fry of eggplant, zucchini, asparagus, tomato and probably something else (I inhaled it immoderately), very close to ratatouille, with a puddle of lumpy red sauce next to it. Romesco is a Catalan sauce, and is made from hazlenuts, almonds, dried mild chiles and...other stuff. It's largely served with fish, but I didn't know that as I let it puzzle my taste-buds. Now that I'm back, I'm going to make some. 

Unsurprisingly, a nap and some vegetation in the hotel room ate up what was left of the afternoon, and I already knew where I was going to eat: El Nou de Granados, an old favorite that I'd recommended to other friends and which, I understood, was still good. 

Satisfied Customer at El Nou, 4/14/16

I like this place because they have fun with their menu, the service is excellent (and English-speaking to a degree) and the wine list is wide and innovative. I had their take on a Caesar salad and, um, I'm not sure what else, because Spain has a way of handing you tons of paper when you go to museums or other sights and towards the end of the trip, I tore up a bunch of it which unfortunately included some restaurant receipts. I do remember the wine, though: I'm getting into eccentric red blends, and this definitely fits that bill. 

No idea what this label is all about

The next day there was business to take care of. The last time I'd had to take a train out of Barcelona, I was headed back home to France, and the guy at Renfe, the Spanish national railroad, refused to honor my French-bought ticket. Moreover, there was nobody in the entire gigantic station, including the travellers' aid folks, who spoke English. Thank heaven there was a young graduate student near me in line who helped, but Renfe still wouldn't accept the SNCF ticket. I was going to head to France the next day this time, but I needed to avoid dealing with Renfe directly. I also wanted to check out the Museu del Modernisme, which was right near me. And my friend Bob (seen checking his phone above) was going to arrive on my last day in Europe, at the end of the next week, and had rented an apartment in the Born district, Barcelona's new hot-spot. I'd agreed to meet his airport bus and take him to pick up the key and check out the apartment. 

It turned out that the Corta Inglés, the huge department store near me, had a travel agency in the basement, and the woman who waited on me confessed to "a leetle" English. In no time, I had my ticket to Perpignan and was back at the hotel so it'd be safe. Then I headed to the museum, which, although small, was a wonderful education in Modernism, the movement -- largely in decoration -- that preceded Art Nouveau in Spain. Gaudí was the most famous (and extreme) exponent of it, but there were lots of others. The museum was founded by two guys with an antiques business who decided some of the furniture they were buying needed preservation and exhibition -- and promotion as a strongly Barcelonan product. The collection is small, but superb, and there's even a Gaudí piece in it, for those like me who don't particularly want to stand in line for several hours, pay over €20 for entrance to one of his houses, and view reproductions of pieces looted by Japanese tourists over the years. (Robert Hughes has a great rant about this in his book on Barcelona). In the basement, there's a large exhibition of the works of Ramon Casas, whose 150th birthday is this year. Casas was both a fine artist, painting beautiful women, for the most part (modern beautiful woman, not afraid to smoke a cigarette or -- shock horror -- ride a bicycle), and he put this skill to advertising art, so there's a bunch of that. And if you're a first-time visitor to Barcelona, just seeing what Modernism is will open your eyes, and you'll notice the many, many buildings, especially in the Eixample neighborhood you're in, that are built in this style. Many masterpieces are on the Paseig de Gracia, but many are not.

After a quick trip to the hotel to check that I had my bearings right, I headed towards C/Princesa to get my routine for Bob down. I turned onto the Via Laetana, an old Roman road, now a major artery, for some time, turned left and there the street was. I walked almost to the end to the hotel that also rents apartments, noted the address, and was delighted that it was next door to one of my favorite lunch joints, Bar Celta, so I dropped in and had lunch. Refreshed, and with nothing else to do that day, I wandered Born, which has some magnificent little alleys, as well as several large plazas. 

I kept wondering what the apartments in this crazy skinny building looked like

Also, at the end of Princesa is the Citadel Park, which I'd not known about previously. It has the Catalan Parliament building

and the second-most-over-the-top fountain I've ever seen (number one is in Béziers, but this photo doesn't give a true feel for how crowded with symbolic crud this one is)

No, that's not the Brandenburg Gate's Quadriga on top, but close

and somewhere in the park is the Zoo, although some critters are loose

Fortunately, he was too stoned to move

I then walked back to Born, where I admired the street art -- and the streets themselves. 

Then it was back to the hotel, another meal at El Nacional (the meat restaurant this time, although I got lost after hitting a bank machine for some cash and I lingered at the wine bar for over an hour waiting for the phone call saying my table was ready -- the woman had lost my number, and it was close to midnight when I ate), and bed so I could catch the train to Perpignan, over in Catalan France.

* * *

Dalí proclaimed Perpignan station to be the center of the world, a title they use to advertise it, but I'm not so sure. It's not even in the center of Perpignan. It was, however, close to the neat little hotel I'd chosen, so it was a ten-minute walk to the Nyx. They were super-friendly, anxious to practice their English, and I was settled in in no time. This gave me lots of time to wander the historic center of Perpignan, which is compact, and overlooked by the Palace of the Kings of Majorca. Yes, the tiny island in the Mediterranean once ruled significant parts of Catalan France and Spain. The building is best seen from outside: although I paid admission, there's nothing but empty rooms, devoid of decoration inside. I was also hustled out by a surly guy even though the place was supposed to be open for another 40 minutes. 

Big, but boring

I wandered some more, looking for places to check out the next day, getting lost in the warren of streets and generally enjoying the ambience. Next to the Cathedral of John the Baptist, I saw a restaurant that looked good, and so I went there that evening. Le Saint Jean is a wonderful combination of Catalan (a fine charcuterie plate to start) and French (veal with a wine reduction), and although the owner hypes his own wine, Mas Divin, I went for another, and was transported: again, an eccentric blend of reds was a knockout. 

The veal

The wine

I'll be back again to try his wine, too: this place was a find. 

The next day, I picked up the car I'd have for the next week at the train station. As they'll often do, they upgraded me to a Peugeot 2008, a car I came to love driving. Neither the Europcar guy nor I could make the navigation system make sense, but the map itself showed enough to get me around. The day, though, was overcast, not quite raining, but not quite not raining, either. My goal was to find a number of Romanesque chapels nearby and also to visit a museum dedicated to a single Romanesque sculptor, which I thought was pretty unusual, in a suburb of Perpignan. The lady at the desk kind of talked me down, though, and I'm glad she did. She mentioned a church in Elne that was a must-see, so I decided to do that one first. 

And I got lost, of course, in part because one of the roads to Elne was blocked off. First, I landed in Canet Plage, one of the horrible decaying holiday villages de Gaulle built in the '60s. Great day for a beach:

See the lone joggeur?

