August 29th, 2007 writerspice
The Michigan Central Train Station, back in the day
During dinner with friends on Sunday night, we ended up, a few bottles in, hovering over my friend J.’s laptop, perusing pictures of the unbelievable abandoned buildings in Detroit. Specifically, the train station.
J. grew up in Windsor, so she often tells stories about being across the border, cruising through streets shadowed by empty buildings, unknown eyes gazing through broken windows. It sounds scary to me, and entirely unreal, like a living, breathing version of a Mad Max movie.
But the train station stuck in my head. Opened in 1913, this once beautiful Beaux-Arts Classical building was glorious and busy with people dressed in jaunty hats and dapper suits, hustling across the shiny floor to answer their business in the booming auto town that was Detroit.
Now it sits unused. How very sad.
And how very strange that last night, during my treat to the husband of a final summer double feature at the drive-in, that this very same train station came to life, complete with dust and darkness, near the end of Transformers.
You know that broken down building with the astonishing pillars and huge arched windows that Sam or Tim or whatever-his-name-was sped through to hand off the cube to the army helicopters (although what they were going to do with it, I never was sure) – that was the Michigan Central Train Station.
Seems a shame that as this once-lovely city tries to reinvent itself by building new casinos complete with luxury hotels, the past is left to simply crumble, used only for fluffy action movies that evaporate as soon as they’re seen. Times sure have changed.
Posted in United States | 3 Comments »
August 22nd, 2007 writerspice
This one’s for you, I thought, as I lifted the beer to the ceiling. All around me glasses and bottles returned to the table and a moment of silence fell upon the ten of us, crammed into a corner in a booth built of dark wood.
Someone made a joke. We laughed. And the evening rocked back into its congenial nature, amidst the raucous Thursday evening crowd at the Old Toad, a pub in Rochester, New York, that my late uncle had loved.
As America, the daughter of my uncle’s good friend Marty Naparsteck, reminded us, if he’d been there he would have insisted on seeing the brew-master.
But he wasn’t there. It was only us, his friends and family, gathered together to celebrate his life and his writing and the truly creative character he was.
Rochester, New York, where he’d once lived, was the setting. At first, I didn’t realize how fitting this would be. I’ve never been to Rochester, but I’ve heard about it, mainly from my uncle, who’d launch into legends of the best brewpubs and infamous eats in the city he once called home.
Going there was like edging ourselves into his stories. And when we arrived, the garbage plate was the first detail we took on.
“We want one,” my mom and I told Marty, who organized the evening’s gathering. Soon we were winding through downtown Rochester, past museums and lovely buildings from another century, to pull into the back parking lot of a former train station, the home of Nick Tahou Hots.
I think we interrupted a drug deal.
Let’s make this clear. I am not a snob. In my lifetime I’ve brought home furniture found on the street, spent a few weeks living out of my car and a good nine months eating dumpster-dove food (that experience ending up as an essay in the Globe and Mail). But even in the face of my continuing pittance of an income, I must somehow be settling into some kind of middle-class contentment because the experience of the garbage plate was, even for me, a slightly disturbing event.
I mean, who knew the plate was actually garbage?
Okay, I’m likely being a bit harsh, but let it be known that this landmark restaurant that’s been serving its famous concoction since the 1930s and has earned a solid following of college kids and people like my uncle who are magnetically drawn to the quirky, is not for vegetarians. Or, for that matter, anyone the least bit concerned about what they’re putting inside their stomachs.
It’s also a phenomenon.
The garbage plate – described aptly by Marty as a kind-of church-basement lunch, where you pile your paper plate full and then sit down to tackle it – has earned such fame that it is oft-imitated in Rochester, even spawning a luxe version served at a fancy restaurant and dubbed the plate de refuse, with antelope meat in place of the hamburgers and hots served at Nick’s.
The hamburgers and hots (hot dogs without the buns: who knew?) is the way to go. They sit on top of three side-orders – beans, macaroni salad and french-fries, in our case and, uh, probably most cases – and the whole thing is then smothered in a spicy meat sauce. Sound good?
Don’t answer. That is a rhetorical question.
It seems I have to agree with another friend of my uncle’s who eagerly attended the garbage plate palace only to lean back in the booth, lay down his plastic fork and announce that this was a one-time deal.
