Defiantly Local

International Spy Museum
800 F Street NW
Washington DC
www.spymuseum.org

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to hunt down this museum.

Visiting Washington DC is a requisite trip for any American citizen. The city is chockablock full of the grandest museums in the country. This is the home of the Smithsonian Institution, the Library of Congress, live action branches of federal government, the Washington Monument, War memorials, Presidential memorials…Everywhere you look, there is another grand stone building, another national museum. The city is saturated with attractions and tourists. Even spending a week doing nothing but tours, it would be difficult to see it all.

Yet, as DC is so federally focused, there is very little in the city that is referential to the city itself. A few years back, a civic group tried to run a museum about the city’s history: the grand architecture, L’Enfant’s complex city design, the amputation of Maryland land to be devoted to the capitol, the struggle for voting representation in Congress for the residents who pay federal taxes, celebrations of the victories of varying protests on the national mall, etc. By all accounts, the museum’s efforts completely failed. While the exhibits were strong, it simply couldn’t compete for tourists with the federal institutions. There remains very little that belongs exclusively to DC that doesn’t literally belong to the nation.

Tucked away on a corner just north of the Senate office building is DC’s high point, a new museum devoted exclusively to international espionage. While nearly all of the museums in the city’s national collection are quite staid with objects under glass and a paragraph long technical explanation tacked on the wall, the International Spy Museum is a completely interactive experience straight out of the best James Bond movies.

Step inside and buy a ticket. Follow the red carpet to the elevator and head up a couple of floors. As the elevator door closes, the floor lights up in intense color and a voice begins to explain your mission. Step off the elevator into the introduction area. You will be asked to pick an identity for the remainder of your visit to the museum. This identity must be memorized off a card on the wall and contains real birth place, new birth place, new name, occupation, and varying bits of background history. This task is actually far more difficult than it seems.

With that complete, a short film introduction then leads into the museum itself. Devoted completely to the history of espionage, its tools, dangers, necessity throughout history, and rewards, there are hundreds of items and interactive activities. If you brought the kids, they can crawl in the duct work above the exhibit floor and listen to conversations happening below. While they’re learning proper eavesdropping techniques, take a moment to study the dangers to a mission and identify the potential threat to spy cover in the interactive wall exhibits. Or compete with your cohorts in identifying where messages or film could be hidden in the public eye, or identifying the signal hidden in the picture – an open umbrella, a guy in an overcoat when no one else is even wearing a jacket, a fast food bag that didn’t make it into the trashcan. Learning what to look for is an incredibly eye opening experience.

Along with the interactive exhibits, the tools of the trade are fascinating. The rooms are filled with items we thought Hollywood invented. The amphibious car is especially fun, as is the room devoted exclusively to bugging techniques. There are lipstick cameras, single use cameras, the smallest derringers in the history of man, fake lighters that hold film and really light…What’s fascinating more than anything is the age of the items. Technology existed as early as the 1950s for lipstick cameras. Clearly the intelligence agencies are a few decades ahead of the rest of us. The latest museum items from MI5, KGB, and CIA date to the early 1990s, clearly as protection for technology currently in use. It will be fascinating to see down the line how the advent of the internet changed the face of espionage.

The individuals involved in espionage over the last 150 years are also quite intriguing and well-examined throughout. Long before the intelligence agencies had budgets, there were interesting ties with the entertainment industry. The explanation of coding and code-breaking is well done also.

Before exiting, after all of this, you’ll be asked to recall your identity from the introduction.  Who knew memorizing that much and retaining it could be so difficult?

DC will forever be worth the visit even the dead heat of their windless summer. There are places every American should see on nearly every corner. But once the necessities have been attended to or you’re looking for a break from the endless wandering around on stone institutional floors, head north just a bit to the International Spy Museum. It’s one of a kind amidst dozens of remarkable places. Sensing in the air the proximity to the CIA, it’s a unique local experience that belongs just to DC. Good luck on your mission.

Crown Candy Kitchen
1401 St. Louis Ave
St. Louis, Missouri
www.crowncandykitchen.com

I’ve always held a special place in my heart for Saint Louis, partially because I grew up there, partially because it has a unique vibe that’s not found in many places.  It rivals New Orleans in age, and remains a unique Midwestern metropolis, identifying more with the East Coast than the Midwest in its own weird way.  If urban spelunking is your thing, Saint Louis is a dream come true.