Then I got lost some more looking for Elne. The weather was something else: stopping at a pullover at a winery called Mas Senior, I snapped this hallucination.

Floating mountain

Finally, I hit Elne. It's a fairly small place, although the church isn't. And it's got a hell of a history. As a plaque tells it:

In 1285, war broke out between Pere II el Gran, king of Catalunya-Aragon, and Philip III le Hardi, king of France 

The French troops besieged Elne and broke into the city. On May 25th, the inhabitants sought refuge of last resort in the cathedral but the besiegers burned the door and massacred the population in the sacred place.  

A  ceramic memorial outside the church goes into gory detail, albeit in Catalan, from a 13th century account: women raped on the altar, then murdered; babies smashed against the pillars; every single inhabitant killed and all of the buildings reduced to rubble.  They rebuilt, and the cathedral, too: this was an important center for the Church, and a monastery was added to it. The monastery's cloister has been restored, despite resistance from the French government, for some reason, and it's the most spectacular collection of Romanesque sculpture in its original context that I've ever seen. I'll try not to post all the photos I took.

A bible story? Who are the three guys? Are they dead?

No idea

Lots of weird animals on these pillars

Again, no idea, but the snake's cool

Small lizard on the pediment

Elne lost its vootie to Perpignan eventually, and some of the cloister's pillars were looted by antique dealers, but a lot of it's been restored and every single one of these pillars is worth looking at: it's the medieval mind gone nuts. I was breathless by the time I left.

Could this place in the suburbs, in Cabestany, be worth it? Aaah, it was on the way back to town, so why not drop in? It was an easy enough drive, Cabestany touts the museum, so it was easy to find, and I paid my dough and went in. And, although I'd just seen some of the best Romanesque sculpture I'd ever seen, I was agape. A piece of an altar had been discovered not too long ago while making repairs to the church in Cabestany, and it seemed far more accomplished than most Romanesque art.

Dramatically lit, like everything in the museum, this is it

The fragment excited the world of Romanesque scholars and other pieces that seemed to be by the same hand began to surface in a bunch of different churches in France, Spain, and Italy. Who was this guy?

The museum is refreshingly frank about the answer: basicallly nobody knows. He might not even be one person. Then again, he might be. Whatever the case, the museum has a wonderful collection, as well as a great explanation of it, and of Cabestany's role in that period's history. Why, it was the home of Guillem de Cabestany, a troubador whose object of adoration was the lovely Saurimunda, wife of Raimond de Castell Rosseló, who had him killed and his heart served to his wife, cooked and peppered. When she found out what she'd eaten, she killed herself, and when the king, Alphonse II, heard the story, he had Raimond imprisoned, where he died. Apparently this legend originated in India and has many versions in Arab poetry, which explains how it arrived in Cabestany.

I was so impressed that I bought one of the Master's works. Oh, it's only a reproduction from the gift-shop, but I wanted a souvenir of this day. The lady at the desk packed it well ("There. You can now play football with it.") and it survived the journey to Texas. I'm not sure what it represents -- an angel? a saint? something else? -- but it's good and mysterious.

We'll stare at each other a bit until we get to know each other.

Getting back to Perpignan looked easy from Cabestany: it was only a few kilometers. And that train station may have been the center of the world, but it was very hard to find: it took me two hours, between the frustrating one-way streets and the construction. I parked the car, went back to the hotel, and only emerged for yet another fine meal in Perpignan at Le Figuier, recommended by the front desk. Wine by Mas Senior, of course.

After all that driving, I was pooped. The next day's drive was only to Narbonne, but I was taking the long way there.

Next: Another Day, Another Mountain

Europe, Spring 2016, Part One: The Backstory

Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita...

Well, not quite, but it was going through my head a lot, so a bit of explanation may be in order. Early last fall, when I finished my rock and roll history book's actual writing, I knew there would be a lot of post-writing work to do. I also had the second half of my advance, and it was, in a sense, more than the first half because the immediate debts I'd had to repay with the first half weren't there, giving me some room. And I knew what I wanted to do: return to Spain and France as a tourist, seeing stuff I'd never seen before, like the western end of Languedoc-Roussillon in France and some more of the area around Barcelona. So I went to Google Flights and started playing around. By then it was too late to ensure a pleasant experience: fall was coming in, and although that meant good things for food, it also meant that the driving I was anticipating doing could be hard, particularly in some of the places I was planning to go.

Eventually, a plan emerged. UT Informal Classes had me down for the two I was going to teach (Austin music history, and a new one about being a tourist and being a resident in Europe) and the first one would start on the evening of April 13. SXSW took up two weeks in March, and I knew from returning to Europe after a number of SXSWs that what I wanted wouldn't be ready immediately thereafter. The alternative, waiting until after the classes, would probably give me the best weather, but the book stuff would be getting hotter around then, probably. I narrowed it down to Easter Monday (March 28) to April 11.

And then I did some boneheaded stuff. Prices were all over the map, and the best one seemed to be to fly from the US into Rome, then back to Barcelona. Weird, but in terms of time in the air, not very different than something that seemed more direct. I decided to think about it: I was committing a bunch of dough to this and I didn't want to screw up.

I did anyway, though. As time moved forward, I decided I had to act, only to find that the flight I wanted had sold out. Aha! I thought. British Airways has a non-stop from Austin to London, and I could connect there! But the BA website wasn't cooperating. I'd get to where I'd pay and it wouldn't load. I started the process over. Same deal. I quit in frustration, knowing I'd mess up if I were too angry. And I went back the next day, booking through American Airlines, which runs the route with BA. Austin-London, London-Barcelona and, in reverse, back. I was so happy to see the website work that I didn't notice that I'd booked a nine-hour layover at Heathrow to start and an overnight layover there on the way back. I had an idiot for a travel agent, all right. Me. But I'd bought it, so that was that.

As I went through this two-day process, what surprised me was the vehemence with which I was doing this. The project had gone from "I want to go" to "I have to go." What was up here?

That question began to be answered only weeks later. Shortly before SXSW was due to begin, John Morthland, an early colleague at Rolling Stone, my very best friend on the staff, and, afterwards, a guy who'd shared my house for a while before moving into San Francisco with other friends, had been found dead at his home of natural causes. My age, approximately. And the day of President Obama's speech opening SXSW, news spread in the crowd that Louis Jay Meyers, one of the event's founders, had died of a heart attack in the night. Again, my age, approximately. Naturally, I didn't know these things would happen when I was booking, but the idea of getting out of town suddenly, for some reason, seemed more urgent.

And there was more, not life-and-death, but a gathering storm of personal and professional issues that were closing in. The publishers of both of my impending books were working faster than I'd thought (thanks, digital age -- and I'm not being sarcastic) and there was stuff that needed doing. I started doing it, but I'd warned both publishers that I'd booked this trip and couldn't change it. Mostly, they were gracious about it.

