 
Your Guide to the Coolest Neighborhoods in North America

By Nate Molino

Copyright 2013 Nate Molino

Smashwords Edition

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Table of Contents

Chapter 1 - SAN FRANCISCO: The Olive District

Chapter 2 - NEW YORK CITY: Van Damn-it

Chapter 3 - NEW ORLEANS: Belle Grieve

Chapter 4 -WASHINGTON, DC: Buchanan's Bog

Chapter 5 - LOS ANGELES: Los Pajaros

Chapter 6 - VANCOUVER: Patchouli

Chapter 7 - ATLANTA: Pantaloon Corners

Chapter 8 - BOSTON: Wrestling Hill

Chapter 9 - CHICAGO: West Signal Park

Endnotes: More About the Author

Chapter 1 - SAN FRANCISCO: The Olive District

_Stuffed With Hotness_

A cold Pacific wind strafed the darkened San Francisco street I hurriedly transited, as the resident meteorological transvestite, called Summer here, blew her customary cold kiss to The City, giving me goose-bumps, which, even if they weren't artisanal, were certainly special.

But that wasn't the only system-shock. I had counted on a meal at the under-the-GPS foodie _boite du moment_ — **Drusus Nero**. Yet, here in its home quarter—the Olive District—smartly-dressed San Franciscans were draped like wilted kale around the restaurant's door. A seating looked unlikely.

Police tape ringed Drusus Nero, **(431 Nido Alley, near Geysers St.)** the _echt_ -Roman Empire small-plates restaurant that had even inspired Silicon Valley elites to run the district's gauntlet of double-parked Bentleys, medical marijuana carts **(MediExx Help Cart, Geyser St. and Leland Ave., no phone)** and prostitutes, just to taste the menu, anchored in a Roman imperial family's second-century A.D. diet.

I had hoped to stop in for a bite, this being one of the iconic eateries that led to revival of the Olive District's fortunes. It's in a former olive-oil and pistachio packing house, hard by the **Olive District Biennale Canal and Water Feature** (formerly Smelly Industrial Inlet No. 2). But, like other gentrifying San Francisco districts, this once once-working-class, stone-fruit-centric area- had been struck by the latest Guerilla Cuisine Attack—a sort of gastronomic performance art-piece for the unsuspecting (and unwilling). Although no physical harm came to diners, survivors reported being re-traumatized when making reservations.

Not sure whether I'd get seated that evening, I stepped back to take in the skyline. Above me loomed the latest starchitecture—the lighted hulk of Celebrity California Architect Hank Fiery's avant-garde city courts building, the **Reginald C.B. Yotsuya Courthouse (Romualdo and Alden Sts.)** , meant to evoke a sea lion rookery on rocky islets outside the Golden Gate. To me, the metallic edifice looked like a large pile of lustrous dog poop. The building is said to leak, but rumor has it the leaks are being converted to kinetic water sculpture. Drivers have crashed because of reflections from its shiny façade, costing the city millions in settlements. Sixth-grade education has been suspended to pay for the legal fights. No worries: parents are encouraged to substitute class with museum visits.

Apparently the attacked happened like this: with Drusus Nero full of patrons prostrate and sprawling on floor cushions, _a la_ a Roman villa, the kitchen shock-troops of so-called "Sub-Commandante Fischbein," entered the restaurant waving Wusthoff knives, ordering everyone to drop their silverware. A radical sous-chef who broke with Slow Food to create Neanderthal Food, an even slower food movement, Fischbein is wanted by police in several cities for creating out-sized dining expectations and traffic-blocking queues. Here, he'd barred exits, tied up the staff, sent cell phones through the dishwasher, and then whipped up the typical meal of a poor family living on the margins of Julio-Claudian society (cornmeal heated on warm pebbles, charred goat, fermenting root vegetables). Diners were ordered to eat the meal, learn Roman coinage, and calculate a tip, to be left in dollars. Shocking as this was for the city, it was not the first time—and many feared it wouldn't be the last—for these frightening culinary-inflected assaults.

I spoke outside the restaurant with Kari Darwin, a Los Gatos health-care executive. She said she had just taken a few mouthfuls of her _Smoked Toy Eastern Provinces Squab, presented in a Tiny Frigidarium of Root Vegetable Puree_ , when the attack commenced.

"I'm still picking things out of my teeth," she told me." It was frightening at first, with all the guerilla chefs wearing ski-masks. Most of their stuff tasted like hummus or tapenade, if you ask me, but it had a very rough texture, kind of gritty. And, then there was that goat. They made one poor fellow chase it down and then kill it."

Without dinner, I made haste for the district's new hostelry, called **Digs (345 South Alcalde St.)**. Created by famously brilliant, bored Silicon Valley software engineer, Gupta Chang, a Hong Kong-born Indian, who has since moved to his own island in the Sea of Cortez, the hotel incorporates many inventions of his technology incubator, **Notional**. One reason Digs is also under the radar, is that it's composed partially of holograms, which takes some getting used to when you're turning over in bed and your hand goes through a wall. The good news is that you can never damage anything, or scuff the walls. The bad news is you can see into the room next to you. Hence, only half the rooms are booked, to give everyone, if not privacy, then a sense of space separating themselves from their neighbor. The four-figure per-night tabs reflect the inability to fill half the rooms, but as the young concierge opined, "so totally worth it."

At Digs, I slept like a baby under a bio-degradable blanket made out of bamboo thread. Once worn out, they're thrown into the hotel's kitchen brazier, where they impart a delicate, clean-smoked, Asian essence to whatever the chef is cooking.

The next morning, I explored the 'hood, using time-tested methods: sussing out independent coffee houses, music clubs that do not appear to be open, and combination gallery-and-hardware stores. Hotness markers in an up-and-coming 'hood usually adhere first to lofts—old factory floors lived in by loft developers, their children, and cranky writers and artists, trying to re-create their early, singular success with little luck. The only such property in the Olive District that fit this description was the aptly-named **Pittery Lofts (34 Romualdo St.)** , (now being re-named by new mortgagees as **The Pittery Centre** to distance it from recessionary vacancies). The former early twentieth-century focus of olive de-pitting, rail-cars and freighters had off-loaded their bitter produce here, to be processed and shipped out.

As with all urban lofts, there are rumblings of celebrity purchases in the offing—but as yet, the truth hadn't surfaced. Was it acting legend Al Pacino who had bought a 17,000 square-foot space, complete with vintage auto-sized de-pitting tubs (one is used as an indoor hot-tub, and the other filled up with pebbles and sand to form a Zen garden)? Or, was the buyer actually Alvin Peppiccino, head coach for the league-trouncing Southeastern Utah State University women's basketball team?

Next up: **The Stone Fruit Building and Curing Works (451 Amoy Pl.)** was the headquarters of the Pacific Coast Health-Full Fruit & Nut Co. ("established 1879"). After a brief stint warehousing San Francisco County Supervisor archives before they were sent for composting, it now houses **The Nuthouse Museum** , honoring the legacy of Pacific Coast chairman, and legendary stone fruit and legume magnate, G. Henry Truaxe. The current owners mostly gutted the interior, save for a few architectural flourishes from the 19th century, like a 10-hole outhouse—now cleverly restored as rooftop meditation cabanas. Here are Truaxe's baby shoes, a christening gown, a Stanford fraternity paddle, and voluminous notes about his passion: the Truaxe health regime that took America by storm for a brief period, before its fate was sealed by the rampant diarrhea it caused.

In the late 1890s, Truaxe's Stone Fruit Cure came into vogue. Clearing several hundred acres he owned outside the rough Sierra Nevada Mountains hamlet of Diabloville, Truaxe sited his Stone Fruit Lodge–a paean to wellness. As originally conceived, the cure involved eating stone fruit and water, while nude, for three weeks; the last requirement was later dropped.

I took in a framed "welcome" letter to lodge guests, from May, 1898, now preserved under glass:

Memorandum of Expectation & Assurance to Health Regimen Subscribers

Dear Friends and Lodgers,

We anticipate your arrival with 'health-full' ease. Please bring to the quest for renewal, garments suitable for the exercise of one's person in private surroundings, as well as appropriate evening wear, and clothing of an informal nature, such as for 'break-fasting' in mixed company.

Exercise may include strenuous arm movements, billiards, pond swimming, legal card games of a family type, jaw exercises, deep-breathing, frog-style jumping, exercise a la crab and medicine ball-throwing. Smoking of tobacco, corn husks, twine, or 'Mexican cigarettes' is strongly discouraged, and herewise held in low esteem. As well, the ingestion of liquors, brandies, ales, and wines is considered unhelpful.

Do befriend your fellow lodgers, as they are come from near and afar to partake of the self-same regime. For our 'locals,' the escape from unhealthful City mists, and richly-layered foods encouraged thusly, is but a sailing vessel, three train journeys, and a carriage-ride away.

Yours, Respectfully

G. Henry Truaxe, Owner

Belle Winters, Lodge Manager

W. Harmon Lightly, Director of Health Regimentation

Then, I read a brief letter from 320-pound businessman Herman P. Stanislaus, who took the cure, and wrote back to his wife:

July 25, 1899

Diabloville, Calif.

Stone Fruit Lodge

Mrs. Herman P. Stanislaus

42 Segovia Ave.

Los Finos, Calif. 23

Dear Minnie,

Godforsaken place with a '49er as old as Methuselah running the post office. The detritus street-side tells me of bovine visitations from ranchos hereabouts. You will not be surprised to learn the air is of a temperature fit for Satan's home place, and moreover, a steak might cook to tenderness on the roof. This Truaxe regimen disports itself favorably upon first recognition, but gradually is replaced with a tedious sensation amidships, matched by pronounced and nettlesome looseness in the bowels.

With affection,

Herman

—Courtesy, Trustees of the Nuthouse Museum, San Francisco, Calif _._

On an unusually crisp, sunny day, with the wind snapping flagpoles to attention, I headed for what I will call, for the purposes of this book, " **Cacao** ," a private artisanal chocolate club on the fourth floor of the landmark **Thermal & Woolens Building (451 Yerba Mate St. at Obispo Way)**. One needs a sponsor to be admitted, and after locating the concierge at Digs, my hotel, (who pronounced the club "so totally worth it") I was able to gain admittance. The décor is "Thirties Captains of Industry" with a splash of "contemporary London sushi bar." Gargoyles on the building provide a medieval look; the architect reportedly based them on her ex-husband.

The club host on duty, a severe-looking young man with a shaved head, tattoos and a monocle, welcomed me, sternly advising, "the first rule of Cacao Club is, you don't talk about Cacao Club (the address is above in the Thermal & Woolens Bldg., take the freight elevator)." Well, he didn't say "cacao," obviously, or I wouldn't be writing this. But you get the idea.

Cacao overlooks the **Ampitheatron (Yerba Maté Park, Alcalde and Obispo),** a state-of-the-art outdoor amphitheatre built by a one-time stock-market darling lost to the initial dot-com bust; it was later bought by Iowa's public pension fund for $5.95. The theatre is a flat plaza with a fountain that sinks with a flip of a switch into a fully-realized twenty-tier amphitheatre.

I took a look at the chocolate menu, and chose the 98% cacao mocha with free-range chicken tenders and a mole of Anaheim chilies and Columbian chocolate. Essentially, it can power you for more than a week without sleep or much to eat. Think of it as a way to visit San Francisco, lose weight and save on hotel bills.

Try the **Magic Pot Cooking School (567 Zocalo St., at Pig Iron Alley)**. I'll let them tell it: "We're not actually a cooking school... you buy the set of pots and it comes with a cook...all your dishes turn out wonderfully. What happens is a pan-Asian family comes to visit you, prepares your meals, teaches you the secrets of Asian cooking, and then lives with you for a month. Then, you return the favor, by moving into their house for a month, and re-creating those dishes." If this doesn't bother you, ask about their Shanxi Province home-swaps; they're surprisingly affordable.

Later, I stopped in at the Olive District's community meeting for an update on the cuisine attacks. A panel was discussing the topic de jour, _Dining Terrorism: Friend or Foe?_ In front of them were cards made of yam starch, bearing their names and titles.

Community activist Helen Dove: "I don't believe in a totally raw food culture. But, this Fischbein had a vision, apparently. Let's understand him, let's learn from him."

Professor Angela Fatuosi, Associate Professor of Social Gastronomy, University of California, Berkeley: "This is a teachable moment, dare I say? As one of the first people to use the phrase, 'teachable moment' and, as a Buddhist with a medical marijuana card, it's an imperfect example of how we're destined to suffer, and make others suffer."

Rafael P., Attack Victim: "You're idiots. I'm disabled now! My sense of taste is irrevocably changed; everything tastes like crushed white beans with an overlay of garlic, summer savory and olive oil—even my breakfast!"

A gentleman in a shiny suit stepped forward. "I'm State Assemblyman Ron Pescadero, and I'm doing two things to address this horrific crime. First, I'm introducing Nero's Law, which makes it a crime to cook something in a restaurant that is not on the menu, and not within the chef's oeuvre of cooking; we're creating a state database for that. Second, with People For a Guerilla-Free Dining Experience, I'm putting a referendum on the November ballot prohibiting crazy people from taking over kitchens."

The crowd surged forward to throw coffee cup sleeves and half-eaten wraps at Pescadero; he ducked the buffet-sourced ordnance, and hurried out.

On my last day in San Francisco, police released portions of a note, written partially in Cantonese, which Sub-Commandante Fischbein, had posted on the Internet. A translation is:

To the Soul-Sick People of the Bay Area, There are only two kinds of people in the world, those whose urine smells funny after eating asparagus and those who are not so afflicted. Water is a scarce resource. Why do we flush so many times each day? Cooking slower questions the answers.Your trans-fat government can't stop the carcinogenic eating-habits of the masses, while money buys organic Stilton for the precious few.

From the San Francisco Police Department:

_Karl Marx Fischbein_ _is wanted by the police for confusing palates, inappropriately spicing food and introducing gamey notes of earth and Ordovician Era Schist into a range of food, without permission or consent of the chefs—or the food—and terrorizing diners. Fischbein and his gang are believed to be traveling around the area chiefly via bicycle, pedi-cab, Muni tram and dug-out canoe. They should be considered expensively-knifed and dangerous._

Onward: **Virtuositie (112 Romualdo Ave.)** is simply a room with big flat screens surrounding you and ear phones connected to them. It's a cool concept: the owner auditions musicians from the around the country, rotates the best through his video screens, and you go in and buy the download. He also has a website, but serves free tastes of coffee from **Gentle Java** , next door. Gentle Java is run by disaffected baristas who used to work at nearby Rough Roast (see farther down); they're fruitarians who collect only coffee berries that have fallen on the ground – it takes about one week for one person traveling through Central and South American terrain to find enough berries for one cup of coffee—that's why it's $12 a cup, but also why food critics have knighted Gentle Java's coffee as the best in the Bay Area, and possibly anywhere else that might matter as much as the Bay Area—which, to them, is basically nowhere **(341 Zocalo St. at Eucalypt Alley).**

I made my way to a quick lunch at a white-hot restaurant called, **Goople (415 Carquinez St. at Sap Ave.)** , where the food is pureed, pulverized, crushed, liquefied or some combintaion of those. Owner Hari Kenilworth, a blonde lady clad in a colorful Vietnamese Ao Dai gown over corduroy slacks, greeted me at the door, and I was seated immediately. The unusual bill of fare is heavy on soups and meal-like sauces, with a gentle refrain of Ethiopian dishes. I complimented her creativity.

"Everything is masticated!" Kenilworth happily responded.

One concession Kenilworth makes to eating such soft food is to offer a profusion of flatbreads to "scoop the goop," as she aptly put it. In keeping with her philosophy of degustation, Kenilworth doesn't make the bread within the restaurant, owing to bread's solidity. Instead, she sources it from the exclusive Dry Food Movement collective, known as Mohenjo-Daro, based in an Oakland warehouse. The bread is rowed across the bay each morning, starting at 3 a.m., in order to reduce the carbon-footprint.

"We lost a shipment to a wayward Korean freighter last year, but we've rigged the dory with GPS and better lights so I think we've solved the problem, and, in any case, seasonal drops in trade keep the shipping lanes a little less busy."

"We also sell carbon-neutral coffee (the crop is bicycled up from Nicaragua). It actually keeps my marriage fresh. We're each gone three months out of the year on the bikes," she added.

**The Transportation Center (One Eelgrass Plaza)** , the newest building of Important Argentinean Architect, Domingo Cantilever, is at the edge of the district, abutting **Mission Lorena** , an historic California landmark. It's designed to look like a Seagull eating bits of garbage from the bell-tower of Mission Lorena. The fight over the building took decades to resolve, owing to the insistence of preservationists that nothing in the neighborhood be taller than the bell-tower's spire. But that was resolved when the Loma Prieta Quake dropped the entire Mission by 18 inches, settling the fight.

Mission Lorena is not as famous as Mission Dolores, a well-known San Francisco landmark, and just half the latter's size. Lorena de Hidalgo is the patron saint of a village in central Mexico—Lorena's husband, a Spanish conquistador accompanying mission-founding friars northward, repeatedly got drunk on Mescal, and ultimately fell off his horse-- tragically crushing Lorena, who was walking beside him. The Vatican beatified her in the 1830s—calling it a miracle that she stayed with her husband as long as she did.

Later, I coaxed Sub-Commandante Fischbein's mother, now a retired psychiatric nurse, over to the Olive District for coffee at **Rough Roast (216 S. Alcalde St.)** , which reputedly serves the strongest shade-grown, Fair Trade java, anywhere, or your money back. Bismuth tablets are free to paying customers. Marie Fischbein was sanguine about her son's crusade. I had seen her on TV and wanted to chat further to gain some insights.

"What can I say? I was a smart-alecky Jewish-Italian girl from Long Island," began Marie. "It was the Summer of Love. I came out in a van to make the scene, and that's when Karl was conceived. Unfortunately, after that came the Fall of Vomiting," she said, un-self-consciously. Not that I could tell.

Marie took a sip of her coffee, and her eyes pooled with tears, obviously moved by her son's plight.

"Jesus, you could clear rust with this stuff," she commented. "But, that's the Olive District for you, I guess."

"Look, Karl's father... he split, as they used to say. So, I sent Karl to Montessori; he seemed to like it. But, there was an accident with some mice. Karl was always big on skewers--you know, shish-kebabs, as a meal," she said, smiling wanly. We didn't pursue it further.

"Anyways, he went off to culinary school and I thought he was really happy, but 9/11 changed all that for him. And who can blame him, really? I hope they're not too hard on him when they find him. You know, I hear the prison kitchens in California are top-notch, so maybe he'll work in one of those for a while..."

After exchanging some recipes, we said our good-byes, and, once on the street, I looked back through Rough Roast's big, bright picture window to glimpse the radical chef's mother dipping a q-tip into her coffee, and using it to remove some nail-polish.

On my way back to Digs, I ran into Reggie Yotsuya (Trust me, travel writers who focus on hot neighborhoods always find out who these people are, how to run into them, and how to get them to say stuff that is perfect for their pieces). The federal courts building namesake, retired federal judge, and it turned out, irreverent author of a cookbook marking the ascendancy of Asian noodle cuisine in San Francisco ("Farewell to Manicotti: Nouvelle Soba Now"), was exiting the Pittery. Yotsuya had bought a loft there and was directing the painters with some difficulty.

"You don't ask for 'just white' in San Francisco. They want to know, 'Menorca white,' or 'garlic white' or 'Zendo white.' I mean, for Pete's sake, just paint it white."

He recalled: "my grandfather used to bring me down here when I was a kid to buy pistachios and whatnot. It was a real dump. Now look at it—galleries, some bars. Maybe one day, a supermarket. You think? We can't all eat small-plates for dinner every night."

"We'll get sixth-grade back in San Francisco, don't you worry. And it will be better than ever," said Yotsuya, waving good-bye.

Finally, as if by accident—but not really, because I need this narrative to end in a nice tight package—I not-really happened to walk by Drusus Nero, the restaurant. I darted inside, hoping for a meal. It was the lull before dinner, and the restaurant was ostensibly closed.

A tall person came over to me and introduced himself as Zeke Wrangell, the owner. We chit-chatted about the Guerilla Cuisine Attack; Wrangell was just emailing the police some information they'd requested. He said he would make free meals available to the guerilla attack victims, but had also posted a notice on a local food blog offering to turn over the kitchen once a week to Fischbein.

"I'm not frightened of him. I know what it's like," Zeke said.

"To be a jobless chef?" I asked.

Zeke gave me a look. "No! To be an outsider. I'm transitional FTM. You know, going female-to-male," he said, while I leaned in, hoping for a story of emigration to the Olive District for my final few lines.

"I always tell people 'for now, just think of me as a hybrid car.' I've got some of both sets of equipment, so to speak. I was born in Alaska, actually, just outside Ketchikan. Xena Rankowski, the strongest girl in physical education glass. They actually had me operating the harbor's ice-cutter at 15 years-old. Loved it! But, I knew from early on I was meant to be a Zeke. Or a Zach. Something. Just not Xena."

A busboy brought us over some Truaxe Springs water, while I digested Zeke's intriguing story.

Did I know any FTMs? I thought about it: "So you're really like the Mercedes-Benz 'manu-matic' automatic transmission with manual controls," I offered.

Zeke narrowed his eyes, seemingly unable to assent to the analogy.

"I'm not sure. You lost me, "responded Zeke. "Do you know the card game, Euchre? There's a group of cards you drop from the deck when you play, so it's like an abbreviated... Zeke's voice trailed off, as a sous-chef came over and whispered something in his ear.

"I have to go," said Zeke."Stay for dinner, OK? It's on me."

A waiter brought me over a small hibachi-like Roman table-stove, in which my rolls, he explained, were actually still rising. I thought about analogies that might apply to Zeke, as my replica first-century bread expanded in its little classical box, and wondered if Fischbein would ever take Zeke up on his offer to work there. I could see, now, ever so clearly, a line from pioneering Henry Truaxe, to the equally-original Zeke, a recent immigrant, hoping for success in this woolly frontier of gentrification. And even if there wasn't a clear line, I would pencil it in.

I was ending my Olive District sojourn where it had begun. The cotton of the marine layer had already begun to move over the area, blotting out the sun, sending the temperature plunging, as it was wont to do in the City by the Bay. And, along with my rolls, my hopes for an excellent meal only grew, and I knew it would be one-of-a-kind—regardless of who showed up to cook it. The Olive District was an exceptionally hot neighborhood, and I was lucky enough to be on the cusp of a free meal at a much-discussed eatery within said district.

From my street-side table next to a picture window—full of bubbles created, Wrangell told me, by Turkish artisans, specializing in early first millennium vitreous work, I could make out wisps of fog dipping down to wreath the Yotsuya Building's upper floors; the day's light moved along the color spectrum from a—sort of—Hacienda Summer Kitchen Orange-Mustard to a—kind of—Farallon Islands Wet Pebbles Gray.

Just then, a pungent smell wafted past my nostrils, a smell that bespoke a simpler time—of leather sandals, and leather belts, and sometimes eating leather, if food was tight.

It was a gamey smell, kind of like...goat. I got up from the table and poked my head in the kitchen, and there, looking very much like his police mug-shot, was Karl Marx Fischbein, stirring his pot, with aggressive motions that clearly bespoke his commitment to kitchen authenticity, if not to The Olive District itself.

Back to top.

****

Chapter 2 - NEW YORK CITY:Van Damn-it

_Is It Too Good for You?_

Following two Czech tourists separated from their native-language bus tour of Manhattan, and on the trail of that urban artifact, the exclusive pop-up restaurant, I wandered into the lesser-known Manhattan neighborhood of **Van Damn-it** , determined to eat at the menu-less, heretofore nameless, restaurant, about which I had only heard rumors. Like a giant _amuse-bouche_ stuffed with some organic hard-to-find cheese and perfumed with truck-exhaust and burnt pretzels, this exciting quarter offers the 19th century charm of brick facades, inside a 21st century city, begrimed by the dirt that comes from a million lives lived close together.

Affectionately called "VaDa" by neologism-mad travel writers, "Throop" by realtors tired of befouling their sales with curse-words, "Fishhead" by history buffs, and "Schmutztown" by people confusing this neighborhood with a similar one in Philadelphia, Van Damn-it hides off to the very Far, Far West Side near other better-known, gentrified riverside collections of restored buildings.

