Licklog

I’m getting ahead of myself. Two more pre-Austin...

Mon, 20 Jun 2011 15:20:21 -0400

I’m getting ahead of myself. Two more pre-Austin stops.

Lake Charles, LA. Distinguishing features: lack of coffee, bullet holes, empty storefronts, car accident right next to us.

And then there’s Beaumont, Texas, which might be the most striking and eerie of the many post-sprawlpocalyptic ghost cities we encountered, its beautiful art deco downtown utterly deserted during our mid-afternoon visit. Where were the 110,000 residents? The 15,000 students of Lamar University? They certainly weren’t anywhere in evidence in the blocks and blocks of empty skyscrapers making up the city center, or in the spooky, carnival-esque (and equally empty) entertainment district. The only signs of life seemed to be in the few offices in the high rises (legal and “executive services”), the interstate commercial strip, and the huge expanse of industrial (oil refinery?) structures surrounding the metropolitan area.

After Rayne, we headed for Austin. This meant a slog through the...

Mon, 20 Jun 2011 14:46:48 -0400

After Rayne, we headed for Austin. This meant a slog through the Houston sprawl, a metro octopus whose tentacles reach too far to be cleanly circumvented by any west bound traffic from New Orleans, it seems. But, then, soon out of Houston the roads contracted to desert paths and things greatly improved.

As Maya has noted, Rayne, Louisiana is the renowned City of...

Mon, 06 Jun 2011 15:41:57 -0400

As Maya has noted, Rayne, Louisiana is the renowned City of Frogs. We actually knew nothing about it until we pulled off the highway in search of coffee and were immediately assailed by frog statues, frog murals, and frog memorabilia at every turn, memorial to the days when this city exported as much as 10,000 pounds of frog legs in a week, mostly to France. The market seems to have dropped off or moved elsewhere, but locals still reminisce about trapping frogs in the nearby swamps as children, selling them for a quarter each at a holding pond just off main street, and heading across to spend their spoils at the now shuttered theater.

The Rayne Courthouse

of course, the local newspaper offices.

The Rayne Police Station.

And here’s the large scale sculpture greeting new arrivals to town. The plaque details that this image of “Monsieur Jacques”, left unpainted for “various reasons”, now signified that beneath our skin we were all the same (brushed steel, presumably). The bible is cited: “Not a flesh is the same, but there is one kind for human beings, another kind of flesh for birds, and another for fish.” (Corinthians 15:09)

The sole mural with not an amphibian in view.

As a slight aside, here’s the RV camp in which we camped for the night a little ways west of Baton Rouge and just before driving to Rayne. As I snapped this memento, a resident advised me “Get a good picture, it’ll all be under water in a few days”, tapping the new metallic false leg he’d only just recieved as replacement for the limb he’d lost during Katrina. He was referring to the impending opening of the Morganza Spillway to divert floodwaters away from New Orleans and into a supposedly uninhabited flood plain to the south and east. Contrast these grim prospects with the assurances of a few New Orleans residents we spoke with: that anyone in the Morganza had known exactly what they were getting into if they leased farming or mineral rights, and that comparatively few would be affected anyway. Now, as far as I can tell, flooding has not in fact reached so far inland as that RV Park, but that says nothing of the tens of thousands of homes that were placed at risk. These, apparently, are the trade-offs necessary to protect many many more people from another Katrina scenario. I’ve been unable to find much sound information on the outcomes for these homes, but I’m hoping that the silence indicates the best, and that the region has not been entirely returned to the frogs.

New Orleans is beautiful and strange and I can never stop...

Fri, 20 May 2011 15:06:08 -0400

New Orleans is beautiful and strange and I can never stop walking across it. These are a few of some hundred shots I kept from our two days here.

well, actually roads we drove on over a week ago. I’m a...

Fri, 20 May 2011 14:03:26 -0400

well, actually roads we drove on over a week ago. I’m a little behind.

west texas highways

Fri, 20 May 2011 13:31:16 -0400

West Texas highways from Rock Hyrax on Vimeo.

Contrary to what I just said about towns losing their...

Thu, 19 May 2011 01:19:58 -0400

Contrary to what I just said about towns losing their mainstreets to strip malls, Vicksburg, Mississippi seems to be doing just fine, with a high apparent ratio of historic riverfront downtown (and the only espresso we saw anywhere in Mississippi). And, built on the only serious hill we saw all afternoon, only the waterfront was at serious risk from the water (see Maya’s shot of the railroad station). Not nearly as much style as Clarksdale, but plenty of classic architecture around.

The route south had lots to offer as well.

We started hearing about the flooding back in Clarksdale. Then,...

Wed, 18 May 2011 19:15:00 -0400

We started hearing about the flooding back in Clarksdale. Then, it was mostly in Memphis. By the time we hit Greenville, we’d started seeing flooded fields, and the water was high on the levee, swamping riverside casinos. Locals seemed resigned to wait and see what would happen, chatting about the last time, the 1927 flood which breached the levee and reached 80 miles away. In Jim’s Cafe, the oldest restaurant in town and home to Gus’ Hot Sauce, which is amazing, the walls were covered with 1927 flood memorabilia, among photos of James Woods and others on a film shoots here. Maya has already covered a lot of this,really well, but it seems worth mentioning again.

Even without the flood-watch, though, beyond Jim’s and the now-underwater casinos, Greenville’s mainstreet was alarmingly empty, gorgeous architecture from the first half of the century standing conspicuously vacant. Of course, the generic commercial strip on the way into town, fast food and quickmarts and strip malls, seemed to be doing fine. This is something we would see again and again: the life of historical, distinctive downtowns and mainstreets being leached entirely out into a sterilized low sprawl. Not always, not completely, but all too often.