And in the back of my mind, there was more, which the two deaths had nudged loose. Which I have to digress to explain.

Some years ago (not many, I see now, looking it up; not as many as I'd thought) my friend Mark Rubin alerted me via Facebook that some friends of his were coming to Montpellier. They were busking their way through Europe and had just been in Denmark and were headed to Italy. A duo, male and female, they wandered the world like this. The male half had been producing a singer/songwriter from New Mexico in Denmark, the female half told me as I picked her up at the Montpellier train station, and the two of them would arrive soon. And so it developed, and it's a long story, but they found a house with some hippies to stay at and the singer/songwriter and I started  hanging out and having long conversations. She was a doctoral student in botany, about to take her exam for the degree, but was also pursuing a music career. She was also smart as a whip, sharp as a tack, and all of that. And gorgeous. And too young for me. I managed to get the three of them a gig at a friend's bookstore, and there I heard some of her songs, and it seemed something was not quite right. Besides, of course, the fact that she hadn't copyrighted any of them and was selling self-burned CDs at gigs, which led to more conversation.

But that was nothing next to what happened once she returned to the States. A question about proofreading, posted on Facebook, led to a correspondence, which led to an uprooting of a lot of my cherished beliefs. If our late-night yammerings in France had been intense, our transatlantic correspondence was positively incandescent. We batted ideas back and forth via e-mail and occasionally in video calls with Skype. She was obsessed with architecture, the way we capture space and live in it and arrange it to make that act of habitation as pleasurable as possible. As she hurtled on to her PhD, she challenged my entire intellectual superstructure on a daily basis. It was like a carnival ride.

It ended badly, of course. I invited her to SXSW and she came, which was, from her end, not such a hot idea, cutting in to her study and preparation time as it did. I selfishly wanted to spend time with her, which I couldn't do in France, where I still lived. What happened in Austin was that the thing essentially imploded. She got her degree, although she had to put it off for some months after Austin, and she moved to the desert. The songwriting career seems to have quieted down. We lost touch, which is probably best for both of us.

I can't speak for her, but some of those discussions we had profoundly affected my life and thinking, and for that I'll always be beholden to her. After months of thinking about it, I can distill one of the main changes like this: Everyone needs reasons to stay alive, by which I mean far more than food and shelter. I decided that the only two things worth living for, on that level of existence above food-and-shelter, were love and beauty. The former you have to be open to, but if you search too assiduously, it will elude you. The latter is all around you, and you can also increase your input of it by going to places -- art museums, concerts, natural spaces -- where an elevated level of it may be available. This became my mantra, and I've been much happier ever since it has.

And that was foremost in my mind when I booked this trip. The love thing continued to be problematical. The beauty thing was waiting for me in specific places I knew -- and in places I had no idea existed. The deaths just underscored this in a big way, as did the changes these books would likely make in my life starting this fall. It was time to escape for a while and let things dangle. And, of course, to let other things in.

The trip started well, too: I asked at the Austin airport if I could somehow rectify my stupid mistake and not have to spend an entire jetlagged day in Heathrow, and the guy clicked some keys stared at a screen, went to talk to someone else, and bingo: a 90-minute layover rather than a 9-hour one. I'd just bought myself another day in Barcelona, getting in at 2 rather than 10:30pm. I'd planned the trip rigorously, as I always try to do, knowing there would be things that didn't go as planned, and being open to them.

Two weeks. This was going to be fun.

Next: Ola Catalunya/Bon Jour Catalogne

SXSW '16: Where Did It Go?

Events that lead off with deaths tend to be muted, and so it was for SXSW this year. Even before it started, the news that my old friend and former Rolling Stone editor and housemate John Morthland had been found dead at his home on Monday the 7th was on a lot of people's minds. Mostly us old folks, of course, those who knew him or passed his way. Although he apparently lived nearby, I never ran into him or saw him socially since I've been back. He was very private, very mysterious. Then, at the end of that week, news came that Louis Jay Meyers, a co-founder of the event who was also a musician, an artists manager, event promoter, and former head of the Folk Alliance had had a fatal heart attack in his sleep. This news came as President Obama was addressing the conference, an event I missed due to a Fresh Air taping.

So this was all history by the time my SXSW began this year, on Friday. I hadn't particularly prepared for the event, but I knew the first thing I would do: BANG! The Bert Berns Story had its premiere on Friday evening at the State Theater, and, having seen a rough cut some weeks back, I was anxious to see it on the big screen. The film had its genesis with a Fresh Air piece I'd done some years ago, after which I'd been contacted by Brett Berns, the producer/songwriter's son, to thank me for it. He talked about doing a full biography of his dad, which sounded great, but perhaps because I was still living in France, the topic faded out. Later, I heard that Joel Selvin had gotten a deal to write it, and figured the project was in good hands. Then, when it was turned into a documentary and Bob Sarles signed on to direct it, I got excited, because Sarles is good at what he does. The film, as expected, was pretty wonderful, and told the story of Berns' short but action-packed life -- music, gangsters, money, and the looming diagnosis of a weak heart due to childhood rheumatic fever hanging over his head -- in fine fashion. After the screening, various unsavory characters were spotted in the lobby.

Director Bob Sarles, right, at the premiere. Photo by telebob

I now know better than to attempt to attend most of the Interactive panels. They're mostly hype for a book or an app, anyway: one learns to read between the lines of the titles and descriptions. Last year, I'd gone to a couple of South Bites food panels, but this year they were more oriented towards technology and less towards discussions of issues, and a couple were pretty obviously "sponsored." Any time you see a panel entitled "The Future Of ______ " you can bet that the presenters have seen the future and it's them.

Sunday was the 12th annual Ed and Jon Breakfast, this year at Manuel's again, which made it a bit hoity-toitier than when it was at Curra's, and a lot of the people who RSVP'd didn't show (it being the first day of Daylight Savings Time might have had something to do with that) but it was a good time even with the smaller crowd. After that, I sauntered over to the Convention Center to pick up my bags and program books and check out the trade fair.