Here, you can get stuffed Lebanese-style mushrooms, shabu-shabu, greens _a la Maroq_ and creative South American-inspired cocktails, which is surprising given that this was, up until 18 months ago, a mostly West Indian section of town.

Warring gangs from the area often created havoc, so many stayed away. But people get hungry. For years, most Van Damn-it restaurants paid kick-backs to gangs. That ended in the 1980s when gang-members were jailed and the graft, instead, started flowing more efficaciously to City Hall. With crime lower, an incredibly diverse group of upper middle-class, mostly white, gay men, from the northeastern U.S. and western Europe, began restoring the buildings, using their innate, magical sense of centuries-old color schemes.

Defrocked and 'out' priest Michael Intaglio, a homeowner and businessman here, said it best, when he told me, Van Damn-it, "is a place, where, with the right credit rating, income, financial advisor, schooling, connections, city licenses, cosmetic dentist, yoga teacher, sexual orientation, and social network, people can just be themselves."

Intaglio owns **Hadrian Wallflowers & Hardware, (Little West 24th St. & 15th Ave.)**, a virtual Vatican for those needing hard-to-find handcuffs, leather cord, harnesses, chain-mail, and unusual geraniums. The store was supposed to be a bank, but the grand opening was improvidently scheduled for a day in the 1930s that would turn out to be a bank holiday, declared by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. It never opened. After that the building became a widely-respected opium den, patronized by many famous writers and musicians, where I'm told they inspired copy that gives the address if you, say, or play, the stories, or songs, backward.

Definitely, grab some of Michael's spider monkey-safe-coffee or some free-range Danish. The wheat for the pastries are grown willy-nilly on a hillside in the Catskills—seeds are scattered in a ceremony celebrating the randomness of the universe, courtesy of the **Lacandon Hunter-Gatherer Collective, Kerfluffle, NY**. Participation in the ceremony is available after each full-moon ; the Danish are $15 a piece, but worth every dollar ( two are for climate-change efforts).

"Some customers tell me this is the best Danish they've ever had anywhere in New York; I tell them it better be for fifteen bucks a pop," said Intaglio, who asserted that supporting free-range farming honored Van Damn-it's agricultural heritage. "When you eat these naturally-sourced morsels, you're reaching out to a distant New York of manure, well-water and lots of flies."

I spoke with Henderson Paisley, a television personality who lives here: "Within two or three blocks, you can get designer underwear, an Appletini and a 16th century Italian wall-sconce encrusted with bat-poop; there's no reason to live anywhere else in New York."

(Spoiler Note: _The New York Times_ -issued guidelines for covering historic New York neighborhoods recommend mentions of a buried creek, an unmarked colonial-era grave, a Roosevelt or two, a founding family's historic home, and all things Dutch. Mentions of the Doge's Palace, in Venice, and a buried hatchet, are also encouraged.)

Van Damn-it is on the site of the former Dutch village of Hoofd van Vissen—Fishhead, one of many hamlets peppering Manhattan Island in the decades before the American Revolution. It was so named for a popular fishhead stew made hereabouts.

And, that name stems from a tale of courtship gone awry, and of the inappropriate usage of farm implements: when McIver, a Scots rope-maker, paid court to tailor Cornelius van Draadmeester's daughter without permission, the two agreed to duel—McIver with a lasso, and Draadmeester with a pitchfork. After separating by 100 paces, give or take 90, according to an old account, Draadmeester's tool found its mark in McIver's leg, at which he started to shout the tailor's name, but stopped to curse: "van...Damn-it all!" Luckily there was a cordswallow (a kind of barrel that appears in well-researched travel pieces like this one) of rum nearby, and McIver's wounds and ego were patched up. Perhaps feeling sorry for him, the tailor allowed the rope-maker to marry his daughter, and the couple had four sons.

Another utterly credible version of this story has four apples speared by the flying pitchfork, finding fertile earth, where they grew into diseased fruit trees in Throop Park that rained down wormy apples on park-goers.

Regardless, this is re-enacted, as it must be, by the **Empire State Sons of the Pitchfork** , every year on Pitchfork Day, the Monday after Memorial Day. Local taverns serve fish-head stew, with New York's mayor invited to sample some of each, and presented with a tiny replica pitchfork for the lapel. I recommend a peek at the boringly-worded plaque from the 1880s, at **14 Ave. Extended and Tiny West 26th St.** : " _Here is located the original site of Fishhead (now called Van Damn-it), the town and home of many people who settled this region. Nearby, fish were taken from the river, and their heads removed for a savory porridge._ "

After the Dutch left, things pretty much went downhill for a long time, and it got rougher and poorer after the Civil War, when many veterans returned to the city, and an influx of immigrants vastly over-taxed the neighborhood housing. Rent and life were cheap in Van Damn-it. Eventually, that famous police commissioner, Theodore Roosevelt, tried to clean up its tainted reaches, to no avail.

A billiards club and bar, **Va-Da-Ba-Da-Boom, (989 Compact West 17th St.)** , celebrates this edgy era in a former slaughterhouse, along with the adjoining **Damnation Station** coffee shop, where you can check your email and "pick people up" according to several young men I met, who were still in the early stages of fixing their personal telemetry on targets that would succumb to their Van Damn-it charms. I ate a crazy-expensive "artisanal" mini-Jamaican meat pie that was actually marked down from a day earlier, while talking to patrons. Heritage sodas, made from a type of sugar cane originally grown during the War of The Spanish Succession, are for sale at $7.95 a pop. Potato chips, sculpted by North Fork-of-Long Island food-art craft-persons, were eight bucks. I'd spent $25 on lunch, and was still hungry.

One artist-type told me, "This is actually a cool place. I do something called low-brow art out of my studio. I'm working with found objects right now to re-create a pay telephone booth from the very early 1970s in a building with a lot of phone closets, and old phone wiring, on Punky West 20th St."

"Listen," he leaned forward quietly," when you're done, could I have that crumpled napkin? Also the lemon from your ice tea, the meat-pie wrapper, and the juice can?" Whether hungry, or just scouting for art-materials, I never found out.

Meanwhile, real estate agents gun for change, taking as their model the effort to turn Hell's Kitchen into Clinton. The idea? **Throop** —namely, local greensward **Gov. Enos T. Throop Park**. Throop was a 19th century New York state lieutenant governor who, in later years was appointed by President Andrew Jackson as the Naval Officer for the Port of New York, and is said to have visited the area for a pint of ale on his way to a meeting at the customs house, from his home upstate.

A poem said to be based on Throop's comments to his tavern-mates, commemorates his Van Damn-it sojourn. It's on a park plaque, which is at **13 ½ Ave. and Dinky West 23 St.**

On Duty

On duty, one can only say

Excises must be paid today

I come not to rearrange the tidy ledgers o' yore domain

But rather from the capitol

Up Albany way'n

I ride downstate to dictate

That all goods, dry or wet, must be weighed-in

And ult'mately you'll see fed'ral tariff benefits be

An out-go from your capital to ours

Located southeast of Schenectady

One can only ever say: duty is as it does

Excises on wool (et al). Duties in full.

Throop Park is also home to **Old Scattershot** , a dangerously out-of-kilter cannon that took off many appendages, and some heads, during Revolutionary War battles—graves are at the park's southeast corner. Its stern, dark presence at the park's center reminds us of the place's violent heritage, lest you think it was all butter-churning and games of horseshoes. And, it's also home to the endangered Manhattoes Striped Squirrel. A Native American legend says that if the squirrels ever leave this quarter, the island would be swallowed up by surrounding waters. Seems prescient, and it makes sense when you think what a flood would do to buried acorns.

I ran into the person most responsible for promoting that chestnut about the squirrels, formidable Harriet Shrillman, founder of the Friends of Lt. Gov. Enos T. Throop Park. Shrillman told me that in the early 1980s, the city tried to de-accession the park "to some filthy developer. "

"This was a guy, Mark Luker was his name, who would build anything, anywhere, even in the dead of night! We stopped him cold. " recalled Shrillman.

Harriet, it turns out, was in the park to oversee a visit on a recently initiated study of the rodents by New York University Professor Carl Luciano-Schuyler; he holds the recently-endowed Mark W. and Helen T. Luker Chair in Rodent Sciences at New York University. We engaged him in a brief conversation that expertly weaved through the neighborhood's history.

"These rodents have been here since Alexander Hamilton's day, at least until Aaron Burr shot him dead. And, then, you could say, they've been here since DeWitt Clinton's day. Any way you look at, they've been here a long time. The question is why'd they move in? Rents? Drug traffic elsewhere? No. They're squirrels, after all," opined the professor. "There aren't enough trees to sustain a population this size. Maybe an old grain-bin from a nearby, long-gone tavern? Mother McChesney's famous rum-whiskey-apple pie from a nearby tavern helped ease a lot of money out of Old New York pockets. Then, too, buried creeks may factor in."

Those creeks would figure in, wouldn't they? I puzzled aloud over a rodent species affinity for human comfort food, but the professor interrupted, "Of course, another question is whether this sub-species wouldn't be better protected in a kinder place, say, The Bronx Zoo."

Shrillman jumped in. "Say, where are you from anyway? I didn't see a Columbia badge." She fingered her umbrella, which began to take on the shape and menace of a shoulder-held rocket-launcher. The professor backed-up nervously. I made my excuses, and left.

Furious texting and Internet searches still hadn't yielded the location of the Van Damn-it pop-up eatery. So, I thought I'd kill some time trying to see the magnificent mansion of Verdure Entwhistle, a very distant relation to New York's Famous "400,"—the list of elite society figures who reportedly could fit into Mrs. Astor's late nineteenth century ballroom, minus their illegitimate offspring. It's now a private museum, on **Dwarfish West 22nd St. at Ave. of the Boroughs (13th Ave. South)** , called **Bell'ston** (Bellissimo Brownstone), and one of the finest examples of the Moravian Hruzny Style ('Horrific Moravian' or 'Moravian Horrifische' in bad tourist German, if you like). Some guidebooks call it a variant of Art Nouveau, while others are too disgusted to label it all. Inside, its curves and ornamental decoration, and allusions to clouds and twigs often invoke a warm, yet queasy, feeling, like taking old bowling shoes out of a box after many years.

Entwhistle's wealthy husband, the upstate talcum powder heir, Olcott Entwhistle, was killed in Cuba during the Spanish-American War, and a few years later Verdure built her mansion. She moved there in 1906, and then never left again, except, according to the web-site, for a 1949 Lord & Taylor glove sale.

I stepped up to the famous corner manse, feeling lucky I'd been able to schedule a tour: a foundation now runs the house. "Bell'ston" is open to the public on the third Tuesday of alternate months of alternate years of alternate decades, counting from June 30, 1898. Basically, it's been open to the public three times since its 1970 debut as an attraction. Happily, an opening coincided with my final day here. This sort of thing happens a lot when you're a travel writer with a book contract. My advice for civilians? Email the foundation repeatedly.

The front door's double-knocker is a separate piece of art with its own alarm system. Called _Zeus Stealing Proserpina to the Underworld_ , it's reputedly the biggest set of knockers in New York. A few heavy thunderbolts from it, and keeper of the Entwhistle flame, Sharon Putsch, opened the door. "Welcome! Welcome to this special place, this special part of New York history," she bubbled, as she re-did some buttons on her blouse, and sent a man standing next to her packing, with a slap on his rear.

"He's a contractor," Putsch, explained. "They're doing work downstairs on the boiler."

Putsch brought me into the two-story foyer, and turned around, apologizing for the run in her stocking. While she fiddled with that, I looked up at the soaring walls, the soaring skylight four floors up and the soaring tapestries that soared up for many feet. A soaring art nouveau vase decorated a carved wooden side-table with a green marble top, which was heavy and stolid and did not soar.

Putsch followed my gaze. "Verdure loved green and she ordered this top to be hand-made by Julian Alps pygmy craftsmen, kind of like 'Upper Balkan Oompa-Loompa's,' if you will, in a cave somewhere; the marble comes from a nearby mine once owned by the Doges of Venice," commented Putsch, smoothing down her outfit.

"Well, let's talk about this creation of a wonderful New York matron," began Ms. Putsch. "As you already know, Olcott Entwhistle was one of Teddy Roosevelt's Rough Riders, but Olcott never made up to the top of San Juan Hill. Instead, tragically, he fell into a vat of molasses on the sugar plantation near their encampment and drowned, the day before the battle.

Mrs. Putsch paused, and seemed ready to faint. I asked if I could help, and she shook her head, turning around to pull on a huge rope that rang a bell. She then yelled, "Florid, I need my special coffee," and explained to me that Florid was Bell'ston's intern from Vassar.

Within a minute, a young woman appeared, brought coffee, which was redolent of liquor. I remarked on this to Putsch, but she brushed it aside, swallowing much of the coffee in one large gulp, then wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, breathing a deep sigh and placing her cup and saucer on a tray next to the telephone stand.

"Oh my dear," she declaimed, while steadying herself on a railing, "you can't imagine what was here before the foundation rescued Bell'ston; Verdure left no heirs and the house had been chopped up into apartments. I'm afraid you are smelling the alcohol of those years, soaked into its very bones, when this precious place was a nothing but a crash pad."

We reached the top of the staircase, and entered the master bedroom.

"Verdure spent much of her time composing romance short-stories. She also commissioned a number of inventions for her home, including a mechanical tissue-dispenser—she cried a lot as she wrote, remembering her husband no doubt."

Then all was quiet. "Breathe in the air that sustained Verdure for more than 50 years!" said Putsch to no one in particular. I took a deep breath, but smelled nothing but dust.

One well-publicized treasure is the portrait of Entwhistle by the famous society painter John Singer Sargent. We entered the library and Putsch closed the door behind me, walked to the oil painting, nearly eight feet in height and paused to gaze up at it for a long moment. She then turned around and gave me a very strained look, with a faint, pained smile growing slowly across her face. Florid entered the room with another cup of coffee, but Mrs. Putsch motioned for her to stop. I leaned in to read the title-plate, "Verdure, wife of the late Olcott Entwhistle, 1909."

"It's beautiful, isn't it? It is—was, I should say—considered to be one of most stupendous evocations of a society lady committed to canvas. The brush-strokes, the tinge of color in her cheeks, the attention to the details of her gown. Sensual and passionate and lovely, without debauching the subject a whit. Any number of people have remarked on it," said Putsch. "But," and here her voice dropped a little, and there was another sigh, along with a gesture motioning Florid to approach with the sacred coffee cup, "this is not a Sargent. At least we don't think so. We think possibly it was painted by a friend of Sargent's, someone who may have stopped here, for a party or called on Verdure. We just don't know. There are no records to support the Sargent provenance," she said, voice cracking as she gave 'provenance' full Gallic articulation.

"The first clue we had was when we saw a small chip of paint had fallen away—underneath was what looked like a commercial poster for milk or something."

"We only found this out after the piece had been loaned to the Met for a Sargent exhibition; one of the curators called us with the bad news."

Putsch let out a small sound that sounded like a croak, then a moan. Then it became a small sob, and then a larger one. Her coffee cup fell out of her hand and she turned to the painting, sobbing quietly but deeply.

"Who painted you. Who painted you!! I don't understand it. I don't, I don't." Putsch wailed, muttering, "bastard" under her breath.

Florid stepped over to pick up the coffee cup, then got up and put her arm around Putsch, murmuring gently "why don't we go downstairs and find you some food, hmmm?"

The intern then gave me a piteous look, smiled and led Putsch to the servant's stairs. That seemed to signal the tour's end, so I exited the house, and stepped outside.

It was mid-afternoon, but as in _Chitty-Chitty Bang Bang_ 's Vulgaria, children are rarely seen in Van Damn-it, though not outright prohibited. One couple told me they were moving to a more artsy, industrial neighborhood on the Brooklyn-Queens border, where many families who want to stay in the city have settled among its row-houses and smaller apartment blocks.

"Sure the schools are the same, but craft brew just doesn't taste good outside The City, you know?"

If you're tired out from the Bell'ston tour, or mis-timed your arrival and so won't be able to see it until 2071, try this quick historical hit: Nos. 890-891 Throop Place (at Smallish West 17th St.) are fine examples of the _Triumphal Elegante_ style of architecture--occasionally called Early Third Republic style, or just Early Third if you're in design circles and want to seem knowledgeable. Jackson Claypit built these homes during a modest upturn, between the Panic of 1884 and the Frenzy of 1885. These two row houses are private, and not open for tours, I learned. The owners are exceedingly mean-spirited people who will call the police on you, if you so much as brush your slip-on weekend walker toe against their aged Vermont granite steps. _Triumphal Elegante_ prefigures the popularization of things French, after they gifted the Statue of Liberty to the U.S.; its hallmark is a vertiginous presentment of swoops and swirls—all easily broken off, hence its disuse in construction after this epoch.

I say: Go ahead! Speedily snap a pic with your phone, posing against the banisters, then run away, quick-smart. What can they really do?

Thinking hard about my Bell'ston tour, I wandered without any sense of direction for a few minutes, turned a corner, and there it was: the pop-up restaurant, as described online.

It's called **contrarybitch (666 13th Ave. South)** and when I got there, I was at first disappointed, as I later realized I should be. It's in a closed laundromat. But there is a small nicely-shellacked bench outside with a skull-and-crossbones flag flying over the door. Inside is a thrift-store mish-mash of ancient office furniture, old hotel and country-club fittings, and what looked like my Aunt Ida's china service from 1951. There's an aggressive use of tightly-fitted brocaded chairs, lacking arms, which either slip out from under you, on the heavily-finished wood floors, or can't be moved from their settings in deep-pile shag. The tables are too close, and the seats too low. The chef, Connie Plunkett, thinks that's perfect.

"You know how hard it is to find a maker of real annoying shag carpeting now? I had to buy seconds from Bulgaria," she told me, after seating me early ("I'm bumping some folks who need to understand how we do things here").

Indeed, Plunkett cooks and serves delicious pan-European cuisine with gastronomic value, and a flair for emotional cruelty, which she says harks back to a saucier, tougher time in the city's past.

One side of the restaurant is incredibly well-lit by arc lamps formerly used to operate a lathe; the rest of the restaurant is almost pitch black. You can grasp one of the centerpiece tea-candles to read the menu, but they are hard to hold and liable to drip wax on your fingers or wrist. Connie changes the cuisine each week – this quarter it's Cambodian, last quarter it was Brazilian – without notice, with devotees of the previous week inevitably showing up, being seated and then facing something they hadn't counted on eating. "I call it 'the surprise announcement.' These Wall St. types, they're used to it; it taps into their fear of losing everything that comes with all that money."

Connie came over during the extra-long wait for the food and explained her philosophy. "New York used to be fun. You not only had to sing for your supper, you had to punch someone in the teeth. My father could fight with a retail clerk over a free pack of matches; my mother thought everyone was 'fresh,' " said Connie. "Those were the days," she added, wistfully.

"Now there's all this 'namaste' crap and 'no worries' garbage. Who needs it? We try to get past that here. We cook good food, and treat you like you should be grateful. This is how New York used to be, and that's why Van Damn-it is the right location—we don't want the typical schlubs that dine out to come here," adding, "we had a lot more fun before, seating non-smokers next to smokers, but those days are over."

My food finally came to the table, and it was quite average. Connie popped over. "Sometimes we go the other way—you know, really incredible food, but we make you eat fast to turn the table over. This time, the food's so-so, but you can stay as long as you want. By the way, we've run out of all the stuff you like," said Connie, adding that she intended to shut-down her pop-up without warning, hopefully leaving many reservation-holders in the lurch.

After a tense dinner in which I struggled to get my wine and water glasses filled, I left and sat down outside on the bench to reflect on my edgy repast. It was only seconds before I realized Connie had also watered the bench along with the adjacent potted plants. My bottom was now soaked. I got up, but Connie poked her head out of the restaurant; she was smiling and clearly understood what happened.

"Aw," she cooed, grinning and looking up at her restaurant sign. "Karma is...well...you know."

Van Damn-it all!

Back to top

****

Chapter 3 - NEW ORLEANS: Belle Grieve

_Skeletons and Closets_

Romantic, fecund, mossy.

All of these words described the food in the Amtrak café car traveling to New Orleans from Texas. I finally arrived at my destination--the River City, Jazz Capital of the World, the Great Gulf Gigolo, Trash Compactor of Hurricanes and Southern Street-Walker Extraordinaire--in the early morning after a fitful night, especially enjoying the unscheduled layover next to an oil refinery– the smell nearly put me in a coma, and I broke into hives.

After the Amtrak train-crew gallantly gave me a haz-mat suit, I crawled into that white silky cocoon, leaving it just a touch unzipped for air, and slept like a koala baby. Still waylaid, I awoke and slipped out of the train, and siphoned into a large plastic reservoir some unrefined oil from a small unguarded pool at the edge of the property, jumped back on the train, and upon our arrival, re-sold the two liters-worth to a woman pushing a shopping cart at New Orleans Union Station; she said that she had been a residential real estate investor in Florida during the property bubble. Leaving in my hands a small wad of bills, she disappeared into the recesses of the station.

Outside the station, the air was thick with possibility, humidity and tragedy...a typical New Orleans broth that I was more than ready to drink with my French roast, and then drink some more. Not for me the tourist _beignets_. I wanted the unusual 'reverse beignets' of a creative cook in my target neighborhood. And, I couldn't wait to sample that secret elixir, reportedly the earliest cocktail made below the Mason-Dixon line, known as the Catafalque– so powerful and intoxicating a beverage that it's said to have caused a naïve 19th century mayoral aide to spontaneously combust.

As visitors' centers so often point out, this part of the world has seen many different flags fly over its historic confines. I would plant my own flag of fun as I tracked down the whereabouts, and secrets of the up and comer, **Belle Grieve** (or **Duroblier's Closet** ), known heretofore only to paroled state legislators, and the occasional brave tourist.

But who was Duroblier? And what was in his famous closet? These were questions I had researched for many months with little luck, or regard for feelings. I called every Duroblier in southern Louisiana, and received many pieces of advice, some of it in Cajun dialect, and some of it of a threatening nature. Finally, upon the advice of a hustler on Canal St., I boarded the streetcar at Esplanade, designated **Retirer** —for the suburb to which it travels, and at which it terminates its lumbering journey—and alighted at none other than **Belle Grieve Cemetery (Station: Robusto St. at Ramblanade.)**

I've provided the tram information here: **Number 73 Streetcar** , to **Retirer** , terminating at Ave. Chien de Sommeil). Stops at: Levee Theodore Roosevelt, Muffaletta St. (at Ramblanade, Belle Grieve), Tangiers Ave. (at Ramblanade, Belle Grieve), **Robusto St.** (at Ramblanade, Belle Grieve), Parc Sublime, Canal No. 3, Poisson Mort, Talleyrand Circle, Harpsichore St., Le Coin, Beauharnais Ave., Guiana St., Barbudian Exchange.

Belle Grieve takes its name from both the cemetery and the famous house, a frightful Southern Gothic pile, (what else would it be?) abutting the cemetery grounds. As I finally learned, the house is famous for Duroblier's Closet—the largest closet in the world, which ultimately took up much of the **Belle Grieve House** that Erasme Duroblier, the last direct descendant of the famous Creole cemetery-keeping family, occupied, and later, shared with his life-partner—although they were known in the parlance of the time as _meilleurs amis_ (best friends). Escaping the bulk of Hurricane Katrina's floodwaters, the neighborhood's fortunes seem to have risen as the waters receded. It is mostly located along the broad avenue known as The Ramblanade. And, until recently, it had been home to a tame alligator owned by two male hoteliers and partners; the reptile, "Edwin" was, however, now missing, prompting a city-wide search.

Old-timers living in this quarter have a hard time understanding how this sleepy, down-at-the-heels area could rate as hip. For these residents, it's a dreary neighborhood centered around a famous burial ground, and the strange old house next door. _Au contraire_! For just now, the breezes from over-priced ceiling fans were beginning to blow across aromatic candles and interesting 'small-plates' meals in Belle Grieve. Where should a Southeast Asian food-truck park, if not near a cemetary? I could not ignore these markers, just to preserve some geriatric sense of normalcy.

