A Yiddish Yankee in Jefferson Davis' Court

Return to Alabama

2012-01-15T21:58:00.003-06:00

Last week I returned to Alabama for the first time since I left in August. I was there for a week and had a pretty good time.

Over the last five months, when I've told people that I lived in Alabama for the previous two years, they're quick to point out the obvious: "living in New York City must be a lot different than Alabama."

Well duh.

But the differences are not what people think.

The major difference between a small town and a big city is that in a small town almost everything shuts down by 10:00 PM. While there are still some places open past 11:00 PM and even as late as 2:00 AM, there are few late evening activities. Even if you're not going out much late at night, the fact that you cannot affects the feel of the whole town -- it feels more sedate.

The other major difference is that in places like Montgomery you cannot walk anywhere. Even a drug store you have to drive to. When you consider the fact that drug stores provide life saving medicine, it's pretty remarkable that in Montgomery you have to have a car to have access to this resource.

Another difference is that the cost of food, especially produce, is actually cheaper in New York and Philadelphia. At a place like West Side Market of Fairway, produce runs about 50% cheaper. Even Florida citrus is cheaper in New York.

Further, in Montgomery, the 10 percent sales tax applies to food. Having to pay not just tax on groceries, but 10 percent, is easily one of the top 3 craziest things about Alabama.

There were a few food products that seemed to be cheaper in Montgomery. One was wine -- prices were several dollars less than New York and Philly -- and Chobani yogurt, despite the fact that Chobani is made in upstate New York!

One thing New York and no other major west coast or northeast city has is Southern cooking. I did a lot of eating during my trip, and the highlight was my favorite restaurant: Red's Little School House. Their fried cornbread is amazing, as is the fried chicken livers and gizzards.

I also made it to another favorite restaurant -- Micheal's Table -- where the "WTFOMG Fillet of Beef" (five-year gouda grits, potato latke, bacon, olive oil poached egg, hollandaise sauce, garlic greens) was back on the menu after a year-long absence. Sadly, I only had time to swing by El Ray's for a margarita (which are better than most up north).

Parting Gift from the South

2011-08-21T08:57:00.003-05:00

While living in the Deep South for the last two years I haven't come across too much blatant racism besides the Civil War deniers who claim that the War of Northern Aggression was fought purely over taxation.

The other day movers were at my house taking my stuff away, and one of them asked me if there had been any problems in the neighborhood. I said no and asked him why he was asking. He said he was wondering because he had seen a lot of "colored folks" around my street. I tried to ignore the comment and not engage in conversation.

My co-worker came up with what should have been my response: one of those colored folk is my mother.

And a few minutes later, I could hear the guy talking to another one of the movers saying "colored folk" over and over again.

I suppose it's a good think that this guy didn't realize that I was Jewish. I assume like everyone else down here, he thought I was Italian, and thus, connected.

Red's: The Final Meal

2011-08-14T17:07:00.002-05:00

As my time in the south rapidly comes to an end, I put in my final meal at Red's -- my favorite southern comfort food restaurant.

Much of the fun of going to Red's is the drive there -- it's in the middle of no where: 20 miles down a state highway into farm country, then another 5 miles on county roads (so two lane roads, sometimes you go off the GPS map).

By far the best thing they make is their fried corn bread. I'm sure it's like 500 calories a piece, but it's amazing.

A friend bought me their cookbook so I could make the corn bread myself, and I was surprised to find that that secret ingredient is buttermilk, and apparently, buttermilk is used in everything, including fried chicken. Who knew? (everyone but me).

Why Women Shouldn't Vote

2011-07-18T15:20:00.001-05:00

So the local conservative weekly rag, The Alabama Gazette, printed the below Op-Ed (it's a must read):

Here's my exchange with the paper about it:

From:
To: alabamagazette@yahoo.com
Sent: Friday, July 15, 2011 4:27 PM
Subject: re: "The People's Voice: In God We Trust," July 8

To the editor:

You should be ashamed for publishing Ed Jone's misogynist diatribe ("In God We Trust," July 8). His claim that women are uninformed voters, that they are swayed by the looks of candidates and not their policies, that their votes have harmed our nation, and thus, giving women the right to vote was a mistake, is offense, unpatriotic, and anti-American.

If there is anyone who is an uniformed fool, it's Jones. In his column he repeatedly says that The Twentieth Amendment established womens suffrage. The Twentieth Amendment is the "lame duck" amendment. The Nineteenth Amendment gave women the right to vote.

The "Gazette" owes its readers an apology.

-Seth

-----

On Fri, Jul 15, 2011 at 5:35 PM, Loretta Grant <alabamagazette@yahoo.com> wrote:

Seth,

Thank you for your response! Response is what I want from our readers!

'This is a "think" for yourself publication. If only we would all stand up

for our beliefs and issues that just "make up mad".
We are the "People's Voice" and YOU are a thinking reader.

I am a woman. I read this, and knowing Ed as I do, I know he simply thinks

men and women are just made different. I agree! We do think about issues

differently. I am a free thinking woman or I would not own this newspaper.

This did not offend me. I did not completely agree with his slant on the

women voting issues, but it does make us examine ourselves to

find out what makes us vote for a particular person. Most people go to the

polls and "don't have a clue", or are told how to vote! Think...think...think.

Be more informed! That's the point!

Thank you again. Please keep reading The Alabama Gazette and feel free

to comment at any time!

Loretta Grant

Publisher/Managing Editor

From:

To: Loretta Grant <alabamagazette@yahoo.com>
Sent: Monday, July 18, 2011 9:34 AM
Subject: Re: "The People's Voice: In God We Trust," REPLY

- Hide quoted text -

Mrs. Grant:

You may know Ed, but I'm guessing most of your readers, including me, don't. All we have to go by is his printed word, and that tells a very different story than the man you may know personally.