I've always been a devotee of trade fairs, and a quick trip around my desk shows various useful and not-so-useful things I've picked up at them, just as my closet has a few t-shirts for mysterious Taiwanese tech incubators and one from Adobe that, in a fine example of techie arrogance, declares "I know something you don't know." Well, don't we all? But that gets worn only as an undershirt. This year, though, the show was big, both in terms of exhibitors and square footage, although it was as enigmatic as ever in terms of just exactly what some of the stuff was. There was the usual film stuff, the gear pretty to look at, the services not of much use to me. Then there were all the apps for things some people might find necessary, less music sharing than in the past, more stuff of use to businesses. An aisle of future-of-food exhibitors had some interesting folks: a tuna-fish vendor whose product was guaranteed to have no mercury was pitching to pregnant women and kids, and gave me a can of tuna, which will come in useful, although the pitchman said he ate tuna about five days a week, which I thought excessive. Still, he's in the business.  There was also the mysterious Pico Brew, which claims, against all scientific evidence, to be able to make five liters of craft beer out of preassembled ingredient packs from a long list of brewers, in two hours. I don't have much experience making beer, but someone who does asked how you can do a second fermentation in so little time, and now I'm wondering, too. And something calling itself the National Hispanic Cultural Center turned out to be a front for Bueno Foods, who gave me a fistful of coupons and a very interesting cookbook. There were fewer enigmatic stands than usual, although Japan had a row of app developers whose products made no sense at all: "Your stuffed animals can chat with each other!" one booth proclaimed. It was a very long time ago, but I remember having a small menagerie and it never once occurred to me that they weren't chatting with each other when I was away. But then, I had an imagination. I do wonder how that may have changed when I see parents letting smartphones calm their little kids. But that's a rant for another time.

I had some other takeaways from the trade fair. Like this thing. It has a peel-away strip for an adhesive on the back, and is made from some kind of rubber. I have no idea what it is.

Quarter added for scale. 

Anyone?

There were a couple of booths selling clip-on lenses for iPhones, and I was impressed with this one, and even more impressed once I bought it and took it home to play with. There's a wide-angle, a fisheye, a zoom, and a macro lens for extreme closeups which you get by unscrewing the fisheye lens.

A bit unwieldy in that it's hard to carry in your pocket the way your regularly-configured phone can be, but I believe it'll get some use, especially in the next couple of weeks. And out in the atrium of the Convention Center, Mazda, one of the event's sponsors, had a deal whereby if you signed up (I had, in advance) you could get rides within six miles of the event anywhere in town. Anticipating this, I'd parked in front of a friend's house in South Austin and taken Lyft (another sponsor) to Manuel's. Mazda got me back for free. (Which is good, because tricky Lyft was charging a 75% surcharge due to increased demand. At least it wasn't Uber, who, as I noted in January, charged me a super-premium rate with no warning, and who are now trying to unseat an Austin city councilwoman who -- horrors!! -- is trying to get them to do background checks on their drivers. Regulation? Libertarian billionaires will have none of that! Mazda also handed me this when I got my ID bracelet for the rides. Apparently the clip grabs your rearview mirror and your smartphone-cum-GPS fits into it.

Clip hidden on right by inept photographer

I had to sit out the Monday events -- none of which looked appealing anyway -- in favor of going over the copy-edited manuscript of the Bloomfield book and answering the fact checker's questions, but Tuesday afternoon saw me at the Rollins Theater at the Long Center for a couple of films. The first one was Goodnight Brooklyn: The Story of Death By Audio, a most curious document. A couple of guys who made stomp boxes for guitars needed a space to make them in and found an industrial space in an odd corner of Brooklyn. Before they quite knew what happened, several of their friends moved into the space and they all worked on renovating it. Another bit of evolution was when they started putting on shows there, using word of mouth to get the word out. By now, this corner of Brooklyn wasn't so odd, and they helped make it so. Then, Vice Media announced they were buying the building (and the buildings of several other Brooklyn underground venues, interestingly enough) and served DBA with eviction papers. It seems (the film treads lightly here, for reasons those with a deep knowledge of Vice may understand) that harrassment and sabotage now entered the picture because Vice wanted them out quicker. At any rate, there was nothing they could do but plan a last month of concerts, evacuate the building, and document it as it happened. As soon as the impact of the film cleared, I found I had a buttload of questions, all revolving around a central issue: first, why didn't the DBA guys (this is a heavily male scene, apparently) talk to the other venues Vice was threatening? Why weren't they a sort of community all along? Not to get all 1930s labor union on them, but there's strength in unity, surface differences notwithstanding. Vice's inability to see that they were killilng birds who were providing them with golden eggs of content is perhaps understandable: it's a monster consumed with greed. But where was a sign of resistance, not only from the venue owners (the other venues only get a couple of minutes, if that, in the film, interestingly enough), but from the audiences? Are audiences so passive, so bent on being solely consumers, that a thriving music scene in their back yard means nothing to them? Do they just think "oh well, there'll be more venues?" DBA is gone and, um, that's the end of the film. Sorry to be all '60s hippie, but I was pretty shocked.

Then it was time to go outside and line up again for the next film at the venue, Orange Sunshine. This, speaking of '60s hippies, was about the Brotherhood of Eternal Love, the gang (there's really no better word for it) that first provided massive quantities of marijuana, hashish, and psychedelics to America's illicit drug consumers. I was quite excited at the prospect of this film: the Brotherhood was very tightly knit, and only managed to get busted rather late in the game. I had understood that part of its unravelling was due to internecine quarrels and betrayals, not to mention ongoing cooperation -- or did they? -- with organized crime. Well, folks, what we have here is a heartwarming tale of some hippie entrepreneurs who just wanted to spread the love and beauty they found in LSD. Of course, the story starts with two of them robbing a film producer of his LSD stash at gunpoint and then taking it to find out what it was. You kind of forget about that once the tale starts: these guys took insane risks and, because nobody was looking for these drugs (LSD wasn't even illegal yet), getting away with them. At one point, they claim, they were sitting on a ton of pure LSD: 100 million hits. But... There are other sides to this story, the outrageous outlaw aspect aside. They befriended and abetted Timothy Leary, an alcoholic renegade Harvard professor whose ego, far from being dissolved by his many acid trips, caused him to self-promote, equating himself with the psychedelic experience, much to the chagrin (never voiced here) of a research community who were on the verge of impressive discoveries about easing addiction, depression, and what came to be called Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. I (and many others) hold Leary responsible for the swiftness with which the federal government declared the drug to be on the same level as heroin and cocaine. And, it should be noted, after the Brotherhood and the Weathermen helped Leary escape from prison, it was rumored that he threw some of the Brotherhood under the bus to save his own skin. This is never whispered in the film. It would seem that one day -- bummer! -- there was a huge raid on their complex and it was over. Now, they're just a passel of silver-haired lovable old hippies, talking heads in their own movie. And -- there's no denying this -- that movie is a triumph, technically: there are reenactments of a lot of the past feats that are so skillful they made me wonder how crazy these people must have been to film themselves loading kilos of pot into Volkswagen buses or going through customs inspection of antiques coming back from Afghanistan. But I would point you towards any of the several book-length histories of LSD and, in particular, the CBC-Saskatchewan documentary Hoffman's Potion, for a clearer and more reliable account of all of this.