Just before we left, a truck loaded with what appear to be theater seats, lost its cargo in the middle of main street. We’re not sure either. Then, flood watches continued all the way to Vicksburg.

Clarksdale, Mississippi. Significant blues center, significantly...

Tue, 17 May 2011 14:15:00 -0400

Clarksdale, Mississippi. Significant blues center, significantly quiet on Monday nights, unfortunately. Even so, this was the point at which the cities became conspicuously deep south. Even the commercial strip proceeding the city along the state highway, full of gas stations and motels like anywhere, took on wholly its own appearance. From here on out, things would be notably different.

Ground Zero, one of the many major blues clubs here.

D&T Meat Market’s Pick 5 Meat Box. So much meat you’ll have delerium tremens the next morning.

Video

Tue, 17 May 2011 12:41:00 -0400

roads. mostly mississippi.

Sat, 14 May 2011 14:41:21 -0400

roads. mostly mississippi.

I actually had no idea that Tupelo, Mississippi was the...

Sat, 14 May 2011 14:35:48 -0400

I actually had no idea that Tupelo, Mississippi was the birthplace of Elvis, but this information became unavoidable immediately upon hitting the main street. Notable features: the hardware store where Elvis bought his first guitar, a really nice community art garden, some kind of sting-related insect that got Maya in the eye-lid.

Back-lick-log: just catching up on missed knoxville/clarksdale...

Sat, 14 May 2011 14:30:27 -0400

Back-lick-log:

just catching up on missed knoxville/clarksdale opportunities

the amazing buildings in knoxville, this one went 3 stories underground!

monday night at the blues museum in clarksdale m.s.-we got there when the town was closed, save for a pizza place. ah clarksdale, someday i’ll come back and hang for a few days

More from NOLA pretty flowers on the levy and more from...

Sat, 14 May 2011 14:28:39 -0400

Rayne, L.A.- Hello Frog City! Rayne is recognized world wide to...

Sat, 14 May 2011 14:27:25 -0400

Rayne, L.A.-

Hello Frog City! Rayne is recognized world wide to be the frog capital of the universe! Unfortunately the frog population is all but extinct and the town has been taken over by humans. Here are some artifacts left over from froggy times:

1.5 hours of Blue Ridge Parkway in under 4 minutes from Rock Hyrax on Vimeo. Dashboard timelapse of...

Sat, 14 May 2011 13:54:44 -0400

1.5 hours of Blue Ridge Parkway in under 4 minutes from Rock Hyrax on Vimeo.

Dashboard timelapse of the Blue Ridge Parkway into Asheville.

Florence, Alabama. Mostly by night. We pulled off the Natchez...

Sat, 14 May 2011 13:48:00 -0400

Florence, Alabama. Mostly by night. We pulled off the Natchez Trace Parkway looking for a place to stay and unexpectedly found a mid-size university town with:
1. the birthplace of W.C. Handy and Helen Keller
2. a commemorative waterfall with the founding dates of all surrounding towns
3. $2 magic hat pints
4. comically oversized civic buildings
5. the best lit main street of our travels so far

metal horse statue that looks like a giraffe in profile

Guns ‘n Such. (If only we’d managed to get a shot of the “Bait ‘n Thangs” sign in Mississippi for an “X ‘n Y” series).

The Regions bank building, much like the Nashville Parthenon, is a colonnaded exact replica of a prior famous building (this one a local mansion, not an ancient Greek temple)

W.C. Handy

Home of an actual theatrical production of Hamlet II. Not sure how Steve Coogan-related this may be.

Town founding-date commemorative waterfall.

The Economy Inn, where we actually stayed.

Economy Inn interior. You can see the peeling Barton Fink wallpaper buit you can’t see that this is the only light that worked, and that one had a creepy David Lynch flicker going.

I always feel more at home once I find the local abandoned Crips graffiti house.

Things under water… We got into a conversation with a guy...

Thu, 12 May 2011 15:07:02 -0400

Things under water…

We got into a conversation with a guy in Tupelo about how weird the weather has been there this winter-8 inches of snow! Tupelo was also the place where we first got word of the flood-possibly the worst since the one that devastated Mississippi since 1927.

the rising mississippi river as seen from the shores of Greenville, home to Joe’s Cafe and Guss’s amazing hot sauce. “Where ya’ll from?”-quoth the waitress…

flooding along route 61

we got into vicksburg m.s. as i was suffering from intense caffeine withdrawal. i had given up all hope of finding anything better than Joe’s gasoline like coffee along the road, when we finally came upon this

stuff drowning in vicksburg

and finally nola-just a few shots from the 9th ward… enough said

and there were also definite chicken noises coming from this lot-i believe we found the chicken lady’s crash pad

nate can convey how amazing these streets are better than i can, wait

bacchanal-the most amazing place-live jazz, back yard, wine, cheese, sigh

We went to Sheffield, Alabama by accident, looking for Florence....

Thu, 12 May 2011 14:54:00 -0400

We went to Sheffield, Alabama by accident, looking for Florence. The downtown is real slow on Sunday nights.

Cigar Diva

Max’s Music

Nashville! As Maya said earlier, we landed in the Gulch, a newer...

Thu, 12 May 2011 14:18:24 -0400

Nashville! As Maya said earlier, we landed in the Gulch, a newer neighborhood south of the tracks and featuring organic vegetables and good coffee, among other amenities. Plus old partway restored architecture, art deco train carvings in the highway supports, and the apparent remains of a warehouse squat site. Downtown, with its halls of fame and stadium and Bourbon Street-esque Printer’s Alley, was not nearly as much fun top wander through.

Oh, but let’s not forget the Nashville Parthenon, a full-size replica of the Athenian original. (why?)