Find the Cost of Freedom

Just got off the phone with cousin Ginger in Royal Oak, Michigan. (She's not been featured here in a while.)

She was at the mall and saw a lot of people wearing "Free Palestine" t-shirts, and she got really excited and rushed to the cosmetics counter at Parisian. They gave her a blank stare when she mentioned Palestine, but they were able to give her a couple of new Sumatran avocado-pomegranate eye creme samples. She ended up buying a .08 ounce vial of Fadeaway Amazonian Botanic Essence Night Magic for $415.

They said they'd heard of Palestine but suggested that she check the cologne counter at Macy's. The clerk was a little confused at first but convinced her that the Estee Lauder gift pack with a free Ralph Lauren Father's Day sampler (a $75 value) was a better deal. She ended up spending over $579 there but appreciated that the t-shirts got her thinking about some essential products that she sometimes overlooks. She also got a great new Malian shea nut butter lip balm and organic multi-bonded nail reinforcers.

Ginger said that you don't always get what you want, but sometimes you're steered in a better direction. It reminded her of the song she used to sing when she was with Up With People "Freedom Isn't Free".

Who Has Wings?

It's not very often I find something that brings me to tears, but hearing the radio broadcast of the PBS News Hour while wheeling down the 101 this afternoon did that. There was the tale of the Boyer family in Iowa and the plight of their 3,000 pigs in the recent floods. A tragic attempt to let them loose didn't work, and 300 of them were discovered later with initial euphoria that descended into further tragedy. It reminded me of the various reasons I don't eat pork, and this certainly reconfirmed it. I pass no judgment on Farmer Boyer who showed tremendous compassion for his livestock, and I feel great empathy for him as well. His ultimate decision was horrific but humane. It put might gripes about the current heat in San Francisco in proper perspective. There was a warning of the graphic nature of the story that was chilling just as audio. I don't know if I have the nerve to watch it when it airs in a half hour.

Parting Prairie Photos

A view of Oklahoma City's squat little skyline

that has changed little since I was a tiny tot.

It's a nearly perfect weather on this, my last night in Oklahoma City. Noted for brutal, long summers, the only time to be outside in Oklahoma is generally November through February. The rest of the year is so obscenely hot, filled with tornadoes or allergy inducing weeds that it's not worth bothering. No wonder no one walks and obesity is at epidemic proportions. Though still a bit too hot for me today in the mid-70s, tonight is just about right, not requiring a jacket and worthy of long walks.

Having heard from so many people about how grim and pathetic my shots of the place look so far, I thought I'd share a few shots almost worthy of a chamber of commerce brochure.
Further evidence of the much maligned "new urbanism" architecture is this development in the Deep Deuce District on the near east edge of downtown. Trying to ape Baltimore row houses, thedevelopers seem intent on creating ready-made history that is potentially interesting but feels a bit dishonest.


One part of Oklahoma City that boasts some incredible residential architecture is its near north side also noted for gorgeous tree lined streets and relatively intact pre-war commercial buildings.The bell tower of St. Luke's United Methodist is an example of successful 1950s modernist church architecture. Inside is an amazing pipe organ that takes up the entire wall behind the altar, looking like the skyline of Brasilia projected in Cinerama. I didn't want to interrupt the service in progress tonight to document the organ, so you might want to check it here.
Across the street is the Aberdeen Apartments, a still relatively upscale residence that I recall having a doorman. It reminds me of the similar building that my grandmother lived in and was one of many surrounding the southern perimeter of Kansas City's Country Club Plaza.

I suppose the Overholser Mansion on a corner a couple of blocks to the west would qualify as Prairie Gothic. As far as I know it still serves as a historical museum and is a surviving example of pre-statehood residential grandeur.
Further west on the same block is the Hightower Mansion. I recall my mother's stories of going to high school with one of their daughters who was brought to school by a driver. When I was a child, there was also a Hightower Building downtown with upscale shops and a tony restaurant in its basement called The Cellar.
I forget the name of this Tudor revival number, but it reminds me of a favored style further north in the much more overdone Nichols Hills, a wealthy municipality that is like a prairie version of Beverly Hills ingesting Vegas steroids. I was afraid to take photos up there because I have heard that the police will hand cuff strangers taking photos and send them straight to Guantanamo.

