Late Thursday evening I got a message from my friend Rob. "Rebecca and I are going, spur of the moment, to Savannah to check out some houses!" he said. "Do you want to come along?" (Rebecca will be going to school at the Savannah College of Art and Design next year.)
I had never been to Savannah, but I had fallen in love with both its sister cities-in-comparison, graceful Charleston and wild New Orleans, and so I said "yes!" And so, on Friday, off we went, and did not return until Monday evening.
The drive down was…well, the drive down. We read part of a romance novel in which the hero is a member of a secret organization named The Order of the Guardians of the Sword and frequents a brothel run by a Madam Venus. We also stopped at South of the Border -- well known for being the crappest, most horribly and weirdly racist, ugliest roadside attraction in the middle-of-nowhere, South Carolina. There are billboards for two hundred miles on either side of it, in classic sixties-roadside-attraction fashion. They used to feature more racist imitation-Spanish slogans, but now they're just things like "TERRIFIC! SOUTH OF THE BORDER!!" and "WORLD'S BIGGEST MINI-GOLF" (which cannot possibly be true).
We actually went in some shops. The selection was disappointing, by and large (not crap enough! Just the same crap/racism/homophobia/jingoism level you get in the beach junk stores on the Carolina coast), although the "Africa Shop" did make me desperately uncomfortable. That was more because it was trying so hard not to seem racist, though. There was this big sign about how "this shop honors all the Americans from Africa who gave their hard labor and their lives to contribute to our economic prosperity, and so all these goods are real African things made by real African people." Even standing in the shop makes the skin crawl. The implication that cheap fertility-god statues and loud prints can somehow atone for slavery; and within the context of an attraction whose mascot is a "lazy Mexican" figure who speaks in caricatured dialect…it's too much.
And it's not, sad to say, funny. I like stuff that's so horrible it's hilarious, and some of South of the Border (giant sombrero tower; large fiberglass animal statues; clear plastic "America Cross" with the stars and stripes on it and bubbles coursing through it) is that. But all together…it's too much. The nastiness overwhelms and cannot be dismissed, and you end up standing in the parking lot next to the giant gorilla and the garishly painted, enormous ice cream shop, and the entire world feels nauseating. (Though I would like to see the motel.) (And I'm of course glad we stopped there. Yes, I may turn out to have my limits on dreadful kitsch, but I reach those limits a lot later than most people.)
We got to Savannah about six in the evening and checked into the hotel in which Rob had cleverly gotten the very last room (!). It was a fine hotel, although there seemed to be a migrating party – first in the hall, then in the lobby, then by the pool, then back in the hall again. But as we repeatedly found out, Savannah is a party town. (This is one of the themes of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, too. I'd forgotten.)
We dropped off our stuff and headed into historic Savannah to wander around and have dinner. Savannah is, of course, lovely. James Oglethorpe (Huzzah! I have to say that as I am the founder of the Order of the Guardians of the Oglethorpe now. We are very miffed at having been cheated out of our #20 spot on the Best Orders list last year. Goddamn Shriners.) Anyway. As I was saying. Oglethorpe designed the place with a series of squares, in the middle of each of which is a delightful park with spreading live oaks covered in Spanish moss and monuments to various Revolutionary War heroes. Live oaks line virtually every street, too, making for a lacy, twilight quality of sunlight dancing over the hundreds of glorious Victorian houses. It's a city that knows how to use trees, and churches, and iron-wrought balconies. It's an elegant city – even its decay is elegant. The whole place slopes up (or down) to the river, along which, in the former warehouse district, are about a million gift shops your grandmother would love, a bunch of seafood restaurants, and a curious number of Irish and English pubs.
Overall, my impression of Savannah is that it is beautiful, but maybe too beautiful. It's a very wealthy-seeming city. Not that it doesn't have its obvious poor – as in every other Southern city, the dividing lines between poor and rich, black and white, are very clear – I could tell you, within a minute of driving into a new area, who is likely to live there. (I even know where most of the Jews live. I knew it before I even saw the reform temple and the Jewish Community Center. Savannah also has the only Gothic synagogue in the U.S., but it was sadly less impressive than I'd hoped.) The thing is, though, despite the configuration that is both melancholy and familiar, I found it hard to feel at home, or potentially at home, in Savannah – which is good, I think, for me. It would be too much to be in love with New Orleans, Charleston, and Savannah.