I'm also curious that you have no comment on the fact that he repeatedly named the wrong amendment (and that fact checkers did not pick this up).

Respectfully,

-Seth

---

Seth,

I will print this email out for him. He does not personally operate a computer.

Thanks for your comments!

Loretta Grant

Seaside, FL

2011-07-05T18:56:00.013-05:00

This past weekend I went to Seaside, FL where The Truman Show was filmed.

Seaside is a master-planned community designed to be an idealized 1950s beech community.

Despite the extremely high level of kitsch, the town is pretty cool -- I'd vacation there.

Seaside is quite compact (there's very little space between homes), it's modeled to be a garden city with trees and brush all over the place, the architecture is diverse and interesting, and it's all very self-contained with lots of retail and restaurants in the town center.

With the exception of going to the supermarket, while there you could park your car and never have to drive -- everything you would need is in walking distance.

(Sand paths like this cut through the blocks so that people can walk from their homes to the beach in bare feet.)

There is one major flaw with the design of the town. Virtually none of the homes have parking on the property line (e.g. a garage or parking space). As a result, all of the streets are lined with cars, and they screw up the picturesque look of the town.

It's either a major oversight, or they grossly underestimated how many cars per home there would be. This website implies that the on-street parking provides a buffer between the street and sidewalk. While this is done in places like NYC -- it goes sidewalk, bike lane, parking, traffic lane, so that the parked cars protect the bike lane from traffic -- unlike NYC, people aren't zooming down the streets of Seaside at 40 mph. Most people were driving slower than I walk.

One other planning mistake was that they didn't put in bike lanes -- and lots of people bike around town.

More pictures:

On the way to Seaside I drove by this mega condo, Emerald Grande:

It's an interesting contrast to Seaside. Both have the same goal of being a self-contained vacation community -- it has its own mall, restaurants, marina -- but its design philosophy is part of our mall culture -- the building is pretty much a stationary cruise ship.

I can understand why some people will like that, but its huge size means it's always going to be congested with people.

The biggest difference between it and Seaside is that there is no where to walk -- walking is a major component of Seaside experience.

I also think buying a unit in a condo like this is a bad investment. Eventually someone is going to build a newer, glitzy condo tower, and next thing you know, you own a unit in a second rate building.

Finally, I spotted this disaster waiting to happen:

This putz is going to get someone killed. What does he think those clam shell type looking things everyone has on their car roofs is for?

36 Hours in Central Alabama

2011-05-25T19:03:00.010-05:00

A friend was in Alabama for a day and a half, so in the spirit of the New York Times travel section's “36 hours in…,” here’s an accounting of our whirlwind day and a half.

Saturday

9 a.m.
1) Selma

First stop was the tiny but historic city of Selma. We did the usual – walked across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, went to Brown Chapel and strolled by the homes in the historic neighborhood – and as a first for me, went to Live Oak Cemetery which is a picturesque southern Gothic cemetery overflowing with Spanish Moss.

12:45 p.m.
2) Mobile

Our pursuit of authentic southern food led us to The Brick Pit. It was simply the best Bar-B-Que I’ve ever had. The ribs melted in my mouth.

According to the menu: "We Smoke our chickens for 6 to 8 hours, our ribs for 12 hours and our pulled pork for up to 30 hours all over a blend of Hickory and Pecan."

2:00 p.m.
3) Dauphin Island

On impulse we decided to drive as far South as you can get – Dauphin Island. I’ve been before, but a first for me was going into Fort Gaines. If you’ve seen one Civil War fort you’ve pretty much seen them all, but the exhibits there depicted its role in the Battle of Mobile Bay, and the Fort’s latrine used the tides in a pretty clever way to remove waste.

Here's a fun little plaque about the cause of the Civil War.

Last time I was at Dauphin Island I noted how many oil rigs you could see. This time not only could I see more, but they appeared to be even closer to the island – only a mile or so away.

4 p.m.
4) Mobile.

Back in Mobile we walked around Dauphin St.

6 p.m.
5) Monroeville

For the second year in a row I attend Monroeville’s community product of To Kill a Mockingbird. Last year I sat in the balcony during the courtroom scene (which is staged in the Monroeville courtroom); this year I sat on the main level. While I wanted to go back to the balcony, because it filled up fast so I was forced to sit down stairs. However, I felt it was a more involving experience sitting in the main level. At times it felt like I was watching an actual trial unfolding in front of me.

Sunday

9 a.m.
6) Montgomery

In the morning we hit the highlights of Montgomery: Civil Rights Memorial, Dexter King Memorial Baptist Church (where MLK was pastor and organized the bus boycott), Court Square (site of the city’s slave market), Capitol Building steps where Jefferson Davis was sworn in, and Hank Williams’ grave.

11 a.m.
7) Red’s Little School House

For an early lunch we went to Red’s where I got in my once a month serving of fried chicken, fried corn bread, fried livers and fried gizzards.

1:30 p.m.
8) Downtown Birmingham

On the way to the airport we swung through downtown Birmingham. As always, I was impressed with its many well preserved turn of the century buildings. If there is any Alabama city that could have a vibrant downtown comparable to a northern city, it’s Birmingham. The infrastructure is there, but people and businesses just need to relocate downtown.

Alabama has a cockfighting lobby?

2011-04-18T09:08:00.002-05:00

Sometimes Alabama lives up to its reputation and there is no way to defend the state:

Cockfighting lobby likely to derail bill that would stiffen penalties for crime

Published: Friday, April 15, 2011, 8:00 AM
By George Altman

Alabama's cockfighting lobby appears to be on the verge of blocking yet another bill that would impose stiffer penalties for the crime, the bill's sponsor said.

