New York I Love You But You’re Bringing Me Down (New York City, New York)

May 9, 2015 Sizzle 1 Comment

Let’s discuss the title straight up – New York I Love You But You’re Bringing Me Down is a bloody brilliant song by LCD Soundsystem, an iconic NYC band. Also, it’s the best way to describe my time in New York due to the fact that it was impossible not to compare New York to London, and it just made me wish even more that I was living back there.

We Couchsurfed at a sharehouse in Brooklyn in an area that looked so much like Manor House (where I lived in London) – the plain brick buildings; ethnic convenience stores; middle eastern fast food. The subway system was a sub-par version of the London underground – it was hard not complain that the Underground was cleaner, more comfortable, more frequent, and far more user-friendly. Some places looked a lot like London, we would often be saying “this is like Shoreditch”, or “this is like Shepherds Bush Empire”.

An example of the shitty state NYC subway stations are in

We went to see The Wombats on Monday night for $18 (they were amazing, by the way) and we could’ve seen Ben Folds on Thursday for $30 but got lazy and didn’t (we had to be up at 4am for our flight to Colombia). That was what London was like.

Ok! I’ll stop whinging! Honestly, I did love it, it just made me sad that I live in a country with beautiful weather and personal space where it’s easy to drive a car.

We did a walking tour of the Financial District straight up which was a great way to learn about the history of New York. The only thing I really knew was that “old New York was once New Amsterdam” because of that really old song that They Might Be Giants covered that one time, “Istanbul was Constantinople”. Probably my favourite fact was that the word Manhattan comes from the language of the indigenous people who lived on the island when the Dutch East India Company turned up and settled it and 25% of the buildings were pubs. Manhattan comes from their word which I can’t spell which means ‘place of general inebriation’. That’s pretty funny.

We visited Grand Central Station, which of course I was likening to Victoria station, until we actually got there and it was actually really beautiful and I totally see why people go and look at it. The Chrysler building is just next to it; as well as The Rockefeller Center and The Empire State building. We went up neither of these buildings to enjoy the views of the city because we’re tight-arses.

We walked to Times Square and were overwhelmed by the amount of people and wasted electricity. I got sad about not being able to see any musical I wished whenever I pleased. God I miss London. We laughed at the ridiculous people dressed up in costumes that are supposed to look similar enough to a famous character (aka Hello Kitty or Iron Man) to get tips from tourists wanting a picture; but not so similar as to attract a lawsuit.

All the characters hanging out, just like on The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt

We visited Chelsea Market and bought a picnic which we ate as we walked the Highline (a disused railway line that’s been converted into a paved-and-gardened walkway above Chelsea and the Meat-packing district). We rode around Central Park and then returned on foot to see the bits we missed (Strawberry Fields; Belvedere Castle). Fish preferred Hyde Park but I have to admit that I was quite taken with Central Park, especially the beautiful magnolia trees.

Jackie Onassis Reservoir in Central Park

We weren’t organised enough (a recurring theme) to have bought tickets to any theatre shows but I’d heard about getting last minute lottery tickets. I really wanted to take Fish to see The Book Of Mormon, a musical written by Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the writers of South Park. I saw it when it opened in London and I can’t stress how much I loved it and it is also boy-appropriate (not that musicals should be for women only, but when you date a guy from Jamestown you have to be sensitive to some old-fashioned ideas). It’s so popular that it sells out way in advance and tickets are sooooooo expensive. So we lined up at 4pm for the lottery and standing room seats. There were already about ten people in front of us. The line grew and grew and at 4:30 a chap from the box office came out with little cards to write your name on and enter the lottery. 6 lucky people would have their names drawn out and from there could buy two tickets for $32. The seats are 12 special seats reserved in the front row just for lottery winners. Other people in the front row pay $300 to be there.

There was a crowd of about 100 people by the time the lottery was drawn at 5pm. There was so much anticipation, it was like a reverse Reaping from the Hunger Games. The guy who pulled the names out created a bit of theatre about it so it was fun in itself seeing how it worked (because they never do this lottery business in London!). We were no Charlie Buckets, we didn’t win the Golden Tickets. But we had our place in the standing room line. So when the lucky bastards who won the lottery had bought their tickets, they opened up the ticket office for the first 25ish people to buy standing room tickets. We got them for $27.

By this time it was 6pm, we’d been on our feet all day and were about to stand for another three hours to watch this show. We scarpered to the nearest pub for a pint and a burger (bless the Irish heritage of North-East America, we’d been hard pressed to find a pub up til now) before getting back to the theatre for the start of the show at 7. I was nervous that I’d built it up too much for Fish (and the other people whom we’d befriended in the ticket line). Thankfully, he was impressed and there were some legit LOLs coming from him. If you thought Team America World Police was funny, Book Of Mormon is next level. And more inappropriate. What made it even better was that the standing places were actually up against the railing at the back of the stalls (the stage-level seats, for those not in the know of theatre lingo). We were resting just behind the people who’d paid over $200 for their tickets.