As a teenager, I discovered my real love of urban areas.  Growing up in the suburbs was worthwhile and sanitized the way it’s meant to be. However, I remain grateful to parents who allowed their only daughter to go to high school in the city, to learn the lessons of navigation, meet people from other walks of life, and gain the street smarts that have served me well in urban areas all over the lower 48 for the last few years.  They let me wander.  I drove past hundred year old mansions across from the world’s fair grounds every morning on the way to school, went to Mass in the Basilica that took 80 years to fully complete, and wandered an eclectic neighborhood whenever possible.

Fascinated by what I’d discovered just in the Central West End and the southside neighborhoods of my friends, I was desperate to explore more.  One weekend senior year of high school, my dear friends J and Linny and I took my 1967 Impala into downtown along with a video camera to explore new territory.  I had of course been downtown for events, baseball games, school field trips, and with my parents who knew exactly how to get where we were going and get out. 

Wandering with my friends, I saw for the first time the real decay of the north side of downtown.  I was suddenly aware of this land that my father in his politically oblivious way referred to as “Injun country” for its wide open spaces and potential danger around the few corners that existed.  With newly adult eyes, I was seeing the results of one of the worst urban renewal campaigns in history.  What was once thriving with homes, businesses, and industry was now a seemingly bombed out mess of a few remaining structures, open lots, pot holes, and flooded storm drains.  Just blocks from the crowded tourist areas of the Gateway Arch, Busch stadium, and the courthouse were the tangled ruins of neighborhoods abandoned to the ravages of time.

Fast forward twelve years.  The mess of empty buildings, razed lots, and the old Vess Cola bottle sign are still there.  Yet, somehow in our 1994 journey, I had missed the literal crown jewel of the entire area that has managed to both survive and thrive - Crown Candy Kitchen.

Started in 1913 by two Greek friends, Crown Candy Kitchen remains an icon of the city and one of very, very few businesses still surviving on the north side of downtown.  The neighborhood around it shows few signs of life - empty places both extant and razed with just a few offices, mostly industrial support, and one or two storefronts still operational.  Yet on the corner of St. Louis Avenue and 14th Street is the most crowded restaurant in all of downtown.

Patrons take a step back in time as they cross the threshhold.  The pressed tin ceiling is as clean and crisp today as the day it opened 94 years ago.  The green and white linoleum floor was probably laid in the 1950s and has been scrubbed clean every night for the last half century.  Coca-Cola signs from decades past line the top shelves, and signed Saint Louis Blues hockey sticks hang on the walls. The menu on the wall is one of those pressed-plastic letter jobs like they have at stadium concession stands, the plastic now an unusual tinge of yellow with a faded, splashing Pepsi cup bursting from its center.

Patrons fight for booths at lunchtime.  As this is a clock-punching crowd, it’s best to arrive on the hour or half hour as half the restaurant gets up and departs at once to get back to work.  They fight for these tiny tables for the home-cooked food and the tradition of the working man’s lunch. 

Each table has a “Seaburg Wall-o-matic” jukebox on it that once connected to the main jukebox for the restaurant.  The songs are still in place.  As my compadre joined me to sample this somehow elusive local fare, I was debating which I would have liked to hear more, Johnny Cash’s “Folsom Prison Blues,” The Doors’ ”Light My Fire” or The Troggs song that I’d not heard before.  As Stina dropped into her seat and our server appeared, I stopped surfing this earliest of ipods.

We selected our lunch, and having been on the road for too many weeks, I underestimated the Midwest portion size.  Stina and I shared my yummy small salad and still didn’t finish it as our heaping lunch plates were served.  Lunch was both tasty and enormous, and we set aside our plates with food left for the starving children in Africa so that we could have the coup de grace of Crown Candy Kitchen: dessert.

You go to Crown Candy Kitchen for the meal, but what you’re really after is the sugar.  After all, lunch is served in the lobby of a still-operating, old-school candy kitchen.  The ice cream is hand dipped, the ingredients are fresh, and whether planned or not, you can’t leave without at least a quarter pound of chocolate for yourself or someone whose diet you intend to ruin.  So, a shared banana split later, Stina and I headed for the counter to buy more sugar.

The kitchen whips up every sort of chocolate concotion imaginable.  Non-pareils, malted milk balls, cream centers, caramels, Swedish fish…the list is long and mouth-watering.  Any moment, the candy man from Willy Wonka seems bound to emerge from the back and break into his song while handing over those weird little styrofoam spaceships with the bits of colored sugar inside.