State Rep. Jim Barton, R-Mobile, said that while House Bill 74, which would elevate the offense from parking-ticket levels to hundreds and possibly thousands of dollars in fines and potential jail time, has passed through committee, it probably won't be considered by the full House.

"The sentiment of the House - particularly a lot of the northern Alabama representatives - (is that they) do not want to deal with it," Barton said. "I think there's been a lot of pressure on those guys."

The pressure, according to Barton, has come from the Alabama Gamefowl Breeders Association, which has helped derail similar bills in recent years.

"Alabama has more important things to worry about than cockfighting," said D'Renda Lewis, the association's secretary.

Not only are the $20 to $50 maximum fines for cockfighting currently on the books sufficient, they shouldn't even apply to most cockfights in Alabama, which are not held in public places and are, therefore, legal, according to Lewis.

"The majority of people who participate in cockfighting in Alabama are not doing anything against the law," Lewis said. [more]

Philly Invasion

2011-04-05T22:07:00.004-05:00

My local Fresh Market supermarket carries Di Bruno Bros. cheese spreads. Incredible!

I saw the containers from a distance and they looked familiar. When I got in close I was blown away. This is Di Bruno Bros. in Ala-freakin-bama!

I'm going to have to talk to the manager about stocking other Di Bruno Bros. food products.

Doo-Nanny

2011-03-29T23:06:00.011-05:00

This past weekend I went to Doo-Nanny. It's an "outsider art folk show" in the middle of nowhere in Alabama (which I define as 40 miles off the interstate).

Artist Butch Anthony hosts it on his 80 acre farm. At the end of the night there is the Doo-Nanny Burn which is modeled after Burning Man.

If it sounds familiar, the New York Times wrote an article on it last year.

It was pretty easy to spot the tourists like me and the people who were really into the spirit of the event.

The permanent exhibit on the compound was the Museum of Wonder.

It featured arrangements of found objects, which I suppose is the definition of "outsider folk art."

There were too many people going in and out to take in all the details. If it wasn't for the fact that it is 1.5hrs away, I'd like to go back.

Elsewhere on the grounds there was the art show which I felt was more people peddling their junk than actual art show. I say junk because for the most part, it lacked the wit of the pieces in the Museum of Wonder.

Perhaps the main attraction of the show is the Doo-Nanney Burn.

Here's the effigy that they burned (yes, it's what you think it is):

Here's Anthony's explanation (from the Times article):

“There’s a 100-foot vagina we’re fixing to burn,” Mr. Anthony remarked recently while filling a garbage can in the back of his battered truck with water, a precautionary measure, one gathered, in case things got out of hand.
But why a vagina? “They’ve got a burning man, why not have a burning woman?”

I didn't stay for the burn because I didn't want to spend the entire day out there -- I got there at 1:30 pm; the burn ends at midnight. And I lacked the motivation to load up my car with food and camping equipment.

This was definitely one of the more interesting uniquely Alabaman experiences I've had.

All of my pictures:

Oh. On the way there, I passed sections of forest that looked to have been hit pretty hard by forest fires.

It's not racism, it's herritage...and denial aint just a river in Egypt

2011-02-20T17:46:00.001-06:00

This past Saturday the Sons of Confederate Veterans celebrated the founding of the Confederacy by reenacting the swearing-in of Jefferson Davis on the Alabama State Capitol steps (where Jefferson Davis was sworn-in 150 yeas ago).

Predictably, their message was that the Civil War was about States Rights and that they were honoring the brave men who fought for this noble idea.

I was thoroughly creeped out from being surround by all of these lunatics -- I was less uncomfortable when I visited the gas chambers at Dachau. I'm not kidding.

Maybe it would be unfair to label them all as racists, but who puts stickers like these on their cars?:

No one threatened me, but one guy came up to me and said, "do they know a Yankee is here?" I wasn't wearing anything to indicate that, but I obviously didn't fit in.

The most lunatic speech came from this guy:

Besides bringing up Harry Potter, he compared his plight -- a white man who is maligned by liberals because he speaks the truth of what the Civil War was really fought over -- to the Civil Rights Movement. He told the crowd that like Rosa Parks, it was time they stood up from the back of the bus and walked to the front. So I guess he must feel like he's living in an apartheid state. And there's no doubt that Rosa Parks' name was invoked because we're in Montgomery, AL, home of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, and only several hundred feet away from MKL's church where the boycott was organized.

I was happy that Bill Maher focused on this event in his New Rules segment on Friday's show. My local friends weren't happy that Bill attacked all Southerns, but my response to them is that even though the Sons of Confederate Veterans do not represent the majority of Southerns, the majority is complicit by never speaking out against these Civil War revisionists. There should have been a counter protest, but there wasn't one. And while these guys obviously have a Constitutional right to assemble and say whatever they want, I don't think the State should have allowed them to hold the event on the Capitol steps given that they are slavery deniers.

All my pictures from the day:

Someone really likes 'The Dukes of Hazzard'

2011-02-06T23:07:00.003-06:00

I spotted what appeared to be a near perfect replica of "The General Lee" in town today:

The confederate battle flag was on the roof and "01" was painted on the doors. The only apparent dissimilarity was that the doors did not appear to be welded shut.

Alabama Gov. to non-Christians: Go to hell

2011-01-19T22:35:00.005-06:00

Our new Governor, on his first day on the job, speaking at an MLK day event, at MLK's church, had this to say about his non-Christian constituents:

"So anybody here today who has not accepted Jesus Christ as their savior, I'm telling you, you're not my brother and you're not my sister, and I want to be your brother."

While there is some context to the statement, it's pretty scary that when writing the speech no one thought someone might take issue with telling non-Christians that the Governor is not their "brother."

The good news for the Governor is that there aren't many Jews in Alabama, and I doubt any of them voted for him.