But I've left us exiting the car, walking to the river, for too long! We moved around for a little looking at restaurants, and finally settled on a Japanese place that looked like it would be both economical and tasty. (Economical Sushi being a very good name for a restaurant, we decided. That is not this restaurant's name. It is the name of a restaurant that has not yet been opened.)
It was economical and tasty (the portions were huge), but it also came with the Worst Waiter Ever. Before you start feeling sorry for him – let me say. He is the Worst in the way South of the Border is the Worst. A way that induces horror, rather than pity. He began his service by dropping his pen three times (that, I do) and chatting very intrusively about my tattoo, his past, and his ambitions. I expect people to ask me what my tattoo says, of course. That's part of why it's there. (I spread the Gospel of Shakespeare! As well as the Gospel of Oglethorpe!) What I do not expect, however, is this:
WWE: Whoa! Hey! [Touches me familiarly on the arm.] Yo! I won't pull down your shirt. You'll have to tell me what it says! [drops pen, sways from side to side, laughs weirdly and licks at herpes sore at the corner of his mouth.]
Me: Aieee! Oh, ah, sorry. What?
WWE: He he he!! [Points at tattoo.]
Me: Oh. It says "I am not furnished like a beggar, therefore to beg will not become me. My way is to conjure you." [using my Tattoo-Saying-Voice, which is supposed to be spellbinding.]
WWE: So you're into MAGIC?!! Ha!!!
Me: Actually, it's from As You Like It by Sh…
WWE: I SAW THAT MOVIE ONE TIME HA HA HA!!!!
Me:…..
Rob: It's a play. By Shakespeare.
WWE: Oh, dude one time I was! Yeah! I was in a play by Shakespeare it was um it was I played Banquo and I was like I auditioned and I did this like voy-ICE tha' WAZ fruuuum Mauwnchester, LOIKE," like that, it was a Manchester accent only at the time I didn't know that's what it was, it was an English accent, but later one time I met this guy from Manchester and I figured out what it was and the director he was my acting teacher he said "I'm casting you as Banquo but I will fire you if I hear any English accents" and I was like, I don't know why he wanted that, but apparently he didn't want any English accents so I played it without it, but the accent kept slipping back in and I was…oh one time I was also I read in Hamlet and what's that…um…that other one….it'll come to me…oh yeah! Romeo and Juliet!
Rebecca: [interrupting firmly and with presence of mind] We're ready to order.
Us: [ordering]
WWE: [forgets various bits of order in his repeating back; tells Rob not to order what he is ordering in an intrusive way, and because Rob is so nice he thanks WWE for it, and it turns out to be accidentally good advice.]
We eat. The food is, as previously mentioned, huge, but good. (I get SQUID, which of course as you all know I love, and which is my primary non-vegetarian transgression.) WWE comes back periodically and is weird. The end of the meal arrives.
WWE: So why are y'all in town?
Rob: Rebecca is going to the Savannah College of Art and Design next year and we're checking out houses.
WWE: What specialty?
Rebecca: Advertising.
WWE: I would choose a better major.
Us: [stunned]
Me: [testily] Rebecca here is an advertising genius.
WWE: Well, that may be. It's just that I never heard of anybody doing that. Here.
Us: [looking daggers]
WWE: I mean, I would choose a useful major, like writing. I'm a writer myself I one time I published this piece that I wrote one time in the..um..what was it called ..the Village Voice! Yeah, and so I, like I still write, um, yeah! And I would, like well, I think I should just like keep writing and stuff because I don't need to go to school or anything…
Me: I think that's wise.
WWE: Why?
Me: [Very southern voice] Oh, only because you clearly are not the sort of writer who benefits from classroom training.
Rob and Rebecca get up to go to the bathroom. While I am alone at the table, WWE comes back with the check.
WWE: [touches me again] Yo. Tell her I'm sorry. I feel like an asshole.
Me: Hm. You probably shouldn't, like, insult people.
WWE: I feel like an asshole.
Me: Mm-hm. Good night.
I feel that, on sum, we came out ahead on everything – we had a good meal and also have now met the Worst Waiter Ever, so we really got two things for the price of one. Also, I didn't know I was going to be that Southern until suddenly I was. I virtually never confront people who are rude – and I didn't, really. But. It was very Southern.