When the show was over we were having a chat to the people who’d been next to us in line earlier – a bunch of Aussie doctors from Melbourne and a gay couple from Clapham, one of whom played in the house band at Venn Street Records in Clapham Common (a great bar in south-west London). When they’d been walking back to their hotel to get changed before the show, the Aussies had bumped into a ticket seller on the streets who’d sold them cheap ($30) tickets to a late-night comedy show at Jerry Seinfeld’s comedy club where Tina Fey was appearing that night. I do love Tina Fey. If anyone is a fan of 30 Rock I urge you to watch The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt – Tina Fey’s new show which is freakin’ hilarious and I got addicted to it on Mary and Kosta’s Netflix. We were so tired and the show wasn’t on til 11pm but it was TINA FEY. Fish The Accountant even said that the budget could allow it. So we walked to the venue to see if we could get tickets. The dude on the door said that it wasn’t sold out so if we just came back at 10:30 we’d be fine. Awesome! We got a pint, came back at 10:30, managed to get tickets for $20, and then realised that the venue was tiiiiiiiiiny and immediately we became suspicious (would’ve been great if we’d become suspicious an hour earlier). How naïve we were. There were 4 stand-ups of varying quality (they would’ve been great if it was an amateur comedy night at Rhino Room; not when you’re expecting Tina Fey) and about 90 disgruntled punters which dwindled rapidly once they all dawned that no famous comedian was coming out. Turns out the ticket sellers on the street say any comedian’s name and it’s up to the purchaser to be savvy enough to know that that’s bollocks. And our Melbournian Doctors weren’t and we didn’t twig until too late. To add insult to injury there was a two drink MINIMUM and the cheapest drink was about $9. It was funny reading the TripAdvisor reviews of Broadway Comedy Club after that.

We spent a day in Brooklyn as well, following recommendations from Danny and Alisha who used to live there. Prospect Park was pretty cool – apparently if Central Park is New York’s front yard then Prospect Park is its’ backyard. There were more pretty flowering magnolias. We had awesome banh mi for lunch from a legit Vietnamese café (if there’s one thing we’ve been missing more than a chicken parmi it’s a dog roll). We walked over the Brooklyn Bridge, saw the Statue of Liberty in the distance, then cruised on to Williamsburg (much like Shoreditch – commercially hipster. If you want your cutting-edge Dalston-level hipster you have to go all the way east to Bushwick). I couldn’t resist flicking through some vintage shops so I released Fish for half an hour so I could browse and dream of more luggage space without feeling guilty watching him play on his phone while sitting on The Boyfriend Chair. When we reunited the little sweetheart led me to a park and produced a bottle of wine and plastic cups for us to enjoy in the late afternoon sunshine. Just to make it really feel like London. Sometimes there’s a little flicker of romance that gives me hope that my choice of partner isn’t totally Freudian. In the evening we hit up a couple of bars in Williamsburg that’d been recommended. Best of all was Anaconda Lounge which gave you a free pizza with every drink you purchased. That’s a travellers dream if ever I’ve heard one! We ate 6 pizzas and their matching pints while watching the Brooklyn Nets NBA playoff game (cos we’re hard out basketball fans now, haven’t you heard?).

Have I ever told you how much I love magnolias?

Another day was spent vaguely following Stacy’s Perfect Day In New York suggestion (we had to split it because it involved the Highline and Chelsea Markets which we did a different day) through SoHo; Nolita and Greenwich. New York has this funny but logical way of naming areas by abbreviating a description of their location. Nolita is North Of Little Italy. SoHo is South Of Houston. Tribeca is Triangle Below Canal. Dumbo is District Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass. We had to miss out on Balthazar’s restaurant which was recommended by Stacy, Katy and Misha, because, you guessed it, we’re tight-arses. We got take-out (because we’re in American so it’s not take-away) thai for dinner and had an early night before our 8am flight to Colombia.

All-in-all I liked New York. It was hard to scratch the surface in just 4 days, but I liked what I saw. Considering I’m not welcome to live in the UK anymore I’d definitely consider moving to New York for a stint. I feel like it’d be one of those cities that the more you know of it the more you love it. Just like London.

Road trip part II: The Second Part

May 8, 2015 Fishy 1 Comment

From New Orleans to Memphis we rolled. Memphis, where freaking Elvis and Johnny Cash both got their starts. The place must be a bustling metropolis with streets of gold where everyone’s got a chance to make it BIG.

MEMPHIS:

Describe it in a 10 word sentence: You can’t polish a turd. But Elvis lived there once

Recommend something to see please: So the town itself is a bit out of luck. If Memphis were a racehorse, the curtain would have been around it a while ago. Thankfully something that they have managed to keep a hold of is a professional sports team. And you are now reading the words of a fully-fledged Memphis Grizzlies Superfan. I got my first taste of American sports and I was not short-changed. Apart from the fact that this mob of basketballers kept on interrupting the sideline entertainment. Rude. Anyways we won and left with free Grizz hand towels that presumably were compensation for the fact we were dropping $14AU per beer.

Tell us one thing that happened there: We stayed at a Holiday Inn in the CBD of Memphis, and just across the road was a lovely gilded building that had a constant stream of retirees flowing in and out of it. We wandered over and learnt it was the Peabody Hotel, the most famous hotel in Memphis don’t you know. And ‘OH BOY’ they said, ‘You come over here at 11am tomorrow and you’re in for a TREAT’. Well that sounded exciting, so next morning we did just that. We walked into the foyer to see a crowd of a few hundred people listening to a fella in a suit giving a bit of a town-crier style talk. He explained he was the DUCK MASTER, and he was about to drop some shit on us that would blow our fuckin’ faces off. He jumped in the foyer lift and went up. About 2 minutes later, to the sound of angels singing and an 80 piece orchestra, the lift doors open and 5 ducks come walking out, down a red carpet, and jump in the fountain in the middle of the lobby. Then just sat there. WOOOO.

'Who are you wearing?' — ‘Who are you wearing?’

Star Rating: 2 ½. It could have been worse but we found out that the tallest building in town – a 30-odd storey old art deco hotel – was on the market for $1.2 mil, so I’m now seeing the whole joint as an investment opportunity.