Unsealing Revelation's Mysteries

2011-01-18T23:09:00.002-06:00

I received this in the mail the other day:

Unsealing Revelation's Mysteries

Unfortunately I've been out of town during some of the early seminars, but nothing is going to keep me from missing "How to Postpone Your Funeral."

It turns out that this church is local and they have podcasts. Listen to this one and be sure to listen for at least a minute. You'll see why.

Panic at the Supermarket

2011-01-10T22:10:00.003-06:00

An inch or so of snow and some freezing rain was predicted for Sunday through today (Monday), and sure enough, on Friday people began clearing out certain items at the supermarket, most notably bread.

It doesn't take much snow to legitimately shut things down here in Alabama -- neither the city nor state have many plows or really any salt stockpiled.

But what I don't get, is the level of fear that is induced when people hear that it could snow.

People react like they're going to be trapped in their homes for days, maybe weeks, and will be completely shut off from food.

Let's pretend for a second that this really could happen. Why is that people think they can subsist on sliced bread? There are a lot of other things in the supermarket that have substantially greater nutrional value as well as a longer shelf life, like canned fruits and vegetables. If I thought that a snow apocolyspse was really imminent, I'd stock up on canned foods, not wonder bread.

The Check

2011-01-02T22:39:00.003-06:00

Here's a cultural difference I've noticed between the Dixie and the North.

When a group of people receive the check for a meal up north, it's always a single check. In the South, probably 65 to 75 percent of the time the server either asks the table if everyone wants separate checks, or they go ahead and do it without asking. And this seems to be indicative of the people in the South. When I'm out with people and the server gives the table a single check, someone always ask if the table can have separate checks. Up north I find it is very rare that someone asks for separate checks -- almost everyone seems find calculating what they owe.

While I suppose that always having separate checks does make it a lot easier to calculate what you owe, especially when everyone at the table has ordered a lot, there's something anti-social about it. When you ask for the separate check, you're pretty much saying that you don't trust the people you're dining with to properly split the bill.

There have certainly been times where I knew someone calculated wrong and I had to over pay by a few dollars, but my philosophy is that it will all even out in the end. So maybe the folks up north are actually more friendly than people in the South?

Alabama: Where Pontiacs go to Die

2010-11-19T09:59:00.005-06:00

I’ve been traveling a lot in the last two months, so I haven’t had time to post any new updates. But right now I’m on a long flight with a baby that won’t stop screaming, so now seems like a good time to review my first year in Dixie.

When I think of the last year living in Central Alabama, three things come to mind: college football, sunglass chums and Pontiacs.

College football

The obsession with college football goes beyond the degree to which Eagles and Giants fans vicariously live through their respective teams. When two people in Alabama meet, within 5 minutes someone will say: Auburn or Alabama?

On Saturdays everyone is at home watching football. There are a few restaurants in Montgomery where you actually do need reservations, especially on a Saturday night. If Alabama or Auburn is playing at night, the restaurant is empty. And when I say empty, I mean it’s the bartender, the wait staff and me.

My theory with the obsession is that people view it as a form of social mobility. By going to either the University of Alabama or Auburn University, you’re part of a special club, and you maintain your membership by being a vocal fan – it’s how you let everyone know you went to one of the two schools. It’s like how people tie their identity to a country club. And what’s really wild about it, is that the only thing the schools are known for (whether deservedly or not), are their football teams. Let me try and explain it this way: when pretentious assholes like me brag they went to an Ivy League school, we’re trying to showoff that we’re smart, or at least people should think we are smart. When people say that went to the University of Alabama, they’re bragging about the football team – and people here are impressed that they went to a school with such a good football team. People are so obsessed with the teams that it’s not uncommon for parents to tell kids that they can only apply to one school.

On the upside, Alabama and Auburn fans are much more pleasant than Philadelphia sports fans. No one is throwing batteries, puking on children, or beating people to death.

Fashion

There are some fashion trends that are distinct to the Deep South, most notably sunglass chums.

All the locals wear them – everyone from construction workers to attorneys. I think that people believe it communicates ruggedness. I think they look ridiculous. I bought one and tried it out to see if I was missing anything. I wasn’t.

Pontiacs

Have you ever wondered why you see so few Pontiac cars on the roads up north? It’s because they’re all down here. While most people have at least one SUV or pickup truck, the sedan of choice is by far a late model GM P.O.S. Pontiac (completing the trifecta of gas guzzlers).

The 1980s time warp

In many respects, Alabama is still in the 1980s. While there are surprising number of restaurants that are into only using locally grown and raised organic food, they are up against a culture that believes a meal should not cost more than $10. New restaurants have a very hard time convincing people that it’s reasonable to charge $20+ for an entrée.

But more emblematic of the 1980s culture is the lack of urban redevelopment. The major cities – Montgomery, Birmingham, Mobile, etc. – all have vacant downtowns. There’s no retail, and few restaurants and bars. The problem is urban sprawl.

Here’s what city planning in Alabama amounts to: someone builds a new planned community in the outskirts of the city, and strip malls are built nearby to provide retail and food for the people living in the community. A few years later someone builds another community even farther out – being surrounded by pastures is selling point. A new strip mall or two is built near them. The process then keeps repeating itself over and over again. The homes in the old communities are obviously not as nice as the ones in the newer, so people in the older communities move out to the new ones. As a result, people are increasingly moving out of the city center to the city limits, and the geographic footprint of the city is increasingly expanding so there is still wide open land for new planned communities to be built on. The old homes and strip malls then become dilapidated.