To continue...after alighting from the uncomfortably empty Retirer streetcar, I checked into a little boutique hotel that is getting rave reviews from those who are not bothered by paranormal activity, or oil paintings that follow your every movement. **The Melancholia Arms (56 Humide Place, at Cyclone St.)** is run by the very gayest couple I have ever encountered on a trip—and that is saying something, as I am gay, and, in any case, well-traveled.

I had no idea the Elizabethan ruff, or the mantilla, had made comebacks, especially among men, and especially with blue-jeans. Still, the Confirmation Day Tasting Menu at breakfast—Cajun Deviled Eggs, cucumber salad, smoked oysters, a Sazerac cocktail, alligator skewers, and nutria croquets--made up for any confusion the hoteliers' sartorial choices might have caused. Although it wasn't quite what I had in mind early in the morning, it was included in the bill and I ate it with gratitude.

And, it was while enjoying my early repast in the moist confines of the Melancholia's brick and moss courtyard, a helpful visitor arrived. Eglantine "Eggie" Simmonsweal, the Duroblier descendant, and force behind the restoration of the cemetery, the main house and, indeed, the neighborhood, presented herself as my guide to Belle Grieve. Once just a typical post-graduate Gulf Coast sea-turtle rescuer--who had somehow managed to matriculate from Mobile's Spring Hill College without a fiancée—Eggie had returned after two turtle egg-laying seasons to the place she knew best, her second home along The Ramblanade, the great cemetery keeper's house next to Belle Grieve Cemetery.

"My great-aunt, Eugenie Shreve Thibodeaux, was Erasme Duroblier's cousin, twice-removed by marriage and natural disasters," announced Eggie, after leaning in, uninvited, to finish off the rest of my Confirmation Breakfast. "She was the last person to live in Belle Grieve House, before it was willed to the foundation that takes care of it. I'm the head of the foundation, so I live there and keep it tidy and give tours in the 'grief-mobile,' which is basically just a 1953 hearse that the morticians next-door had garaged since, oh, about 1971," Eggie prattled, while licking her fingers clean, after depositing several tiny croquets in her own yammering maw.

"Of course, as you already probably know, or as the Bruces (Leighton Bruce and Bruce Gomez, the Melancholia owners) may have told you, most of the second floor is taken by the largest closet east of the Mississippi. Duroblier kept the contractors busy building it, and adding to it, until it wiped out virtually all of the bedrooms except for the master suite. He was a bit of a clotheshorse...as was Clive, his buddy."

Eggie arose, motioned with her head for me to follow, saying what I thought was Cajun for, "Let's do this sucker." It was actually Pig Latin—Eggie is fluent, turns out.

"Basically, a typical weekend at Belle-Grieve in the 1880s and 1890s began something like this," —and here, Eggie took out the diary of her relative by marriage, Duroblier himself. A funeral, attended by the family, would commence after a large breakfast. The family would gather on the verandah, overlooking the cemetery, while the Erasme's father or uncles went out to manage the interment. It was the family's custom to send the beloveds off with good-wishes:

" _Greet the mourners, greet them!," shouted mother. "Bon Voyage," grande-mere would shout. "Adieu," waved Oncle Peyroux. And then, I, little, fragile, sensitive, terrified, Erasme, would go and hide in the closet of my vast bedroom. When grande-mere and grand-pere had themselves been interred, and mama and papa were gone, and mon oncles had also gone into the beyond, the job of keeper of Belle-Grieve Cemetery passed out of the Duroblier family forever, as I would not take it under any circumstance. Instead, I occupied myself in the study with my map collection, plotting shipping routes, and train lines, and roads, in the tranquil afternoons._

—from _The Journal of Erasme Duroblier, 1887-1964_ ; Louisiana State Archives

However, tranquility didn't last, Eggie noted. New Orleans' Mayor during these years around the turn of the last century was Prosper Panatella, a family friend. Panatella was aware of Erasme's map collection, which he pronounced in his thick Louisiana accent, at a dinner in March, 1902:

"...fah n'awah, da fahn'st cash 'a gee'graf'cal aydes to nav'gahtory 'n explor'tory doc'amenshun a da knoiwan soiface 'a de plant since de Lous'ane poichus waws ih-self poichus." (translation: "...far and away, the finest cache of geographical aids to navigatory and exploratory documentation of the known surface of the planet since the Louisiana Purchase was itself purchased.")

Shortly thereafter, the then-Chief Cartographer of Orleans Parish was given a special commission by the mayor: explore the coast of Guyana for spices and gold—he was never heard from again. And, after six months, Duroblier, who had been occupying the cartographer job in an interim capacity, was declared the city's Chief Cartographer.

While working as a cartographer, in the Plats and Waterways Department, he met an important staff member, Thierry Hanrahan, known as "Clive". Hanrahan was the Deputy Assistant Cartographer for Investigations. Investigations at this time were said to vary in subject and scope. Houses, lots, even streets could disappear in New Orleans, the result of water seepage, or sinkholes, or voodoo. If a curse were put on a house, it might become invisible for a day, or a week, or even for a year. Street sign names changed with alacrity, or, accents ague disappeared or re-appeared on the signs—a matter of considered quite grave. Addresses were changed in order to evade city tax collectors, or avoid tariffs if the address held valuable overseas cargo.

The job of the cartographic inspector addressed all of these problems. Sometime in the late 1890s, Clive became Duroblier's housemate, and they were seen forever after at city functions together, and sometimes with the unmarried Creole sisters Droupier, Adeline and Hermania. Sometimes they were seen by themselves. Duroblier and Clive vacationed together as well: Hot Springs, Arkansas was a favorite, as was the town of Saugatuck on the eastern shore of Lake Michigan. By the end of World War I, the pair had bought a house in Tucson, and spent part of the winter there. The one place they were not seen together was at church: Duroblier attended St. Anthony the Abbot, a Roman Catholic Church on Muffaletta St., in Belle Grieve, while Clive attended the Episcopal Christ Church Cathedral on St. Charles Ave.

Thus did Duroblier and his partner pass into history.

Today, very few celebrity chefs from New Orleans come 'round Belle Grieve, as its cuisine had been subsumed long ago into the traditions of greater New Orleans. Still, some have relocated to Belle-Grieve in the hopes of forming a new base of support; many people in Belle-Grieve, taking their cue from Hurricane Katrina, keep their backyards flooded as paddies, in order create a sustainable supply of locally-grown rice. Because of this, bare feet are allowed in most restaurants and stores, where Belle Grieve residents, fresh from their backyard paddies, clean their feet off in special foot-washes. _Note: do not use these for cleaning shoe soles; these are only for cleaning foot-pads._

**Centime** is a lovely café run by the Tagette family, in the French tradition, on a Belle-Grieve side street, where the famous reverse-beignet, called _reignet_ (WREN-yay) reigns supreme. Fluffy on the outside, and full of powdered sugar on the inside, no one is quite sure how they make them—and don't ask because they'll give you a sort of Cajun evil-eye. Next thing, you're a swamp creature. Reignet and coffee is $4.95 **(456 Sarcophagus St.)**. Still, Proprietress Cerise Tagette sells mysterious reignet mix, when she's not taping her YouTube cooking show. Edwin the alligator was reportedly very fond of reignets, and the alligator trappers had set up a trap in the alley behind Centime with some reignets for Edwin; thus far, there had been no takers.

At **Restaurant Reliquary (761 Tangier St.)** , they dispense with the niceties: both the waitstaff and food are dressed in black. Bring a flashlight—the interior is kept tomb-dark. Owner Colza Wiles, the daughter of a New Orleans coroner, went to art school, where she majored in kinetic sculpture and minored in food styling. She took her goth-inspired recipes, and created Reliquary. Sweet breads are popular here. They use a lot of squid ink, and food coloring. And, they have appropriated the famously explosive cocktail, the oldest mixed drink in the western hemisphere: the _Catafalque_. Comparable to a mixologist's version of the Japanese dish of Fugu, or blowfish, combining the Catafalque ingredients in the wrong way can yield a delayed reaction that causes an actual explosion, hence the Lousiana mixology license with a certification in Catafalque construction.

The Catafalque

½ Rye Whiskey

1 part brandy

1 part dark Rum

1 sugar cube

1 maraschino cherry

Dark Chocolate Shavings

1 splash apple cider vinegar

1 pinch cayenne

1 egg yolk

1 egg white

1 sprinkle cinnamon

½ part Kahlua or coffee liquor

1 dash secret ingredient (some use licorice, wood-shavings, saltpeter or turmeric)

Directions: Combine all alcohols; beat in yolk. Eat cherry, and throw stem behind you, bowing to the four cardinal directions. Throw in the sugar cube and cayenne, pour mixture into a cocktail shaker with shaved ice. Whip the egg white until frothy. Say: "take that, (name of spurned lover), you scoundrel (or 'daughter of a muskrat')." While whistling "Dixie" in a minor key, pour mixture into martini glass, pour in vinegar splash, pour in egg whites on top, sprinkle chocolate shavings. Pluck a hair out of your head, or eyebrow. Light a candle. Make a wish—singe the hair in the flame. Add secret ingredient, and stir. Recite "Ring Around the Rosey." Drink Catafalque in several continuous gulps. Shout, "laissez le bon temps rouler." Throw glass against the wall, into street or into the fireplace.

A trip to New Orleans would not rate as authentic without touching some aspect of Mardi Gras, and the clubs that form the basis of the parades around town. Eggie offered to take me to the secret warehouse of the Mardi Gras krewe representing Belle Grieve; long-dormant, it had been revived by some urban pioneers hoping to inject a sense of life into a neighborhood known mostly for rituals surrounding death. However, those rituals proved a little too strong to overcome--even amidst a celebration.

The **Belle Grieve Social Club for Revelry** had taken over the old offices of the Empire Southern Tropicale Sugar Company; their floats for the Krewe de Tyche, named after the god of fortune and chance, were focused on the role of these elements in daily life. For if an alligator, disease or hurricane can sweep life away, then the roll of the dice must be celebrated. But the theme of this year's float was in some question.

Should the float focus, as Eggie had hoped, on the life and times of Erasme Duroblier? Eggie's idea involved a giant closet with two members of the social club playing Erasme and his friend, Clive Hanrahan. A closet, laid bare with a 1000 garments from the early years of the last century would hang on the float. Float designer Martin Ecrevisse, this year's Colonel du Krewe, let me in to this warehouse and we gazed up at the giant paper-mache head of a joker from a playing card rolling the dice at a craps table. The giant joker's head bobbed a little, as if to mock my attempts at understanding the reality of Belle-Grieve, but also, basically, as a gentle reminder that gamblings themes have been prominent on previous float.

The Krewe de Tyche meeting was called to order and the krewe's secretary, Beneva Lecoire, read out the final description of the float for the up-coming Mardi Gras.

"At the center, top, stands the Belle Grieve House, surrounding by cardboard and paper-mache mausoleums and tombstones; members of the krewe stand behind their designated burial plots and play _Le Diable a Mangé Mon Dejeuner_ ("The Devil Ate My Lunch"), a popular 1910s music hall ditty. The musicians serenade Edwin the Alligator, as he lumbers around the float. At the float's rear, Colza Wiles will cook a meal of Cajun-style tripe in a working kitchen, while hunters move around her, trying to trap nutria in a faux-bayou made of gelatin and straw.

Eggie stood up: "I will not cook a nutria, and I think we ought focus on sustainable produce. Where are our famous rice paddies?

Martin responded, "This celebrates Belle-Grieve's heritage. And, the paddies offer a level of technical complication that we do not have the financial resources to replicate."

Cerise stood up, but broke down in tears, telling the small group that her little terrier, Jean Lafitte, was missing. With that the meeting broke up.

**Bistro Badinage (Ave. Noixville at Cacophonie Place)** , is a hot ticket in Belle-Grieve, with food that is light, playful and downright silly. The chef, Percy Flage, who was a professional clown for years, dresses up a grouper cooked in its own skin in a gingham frock, while savory muffins have eyes made of coffee beans, noses of jalapeno, and mouths of pimento. It's confusing, tasty and a whole lot of fun, if you have the patience for these things, which lots of folks in Belle-Grieve do.

**Fiat Lux (938 Sarcophagus St.)** sheds light on situations, both supernatural and real. The writer and wiccan, Beltane Earp, who runs Tulane University's screen-writing program, took her late grandmother's candle factory and store, Candelabrum and Co., and turned it into a veritable temple to the chandler's arts. There are religious candles, time-keeping candles, beeswax candles, tallow candles and a variety of aromatic candles for which her grandmother's recipe book—kept secret--has come in most handy. Cinaster is a beguiling combination of cinnamon and aster flowers. Poprika combines the spiciness of Paprika and the seductive scent of a genus of poppy. The Cambion model changes colors as it burns, and is especially useful for casting spells on irksome employers and pesky neighbors, I was told.

Back at the cemetary, I grabbed a spring-roll from **Banh! Banh! (Tuesday-Sunday, front gate, Belle-Grieve Cemetary, 11-2)** , the Vietnamese food-truck one usually finds outside broken-down old burying grounds in the Deep South. Truthfully, the BP oil spill had pushed the longtime Southeast Asian fishing community here to the breaking point, and a younger member had pushed into uncharted, but vital new eating territory, with a re-made Mr. Smoothie truck, peddling Pho, rolls and the steamed Indochinese cakes, Banh Mi. The owner blackened my cakes, sprinkled them with Tabasco, shouted "bon appetit," and tossed a Cajun-Indochinese meal onto the counter, worthy of its multi-cultural heritage.

Then, I ran into Eggie, who revealed details of what I longed hoped for, and without which, my tour of Belle Grieve would have been less than complete: the famous zombie jazz bar known as **Le Grimoire (#43E Ratoon Alley)** , or in local parlance, 'The Grim.' Here, for a price that is quite high and never quoted verbally, customers are locked in for a possible appearance by the only jazz combo of living dead on the planet. Whether you come out or not after the performance is said to depend upon how appreciative you are of musicians, and whether they like you. Although it sounded to me like a typical stadium rock-concert, Eggie insisted it happens only on full moons and in leap years. Sadly, with neither available on my trip, I gave up the idea of a visit.

_Day Trip_ : if you want take an authentic paddle-wheeler upriver from the **Tangier St. Pier** in Belle Grieve, tours stop at some of the old places where riverboats used to call. Once, these plantations were scenes of great cruelty toward their slave laborers. You would think that would give some travelers pause, but it doesn't—not when there's gambling, good food and congenial travel-mates on the trip. Truth be told, these trips are educational. A creaking old riverboat, known as the _Marie Royale_ plies the tourist-laden waters. I decided to visit **Shibboleth Forest** , a grand old house and plantation—now restored—which has ties to Belle-Grieve; Shibboleth's original owners kept a _pied-a-terre_ in Belle-Grieve, long since demolished.

At the Shibboleth pier, we were greeted by the docents, one black and one white—two women presenting at once the spectrum of Louisiana history.

"Welcome to Shibboleth Forest. I am Cherisse Haycroft, a descendant of Shibboleth's enslaved population, and this is Rose-Marie Wilcoxen, a descendent of the Meunieres, who owned this property. Shibboleth Forest was one of the nastiest, meanest plantations in the South. But it's been lovingly restored by its current owners, retired Gulf Coast Oil Company Chairman Lawrence Endwell and his wife Laurel, and it's an official Louisiana State Historic Site. As descendants, we take great pride in showing you around. We don't hide anything. This is a warts and all tour. Whipping sites, slave quarters, outhouses, formerly malarial swamps, mausoleums...we've got and you'll see it."

Rose-Marie introduced the property with a slice of history: "Now, my great-great-great grandfather, Crudite Meuniere, raped Cherisse's great-great-great-great grandmother, Galette Meuniere, who was enslaved on this plantation, and she had a child, and so Cherisse and I are also related," Rose-Marie said, matter-of-factly, while shoving a tray of some freshly-made sweets at us. "Pralines? They're made right here, and they're dee-licious. Isn't that right Cherisse?"

"You bet your cotton bale, they are," replied Cherisse, with surprising equanimity.

And with that disturbing factoid, we were off on a fascinating trip into the economy and life of the Old South. I had a good time—or as good a time as one could have while visiting this kind of place. All of that labor the slaves performed on the plantation had bought rich carpets, enormous drapes, furniture from Europe and a well-stocked kitchen for the Meunieres. But, as they say in these parts, it also bought a little bit of crazy. The Meunieres were free with their saber and gun usage, and were constantly offing their kin. Pretty soon, the place was ownerless, and fell into antebellum disrepair.

On the way back the boat stopped at **Ceuta** , a crossroads town that was once a dilapidated, dying river hamlet, full of impoverished white trash, and little to buy. Now, it's full of rich white trash, and a whole range of shopping options, too. After a young mayor convinced business people to upgrade their stores to serve tourists, residents have either gone in for servicing the tourist trade, or taken a powder for the Florida Panhandle beaches.

"It's mostly the same people as before," noted Mayor Claude Meuniere, "but now they're nice to everyone, because they wants your money."

Cheered by Ceuta's newly progressive outlook, I stepped into a hoary old currency-trading and numismatic shop—which, like, all the other stores in town, sells ice-cream and fudge on the side—to check out the goods. **S. Moneda and Sons** ("Dealers in distressed, old, new, worthless and valuable currencies") had some interesting pieces for sale: a 19th-century 100-taler note from the long-vanquished Duchy of Vandenberg, now part of Thuringia, in Germany, retailed for $75. A 50-ecre silver piece from the Territory of Nueva Murcia, a former sliver of Peru in the 18th century, was priced at $456; the price seemed steep, but was told it came with a map to the silver-mine where it had originated. Candles and black clothing also were for sale.

Grabbing a quickly-melting sundae, I repaired to the Marie Royale for the trip back to Belle Grieve.

Upon my return from Shibboleth Forest, I was greeted at the dock by a grim-faced Eggie. She reported that Edwin's body had been found, and, sadly, the cause of the death was likely indigestion from supping on a local pet.

We proceeded to the death scene, at the Levee Theodore Roosevelt, where on the banks of Canal #3, Edwin had come to his finally resting place, caused, the coroner said, by indigestion from eating Cerise Tagette's male mixed terrier, Jean Lafitte—a possible drowing victim. Nearby, floating serenely in the water, was a female alligator that apparently was watching to see whether Edwin's meal-catching prowess was up to snuff before letting him mate with her. Edwin had picked up this girlfiend, somewhere in the city's canal system, upon his escape from the Melancholia Arms, and together they had roamed the streets of Belle Grieve, looking for a nightly meal—but she had declined to feast on Jean Lafitte. The Bruces dubbed this female gator "Edwina" and were petitioning to take her home with them; but, the future for gators as pets in Belle Grieve was looking grim—the city wanted to clean up the neighborhood to encourage tourism.

One of the Bruces said: "No surprises, really. We took Edwin to a séance when we first got him; the medium told us he would die after meeting a live girl and a dead boy, within a day of each other. Looks like he found both and it did him in: he met this female gator, and then he feasted on poor little drowned Jean Lafitte, and it killed him."

Plans were underway to give Edwin a classic Jazz Funeral. I stood on the levee, as a late afternoon breeze broke up the humidity slightly. And, as the sun dipped below toward the horizon, I realized something awful: I was destined to write a New Orleans travel article without having mentioned "Etouffee," the signature dish of the city, nor, for that matter, Huey Long, the famous populist state governor. Would my Belle Grieve chapter suffer, I wondered aloud?

Colza stepped up. "I'm distantly related to Governor Long," she said, helpfully, "and my three year old Calico is named Etoufee. So you're covered."

She smiled, as only someone who had worked so hard to help revive a decrepit old district could; and I thanked her profusely for saving my travel story.

"Of course," she noted with a smirk, "my other cat is named 'ANTI-CHRIST!'"

A peel of thunder clapped above our heads, and with that, Colza stretched her arms outward, while her black cape caught the wind off the water, and she rose up in the air and flew away toward her Belle Grieve hostelry, and the eponymous cemetery.

Back to top

****

Chapter 4 - WASHINGTON, DC: Buchanan's Bog

_Stewing in its Own Up-And-Coming Juices_

They say politics is dirty. But maybe it's just dirty because in nineteenth-century Washington, the streets really were made of dirt.

In the 1850s, virtually all of capital's streets were dirt. Precipitation turned the dirt to a thick, viscous soup. Sometime in December, 1858, President James Buchanan's carriage became stuck in the mud along South Carolina Ave., S.E. But, where exactly? A period diary I obtained tantalizingly indicates that this incident occurred, "in the south-east quadrant of the capital city, in plain sight of the Houses of Congress, and not a great distance from a well known house for activities best conducted under cover of night."

"Cover of night" could mean a brothel. Nearby **Madame O'Bannion's Euphonia Inn** , (now a lobbying firm), was a noted prostitution house "proffering vendors of both genders" according to period accounts. The President's diary nowhere records his destination that evening.

According to fifth-hand accounts of the time, the President alighted to help the driver extricate the horse-drawn contraption from the Mid-Atlantic muck. Rocking it clear of the mud, urging the horses to help, Buchanan found himself now sucked into a powerful Piedmont mud-puddle of his own: he, in his boots, was now stuck, too. The coachman solved this, by lifting the Pennsylvanian out of his boots, and into the carriage, unshod and unharmed.

The boots were left there, and some say they remained a part of Madame O'Bannion's private collection of curiosities for the next three decades, leading to rumors Buchanan had been heading to her infamous house. The Library of Congress steadfastly denies that the boots are in its voluminous collection—I checked. Some say it didn't happen at this particular location at all, and that the choice in the popular imagination of a South Carolina Ave. incident was an apocryphal post-Civil War cautionary tale referencing the first shots of that war, fired at Fort Sumter, in South Carolina, or an attempt to impugn the conciliatory Buchanan's reputation.

In any case, much of the area where Buchanan got stuck was torn down for a 1960s freeway project, but a few small blocks exist south of the National Mall, and this area took its name, Buchanan's Bog, from the President's detour. Soon stews were named after the incident, including a Depression-era version of 'the Bog' that included an actually piece of shoe-leather in a muddy brown broth.

The legend of Buchanan's Bog grew, and if you can find it, you will be richly rewarded with the restaurants, such as **H.P. Taliaferro's** , that remain favorites for the backroom dealings of congressman, and a few small shops. Today, Buchanan's Bog is officially considered part of Capitol Hill, but for the few people who live here—its primary focus being institutional—they pay lower rents, because of its proximity to freeway noise, a railroad tunnel and a population of feral cats. Feral cats—often written about in connection with Paris and Rome, haven't been a popular part of the creation myths of gentrifying American'hoods recently, so conveniently, they are a part of this one. Happy now?

While I pondered where to get my first iconic 'Bog' meal, I considered the instructions given to most travel writers undertaking a dissection of the national American capital, once again falling back on _New York Times_ tips: mentions should be made of "cows once pastured on the mall," "Dolly Madison fleeing from the British with various items," "Theodore Roosevelt's antics on the White House lawn with his children," and "built on a swamp." Props for working in rotund President William Howard Taft's specially built bathtub.

I decided to do what hungry Capitol Hill aides and congresspersons have been doing for over 150 years; head to **H.P. Taliaferro's (234 One-Quarter St., S.E.)** , for the kind of rib-sticking comfort food that, once eaten, obviates the need for food the rest of the day, or possibly the week. Menu items are increased in price by a particular percentage calculated by Taliaferro descendants, who still own the restaurant; prices, therefore, are rather idiosyncratic: their famous "Chicken Chain Bridge" with pork sausage and hash-browns costing $8.42, for example. I personally took a liking to the "Hallelujah Hodge-Podge," a mixture of okra, bread stuffing, and collards topped with a fried egg. You will never get the stuffing recipe out of the owners, so don't even try.

But the real reason the powers eat there is attributed to superstitions around its mysterious "Election Stew." It's reportedly an ancient, and unrecorded recipe. I had heard every congressman eats a little of it, in order to ensure successful completion of his term. The legend has it that not doing such could lead to an abbreviated tenure in Congress. Like the scent of a mailman hitting canine olfactory bulbs, that tickled my travel nose and I headed to Taliaferro's.

Usually referred to as 'HP's'– the menu hasn't changed much since 1866, the year it opened. Born on a plantation in Georgia in the 1840s, H.P. Taliaferro was a freedman who came to Washington after the civil war, along with General William Tecumseh Sherman's army. He'd worked in the army mess along the way, after fleeing his south-central Georgia plantation, and Union officers became so fond of Taliaferro's cooking, they encouraged him to start his tavern with a range of donations.