See, now wasn't I a nice boy on this, the Sooner state's Centennial, weekend?

A few final Oklahoma musings:

• I met a charming young woman running a new organic market using only locally grown produce in Norman, appropriately located on the town's historic Main Street. We were able to share recent first-person encounters with Barbara Kingslover.
• Three people today spotted me for being 12 to 15 years younger than my actual age. I could learn to love people here, though one was from New York and one from Ecuador.
• I had a long conversation about my upcoming Catalonia trip with an adorable coworker born in Seville but raised on the Canary Islands. It was a bit surreal to be getting tips on taking the bullet train to Madrid a few blocks from the Oklahoma River.
• The food here has actually been reasonable but not remarkable here. It's not all icky barbecue, toxic tater tots and all-u-can-eat buffets (though all are in abundance, and I am two blocks down from something called the Sonic Drive-In the emits fumes worthy of a nuclear dump site.) I had dinner tonight at a Vietnamese restaurant in a former Village Inn. Beneath mirrored golden dragons on a scarlet background, a jazz trio played Porter, Carmichael, Ellington and Jobin. An endearing mix of African American and 60ish Caucasian couples sauntered onto the dance floor to foxtrot in between martinis and vermicelli bowls. A hella-cute Amer-Asian waiter flirted with me while taking my with a mildly French accent. At the table behind me, a pair of Canadian businessmen discussed the emergence of switch grass as a viable biofuel to cultivate in the south central prairie. My meal may have been a notch or two below anything at the Slanted Door, but having such an acceptable and cheap meal with a glass of an overpriced Sonoma chardonnay after being seated immediately upon entering the place made for a pleasant last meal on the prairie.
  

Further Adventures in Okie-Homa

As I've stated here before, I consider myself a native New Yorker who had the misfortune of being born in Oklahoma. While New York is always the city where I feel most at home and grounded, I spent most of my formative years in the Great Plains, primarily Oklahoma City, Kansas City and St. Louis. So spending time in Oklahoma is always a bit surreal.

Since my trips to Oklahoma City are usually brief and business or family related, I tend to be isolated in the leafy, northwest suburbs with all the familiarities of Best Buy, Cheesecake Factory and Macy's. It's a part of town that has all the generic familiarity of Royal Oak, Michigan; Thousand Oaks, California; or Danbury Connecticut.

Even its once boarded up, vacant downtown area has since been renovated with a veneer of the dreaded "new urbanism" akin to Santana Row or the area surrounding AT&T Park back home in the Bay Area. The centerpiece of downtown is Bricktown, a completely safe, generic, manufactured place that could be anyplace in the U.S. and is in no way organic or reflective of the city's history, culture or diversity. You'll find all the people from the suburbs sipping Skyy martinis on the edge of the water that could just as easily be in a similar spot in suburban Toronto or the waterfront in Baltimore.