The most cynical I’ll get is that people here have unknowingly chosen to live in mediocrity. No one has figured out the connection between paying little in taxes and having roads that have not been repaved in a two decades, public schools that are only surpassed in failure by Louisiana and Mississippi, and an inadequate number of police officers. As ass backwards as Philadelphia can be, Montgomery makes it look like the most efficiently run city. In Philadelphia, if you call in a pothole it will typically get repaired within 24 hours. There are heavily used roads down here that look like Dresden after the bombing.

But to give you a real idea of the mediocrity, there is no curbside recycling. While every city in America is moving to single stream recycling and expanding the various waste they recycle, the Mayor of Montgomery decided to get rid of curbside collection because he said it costs too much. Now this is total bogus because the dumping fees for recyclables are less than waste. Further, there is already twice a week trash collection. How about eliminating one day of trash collection – if people have curbside recycling they’ll have less trash, and won’t need twice a week collection. I feel like I’m the only person in the city who realizes this.

And the whole recycling thing gets better. The city has drop-off sites where you can leave your paper and cardboard, and one or two of the sites will supposedly accept glass and plastic. Nobody uses them because it’s a pain in the ass to drive out to them. Even the Mayor has acknowledged that the recycling rate has plummeted since he eliminated curbside. So what’s his solution to this? Add more drop-off sites that are not used. I’m going to find out where he lives and leave my recyclables on his lawn – turn it into a drop site.

Alabama National Fair

2010-10-15T00:00:00.002-05:00

Last night I went to the Alabama National Fair.

Yes, it's a national fair. Nothing on the website seems to indicate why exactly it is a national fair as opposed to a state fair, but I assume it's because the contests at the fair accept entries from non-Alabamans.

Anyway, it's a pretty typical state fair with livestock, competitions, food, games and rides.

The major attraction at the fair was Krispy Kreme's Donut Burger.

These things have been around for years up north (a google search produces hits going back to 2006). It's simply a bacon cheese burger with a glazed donut for a bun (aka "The Luther"). It contains nearly 1,100 calories and 67 grams of fat. Of course I had to have one and document the experience:

It tasted like a burger with a donut. And it was delicious.

Something more unique to the fair was pig racing.

Unfortunately, it didn't quite live up to the hype.

For each race the MC rambled for about 5 minutes and then the actually race took about 15 seconds.

But this one race was pretty good.

Instead of going around the track the pigs had to swim through a water obstacle. Notice how far the last pig manages to jump.

Baseball in ATL

2010-10-09T10:11:00.007-05:00

Last Saturday I went to the Phillies-Braves game in Atlanta.

I wore a Ryan Howard t-shirt and Phillies hat and expected to get crap for it. From going to Eagles games since the 1980s, I'm pretty much expect a few fights to erupt during division games between fans of the opposing teams.

So I was surprised how polite Braves fans were. No one said anything. When I was climbing over seats to get back to my row Braves fans volunteered to hold my food. After the game they were coming up to me joking how I ruined Bobby Cox appreciation Day (Phillies won 7-0). Had this been Philadelphia, a more likely reaction from hometown fans would have been voluntary vomiting.

I was also surprised with how many Philadelphia fans were at the game -- easily 10% of the crowd. Some people must have been from Philadelphia -- roundtrip flights on Saturdays are only $150 and Braves tickets are very easy to get last minute. Despite the Braves still being in the wild card race at that point, I was able to get tickets three days before the game.

Lawn Care

2010-09-19T22:34:00.004-05:00

It may nearly be October, but down here in Central Alabama, every day it's still sunny, in the 90s, with a almost no rain.

On my way home after work I've started to notice people watering their lawns. I took a close look at my lawn the other day and saw that it was no longer a healthy green. It was beginning to go yellow from the lack of rain. While the landlord takes care of cutting the grass, I suppose making sure the grass doesn't die is my responsibility -- he's not going to send someone out to turn a hose on it for a few hours every day.

Because water is including in my rent, I took it upon myself to get one of those cheap sprinkler attachments for a hose and join in my neighborhood's nightly lawn watering ritual.

And that's when it hit me. I've become everything I've hated: a suburbanite. Now that I'm taking care of my lawn, there's no denying it.

The whole thing confirms why I hate the suburbs. Lawns are total money pits. They don't do anything except cost money and eat up time.

Lizards

2010-09-13T23:54:00.004-05:00

I found this running around my apartment the other night:

It makes Central Alabama seem so much more exotic than it really is.

The South is Rising Again in Selma, AL

2010-08-25T23:55:00.008-05:00

This article speaks for itself:

Selma Council chambers erupts after calls for resignation

Story posted 2010.08.25 at 11:08 AM CDT

Posted by Cody Holyoke

SELMA, AL (WSFA) - The City Council chambers had to be cleared Tuesday night after things became heated between council members and protestors.

A group of demonstrators say council president Dr. Cecil Williamson was a member of the League of the South, a neo-confederate group.

Protestors also allege Williamson hosted an event and headed a group honoring Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest, who they say murdered hundreds of black soldiers and became a member of the Ku Klux Klan.

For those reasons, protestors called for Williamson's resignation.

"We don't have any legal jurisdiction to throw him out, but we're hoping that, if he really loves and is concerned about the city, that he will respectfully resign," explained Franklin Fortier, president of the Selma-Dallas County branch of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
Once everyone entered the council chambers, the meeting soon erupted before members could even get to business.

With tension at a fever pitch, Mayor George Evans called for order.

"That's the message on the street. That you all called everybody and told them to come here and raise hell, so they couldn't arrest everybody," he told the crowd.

When that didn't work, the council cleared the chamber for nearly half an hour. Then, hour after hour. members made their way through the agenda, while police officers watched the crowd.

Councilman Samuel Randolph, the sponsor of the resolution, read the measure aloud.
"We request that Cecil Williamson voluntarily resign from his position," Randolph said.

After discussion, the majority of the council rejected it. Williamson denies most of the claims and says he's not a racist.