Either way, leaving full of the local flavor, it’s fun to step out the front door to a clear view of the Gateway Arch just over the hill - the signature of the city and a reminder that this place, despite the loss of the entire neighborhood around it, is defiantly local.

Collingwood Arts Center
2413 Collingwood Blvd.
Toledo, Ohio
www.collingwoodartscenter.org

I’m a history nerd.  Not just a buff, not just a nut, I officially qualify as a nerd.  I know freakish amounts of useless information about everything from seafaring in the 17th century to the obscure reasons for bizarre theatre traditions. Some people like Star Trek.  I happen to be particularly fascinated by the ties between sailors and stagehands, the reasons are cities are designed the way they are, and the number of American icon products that were introduced at worlds fairs.  In fact, my college roommate once looked at me and said, “You know, I had a teacher who said if you know what pedantic means, you probably are.  You know what pedantic means, don’t you?”  I did indeed.  I might not have been the first sorority pledge picked had I chosen that route, but I can always find something to say at a dinner party.

I also have a deep love of a good ghost story.  You can’t work in theater and not believe in ghosts, and I do both.  It’s a bit macabre, but I like the bloody ones best.  I am perfectly fine, however, with some benign spirit or other.  I had a phantom roommate in this great 1880s house I lived in for a year.  I don’t like the term haunted.  I prefer ’shared space.’

Then, I got a Masters in historic preservation, adding architecture and basically combining all of these great fascinations.

So the other day, I was asked to go check out a new venue to do smaller shows in Toledo.  The space was wrong to suit our particular purposes, but I came out with a great story.

The Collingwood Arts Center in downtown Toledo is in a transitional part of town.  Near the art museum, this is clearly going to be budding territory for urban pioneers in the near future. The arts are frequently the first into depressed areas before they start to turn around.  I had a professor in grad school who was bemoaning ’the artists’ because ”every time they move in, suddenly the prices shoot through the roof.”  Let’s analyze that.  Artists don’t have money.  Period.  Artists are not exactly the Donald Trumps of urban revival; they’re usually working shitty gigs at parties to come up with enough money for materials for their next work.  Yet remarkably, neighborhoods turn around when they move in.  Why?  They’re interesting, they’re willing to take risks, they open businesses to sell their work, and they clean up their property to make it livable.  Then, of course, in the ultimate of ironies, as the neighborhood picks up over time, they can no longer afford the rents to live there or the taxes on the property if they own it, so they move on to the next ‘it’ spot that no one knows is an it spot.  If you’re looking for real estate investment, my advice is to follow the artists.  But I seriously digress.   

Nestled amongst what was an enclave of Victorian opulence at the turn of the last century sits a three-wing former boarding school founded by the Ursuline Sisters in 1905. It’s a gem - Gothic windows, brick patterns that only true artisans could lay, a copper and Spanish tile roof, ceramic tile floors, hardwood, wood sash windows.  The converted gas-to-electric chandeliers and wall lights are a sight to behold.  This building is every architecture buff’s dream.  Yet, it could have been a tough one to rehab for new use.  Given that it was a boarding school, bearing walls would probably cause a host of problems.  The cost of maintaining such a structure aside, what do you do with an old boarding school on no budget?

These are creative people.  Collingwood Arts, the new owners of the building, have converted it into an art space.  Forty artists live on-site in the dormitory portion of the building, paying rent for unusual living spaces, all for the single luxury that accompanies living there: their own 900 square foot art studio in the converted classrooms of the building.  There are parlors for poetry readings, board meetings, fundraisers, and small theater performances. There is a theater on-site.  Operating on a shoestring budget, they are maintaining and upgrading this impressive new use for an unusual structure.

I should have known throughout the tour that things were going to get colorful.  I’ve done my share of urban spelunking (without the breaking and entering part, thankfully) over the last four years, but rarely has a structure had so many unusual occurrences in such a short period of time.  It was a little creepy, though admittedly fun, that there are two low-level gaslight fixtures shaped as hands coming out of the walls like “Thing” from the Addams Family. In another room, I moved the curtains to look out a window and my guide on this little adventure said very calmly, “Now, don’t be scared, but look up.  There’s a bat above you.”  He was not kidding.  The largest bat I’ve ever seen in my life was hanging upside inside the upper window sash sleeping.

Finally, we reached the auditorium they wanted to show me.  It was redone in the 1950s, so while accoustically quite perfect and interesting with a gallery at the top, I can’t say it was my personal favorite architecturally.  However, I took my share of pictures to send to the home office, discussed all of the details, then moved back out to the lobby to head back to work.