Arriving in Washington in 1865, Taliaferro helpfully possessed $23 in gold coin, a spyglass, two saddles, a padlock, 17 coat-buttons, a cocker spaniel, a union suit, four pairs of men's stockings, several pairs of boots, a set of spurs, a shaving mirror and mug, a complete military atlas of the Carolinas, a Tamworth hog, a set of playing cards with pornographic daguerreotypes on the back sides, two Bowie knives, sewing kits, a bottle of witch-hazel, some bandages, a French garter belt, a door-knocker, a dinner-bell, cast-iron cookware, three tins of snuff, a bust of Herodotus, the battle standard of Indiana's 19th Independent Battery Light Artillery, and a church pew.

After selling off some of these items, and keeping what worked for a tavern, Taliaferro set about finding a building in which to house his tavern. A seamstress, who had taken ill during the war, recently had vacated a house on One-Quarter St., between B and C Streets, and Fauntleroy set about creating a public house there "for filling the belly with vittles."

Upon arriving at Taliaferro's, I met relatives who still run the restaurant. These included Taliferro's great-great-great-grandniece, Eloise Taliaferro Pelham, who oversees restaurant operations. She offers kitchen tours monthly—I, of course, caught one. Eloise began by taking us through the dining room, and then into the kitchen itself. So far, the family had fended off extensive media coverage, and had firmly rejected bottling, canning or freezing their stew for retail sales. I asked her about the famous Election Stew and its enticing recipe. Pelham proudly told me the stew was virtually as old as the restaurant.

"You mean the recipe is 140 years old?" I clarified.

"No, I mean the stew in this pot is a 140 years old; it's been bubbling on a stove in the restaurant for 140 years, since November of 1866. We never let the fire go out. Of course, we're continually adding fresh vegetables and meats to it, naturally, but that stew-pot has never been empty, and never will be, not since H.P. lit the fire and threw in his special ingredients. H.P. declared the stew would be kept alive into eternity, just as he hoped the union that set him free would last forever."

A silence that was equal parts patriotic tribute and food safety-standards anxiety met Eloise's description, and this conflicted worry filled the kitchen like a quickly rising soufflé of concern. Eloise took note of my twitches.

"Oh, don't get your manhood in a sieve. We deglaze the sides a little every week or so, to reduce the contents from sticking to the sides. But, basically this stew is the same stew, freshened up every few days, since Reconstruction. We can't completely empty the pot or the Congressman that come in here to order it, so they can fulfill the election prophecy, well, they'd go ballistic."

And they say America doesn't preserve its history. I beg to disagree. Right here was an edible edifice that had withstood the press of time. As well, I must take a moment to recount the exact story of 'the election prophecy,' as related by Taliaferro's descendants and others.

It seems that seven congressmen gathered for a mid-day meal, in October of 1866 just prior to the elections of that year, at Taliaferro's newly opened eatery—not yet the favorite it would become. Four ordered the stew, three did not. They then adjourned for electioneering in their districts. Guess what? No, don't bother. It was with great surprise that the four who ordered and ingested Taliaferro's stew, found themselves returned to Congress.

The dining companions were astounded by what had occurred, according to a little book I just happened to pick up a day earlier, while browsing a charming table of moldering volumes, at the nearby Eastern Market bazaar, hard by the edge of Capitol Hill. Believe me; these coincidences regularly collide with seasoned travel writers. Entitled _Tales of Politicks and Its Practitioners, Recounted for General Divertissement_ by a Horace Ploughman, the book purported to be a complete account of the subsequent discussion:

"Is it not a striking factum," sagely observed Missouri congressman Girard Bonifant, to the group of elected eaters dining with him in January of 1867, as told by Ploughman, "that we gentlemen partook of Taliaferro's stew September last, and withal the great noise made against our persons in the late contest, still we are again in vicinity, one and t'other."

Eye-brows raised around the table. And, Bonifant, as Ploughman tells it, leaned in, continuing, "and, yet, good sirs, note well this circumstance is in contraposition to our autumnal supper companions. For never did stew touch their lips, and presently, they are seen no more in the capital!"

Striking, indeed. And, presently our merry tour group, huddled in Taliaferro's kitchen well over a century later, standing in proximate vicinity to this savory antique porridge; a poached, burbling relic of the republic's resilience and the supernatural power of well-crafted compotes. Even aged as it was, this stew cooking away through wars and weather in a large iron pot, certainly smelled appetizing.

"Cabbage and a little hare, that's all I can tell you," offered Eloise, deflecting questions about ingredients. "The rest is a family secret and it goes to the grave. H.P. himself used to say, 'don't ask, 'cause I can't tell.' No ifs, ands, or buts on that score. It's too precious, you know? That pot has seen it all: Ulysses Grant, the Wright brothers, War to End All Wars, WW Two, Dr. King and Civil Rights, Watergate, Operation Desert Storm. You name it, the stew's been cooking the whole while."

Then, Eloise ladled out some of that precious electoral elixir, witness to the march of western democracy, into small bowls held out by the gastronomic prayer circle we had formed around her. In concert, we quietly brought the mid-Victorian ragout to our lips, blowing on our spoons and taking small tastes of it; notes of gunsmoke, very old lipstick, fennel, leeks, tears on flower-scented paper, heritage turkey, and a lot of sweet onion popped on our tongues like Fourth of July sparklers. Was there a taste of wet cobblestone? Or was it gum-tree mixed with macadam and cumin? I volunteered "chintz from a very old sleeping compartment on the Baltimore & Ohio's express to Philadelphia, circa 1885" and got very nasty looks from fellow tour-goers. Taliaferro's stew was a stereopticon of flavors.

We, of course, wanted to know, whether a certain VIP, fond of local dining, had stopped in. But, we could not get a confirmation that President Obama and the First Lady had dined at H.P.'s, and there seemed little chance that we would obtain the First Couple's menu, even if they had popped in for a bite. Moving toward the door, I heard a rustling in the corner of the kitchen, and several of our party gasped. There, an ancient woman seated at small café table pored over a newspaper with a magnifying glass. We hadn't noticed her.

"Oh, that's Cousin Mae; she's a grand-niece. 97 years old and counting; doesn't really talk anymore. She just watches over the pot, even at night. Mae sleeps in a little room we've got off to the side. Eloise motioned in the direction of the back door of the kitchen. "I mean, come on! We're not going to leave a pot of stew on the stove for a century and a half without keeping watch, for heaven's sake."

"You know what they say," continued Eloise, as we gathered our things to leave. "Two things always bear watching: the making of H.P.'s stew and the making of legislation."

I cocked my head a little, and asked. "Are you sure? I thought the two things you did _not_ want to watch were the making of legislation and the making of hotdogs."

"Well," snapped Eloise, "the person who said that didn't eat our stew, and they probably didn't get reelected, neither." And she hurried us out the door.

The **U.S. Court of Exceptional Claims (301 Guam Ave., S.E.)** , which handles any cases that the rest of the federal judiciary refuses to touch, can be toured pretty quickly. Judges are appointed to the three-judge panel by the Vice-President from a pool of applicants who apply to the Society of the Cincinnatus—a revolutionary war heritage group—for life "plus five years," meaning that when they die, the court must appoint whomever the dead justice has designated in their will to serve a further five years. After Judge Amulet Parterre Wilkes appointed his Chesapeake Bay Retriever back in 1879, Congress passed legislation requiring that only "persons of a human character and corpus" be allowed on the court.

The court only meets four times per year to hear cases, and eat soup. They sit 'en banquette' on a long banquette (hence the legal phrase, _en banc_ ), in front of which is a long oak table. Tradition dictates that anyone arguing a case before the court is required to ladle out equal portions of soup to the judges, and then one portion for him or herself. If they fail to make the portions equal, they must cede their opening statement time to the other side. The building was originally a music hall, and the banquette where the judges sit was said to be where Sally "Racey" Rossiter, the famous singer and society courtesan of the 1880s, held her own special sort of court.

"When I choose a man," Rossiter told one admirer," you can appeal all you want...and so can I."

Remember the "Moho"? Jules Verne-nerds aren't the only ones who would like to journey to the center of the earth. The quasi-private Commission on Subterranean Research runs the **Museum of the Mohole, (278 American Samoa Ave., S.E.)** , out of a Reconstruction-era townhouse left to them by an early booster. They've got a working model of this 1960s-era project to drill into the Mohorovicic Discontinuity, between the earth's crust and mantle. Your admission helps fund their half-century effort to revive the project for reasons that are unclear, but nonetheless seem awfully noble. It's only open Sunday through Tuesday (Admission $6.50). They have been funded modestly by the federal budget, but their biggest champion, Sen. Gregory Silt (R-Wyo.), just died, so the future is uncertain.

A Buchanan's Bog secret: the best parties are given by **The Mission of French Amazonia** , which represents the interests of a group of banana plantation owners in an area of Brazil just south of French Guiana; they assert their 15,357 square mile territory is really a part of French Guiana, but due to a cartographic error, it has been incorporated into Brazil—which is fun, but, after all, not French. Learn more about the cuisine of French Amazonia at their restaurant, or about their capital, Boueville. **(Mission de la Amazonia Francais, 627 First St., S.E.)**. If you're lucky, you'll catch their annual food festival in the spring; it features fish, but also bananas prepared dozens of different ways—really, too many different ways, if you ask me.

Speaking of food, I had lunch with **Fair Food Prices Foundation** executives **(456 Guam Ave., S.E.)** , at their delightful, public, in-house cafe, serving organic, farm-to-table, nose-to-tail, pulp-to-peel cuisine. The foundation supports agricultural subsidies and the Unfair Food Prices Coalition, which is actually controlled by the Fair Food folks—they figure if they start a group that opposes what they do, then they can control how the opposing group fights themselves and they can make sure they win and the opposing group loses. So they appoint real dummies to the opposing group's board, which makes the whole issue the opposing group is fighting for look terrible and amateurish; the Fair Food folks look brilliant.

I inquired: "That's pretty clever. But, hasn't the press figured out the game you are running?"

"No, not that you could tell," said a Fair Food executive.

A fine restaurant is **Entente (entrance in a dead-end alley behind 322 St. Croix St., S.E.)** which occupies the original U.S. offices of the 1920s central European alliance known as the Little Entente, an early 20th century coalition focused on checking Hungary's ambitions for world domination. Entente knits together central European cuisine in a delicious, if slightly contemptuous style. The starter was both delicate and thorny: stripped baby birch twigs, grilled and coated with burned caramel sauce. Potatoes Pickelhaube was a rather in-your-face new potato, just one, in a savory vinegar and paprika-inflected sauce with a little spiked helmet atop, composed of a salted cinnamon stick surrounded by a cape of under-cooked carrot dough as the helmet. It's a somewhat severe meal, which leaves you feeling full, yet uneasy.

When you're done eating, educate yourself. What's great about the Smithsonian is it's free. Well, almost. The new **Museum of Games and Gambling (417 B St., S.E)** contains some pretty interesting slot machines. It chronicles gambling history riverboat faro games to illegal slots and Indian and Internet gaming. There's no admission, but there is a gambling minimum to meet congressional conditions that it be self-supporting. A computer simulation lets you play with various odds, betting on different political and social issues. For instance, the odds of getting hit by a bus are actually pretty low. But the odds of turning 50 without adequate health-care, if you're not on a company plan, are quite good. Try your luck!

I made my way over to the Capitol for my meeting with a friend of a friend's uncle, Rep. Bartholomew Coade (R-MT). In the lobby of the Longworth House Office Building, I went through security. After I had been irradiated, de-loused, searched, x-rayed and micro-chipped, I made my way up to the third floor to meet Rep. Coade.

After perusing a few magazines, as well as examining a stuffed bison, and a working model of a copper mine in the waiting area for a few minutes, Rep. Coade popped his head out of his office.

"And, howdy, you must be my nephew Zip's friend," Rep. Coade blasted in a loud western drawl. I explained that I was really a friend of his nephew's friend, and hoped to ask him about health-care for freelance travel writers, along with some Bog history, like what had actually happened that night to President Buchanan's lost boots, and where might his destination have been—and, of course, about Dolly Madison's flight from the city, Teddy Roosevelt's antics, and Taft's tub.

The congressman changed the subject immediately. "Nate, are you married? Now, our Zip, seems like he has a new girl every month," and the congressman chuckled to himself, while he busily made what looked like a Gin Gimlet at his mini-bar. "Goodness, I've never met anybody with such an eye for the ladies like our Zip, and that includes me!" Completing his alcoholic toilette, Rep. Coade rejoined me, drink in hand, in a kind of conversation pit in front of his enormous desk.

He launched into his next discourse. "I don't know if Zip told you about his auntie Helen? Yeah, well, she breeds miniature pinschers and cutting horses up in Sabertooth Falls, Montana. Helen's got a new gal pal up there at the farm, and this Beatrice or Belletrice, or Belladonna...anyho, she's a mighty fine arm-wrestler, and she knows sumo, too. My lord, she threw me so far during a demo, when I come to, I thought I was in Wyoming."

We were interrupted by the congressman's assistant, who poked her head in the office door. "Congressman, your 11 o'clock sumo training session is in five minutes in the congressional gym."

Coade tilted his head upward at his assistant. "Oh yes? Well, tell Toshi I'll be about five minutes late."

The assistant added, quietly. "it's Hashi, sir."

"Yes, alright," responded Coade.

He continued. "Anyhow, this gal is pretty darned strong—I told Helen, hell, send her to Afghanistan—it's not too late; I can probably get her a pretty good berth over there—maybe she'll whip those scorpion terrorists into shape."

I was about to respond, when Coade got up abruptly and turned to me, saying, "Nate, just remember, as you walk these hallowed halls, we've got to fight fire with fire, here. Smarty-pants stuff won't help us out in the coming apocalypse. When someone throws mud at you, you gotta take that mud and make a delicious Mudslide. Don't forget this acronym, 'KISS': keep things stupid 'n simple.'"

Amazingly, I looked up just then, and I thought I spied a pair of boots in a glass case, high up on a shelf in his office, and turned to ask the congressman about them. But, he was moving out the door as I rose, virtually shouting back to me, "God bless you on your journey through our great country, and God bless the second district of Montana." As Rep. Coade exited, he touched the head of the stuffed bison with two fingers and then brought those fingers to his lips, as if the dead creature were a kind of preserved mountain-man _mezuzah_.

The office door slammed, and after petting the stuffed bison one more time, I reflected that I would probably never find out the whole truth behind this intriguing urban neighborhood at the heart of America's capital. I exited into the hallway, completing my visit to historic and important Buchanan's Bog.

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****

Chapter 5 - LOS ANGELES: Los Pajaros

_Free as a bird in a hip L.A. hillside 'hood_

"Are you in the business, dude?"

The question came from a sun-glassed, scruffy-faced denizen of Los Angeles' hippest hillside swath. In no rush to answer the question – for in Los Pajaros (reminiscent of an Italian hill-town, if a first-time visitor, or if stoned and from L.A.) the enjoyment of one's life-station is more important than the alacrity with which one responds to others' requests—I pondered this query for an instant, while a balmy breeze tinged with auto exhaust wafted through the arroyos of this climate-blessed, excessively ceramic-tiled quarter.

As if in homage to its name, its residents are free as birds. Here, the slightly-alternative star, the out-gay up-and-comer, and the just plain strange performing artist and their production entourage could mingle and cohabit with the aging, sun-damaged, smoked-out, straggly-haired relics of the British Invasion, New Wave Cinema and various epochs of exploitation and independent film. They've gone toward lifestyles of unwashed food and clean-living, or, to a life of very clean food, and dirty living. Whether the business is growing pot or growing actors, Los Pajaros is the ticket.

It turned out my inquisitor was selling marijuana, not movie roles, and so I left him where I found him—drinking a coffee at a street-side café, which seems to be what most people in entertainment-centric 'hoods are doing, most of the time.

More importantly, though, Los Pajaros is the neighborhood where so many reality TV stars have chosen to settle, once they hit the big time. Why? What brings them here? It would take searching and talking to many people, using the facile, upbeat lingua franca preferred in L.A. As a waitress—and reality star, natch—told me, "what's not to like? It's got Andalucían weather, Corsican-style politics and Parisian property values."

Los Pajaros offers an alternative reality to the iconic Los Angeles of studios and beaches that is refreshing and weird: it's the home of a **weekly motor-scooter rodeo** , a **once-lesbian hootenanny** , the **Academy of Independent Directors Revenge-Cut Screenings Festival** and **Scruff-Daddy** , the appointment-only men's fashion boutique that helps creates those looks that stand out on the red carpet, or in rehab. Within the 'hood's undulating precincts, I found a famous actor's school, more used avocado-tone appliances and old wedding-factory faux-crystal chandeliers for sale than I thought existed, a store devoted solely to clothing made from found items—the wearable art store one expects, if not demands, from a hot neighborhood.

Along Los Pajaros' dusty green inclines, luscious Umbrian-style houses thrown up against the rich Tuscan-style topography, offered their owners privacy and at least one possible coronary event after the age of fifty from attempting to walk back up a 9% grade to the house, from a bar or a guest's car. Siena, Girona, Taormina—it reminded me of none of these appealing Southern European locales, and made me want to escape to any of them, if only so I could find a restaurant that served more than one meal a day—preferably not artisanal or vegan—or that had a working restroom for non-customers. With a half-dozen Mediterranean references in just one paragraph, it quickly became clear that Los Pajaros had sucked me in to a Charybdis-like L.A. whirlpool of edgy cultural ferment amidst perfect weather and perfect-looking people.

_Getting Around_ : Short version is you can't get around—it's L.A., after all. Longer version: rent a car at the airport, or walk uphill the two miles from the Metro's Red Line Hollywood Blvd./Vermont Ave. Station. Buses labor up the hill at 10 miles per hour. Don't try to figure out the L.A. rapid rail system—line placements were created using Feng Shui; they balance the traditional energies of water, earth, and freeway fumes. **El Sueño Blvd.** is the main drag; it's one mile long as the parrot flies, but five miles long in reality: it's twisty, hilly, pot-holed, and speckled with giant fallen palm fronds, abandoned shopping carts, medical pot containers, and homeless camps. Grab a heavy flashlight, a panini and your water bottle, before exploring.

I was too excited by the prospect of getting close to an exclusive club, whose many members I knew to live above the roadways, in vine-covered redoubts, dreaming up film plots, running script lines and readying themselves to attend swag-bedecked parties bubbling with hot fashions, the latest drinks and fascinating chatter about new releases. The only thing missing were peasant women walking along the roadside with giant amphorae balanced on their heads.

And, then, like the predictable plot twist in a tent-pole movie, I saw that, too, as I watched a catering company set up a Greek Islands-themed lunch on someone's patio.

While snooping around for more famous people, I stopped by **Kray Magma (567 Patagonia St.)** to look into a martial arts practice that has gained popularity in Los Angeles among some model/actors who want to stay in shape, or need to fight off an attacker. (it's deadlier off-shoot, Super Kray Magma Crazy On Your Head, is illegal to teach in California, per a recent state ballot initiative, but I was told lessons can be had for cash, and a gaming-site password). They also teach Tee Mun, which means "drop you on your ass" in some other language.

Kray Magma's owner was sanguine about L.A. and Hollywood, quoting a famous aphorism about Tinseltown: "someone knows something."

"Really?" I asked. "I thought it was something like, "no one knows anything."

The owner replied: "that, my friend, is what the people who know something want you to think. But, in fact, the actual phrase these folks really repeat around here? It's 'someone knows something.' Think about it—what makes more sense?"

Armed with this insider knowledge, I knew I needed a new look—this being L.A. And that job fell to **Scruff Daddy (456 Emilia Pl. at Rancho Los Pajaros St.)**. Sign-less, and appointment-only, the building housing this insider styling shrine looks like a bar and hotel from, say, Chihuahua, circa 1885. Outside, pockmarked, mustard-colored adobe walls imply its existence pre-dates statehood. Inside, the hipster's Disneyland of male styling specializes in the hip urban scruff so many wear, but so few wear well. They have many different looks, but the secret is to buy one of their all-in-one packages, re-printed here:

_Rocker Dad_ : Lawyer by day, you're playing Catalonian ballads on 12-string guitar by night. Your twin toddlers look perfect with their first tattoos. You've got three 14-carat Namibian gold ear studs for each ear, lobe to top. Extra short t-shirts reveal the boxers you're wearing with logos from Ukrainian tractor-drivers union, and the Anti-Imperialist Logging League of Yekaterinburg. Belt is made from Argentinean hemp with the phrase, "T.Q.M. Carmelina" in faded rust-red lipstick on its face. A special shaver offers the five-day growth look. Your jeans have burlap coffee-bean-sack patches used to transport coffee in the Obama family's ancestral district. In each jean pocket is a different sonnet or song you're working on. Corn-row braid, or Japanese top-knot optional. $23,789.

_Newbie Studio Exec_ : You're dressing down to keep everyone "chill," while you burn through studio cash on your borderline-personality buddy's first picture. Your imperfectly shaven face recalls the High Desert; you're wearing a Comme des Garcons shirt with a weird crease in the collar from sleeping on your office couch, possibly after a "nooner" debauch. We offer a range of discreet wrist and ankle tattoos with Celtic, Sanskrit or Tibetan themes and special gel that gives your hair that tousled look that says "crazy busy." Jeans offer several carefully-placed slashes. Shoes are custom-measured and ordered from a Milan bespoke shoe house - barely visible under the authentic renaissance-recipe shoe polish are cross-hatches from a saber used by Italian Risorgimento-era troops. Rehab Recovery bracelet made from found tsunami scrap-metal, made while 'away,' is optional. $16,295.

_Cool Drone_ : Thuggy, buggy, druggy. No one would guess you sell staplers at a big-box store. Your ear-plugs are pewter-rimmed pegs from the planking of a scuttled Mombasa-based dhow. Patched splay-collared shirt was hung an Alaskan King-Crab fishing boat mast in the Bering Strait. Comes in faded "Rusted Hull Red" and black-flecked "Angry Ocean Blue." Your shoes are mid-calf-high work-boots of Alberta cowhide, from the toughest, highest elevation spread in the Canadian West. Pink-stained twine wrist bracelet was braided by groupies at a Gotye concert in Latvia. Strange-looking shell carried on a necklace made of a cable-television connector; we harvested the shell at a protected marine sanctuary under special U.N. license. Choice of shaving styles used by Mexican drug cartels, South China Sea pirates, and Moldovan pimps. $12,895.

_Ambiguous Means of Support_ : White collar? Blue Collar? No collar? It's hard to tell with this studied look that makes some neighbors run, and draws the lonely ones inward. Full coverage tattoo of one limb comes in various themes, including Viking, Cheesy Waikiki Lobby, Altamont/1967, and cartoon characters. We take expensive golf-shirts and send them to Ecuador, where they're used as dish-rags by indigenous villagers for several months. When they come back, they're almost unrecognizable – and you'll wear it proudly. Tractor-tread sandals could mean you're environmentally-sensitive, or go dumpster-diving for footwear--no one can tell. Hammered Mexican silver bracelet looks suspiciously like work-camp chains. Nipple ring is melted-down factory metal from the Caucasus. Your slacks are Egyptian cotton khakis, and were taped to the bumpers of monster-trucks at a two-month rally in South Dakota, and then used as wind-socks at a nearby general-aviation airport for one whole year. You'll seem dicey, and fun, with this special look. $9,345.

_Crazy-Town_ : Strangers will ask, "Didn't I see you on the visitor's bus to state prison?" You'll say 'convicted and awaiting sentencing' with this frightening gutter-level look that will have actual street-thugs wetting their pants. That labret is really titanium from a recovered Russian satellite. A full-coverage neck tattoo will draw stares at the opera, but looks very much like a famous metal-band front-man's ink. They'll ask: 'could that be him?' The effect really comes together on your head: we create a modified Mohawk, with a very tight fade on either side, and carve your initials – and those of your 'crime victims' into the sides. If you're bald, we've got a tattoo-artist who specializes in heads. A hammer-and-sickle superimposed on an Islamic crescent completes the tattoo series – this one on your forehead. They'll be running for the hills or taking snapshots of you when they get a look at your four lip-rings, strictly made of metals from third-world conflict areas. Palm tattoos of dice and the Russian, Chinese and Farsi words for "die now," make any handshake a special occasion. Our surgeons in China will use advanced laser techniques to create a slightly forked tongue. Your t-shirt was worn during the Arab Spring—rips are from a sandstorm. Keys hang from a belt loop with de-accessioned handcuffs from the East German Stasi secret police. An authentic Bowie knife hangs from a leather bandolier across your mid-section, which also has a special pocket for a net-book-style computer. Basketball sneakers three sizes too large, and without laces, complete the look. $37,450.