"The council expressed itself and voted it down overwhelmingly, and I hope that will be the end of that part of it," Williamson said.

Meanwhile, some residents are left shaking their heads, hoping the city can get it together and move on.

"I'm just amazed that, in this day in age, and in this historical city, that this is what's happening. You know, we have bigger issues here," said John Carroll of Selma.

Meanwhile, the controversy will continue. Protestors say they rally outside City Hall and the headquarters of the local newspaper until Williamson is no longer council president.

Stay with WSFA 12 News for the latest developments in this story.

--------------------

This is all happening 50 miles from me.

But hey, Philadelphia City Council has had its own run-in with the KKK recently.

Street numbering madness

2010-08-23T21:37:00.009-05:00

Without doing much research, let’s accept the following as fact: until the 19th century, the street plans in cities were not planned, they just grew organically. Philadelphia was one of the first planned American cities using a grid system (1682) with a planned numbering system -- streets running north-south were numbered and east-west streets were named after trees (to reflect that the City was a garden city).

Of course, the problem with using trees as the names of streets is that even with the logical grid system, if you’re unfamiliar with the City there’s no way to know where Walnut St is in relation to Pine St. So not surprising, in the Commissioners' Plan of 1811 for Manhattan, it was decided that everything above 14th St would be laid out as a grid, and both the north-south and east-west streets would be numbered streets.

Birmingham, AL is relatively new city (founded 1871), and before anything was built, the planners decided it would be a grid with all numbered streets.

Now you’d think being such a new city it would have the most logical street design and numbering system because the planners had the benefit of seeing what worked and failed in other American cities over the last 100 years -- Manhattan’s 1811 plan had been around for 60 years. But something went terribly wrong. As my friend describes it, the City ran out of street names.

Here’s a map of part of Birmingham:

I was in a car with my friend; he was driving and I was navigating. We were going west on Dennison Ave and needed to turn at 16th Way SW. I told him to do this, but not to get excited when he saw 16th St SW or 16th Pl SW -- neither were our turn; we were looking for 16th Way SW.

The whole city looks like this. It appears that streets were added after the original plan, and instead of giving the streets proper names, Birmingham wanted to keep as many streets as possible named after numbers. It's led to total insanity.

So going north to south, there's 31st Alley N, 31st Ave N and 31st Alley again -- except there's no directional suffix. And then 31st Alley becomes 30th Alley N. WTF?

How about this:

From east to west there is:

1st Alley W
1st St N
Center St N
Center Alley W
Center Pl W
1st Alley W (again)
1st St W
1st Alley W (again)
1st Place W

It's massive FUBAR.

Memphis, TN

2010-08-09T23:02:00.007-05:00

Last weekend I was in New York and I went through hell flying back to Montgomery. I wrote Delta a 1,200 word complaint letter, but in short, here’s what happened:

I checked-in online the night before my flight on Saturday. When I arrived to Newark airport on Sunday evening I found out that my flight to Atlanta was delayed so late that I would miss my connecting flight to Montgomery. The line to see an agent at the counter was easily 50 to 75 people long, and there was only one person at the counter. Meanwhile, there were three people working the Medallion status counter doing nothing.

Realizing that if I wanted a chance of rescheduling the flight that night, I needed to talk to someone on the phone ASAP because it could be hours until I would get to the counter. After calling a few random number on the Delta website I was able to get someone on the phone who could handle booking. At first they suggested that I fly to Atlanta that night and get a new flight to Montgomery in the morning. I asked if they would pay for a hotel, and they said no. I asked if that meant I would have to pay for one myself or sleep on the airport floor, and they said yes. Instead they booked a new flight for me the next morning (this time flying through Memphis).

Now let’s pause here a moment. Had Delta notified me of the delay, I would have never gone to the airport. Penn Station to the Newark airport costs $15 on NJ Transit. So as I see it, Delta owes me $30 for a unnecessary trip to the airport (and then back to Manhattan). Had I received email notification about the delay, I would have never gone to the airport. And they definitely have the technology to do this. As soon as my flight was changed I received email notification and an automated call.

My flight the next day was at 6:30 AM. So I went to bed early, got up at 3:50 AM, got to the airport at 5:00 AM, and the same thing happened all over again. My flight to Memphis was delayed so late that I’d miss the connecting flight, I needed to see someone at the counter, the line was 50 people long (despite it being 5:00 AM), and there’s one person working the counter while there were three at the Medallion status counter. And had Delta altered me that my flight was delayed, I would have gone back to bed at 3:50 AM.

I got to Memphis at 9:30 AM, but my new flight to Montgomery wasn’t until 2:30 PM. There was no way I was going to sit in the airport all day, so I got a taxi and headed to downtown Memphis. I felt like doing some sightseeing would somehow spite Delta.

The taxi dropped me off at Peabody Hotel in downtown Memphis. It’s best known for its ducks, which I did not see while I was there.

After checking out its ornate interior I walked around the surrounding downtown area.

There were a number of well manicured pedestrian friendly streets that featured restaurants, bars and clubs, but being the middle of the day and extremely hot, there was no one around. There was also a trolley line that went through most of these streets and connected to various points of interest in the downtown area. So the city does have a well thought-out tourism strategy, especially compared to other southern cities.

My time was limited, so I headed to the city’s The National Civil Rights Museum which has been built at, into and around the Lorraine Motel – the site where Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated.

The façade of the main museum building looks like the motel as it looked in 1968. Out of the various civil rights museums I’ve been to so far, this was by far the most comphrensive of the civil rights movement. At this point I’m not learning much new from these museums, but I still spent about an hour and a half there.

One of the advertised highlights of the museum is that they’ve recreated the rooms that King and his entourage stayed in. It’s kinda cheese since it just looks like a period motel room. More significant is that you can lookout (but not stand on) the balcony where he was shot. As one woman there summarized to her young daughter: “You’re standing where a very important event in history happened. You don’t understand do you? Well, you’ll understand in 10 years.”