My guide mentioned that I should look at my pictures because they frequently have trouble with random paranormal orbs showing up in pictures.  The Sisters are apparently hanging around the building and tend to check out the theater on a regular basis.  He told tales of photographs of a blue-humored comedian covered in these light orbs, as if the Sisters still hanging around didn’t like him.  They’d had other clients take pictures that turned up a ton of orbs, then, needing a clear picture, asked the Sisters to move aside so they could photograph.  The next photograph showed nothing.

So, I took a look at my pictures.  He was not kidding.  In all of my years of photographing historic buildings, many of which were rumored to be haunted, I’d never had photographs turn up anything.  I suppose the Sisters liked my camera or somehow knew that I’m the product of a very long Catholic education, but it was crazy the number of orbs that turned up.  The auditorium is truly ’shared space’ with the building’s past.

Collingwood Arts Center is still getting on its feet. They’ve been operational for a couple of years now and are giving it a go.  Next time you’re in or around Toledo, check out this local gem.  Its unique story deserves to be told around the country, and not just as one of the best benign ghost stories this history nerd has found lately, but as a truly creative use of an unusual building.  Hats off to Toledo! 

Walt Disney Concert Hall
111 South Grand Ave
Los Angeles, CA
www.laphil.com  

It may seem odd to put anything on this page with the name Disney on it, but let’s be clear before going any further: The Walt Disney Concert Hall has no affiliation with the Walt Disney Corporation.  It is part of the Los Angeles Music Center, serves as home to the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and just so happens to bear the name Disney in honor of its biggest contributor.  Lilian Disney believed that Los Angeles needed a symphony concert hall and donated the initial $50 million gift in honor of her late husband.  Beyond the fact that mouse dollars provided seed money, this is not a Disney property. 

Los Angeles is an amalgamation of glamorous and seedy, sometimes all in one package.  It’s a city that struggles with its own complex identity, partially as a large number of its residents are not native Californians and have no connection to the places of its colorful past, partially because it’s so very sprawling that it’s difficult to find a cohesive character.  The city and its neighbor, Hollywood, carry the very aura that their residents are accused of being – shallow, self-centered, and in many cases illusions.  Yet, the exceptions to the rule are overwhelmingly exceptional.  In architecture, those places are the Walt Disney Concert Hall and the J. Paul Getty Museum.

Los Angeles is enamored with its heyday, the 1950s.  Roadside stands, early signs from fast food franchises, classic cars, and diners featuring waitresses in old-school uniforms stand out drastically against a landscape of usually trend-setting culture.  The city retains elements of its glory decade, then conveniently skips to the present.  Los Angeles seemingly never fell in love with the minimalist and brutalist culture that followed the 1950s in American architecture, instead choosing to leap forward to modernism and post modernism.   And now there’s Frank Gehry.

The Walt Disney Concert Hall could not be placed in any other downtown in the world except Los Angeles.  No other city would tolerate this building in the midst of its daily business.  Live arts venues have been seeking unique forms since the Sydney Opera House appeared on the scene, and Moshe Safdie and Frank Gehry have been more than happy to design these conversation-inspiring structures in recent years. Where Safdie remains conscious of his surroundings and donor dollars, incorporating the landscape into his structures, Gehry creates experiences.

This is the man who designed the Bilbao Museum and the Experience Music Project.  I’ll save my opinions of him as an architect until 30 years have passed and we see how his structures weather the test of time.   However, Los Angeles is the one and only place in the country that would place this city-block-sized, stainless steel shipwreck on a prominent downtown corner.

Many were not happy with the building.  Overbudget, out of place…the eagle has landed in downtown Los Angeles.  But, then, the French hated the Eiffel Tower at first.  It’s so enormous and so overwhelming that the neighbors sued.  The stainless steel reflects the California sunshine so intensely during the afternoons that their apartments were heating up more than fifteen degrees with the heat coming through the windows.  Say what you will, though, this is a place of real enchantment.

Gehry’s vision for the design was that of a garden to honor Mrs. Disney’s love of horticulture.  When stepping in the front doors, the four-story, straight grain, Douglas fir pillars are shaped like tree trunks, which happen to conveniently provide HVAC and light.  The wood was selected for its grain and its common use in musical instruments.  This is, after all, a concert hall.  The carpets have abstract leaves throughout, and varying shapes are reminiscent of flowers, sticks, and natural atmospheres.  The white ceramic and marble give the feel of natural stone pathways.