And that, to my surprise, was the end of my movie-going: two in one day. Unlike last year, when I missed a couple I dearly wanted to see, there were very few films clamoring for me to attend them. There were a couple that looked like knockoffs of Twenty Feet From Stardom, the blockbuster about backup singers from a few years ago, a film about the fabled Austin honky-tonk the Broken Spoke that I missed a couple of times, the Miles Davis biopic, which friends who saw it at the Berlinale weren't so hot about, and some mildly interesting non-music flicks. The descriptions of all of these films was beyond awful: reading the review of Midnight Special in the New York Times, it sounded way more interesting than that SXSW description made it out to be. And yet, you sit in the theater watching the promotional slide show and wonder who'd want to watch some of this. I probably missed something, but I didn't hear any buzz, so maybe not.

Which left the music part of the festivities. I no longer go see live music, at SXSW or, for the most part, anywhere else, which is, again, a matter for further discussion elsewhere. But as SXSW's original panels coordinator, back when it was just a music event, I'm always up for the panels and the music tradeshow. The film/interactive tradeshow closed early on Wednesday afternoon, so I figured it'd reopen on Friday. Wrong. For the first time in its 30 year history, there was no music tradeshow at SXSW. It used to be that at least the national exhibitors -- Brazil had a huge presence this year -- would swap out their tech guys for their music guys and just change the focus. Some of the gizmo folks would stay on, and organizations promoting their music scenes -- New Orleans was always predictable -- would promote their showcases, give away CDs, and otherwise loll around. Not this year. What this means is not only that the worldwide music industry is broke, but that the export agencies of the various foreign countries see no sense in promoting the music other than via live showcsaes. Of course, when you're Italy and the best you have to promote is a band called Moustache Prawn, maybe that's for the best. Moustache Prawn?

That left the panels, most of which were squeezed into one day, Friday. As usual, I went for the history-oriented panels, and unfortunately I missed Tony Visconti's keynote (I missed Michelle Obama's, too, the protocol for attending which was announced at about 3am the day of the speech), and I understand he was very pessimistic, as one would expect from a veteran of his stature. I did, however, get into town in time to catch a panel on Ardent Studios' 50th anniversary (some neat stories, but you kind of had to be either a studio nerd or a Memphis music nerd to really enjoy it), another on the Ramones, which was uncharacteristically dull, one on British punk, which was much better, and finally an onstage interview with Dion by Richard Gotterher, which was hilarious. At the end, I thanked Dion for distrupting my childhood and left.

Friday evening there was a memorial for Louis Meyers, which was like a homecoming. In fact, I resolved to skip my annual ritual of wandering around the Sunday softball game because everyone I knew who would be there was here. The mayor read a proclamation, there was some funny video, and everyone wandered around talking to each other until the venue evicted us. I walked across town to the bus stop and, well, although I went in the next day for a short while, my SXSW was over.

Kind of a muted affair, like I said.

* * *

A week from this evening, I'm taking one of those brand-new BA non-stop Austin to London flights, and connecting in London for a hop over to Barcelona, where I'll spend a couple of days and then head to France, where I'll explore part of the Languedoc region I've never seen and then head to my old home of Montpellier for a few days' exploration and wine-hunting. Expect a bunch of blogging when I return -- I can't feed pictures from my phone or my camera into the iPad Pro I'll be taking to keep in e-mail and web communication -- and it should include a bit of food porn, too. 

Cajun Taco, Or, A Quick Weekend

A friend who's had a hard year deserved a birthday present, and I had a need to go back to Louisiana and finish the food-buying trip I started in October on my way back from the Ponderosa Stomp. So on Friday morning I picked up a car from Hertz and we blasted off for Lafayette. I expected some great Cajun food -- and I wasn't disappointed -- and what I emphatically did not expect was great Mexican food. But I got some.

I always have trouble with lunch when driving to or from Louisiana, and have never had a decent solution to it. Once, I stopped at Al T's in Winnie, which advertises itself as a Cajun restaurant but is instead a mediocre something kind of restaurant, an insult to Cajuns. Other times I've stopped in Houston at non-memorable joints, or just taken along a bag of nuts and stopped for a soft drink to wash them down.

And every time I've done this, just as Houston is fading in the rear-view mirror, I've seen this little clutch of Mexican seafood restaurants and thought "One day..." Well, one day came on Friday. We both decided this was the time I try one of them, and drove down I-10 until the next exit. Then we backtracked a couple of miles and pulled into the incredibly crowded parking lot of Ostioneria Arandas Seafood. The name was familiar, but the food sure was different from what the taquerias of the same name offer in Austin. There was only one choice for me as soon as I saw the menu: Cocktél Vuelva a la Vida. Many years ago, I briefly lived in Santa Monica, California, and frequently ate at a place called Lucy's Mariscos, on the second story of a building at a crossroads featuring a used tire place, a barbequed goat place (which for some reason I never tried) and a vacant lot. I always got the calamares rellenos, squid stuffed with rice and green peas, toothpicked back together, and smothered in a wonderful ranchero sauce. I've been searching for them ever since, as I've been searching for Vuelva a la Vida, which is a shrimp, oyster, squid, and octopus cocktail, the seafood swimming in a spicy tomato-based sauce, well-cilantroed, with bits of avocado mixed in, which I invariably ordered as an appetizer. Arandas' version of this was sweeter than Lucy's, with less avocado and cilantro, but all of the seafood was perfection, including the squid and octopus, which were perfectly prepared. My friend got one of the daily lunch specials, fried shrimp and stuffed crab, which came with one of the weird things this place offers: fried rice. Yup, like in a Chinese restaurant, with shrimp and mung bean sprouts. (There is also eggroll on the menu). I snagged a takeout menu on the way out, and noticed that this Arandas was indeed the same as the Taqueria Arandas joints in Austin, and there was a phone number on the back to get information on franchising. I think if Arandas opened an Ostioneria in Austin they'd be mobbed, and we'd finally have a first-rate Mexican seafood joint. We already have El Catedral de Mariscos next to a La Quinta on I-35 around Oltorf, but it's mainly fried stuff, and not very good at all. Okay, that's my free get-rich tip for today.

* * *

Louisiana was as wonderful as ever. First night's meal was gumbo and crawfish etouffée for me at Prejean's, and some kind of catfish with hollandaise and crab for her. Prejean's is an institution on I-45 just outside of Lafayette, although I'm sorry I never tried their main competition, Prudhomme's, run by Paul Prudhomme's sister, who died a couple of years ago and was acclaimed as a far better cook than her brother. 