NASHVILLE

Describe it in a 10 word sentence: There’s nothing good about country music, can you please stop

Recommend something to see please: Thankfully, there’s a bit more to Nashville than people singing about their pickup trucks. Being the cool cat that you’re all very aware I am, you won’t be surprised to know I was on the lookout for the hip part of town. We found it out East at a place called 5 points – an intersection of 5 roads that had a whole heap of cool little bars and shops. The beers were many and varied, and the waitstaff all said ‘y’all’ about every third word, which is scientifically proven to be the most welcoming word in the English language. But only in a Southern accent.

Tell us one thing that happened there: In Nashville there’s a theatre called the Ryman. Up until the mid-70s it hosted The Grand Ole Oprey, which is a country music concert held once a week since forever that is simulcast on radio. Apparently it’s a fair old institution in the US so we joined a group and got a backstage tour. So the fella guiding the tour was in his 20s and pretty jolly, and every name that he shot at us went straight over my head (bar Johnny Cash). But it became fairly apparent fairly quickly that the young man was about 8 jackets deep in the closet. Nashville being what I’d term Southern-progressive, I’m sure he wouldn’t have been run out of town for enjoying the lads, but he was certainly trying his best to dial down his femininity. With hilarious results. Every now and then he’d just come out (not literally) with the gayest arrangement of words possible, and we just had to glance at each other and try not to laugh. It was a lot like trying to hold in the giggles at church. Cathoes REPRESENT.

It's either Kosta or the gay tour guide, I dunno it's hard to tell in this light — It’s either Kosta or the gay tour guide, I dunno it’s hard to tell in this light

Star Rating: 3. I do realise that a fair few people DO like country tunes, so obviously their score would be higher. Add ½ a point for every Lee Kernaghan album you own.

Road Trip Pt I: Don’t Worry It’s Only 2 Parts

May 5, 2015 Fishy Leave a comment

Oh shit, the blog! Good lord we’re behind. I didn’t realise that holidaying was such a full time job. We’re not even getting paid for this.

So following on from Coachella we flew straight to Austin because we were starting our SOUTHERN ROAD TRIP. Cos what would a trip to the US be without haulin’ ass down route 66 in a drop-top Cadillac. Except in our case we were doing interstate 10 in a Hyundai. Just like in the films.

So the plan was simple (because we didn’t organise a thing), Austin-New Orleans-Memphis-Nashville over 10 days. Mary and Kosta joined us in Austin 3 days after we arrived, which we had spent with couchsurfing host AJ, a Grade-A chunk of lad who is officially the wisest 22 year old either of us have ever met. We collected a few times over the next week and a half so to save both your and my time, I’m going to dot point this shit.

AUSTIN:

Describe it in a 10 word sentence: A cooler version of Adelaide in March with more variety.

Recommend something to see please: Food trucks have become a real institution in Austin over the years and the area that they congregate – SOCO – is a super cool joint. The city’s unofficial slogan in ‘Keep Austin Weird’, and this is the area that most lives up to the tagline. Made even more so by the hot rod convention going on the weekend we were there. Also Rainey street is a party street that the locals go to, and it’s just a series of converted houses. It felt like we were skipping from house party to house party the whole night. Mint.

Tell us one thing that happened there: We went to Untapped beer festival 15 minutes out of town while we were there. It had over 200 breweries offering tastings of their entire ranges – for a fiver you could buy a tasting card for 12x 60ml cups and you just wandered round filling yours up. It maybe had 5000 punters attending and there were live bands to keep you occupied. We noticed though that the beer tents were starting to pack up about 3 hours before the scheduled finish. Just before the headliners started there were maybe 20% of the original tents still serving. Mary and Kosta were on their way to pick us up by this point so we were relieved that we weren’t missing out on anything. As we were walking out the front to meet them though thunder and lightning came from nowhere, and a gentle breeze turned into a gale. We ran the last 500m to the car and jumped in just before it started drizzling. As we got in we noticed an F150 with about 12 lads in the tray heading off too (apparently legal in Texas?). When we got 200m down the street the rain came pelting down. I’ve never seen anything like it. We were going about 15kph, but could only see about 5m in front of us so we still felt like we would crash and die. This went on for about 15 minutes until we waited it out at a servo and drove back to town in “normal” heavy rain. God knows what happened to the festival-goers and stalls that were still at the grounds, or the lads in the back of the ute for that matter.

'Oh look a free hellstorm with every beer' — ‘Oh look a free hellstorm with every beer’

Star Rating: 4 ½

NEW ORLEANS:

Describe it in a 10 word sentence: A sweaty, wild, musical joint with history out the arse.

Recommend something to see please: New Orleans is famous for Bourbon street – the party street that everyone goes to for their cheap beers and loose times. Which is fine – if you’re in the mood for a grimy Saturday night, brilliant. The only problem is it STINKS. Just sitting water everywhere that you know isn’t just water. You also have the hustling side of things which comes with that sort of place. So instead, there’s Frenchmen’s street. It has awesome live blues and jazz in every bar, and less of the piss-where-you-please clientele.

NOT PICTURED - the smell of other people's insides — NOT PICTURED – the smell of other people’s insides

Tell us one thing that happened there: We were wandering around the rich part of the French Quarter one night looking at the unreal architecture and old white couples on horse and cart tours when we spotted a mint old house on the corner of a couple of main streets. The curtains were open so we peered inside and it was CRISP. It looked as though there was a plantation owner still around who hadn’t touched a thing since 1850, just kept it tidy. We couldn’t decide whether in was a museum or an art gallery until we walked around the other side of the house and a man was standing in the doorway. ‘So do you run this place?’ I asked. ‘I own it’ He said, ‘wanna take a look?’. So we followed him in, and it turned out that this was his holiday house. Chip was a semi-retired 60 year old lawyer from a few towns over with an accent that made you felt like you were swimming in chocolate. He told us on good authority that he had the highest ceilings in Old New Orleans, and his ensuite was once an entire house. We took a couple of happy snaps of us faking the high life before things got a bit rapey and we high-tailed it out. No Chip, I don’t want your special home-brew lemonade.