So tonight I decided to take a tour of the rarely seen parts of town, especially the areas immediately west and south of downtown. I've not been there in years. There has been absolutely no development of these areas, and their deterioration rivals anything in West Oakland or the worst parts of Detroit. There were enough spooky things and people that I feared slowing down let alone taking pictures. But I did manage to snap a few shots in the less dangerous parts of the decaying wonderland.
Just south of the river is a forgotten neighborhood called Capitol Hill (that is not on a hill, just a slight rise in the prairie). Once a working class gringo neighborhood, it is now the heart of the Hispanic community. All the taquerias made me feel like I was back home in the Mission. I saw one pedestrian in six blocks.
Just west of downtown I passed a hug homeless encampment larger than most in San Francisco. Ever wonder where the homeless folks in Manhattan went after the mid-1990s? Out west in Oklahoma, apparently, and they are much spookier than the ones in San Francisco. Going further west, still within a few blocks of the glistening towers of downtown is the abandoned, enormous Spanish style farmers market building that later served as an antique mall before being emptied.
In addition to homeless people, I've never seen so many stray dogs. Easily 50 in a five block radius. This guy seemed almost friendly until I started to open the car door, and he was more intimidating than the homeless people. He almost looked rabid.
He was hanging out with his buddies at this place. There were blocks and blocks of this type of structure.
This is the view from Capitol Hill heading back north to downtown, a weird mix of grain mills, auto shops and urban decay. Sort of Children of the Corn meets Blade Runner.
Back in the homogenized northside 'burbs, I was pleased to see a few non-franchised landmarks are still in operation.
And who could say no to a Big Bevburger? Uh, me.So, I ended up eating here, Zorba's Mediterranean, that had just opened on Monday. It was actually not half bad.
I also passed on getting a drink at the famed Hi Lo Club but could not resist nabbing a shot of this landmark bar.
A number of its patrons likely live here on Carey Place, a pleasant three block stretch of Hollywood/Spanish style bungalows. Back when I was in grade school, my aunt lived two blocks over and would take me to parties where her bachelor friends served daiquiris and played Scott Walker and Dusty Springfield records. A decade or so later I went to bachelor parties there on my own.
Despite its super-white image, Oklahoma City has a large Vietnamese population evidenced by this huge Asian supermarket. I could pass for Bolsa Boulevard in Orange County's Westminster.
And it wouldn't be complete without a shot of the landmark milk bottle building, now a French Vietnamese bakery.

Finally a shot of a once threatened pair of landmarks, the gold dome bank that how serves as the home Sierra Club and other non-profits and the tower patterned after Frank Lloyd Wright's only skyscraper, Price Tower (actually in Bartlesville, Oklahoma) is being converted into condos.

Okay, now you know more about this city than you ever wanted to know.

Vegas Prairie

I arrived late, was tied and didn't have a tripod, so I apologize for the quality of the shot, but I wanted to nab an image of the early 1960s Founders Tower in Oklahoma City. Unlike Kansas City, Omaha or other cities of the Great Plains, Oklahoma City retains little of its historic roots, not unlike Phoenix on that count. However, the Founders Tower has a great mob-era Vegas feel to it. The restaurant at the top used to rotate, though I've not been up there in 20 years when my aunt had her reception for her third or fourth marriage.

Sadly, the Continental Theater, one of the last Cinerama theaters built back in the mid-1960s was demolished this spring. I got this shot of it last August. There is an empty lot with a cyclone fence around it now.

Joad Road in Reverse

I'm heading off to Okie-homa-stan for a few days tomorrow, taking the Joads' route in reverse, albeit above not on Route 66. I'll try to take a few photos but can't promise how scintillating the scenery will be.

Vanilla Pride - The Ultimate Rebellion.

In a matter of hours, San Francisco will host its most irrelevant, boring, outdated event – the Folsom Street Fair. While we now have a viable alternative opportunity during Pride Week thanks to the increasingly popular Gay Shame, unfortunately there is not a local Folsom Street Fair alternate. We desperately need one. That’s why tomorrow night I’m puttin’ on my Dockers and heading to Kansas City for the fifth annual Blandfest, the nation’s definitive vanilla-appreciation event. This year promises to top 2006’s landmark event in Dubuque when they dedicated the glorious Mullet Wing at the Hairdo Hall of Fame and the Alberto VO5s put on a kick ass concert.

This year the event will include a reunion of Hootie and the Blowfish, an Up With People retrospective and two simultaneous cinematic galas – the Tom Hanks Film Festival in Country Club Plaza and the Sandra Bullock Film Festival at Crown Center.

The Alberto V05s rock the house at Blandfest 2006

As a true renegade and rebel, Junk Thief would much rather be at this edgy event in Kansas City instead of the tedious gathering in SOMA. I mean, how many times do you need to see a 68-year-old guy show off his pierced scrotum while a group of onlookers gape with the dogged orthodoxy of a bevy of elderly Rotarians from Toledo going through their weekly rituals? What’s that, oh right, that 68-year-old guy with the pierced scrotum actually is a Rotarian from Toledo.