I, being a poor travel writer, chose _Wannabe_ , a $147.95 down-shifted look that cleaned me up with mid-priced mall-wear, a facial, some very strong hair product, a temporary tattoo, a single earring, a string-and-shell bracelet, and some past-season Vans footwear.

I left Scruff Daddy, and headed up El Sueno Blvd. to the very "in" **Shrub Café** , where the building super-structure is made of topiary sculpture, and some rather ambitious designs ("that's not Pinocchio," a waitress told me, "that's Tommy Lee, and that's not his face."). I planned here to dip into Los Pajaros' creative tapenade. Within five minutes I realized I was siting amongst real actors, writers, directors and others connected to L.A.'s thrilling _raison d'être_. Leaning in, the words sounded expectant with filmed magic:

"...and the big problem now is she's booked for the entire year, so I'll go with Reese, Emily or January," I heard from the table next-door. And from the other direction, "...never forget that spaghetti dinner I cooked for the crew in Romania." And this tantalizing bit of audible acrobatics from behind me: "...you've got to be in tip-top shape. I actually hurt my shoulder on that shoot."

After a few bites, I eagerly approached all of these speakers for autographs. While I was disappointed to learn they were, respectively, a pre-school recruiter, a charter pilot and an adult performer, I still felt confident that the urban hood with a quasi-Sardinian farming community vibe, set in an Aegean context, would yield up its secrets soon enough.

My waitress agreed. She was none other than Oleander d'Alene, reality star of _The Big-Box Church_ , about a exurban Riverside County mega-church 50 miles east. Oleander quoted her favorite Los Pajaros cigar vendor about the neighborhood. "What's not to like. It's got Sicilian weather, Hong Kong property values..." I got the gist, and left before she'd finished.

I was itching for some night-time entertainment, and phoned my old friend (in L.A. terms, he was an old friend; if had I a eaten meal with him, I would now be considered related) at Kray Magma Studio. He suggested the **Hexagon Hootenanny** , an unlikely weekly-square-dance in the courtyard of one of the oldest churches in Los Pajaros, the **Hexagon Church of the Savior (4316 Mirror Park Blvd)** , where a 1920's evangelical preacher testified to the power of prayer. It seemed a little odd, but Los Pajarans had run out of trendy dances.

"You know everyone went through the tango, the return of disco, the death of the return disco and the re-return of disco. The minuet died in, like, five minutes. So square-dance is basically all I have left for now," the dance's manager told me (by the way, **Mirror Park** contains **Mirror Lake** , once famous for its crisp reflection—legend has it that rising movie stars of the 1920s and 1930s used to check their reflection in the lake's surface, before going to auditions. If you look in the lake today, you may see a face staring back, but it's probably not yours: drug cartels like to dump bodies here).

"It used to be an all-lesbian square-dance, "the manager told me, "but the lesbians moved to Culver City, and the caller was left in the lurch. He's fantastic. Came here to ride studio horses in the 1960s as a teenager. You'll have a lot of fun. Everyone goes. You'll recognize some famous faces. The lesbians left some mighty big dancing shoes to fill, but you'll do fine."

Your Los Pajaros Accessories Checklist:

*House or apartment with difficult-to-find entrance

*Car from years '62-'78.

*Tattoo in non-Roman alphabet meaning luck, opportunity, love, compassion or millionaire.

*Porkpie hat, or Kashmiri or Bhutanese bracelet, or both.

*Pet or child with unusual name, e.g. foreign city or abstract noun in developing country's language. Try 'Xian' for a girl, 'Rome' for a boy or 'Peligroso' for a dog.

*Own energy healer, yoga teacher, psychic reader, astrologist, psychotherapist and cosmetic dentist.

*Own blog, but preferably, own show.

*Access to "a place in the desert."

*Unused paintball gun.

*Own set of pool cues

**Undercroft** is an artfully tumbledown place with books from floor to ceiling **(3126 El Rincon, at Perdida Pl.)** , and a patio shaded by jacarandas, and a giant plane tree growing out of the middle of its recycled plastic deck. You need to ask the names of anything in the pastry case, because they make them fresh and don't have time to create labels. It is the _echt_ -writers coffeehouse. Surge protectors of various sizes drape the rafters ready to be used for the next script-writing, podcast or live-blog session. Singles at small tables are reading, presenting a whispered facial ballet of moving lips creating or learning soon-to-be memorable plots. Here I met Oklahoma-native and reality TV star Ripper Cleburne, who achieved national fame through four seasons of _I Live in a Mall_.

The rumors were true—he was still living outside in the big city: "...and will continue to do so until everyone in the world has a home. That's a fact," said Ripper, while eating a vegan gelato. "Awesome," he said, pulling a potato-starch spoon out of his mouth, "Yam is really the best flavor, no lie."

I asked about Trellis Chung, his longtime girlfriend, and the sassy star of _Real Physician's Assistants of Phoenix_. I, like everyone, had heard they'd bought a hill-top perch in Los Pajaros, reportedly owned by Cher's accountant, then Jake Gyllenhaal's real estate agent, then the agent's lawyer and, finally, the lawyer's bankruptcy attorney. But, sadly, Ripper told me the relationship lasted all of a month. He pointed out his new girlfriend, across the room—she had moved from West Hills, in the San Fernando Valley, to be nearer him, and to her church, the Little Precious Church of the Foothills (2012 Philippians Way) a non-denominational congregation for the adult film industry.

"We're basically praying on whether personal sex-cams are going to destroy the business, or not," she told me. "Give us some direction, Lord."

Is it any wonder the glitterati of Hollywood have fled the over-exposed confines of Silver Lake and Los Feliz to hide out here, redolent with Dodecanese cooking smells and Balearic-style dining? I wasn't even sure how Dodecanese cooking tasted, much less smelled. No matter, as details like that are less important in L.A; nobody fact-checks, and most just make it up as they go along. Try it, youself—it's cheap fun.

And while it's sunny here, it's not sunny for everyone.

"There ain't no birds, never were," announced Celia Gutierrez, who's run **Celia's Diner (5677 El Rincon, at Madero Ave.)** , since 1963. "A developer made that name up during the Great Depression hopin' folks'd buy up here."

Some people just hate on good times. Like Celia, her coffee is strong and packs a punch. After it went through me I visited her 1940s bathroom, complete with toilet tank mounted high up on the wall with a pull chain, a charming touch that Celia said she had kept along with the graffiti from the rockers who had visited her over the years when she ran it as a 24-hours shop. So iconic are the wall-scribblings, they were described in the famous New Journalism piece of 1973, _Tales of the Toilet: What They're Telling Us Now_ (I found it had faded, but full of epochal inspiration evocative of '60s revolutionary: "Rita's shish kebabs made me high —Ronnie" and "Screw Ronnie! —Shish Kebab" were typical).

Next door, the **Academy of Independent Directors (5679 El Rincon)** , was having their "Director's Revenge-Cut Film Festival" and I found the description of their latest screening online:

_"Gelato Girl_ (2006). Originally called _Flavor of the Month_ before it was artistically violated by Warner Bros., director Brace Fuller ( _Direction: Petershausen_ , _Where is Rafael?,_ _Tokyo, Mon Amour_ and _Do Drop Inn_ ) shows us what really happened to Claire Danes, after she fell in love with the head of a Balkan, not Russian, crime syndicate. Danes' character is revealed to be the love child of a Middle Eastern royal, not a poor Indiana couple, now struggling to keep warring religious factions from destroying his country—not her town; and she leaves her comfortable life in London, not Ft. Wayne, to bring peace to her father's country, by cultivating a rare flower, not her grandmother's old recipe, that flavors her gelato in a unique way. Supporting roles, with Sir Ian McKellan, as the piano teacher at the eunuch's school, not Danes' kindly grandfather, and Salma Hayek as a Dubai escort, not her high school German teacher, are restored."

Then, as if by chance, but actually through bribery and threats, I finally find one of the hidden sages of The Business: Joe.

Yes, Joe is one of the finest acting coaches in the world – he's paid hundreds of thousands of dollars. But he works out of a barber shop. The school doesn't have a name, but its putative one— **Joe the Barber Acting School** —is actually where many of the top actors have gotten their tips and tricks. Little known by average people, and even less well known in the entertainment community, Joe is the unacknowledged secret behind so many careers; occasionally a "thanks, Joe" slips out at during the Academy Awards, but he frowns on any mentions.

I met Joe at his studio; in front is a normal barber shop. Behind the barber shop is a multi-million dollar warren of rooms built into a hillside, where the famous and not-so-famous come to train in secret with one of the great masters of dramaturgy. He shows very few people this state-of-the-art facility. And he doesn't stint on candor. "No, I'm not trained. But, when I'm done with you, you'll be asking the director which nostril your funeral sniffles should fly out of."

But, Joe said he takes very few clients. "Don't come to me from Lake Forest with a condo as a graduation gift in your pocket, OK? I can't do anything with that. Bring me a drug problem, hippie parents or a life as a child pick-pocket – that I can work with. Leo, Liev, Joaquin, Shia,– yeah, strange kiddie-hoods, - sleeping in hammocks, running around Central America, knives daddy drug-dealers, Snickers for breakfasts. That's all fodder for our work." Joe paused and looked around as birds took wing outside and the sun rose ever higher, brighter than bright.

"Reese? I don't what drives a kid like that. Now, Brits, LiLo, Mark-Paul – yeah, there's something there. When you battle family as a kid for your own dough, that's acting gold."

I asked about his methods.

"They're mostly secret, but basically it depends on what you're coming here with. I need to challenge you, break you down, pummel you, turn you inside out, rock your world, pull the rug out from under you and give you a clue."

"Sometimes—after you've signed a waiver—I'll take you to Griffith Park Observatory, and then throw you over the side of the cliff – if you survive, and can make it back to my place with no money, a broken leg and torn clothing, I might have something. Obviously, if you get picked up by the police for loitering, vagrancy or shop-lifting, all the better.

"Sometimes, I'll just make you cut hair in here for weeks and weeks. Tedious, boring, and yucky.

"But,transcendent. And not good hair neither: a picky old guy with, like, three strands left. A crazy tweaker with bed-head. The tough cases. You'll listen to their sad-ass tales, and then listen some more, and you'll love it, and you'll offer them advice, and become like a third mommy to them and a second half-brother and a fifth kid, too. And most of them are narcissists, or depressives, or both, and you'll get drawn into their drama and it will ruin your life. And, you might go broke working here, and lose your apartment and sleep on the street – which, by the way, is easy here on account of the weather. And you'll grow and become stronger."

Joe paused, and then said, "And then, you're ready to act."

He stopped talking, motioned to a customer sitting along the wall to sit in one of his barber chairs, and begun to cut hair, wordlessly, silently. He never looked at me again. I crept out of the barber shop.

From above, a flock of birds, maybe the descendants of that inspiration for the first settlers in this smoggy urban hillside idyll, perched—yes, dammit, one more Mediterranean citation must present itself—like a group of Honey Buzzards above a Puglian mountain hamlet in Italy's boot-heel, came flooding down on the trees in front of the shop, and their cawing and chatter grew louder and louder as I watched them settle in among the jacarandas, until I had to move away, so I could hear myself think about my visit to hip Los Pajaros.

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****

Chapter 6 - ATLANTA: Pantaloon Corners

_Cleavages Anew_

I arrived in Atlanta during a thunderstorm that threatened to flatten everything in sight, and would have exited the airport terminal sooner, if not for wandering unbidden into a demonstration for a device that spiritually scans you and pronounces you "saved" or "not saved" after you exit, as if I were a computer file checked for emotional viruses. After being offered electronic salvation, the church promoting this device asked me to sign a petition renaming **Atlanta's Hartsfield Jackson International Airport** , after Jesus Christ or Georgia's senior senator, Brunswick Syllabub. I declined, citing my lack of Georgia residency.

The air was crackling with humidity and edginess as I lit out for this off-the-digitized-map quarter of the South's erstwhile capital, like a younger, gayer, male Miss Daisy, if she was being driven to Bonnaroo, and if it were taking place in an organic, sustainable, rooftop pumpkin patch. Once a post-reconstruction center of prostitution, known as Cleavage Corners (and some other "c" words), **Pantaloon Corners** later became an industrial center, churning out furniture, and a locally-made cola, the latter later swallowed up by you-know-what-company. After that, industrial decline, riots, and a general disinterest in the area, sent the Corners tumbling downhill from a neighborhood of 9,000-plus to 34, give or take. Enter rooftop gardens, graveled restaurant floors, artisanal soda pop, and the Slow Furniture Movement, to the rescue. Exiting at the **Hogshead MARTA Station** , I excitedly grabbed a bus up Old Maudlinville Road with a sense of anticipation.

The big news hereabouts is that a national reconciliation center for the Civil War at the recently restored **Chattersworthy Complex** (Chattersworthy Mansion &Plantation, Historic Site, Charter School, Community Center, Artisanal Café, Folk Workshop, Digital Media Center and Battlefield, 7 New Chattersworthy Road) had finally opened. It had also abruptly closed, I found out. Several lawsuits targeting high-fat, high carbohydrate foods in the cafeteria, a poorly conceived battle re-enactment, a mural featuring the stars and bars, some questions of scholarship regarding research on the house, along with a ban on cursing, had tied up the place in post-bellum knots.

Momentarily disappointed, I went to check in at Victorian-era **Clawfoot Cottage, (342 Swale St.)** a delightful bed and breakfast that has been restored to within an inch of its 167-year-old life by two friends, Alma Godswill, and Glynn Laurens, from nearby Mountebank County. Wanting to create something new in the big city, they had rubbed the floors and furniture with lemon oil, three kinds of organic shellac and artisanal furniture wax made at the only factory of its kind in north Georgia. Breakfast was hand-churned butter, and homemade bread, along with Dancin' John—a dish for which I never ascertained the exact ingredients, but sounded authentically Southern. Soap is made with a bicycle contraption that Alma was riding on while checking me in.

"It's an incredible work-out, and we sell the rest at **Polly Wanna Cracker" (567 Garter Street, check Twitter)** , the shabby chic store run by Polly Screven, the Pantaloon Corners interior designer, explained Alma.

The Corners has a long, complicated—and as indicated—somewhat naughty history. After the big decline, many of the buildings fell into "ruination, debasement and decrepitude" as a handy and evocative online slide-show put together by the Chattersworthy Complex shows. The entire neighborhood was once known as Six-and-A-Half-Corners—which really was a mouthful--the corners are formed by the intersection of New Chattersworthy Road, Persnickety Avenue, Old Maudlinville Road, Garter Street, Calvary Highway and Little Big Rushing Creek Boulevard. The fraction results from how New Chattersworthy Road ends just up from the main intersection—don't let it bug you. I didn't and enjoyed my trip.

**Hardscrabble , (5 Persnickety Place, see website to contact)** , is causing quite a stir. The owner's original proposal for an authentic dirt floor was nixed by the city authorities, so they've made do with wood floors strewn with gravel and some sand. The menu of meat on the bone, seasonal vegetables from their garden out back, and down near Macon, along with sugary homemade desserts guaranteed to send you to the dentist, is a winning one. A washboard band plays on Wednesdays and Thursdays.

The new mortar holding together the pecans of gentrification in this urban pie are the hard-working men and women, now restoring the so-called _horse cottages_ of Pantaloon Corners, an architectural style of the 1870s, that described a multi-family dwelling with a very high and long hallway that ran the length of the house—tall and straight enough for a horse and rider to navigate it (though whether one would remains a source of some debate among historians), providing interior hallways for the two or three apartments within **.(A Course of Horse, Cottage Tours, 800-555-1872, tours begin at 316 Old Maudlinville Road)**.

The Corners has, in part, been revived, as expected, by Atlanta's large gay community. They've been busy pruning, trimming, waxing, scrubbing—and sometimes even taking a break from personal grooming, to open restaurants and restore homes. Pantaloon Corners is also attracting the attention of gay scholars, too, as research has unearthed evidence of same sex houses of prostitution during both the Civil War, and afterwards. Emory Professor of Proudly Queer Studies, Skipper Gallant, offers LGBT-themed tours of Pantaloon Corners, noting that "it was called The Corners back when, but it was a different "C" word than Cleavage, used to describe it. It was a rough and tumble time in the sex-worker business here." I emailed for a tour reservation, and downloaded Gallant's latest tome, _Strange Bedfellows: A Confederacy of Queers_.

Today, much like its once-forgotten environs and some of the more aged hookers that once graced its byways, both The Corners and Chattersworthy House are being sanded, re-painted, re-wired, flatteringly lighted, dusted, cleaned and otherwise gentrified to a high-gloss required of an historic area and building that serves as the centerpiece for neighborhood restoration—and reconciliation efforts.

The South is famous for its sweet desserts—and sweet soda pop. Once upon a time the Corners had its own soda concentrate factory. Bought off years ago by the Pause That Refreshes, the brand has been bought back, and is now being revived by a hipper, younger scion of the original owners, who has a small trust fund, a big imagination, and a medium sized ear-labret-thingie. He has re-opened Hatton-DipsyCola Company (654 Hatton Ave.), creating artisanal soda, including a peppery cola that's got _tout_ -Atlanta in a sugar-fueled tizzy. I made my way over to the plant to meet Rumsford Hatton VI, the 31-year-old skateboard-riding CEO, with an iPhone on his hip, and custom metal and glass straws in his breast-pocket for tasting the product.

Marvell Phipps, head of PR, showed me around the waiting area, in the center of which was a huge oak round-table, topped by a giant sterling silver, engraved punchbowl. Hatton himself appeared in the doorway, and did a loop around the room on his board.

"That's quite a dish," I observed.

"We all crush on Rummy; he's a hottie," replied Marvell.

"No, I was talking about the punchbowl," I responded. Well, I wasn't talking about the punchbowl, actually. But, travel writers need to maintain some level of decorum even at the risk of buzz-kill. And, with that Hatton, skidded to a stop, and launched into a story about the cherished chalice opposite.

"My granddad used to spike that thing at parties. It was given to us by the local authorities, when we'd sold our 10 millionth bottle, back in 1902. Now we just keep it around for ceremonial purposes, but we don't stand on ceremony much anymore, so there it sits, and here we are, and Dipsy-Cola is back from the dead," pronounced Hatton, as he and Marvell high-fived and elbow-bumped, for good measure.

Hatton finished the tour by explaining that workers harvesting the sugar-cane get free health care, a gym membership and a subscription to cloud-based home-management software, while the sugar itself comes from a strain once used to make rum for Britain's Napoleonic Wars-era soldiers.

"If we're going to rot your teeth, we want to do it with some concern for the workers, and for history," he commented.

The railroad marshaling yard next to the plant is being turned into an outdoor railroad museum, and the signal tower is being converted into a media center featuring the industrial history of the neighborhood, now rushed into opening after the Chattersworthy Complex shut down. I headed for this railroad-centric take on The Corners.

Let me be the first to unroll the yoga mat for you," offered Maddy Roswell, as I entered; she wasn't joking—there's no furniture yet, so you have to watch their movie sitting on mats on the floor.

"I'm still working on the introduction – this is not an official historic site yet, but we've been granted provisional status by the state of Georgia. "I'd like to show you a short film," she announced.

Roswell used a remote to start the show, and the room darkened. Images flickered on the opposite wall, sounds of Atlanta filled the room, and I prepared to take a trip down memory lane. Even the smells of the room heightened, with whiffs of pine smoke, burning wood, candlewax, molasses, and, of course, that particular, not unpleasant aroma of wet autumnal earth, in and around old clapboard houses, no longer assertively landscaped, surrounded by iron-work fences and stone retaining walls.

There was sepia-toned footage of trams, of people in big hats and long skirts, walking quickly and jerkily along sidewalks. Soon, a railroad train came into view, puffing into a station that looked like The Corners. Then, a couple walking past what looked like the building we were in. A speech was made, a funeral procession, logs floating down a river, migrant workers; Theodore Roosevelt gave a speech, an early baseball game. Negro League ball-players waving to the camera, a Sunday picnic, a bible-thumping preacher and people eating hot-dogs at a summer fair." The lights came up. I had glimpsed a bit of The Corners' charming, troubled, workaday past.

But, I was wrong: "Those were actually some images of Houston and Memphis from around 1900; we're still trying to convince one of the local residents to part with her copy of the only film of The Corners from before World War II, so we have to show that in the meantime. She wants a little bit of money for it – you're welcome to put some change into the office kitty, if you want. And, I'll write you a receipt. "

Moving on, I headed for the epicenter of the Slow Furniture Movement, **Six And Half Corners Workshops and Live/Work Environment** , just up the tracks apace **(75 Hatton St.)**. The last furniture maker, Chatta-Hoochee Furniture Manufacturing, left decades ago. But Jory Tarleton has revived the company as part of the slow furniture movement—hand-crafted wares are "done when they're done," as Tarleton told me. In some ways, this philosophy synchs with the Chatta-Hoochee tradition, which always valued lack of speed over delivery. One order, put in on Aug. 4, 1961, was completed on November 11, 1977 – the longest furniture order ever.

A fine example—if the house is open—is in **Chattersworthy House** itself. The original owner, Croesus Syllabub, had a custom headboard made by the Chatta-Hoochee's predecessor company; it was one of the largest headboards ever made for one of the highest beds every constructed. In the summer months the bed was elevated by a special crank, so that it could catch more of the breezes. A winding staircase on wheels and a piano crane were then positioned so that Croesus and his wife could get in and out of bed.

**Maudlinville** , in nearby **Mountebank County** , is often mentioned by people in Atlanta as a "you must go," sort of day-trip, but when you get to **Maudlinville** , there isn't a blessed thing to do, and so you turn around, and head back to Atlanta. That's a mistake, because the county is known for its rich, creamy, ice-cream, from local cows munching on the local turf. **The Regnant Theatre (27 Margaret Mitchell Way)** has been restored as a theater and ice-cream parlor. It's a place for "The Music Man," so if you're looking for "Rent," maybe look somewhere else.

**Rumpus Creek** is another fun day-trip, if you like tubing and drinking beer. It is north of **Millageville** , in suburban **Valorem County** , which for my money, isn't much of a bargain: the town is an antiques center for people who mostly buy back the stuff some other family member gave away or sold the previous year.

Gay Pantaloon Corners is a hoot, especially if you're gay. If you're not gay, then maybe it's not so much fun—but still worth a peek, eh? **Club Ruckus (34 Old Maudlinville Rd.)** is an old-school men's bar. Lighted-up like a ninety-year old cosmetic-surgery patient, it shimmers under twenty coats of paint, and offers cage-dancers—in fact, dancers on everything but the floor itself. **Swell (876 Garter St.)** is a men's and women's video bar that cleans up the experience, a little; it used be to be called Tube, and before that it was also Swell. Its Sunday tea-dance is legendary. The **Vault (561 New Chattersworthy Rd.)** is in a former bank that never had a vault, as it's a fomer credit union; it used to be a sex-club, and was then closed down and is now just a regular pick-up joint. The famed female impersonator, Bananas Foster, performed at the **Old Hogheads Inn, 44 Aphid Ave.** , which is now boarded up; word has it, though, that entrepreneurs have bought it, and are turning it into a gay-friendly bed and breakfast.

"That really salts my chicken," remarked Glynn, of Clawfoot Cottage. "I mean, we're gay-friendly, and one of us is a lesbian—but because we're not a couple, we don't get the press on this."

Speaking of which, the Chicken Valdosta at **Plantain (53 Hatton St., no phone)** is reminiscent of a "Great Depression Easter pot-luck, when sawdust, backyard dandelion greens, a pigeon or two, and pan-scrappings, created something marvelous and real", according to the _Pantaloonist_ blog. Try it and see.