The next day, we headed straight for LeJeune's Sausage Kitchen in Eunice, because last time I was there I hadn't bought enough tasso, and the small piece I had bought went bad in the refrigerator. They're closed on Saturday and Sunday, but I begged Mrs. LeJeune -- no, I'm lying: she told me that if I could get there by 10, she'd open up for me. And she did, saying "You should have bought a box," which I did. I promise, therefore, to show up on a weekday when I run out, which I will, because there is no better sausage anywhere in Acadiana, as far as I've been able to discern. 

We drifted into Eunice and looked around, checked out the Prairie Cajun museum (one of the six Jean Lafitte historical sites run by the National Parks Service) just behind the Liberty Theater, got a very good coffee at a small coffee shop, and then drove up to Mamou, where I took a sort of wrong turn -- the idea had been to go back to 190 and head east -- and saw that we'd stumbled on TBoy's, allegedly the home of the world's best boudin. Well, no longer allegedly: although my diabetes is the sort that goes nuts if I'm in the same room with a cooked grain of rice, I said to hell with it and bought a boudin ball, which is, to one way of thinking, a stupid idea when you could have a link, and, to my way of thinking, the only way I could check out TBoy's brag without causing a problem. Now that Johnson's Grocery in Eunice is extinct, this has to be the state of the art, and no MSG that I could detect -- and I detect it real good, I'm afraid, as I discovered when falling for the hype of the various places around Scott that people had recommended. 

We drove around trying to get back to 190, but with a whole afternoon to do it in and a glorious afternoon at that, getting lost in the back roads of the prairies, cruising past the flooded rice fields with the crawfish traps out, seeing beautiful old houses and the clouds floating above the fields, was hardly a hardship. And yes, we found 190, since we'd come almost to Opelousas, so I turned west and soon came upon a photo op I hadn't responded to last time. This place was apparently last known as the Southern Club, and that may have always been its name, but it's in poor shape and the last remaining big dance-hall around these parts that I know of. 

A real fixer-upper

But apparently they get their mail elsewhere

Further down the road Marc Savoy is still doing business (although a guy who wandered into the Jean Lafitte place was complaining that his hand-made accordions are now selling for $2300 -- and there's a waiting list -- which didn't seem too onerous to me), but he'd had his Saturday morning jam session and the place was locked up. There was a sign in typical grumpy Marc fashion saying that the jam session was for older musicians and youngsters were not welcome to jam, his way of saying that it was for traditional Cajun music only, and which, like a lot of what Marc says, could have been phrased in a, shall we say, kinder fashion. I'm not chastizing him, though, not for a second. He's been a bulwark while a culture rebuilt itself after the anti-French movement in the 1950s, and he's entitled. 

When we got to the outskirts of Eunice, I U-turned and we headed back towards Opelousas, as I searched for the location of the now-vanished Richard's Club near Lawtell, and in the process didn't stop to figure out a building which had a sign saying it was the Zydeco Hall of Fame, although I think it's probably a performance venue rather than a museum. Another one for next time. We did not stop in Opelousas for a fried chicken salad at the Palace, but headed straight for a hidden gem back towards Lafayette, Grand Couteau. I love this lost-in-time village, whose main street now has a bunch of tourist-oriented businesses, but running parallel to it is a short street lined with houses that mostly date to the 1840s, traditional architecture and Spanish moss-chinked walls intact (except for the one at the end of the street, which has an 1840 plaque on it and needs rescue tout de suite). We tried to top the afternoon off with a visit to Vermilionville, a collection of traditional Cajun structures from all over Acadiana, but it closes at 4, and as usual Google Maps was no help whatever, getting us there late, so we sat by the side of Vermilion Bayou and watched the costumed tour guides leave. 

Dinner that night was, of course, boiled crawfish at Hawk's, especially since my friend said she didn't see what was so great about boiled crawfish. Really? Oh, come with me, cher... My radar has really been good lately, and although I'd copied down instructions from their website, none of the route numbers matched. I did have their phone number, though, so I knew we could call if we got lost. But no, there were the hard-to-see signs directing us to the middle of nowhere (a more apt description for where the place is than "sorta near Rayne, but not really") and just as we pulled up, a departing gentleman offered us his parking spot. A short wait later, another Texan knew what was so great about boiled crawfish. That wasn't hard. 

* * *

We had to get back to Texas, though, so I pulled the car out of the parking lot and pointed us down I-10. And wouldn't you know it, just as we were both thinking it was time to get lunch, we found ourselves on the outskirts of Houston and saw the Bank of America building that was the signal to turn off for Arandas. However, we both agreed that finding one of the other seafood restaurants might be fun, so we drove past Arandas and pulled up at Tepatitlán, which also said they offered seafood. It was a much smaller offering, though, and the campechana, their version of Vuelva a la Vida, only featured shrimp and oysters, so we settled on the dish after which the restaurant is named, a plate of beef and chicken fajitas and three shrimp, also grilled. This was the right decision: I've rarely had beef fajitas that well prepared, the chicken was also fine, and only the shrimp -- which, let's face it, don't hold up well to this treatment -- was so-so. We'd accidentally asked for corn tortillas (flour are more traditional), and that was another discovery: thick, meaty, flavorful tortillas made in-house, some of the best I'd ever had. And two people splitting the order for one was perfect for lunch.  This strip in Houston is a very happy discovery. I'll gladly stop there next time. 

Ostioneria Arandas Seafoods, 10601 I-10 East Freeway, Houston, tel (713) 673-5522. 

Tepatitlán, 10337 I-10 East Freeway, Houston, tel (713) 676-0758. 

Go East, Part Three and Last

Obviously, with being under the weather much of my first week here and in Boston for part of the second, I had to make up for some lost time if I was going to be a good tourist. So after ascertaining on Sunday that the streets were going to clear up some, I figured I was smart enough not to try for any museums on Monday and so instead wandered around Brooklyn some more. This time I headed for DUMBO, which seemed to be down the hill, and looked around. There was another view of the Statue of Liberty, another hunk of downtown Manhattan, and a couple of old buildings I found myself wondering about.

Now an ice-cream shop, which used to be what?

I walked the streets, noticing the rampaging gentrification and idly musing about how the vibe reminded me of SoHo in the late '80s. There was St. Anne's Warehouse, which is now a theater, and I vaguely recall a Lou Reed connection, like that was where he put on one of his latter-day multimedia pieces. There was the looming hulk of the Manhattan Bridge, not nearly as charming as its neighbor, Roebling's more famous bridge.

Brooklyn offers a yellow YO in the distance

There were some pizzerias, a very popular restaurant whose motto was "You don't cook; we do," which I didn't go in, and a big used bookstore. A lot of it, to be honest, was too industrial to be interesting, and the snow hadn't been cleared as much as it had been up the hilll, so it was a kind of a slog. Old-timey and new seemed at a precarious standoff.