After dinner, we wandered around the streets. There was a band playing, and during one of the songs, the people in the plaza by the river started spontaneously dancing the Electric Slide!!! I was very impressed and endeared by this behavior, and danced along for a little while. I didn't fall in love with Savannah, but between the live oaks and a city in which the Electric Slide is still the street-dancing dance of choice, well, I can see why a person would. There was also (most emotional moment of the trip) a street lutenist.
He had amplified his lute with an electronic pickup, which sounds awful, but wasn't, and I crossed the street without even looking both ways when I heard it because my heart skipped and I thought "that can't be a lute, can it?" And it was. Somehow, standing there listening to the lute by the river was like coming home. I felt like crying from happiness. He also got all teary while playing one of Dowland's laments, and he played the song Dowland wrote for Richard Tarleton's funeral for me because we told him I was a Shakespeare person. I don't think I'll ever see a street lutenist again, but I'm very glad I heard this one.
The next day, Rob and Rebecca went to look at condos, and I wandered around downtown Savannah for a few hours. I was desperate for a book (why did I forget to bring War and Peace? A lesson: never, never leave home without your book) and did not want to buy either a) a cookbook or b) a book of stories about Savannah, and thus ended up walking and walking until I finally found a junk store, in which I bought a mystery novel and a 60s pulp called Countdown for Cindy: The Thrilling Story of Nurse McGee's Mercy Mission to a Space Station on the Moon!.
Countdown for Cindy sadly much more boring than it sounds. Although it might seem like the question of whether Cindy can hack it at A Space Station on the Moon, considering that "she would need to be more than a highly-trained professional nurse – she would have to be a sensitive and understanding woman" (from the back cover) would be difficult to answer, it turns out to be pretty much answered within the first page. Also, there are no moon monsters.
When R&R got back, we went to the beach for a while, then to look at one more condo, then to dinner. We ate at a nice Vietnamese/Thai restaurant, then had drinks at a really awesome Tapas place, wandered around, and went to bed. And in the morning we drove home (I read aloud from Midnight in the Garden for a large portion of the drive, which is fairly amazing, since I never used to be able to read in the car without getting sick. I think it was the completely straight and treeless interstate upon which we were traveling).
Right as we got back, a terrific thunderstorm started up, and through the deafening rain, I thought. "Yes. I'm glad to be home." Which is, after all, one of the best feelings about a road trip. So. Here I am again, and I'm glad.
I had never been to Savannah, but I had fallen in love with both its sister cities-in-comparison, graceful Charleston and wild New Orleans, and so I said "yes!" And so, on Friday, off we went, and did not return until Monday evening.
The drive down was…well, the drive down. We read part of a romance novel in which the hero is a member of a secret organization named The Order of the Guardians of the Sword and frequents a brothel run by a Madam Venus. We also stopped at South of the Border -- well known for being the crappest, most horribly and weirdly racist, ugliest roadside attraction in the middle-of-nowhere, South Carolina. There are billboards for two hundred miles on either side of it, in classic sixties-roadside-attraction fashion. They used to feature more racist imitation-Spanish slogans, but now they're just things like "TERRIFIC! SOUTH OF THE BORDER!!" and "WORLD'S BIGGEST MINI-GOLF" (which cannot possibly be true).
We actually went in some shops. The selection was disappointing, by and large (not crap enough! Just the same crap/racism/homophobia/jingoism level you get in the beach junk stores on the Carolina coast), although the "Africa Shop" did make me desperately uncomfortable. That was more because it was trying so hard not to seem racist, though. There was this big sign about how "this shop honors all the Americans from Africa who gave their hard labor and their lives to contribute to our economic prosperity, and so all these goods are real African things made by real African people." Even standing in the shop makes the skin crawl. The implication that cheap fertility-god statues and loud prints can somehow atone for slavery; and within the context of an attraction whose mascot is a "lazy Mexican" figure who speaks in caricatured dialect…it's too much.
And it's not, sad to say, funny. I like stuff that's so horrible it's hilarious, and some of South of the Border (giant sombrero tower; large fiberglass animal statues; clear plastic "America Cross" with the stars and stripes on it and bubbles coursing through it) is that. But all together…it's too much. The nastiness overwhelms and cannot be dismissed, and you end up standing in the parking lot next to the giant gorilla and the garishly painted, enormous ice cream shop, and the entire world feels nauseating. (Though I would like to see the motel.) (And I'm of course glad we stopped there. Yes, I may turn out to have my limits on dreadful kitsch, but I reach those limits a lot later than most people.)