Chip painted us like two of his French girls

Star Rating: 3 ½

Thank You For The Music (Coachella, California)

April 30, 2015 Sizzle 1 Comment

Right, here’s my Coachella blog. The festival was amazing but it was so long ago it almost feels irrelevant! I’ve just broken it down into some main paragraphs to cover the most important areas. Thankfully Fish covered the behind-the-scenes parts because that was definitely the highlight for me. We’ve since done an amazing road trip through the South, and we’re in our last day of 4 in New York now. We fly to Colombia tomorrow to start our South America travels! So let’s start catching up on what the States showed us…

Here’s my Coachella summary:

The headliners:

Night one was ACDC. We all got far too excited and went too hard during the evening so after enjoying Interpol and Tame Impala it was all too hard for us to stay upright for a 2 hour ACDC set. We hung around long enough to hear Thunderstruck which was all we really needed anyway. The boys still managed to watch and commentate an entire Crows match back at the tent whilst Mary and I called everyone’s number we could think of. I’m sure everyone enjoyed that.

Night two was Jack White who I had no time for. I will gladly swallow my pride and admit that I was wrong on this one and I was glad that Fish had him down as a must-see. He did a really rad old-school-country version of Hotel Yorba which was one of my favourite songs for the whole festival.

Night three was Jimmy From Degrassi, or, as he likes to be called now, Drake. What a load of rubbish. You’ve probably all read about and seen pictures of Madonna’s guest appearance in his set where she randomly pashed him and he quite obviously was horrified? Yeah, well that was the most interesting thing about the whole freakin’ set. Yawn factor 10.

The guest appearances:

So, Coachella is known for guest appearances. Whether it’s a hologram of Tu-Pac or Kanye West performing a mini-set, you’re guaranteed a guest appearance during a headline act and can almost expect artists who’ve featured on a song to appear for that part of the set. Case in point – I dragged Fish along to see just a little bit of SBTRKT’s set before we hit the hay on night two. Lo and behold, Ezra Koenig from Vampire Weekend wandered out and delivered New Dorp, New York then trotted off again. It was amazing. I think even Fish was impressed despite hating that song (DIGRESSION: I love that song but Fish hates it because he thinks the lyrics are dumb. We’re in New York right now and we saw a sign today that listed New Dorp as a location! I was so excited that that wasn’t just a dumb lyric! I now just have to find a statue or something of gargoyles gargling oil…)

Zach De La Rocha from Rage Against The Machine featured in Run The Jewels set which we tragically missed due to unfortunate clashes. After complaining so much about how sparse the line-up was of good acts I managed to miss bands I would’ve liked to see and Day 2 was a corker for clashes of bands. I think you realistically can only watch up to 5 bands in one day of a festival by the time you factor in food, beverage, shade, and rest needs.

Jack White had a full band behind him which included the lead singer from the Dixie Chicks on fiddle and back-up vocals which was kinda cool.

Now, Madonna… Kiss, shmiss, whatever, that was the least of what was wrong with that appearance. The whole thing was confusing – why was she even there? When people make a guest appearance, especially during the headline set, they should have some connection to the people performing or at least be relevant. Honestly, when she appeared Fish and Mary where sitting down having a chat (because that’s how compelling Drake’s set was) and Kosta and I were standing there going:

“here we go…. Someone is going to appear…”

*opening strains of Hung Up start*

“ohhhhhh, is it Lady Gaga?!”

“Nah….. it’s…. ummmmm…….”

*Madonna comes out on stage*

“Who is that?!”

“Madonna!”

“Oh yeah it is! What’s she doing here?”

The whole thing just smacked of a publicity grab for Madonna.

Highlights:

Right! Enough whinging! Good stuffs!

Royal Blood. Woah. They were incredible. They’re a very unorthodox set up of one bass guitarist/vocalist and a drummer and they will blow your face off. I can’t believe the sounds those guys could produce just between the pair of them. The crowd loved it too.

My personal highlight was a recommendation from Jacob, Mary’s brother. It was a band I’d never heard of from Alabama called St Paul and The Broken Bones and they were on so early that they didn’t clash with anyone so we went to check them out. They were a suited and booted big band – brass; drums; keys; guitarists – fronted by a man who was as plain as an arrowroot biscuit but had amazing stage presence and had an incredible voice. The best thing I can compare them to is Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings, but remove Sharon Jones and replace her with the body of Drew Carey and the voice of the chick from Alabama Shakes. Kaysie, you would love them and I think you need to get Tennis onto trying to get them out for Blenheim fest!

Interpol were great, as per usual; Milky Chance were excellent despite the lead singer being really sick and nearly losing his voice; St Lucia were fun; Parquet Courts; Kasabian, and Florence and The Machine. Florence was just wonderful and we later found out that she actually broke her foot during the set from running all over the stage!