"It was time to visit one of The Corners' vegan restaurants , right next to **Colonel Sourby Chancel Park** , locally known as "Bless You Park," after the Sneezing Epidemic of 1875. **And Three (561 Persnickety Ave.)** serves delicious vegan cuisine; the name hails from that Southern mealtime staple of 'meat and three,' for the meat entrée and three side dishes—in this case, the restaurant had no choice but to drop the meat part, and keep the three sides. There are many dishes, from peanut casserole to 'papple,' which was described to me as the vegan version of scrapple, minus the pigs ears—or pig's anything.

"We just take the peels, cuttings, cores, you name it, and stew it up and serve it as a kind of meal soup—it's surprisingly good, but the taste varies, depending upon what we've thrown in. Or not, but you know, lots of people around the world are eating dirt, so this is a step up, when you think about it."

I tried not to think about it, but I did munch my way through a lentil loaf, and peach-soy smoothie pretty quickly.

Afterwards, I headed into the park. ( **Colonel Sourby Chancel Park, Persnickety Ave, and Azalea Rd.)**. The trouble began when Anna Conaway, a cook in the household of a lumber merchant, put some pies out to cool on a window ledge at the house where she worked on nearby Décolletage Place. Coming back a few minutes later, she sniffed the pies to see if they were still cool, and immediately launched into a massive sneezing fit. Her employer came home and she pointed at the pies, he began sneezing too. The household repaired to nearby Col. Chancel Park, trying to shake the source of the sneezing. Soon everyone in the park, and indeed, in Pantaloon Corners, was evacuating their nasal passages with gusto. The police were called, as were the workers from a nearby sanitarium, but the sneezing had spread to a great number of people, and it lasted the better part of five days.

The Alarming News from Six and a Half Corners!

Nasal Seizures Nightmare Reported! Sternutation Ensues

Many Taken Ill

_Six-and-One-Half Corners, Atlanta_ _—May 7, 1875. Our correspondent reports: Utterly without provocation or reason, authorities near Six and a Half Corners are attempting to salve the late results of a sternutative outbreak that has left three under the care of medical staff at a military watch-post, and fourteen persons insensible from lack of breath and air to the lungs and brain._

The state legislator representing the area, Saxonby Chancel, declared that the cause of the mass bodily writhings and head flexations is Satan. The only hope of the populace, he told this writer, is that the departure of Satan and his seizures will be officiated over, when federal troops terminate their occupation in February next "

I tried one more time to see if I could gain entrance to the Chattersworthy Complex, while court cases tied up the place, and I met one of the board members at the gates.

Board member Lawson Evergood, a top software entrepreneur, had decided to restore the house where he was born in Pantaloon Corners on Hat Pin Lane. He had been recently been celebrated by a regional business magazine as one of "40 Over 30 With 15 And 5," the magazine's clever, elaborate, shorthand for one of 40 black entrepreneurs, over the age of 30, changing the face of Atlanta, with 15 or more employees and more than $5 million in sales. The company was headquartered north of the Perimeter, and Evergood lives with his family in the suburb of Tucker. But, one of the things he did with his first million was to buy the house where he had been raised, hoping that one day he could help turn Pantaloon Corners around.

"This was a vibrant neighborhood in its day, and by vibrant, I don't mean shooting up heroin or jacking cars. I mean, there were street musicians and all kinds of little stores. That all went away after the riots in the 1960s," said Evergood, as we walked around the Chatterswothy perimeter.

"I thought, 'hey, let's change things up a bit—and choose re-enactors by lottery, that way everyone gets a chance to be on different sides, Union and Confederate. I introduced tail-gating on the Union side. But then people started changing sides and ordering Indian take-out, and it all went to hell. Anyways, for those reasons and a whole bunch of others, we're in a hot water right now. Nobody really took to my ideas.

The plantation is also the site of the Information Creates Knowledge Charter Academy, but the students were away on a field trip visiting President Obama's birthplace in Hawaii, so I was unable to tour the facilities.

"We're just hitting re-set, and hoping for the best," offered Evergood.

Indeed, that sentiment could have applied to The Corners itself, for like the leavings of a great Southern Feast left out on the table too long, the dishes had been put down on the floor for the dogs, the serving containers had been been cleared, the table wiped down and polished, and the chairs put back in their rightful places. And, so it was with The Corners. War, famine, oppression, pestilence, seizures, tragedies, romances, riots, lust, inventiveness, economic triumph and financial ruin, the table had been cleared, wiped down and new place-settings of tolerance, alternative music, plucky small businesses, creativity and _joie de vivre_ —the menu of a typical rising urban neighborhood—had now been set. And I was experiencing this new seating.

Meanwhile, at the edge of the neighborhood, the Little Mega Church at Little Big Rushing Creek Mall—now no longer a mall after business went up the creek in the Great Recession—was preparing to share space there with a mosque, which had leased space once occupied by another anchor department store. Things were changing in The Corners, for sure. I put in an order for a coffee table at the Workshops and was given a delivery date in the next decade. While munching on something called "Sweet Cracklins" (basically a hunk of potato bread dipped in turbinado sugar from a specific township in Barbados and then fried in peanut oil) at Hardscrabble, I struck up a conversation—because, you know, these things happen to you all the time, in the middle of the day, when you're a travel writer—with a drag queen, who was planning on a revival of the legendary Bananas Foster revue, "Cat Got Your Tongue?" at Vault.

Lacretia Luckie, the famed Savannah-based performer, talked about her plans, as well as a city permit she had filed to run a heritage chicken-breeding operation in Bless You Park, to supply artisanal chicken-fingers to gay club events. The revival, she averred, was, "going to be very fine, and seriously competitive. I'm talking a whole new meaning to the term 'Southern Drag Racing'".

"You would have to go to a working-class neighborhood in Mexico City, maybe, to find a more spectacular and historically-correct drag show, I kid you not, chicken."

With another thunderstorm moving through, I headed back to Clawfoot, and grabbed a cold Dipsy-Cola out of their guest fridge, took a sip, and reconciled myself to returning to the area someday, hopefully to see what the next chapter of The Corners would hold for the average, and not so average, visitor.

Back to top

****

Chapter 7 \- VANCOUVER: Patchouli

_Alt-crabby at the Water's Edge_

For many soggy years, before the invention of renewable flooring, day spas and giant, colorful cocktails, the emblematic counter-cultural Vancouver neighborhood of Patchouli has really been two neighborhoods: the first is up a ways on a moderately high hill above the less-than-majestic estuary, Lispenard Arm, much smaller and less-well known than larger Burrard Inlet.

This area, **Logan Lispenard** , consists of old turn of the 20th century single family homes; it's now highly desirable as it overlooks the remnants of a much larger fishing fleet, and the yacht-choked harbor of the second neighborhood, **Crabtown** , below, which has been slower to gentrify, perhaps owing to the smell of dead sea-life, or the fact that so many old buildings are sitting out over the water on rotting pilings. Occasionally, one collapses. Don't let this stop you from visiting: many Crabtown restaurants keep life-vests and life-boats at the ready for just such a possibility, and the safety drills are becoming an under-the-radar attraction in themselves. **(Marine Restaurant Safety Drills, 325 Dungeness St.)**

Prior to its 1960s raison d'être as the locus of the radical student movement in western Canada, the district was famous province-wide for its large community of both immigrant Germans and Chinese, a combination that yielded countless dumpling versus pot-sticker bake-offs, and some political street-fighting during World War I. Along Dungeness St., Crabtown's main drag, the rickety old shipping line offices, seafood companies with their cannery buildings, now mostly converted to artists' studios. Seagulls wheel in the air over the forest of yacht masts; their live-aboard owners letting their gourmet-roasted Indonesian varietal coffee move gently to-and-fro in their stomachs when a passing tanker out in Vancouver harbor sends a wake up the inlet. Despite its historically somnolent nature, Patchouli is now home to a work of celebrity architect Domingo Cantilever, historically-relevant theatrical performances, and the largest restaurant fish-tank in North America.

It was drizzling when I pulled my catamaran up to the Crabtown docks; it had taken three days to sail the seven miles around Stanley Park from downtown Vancouver, and then another day to paddle the catamaran through the thicket of pleasure boats in the Arm to the public dock. Much was happening here, and I was thrilled to be a part of it—if only as a tourist.

Meanwhile, ever so quietly—but perhaps not so quietly, after all, as I had just read a cover story about it in _The New York Times Magazine_ and viewed a cable segment on it, too—a number of entertainment celebrities have bought and renovated large old homes and multi-family structures in the hilltop area, prized for its views of Vancouver Island and, real estate agents insist, on a rare clear day, the Aleutians. The renovators don't yet include any Oscar-winners, but there are rumors.

Typical is Belize Richmond, a 27-year-old actress, singer, talk-show host, kindergarten teacher, model, pole-dancer, and children's book author who moved here from Los Angeles: "We bought an old 1910s apartment building for $100,000, threw every one out, spent around $1million renovating it, and now it's just beautiful! Sometimes we see the old tenants picking through garbage down the hill, and I stop and wave, and say, 'remember your old building? Well, it's so much prettier now!' "

It does seem that real estate and simple pleasures, like eating, are the bywords in Patchouli and its two constituent neighborhoods. Community leader Susan Rupert-Whiner, who runs the leather accessories shop **Leathbian** with her partner Molly Whiner-Rupert ( **308 Beaverdam St., hours vary. Muffins and coffee served Sunday and Thursday** ), says the recently held winter Olympics brought in business, but derided it in a very direct way characteristic of Patchoulians, for creating more "poop and pollution" than "we need now or in the future."

The Patchouli water-quarter, Crabtown, owes its name not to the prodigious amounts of crab that were brought in during the height of its role as a fishing port in the years before World War II, but rather to the singular British Columbia personality known as "Crabby" Mike. His statue, often festooned with crab bibs (and prophylactics—more on this later) in homage to the famous British Columbian fisherman, can be found in Patchouli Park.

He was a rather good crabber, this evocative Crabby Mike character. But he, in turn, earned his moniker from the peculiar British Victorian-era street slang prevalent in Vancouver in, or around, 1877. To wit: "crabby" meant "happy," while "happy" meant "horny" or "drunk" (or both). Meanwhile, "lively" meant "moody" or, as we understand the phrase now, "crabby." Everyone understood each other perfectly, until the slang was superseded by different slang; some bar-brawls ensued and the casualties of these misunderstandings forced the pendulum (called a "slide-rule" on Vancouver streets of the time) to swing back in favor of earlier meanings. None of this really helped me understand Crabby Mike's history, but it's the kind of thing that can really concentrate the mind away from a typical drizzly Vancouver Sunday, and that's all I needed.

I learned all this and much more at the **Crabtown Historical Society (878 Dungeness St., Comox Pier #12d)** , an authentic ice-fishing house on giant runners that was moved to the waterfront after its unfortunate owner was pulled by an aggressive Lake Gar through an ice fishing-hole in Lake Athabasca, far to the north. A Vancouver relative of the deceased inherited the house and donated it to the society. Kambie Karst, a feisty octogenarian, and herself part-German and part-Chinese, who grew up in the area, runs the society's information center. She helped me understand the unique history of Crabtown, its up-the-hill neighbor Logan Lispenard and other facts—all while she fished for her supper through the fishing-hole in the floor.

"First off, Patchouli: students took over the neighborhood in the 1960s, owing to its proximity to the University of BC; they smoked up a storm of weed and needed something to cover it up. Round about the winter of '67-'68, an over-sized shipment of incense, virtually all of it Patchouli, washed ashore in a storm when a Thai freighter foundered in rough seas out in the Strait. Need I say more?" She did not, but continued nonetheless: "...the oldest head shop west of Thunder Bay is right here in Patchouli – I highly recommend it."

" Mick Jagger never had an interest in it—that's a myth. I was a part-owner, just so you know." Kambie proclaimed.

She continued: "The 1860s saw a huge influx of Chinese, including my grandfather, Karl Karst. He wasn't actually Chinese; he was a German Lutheran missionary working in China, and felt a calling to leave, and so took ship for Canada. That was followed by a huge influx in the 1870s of Swabia Germans ( _editor's note_ : Germans from Southwestern German, the Swabians speak a dialect of German called Swabish and came to British Columbia in the 1880s to log the vast pine forests), including my grandmother, Su Chow; my great-grandmother was the Chinese personal cook to a Stuttgart industrialist before she emigrated here. Great-Grandpa Karst met her at a Chinese tavern that was located not far from here and attempted to convert her, but she'd already been converted back in Stuttgart. They communicated perfectly, and sailed up the coast to Prince Rupert for their honeymoon and a little salmon fishing."

"By 1900, Crabtown and Logan Lispenard were together known as the largest Sino-German urban village in the world – that's a fact. Vancouver annexed both areas before World War One – Crabtown actually had its own P.O., which for a while was called Crabbytown, but there was another Crabbytown in Nova Scotia, so the powers didn't like that. And, then you know Crabby meant "happy,"...well, I don't need to repeat the story." She did not.

The fishing-line that Kambie had set in the ice-fishing hole had moved a little, and Kambie took a little break to jiggle it. Quick as a flash, she pulled up a large sea-trout, which flopped around the historical society's floor. As I watched with fascination at this display of local color, Kambie motioned me to get back a little, which wasn't easy in a 5' by 7' building, but I inhaled and held my breath, making some room. With a single gesture, Kambie reached behind her head, took the 6-inch jade spear holding her hair together in a bun, removed it, and used this stunning heirloom piece of jewelry to paralyze, kill and gut the fish—all within the space of about two minutes. (she proffered, "come back later, and you can have it grilled up with a little bit of soy sauce and rice vinegar and some red cabbage on the side. You'll love it")

Having flung the fish into a small freezer, she wiped her hands clean and continued her tale.

"We do know that in July of 1856, Captain Reginald Lispenard steered his Royal Navy 32-pound frigate, H.M.S. Bombazine, into what is now Lispenard Arm. He was looking for a water route to Winnipeg. A few Haida fisherman rowed up to the Bombazine and tried to tell the crew that the name for the inlet in their language, was "rocks under water." But the ship's crew didn't speak Haida. Luckily, his second-in-command, a Lieutenant L. Alec Hall, helped direct the boat into the arm. After beaching the vessel, the crew built a royal garrison atop the hill. Some years later, both men left the Royal Navy; they came down to Crabtown and started a haberdashery and the Logan Lispenard Light Opera Society, which put on quite a few works in its day."

"I understand the pair played many of the parts themselves," she added.

Kambie went on to tell me about the vibrant fishing industry that kept Crabtown busy after the inlet was dredged and most of the rocks in the water were blasted away: crabs and fish from the Pacific, geoducks and salmon from the area's estuaries and rivers, sardines and all sorts of fish poured into the docks and its maze of canneries and ice-houses. From there, the catches were processed to be sent out to the world's restaurants and markets, with the occasional bits of shell, a finger, hair and lockets – this was before regulations prevented such things and, in any case, people in those days expected foreign objects in their canned goods as that attested to its authenticity and served as a kind of premium. (A Ontario pastor's wife received a set of men's suspenders and a moustache-brush along with her chest of smoked, dried salmon; these items are now in the Royal Canadian Museum in Ottawa).

_Helpful Transit Info:_ As befits its Olympian parent, Vancouver, Patchouli and its upper and lower neighborhoods are accessible by water taxi, sky-train, subway, monorail, people-mover, funicular, ferry, tram, 30-oar galley war-ship, amphibious vehicle, runaway mine train, rickshaw, ropeway and bike-trail. It's also accessible on the citywide loop-bus, so you can never go the wrong way – but you can wait for it in the wrong place. Check the schedules.

The tram lines split a little closer to downtown Vancouver, so be careful when you use them to travel to and from Patchouli. Just remember to use the **Royal Caribou** stop, which is at Dungeness and Lispenard Way West traveling outbound, or **Pontoon Central** , which is at Dungeness and Lispenard Way East traveling inbound. Unless you're staying outside the city, or you're traveling on the weekends, and then you should reverse, and invert, respectively, all of the above. Some of these various lines connect to the airport, but I used cross-country ski trails to make my plane, so that didn't affect me.

I wanted a deeper connection to local flavor. And, Kambie had suggested that I meet a famous member of Patchouli's counter-cultural elite, the sixties radical Robert Courteney Sherpa (he goes by "Sherpa"), considered to be the founder of modern Patchouli, and recently designated a "First Hippie" by Canada's Prime Minister. With shoulder-length gray locks, a moustache, leather bolo around his neck, a Tibetan prayer flag flying from his shirt-pocket and a faint aroma of marijuana and home-made bread surrounding his person, Sherpa seemed like he had earned that distinction.

Sherpa initially came to attention in Canada at a 1967 sit-down strike in Vancouver in support of the creation of what would ultimately become Nunavut, the largely Inuit territory finally established in 1990 in northernmost Canada. His radical performance piece given during the strike, entitled "Rape of a Nation," in which he and several compatriots introduced the bent-over effigies of Canadian leaders opposed to Nunavut, to the top end of totem poles, shocked and scandalized millions of Canadians. Now much-beloved, the piece is performed in repertory at the **provincial museum's outdoor amphitheatre** Wednesday to Saturday, twice daily during summer operating hours, and has been set to authentic First Nations music.(see provincial museum website for ticket prices).

I took Sherpa to the nautical-themed sustainable-seafood restaurant **Estuary (431 S. Flotilla St.)** for a drink and some food. The dishes are unique and have stoked a foodie buzz - along with some international sanctions; they include cruise ship passenger-fed killer whale and farmed giant squid. We chose the shrimp cocktail. I also ordered their signature drink, the Low Tide, which contains vodka, organic clam juice, unagi, tomato juice, vodka, pine-tree sap, vodka and some bits of plastic. Our Nordic-looking waiter brought the drinks quickly; a pretty scallop shell hung on the side of the glass, and silence fell on our little table as we looked to see if it would fall off. It didn't. Sherpa's wife turned up soon after. Saktuk "Saki" Five Mile House (nee Susan-Marie Yaptich) Sherpa an artist who works in glass. In this case, she explained that she works in a special glass solarium Sherpa built for her; inside Saki creates art using natural materials, especially marsh grasses, shells and found wood.

Saki told me that the pair met when Sherpa worked as a part-owner of the **Oldest Head Shop in Patchouli, (420 Concubine St.)**. Later Sherpa started a book-store called **Don't Shop Here** that was highly successful for a few years, but recession in the 1970s killed off the trickle of customers who dared patronize the store.

Saki wanted to try the Giant Squid, but the waiter demurred, saying, "we're all out as the squid attacked the sous-chef during feeding time and dragged him and one of our bar-backs to the bottom. " We offered our condolences and finished our drinks.

After lunch, we moved down the docks of Dungeness St. to the most famous Chinese seafood restaurant in Canada. **The Seven Seas (475 Dungeness St., #A & B)** sits on its own pier. Founded by a Hong Kong businessman fleeing China in the late 1980s, after the British announced they'd hand back the colony to the mainland communist government, this restaurant features the largest restaurant fish-tank in the world. It covers several acres in an enclosed, roofless area next to the restaurant. A full-time diver is on hand and snorkeling lessons are available. Call way ahead in advance; some of the natural bottom of the tank is still being mapped by oceanographers. Not only can you pick out your fish, you can pay extra to spear it yourself.

You can find a statue of Crabby Mike—it's Mike holding a crab-trap in one arm and a a pint of ale in the other—in tiny one-square block **Patchouli Park** , which contains the only small, surviving piece of the great Pacific Northwest rainforest, extant in this part of Vancouver. It's revered by its neighbors as an unrivalled environmental treasure, small though it is, especially by the residents of the 22-story tall sliver condominium **(232. S. Park Way West)** built overlooking it in 1999. A commission of starchitect Domingo Cantilever, the building is designed to look like a giant sailing mast, flanked by 'sails,' which are actually wind turbines arrayed horizontally from the bottom of each sail to the top. Once they get going, watch out: several elderly have been blown over Lispenard Arm to downtown Vancouver when the turbines are powered by North Pacific storm winds. Only a few of the hapless geriatric residents were carrying their umbrellas, enabling them to land, Poppins-like, on sidewalks and balconies. The rest are missing or were found farther inland. The resulting lawsuits are winding their way through British Columbia court system at a leisurely pace, with settlement expected sometime in 2032; ownership of the building will likely pass to the affected families, according to legal experts.

It's ironic that the most famous generator of wind-power in Patchouli is a large condominium, for Saki told me that Crabby Mike had a reputation in that regard.

"Nobody wants to reveal that," said Saki. "Crabby is so much better for tourism than Windy. But that was his nickname, too: Windy Mike." She leaned in a little: "basically, he used flatulence to signal his crew. He was just talented in that way. One toot to cast the lines, two to unload the catch. These were allegedly fog-horn quality. I'm talking loud."

Suffice it to say, the date of Crabby Mike's birthday, August 1, often finds his statue in Crabtown Park, adorned with crab-bibs made of bio-degradable material and prophylactics.

(The controversy doesn't end there. A noted feminist sociologist at the University of Toronto recently asserted in her history of women in the early Canadian seafood industry, "Small Hands on Deck: the Women of Western Canadian Fishing, 1864-1939," that Crabby Mike got his name from the infestation commonly known as crabs, which he often bore, owing to his patronage of Crabtown prostitutes. This charge is firmly rejected by the official association of Crabby Mike descendants, now numbering over 23,000 in British Columbia alone.)

It was a typical Vancouver day: sun appearing, then hiding behind thick gray clouds, the sky turning slate, then lightening up a little; the temperature hovered around 62, but it felt much more like 57, perhaps because of the humidity. A light drizzle began, then ended.

Much of the surrounding area was logged out by 1900, and so many of the Swabish-speaking Germans emigrated to the suburb of **Hoodoo** , farther inland. Others colonized the nearby town of **Williwaw** , a half a day's journey up the Fraser River by steamboat. With the British handover of Hong Kong, the neighborhood has gradually taken on a more Asian flavor as the old hippies and Swabians move out.

Jan. 14, 1853, Osborne House. Isle of Wight

Her Royal Britannic Majesty hereby commands and gives leave to Capt. Reginald K. Lispenard and the crew of the Royal Naval Vessel HMS Bombazine for the exploration, surveyance and reconnoiter of an inlet lying to the south approximately two miles, of Gastown, British Columbia, herewith, and, lacking in name, to name it, and thence to proceed inland to our province of Manitoba, by land or sea.

Victoria Regina

Today, the debate about whom, or who, Logan Lispenard was, or were, has receded with the growing recognition of this neighborhood as "cuter than cute," "boring as firm tofu" and most proudly, "Canada's Greenest Urban Neighborhood." There are more solar panels, tricycle-driven power sub-stations, thermal baths, windmills and composting toilets here than in any other Canadian city. You may see (or smell) some of them on your visit.

Robert Doric, the famous French-Canadian architect, was the son of a grocer, growing up in a housing block near Toronto. Doric created many famous early twentieth century buildings in the Patchouli area. His **Swabish Fireman's Union** (1909) building is a typical example. Now a coffee-shop and community center, it is open to the public **(451 Bombazine St.)**. Tours are given on the third Thursday after Royal Canadian Mounties Day, or Confederation Day, whichever one can be remembered first.

I wanted to rest a bit before continuing to track down the heritage of this coolest of urban 'hoods. Next to the Asian-inflected dance-club beat of **Pier 23** , the white-hot club of the moment, lies the terribly correct two-floor houseboat bed-and-breakfast known as **The Inlet Inn**. It's woody and wet and wonderful, and I couldn't wait to leave. Owner Revell Stokes loves her guests. Too much, if you ask me. I was never let alone from the moment I set foot on her little house on pontoons: I received a tour, a history lecture, a lesson on how to make geo-duck fritters, a massage from Revell's husband, an espresso flight, and a welcome cocktail hour, before begging off from the bonsai class to go to bed early. Stay there at your peril.

Homer Tomalley, is a Japanese-Canadian, who runs a small sushi stand on the water, called "Sushi So Fresh..." as well as a water taxi service to other parts of Vancouver. Born in Nagoya, Japan on a Canadian grain-freighter, he was raised in Victoria. About five years ago, he started his business. While he prepared some lunch for me, he spoke about the area.

"Lispenard? The truth is we don't know a lot about him. Sounds like he was slightly loony, looking for smooth water to Canadian plains, eh?. Off his kiester, really. He wasn't as famous as George Vancouver or Juan de Fuca or any of the other explorers, who came to this region. He only discovered one estuary \- named for himelf, too!

