east coast, fuck you. (pts. 3 & 4)

In predictable fashion yours truly got infected with lethargy once again and didn’t finish updating the story of my reading week before I went back to the East Coast for my second trip this year. I’d say that the 3000 word essay on the Canadian home front in World War II is a valid excuse, I did have to read a 300-odd page book cover-to-cover and the book had really, really small writing, like size 8 or something stupid. But in reality, I spent many an evening of the intervening period fervently playing Football Manager or watching myriad TV shows on my laptop when time could have been much greater utilised.

Regardless, I’ll continue where I left off. Rich and I had come to the end of our bender in New York City back in the middle of February and our destination was Boston via another 2 or 3 hour, cramped Chinatown bus. Boston is another really awesome place. The main thing that struck me about it was its cleanliness. Either the municipal cleaning staff people are working over time, or Bostonians are really well mannered. We weren’t there for long enough (a day and a half) to get a proper feel for what Boston was about. Besides having a guided tour of Fenway Park, our main activity was just walking about and taking in the city’s locales with pit-stops for beer and food. The Fenway Park tour itself was interesting, if a little superficial. The Red Sox’s ground is the oldest in use in Major League Baseball, dating back to the early 20th century and has a classic reputation. But the tour didn’t exactly take you into the deep depths of the baseball ground. The most exciting ‘off-limits’ area was where the commentators would be on match day, which amounted to two lines of green desks with a few swiveling chairs.

Allston in west Boston, the area where the hostel Rich and I were staying in was located, was a really cool area. It’s the student area near Boston University and, thus, has the sorts of dive bars, bohemian cafes and quaint shops that are a far-cry from the corporate chains that dominate the downtown area. The sorts of places you have to know about, as opposed to stumble upon. One bar we went to had something like 160 beers on tap, an unimaginable scale before I saw it. Quite how they manage to make money whilst serving beer that hasn’t gone bad is beyond me, the shelf life of a keg isn’t that long and I can’t imagine they get through all of those beers. Either way, it didn’t help my indecisive nature and I had to try really hard not to fall back to the lovely, cheap Pabst Blue Ribbon. There was the obligatory punk café with waitresses with coffee themed tattoos and another bar we went to was Charles Bukowski themed. It was a nice novelty that amounted to a few references here and there but I don’t think Bukowski ever had anything to do with Boston.

After some respite, a good day’s walking and a delicious slice of Boston cream cake the last stop on my reading week travels beckoned; a night in Amherst, Massachusetts, the home of University of Massachusetts and my friend Brandon. Another three hours on a bus, this time owned by Peter Pan, and I’d arrived in Amherst, a town of some 35,000 people of which the majority are students. It’s a weird place and a stark contrast to the likes of Boston, Philly and New York City, reminding much more of where I started my travels in Lewisburg, PA. It’s a town that seemingly has nothing to it beyond the fact that it harbours a wealth of students. However, in honour of my visit, Brandon went and organized a 9-band house show/party in his own house that, if my memory serves me correctly, he successfully organized in about 5 days. This was what impressed me about Amherst, it has such a closely knit DIY/punk community where people are much more interested in their local bands and supporting local music than they are for other touring bands. I think this comes partially down to the backwater location in the depths of New England where the nearest big city is 3 hours down the Mass Pike. Bands don’t go through Amherst a great deal so they create their own scene and it’s refreshing to see.

Sadly, the house show was cut short far too early. Over one hundred and fifty people turned up to Brandon’s abode and by about 12.30 or 1 the filth had arrived to shut the show down due to noise complaints. Annoyingly, it was by this point the Pabst was allowing me to feel uninhibited enough to begin mixing among the throng of crusties and punks, where I only knew Brandon. Even worse, I didn’t get to see Brandon’s band, Time and Place. And even worse than that, Brandon and his housemate Jack got arrested because Amherst is a university town there’s a by-law that means that the homeowner can be arrested in times of excess noise. Fucking police. I guess the drama of it all was quite exciting, but at the same time it cut my night real short and put everyone in a pretty angry mood and when I was only there for that night it put a dampener on the visit.