Celeb spotting:

Guys, so many celebs! I got well excited. My favourite was Donna and Hyde from That 70s Show being right in front of us during Bad Religion (I was more excited about them than the band). We also saw the curly haired dude from Workaholics; a few Victoria’s Secret models; John and Yoko’s son; and some famous bloggers. Mary and Kosta knew all the actual names of these people, but whatever. We thought we saw Kahleesi from Game Of Thrones but it turned out to be another short chick with bleached hair and dark eyebrows; and there were about 8 incorrect Dave Grohl sightings within one hour. There were unconfirmed sightings of Justin Bieber and Iggy Azaelia. Oh and we saw Fitzy from Aussie radio/ Big Brother hahaha.

The best one, however, was when Fish and Kosta were standing right in front of Aaron Paul during The War On Drugs set. He’s Jesse from Breaking Bad. Mary and I were off watching Ghostface Killah and Raekwon and when we came back the boys had drunk all of the waterbottles of vodka we’d packed so were on another level. Kosta was preeeeeetty excited about seeing Aaron Paul and that name became his answer to anything, the best time being after Mary asked if he was ok: “Mary… A) Aaron Paul… B) Aaron Paul)”. That became the quote of the festival. Now if we list anything we have to start at C because we all know what A and B are.

"And just to my left here is Aaron Paul..." — “And just to my left here is Aaron Paul…”

At the end of the day:

So, we had a brilliant time. The line-up was definitely solid enough to keep me interested and there was the added bonus of not being torn between two bands due to clashes. Even that wouldn’t have been that much of a problem because of the Golden Ticket that is a Safari Pass – just jump back stage, get on a golf cart and get whisked to the next stage. It was freaking hot during the day so I don’t know how it must be if you camp and then have to walk a million miles into the festival grounds. I’d do it all over again but only with the Safari Pass. In summary:

A) Aaron Paul

B) Aaron Paul

C) Safari Pass

D) Coachella

We Gotta Get Out Of This Place (Jackson, Mississippi)

April 22, 2015 Sizzle 3 Comments

Guys, we’ve been so busy doing so much we haven’t had time to write about it. I’ll get around to doing my Coachella blog at some point (maybe) and at least one of us will write about this roadtrip that we’re currently on. But I’m writing this post as a bit of a public service announcement – Jackson, Mississippi, is a shit-hole.

Yesterday we drove from New Orleans, Louisiana, and drove north to Memphis, Nashville. This involves driving all the way through Mississippi and we were pretty excited to have a stop in Jackson. We were singing ‘We’re going to Jackson’ by Johnny Cash and June Carter for most of the morning, sometimes interspersed with a little “Hollywood, Harlem, Jackson Mississippi” from Mark Ronson’s Uptown Funk. We got into town and shut up immediately. Why, Mark Ronson?! Why?!

We did not even get out of the car. I think the only person we saw was one guy on a park bench who started walking towards us when we paused too long at an intersection. I just asked Fish how he would describe the place and he just said ‘Caltowie’. Perfect.

Mary googled some facts about the town as we quickly retreated – Jackson has a population of 175,000 people (the largest city in Mississippi) and the state ranks as the worst in the entire USA in education attainment; mean household income; and health. It’s also the most racist and most religious.

We just have no idea why the city gets sung about.

Title is from The Animals ‘We Gotta Get Out Of This Place’. Kosta thinks the song is about the Vietnam War but I’m sure it’s another Jackson song.

Coachells bells

April 15, 2015 Fishy 2 Comments

Coachella in my mind has always been a mythical place that I assumed I’d never see, just hear about every year because something huge happened that had every music-loving person in the world at half chub. When I realised it might fit into our US schedule I got a bit excited myself, but when Siz got me tix as a pressie, I was peaking. Little did I know…

We got going from LA early-ish Thursday morning thanks to Mary and Kosta weaselling another few days off, and it paid off. What can sometimes be a 5 hour trek was done in 2. I had noticed when packing the car that there was a severe lack of tent and sleeping gear, but I put that down to Coachella perhaps having a strict provided-tents-only policy. Things started to seem stranger when we pulled up to a country club in town instead of a paddock. ‘Should we tell Fish what’s happening?’ asked Siz. They decided not to. I thought I might be in for a late birthday lunch or something, but then we went inside and there was a Coachella check-in desk. We got handed a welcome pack and were instructed to follow a concierge in a car to the grounds. Now still at this point I just assumed this was standard operating procedure for Coachella goers and this was the most fucking mintly organised festival ever dreamed up by mankind.

We weren't the only fans on the way to Coachella haha FISHY — We weren’t the only fans on the way to Coachella haha FISHY

Things started to click when we arrived at the festival proper. We pulled up in a car park marked ‘Safari’ and 8 people spread over 4 golf carts rushed over to meet us. ‘Hey Fish, see these golf carts?’ Kosta asked, ‘they drive us to the stages’. We weren’t at Falls anymore. The carts took our bags and ourselves and drove from the car park into an Adelaide oval quality patch of turf with immaculately constructed white tents arranged in a bicycle spoke pattern around a central larger tent. They dropped us at a tent 3 from the centre, where our concierge unzipped the front flaps to display two friggin’ queen size beds, a bar fridge, air conditioner, full length mirror and the cutest little outdoor setting you’ve seen in your whole darned life. Fair to say I was a touch taken aback. ‘And guys if you want to book in for your massages just wander over to the front desk there and they’ll take care of you’. What the hell.

If this isn't 1000 thread count I swear to God I will end you — If this isn’t 1000 thread count I swear to God I will end you

So anyways on top of the most palatial tent on God’s green earth and daily rub-downs, we got;

Full buffet breakfasts and midnight snacks daily, as well free non-alcoholic beverages
Fancy pants shower and dunny blocks away from the plebs
The aforementioned shuttle service to the back of any stage we choose
An area at the front of each stage reserved for Safari campers and artists
Entry into the VIP and artist areas of the festival
A feeling of being better than everyone else

Central site tent outside — The mountains in the background were actually put there for the benefit of Safari pass holders

I was honestly a bit overawed by the whole thing, and it took a while to process the princely situation that we were going to be living. For a fella who hasn’t ever showered at a festival before and more often than not ends up with some sort of bodily fluid in his tent by the end, the thought that I could have the awesome times without the grimier times at Coachella was something else. Especially for the fact the average temperature for Coachella in April is around 40c.