Looming at one frontier of the neighborhood was the Eagle Warehouse building, which I couldn't get a decent shot of because of the sun. It's a lovely building, and the plaque on it says it was erected by a famous architect on the site of the Brooklyn Eagle, the newspaper Walt Whitman edited, after it had gone out of business. (Walt's also got a plaque on the building). No longer a warehouse, it's now apartments.

A dragon, not an eagle. See? You can't trust the media!

And across the street is a nice old bank, one of the first cast iron buildings in Brooklyn, which is now a pizzeria.

But the one thing it was, was wet and cold, so I mounted the hill -- turns out I'd taken a way long way around -- and contented myself with having made the discovery. There's every indication that this part of town would be far more charming in the summertime. 

The next day I set off for the Brooklyn Museum to see the Coney Island show. I didn't dawdle around the house, I didn't waste half the afternoon reading the Web, I found the direct subway line to the museum, got on the train, got off at the right stop, mounted the stairs and there was the museum in front of me. My adventures with unknown public transportation generally aren't so successful, and I felt good that I didn't have to turn around, switch trains, or anything. I did, however, have to return, because the Brooklyn Museum is closed on Monday and Tuesday. So I wasted the other half of the afternoon reading the Web. 

Determined, however, to make something of the day, I decided to take myself out to dinner. I'd passed a very interesting-looking joint called Henry's End on my way back from DUMBO. It appeared to be kind of old-school (no fancy stuff, some classic dishes) and kind of new-school (well-chosen ingredients, interesting preparations). I wound up going there three times, and having great meals each time. The first night I had the duckling with wild mushrooms, which was phenomenal (and plentiful), the second, a special of a kind of breaded chicken breast roulade stuffed with mushrooms and blue cheese napped with a beige sauce that might well have had cognac in it, and the third time their take on veal piccata. The first night there was almost nobody there, except for a lively table of four, one of whom looked very familiar -- is Marshall Brickman still alive? The second time was on Friday, and the place was packed. I got into a conversation with the couple at the next table, both of whom were Brooklyn natives, and I said that I'd been wandering the area and liked a lot of what I'd seen and that I might be interested in moving there, whereupon the woman, in classic New York style, said "I'm glad to hear that," and produced a card, saying "I happen to be a real estate broker!" Okay, Emily, you'll be my first call. And my last meal there was my last dinner in town, and I couldn't think of anywhere else I'd rather go. As befits a high-end neighborhood, it's a neighborhood joint, but kind of high-end, and has been there since 1973. If you must spread the word, use some discretion who you spread it to. 

The next day, I had a meeting with my agent to get a sense of what will happen when on the road to Nov. 1, publication day for my book. I was determined to get some authentic New York pizza into me, but he had to stay on Manhattan because he had appointments later, and almost apologetically he chose Lombardi's, in SoHo, which claims to have been serving pizza since 1905. If that's true, then they may well be America's oldest surviving pizzeria. Whether they're the first American pizzeria is an argument I don't really want to get into, but my reference book says that both Totonno's in Coney Island and John's on Bleecker Street were started by former Lombardi's employees. I can state from empiric evidence, though, that they know how to make a pie. 

After we had our talk and parted ways, I decided that it was warm enough to walk to the new Whitney Museum to see what the foofaraw about the Frank Stella show was about. Next to the Picasso sculpture show at MOMA, this was the big show in town, and I guess the weather had scared off the tourists, because there was no problem getting in. The Whitney still has some of those iconic works from the '20s on that they're famous for, but I have a real problem with the highly-interpretive labels, which are annoying. If you read anything but the name and title of the work, you're forced into someone's idea of what's going on. I'd like some bare-bones stuff: who the artist is, the circumstances in which the art was made, stuff like that. I'll make up my mind what's happening. There may have been more of this in the Stella show, but the big statements from him that are in each of the rooms are jut so down-to-earth and sensible that you have to just laugh at the art historians tying themselves in knots. There's a short dialog in which an interviewer asks Stella if those pieces that escape the wall are paintings. He says of course they are. A sculpture is just a painting that came off the wall and stands there.  I found myself taking no notes as I walked around, lost in wonder at this guy's ability to reinvent himself and plunge into whatever new idea takes his fancy: he's 80 this year, and is currently working with CAD software and 3-D printing, which, after you've taken in all the stuff here, is no surprise whatever. 

I took a much better picture, but somehow it's lost. This doesn't really get the scale as much, sorry.

Stella's remarkable Moby-Dick series, his work with all manner of materials and colors, his progression from a kid in his 20s making rigorously thought-out black paintings to things that leap off the wall, from geometry to seeming anarchy, it's all here. I compared the show to being on drugs: you don't really know what to say while it's happening, and it stays with you for a long time. Unfortunately, it's not staying at the Whitney much longer, and closes on Feb. 7. If you're in the vicinity, it's well worth your time. (EDIT: Hey, Texans just got lucky! This show moves to the Ft. Worth Contemporary Art Museum from April 17 to Sept. 18. I'll go see it again, that's for sure!)

The next day I went to a museum pretty much around the corner from where I was staying, the New York City Transit Museum. I had two goals in mind: one, to see the museum, of course, and two, to see if I could get one of those dime-sized tokens with the Y cut out of the middle that my dad used to bring home and toss into his change drawer. They fascinated me as a kid, although of course now it's all done with a magnetic strip on a Metro Card. The museum is in a closed-off part of the Court Street station, into which representative subway cars from all eras of the city's history, starting in 1905, are parked. It's got all the old turnstiles, all the old ads, a long section on the building of the lines (several sandhogs digging the tunnels under the river were involved in blowouts that shot them into the air -- and many of them lived) emphasizing that it was a job that'd take anyone, so that blacks and recent Irish and Italian immigrants could get jobs. You do, however, have to be a serious nerd to linger over the old rolling stock, but I saw what I came for and hit the gift shop, where I found that there were no loose tokens, but stuff made out of them, so I bought a key holder whose padlock-shaped base has one of those little tokens embedded in it. I wasn't pleased that the stock description next to the bar code said "key holder w/antique token." Antique my ass!

It was nice enough to keep wandering, so I told myself I'd head to Caputo's, the Italian place that makes its own mozzarella, to see if they had salt-cured anchovies. It was a long walk, especially after the museum, but I got there and found that a can of the same anchovies I have here would cost the same as ordering them from Amazon, which I'd rather not do. Also, with my radically decreased consumption of pasta and pizza at home, I'm not going through them as fast as I used to. I passed and started wandering again. I needed some lunch, but what? I saw a place that called itself a "Jersey pork butcher," that offered Italian delicatessen, and walked in. It was a place a friend of mine has mentioned often, notable by its ridiculous names for sandwiches. I forget what they called an eggplant parmagian sandwich, but that was just what I wanted. It was still hot when I got to the apartment, too! 