All that was left of my travels after that was a solo 20 hour journey back to Hamilton, Ontario that started at 1pm in Amherst and ended at 9am the next day. That journey in particular will leave me completely un-phased by any future bus journey. I can’t believe I used to dread the four hours from Leeds to London. The bus journeys can feel quite surreal at times. There’s something very unusual about being awake on a bus at 5 in the morning, the middle of Nowheresville in upstate New York, surrounded by people breathing heavily in their own unique yoga-like positions that allow them to sleep in that few feet square of space that Greyhound can spare. The sleep never feels like real sleep either, there’s always that sense that you’re on the bus, all it does is put a finger on fast-forward for an hour or so at a time. Even after all that, the sense of satisfaction that I expect when I finally reach my room is decidedly underwhelming. Even after 20 hours, I still don’t really want the journey to end.

As I said, the intervening period was particularly uneventful. I drank a few times a week, went to some sweet shows, missed some sweet shows, read some zines, did the minimum of uni work required, had a surprisingly awesome St. Patrick’s Day, fixed my bike, ate, shat, slept and worked on 63336. All whilst thinking that I need to be making the most of my last couple of months in Hamilton.

Around the beginning of March I was considering a trip back to Philadelphia to visit my pals again before I had to jump ship from this continent. Luckily, I was researching some ticket prices and stumbled upon the bafflingly cheap $2 return from Toronto to NYC. Without hesitation the tickets were booked and between 2nd April and 5th April the East Coast was blessed with my presence once again. Interestingly, I spent four times the cost of the return from Toronto to NYC on the single bus from Hamilton to Toronto.

In the preceding week to leaving, the weather for the weekend was looking incredible with temperatures set for the twenties, or sixties for those that believe Fahrenheit is an easier system. This, combined with a month and a half in Hamilton, spurred on the excitement for the weekend ahead. Luckily, I had the company of the Connie, Lucy and Emily for the initial trip down to New York. Less lucky was the realization that we were travelling down Easter weekend, so it seemed like there were about 300 people that needed to get on the bus to New York. So, an hour and a half and three full buses later, we finally get on a bus. However, the delays did not stop there. We had to wait at the side of the road for about 45 minutes just down the road from the Toronto terminal, then wait around 2 hours at the border for some reason unbeknownst to me and then we were granted the delight of a bus driver that wanted to stop every hour for a toilet break, even when there’s a toilet on the back of the bloody bus. Oh, and he also seemed to want to drive through New York, Pennsylvania and New Jersey to get to NYC, which, if you look on a map, is not the most logical route you’ll ever see. What all this incessant whining amounts to is that our bus that should have departed at 9pm and arrived at 7am actually arrived gone 11am, which really cut into the short amount of time I had in NYC. Nevertheless, I got a chance to look at the High Line Park, Central Park and draw a very straight-edged cock on an etch-a-sketch in FAO Schwarz. With the High Line Park, the city has made use of the disused above ground railway lines in the Meat Packing District of Manhattan to create this public space/garden over the course of a number of blocks. It is textbook gentrification in a sickeningly yuppie area, yet the concept of it is a really swell idea. However, at the moment it’s slightly underwhelming as the ‘garden’ aspect of it is no more than some shrubs a foot high and the majority of it is made up of concrete walkways. On the other hand, it has only been open for less than a year and it certainly shows some potential. I’d be interested to see how it has evolved whenever I make it back to NYC. Central Park was as vast and hectic as I imagined, especially given it was a public holiday and the weather was more than likely the best the year had seen yet. Apparently, it was still cold enough for the ice rink to be open though, so it was quite funny watching numerous people skating around and every step they take water splashing up off the melting ice. I was hoping to make it up either the Empire State Building or the Rockefeller Center, given the quality of the day but the huge, 2-hour queues made it an impossibility. So, I said goodbye to Connie and Emily and boarded the Chinatown bus to Philadelphia.