We got to Savannah about six in the evening and checked into the hotel in which Rob had cleverly gotten the very last room (!). It was a fine hotel, although there seemed to be a migrating party – first in the hall, then in the lobby, then by the pool, then back in the hall again. But as we repeatedly found out, Savannah is a party town. (This is one of the themes of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, too. I'd forgotten.)
We dropped off our stuff and headed into historic Savannah to wander around and have dinner. Savannah is, of course, lovely. James Oglethorpe (Huzzah! I have to say that as I am the founder of the Order of the Guardians of the Oglethorpe now. We are very miffed at having been cheated out of our #20 spot on the Best Orders list last year. Goddamn Shriners.) Anyway. As I was saying. Oglethorpe designed the place with a series of squares, in the middle of each of which is a delightful park with spreading live oaks covered in Spanish moss and monuments to various Revolutionary War heroes. Live oaks line virtually every street, too, making for a lacy, twilight quality of sunlight dancing over the hundreds of glorious Victorian houses. It's a city that knows how to use trees, and churches, and iron-wrought balconies. It's an elegant city – even its decay is elegant. The whole place slopes up (or down) to the river, along which, in the former warehouse district, are about a million gift shops your grandmother would love, a bunch of seafood restaurants, and a curious number of Irish and English pubs.
Overall, my impression of Savannah is that it is beautiful, but maybe too beautiful. It's a very wealthy-seeming city. Not that it doesn't have its obvious poor – as in every other Southern city, the dividing lines between poor and rich, black and white, are very clear – I could tell you, within a minute of driving into a new area, who is likely to live there. (I even know where most of the Jews live. I knew it before I even saw the reform temple and the Jewish Community Center. Savannah also has the only Gothic synagogue in the U.S., but it was sadly less impressive than I'd hoped.) The thing is, though, despite the configuration that is both melancholy and familiar, I found it hard to feel at home, or potentially at home, in Savannah – which is good, I think, for me. It would be too much to be in love with New Orleans, Charleston, and Savannah.
But I've left us exiting the car, walking to the river, for too long! We moved around for a little looking at restaurants, and finally settled on a Japanese place that looked like it would be both economical and tasty. (Economical Sushi being a very good name for a restaurant, we decided. That is not this restaurant's name. It is the name of a restaurant that has not yet been opened.)
It was economical and tasty (the portions were huge), but it also came with the Worst Waiter Ever. Before you start feeling sorry for him – let me say. He is the Worst in the way South of the Border is the Worst. A way that induces horror, rather than pity. He began his service by dropping his pen three times (that, I do) and chatting very intrusively about my tattoo, his past, and his ambitions. I expect people to ask me what my tattoo says, of course. That's part of why it's there. (I spread the Gospel of Shakespeare! As well as the Gospel of Oglethorpe!) What I do not expect, however, is this:
WWE: Whoa! Hey! [Touches me familiarly on the arm.] Yo! I won't pull down your shirt. You'll have to tell me what it says! [drops pen, sways from side to side, laughs weirdly and licks at herpes sore at the corner of his mouth.]
Me: Aieee! Oh, ah, sorry. What?
WWE: He he he!! [Points at tattoo.]
Me: Oh. It says "I am not furnished like a beggar, therefore to beg will not become me. My way is to conjure you." [using my Tattoo-Saying-Voice, which is supposed to be spellbinding.]
WWE: So you're into MAGIC?!! Ha!!!
Me: Actually, it's from As You Like It by Sh…
WWE: I SAW THAT MOVIE ONE TIME HA HA HA!!!!
Me:…..
Rob: It's a play. By Shakespeare.
WWE: Oh, dude one time I was! Yeah! I was in a play by Shakespeare it was um it was I played Banquo and I was like I auditioned and I did this like voy-ICE tha' WAZ fruuuum Mauwnchester, LOIKE," like that, it was a Manchester accent only at the time I didn't know that's what it was, it was an English accent, but later one time I met this guy from Manchester and I figured out what it was and the director he was my acting teacher he said "I'm casting you as Banquo but I will fire you if I hear any English accents" and I was like, I don't know why he wanted that, but apparently he didn't want any English accents so I played it without it, but the accent kept slipping back in and I was…oh one time I was also I read in Hamlet and what's that…um…that other one….it'll come to me…oh yeah! Romeo and Juliet!