A rooftop garden is open to the public every day.  It features an enormous fountain made of mosaic Delft china in the shape of a rose, to honor Mrs. Disney.  The trees in the rooftop garden are all mature trees that were removed from varying places and relocated to this roof.  They were replanted to face the direction they originally grew.  There are flowers, tables to relax, and a magnificent view of the city, all from the shadow of the stainless steel waves and broken sails above.

The roof also houses a small amphitheater for youth concerts and arts education.  The main concert hall inside is an unusual shape and features an organ with pipes that look like French Fries falling out of fast food cardboard sleeve.  The stunning acoustics were designed by Mr. Toyota.  A third multipurpose concert hall at street level can be converted for any use – speakers, piano recitals, whatever.

The Walt Disney Concert Hall is bar none the most kinetic building one can imagine.  The stainless steel curves alter light and shadow through every waking hour.  The glass on street level reveals changing light with every green of the traffic signal.  The curves feel as though they are both crashing in and protecting visitors all at once.  Though not tall enough to alter the skyline, this is a building that will define Los Angeles architecturally the way the sadly lost Ambassador Hotel once did.

Taking a flying leap into the future with a sometimes unpopular project, Los Angeles has emerged with a world-class symphony hall with character all its own.  A welcoming art space that embraces the public every day, the WDCH has effectively altered the imposing and austere image of classical music to one of whimsy and enchantment.  Only in Los Angeles could that, the dream of every arts educator, come true. 

Palms Bistro
221 N Broadway
Milwaukee, Wisconsin
www.historicthirdward.org

Brewery towns have such a fantastic vibe.  They’re casual, while honoring traditions and blue collar pasts.  A woman rarely feels she has to wear heels to go downtown, and a ponytail is socially acceptable on either sex.  Yet there is an odd sophistication that accompanies these cities built on barley and hops.  They exude the sense that they have a secret.  They’re in on the joke.  They know that all of those martini-swirling and wine-tasting yuppies in other cities would in their heart of hearts rather be sipping the head off a good lager.   They’re comfortable in their own skin and invite their visitors to be the same.  Ordering a beer at lunch is no great crime, and counting carbs isn’t even on the radar.

Milwaukee’s historic Third Ward district is the beating heart of its downtown.  Alive with art galleries, restaurants, creative enterprises, shops, and restaurants, what was a warehouse district now hums nearly every hour of the day.  This is not a downtown that dies when the whistle blows. The River Walk in the district is one of the most alluring public spaces one can find in any major city, popular with visitors and locals alike. The theatre marquees are consistently lit for evening performances, and the pubs serve up the local brew until late into the night.   

In a converted icehouse on Broadway, amongst a succession of art galleries, antique shops, and other restaurants, is the Palms Bistro.  Unique in its approach, the bistro is not necessarily what one might expect to find in this most noteworthy of brewing hubs.  Exotically decorated with needlepoint zebra and tiger print upholstery, potted palms, and vertically-spinning, palm leaf-bladed fans, this upscale bistro feels more Johannesburg than Milwaukee.  It serves intricate recipes, everything from elaborate pasta dishes to domestic meats to the best prepared tiger prawn one can find in the Midwest.  Yet, its blatant nose-thumbing makes it defiantly Milwaukee.

One has to admit that it takes moxy to put an oil painting of a tiara-sporting, evening gown-clad chimpanzee in an ornate plaster frame over the fireplace.   In fact, the place is full of them.  Amidst the haute cuisine and the expensive interior design, mocking every possible high society stereotype, the chimpanzees adorn the walls in a variety of framed oil portraits.  There’s a portrait of a chimp playing golf.  There’s a portrait of a chimp riding a mid-life crisis motorcycle.  There’s a chimpanzee yacht captain.  There’s another in a tuxedo, cradling a glass of sherry in that vaguely human hand.  Reviews of the restaurant openly refer to the place as “upscale monkey.”

There are probably only twenty-five tables in the place in addition to the long and quite popular bar.  The Palms Bistro is a thriving nightspot that serves not only brew-town favorites but banana flavored and monkey-themed drinks like “Gorillas in the Mist” and “Monkey Java.”  You see, if you’re going to insist on ordering something fru-fru, you’re going to drink it amongst paintings of high society chimps.  The irony is unmistakable, and visitors had best be able to laugh at their own perceptions.