Philadelphia was essentially the whole point of the trip; heading back to see the people I met the in Philly the first time around. So, in short, I was pretty excited. Greeted once again by Rachel (she was gutted I didn’t drop her name in the previous blog, the dude abides this time) and after some initial faffing, we headed off to West Philly (yes, where Will Smith was born and raised on playgrounds) to a house show at the Terrordome. The show was pretty awesome, even though I barely watched any of the bands. The whole set-up made me a bit gutted that house shows aren’t a bigger part of the punk scene in England. Damn our old cities and their terraced housing. Whack were headlining the show and they played this instrumental baroque-esque punk that sounded a bit like The World/Inferno Friendship Society , mainly because they pissed around on an accordion. They were decent enough, however, and the kids certainly loved it. I felt like a party pooper for being the one of about four that weren’t dancing. Oh, how reserved we British are. I was devastated to hear that if I had been there a few days earlier I’d have got to have seen Paint it Black play to 300 odd kids, and if I were there a few days longer I’d get a similar privilege with No Friends. Woe is me. Afterwards, we went back to South Philly to indulge our livers, spin some hula hoops and have arguments about whose country is better. The usual.

Saturday involved the following in no particular order: hanging out in the sun, some Frisbee, some slapstick Frisbee injuries, nice beers, nicer beers, beers in the sun, eggs, Del Shannon, tofu, roofs, chemicals, Against Me! sing-a-longs, propositions, zombie apocalypse, clothing removal, cigarettes, sweet dudes and sweet ladies, a broken camera, Dan’s disgustingly sweet wine, 6.30am walks home, piggy backs, Descendents, nipples, bricks, toot, the crab and Arcade Fire. Essentially, I had one hell of a day/night/morning, one of the best in a long while, and it made me feel reminiscent of my friends back home, not just because of the Against Me! sing-a-longs at 5am, but in a way that I don’t think I’d be able to put into words without sounding like a tool, so I’ll use an image. But make those teeth a bit more crooked and chipped, the lipstick is optional. More like this. That sums up my feelings, just about.

I was, however, certainly feeling the pain of Saturday on Sunday morning after a meagre four hours sleep broken by the blinding daybreak light of Philadelphia and Rachel’s phone screaming in my ear. The hangover would, unexpectedly, manifest itself as a two-day marathon. The sorts of things I’d only heard from in the incessant whining of our dear Sam Hutchings every time he utilises his downing ability for a liquid that is not beer. The receiving end ain’t as fun and I became that once resented incessant whiner. But now I’m beginning to sound like one of those tits that jabbers on about their hangover in some vain attempt to let everyone else know how much they successfully consumed the night before. So I’ll stop. Sunday and Monday were spent walking in the sun, talking in the sun and sporadically eating foods, usually not in the presence of the sun. Two thumbs up goes to Govindas, where I had consumed a delectable vegan chicken cheese steak hoagie (sandwich, to the outsiders). If you’re ever in Philly and don’t partake in meat (or even if you do), then I thoroughly recommend this place.

I’d delayed getting on around three buses on Monday evening and then missed a bus due to waiting for Caitlin to come say goodbye, although it was worth it to see the dramatic, would-have-looked-better-in-slow-motion run. So when I finally got on the bus it was a pretty morose experience, not knowing when I would get the opportunity to see all these people again. It probably wasn’t helped by the beautiful sunset I got to gaze at whilst driving through NJ, listening to Ben Nichols’ depressing, haggard songs about the ‘last pale light in the west’. A pensive experience.

Another 15 hour journey in solitude, it’s never a great experience. The panic began to set in wandering around Penn Station in NYC not knowing where the hell the Mega Bus stop is, getting completely mixed directions from two policemen and eventually getting accurate directions from a tramp who wanted some money. Nor was it much fun waking up at 5am in the dreary setting of Buffalo, NY where the rain looks so set in and steady that you question whether it has either a beginning or an end. The sun of Philadelphia seemed a world away.

Thankfully, sun has now returned to the Golden Horseshoe, the temperatures are adolescent, lectures finished and the one and only hard exam I’ll have to take has been finished. So, now it’s time to make the most of my last couple of weeks in Hamilton. Hammer tattoos all round then, yeah?