Rebecca: [interrupting firmly and with presence of mind] We're ready to order.
Us: [ordering]
WWE: [forgets various bits of order in his repeating back; tells Rob not to order what he is ordering in an intrusive way, and because Rob is so nice he thanks WWE for it, and it turns out to be accidentally good advice.]
We eat. The food is, as previously mentioned, huge, but good. (I get SQUID, which of course as you all know I love, and which is my primary non-vegetarian transgression.) WWE comes back periodically and is weird. The end of the meal arrives.
WWE: So why are y'all in town?
Rob: Rebecca is going to the Savannah College of Art and Design next year and we're checking out houses.
WWE: What specialty?
Rebecca: Advertising.
WWE: I would choose a better major.
Us: [stunned]
Me: [testily] Rebecca here is an advertising genius.
WWE: Well, that may be. It's just that I never heard of anybody doing that. Here.
Us: [looking daggers]
WWE: I mean, I would choose a useful major, like writing. I'm a writer myself I one time I published this piece that I wrote one time in the..um..what was it called ..the Village Voice! Yeah, and so I, like I still write, um, yeah! And I would, like well, I think I should just like keep writing and stuff because I don't need to go to school or anything…
Me: I think that's wise.
WWE: Why?
Me: [Very southern voice] Oh, only because you clearly are not the sort of writer who benefits from classroom training.
Rob and Rebecca get up to go to the bathroom. While I am alone at the table, WWE comes back with the check.
WWE: [touches me again] Yo. Tell her I'm sorry. I feel like an asshole.
Me: Hm. You probably shouldn't, like, insult people.
WWE: I feel like an asshole.
Me: Mm-hm. Good night.
I feel that, on sum, we came out ahead on everything – we had a good meal and also have now met the Worst Waiter Ever, so we really got two things for the price of one. Also, I didn't know I was going to be that Southern until suddenly I was. I virtually never confront people who are rude – and I didn't, really. But. It was very Southern.
After dinner, we wandered around the streets. There was a band playing, and during one of the songs, the people in the plaza by the river started spontaneously dancing the Electric Slide!!! I was very impressed and endeared by this behavior, and danced along for a little while. I didn't fall in love with Savannah, but between the live oaks and a city in which the Electric Slide is still the street-dancing dance of choice, well, I can see why a person would. There was also (most emotional moment of the trip) a street lutenist.
He had amplified his lute with an electronic pickup, which sounds awful, but wasn't, and I crossed the street without even looking both ways when I heard it because my heart skipped and I thought "that can't be a lute, can it?" And it was. Somehow, standing there listening to the lute by the river was like coming home. I felt like crying from happiness. He also got all teary while playing one of Dowland's laments, and he played the song Dowland wrote for Richard Tarleton's funeral for me because we told him I was a Shakespeare person. I don't think I'll ever see a street lutenist again, but I'm very glad I heard this one.
The next day, Rob and Rebecca went to look at condos, and I wandered around downtown Savannah for a few hours. I was desperate for a book (why did I forget to bring War and Peace? A lesson: never, never leave home without your book) and did not want to buy either a) a cookbook or b) a book of stories about Savannah, and thus ended up walking and walking until I finally found a junk store, in which I bought a mystery novel and a 60s pulp called Countdown for Cindy: The Thrilling Story of Nurse McGee's Mercy Mission to a Space Station on the Moon!.
Countdown for Cindy sadly much more boring than it sounds. Although it might seem like the question of whether Cindy can hack it at A Space Station on the Moon, considering that "she would need to be more than a highly-trained professional nurse – she would have to be a sensitive and understanding woman" (from the back cover) would be difficult to answer, it turns out to be pretty much answered within the first page. Also, there are no moon monsters.
When R&R got back, we went to the beach for a while, then to look at one more condo, then to dinner. We ate at a nice Vietnamese/Thai restaurant, then had drinks at a really awesome Tapas place, wandered around, and went to bed. And in the morning we drove home (I read aloud from Midnight in the Garden for a large portion of the drive, which is fairly amazing, since I never used to be able to read in the car without getting sick. I think it was the completely straight and treeless interstate upon which we were traveling).
Right as we got back, a terrific thunderstorm started up, and through the deafening rain, I thought. "Yes. I'm glad to be home." Which is, after all, one of the best feelings about a road trip. So. Here I am again, and I'm glad.
Labels: trips
0 Responses to “Savannah triplog”
Post a Comment