Milwaukee’s Palms Bistro is a fun romp and a deep chuckle.  A unique business lunch or a casual night out, this brewtown exclusive offers an unexpected twist and a special snicker at the snobs we’ve become through too many re-run episodes of “Sex and the City.” 

Sometimes, you see, the brewery town not only gets the joke, but it makes the joke.

Massachusetts Avenue
Lawrence, Kansas

www.visitlawrence.com

There is a town called Liberal, Kansas, which is frankly its own irony.  However, perhaps the most liberal place in all of Kansas is Massachusetts Avenue, the main street of Lawrence.  A trip to Lawrence on any given day reveals the most eclectic mix of people one might find anywhere in the state.  Granted, it’s still predominantly white and middle class.  This is Kansas after all.  Yet there is an air about the five-block stretch of “Mass Ave” downtown that is open to anyone and everyone.  It’s a collection of skaters, mohawk-sporting punks, Gucci-wearing debutantes, ordinary GAP-loving students, black clad and pierced goth girls, professors, trendy and not-so-trendy thirty-somethings intent on shunning Crate and Barrel, government workers, and musicians set to play the clubs that night.  Everyone is welcome.  There are no strangers here.

Lawrence is a university town, home to the University of Kansas.  An easy 45-mile jaunt west of the urban areas of Kansas City, it’s a small city with an identity all its own.  There is a sense that time has forgotten this place.  The main street has a 1950s single-screen movie theater, angled curb parking, and a plethora of retail shops.  Without the people to color the scenery, downtown Lawrence could be the set for any mid-century film.  All one and two-story shops, nearly every space is filled with anything from both hip and vintage clothing stores to art and furniture galleries to musical instrument repair shops.  Brick streets and sidewalks are a welcome shift from the concrete of most main streets.  Yet as traditional as it appears, it’s more hip than historical.

Brits sells all British Isle imports, supplying expatriates and those of us of Isle-heritage with McCann’s Irish oatmeal, Wheatabix, good tea, and the best Jameson’s-filled dark chocolate available.  The Toy Store is an old-school toy store.  There are no licensed toys here – no Dora, Blues Clues, Sesame Street, or Warner Brothers to be found.  The Toy Store carries toys every thirty-something remembers playing with as a kid: Lincoln Logs, Ouija boards, Twister, the Fisher-Price chatter phone, remote controlled cars, baby dolls, and hula hoops.  Annie’s Sweet Shop sells penny-candy, good chocolate and ice cream. Hobbs  is the gift shop one would expect to find in a university town, the typical purveyor of Dirty Girl products, overpriced Goth T-shirts, and house wares from the Queen of Hearts shot glasses to silly washroom books.

One of the grandest benefits of being in the heartland is that the food is both fresh and beautifully prepared, even the pub food.  The restaurants in Lawrence are no exception and there is no shortage of them.  Mass Ave is home to every cuisine imaginable from Middle Eastern to Indian to Mexican.  American fare can be had at Jefferson’s where thousands of customers have left their own federal offenses on the wall – hand-colored defaced currency hangs over every inch of the walls and ceiling.  Teller’s, the most upscale of the restaurants on the avenue, features haute cuisine amidst the marble floors and wood counters of a restored bank. 

The clubs are busy in the evening, generally with live music.  Walking Mass Ave and New Hampshire Boulevard (just a street east) after dark, one can hear the beats of varying local bands and independent label national acts.  The coffee shops are packed to the gills after hours, some with solo artists playing for tips, some just noisy with conversation.
 
Mass Ave is the place the locals go when heading out.  Countless KU alumni that live in Kansas City head that direction to party for the weekends, comfortable years after their graduations to return to this welcoming place.  For those of us that skipped the KU experience in favor of urban universities, it’s an easy trek to join the masses on Mass Ave for the best of the club circuit and holiday shopping.   Mass Ave is not a place that could be recreated anywhere in the United States.  It’s had decades to steep in its own flavor to be the defiantly local place that it is today.

Fred’s Records
198 Duckworth Street
St. John’s, Newfoundland
www.freds.nf.ca

Downtown St. John’s is a landscape dotted with color.  Every color, in fact.  Duckworth Street, a main drag just a sturdy block up from St. John’s harbour, is pretty much all two or three-story, woodlap-sided frame buildings.  It’s the kind of main street that city planners dream about with thriving retail stores on the ground floor and apartments or low-foot-traffic businesses above.  The buildings are painted every color of the rainbow, and a few are painted colors that nature never intended.  The street is busy nearly every hour of the day and maintains a fair amount of traffic after the shops close, the pub crawlers making their way up to the restaurants for late night silly food.