So I decompressed in the car while we ducked out to Slab City from the movie Into The Wild. It’s a crazy hippie commune in the middle of the desert (an hour away from Coachella) that features a huge mound of dirt that a fella spent 28 years covering in papier mache and painting preachy religious slogans on. I can only assume his choice of ‘Jesus come upon my body’ didn’t quite have the connotations back in the 80s that it does today. Or maybe, as the info booth noted, he was just too hopped up on acid to notice.

Thursday night was enjoyed at our abode with a free feed put on for us high rollers with a DJ pumping out tunes in the central tent. I started to get the feeling the excesses were having an effect on me when I dropped a mountain of fried chicken on the floor and instead of being a normal dude and crying, I laughed and went and got more. Sorry starved African kiddies 😦

I’ll let Siz talk you through the festival proper but I will just say that the one band that I was drop dead keen on – Royal Blood – blew my face off and were by far and away my highlight of the festival. But there were so many hidden gems and stunning headliners that it would probably take the equivalent of a Bryce Courtenay novel to describe everyone/everything.

In summation, we done fun.

Havasu, Crushin’ Brews, Marry a Man

April 8, 2015 Fishy Leave a comment

So on we went from San Fran. After 4 hours sleep and 0 cups of coffee we got picked up at 8am Friday by Mary and Kosta from John Wayne airport, heading straight to Lake Havasu for the Easter weekend. FUN FACT: All you have to do in America to get an airport named after you is be in a film.

All I’d heard from people about Havasu before getting there was that it’s a cradle of college filth. If you have a dip in the water you’ll either get pregnant or have the best skin in the world. The major trade along the shoreline is in Pastieez (cos how ELSE would you spell it) which are sticky nipple discs you can chuck on so as not to get locked up for indecent exposure when you’re saying G’day to someone with your chesticles.

All this and more was running through my head when the bomb was dropped that we are currently in the middle of SPRING BREAK for southern California. SPRING BREAK by all reports is exactly like what you see in the movies. Also SPRING BREAK has to be capitalised when written because SPRING BREAK.

We got to Havasu though and it seemed like a chilled out version of Renmark. It’s situated 4 hours inland from LA and it is legitimately in the middle of nowhere – the 4 hours drive was pure desert and apart from the servos that fed the freeway there was not a sign of humanity. Mary’s lovely mum Tina and stepdad Dave have an awesome pair of places that back on to a golf course 5 minutes drive from the lake. Us young pups set up camp at chateau #2 while the oldies held court at #1. The Friday night was spent beering and barbecuing around the Jacuzzi, and thanks to the early start had ended for us by 11pm.

Saturday was scheduled as lake time, and after a slow start by a few people we ended up getting out to the water by lunchtime. Mary’s extended family has teamed up to buy the sweet combo of a pontoon boat (floating bar that does 30kph) and a Nautica ski boat (the most mint ski boat I’ve ever seen). We drove around the lake until we found a nice little clearing, tied the two together and set about our business, which included and was limited to beers.

Two boats backwards is staob owt which means 'heck yeah' in dutch. — Two boats backwards is staob owt which means ‘heck yeah’ in dutch.

I did end up having a quick wakeboard at the end of the day but it wasn’t great because it was choppy and I’d had many beers and people were looking and my mustache was sore and the barometric pressure was way off and excuses. To mend the aches we had family burritos that night and watched the Crows start the season in style, explaining what the hell these lads were doing every 30 seconds to the Americans.

Drowning Siz proved harder when she got her hands on some pool noodles

Sunday was just chill central. We got back on the pontoon boat for a few hours for a couple more drinks but there were some sore heads and a 4 hour drive to knock over back to LA, so everyone kept themselves in check. Havasu’s must see is London Bridge, which is a previous version of the actual London Bridge that they shipped into the middle of the friggin’ American desert brick by brick and recreated. Pointless, excessive and awesome. The words that come to mind for about 98% of the US that I’ve seen so far.

We got back at 11:30pm Sunday thanks to another marathon effort from Kosta behind the wheel. The poor bastard was the only one of us who needed to work in the morning as well. What a trooper.

For a slice of the Havasu life and to get the title reference, do yourself a favour and have a squiz – www.youtube.com/watch?v=jUw4Qh9uFK8

She’s Got Legs, She Knows How To Use Them (San Francisco, California)

April 4, 2015 Sizzle Leave a comment

After our excessive weekend in Vegas Mary and Kosta went back to work and Fish and I flew up to San Francisco.

This was the first time we weren’t being shepherded around by friends or family and we were being total tourists. One of the draw cards to San Fran was that my friends, Danny and Alisha, were living in Berkeley. Let me digress for a moment and explain something critical about San Francisco that you probably don’t know until you get there: San Francisco itself is quite small but it’s situated on an enormous bay. Across the bay are the ‘cities’ of Berkeley and Oakland but in essence all three of these cities blend into one and form The Bay Area. We stayed in Oakland and it was only 15 minutes to downtown SF – the train system connects them all.