The next couple of days involved some business stuff, some maintenance (I had to do my laundry), and planning the last few days in Brooklyn. Along the way, I found a nice unpretentious sort of northern Italian joint, Rucola, which was an invigoratingly long way from the apartment, meaning I was burning up those carbohydrates as I walked to and from there. Dean Street has some very old wooden houses on it, although the restaurant's in a brownstone. The roast chicken turned out to be a masterpiece, and I recommend it. 

On Saturday, I wanted to get a pair of shoes, specific shoes I'd seen advertised and thought might be something I could wear in more formal situations, since my shoemaker of choice seems to be Nike, not always the right choice. My New York radar seemed to be working great: I found the shoes and started walking until I hit Union Square, where it occurred to me to call my friend Mike, with whom I'd gone on a wander in Brooklyn the week before. He had just sat down with his girlfriend to have lunch at the White Horse Tavern, so I just started walking. That's not a section of town I'm familiar with from childhood, but somehow I managed to walk straight there passing a couple of things I'd never seen before, including a house with a plaque honoring Charles Ives, who'd lived there, and a tiny triangular plot of land with some very old gravestones in it, which turned out to belong to an ancient Portugese synagogue. Amazing. At the White Horse, the three of us sat around talking and when they were finished with lunch, we set out walking downtown on Hudson Street, which soon turned into terra incognita for me. We walked and walked, with Mike expatiating on some of the history we were passing, which was increasingly being hemmed in by these huge buildings that I'd seen from Brooklyn, new buildings I had no names for. There was also a condo in TriBeCa which I'd seen ads for, one of those buildings being built for the oligarchs and .01 percenters. It looked like a stack of glass blocks poised to fall over, easily one of the ugliest buildings on an increasingly uglifying island. Eventually we reached Battery Park, although it was too dark to see anything there, and thoughts turned to where I could have dinner. In that general vicinity -- Mike works down there, so he knew the area well -- there are a couple of protected blocks of very old houses, including Fraunces Tavern, where Washington bid farewell to his troops after the Revolution, and, much later, some Puerto Rican nationalists blew the hell out of one of the rooms. The place turned out to be huge inside. The museum was closed, but the various bars -- there's a beer-specialist room, a virtual museum of whiskey, and several dining rooms -- were open. We had a beer -- mine was a stout, actually -- while making up our minds what to do next, and it turned out that the whole bar/restaurant thing had gone broke and been rescued by a craft brewer from Ireland called Porter House, whose stout I was drinking (there was an oyster stout on the menu, but it wasn't in yet). Eventually a live band started playing and drove us out into the street, where we wandered looking for a restaurant without any luck. We wound up in the Fraunces again, and all had a beef pot pie that was very nice, although maybe a bit heavy on the thyme. But it was value for money, and not what you expect from a place that has definite tourist-trap vibes around it. I'd go there again. We wandered a little more and I saw the U.S. Stock Exchange, heavily armored now against bombs, and the Federal Building with its huge statue of Washington, since it's where he took the oath of President. 

My last destination on this trip was that Coney Island show at the Brooklyn Museum, and I'd left it until Sunday, a day when it might have been mobbed. I'd never been to this museum before, and I have to say it impressed me. They're changing a lot of stuff around, and a lot of it is closed, but I got to see a very good show of stuff from their African collection, which is very impressive, a collection of feminist art, the centerpiece of which is Judy Chicago's The Dinner Party, and a collection of historic interiors which includes two early Brooklyn houses in their entirety. But the Coney Island show blew my mind. 

The smiling face of the Steeplechase

According to the wall caption, Coney Island's heyday was the first half of the 20th Century, and some of the graphics support that. I would wager that today's children would be more scared than enticed by the Steeplechase's grinning trademark, and a number of film excerpts, too, show it when it was a place to meet girls (the theme of several films) and engage in a day of innocent fun. There was also the boardwalk and beach, for perhaps less innocent fun, although Weegee's famous picture of the beach crowd during a heatwave (he got on a tall ladder and had them all face his way) shows that privacy might have been a bit hard to achieve on some days. And there was a kind of desperation to the fun, which I think comes out in the numerous Reginald Marsh paintings of the place, and is very explicit in Henry Koerner's scary oils. (Red Grooms, who I hear is Bob Dylan's favorite painter, has a couple of pieces in this show, too, including a multilayered reconstruction of Weegee's photo on glass). The show digs into the sociology and the response by fine art and fine art photography to this massive collection of rides, fortune tellers, taffy-sellers, and dance pavilions. This, for instance, is from the teens:

Iconic Islanders

I didn't know that Mae West grew up in Coney Island, where her father was a prizefighter, nor that Jimmy Durante started as a piano-player in a cabaret that offered drag shows to a racially-integrated audience. But horror and fun mixed closer together than they'd dare do in this time of trigger warnings and helicopter parents. This was another icon:

Hello, boys and girls!

The fact that age has had its way with this demon just adds to the icky affect of its cyclopean gaze. 

And then, around the end, where the amusement park was in stark decay and only minority kids were hanging around the ruins (and, some of them, making art), came a wonderful surprise: an installation about Coney Island by a remarkable graffiti artist who briefly worked in my neighborhood in Berlin, and whose new pieces always gave me a thrill when I'd encounter one: Swoon. 

Swoony, baby!

It's kind of hard to depict this, since it's her usual paper work, some of it X-acto cut, some charcoaled, all of it in 3-D and standing up. It binds the past and present of Coney Island together, and is a great end for the show. You've got a little more time with this one: it closes March 13. Go.

Which is what I had to do next: go. Monday saw me cleaning up the apartment, packing, running into the city to celebrate, a couple of weeks late, National Hot Pastrami Sandwich Day at Ben's, a new place to me (it started on Long Island, apparently), with a friend who works at the New York Times.

I had been gone three weeks, and really needed to get back to Texas. I mentioned in an e-mail to my agent that I had to go home but on some level didn't want to and he replied that I wanted to go home but was wishing that home were somewhere else. And he nailed it: very probably, moving back to Austin was the only thing I could have done in October 2013, given my circumstances. While I'm not even sure that moving back to the U.S. was a smart thing to do, I'm very sure that Austin, while it'll do for now, isn't the place for me any more. Walking the streets of Brooklyn was somehow soothing: my family has a long history in the Northeast, and that's where, eventually, I should probably be. It won't be now -- I hope there's a second volume of the book in the future -- but I suspect it'll happen. Brooklyn, the Hudson Valley, maybe even somewhere in New England or (perish the thought) New Jersey. But this trip shook me, and in a good way. I have a lot to do in the coming months, but now I have this to think about.

To be continued in the months to come.