The museum has taken over the Young and Morrow Building across the street -- it's the former rooming house where the shot was fired that killed King. In it there is a exhibit dedicated to the assisination and you can lookout from the window where James Early Ray fired his gun. When you think about it, it's kinda interesting that they've turned a crime scene into a museum.

After leaving the museum and looking for a taxi, I spotted this sign in front of a mini-mall:

It's pretty clear who they're trying to keep out. Next time I'm in Memphis I'm going to go in there wearing my jeans low, with hat sideways, and a shirt that says:

I Love Dick...

Nixon

for President

Nixon/Agnew '72

Strange Park

2010-07-25T18:32:00.005-05:00

There's a park near my house that I drive by almost daily, but until today I have never gone to it because it is inaccessible except by car.

The park is shaped like a triangle, probably 2 acres in size. On two sides major traffic arteries run along it. On the third side is a street that connects the two other streets. There are no sidewalks along any of the streets on both sides. So it's impossible to walk to the park (except for the people who live directly across the street). There's also almost no parking -- the only place to park is along the third street. The park has benches, a fountain, lots of trees, is regularly maintained (new trees were planted in it last month), but since I've been down here only once have I seen someone in it.

I checked the garbage cans in the park and they were filled with water (from the rain) and a few soda and beer bottles. It seems pretty strange for the city to continue to spend so much money on a park that is pretty much inaccessible. And because of the whole parking issue, there's a cap on how many people can use it.

Southerners Think I'm Italian

2010-07-08T23:20:00.002-05:00

Since I've been down here a few people have asked me if I'm Italian. I'm sure anyone who knows me is scratching their head right now. While I don't have jewfro hair, I do have the nose, eyebrows, nasal voice and overbearing mother. I'm identifiable enough that up North during High Holy Days random strangers on the street will wish me a happy new year.

I cannot figure out which stereotype is causing people to think I'm Italian -- I can only think of two things: 1) I have dark hair and my skin can tan pretty dark; and 2) My last name ends in a vowel (while up North my last name is obviously Jewish, down here nobody knows that). I suppose these things could throw people off, but I have a very non-Italian first name.

Maybe Tony Soprano is really right: Italians are Jews with better food.

I bring this up because today I was getting my hair cut and the stylist was telling me that she was going to visit family in Europe next week. She then said to me, "do you get back to Italy often?" For a few seconds I couldn't figure out what she was talking about and I just said no. But then I realize that she was yet another person who thought I was Italian.

One of the benefits of people thinking I'm Italian is that the local white supremacists shouldn't come after me. In fact, people may think I'm connected and think twice about messing with me. Next time someone asks me what my father does, I'll say that he's in the olive oil business but he's thinking of buying some casinos out in Vegas. And my brother has been out there learning the ropes of the casino business.

Monroeville, AL

2010-06-27T13:01:00.007-05:00

Last month I went to Monroeville to see a theatrical production of To Kill a Mockingbird.

Monroeville is the town where Harper Lee is from, and Truman Capote lived next door to her.

The fictional town of Maycomb is modeled after Monroeville right down to the courthouse where the trial took place (for the film, the courthouse set was a copy of the Monroeville courthouse).

The town has embraced its literary significance. Each year, for the last 20 years, members of the town put on a production of To Kill a Mocking Bird. The first half of the play is a highly compressed version of the first half of the book. The second half is mainly the courtroom scene, played out in the courthouse (the first half is staged outside of the courthouse; during intermission everyone is herded inside). The whole thing is very meta. It's a fictional story, but you get to watch it acted out in the town and building where Lee witnessed events that inspired characters and incidents in the novel. Fact and fiction blur together.

While it was community theater, the actors did a pretty good job. Their southern accents lend a sense of authenticity to the characters -- nobody is faking an accent, this is what the people Lee grew up with sounded like. The director also deserves credit for taking advantage of part of the playing being staged outside. During the scene where Atticus is standing guard at the jail, the director had the mob enter the scene by driving a classic car onto the outdoor set -- the car swung around from down the street and drove through the audience.

Today the courthouse is a museum dedicated to the history of Monroeville, Harper Lee and Truman Capote. From the historic pictures of the town you can see that despite always being very small (a population under than 10,000), its courthouse square was a well landscaped bustling commercial corridor. Today it's mostly baron. All the retail has moved to the outskirts of town where there are a few big box stores, most notably Walmart.

Courthouse pictures:

Alabama Campaign Commercials

2010-06-14T18:30:00.001-05:00

The political ads down here are out of control.

As I blogged about before, GOP gubernatorial candidate Tim James kicked things off with his "This is Alabama. We speak English" ad.

Right now he's in a recount to see if he'll advance to the GOP runoff.

Then the Alabama Board of Education tried to weaken Bradley Byrne's chances in the GOP gubernatorial primary by accusing him of advocating the teaching of evolution in schools.

He's advanced to the runoff.

After that, Dale Peterson made headlines with his ad for agriculture commissioner that heavily featured a horse and gun.

Funny or Die did a brilliant parody of it.

We're Better Than That, Too!!!! w/ Dale Peterson - watch more funny videos

And now Rick Barber, who is in the GOP runoff for the second congressional district (my district!) has released this ad:

Happy Jefferson Davis Day

2010-06-07T23:06:00.002-05:00

In the Union we honor all the past United States Presidents by having a federal holiday dedicated to them on George Washington's birthday: Presidents Day.

In the South, there is one President so important that he gets his own state holiday: "President" Jefferson Davis.

Meridian, Mississippi

2010-05-26T22:09:00.009-05:00

This past weekend I went out to Meridian, Mississippi so that I could say I’ve been to Mississippi.