We couldn’t stay with Danny and Alisha because they’ve got a 2 month old baby, Ollie, so it wasn’t a good time for visitors for them. We still spent a glorious amount of time with them, but I’ll get to that later… Hostels in America are expensive. Like, $40 for a dorm bed per night. That does not work with our budget. So we Couchsurfed. (It’s probably necessary at this point to explain that couchsurfing.org is a website where travellers and hosts can put profiles up and people can request to stay with them. You leave reviews, it’s very legitimate, I’ve never heard of a bad experience such as robbery, only personality clashes. I’ve been on CS for about 5 years and have met amazing people through it. I’m a strong advocate of it.)

Our host, Danny (very confusing that 66% of the people we know in SF are called Danny), was actually the most accommodating man in the world. He picked us up from the airport and was all about us just having the best possible time in SF. We hardly saw him for the first two days and he was totally fine with that. The best thing was (and we didn’t plan this, it just worked out perfectly) that his place was in downtown Oakland, three blocks from the metro station, and it was one 15 minute train to Danny and Alisha’s stop; and one 15 minute train to downtown San Fran – we were so perfectly connected for our stay. We got in late at night from Vegas so after a short chat with Danny we hit the hay hard.

The first day we were in San Francisco we knocked over a LOT of the major touristy stuff. It was a brilliant day! We walked down to Fisherman’s Wharf via Lombard Street- the windiest (as in curved, not windy. Same word… weird…) street in the world. We then hired bikes and rode what ended up being 30kms – along the water (beautiful parks, beach, views of the Golden Gate Bridge, tourists, sunshine), over the Golden Gate Bridge (very windy, longer than you expect), back over the Bridge and along the water front, through town to Golden Gate Park, back through the Presidio (an area that was an old naval and army base but is now all museums and some houses) and back to Fisherman’s Wharf. It was the most exercise I’ve done in a long time but it was so much fun.

That evening we had dinner with Danny and Alisha. Danny and Alisha were some of the great friends that Lol, Kaysie and I made when we walked the Camino De Santiago in Spain in May of 2012. We have very fond memories of our time camining (definitely not a word, it’s a verb we made up) together and sharing stories. Danny and Alisha gave us a short course in appreciating wine from the Rioja region, and we taught them Peter Combe songs. When we met them they’d just quit their jobs in New York and were travelling around the world. Very inspiring. It was fun then to see them in their home with their 2 month old son. I think it’s a sign of a good friendship when a lot of time can pass but when you see each other again you can pick up where you left off and we definitely had that with Danny and Alisha. (Fish had also met them once before when they were staying with Kays in London).

The next day we had an easy morning and then met Alisha and Ollie in the afternoon. They took us on a fabulous little tour that we never would’ve been able to do without a local guide and a car. We drove up to the Sonoma Valley (just next to the more well-known Napa Valley) and we’re amazed at how quickly the city suburbs turn into beautiful countryside. At one point we drove past a little hill that was covered entirely with white crosses. When we asked about it Alisha said it was a memorial for all the people in the local area that had been killed in Iraq or Afghanistan. That blew our minds. Anyway! We went to a winery called Artesa which Alisha is a member of. We got tastings of lots of their wines- a chardonnay, pinot noir, cab sav, a sparkling, and some other grape varieties I didn’t know. They were all amazing and we sipped them while enjoying views all over the Valley and down to San Francisco.

We then cruised down to Muir Wood – a national park with a lot of coastal redwoods- some of the tallest trees in the world. There’s beautiful walks through there and we managed to wander about for an hour before it got dark. It was so beautiful and it reminded me of Tasmania. And once again it was amazing that it was so close to the city.

We went back to Danny and Alisha’s for a quick dinner to hang out with Danny one last time, then we bailed cos it’d been a big day for everyone and we needed some rest (especially little Ollie who had been a champ all day).

Our last day in SF we walked a million miles up and down hills (I swear our three days in the bay area made up for our sloth-like behaviour over the last week). We did a walking tour in the morning in the Castro which is the gay area of SF (well, everywhere is a gay area now, but it was where the LGBT rights movement started in the 70s). It was pretty interesting and it was cool to see the rainbow zebra crossings and other flamboyant things; but I spent a lot of time in Soho in London so it wasn’t that unusual to me. Also, we’d both seen the movie Milk so we knew a lot of the LGBT rights movement stuff too!

We then walked on to Haight Ashbury which was the area where the Summer of Love movement happened in 1967. My expectations were too high (mind the pun) I think, because it was just a bunch of homeless and/or high teenagers amidst a bunch of shitty shops selling tie-dye monstrosities. That’s a bit rough- it was actually quite pleasant to walk around (tangent: San Fran is absolutely stunning in terms of architecture. It’s probably my favourite city I’ve been to in terms of architecture. Poor Fish got pretty sick of me going “ohhhh! Look at that one!” to every second house we walked past. Better that than the usual which is pointing out every dog we walk past…) Anyway, we had a nice pub lunch (pubs are rare in the States, we were pretty stoked) while listening to a bum jam out some beats on a post box.

We then walked up to The Painted Ladies- a famous row of ornate Victorian houses- made most famous (in my 90s-child-eyes) by Full House. In the same way Fish was judging Vegas on Cops, everything I knew about San Fran was from the opening credits of Full House. There’s a really pretty view of the city from Alamo Square opposite the painted ladies which we enjoyed a bit longer before marching back down to The Mission District.