So indulge me to once more give my take on the Folsom Street Fair. In 1962 it would have been fiercely renegade and shocking. By 1970 it would have reached a stage of still being mildly edgy but bordering on mainstream assimilation. By 1989 it had attained near retro relevance of paying homage to a long lost age. By 2002 and the post dot-com bust, it had attained the hollow pathos of a group of mourners continuing to put on a funeral years after the corpse was permanently planted six feet under. In 2007 it is, in a word, pathetic.

Mind you, I have no problems with sex, kink, innovation, freedom, self-expression and individualism, none of which will be on display at this event. It's just a bunch of technology and rituals. If I want that I'll head over to Best Buy and blow the one cute member of the Geek Squad. Perhaps it comes down to what I consider to be the major differences between creativity and sexual innovation in California and the East and Europe. As with many things, California seems to be obsessed with technology and not content or concept. As anyone can tell from the sloppy design of this site and inept editing of Junk Thief TV, I’m much more a concept and content sort of guy. Sure we all need our share of technology, but it’s not what I want curled up next to me at night.

So that’s why I’ll avoid the lame rituals on Folsom Street this weekend and opt for the Big Vanilla in Kansas City. It’s a good reminder that vanilla is too often misnamed as a non-flavor while the foul, fecal stuff called chocolate is revered as something holy. In its pure form, vanilla is neither bland nor white. And while an excess of chocolate will give you zits, a big gut and a headache, too much pure vanilla will give you a glorious, giddy high. But, of course, Vanilla Pride should not be repeated. As with any true, renegade act, it should be committed once and allowed to sear itself into our memory. To repeat it would turn it into ultimately banality, something the Folsom Street Fair organizers should have realized 25 years ago. And don't even get me started on body "art"!

UPDATE: News flash from Omaha, home of the Alberto V05s. The reason the above photo of the 5s has only four men is because Ralph Burnside, their counter tenor, has left the group and will be running a spanking booth at Folsom Street Fair. Obviously, this was horrifying for the group, but they've persevered and reformed as a quartet named the Blandies.

It Came From Springfield

One of the things I have not had a chance to mention about being with family members in Missouri was how one of my cousins was absolutely gushing about how wonderful her native Springfield is. (She could have passed for one of the civic promoters of Blaine, Missouri, in Waiting for Guffman.)

Besides being able to brag that native son Brad Pitt often brings Angela and the babies in tow, she claimed that it will soon be nationally announced that her Springfield is, in fact, the one where the Simpsons live. She said this with twinkling eyes and absolutely no hint of irony. I don't think irony plays well in the Show Me State.

Funny, though, that with the Simpsons movie coming out and a dozen or so 7-11s being converted into Kwik-E-Marts, I don't see a single one in Missouri or any of the nation's Springfieds. And as if that weren't enough, I have to drive all the way to Mountain View to get a Squishee and stock up on my Krusty-O's.

UPDATE: Well, whaddya know, cousin Dianne was wrong. Springfield, Vt., won out on this, and thus booming Springfield, Mo., will not have the honor of hosting The Simpsons movie premiere. Just makes you want to cry into your six-pack of Duff's beer, don't it?

Detroit, the American Mount Olympus

Detroit, that town of dead end dreams, has always fascinated me. So I was happy to end a short work trip with a visit to my cousin Ginger whom I see maybe once every three years. She lives in the same house where she grew up and has only modestly remodeled since her parents died a few years ago. That isn't a bad thing since the house is solid mid-century design, and fortunately never suffered through a "French country" phase. It has the same sunken living room with recessed lighting where we used to perform our favorite songs from Once Upon a Mattress at family gatherings when we were both four years old. Since she is six months my senior, she got to play Queen Aggravain to my Princess Fred. (Ginger also loved to play Gilligan's Island and would prance in haughtily as I sang "...and a movie star!")