"So they built a little fort up the hill, that's the story. Then, when the garrison was re-supplied, and Lispenard's time in the service was up, he and his friend--Hall was his name--they decided not to return to England. Instead, they come down to Crabtown, to start a store. After a few years, he'd made enough to money to do something else, they say, and so he repaired—again with his friend, Lt. Hall—to one of the Gulf Islands, across the Straits of Georgia. No one remembers Hall's first name. Might have been Lovell, or Lenihan, or even Logan. Some say they took two Haida women as wives, and that the women lived in one house and Hall and Lispenard lived in the other, right next to each other, on a small lake on this island, with the lake providing fish, as well as ice for storage.

"No one's really sure what to make of that arrangement," mused Tomalley.

We sat down on a nearby bench; the sun was peeking in and out and a slight breeze came off Lispenard Arm; the temperature stood in the mid-50s, though, truth to tell, it felt much more like the upper 50s. We looked out past Cantilever's imaginative and futuristic condominium, a strong breeze coming in off the arm, beginning to turn its mighty turbines. A woman on the 12th floor clutched at a scarf that took air as a turbine spun past her balcony.

From somewhere, I smelled a spicy scent that wafted past, and made me especially glad, if not downright smug, about finding this delightful corner of Vancouver. I pictured skate-boarding to the airport over an accessible trail, the wind at my back, and my rolling duffels-cum-backpacks trailing behind via a stustainably-produced tether, as I rounded corners planted with native plants, my solar-powered-and-body-heat-regulated reflectors on my packs blinking a warning to all in my path.

Back to top

****

Chapter 8 - BOSTON: Wrestling Hill

_Much About History_

At Boston's historic Old North Church I must have arrived during the MTV History Tour; the very young tour guide asked everyone to introduce themselves. As I was headed to Wrestling Hill, the secret urban neighborhood with a specific link to the church, I chose to recite the first lines of Longfellow's immortal poem: "Listen my children and you shall here of the Midnight Ride of Paul Revere..."

The guide interrupted. "Dude, we're sharing deets, OK? Respect it. " cautioned our junior historian.

The guide then described the church's history as dating from "before Facebook and Selena Gomez" and the Revolutionary War as a fight between the "wicked mad Brits" and the "white native Americans" who were "like, 'bring it, bitch'" to the British. Eventually the "Redcoat Ultimate Fighting Machines" indicated they would move by water, something the Sons of Liberty would signal with two lanterns in the "skyscraper of the time", the church's tower, so Paul Revere could warn area residents.

The tour went downhill from there.

Wrestling Hill, of course—otherwise, why include it in this book—links up with this famous event. Turns out, on that chilly April, 1775 evening, Paul Revere had already slipped by boat to the opposite shore from what is now downtown Boston. He had previously advised the church's sexton, Robert Newman, to signal Charlestown residents on the shore opposite, as to how the British were traveling out of Boston to their area, and beyond. One lantern-light if the British were to travel by land on their way to secure weaponry in the Middlesex countryside, and two lantern lights if they were to travel to Charlestown by water. The British ended up traveling by water.

Trouble was, Newman's scatterbrained assistant had forgotten to replenish the candle supply—they only had one candle left and needed two, according to new information. Newman sent the assistant to alert a young candle-maker, a junior member of the Sons of Liberty, Wrestling Purslane, in the neighboring town of Rummage. And, they waited. And, then, they waited some more, because this was colonial America, and mass-communication had not been invented. Wrestling was in bed, asleep.

Soon, though, he dutifully appeared at the church with enough candles to solve the problem—just as the British began boarding their boats. With the signal given, Purslane was dismissed. But rather than walk home, he obtained a rowboat and brought the remainder of his candles to colonials on the other side of the Charles River, who had used up their candles during the busy evening, watching, and waiting—and in some cases—fighting the Redcoats. He only returned to his Rummage home early the next morning on a borrowed horse.

Without young Wrestling Purslane, history might be different. Yet, Purslane was quickly forgotten, until his hometown was swallowed by Boston in a nineteenth–century annexation. Subsequently, what had been Rummage was labeled Wrestling Hill in his honor after a relative reminded everyone of his contribution. If only Purslane could see the vegan students, coffee bars, and trails commemorating oppression, now...how very proud he might be! Purslane is, in fact, interred at the **Old Rummage Burying Ground (1 Rummage Place, established 1654)**. His economic epitaph reads:

From him, thy freedom lights were lit

Our country grew a bit

Wrestling Jonah Purslane

Dec. 29, 1757 - Dec. 29, 1833

Which leads me to my tale of this soon-to-be-not-so-secret 'hood: I targeted Wrestling Hill for what I thought would be the standard array of organic eateries, hookah shops and day spas. Turns out, the district is now known for something else: a battle over colonial-era artifacts.

Some months earlier construction workers digging through the foundation of the former South Bay, West Rummage and Lower Charles River Street Railway, (12 The Rummageway), car barn—soon to be imaginatively named "The Residences at The Car Barn"—had come across what appeared to be a colonial-era button, and a shoe buckle, and all work had stopped. The clues were promising, with pieces of Puritan-like clothing indicating the possibility of colonial era-provenance. Historical treasures were always turning up in Boston, for one reason or another.

Rumors persisted, however, in this once-Irish and Italian working class neighborhood, known as "W Hill" for short, that the artifacts were actually connected to a 1970's Mafia-hit victim, or a gang fight. This had been, after all, the home-turf of a number of now-defunct gangs.

"My concerted guesstimate is, this button, or what have you, is Flaring Nostrils Iannelli or one of his deputies, you know, like Tattoo Tony, maybe, or Clive "Three Knives" McNamee," offered Mike Gritty, owner of **Gritty's Hardware & Coffee, (457 Rummage Wharf Ave.).** Important note: all retail establishments in 'W Hill' now sell coffee, whatever their focus; you're never without a cup of java. Other important note: Mike served time at Deer Island, a nearby prison. Keep the jail humor to yourself.

I took this information and phoned the **Center for the Preservation of Early American Relics (57 Rummage Brook St.)** which is under the auspices of **Crofts University** , a private research institution in the Boston suburb of Mehitable (now known as "Crofts University, presented by Sitz Pharmaceuticals/Singularity Aerospace Corporation," after recession-driven investments.) The school had bought the old Heffernan Poultry processing plant in Wrestling Hill, and was now using the giant refrigerated spaces to store historical things, like candle-snuffers, fire-bells, and old troop-ships—that sort of thing. The button in question was now in C/PEAR'S recesses.

"I don't know who Tattoo Tony is," Professor Marina Billiard-Kohan, SnappyMart Chair in Early American History at Crofts, replied to my questions, "but this is clearly the button of a Baptist dissenter, or perhaps one of the Quaker martyrs; they were all buried at Beacon Hill's western edge. There are reports they were later dug up and moved by their brethren."

"I wouldn't be surprised, if the object belonged to Mary Dyer, or one of the other Quakers. None of their bodies were ever found, post-execution," she remarked, referring to the four Quakers hung in the late seventeenth century by the Massachusetts Bay Colony's Puritan rulers. My own investigation revealed that the Puritans considered the Society of Friends, whose members were called Quakers, a loathsome sect, because, among other things, Quaker puddings were too bland—an outrageous heresy.

If you didn't know, the Friends also "got all up in the Puritans' face, yo" about clerical primacy and letting women preach, ("preacher power" and "chicks preaching") according to an well-informed employee at **Tunes 'n Toast** , a music and breakfast place, **(7 The Rummageway).**

I decided to continue my investigation of 'W Hill'. Much of it remains working class, with the residential component represented almost solely by multi-family housing. Here and there a clothing boutique has replaced a tobacco or struggling electronics repair store. Even in the 1840s, the earliest apartment blocks were going up to house the workers who serviced the brisk business of maritime Boston. With so many people dependent upon the departure and arrival of ships, a new form of housing came into being in then-Rummage town.

New England's three-deckers—three level, mostly wood-shingle-sided apartment houses—are ubiquitous. But, Rummage was known for something unique: the **spy-decker**. Designed and built in the 1850's by the erstwhile Harvard architecture student, Transom J. Clerestory, these consist of three levels centered on a small, covered atrium. From each apartment, periscopes make their way from the kitchen out the side of the building to Juliet balconies one-half-grade above the kitchen, used for espying incoming ships. The first spy-decker that Clerestory built still stands at **32 Upper Rummage Lane**. (private pre-school, no admittance).

Spy-deckers were mostly considered aesthetic blights, until rents in Boston sky-rocketed, and students and others needed housing. They now fetch enormous sums. Oh, don't even think about it: it's illegal in Boston to remove a periscope—very few are original, but they are considered historic fixtures. Not everyone is happy with the student influx from MIT, Northeastern, Boston University, and other schools: the movement to compost or recycle ever last bit of the waste-stream has some longtime residents on edge, with streets clogged with recycling bins, while homeless dumpster divers, and fringe eBay sellers, rifle them for treasures. Step carefully.

When I heard this demographic factoid from Mike Gritty, I knew what it meant: somewhere in W Hill, right now, a pierced-lipped, henna-haired young woman with nails painted for a Black Mass, was garnishing a lentil burger with bean sprouts and vegan Russian dressing, and serving it to a scruffy-faced law student with a distressed leather satchel, while John Mayer, or Lana Del Rey, offered musical accompaniment. I knew what I had to do: find the woman, the burger, the student, and maybe even the music download. I would trust Gritty, but I would verify, too. I would find some answers to this 'hood's ineffable appeal, starting at **Rummage House** , next to a paved area that once served as Rummage's Town Common, and the town dock on Great South Bay, later filled in.

Interesting fact: Rummage House was where the colonial Rummage Lords (later the Committee of Rum Provisioning) presided over rummage, the factor by which merchant ship owners figured out how much rum to give each sailor, per voyage. It might have also just been a ploy for the captain to draw a bigger share of rum—historians aren't sure. The docks around Rummage were a shipping point for millions of casks of rum. ( _rum-tum-tummage_ was the amount of unused rum left over after a voyage, then sold at rummage sales. But, you knew that).

It was now drizzling. And, I, accordingly picked up the pace, mindful of the W Hill version of that Boston aphorism: "if you don't like the weather, wait five minutes—and it will get worse."

I was here for the "Flags and Flavors" tour advertised by the Wrestling Hill Business Association, as "a taste of the five flags that have flown over Wrestling Hill: the Massachusetts Bay Colony, Rummage Town, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, the City of Boston, and the United States of America, and the cuisine of each." What the difference in cuisines actually was, I couldn't be sure. But when I looked around, I saw only a small group of people, with a woman in a forest green park ranger's jacket holding a sign that read: "National Oppression Trail Tour". I approached.

"I'm here for the food tour, um, Flags and Flavors tour," I ventured.

"That's been cancelled on account of budget cuts," the ranger replied. "I'm Park Ranger Beth-Anne Crone, and you can join us for a tour of the trail your tax dollars paid for. Lots of people come to walk Boston's Freedom Trail, and that's fine, but this is important, too," said Beth-Anne.

"I'm sort of hungry," I ventured. "Will you be stopping for a bite? I'd counted on that."

"Nope," said Beth-Anne, sharply," but we're all trying some haddock jerky, which was basically what people ate around here in the 1840s. It's pretty dry, but it'll keep your energy up."

We looked at one another; doubtless, talking about oppression day after day would be sufficient to put anyone in a bad humor. Beth-Anne seemed emotionally bent from the weight of historical cruelties she was now duty-bound to explicate to a guilt-ridden public. Silently, I reached out in empathy to this national servant, and vowed to overlook her sour demeanor. I took a strip of jerky, and noisily heard my teeth clacking through its leathery texture, and affected a grateful facial expression.

**The Oppression Trail** marks the place where bad stuff happened to different people. Like the nearby Freedom Trail, the Oppression trail is a colorful way to learn more about American History. You can pick up the trail at the statue of Wrestling Purslane, at the foot of Wrestling Hill, along the Rummageway. She called the trail "geographic surgical stitches on the scabby historical wounds of our political tumors and diseases," These were evocative words that left us up-chucking a little in our mouths.

Established by Congress, it snakes for thousands of miles around the U.S., memorializing every nasty, mean, sad event that had occurred since Independence. But, it begins in Boston, "as so much of the dark side of American history does," said Beth-Anne, with a smile.

And with that, thus chastened by our own sorry history of treating everyone very, very poorly—including our own selves, depending upon the decade—we were off on a duly upbraiding, hopefully redemptive tour.

First stop: the stocks, and punishment mutilation for religious dissenters. You could be put in the stocks for any number of reasons, both civil and religious: not going to church or not taking off your hat in church. "Giggling uncontrollably" or "chuckling without reason" were added in 1659. "Lascivious glancing" addressed the growing teen population, we heard.

Somewhat worse than spending several days subjected to rain, wind and neighbors throwing rotten food at you, while indisposed in a fixed, wooden harness outdoors, was having pieces of your body removed—the Puritans were fond of this as a method of social control, if not ostracism. In Rummage, the Rummage House contained something called the Pruning Yard, where fingers, hands, ears, tongues, nose and feet were pruned, or removed, for various offenses. Hung up on hooks in the Pruning Yard were actual versions of the frightening instruments of holy Puritan mutilation: the Probiscide (for removing noses); the Ear Snipper and the Squawking Annie (for removing tongues).

If you stole rum from the stores here, the consequences could be severe. Insist Colerain and his betrothed, Tranquility Smyth, found that out the hard way when they filched a cask for a picnic, in 1682. Needless to say—but Beth-Anne was happy to say it—Insist and Tranquility were severely punished.

Crone motioned us to move on, and we headed off into the neighborhood, stopping opposite commercial buildings from the nineteenth-century. "It's gone now, but the home of Resolve Spiteworth, a merchant, stood here for many years. It was the site of a disastrous Thanksgiving meal that brought King Philip's War to the town of Rummage," intoned Beth-Anne.

Resolve had invited some Native Americans to his Thanksgiving in the hopes of diffusing tension. Unfortunately, his eyesight was not very good, and he mistook the action of one of the Indians, who was showing Resolve's wife how to put on facial decoration, for some kind of inappropriate gesture. Apparently, the translator had stepped out to go the privy. This started a fight, after Resolved painted one of the Indians faces with some oyster stuffing. It went from bad to worse afterwards, and Rummage went up in flames. Resolve ended up with an axe through his head, his wife and children were taken hostage for a decade, after which they spoke pretty good Nipmuc; the eldest daughter married a minor chieftain, Sackawicket—later memorialized as the name of a Cape Cod tennis club.

The good news, said Beth-Anne, is that the original Nipmuc are seeking to claim ownership of the land in Rummage where they used to live at the time of the Spiteworth Thanksgiving, and are proposing construction of a 500-room casino there; some of the casino proceeds have been pledged to clean-up graffiti around the Purslane Statue, and put in new benches made from recycled Vuvuzelas.

Anyway, Beth Anne showed us a clipping at the Rummage House, which explained how Wrestling Purslane's actions were revived in the collective memory years later.

The Boston Orator & World-Express

July 4, 1876

" _Be Not Afraid of Lateness"_

To the Editor: Here this pleasant July the fourth, in Rummage Hill extant, hearts are passionful with national fever as we march in traditional assembly from our spy-deckers down the Rummageway to the burying ground, now to honor our Boys of '76. Yet, within the green expanse of our ancestors' resting place lie the brave remains, of one whom, directed by Sons of Liberty, did take candles from his Rummage shop to hang in the Old North Church. It is true that Wrestling Purslane, by name, was late to the church, yet he did his duty. Not enough for him, Purslane sallied across the British lines with stores of such, for Middlesex villagers and farmers. He inquired if he should further travel into the darkest night to be of service.

" _Be not afraid of lateness," responded the Minuteman, Colonel Yarrow, a farmer of Bedford, to Patriot Purslane, "there is no shame in that, only of the not going. March now, boy, 'n light the world 'agin!" All Bostonians are now received of his heritage, owing to Rummage annexation, I would note. Celebrate Wrestling Purslane on this day, unto eternity._

—Catherine Humility Purslane, 26 Rummage Field Rd.

Subsequent to this letter, and because of calls for some memorial to Purslane, Catherine took up a collection among school-children and shop-keepers, collecting $8,445.76 ($257,000 in today's money) for a statue to be erected, in what was renamed Wrestling Hill. Julia Drabstead, a Radcliffe College student from Kindling River, NY, won the contest to dedicate the base with a poem; the dedication took place in April, 1883, fifty years after Purslane's death. Drabstead took her inspiration from Col. Yarrow's words.

Be not afraid of lateness

The clock cannot cry for you

Do not remind, of church's chimes

Laggards are fine, and few

Be not afraid of lateness

' _tis the spring that's never prompt_

When rain gusts blow off new-born buds

Underfoot, they are soon tromped.

Be not afraid of lateness

Candlelight knows no yesterday

Nor waxy melt tomorrow's dark

When the candle is snuffed for good

Its tardy start leaves faint lasting mark

Perhaps inspired by Emily Dickinson, or perhaps because she was basically a frump, Drabstead later moved to a small house in the Boston suburb of Germane, where she remained unmarried, mildly depressed, and prolific. She never saw the Purslane statue, nor her words at the base.

One of the first signs of gentrification is the focus on making one's own body healthier and more presentable so as to attract others who are also healthy and attractive. Pretty soon, a neighborhood once known for its denizens wearing stained t-shirts and beat-up shoes and way-past-season fashions presents the same kind of clothing...but, wearing these duds are, instead, great looking people, with clear skin, toned muscles and luxuriant hair, sometimes carefully-coiffed. The process is helped by spa owners and yogis looking for new customers.

I found one such group at **Yogaddict, 53 Rummage House St.** Nadine was my teacher for the basics class, and after listening for a few minutes to the soothing music, while lying on our mats, she began her session. But it quickly took on an unusually belligerent tone. Nadine spoke softly, and I gathered there had been drama in the relatively new story of Wrestling Hill's earliest yoga studio.

"It's a beautiful day here in Wrestling Hill. As usual in Boston, it's drizzling. We're so lucky to have this beauty around us; this old building, with its leaky toilet, the crumbling back stairwell, and the grimy upper windows that no one can reach to clean.

Now, take your foot and move it toward your mouth; this may remind you of someone who said something that was inappropriate or hurtful. I experienced this recently when my old and former friends at Yoga Moon told me they were not going to split the cost of teacher training, and were withdrawing from our partnership in the Mandala School of Yoga Education. _Untruthfulasana_. A very healthy pose."

After that we headed into _Bitterpillasana_ , and then breathed into _Backstabberasana_ , and _Takeaflyingleapasana_. We practiced _Komodo Dragon Feasting on Unsuspecting Rude Person_ and _Angry Bear Mauls a Fool_. Nadine apparently had a lot of scores to settle, and we were helping her, and getting a wonderful stretch, too.

The **Wrestling Hill Farmer's (1 Rummage Green) Market** is like some kind of old-hippie heaven; it's held on the mostly paved expanse of what was the town of Rummage's central greensward. Many of the old-hippie farmers come from their old-hippie farms in the central Massachusetts hills or up in Maine, and they bring down the most delectable cakes and cookies and pies made from old-hippie recipes that seem to uniformly include bulgur wheat and molasses. Blackberry preserves that would taste as fresh as if they were made the previous day were sadly trumped by a grain-and-molasses construct. Dorm-room vegetarian chili starts here, I'm told. Pick up some organic leeks and start chopping.

_Day Trips_ : While you can easily go to enormous South Station, at Dewey Sq., I like smaller **West Station, 178 Flinty St.** , which is a few blocks outside of Wrestling Hill, hidden by a freeway, power station, and abandoned factory. Near Rummage Square—which is, following Boston naming conventions, neither square nor within historical Rummage—it's worth a visit. Dating from 1891 and looking much like a Christmas bon-bon, the station was designed by March Saint-Jardin in the rather silly _Trompe de Treacle_ style of stonework, in some usage after the Franco-Prussian War sent French architects lurching in disturbing decorative directions. The tiny station contains a frigid waiting room, and uncomfortable stone benches created from some of the wharves that were dismantled as nearby South Cove was filled in during the station's construction late in the nineteenth century.

Several commuter lines radiate from here. I recommend the trip to **Bitter End** , in the former mill town of **Tartborough** , Mass. (trains every 73 minutes), where there's a wonderful, if unsettling, exhibit on factory accidents at the old spinning mill. Another town on the Bitter End line— **Germane** —is a classic New England burg, now an affluent Boston suburb. Its 286th Dried, Stuffed, and Mounted Show will be held in early November, featuring a display of the only taxidermied Puritan divine (Endycott Meane; now you know) in existence—always a crowd pleaser. **Soupçon (12 Town Common, Germane)** is the new French bistro there. Stylishly small portions are offered, so maybe have a nibble before you sit down. Maybe even eat dinner beforehand.

_From the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA)_ _Bitter End Line_ :

**West (South Bay) Station, Boston** to: Winslow Middle Falls, Winslow Upper Falls, Haughty Corner/Crofts University (Town of Mehitable), Governor Crane St. (Mehitable), Coldfield, Brimstone, **Germane Center** , West Running Brook, South Fencing, Blackstone (Blackstone University), **Bitter End Village** (Town of Tartborough).

Real Bostonians and especially those from 'the W Hill,' know about **The Home for Tiny Nomads, 46 Rummage View St.** , at the top of Wrestling Hill. A well-known orphanage founded in 1807, it's run by the Sisters of Eternal Servitude. Many famous Bostonians were raised here, and then came to prominence in the arts, politics, sports, and, of course, organized crime. The existing building is the second (the first burnt down) building occupied by the home. It was constructed in 1879 in a modified Queen Anne style, known as Queen's Anne's Consort, basically Queen Anne style with a few more nonsensical flourishes to confuse burglars about where the window cranks and keyholes were located.

" _It shall be as a large home, with the accouterments and tailings and tub-settings and knockabouts of a typical abode, yet with one important difference. An in-gathering of the motherless and fatherless shall reside, thereunto,"_ wrote the founder, Mother Rebecca Clare O'Dowdy, in an 1805 letter to Boston authorities.

Bostonians embrace their own history, whole-heartedly encouraging tourists to visit the city's obscure, cob-webbed corners. Here's a sample dialogue for you to use:

_Question_ : "Excuse me, could you recommend any historical attractions in Grimy Flue Hill?"

_Answer_ : "Yah Flue? Christ's blood, theahs nuttin' theah. Used t' be, shur'whah. Not no mow-ah. Now, it's a wick'd pit, 'n full-ah assholes, ya ahsk me." (translation: Grimy Flue Hill? Christ's blood, there's nothing there. Used to be, sure. Not no more. Now it's a wicked pit, full of assholes, if you ask me.")

Today, Wrestling Hill's main drag, the Rummageway, is beginning to show signs of life. Yoga studios, cafes, bistros, an art gallery—yes, the markers of acceptability to the urban neighborhood denizen now pop up, although, because of the average low temperature in Boston, and the amount of precipitation, there's a distinct downer vibe. Area natives have traveled, however unwillingly, to points outside Boston, to areas outside the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and even, though it is rarely admitted, outside of New England. The result? They feel a little bit chagrined at how much nicer it is in other parts of the world.

"It used to be," offered one ruddy-faced fellow, outside **(The Tippler, 42 Center Rummage St., no phone)** a pub on Center Rummage St., "that none of the locals had traveled anywhere outside New England. Now that they have, they realize that, a lot of the time, the weather sucks little lima beans."

I did know, and after having my first umbrella destroyed in a nasty downdraft, I vowed to spend extra money on rain-proof outer-gear, and military-issue umbrellas.

Over the course of my visit, as city archaeologists and academics began fanning out through Wrestling Hill to find more clues as to the provenance of the colonial button, some residents began to resist the investigations, which often involved strangers digging up cellars.

"There are no Quakers buried in my cellar, darn it all," one exasperated homeowner told me. "We can't turn every furnace room into a shrine. These city officials don't have the sense God gave a head of lettuce."

It was my last day in Wrestling Hill, and I still hadn't heard any news about whether I would there had been a definitive analysis of the button, and whether I would be allowed to see the button, or even, to whom the button had belonged.But, I was in for a surprise.