The Mission District is a hip neighborhood. It’s roots are as the Latin American immigrant neighborhood; it hosted a large punk scene in the 80s (I had Rancid songs in my head the whole time we were in SF, taking me back to my angsty teen years. It was cool being in the places that are referenced in songs that I was listening to as a 14 year old kid in the Mid North of SA) and started becoming gentrified in the 90s with the dotcom boom. Now its kinda a mix between the old and new. We almost felt unsafe of Mission St but one block over on Valencia it was hipster central. We didn’t spend much time in Mission, we walked through and sat in Dolores Park (great views of the city. That’s the pay off for trudging up these hills we’d call mountains at home) and then walked back to the metro via Clarion Alley. Clarion Alley is wall to wall street art. Amazing.

Our last night in SF we spent actually hanging out with our wonderful host, Danny. He was such a great dude. His couchsurfing profile didn’t list his age and we nearly fell over when he told us he was 53. I wouldn’t put him a day over 40; I guess that’s just a testament to remaining child-free. Danny drove us all over San Fran – dinner at a great Japanese place, then along the coast to some beautiful view points that overlooked the city and the Bridge, including Twin Peaks and over the Bridge itself.

We had dessert at a place in Castro where we each ordered a piece of cake but should’ve shared one between the three of us. They were enormous. We took the left overs home for Danny to give to the homeless guys who live on his block. He’s an humanitarian.

Then we had a short sleep before getting up for a 6 am flight. I swear that if I ever become super rich the first policy I’d put in place would be that I never take a flight earlier than 10am. I’m angry just thinking about it… But Mary and Kosta picked us up from John Wayne airport and we cruised on to the next adventure, which I’ll hand over to Fish to tell you about.

Sorry about the length of this post, but we done so much!

Title Time:

Legs by ZZ Top. Because my god did we use them.

What happens in Vegas is on this public blog

March 31, 2015 Fishy Leave a comment

Well happy birthday to me. As Siz mentioned last post, Vegas is just SILLY. You see the movies, you hear the whispers, and if you’re anything like me you go ‘bugger off it’s like that’. Can I please now confirm to you that yes it is. It is exactly like that.

According to urban legend, Steve Angelo can't count past 4 — According to urban legend, Steve Angelo can’t count past 4

So our Vegas hook-up Slick Rick led us into his clubs, straight past your VIP lines and into areas that apparently cost the sort of dosh that buys us normies a new set of wheels at a Holden dealership. A sample of the numbers that Slick Rick arranged without charge;

Entry to Steve Aoki – $90

Table and bottles at a live music club – $500-1000

Private Area at super duper swanky club (that we sort of muscled our way into) – $15,000

Fair to say, the money here is vomitus. You’ve got the extremes of someone dropping $15k on a 3 square metre bit of turf then walking outside to be tapped on the shoulder by the friendliest bum ever asking if you could spare 10c for his kids.

So Siz had sneakily arranged a bit of a birthday extravaganza for me on Saturday. We started off by shaking off the hangover from Friday with burgers and beers in our room, before togging up and hitting the pool at our casino (SLS). The pool parties here start mid-morning and you could lose your molars with the amount of bass they’ve got pumping through the speakers even if you’re there that early. We floated around for a few hours before heading back to the room to sharpen up and have snacks & cocktails.

From there we hit up Sayers Live music club where we got prime seating and our own bottles and cocktail waitress, and I got shout-outs galore from the musos. After we all got to the point where we couldn’t feel our own faces we topped off the night with the hype EDM sounds of Steve Angelo at Live club. That thing you see in movies where someone upstairs pours vodka straight into your mouth happened. It was filth.

Anyways, the armchair ride drinking caught up to me after day 2. Siz and I left our hotel room for a total of 30 minutes on Sunday, and solely due to lack of food.

I have officially been Vegased.

I can show you the world – Shining, shimmering, splendid (Las Vegas, Nevada)

March 28, 2015 Sizzle 1 Comment

Holy shitballs, Las Vegas is RIDICULOUS!

Despite having so many people describe it to me, my expectations were waaaay off.

We got here this arvo after a 5 hour journey from Newport which should’ve taken 3 and a half. Traffic. In the middle of the fuckin’ dessert. It was like driving to Wirrabara on a long weekend and getting stuck at Port Wakefield, but on steroids.

Anywho, we’ve checked into the SLS which is a new hotel/casino (those words are interchangeable… weird…) on The Strip where Mary’s friend Rick (who I consider a friend too after getting along with him like a house on fire at The Wedding) is the entertainment manager. What a sweet connection. He’s sorted us out with the room and that’s just the beginning of his abilities in this town. We are hooked UP (say that in an American accent when you read that, please)!

This is the best way to experience Vegas and I think Fish is enjoying it (he’s always hard to read) despite thinking he was gonna hate it (lucky, cos it’s his birthday tomorrow). This conversation actually happened on the plane on the way over:
Fish: I don’t think I’m gonna enjoy The Strip. It’s not really my scene.
Me: Why? Don’t judge it too soon..
Fish: To be fair, I am judging everything based on Cops…
I don’t think he could be disappointed if that’s what he was expecting…

We’re just in the room relaxing with a vodka before we head out for the night (we’re starting at one of Rick’s other clubs, Hyde, at the Bellagio). I’m pretty excited… can’t wait to update again!

Ridiculously Nice American Update:
The woman washing her hands next to me at a servo restroom said a very cheery hello. So unnecessary.
And every bouncer who’s carded Fish today has said ‘Happy Birthday!’ even though it’s tomorrow.

Disclaimer:
So sorry about terrible spelling (autocorrect, I swear. Changes shit that doesn’t need to be changed. Case in point: it just changed shit to shut.) and probably some terrible grammar. I’m writing this on my phone and often am too knackered to proof read. I’m sorry, Karen, if you’re disappointed in me!

Title Time:
A Whole New World from Aladdin, duh.

LOOK WHAT WE DONE!