In a vibrant purple building with gold lettering reading “For the Record, It’s Fred’s,” houses Fred’s Records.  Not only is this place a St. John’s tradition for finding just the right music, it exudes the kind of local cool lost nearly everywhere in the States.  As one who tearfully said goodbye to entire afternoons spent in Tower Records on Sunset, finding this unpretentious haven of both popular and rare CDs was heaven on earth. 

Independent record stores are rare these days as they try to compete with megastores with mega-discounts and iTunes.  Yet stepping inside Fred’s is like stepping into a record store of a decade ago, a place seemingly unaffected by malls, Best Buy, and download capabilities.  Passing the door onto hardwood floors, shoppers are greeted by both unbelievable numbers of wood bins lining the walls and floors and a staff that knows when to let them alone and when to offer suggestions.  Colorful posters for both albums released and concert past adorn the walls and even some windows.  T-shirts hang in the rear corner, and vinyl albums rest under the bins for both those who love the scratch and the music that was never released on compact disc.

Just inside the front door is the standard rack of top selling albums.  In this case, CDs by Great Big Sea, the Navigators, Ron Hynes, and Buddy Wasisname (all worth checking out, by the way) were joined by copies of the Gerald S. Doyle songbook from 1966, another rare item of Newfoundland tradition.  In exploring the racks, all of the usual U.S. and Canadian acts are represented, though Fred’s carries maybe four copies of their CDs instead of the thirty found in the megastores, and with good reason.  They have to make room in the racks for all of the great musical finds.  This is the one-stop-shop that carries not only the greatest hits, but the albums cut by the bands heard in the pubs on George Street.  Fred’s supports local artists, many of whom could stay in the CD player for days on end.

My maiden voyage to St. John’s was this summer and Fred’s was a lovely surprise.  Though, clearly, the American woman on a solo mission scouring the racks was going to need some guidance.  An employee named Steve wandered over to help.  I already had a handful of music and two copies of the Gerald S. Doyle songbook when he reached me. He asked what I was looking for and my response was a basic, “Pretty much anything.  What do you have?”

He introduced me to a couple of things on the listening station, told me about some national Canadian acts I was missing, and guided me to the Navigators CD I was looking for in the local section.  We talked about blues, the States, and a little about St. John’s, but mostly about the new music I was about to be ripping to my hard drive in very short order.  Then, he let me wander for awhile longer, ask random questions, and then changed the music on the store stereo to an artist he thought I should hear.

My final selections made, I set the stack of CDs on the counter, assuring myself that the conversion rate would be kind to me and I wasn’t actually spending as much as I thought I was.  As he was ringing up the CDs, Steve held up several selections and his notes of “excellent choice” and “you’re smart to grab these Doyle books, that’s all we have,” actually meant something.  Fred’s has a staff that knows quality and tries to steer customers in the right direction.  It’s a kind of customer service that’s mostly lost these days. 

Next time you’re in the market for CDs, especially by Canadian artists, check out Fred’s.  You don’t have to go to St. John’s.  They’re on-line and ship everywhere, and I bet if you called them and told them what you’re looking for, they’d have three more suggestions of things you’ll like.  The Amazon.com or .ca databases assume that customers will like certain items by what they’ve purchased, but it occasionally steers customers very wrong.  At Fred’s, a human gauges customers’ reactions to items and knows the product backward and forward. 

In defiance of the download and discount store trend, Fred’s Records is a tradition.  Check them out and let Steve know what you’re thinking - he won’t steer you wrong.

The Owl Bar at The Belvedere
1 East Chase Street
Baltimore, MD
 http://www.trufflescatering.com/owlbar/index.html

Baltimore is an undeniably tough town.  While the architecture and the locals are both quite inviting, it’s one of those cities that exudes a need for caution.  Ignorance of the local turf can leave a visitor instantly on the wrong block and not entirely sure which direction will be safest for a quick exit.

When I was doing my graduate work, a small group of us, eager representatives of Upstate New York, Ohio, Missouri, Tennessee, Virginia, and Texas, would head into the city to explore on free afternoons.  Blissfully unaware of the areas we were exploring and figuring there was safety in numbers, we’d park the car and walk literally for hours. 