Turning down the Rummageway, balancing my coffee, I was heading toward West Station to catch the Amtrak train to Chicago. Rounding the corner of Upper Rummage St. and The Rummageway, I came unexpectedly upon slightly scary Ranger Crone. Leaning against the building at its base was a large poster, which said in handwritten scrawl:

No. 7

Freedom of Religion: Quaker Martyr, John Leddra

National Oppression Trail

Apparently, said Crone, C-PEAR, had determined that this button was most likely from the clothing of Leddra, the final Quaker to be executed by the Massachusetts Mandarins of yore.

"Yep," said Crone, matter-of-factly. "As soon as there's approval from the higher-ups, a plaque will go up on this wall. There's no reason to wait for the plaque, though. This poster will alert everyone to this as a stop on the trail. We need to let people know about the dire consequences that appertained to those who worshiped as they pleased in old Boston town."

I mentioned I was on my way to Chicago. Beth-Anne offered me some hardtack left over from the day's tour.

"You never know when you'll eat next, and we wouldn't want you to suffer on that train from hunger pains, now would we," said Beth-Anne, depositing a dry brown lump in my hand. I noisily chewed it, teeth clacking, as I walked to the station and pondered the equally hard life of the early residents of Rummage, and the peculiarities of up and coming Wrestling Hill.

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Chapter 9 - CHICAGO: West Signal Park

_Blowing on the Sparks of Gentrification_

It's no easy task to find a truly untouched ward in the Windy City that shows promise, and yet has not been spoiled by the predations of frozen yogurt entrepreneurs and scented candle magnates. And yet raw intelligence and no small amount of late night street-view surfing online led me to a real find: West Signal Park, an ethnic district of factories and row-houses, encircled by the railroads and their iconic signaling towers. No Prairie Progressivism for this burg, it is perhaps, then, to be expected that "West Sig", as it is known, is often described as a place of "narrow lawns and wide waists."

Bounded by once powerful lines—now all owned by Burlington Northern Santa Fe—with evocative nicknames like the Route of the Towering Snowdrifts, also called the 'Not So Grand Trunk,' the Flying Teeth-Bared Red Fox Route, the Copper Plate Road, and the dependable Molasses Mainline ("Sweetest Service South and Beyond!"), hard-scrabble, work-a-day West Sig harkens back to a time of lunch-pails, factory whistles, scratchy underwear, and shouting. Resisting gentrification like vinyl siding resists paint, you will not find a Portabello Panini here. You will, though, find bedraggled **Mournwood Cemetery (459 Null Ave. Open to the Public)**. It's the burial place of minor figures, such as the last "funeral mute" in the United States.

Carl Sandburg, Saul Bellow, Theodore Dreiser. Their very names draw literary maps in one's mind of the sprawling lakeshore cosmopolis of Chicago—just not including West Sig.

There are few museums and even fewer restaurants. Indeed, West Signal Park's own tired waist is cinched by a dark, dirty border of still hard-worked iron rails. And, this industrial tableau is overshadowed by the empty, hulking, partially-renovated shell of a once-mighty factory, the defunct Imperium Flame Match Co. ("Light'um with Imperium"), **(Match Works Lofts, 1889 Phosphorus Ave.)** , and locally called The Match Works. It's a hard-luck place. What might have been an economic hydraulic-lift for West Sig is stuck in receivership, and home to a diverse array of artists, squatters, mice, birds and a few, very sour, early loft condominium buyers, now "underwater" with their investments.

I can't report the area is magnetizing hipsters, so far. Yet, tantalizing redevelopment breezes are blowing across its grease traps, with rumblings of craft-brews and organic city-grown greens. Rumor has it that a restaurant connected to a celebrity chef had queried for space amidst its tired-out storefronts.

Meanwhile, West Signal Park's down-at-the-heels mien offers little ostensible encouragement for the standard urban professional. Community theater: moribund. Independent coffee houses: nope. Chachkas-from-developing-world-store: not yet. Farmer's Market? Adjacent neighborhood.

But it does have history. West Sig is, after all, famous for a series of 1930s pet-snatchings and a factory explosion. And those are the benign events—it's now known for prostitution rackets and indoor marijuana grow-houses. Stolen laptops are reputed to be wiped clean at hidden locations here, before being shipped overseas. There are few sit-down eateries and fewer public restrooms.

"West Sig don't look like much, I'll emit," Janice Treska, the owner of **Piggy's Lunch (1023 W. Signal Park Ave.)** , told me, in her thick Chicagoland accent, "but if you take away the EPA brown-field site, back of the Match Works, the strip clubs, the potholes, the pet-unfriendly rep–totally undeserved, let me say–the taggers, the prostitution, the beer riots back in the day, and these new grow-houses, and the fact it's even colder than Duluth, not to mention the Loop, it's really a place where you can be very, very happy."

Local legend has it that, as tough as winter weather is in northern Illinois, it is worse in this once-heavily Slavonian section of Chicago. Everyone I've spoken to swears summers here are a few days shorter, leaves drop faster, and the flocks of birds that summer in the nearby **T.H. Vast Forest Reserve (1302 N. Harebell Blvd.)** escape quickly when winter hits.

Described as being "west of the Loop and South of St. Paul, Minnesota," the aging area's alderman admits it's the home of a lot of "bald tires and bald heads."

It also lacks places to stay. Which left me hanging my toiletry kit at the only hostelry around, in the adjacent neighborhood: the **Do Drop Inn of Signal Park (1961 Grand Signal Blvd., Signal Park)** , a sprawling motel-like 1950's accommodation, with its own bowling alley-cum-event space that uses a dizzying mixture of lavender-tinted mirrored columns, composite gravel-based tiling and translucent glass, to lure the unlucky last-minute bride, or the insurance agents' regional luncheon.

Sinking into the naugahyde banquettes of the Do Drop's coffee-shop, I felt like I was being embraced in one of Lyndon Johnson's famous bear-hugs. Finishing what passed for coffee, I hoofed it to the target district. A short walk along Grand Signal Boulevard brought the row-houses and factories into view, punctuated by short streets of larger, Victorian-era bungalows, row-houses, porches sagging, chimneys askew, paint peeling. Flags of the POW-MIA cause, various Balkan soccer clubs and ships of the _Pirates of the Caribbean_ films fluttered from porch columns and windows.

With all this, word had still percolated up through West Sig's un-remediated earth, that an upscale restaurant would open, but it seemed hard to believe. Along West Signal Park Ave., I shopped as never before for plebeian stuff, like thread, a plastic kitchen drawer organizer, the last box of Fudgetown cookies extant in America, and a bumper of malt liquor. As I looked around at the weeds poking up through a curb stone, and at a 1975 Pontiac Grand Pix, body side-molding long-ago lost, sitting stolidly at said curb, questions presented themselves: was West Signal Park, in fact, a wrongly-accused conflict-diamond of a Chicago hamlet, waiting to be plucked from its dingy Carter-era, apnea-style sleep, thence to be shined up and placed on the finger of a public hungry for yet another dimly apprehended meal, tiny tea-light flickering playfully against an original brick wall released of its history from a dry-walled coffin? Would, say, Janice Treska, wearing devils-pitchfork press-on nails, and a monster-truck-rally t-shirt, eat bits of smoked duck sausage swaddled in a thimble's worth of caramelized onion, rhubarb and Paprika reduction sauce?

I wasn't sure, but I vowed to dig further. Speaking of which, the muck in the brown-field site adjacent to the Match Works—once the Imperium rail spur, loading dock and storage area—is being transformed, grassroots-style, into a "Prairie Demonstration Garden," by artists squatting in half-finished lofts. Pre-World War II, the works ran three round-the-clock shifts from their flagship factory, loading boxes of match-books onto rail-cars next to the factory, and shipping them around the globe. Post-financial crisis, many of its gas fireplaces provide bicycle helmet storage.

One artist, Marram Beachpea,greeted me there, and volunteered to be an unofficial guide. With nary a budding restaurateur in sight, Marram offered us some trail mix from a freezer bag, and began our ersatz tour.

"That's why concrete floors are so great, you can light a fire to keep warm and it doesn't damage anything," noted Marram, and then returned to her hearth on the floor to lean downward so she could blow on a small bonfire of kindling and chopped-up pallets, before showing me around.

Marram works in glass, acrylic and wheat-paste—not all at once. Beachpea, together with another Works resident, font designer Trent Budvar, have applied for a community grant to transform the Match Works, which shut-down in 1973, into an artists' live-work cooperative. Bought in 2004 for $4.38 million by a California investor group aiming to rehab it into luxury condos, _The West Signal Park Signal_ estimated the building's current value at roughly $95,145.56, if you throw in some floor-waxing equipment, and a disco ball from the farewell "We Can't Be Matched" Christmas party of 1973.

Most of the condo-purchasers fled with the economy, but a few are hunkered down in the finished part of the building, reportedly in a foul mood while they await some movement on renovating the rest of the complex. Our artsy pair developed the demonstration garden on their own, amid an overgrown loading dock and the rail spurs; they expressed excitement about its prospects. Together they moved us to a large window in an un-renovated area of the factory, and we peered out of the large window, spidered with cracks. They'd also heard the restaurant rumor, but discounted it, saying, "people here want real food, man, not little white plates with colored squiggles."

Below us, I saw an overgrown loading dock. Yet, Marram and Trent pointed out that among the rusting railroad car axles, the old file cabinets, a busted wing chair with the stuffing popping out and a toilet sans seat, that here, a botanical festival of native Midwestern flora was, slowly, assuredly, taking shape. Bluestem grasses and dogbane and flowering spurge could be glimpsed with Marram's help. Quite slowly the ailanthus, that botanical hallmark of neglect, was being pushed aside for the sand prairie and moraine of Father Marquette's time. Of Hiawatha's, even.

"See right over there near the refrigerator door?" asked Marram, as we followed her hand to the horizon, pointing from her third floor window. "There's an actual prairie dog burrow under there, and near it are some bottleflower and some goldenrod and black-eyed susan that will come into bloom." We all waited for a minute to see if any dogs would pop up their little heads out of the ground, but they didn't. Marram and Trent hope they'll ultimately grow herbs and heirloom vegetables, as well, for a future Farmers' Market.

Postcard courtesy of _The West Signal Park Signal_ newspaper archives:

_Reverse_ : Famous statue in West Signal Park, Chicago, Ill. "Victory, Hand bloodied by War...1923, by M. Saint-Jardin.

October 12, 1933

Mrs. H. Diggity

932 West Shrike St.

Bathsheba, Ind. 7

Heloise,

Tom is poorly. Many nice houses here, paved streets. Indian summer heat. Talk of house-pets goin' missing. Hope they ain't all dead.

Bless you, Celia

I looked hard for traditional promising signs of renewal in West Sig: handmade soaps and crafts, healthy meals with tongue-thickening vegan desserts, transgressive art or freshly de-grimed historic buildings – and found little to comfort me. I did find a junk shop—sometimes a precursor to an infection of more artfully-staged shops with the same junk, but fumigated and dusted—with the remainders of a thousand yard sales, and the expected blenders, old Clue sets, gas station premium glasses, boxes of snap-shots, ugly ashtrays and saints-day statues.

Is it any wonder then that cucumber slices, and feelings, are still raw, at **Signal Subs (1189 Lathe St.)** , where the owner indicates he's been slightly ripped-off by a major sandwich chain: "I'm not saying nothing about it," said Petey Korbacik, who then said, "But let me say this about that; you know the major chain that helps you build your sub as you move along the window? Well, we done that in 1962. Put everything on a long table, and said "have at it." Do they owe me a fee or something? Lawyer buddy in Lombard says I could be a friggin' millionaire from this. Dick Butkus was here twice."

If you're wondering—and I wasn't—there is also a branch on the Southwest Side, off Brenham Ave. (pronounced 'Bren-HAIM'). Petey waved away rumors about celebrity chefs and his small-plates eatery.

"Small plates?" asked Petey," what would we want with that? We eat large in West Sig."

I ran into Trent on Lathe St., and promised to drop by later for a short-story reading at The Works. It was to be sponsored by _The New Porker_ , an avant-garde Midwestern literary magazine for free-range pork farmers. It's a winter-months-only 'zine, aimed at the stir-crazy porcine agricultural practitioner, holed up inside a stuffy farmhouse, dreaming of artisanal sausage wins at state fairs.

I was outside _The West Signal Park Signal_ offices. The seventy-year old shopper is published bi-monthly, and now on the Web, except in July, when the publisher, Clara Dusselhoffer, summers at Walloon Lake, in Michigan. Dusselhoffer is widely viewed as a neighborhood historian, an avocational code enforcement expert, and a crank. Her nephew Ron is head of the newly re-constituted West Signal Park Chamber of Commerce ("re-founded 2004") and has labored for several years to get new eateries to locate here, so far unsuccessfully—he's now running the family-owned beer garden.

"Well, I'll tell you Ron's working on a number of things; he's been pondering whether she shouldn't just try to spin 'Slavonian' as 'Moravian' and just promote that whole thing – simple religious folk move here from the old country, like in Winston-Salem. Maybe license some furniture designs. Lots of clean-lined chairs, and aromatic candles, maybe? It don't make sense to me, but apparently if you're escaping persecution, you end up with candles that smell like pine, which you can sell for 10 dollars a pop," she wryly observed.

Clara also lives in the only West Sig property connected to the legacy of Midwestern architectural legend Frank Lloyd Wright—however tenuous. A sometime draftsman in Wright's famed workrooms designed the large one-room house, which looks like a giant Norse lodge **(4513 S. Casement Pl. Tours Suspended)** , with sloping roofs to keep the snow from accumulating and essentially one room around a giant four-sided fireplace. Clara has spent decades attempting to get Illinois to put the house on the state historical register of sites. It's advertised as being open for tours by appointment, but when I asked about it, Clara peered over her half-glasses and mumbled that she wasn't showing it. Something about a design that people misinterpret, because of the door-less bathrooms.

"I'm not runnin' Tally-Watcha, Wisconsin, here—it's my house, for Pete's sake" harrumphed Clara.

Meanwhile, the spry old gal had just put **Dusselhoffer Biergarten (2380 Grand Signal Blvd.)** in Ron's hands.

"Quite a few writers gathered at the beer garden, in the early twentieth century. No one famous now, but they were well-known in their time. Claude Boozle, Jr. was one. H.J. Soberlin was another. Peter Rennet, you may have heard of; he wrote a lot of poetry—including the one on the Saint-Jardin statue in West Signal Park Park."

"It was nominated for a Governor's Prize in 1926—didn't win. We're not a neighborhood of winners, here, really. Just do-ers," pronounced Clara.

West Sig is famed for one doing though: the pet-napping spree of Cyril Dismas, ultimately sent to Joliet Prison. Although evidence has come to light suggesting he didn't exactly kill the pets, but rather sent them to a friend in Arkansas (receipts for rail freight were recently discovered in Dismas family papers, I learned), this 1930s noir aspect bumped up the neighborhood in my eyes from sad to mildly creepy, auguring, perhaps, a renaissance amongst the well-heeled of the Goth set.

Chicago Elevator & Mercury-Times

Dismas Descendant Disgraced Via Devilish Doggie Doings

Dismal Day for Dynasty; Descent of Dismas

_Chicago, IL, Sept. 15, 1923_ _– The stunning outrage of pet-nappings and possible creature killings ended Thursday with the conviction of Cyril Dismas, grandson of Imperium Match founder Augustus Dismas, on charges of felony pet stealing. Dismas was convicted of absconding with pet feline Petunias and canine Fidos, from residences in Signal Park and West Signal Park. The unrepentant match company heir is to be remanded for six years to state correctional custody. Sentence is to be served in the state prison at Joliet, the Chicago District Attorney's office announced, following trial and sentencing in Cook County Court._

Imperium founder Augustus Dismas commissioned a statue by noted turn-of-the-last-century sculptor, March Saint-Jardin, commemorating the sacrifice of employees in World War I; this bronze piece now sits in the neighborhood's main park, **West Signal Park Park (W. West Signal Park Ave., at Bozen St. and Clump Ave.)**. Once known as Patootie Park or Horse's End, for its former role as the terminus for the tons of manure that Chicago's working horse population generated in those days, Dismas acquired the dumping ground, and then spent his own money to convert it to a public retreat, while the horse excrement repository was relocated to a different neighborhood that people liked even less. The 'Park Park,' as it's known, is the only site in the district listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The docent is a Dismas descendant. A small allee, of six trees, three on either side, leads to the statue. A wrinkled sign-up sheet protected by a removable hard-plastic cover that fell off when I lifted it, on a community board near the statue, had earlier allowed me to schedule a date for a tour.

Andrew Dismas, the factory owner's great-grand-nephew, gives park tours every other Saturday, except in the winter, in August, and when Saturday comes after a federal Monday holiday, or in the same week as a local or state election, owing to some obscure Chicago political custom that I was advised not to question, by a mix of local barflies and cops.

Andrew, a tall man of indeterminate age, grew up in the **Dismas Mansion (1033 Trevithick Ave., private)** , before his parents moved to more affluent Culloden Grove, Illinois, a suburb west of Chicago. He's back now, living in the house, and attempting renovations.

Cleaning out his grandmother's effects from the manse, after her death last year at 101 from chronic rheumatism ("Grandma claimed she drank a shot of apple-cider vinegar every week, but we think it was probably schnapps"), Andrew had recently discovered a cache of papers that he says pointed to Cyril's innocence of the charges of killing pets; he had apparently shipped many of the pets he'd taken to a person unfamiliar to Andrew, living in the South. He's turned the papers over to the University of Chicago.

We proceeded from the sign-up sheet to Saint-Jardin's creation in the park's center. It's informally called "Match Lady," and officially known as _Victory, Hand Bloodied by War, With a Limb Severed, Lighting the Underworld with a Match in Darkness and Eternity, Comforting the Wounded, Bringing forth the Light of Eternal Redemption_.

Andrew told me Augustus had commissioned it in 1921, to commemorate those workers who survived a Match Works explosion in 1913, only to lose their lives in battle in World War I, a short time later. The Aurora-born poet Hanceford "Peter" Rennet, a contemporary of Carl Sandburg, wrote the inscription, which we read silently.

Conflagrations

In life, we were a workaday lot

Making little fires to burn, tiny and hot

In death, we wield

No get up. No go

Where we strike, a fire dost blow

But not in the factory didst we leave

It is on the field, the rifle smoke must hang

A queer reminder of that for once we sang

Of antimony, and of phosphorus

Of chlorates and others still more nox-ious

The conflagration hereabouts didst not fell us

No! It was over there we entered cursed Erebus

O! But once we were sanguine in our cups.

Never thinking we'd be blown up

Yet, o'er the sea, we did roam.

Now the leaves of our youth have turned to loam.

And we are home.

We are home.

-Hanceford Rennet

Andrew piped up, after waiting a moment.

"Queer meant something else in those days," he said.

"Yes, I know," I replied.

And, that exchange signaled the tour's end.

On my way from the park to the beer garden, I discovered in that serendipitous way of expert travel writers, the ostensibly charming district-within-a-district, tiny **Carpathian Village** (roughly around Pantograph St. and Dreary Ave.). It's now-tumbledown bungalows designed in the best-forgotten _Chicago Grasslands Style_ (1911-14), sit side by side; they're a grimace-inducing cross between English farm cottage and Arts & Crafts aesthetics, if that cross had been parented by a centuries-old Eastern European chicken coop. Developed by Kermit Cordovan, a failed architect who jumped from a Loop skyscraper after the 1929 stock market crash, the style is also known as "scary urban farm shack." However, after noting a very high foil-in-the-windows and body-piercings count, it's clear that grow houses are all that's growing here. Also, if you're considering talking to the people sitting on the front-porches, don't. In fact, I advise skipping the area altogether.

Ron Dusselhoffer, Clara's nephew, is trying to create a kind of mini-craft-brewery on a budget, in the Dusselhoffer's Biergarten, so that illegally-squatting artists or budding urban marijuana farmers, or muttering old match-factory workers can slake their thirst with seasonal brews. Ron's first effort, along the self-described theme of "winter food storage," seemed promising: Olde Composte Delighte, a smokehouse-and-pickling-inflected ale. Vinegar, wood-ash, dusty shelving and baking soda were some of the flavors I caught; the venting of a 1960s Electrolux vacuum cleaner was another. He's just been in contact with the heritage yeast movement to begin trying to create some new, unique flavors for the warmer months, and hoping a Homeland Security bio-terror initiative targeting dangerous yeasts doesn't put the kibosh on that effort.

The **American Philumenological Guild, (3102 Bourbonnais Ave.)** is run by former Imperium Match workers, and contains an impressive collection of matchboxes, matchbooks, and strike pads of various kinds. They also have torches and a working flamethrower (Demonstrations: Sundays, 1 p.m. – 3 p.m. winter; call for summer hours). Displays about the various chemicals used in creating matches and the history of the safety match are detailed. Some of the original machine parts found after the famous Imperium factory explosion are preserved here, as is a photo record of the incident. One of the volunteers does an interesting demonstration with lighting his hair on fire, after covering it with flame-retardant. Check that one out, why don't you.

A day or so later, I returned to The Works for a last look, and a visit to Marram and Trent. A train passed along the Copper Plate Road tracks, and Marram walked in the direction of them to see if she could find some cast-off glass for her next art project. The wind seemed to be picking up.

"Oh look!" shouted Marram, a few seconds later, pointing to a tiny reddish-brown creature wheeling in the air in front of her, circling a clump of native grasses. It adroitly rode the stiffening current of air. "It's a butterfly—we've been finding more of them, as the demo garden leafs out. Wow," she said," that might be a Red Admiral from over by the lakeshore."

As we watched it dip and swoop, the fall-out from greasy food, the effects of cold weather, and the musty, industrial odors of West Sig, all lifted a little.

Marram took a closer look as the creature alighted on a yellowish-green stalk, then looked back, and seemed a little more shaken than butterfly-spotting warranted. There was a pause.

"Well, I was wrong," she announced, pursing her lips. "It's not a Red Admiral. Actually, it's not even a butterfly."

"It's just a really colorful moth," she said resignedly, and then brushed past the rest of the garden and continued moving toward the railroad tracks on her quest for broken glass. Just then, an SUV pulled through the open gate, crossed the spur tracks and onto the dirt apron of the crumbling loading dock. The SUV's driver and passenger came walking over to us. The passenger, a tousled-haired man, about 30 years-old, now stood before us, looking at his cell-phone screen for information, and then looked up.

"Would you happen to know where I could find a Ms. Beachpea? I've just signed a lease for some space in the Works."

He paused while the Windy City's calling card buffeted us with greater energy. "Well, I wanted to talk with her about some art for the interior, and I was told I could find her here." he announced, pointing back to The Works. "I'm putting in a restaurant."

We looked at each other, realizing that this individual—whomever he might be—had arrived to help catapult West Sig, albeit elbows out, and grunting, into the ranks of gentrified city neighborhoods.

And, Marram, about 100 feet away, sensed she needed to return to us, and began to make her way back. Just then, we heard distant shouts from the far end of Furnace Way, and looked to see a man running and waving his arms; it looked like Ron Dusselhoffer, and it looked like he was excited. Ron's shouts were, however, drowned out quickly, as a long freight train came thundering along his left, making his sprint seem almost leisurely, and somewhat silly, by comparison.

As he pulled up to our group, breathless and struggling to speak—not realizing we had already heard his news—a powerful Chicago gust blew up, and combined with the draft from the passing freight, the demonstration garden was now caught up in a stiff whirlwind that blew everyone's hair amiss and silenced any chatter. Old fast-food takeout bags, a plastic bottle, labels of every description and mangled cigarette butts, it all flew into the air, as everyone protectively bent down a little. Grit gyrated about bowed heads. The wind reminded me of where we were, as even the trash that had been caught on various garden branches now dislodged, rising upward, sweeping the area, if only for an instant, clean of human residue.

And then, as the turbulence died down a little, the wind re-settled it all, just feet away, in patterns new to the West Sig ground, once again.

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Endnotes: More About the Author

Nate Molino is the pen-name and alter ego of a journalist, writer, and editor, based in California. He takes great pleasure in presenting you with this, his first book of creative writing, and satire. You may find out more about him and his work at http://www.natemolino.com. Also check out a related blog at http://www.tripscrawl.com. The latter is a humorous take on travel Thanks for reading and look for further work from Nate Molino.

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