Sometimes we would let her best friend -- we’ll call her Alice – play Lady Larken because she was so small and perky. Last night Ginger invited Alice over for dinner. Let's just say that there is not a lot of small and perky left in Alice.

The great thing about visiting a place like Detroit is that people like Alice will grab your hand and wistfully say, “San Fran-cis-co…” as if I were from Iberia or Lourdes. Oh, I’m sure those places get boring too. I recall Detroit being held up as the city of progress and industry as a child, so it's intriguing to come back and see what it is today -- its northside suburbs making you feel you're in Palo Alto, but the inner city a true rotting inner city, or a huge East Palo Alto. I can't wait to see Vegas crash and burn so I can go see it rotting away in the desert.

People here think that my fascination with Detroit is bizarre, but I consider it to be the American Acropolis, a mostly intact ruin that is still a relatively functioning city. Maybe that’s why I am a true Junk Thief, always more fascinated by the soiled jewel cowering in front of the glistening, flawless new ones. Of course, I probably spend more of my money on the new ones, hoping they will soon take on the patina and “integrity” of the junks bobbing in the waters beneath the shimmering towers.

Detroit, if approached from the water, as opposed from the south by car, can look stunning and prosperous. Legends like Marlene Dietrich took a similar approach by asking people to keep an appropriate distance in her later years. As I keep adding years to my vitae, I may start asking that people approach me slowly by sea in a canoe or Hong Kongese junk in order to behold the glistening tower from afar.

Is It Royal Oak or Just Michillinda Park?

I've lived in California long enough that it sort of shocks me to go back to the real Midwest, especially the postcard perfect, tree-lined suburbs to find myself not sure if I am in reality or a movie set. Royal Oak or Kalamazoo are not exactly Pasadena, or more appropriately Michilinda Park. Those Southland suburbs have posed as mid-America in movies and TV shows for so long that I have sort of accepted that the real thing should look the same. Adding to the confusion is that Royal Oak has enough vegan spots, tapas joints, bikram yoga studios and (as if sneering at Motor City to the south) Priuses to make me think I'm back in the Golden State. It's sort of like Canadian dollars -- familiar, but not exactly the same. Having made three business trips in one month, my sense of geography is getting increasingly fuzzy. Detroit is the one in the U.S., and Windsor is the one that isn't, right?

Neurotic Like Me: Where You're From

(Overheard at the Holiday Inn Express, Sycamore, Illinois)

Receptionist: Nebraska. Oh, wow.

Guest: Yes. Lincoln.

Receptionist: Oh, I've been there.

Guest: Yes, that's where I'm from.

Receptionist: And I'm from here. Fifth generation, Dekalb.

Guest: Wow.

Receptionist: But where are you from? I mean, your people. Where are they from?

Guest: Nebraska. We've always been from Nebraska as far back as we know.

Receptionist: Oh, yes. How could anyone not love Nebraska?

Guest: I know.

Receptionist: Well, there's nothing better than being where your from.

(Okay, I think that last line may be a worthy replacement for "Wherever you go; there you are.")

Dekorn on Dekalb

Ah, the Midwest. After arriving in O'Hare, I have had a chance to get more of my children of the corn tour. Well, Dekalb is not that rural, but the flatness here is what is always most striking, and there is no question that it makes an impact on the culture. When Almodovar made Volver, he said that La Mancha's flatness makes it an abstract landscape, leading to people being either great artists or insane. I'll be seeing a cousin in Michigan this weekend in semi-hip Detroit suburb Royal Oak. She complains that a one bedroom condo can go for as much as $100,000 these days. Oy, I don't think even Oklahoma is that cheap any more.

Goodbye city life!

Okay, I had my six hours in Chicago this afternoon before heading off to Dekalb, Decatur, Iowa City (which is really a big town, not a city) and eventually Battle Creek. How fitting that I've been finisning up the Omnivore's Dilemma on this trip in the heart of ADM, Monsanto and miles and miles of soy and corn.