The Old Toad was a bit more to my liking. Owned by a professor at the London School of Economics, the bar is serviced by visiting students who all talk in lovely British accents, giving the clientelle the feeling of being settled into some rowdy London pub, a fight about to break out, the wooden walls creaking with centuries of age.
It was here, amidst our banter about reenactments and writing and other places my uncle loved, that I had a near-religious experience he would surely have approved of. Alarmed by the seven-page beer menu, I turned my indecisive self to the blackboards listing the beers on tap and chose, on instinct and pretty much because of the name, a living ale called Blue Point Hoptical Illusion.
Fresh, fruity and cool, it was lit by the buzz of ongoing fermentation and lay on my tongue like nectar. This was the best beer I’ve ever had.
From garbage to gold in one day. My uncle was right: Rochester has a lot to offer.
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August 16th, 2007 writerspice
Circa 1984, my dad and I climbed on a Greyhound to head up to the Soo. Our car had received some specialist attention in the big city, an hour-and-a-half drive away, and we were going to pick it up.
That, of course, is not remarkable. What is, seen through the lens of history, is that nearly everybody on the bus was smoking. The air was blue. The tiny open windows made no difference and we coughed and choked all the way down the highway.
For us, it was some level of hell. For them, the ones embarking on the open road, it could now be called a luxury. Imagine that: setting out on a public journey and sparking a cigarette.
Leaving home equals freedom. Think Vegas, whose marketing people made history with their slogan.
For some, it’s all about downing a few tequila shots and learning salsa from the pretty local on the resort dance-floor. For others, it’s being able to do what you want, when you want. Either way, travel can result in a direct line between us and our worst habits.
This can be bad.
Case in point: a recent article reveals the truth about vineyard tours, reporting that some people aren’t actually there to swirl the esteemed vintage around in the glass before pooling it on the tongue. Instead, they’re riding the bus down dusty California roads with a single mission in mind: getting loaded.
I’m sure people have been knocking on the vineyard gates, ready to tie one on for centuries, but the problem, says the article, is the usual. People getting rowdy and rude.
In a word: obnoxious drunks.
This is a shame, because as your grade school teacher taught you, these people are ruining it for everyone else. Formerly free vineyards are now charging admission in an effort to keep the drop-in drunkards from, well, dropping in.
In stranger other news, one man is now waging war on the anti-smoking tyrants by launching his own luxury airline where clients can smoke from Germany to Japan, as Globorati - where I may soon be making my debut – reports. The airline’s website even offers lots of proof that second-hand smoke doesn’t kill.
That’s a relief.
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August 7th, 2007 writerspice
Across the invisible border, the land is no different and the money is the same but for anyone who thinks that Quebec doesn’t demonstrate a distinct culture, I have one thing to say: get thee east, young man (or woman).
Deep within the province that saw some of the earliest occupiers set up shop lives that trademark joie de vivre that is evidence of a people who have never lost their love for the good life. And why should they have? After all, the place was French for a good 151 years before the British climbed the cliff and took over.
We should all thank the gods of history that the Brits didn’t succeed sooner.
What we’re left with, 399 years after Samuel de Champlain settled in Quebec City’s Place Royale, is a place where good food rules, fine vintages are appreciated, and people easily embrace the enjoyable accoutrements of being human.
Early this August, I took part in the celebration of the roots of this culture at the 11-year-old New France Festival. In the aforementioned once-dirt, now-cobblestoned square where a bronze bust of Louis XIV stands, rowdy crowds gathered at booths serving samples of French wine. By the oldest church in Canada, a woman dressed as a bar maid pulled on a beer tap, hollering humorous insults to the crowd in French.
Deeper down in Lower Town, the absence of corporate signage was obvious in the festival’s food market. There were no typical fast food vendors here. Instead, under wood-shaded booths with minimal signage, singing and shouting French Canadians served skewered small potatoes, cobs of sweet corn, spicy barbecued chicken, two-year-old cheese and rabbit rillette.
Incredibly tasty, this trip back in time brings the truly French heritage of Quebec fully to life – a history that will be celebrated next year at the best and biggest birthday party Canada’s ever seen. It’s one you really won’t want to miss.
Posted in Other Places in Canada | No Comments »