One such afternoon during the second summer, while exploring the Mount Vernon neighborhood, we wandered north up the hill and came across The Hotel Belvedere.  A reasonably imposing structure in what’s more of a two-to-three-story neighborhood, the architecture was quite grand.  Given that it was a hotel, there was a good chance there were publicly accessible restrooms in the lobby and we wouldn’t have to purchase anything to use them.  So we headed inside.

Sure enough, to the right of the door, we found the washrooms.  Meanwhile, a couple of our cohorts wandered off, then wandered back and informed us that we were undoubtedly stopping for a drink.  They had discovered “The Owl Bar.”

The entrance to the bar is flanked with photos - presidents, first ladies, politicians of all sorts really, actresses, sports heroes, diplomats, heads of state, artists, inventors…you name it.  They all drank here.  After studying the portraits for longer than we should have, we looked a little deeper.  The bar had opened in 1903 and on this hundreth anniversary of such a revered spot, we had to know more.

Entering The Owl Bar seems a bit of a maze.  Dark corners and heavy velvet curtains give it a Speakeasy feel, and with good reason.  Once inside, we were greeted with the sights we love - brick floor and brick walls, stained glass, and the kind of long oak bar that Hollywood can only dream of recreating.  For being haunted by the ghosts of diplomats and presidents past, it’s surprisingly low-key.  The most ostentatious things in the whole place are the cloth napkins. The room has an odd orange glow both from the fire for the brick oven pizzas and the orange and green stained glass above the bar. 

There are dull bronze owls with blinking orange eyes high on the wall above the bar next to the stained glass panels that read collectively:

“The wise old owl sat on an oak,
the more he saw, the less he spoke, 
the less he spoke, the more he heard.”

Turns out, in the 1920s, this was a Speakeasy.  During Prohibition, it was one of the few places in Baltimore that shipments of liquor from Canada and Mexico were distributed.  If the owls’ eyes were blinking, the shipment was in and all was well to party and ask to purchase the contraband.  If the owls’ eyes were glowing solidly, it was time to be silent until the feds were gone.

As the owls’ eyes were blinking upon our entrance, we settled into a table in the blissful air conditioning, remarkably having the bar to ourselves.  Texas ordered a “Tanqueray and Tonic in a tall tumbler with a tangy twist”, her version of a gin and tonic with lemon, though we needed an abundance of Advil after that alliteration.  As the bartender was quite exceptional in his duties, our afternoon’s exploration ended right there at The Owl Bar, and it became sort of a staple of our outings and remains that way for reunions.

Beyond having truly great bar food and a talented barkeep, it’s the history of the place that keeps us coming back.  None of us really care about where we have dinner before meeting there for drinks- it’s all about The Owl Bar for us.  In the evenings, there’s always a robust crowd from the neighborhood.  The crowd is generally ages 30 - 45, and politics dominates nearly every overheard conversation. The place is lousy with both lawyers and military, as one would expect so close to DC, but this is their neighborhood pub and a brick layer would be equally as comfortable as a diplomat. 

The Owl Bar is a place of conversation.  There is only one television, usually tuned to some sport or other, and the sound is always off - not that anyone could hear it anyway.  This is a place of connection - between people, and between the past and the present. Set in an old hotel that’s been rehabbed into condos, The Owl Bar remains defiantly Baltimore.

If all politics are local, then they’re some of the very few things left in the country that are.  It has become increasingly obvious to even the most casual observer that our cities are suffering from a glut of overly branded national chains.  Small businesses and even some local traditions have been forced to the sidelines to make way for overbuilt national chain stores that politicians feel will help their downtown revitalization projects. 

There’s no doubt that bland shopping centers with the same combination book/DVD/music stores, restaurants that mistake portion size for quality, and utopias of housewares are tax generators.  City councils love them, and clearly they’re well-patronized.  Yet they lack a certain inspiration - the hometown excitement of a business person that knows his market and has the freedom to take a risk outside the cookie-cutter corporate model.

The term “defiantly local” is being used regularly these days.  It’s used, albeit sparingly, to describe the truly unique spots, the visionary ideas that work beautifully just in one place, that inspire their patrons with a sense of local pride and a place to try something new and different.

So, with the loss of some of these local cultural icons and the Vegas-izing of things like CBGBs, defiantlylocal.com will highlight those places around the country that are embraced by their local populations as the one place that defines a neighborhood or even a city.  Check back regularly for new updates and feel free to submit ideas.  Welcome!