Apparently it was the largest city in Mississippi between 1890 and 1930 (population 10k to 30k). For such a small city it has an impressive number of buildings.

I hate to say it, but Meridian has a better collection of historic buildings than Montgomery. From old pictures of Montgomery it's clear that the city had its share of early 20th century brick and stone buildings, but most have been torn down.

What really stood out to me was the Threefoot Building.

Built in 1929, standing 16 stories tall, it visually dominates the city. No other building is anywhere near as tall as it. It’s strange that such a large building was built in such a small city (the timing of its construction obviously sucked). Even today it is out of place. But I guess the economy in Meridian during the 1920s was so robust that the building owners thought they could fill it. It’s been abandon for a while and plans to restore it have fallen apart.

The city must have been represented by a powerful Democratic Congressman or Senator in the '30s -- it has some impressive WPA buildings that are as out of place as the Threefoot Building (look at the pictures of the Post Office and City Hall).

Other pictures of Meridian:

(City Hall)

Cows

2010-05-17T23:24:00.002-05:00

A few weeks ago I had to change my cycling route because I kept getting chased by dogs.

This weekend I had to deal with cows on the road.

I came across a pack of them that managed to wonder off of someone's farm. As you can see from the video, they totally freaked out when they saw me.

When I came upon them I slowed down and stayed behind them because I was nervous about riding alongside them -- I was thinking about the scene in Jurassic Park where the T-rex is running along side the Jeep and head-buts it. As a result, two cows ran ahead of me for half a mile until they moved far enough to the side of the road so that I could quickly pass them. To be clear, my forward motion was causing them to continue running forward -- all the other cows just ran off to the side of the road. I wonder how long it took for the owner to track those cows down.

Gulf Coast

2010-05-09T20:10:00.014-05:00

On Saturday I went down to the Alabama Gulf Coast beaches to see them before they were destroyed by the oil spill. It's a good thing I didn't wait any longer. I heard on NPR tonight that the oil has already reached Alabama.

The first stop on the trip was Flora-Bama (which is on the Florida-Alabama border). It's a beach bar that’s proclaimed to be the “Last Great American Road House.” It’s a collection of shacks with bars, stages for live music and port-a-potties. It attracts a wide variety of locals, tourists and even celebrities.

Take a look at the pictures; there’s also a wiki article about it.

Electrical Code be damned!

That's a Phillies t-shirt. I said to the guy, "what's going on with the Phils?" He responded by saying, "I don't know. This was just the shirt I had with me today."

I don't know what this is about.

Views from the beach:

There must be other Phillies fans at Flora-Bama.

It looks like the tourist/vacation industry on the Alabama beaches is relatively new. The length of the Alabama coast east of Mobile Bay is 32 miles. Running along it is (Perdido) Beach Blvd.

Beach Blvd.

On one side of Beach Blvd. there is the beach and monster condos/hotels, all of which look no older than 20 years. On the other side of Beach Blvd. there is virtually nothing. There are a few houses, motels, stores and patches of land where real estate developers are planning on building vacation communities (a few sample houses have been constructed), but there are no commercial corridors with retail and restaurants (except for Gulf Shores Parkway). It’s just the beach and the condo towers on one side, and wide open land on the other. Further, despite there being a state park that weaves its way through the beeches, except for a state owned fishing pier, there were no public bathrooms.

New Construction.

A major difference between the gulf coast beaches and beaches in the Northeast, is that alcohol is permitted. I was pretty much the only person on the beach who was not walking around with a drink in my hand. And so many people were drinking that few people were actually in the water.

To give you an idea of how few rules there are, these are the rules for Belmar Beach in NJ, none of which apply to the Alabama beaches:

No Smoking
No Admission to Beach Without a Beach Fee
No Alcohol or Glass Containers
No Pets
Ball-playing and Frisbee Only in Designated Areas

What I really found surprising about permitting alcohol, was that there were no concession stands on the beach to buy food or drink. It seems like a missed opportunity to make a ton of money. Everyone at the beach had a cooler and brought their own alcohol from home.

The Gulf water was already as warm as it gets in the Northeast at the height of summer. I did go swimming and I have to say that I was brilliant enough to bring shampoo and soap with me so that I could take a shower afterwards at a condo tower’s outdoor shower. People gave me looks, but I didn't want to walk around with the residue of salt water all over my skin for the rest of the day.

I also went parasailing. The boat operator told me that I got over 600ft up in the air. From up there I could see just how much of the area north of Beach Blvd. was undeveloped. I could also spot oil rigs westward out in the Gulf.

Final picture:

Looking towards the coast line on a fishing pier 1,200 feet out in the Gulf.

Confederate Memorial Day

2010-04-29T22:50:00.002-05:00

A few weeks ago residents of the Union States found out that governor's of the Confederate States typically declare April Confederate History Month -- the whole flap in Virginia brought this to light. What has gone totally unreported is that most of the Confederate States have two Confederate related state holidays: Confederate Memorial Day and Jefferson Davis' Birthday. This past Monday (April 26) Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi and Texas observed Confederate Memorial Day. The other Confederate States celebrate the day on other dates.

Confederate sympathizers are quick to point out that the day has nothing to do with slavery -- it's merely about honoring the soldiers who fought and died for the Confederacy in the ~~War of Northern Aggression~~ Civil War. I suppose this would be like the German government creating a holiday called Wehrmacht Memorial Day which honors the soldiers who fought and died for the Third Reich, but of course, the holiday doesn't endorse the principals and objectives of the Third Reich.

Based on how there seemed to be no recognition by the general public of Confederate Memorial Day -- the only businesses closed were state offices; the were no major public observances; my co-workers had no clue that it was Confederate Memorial Day -- I think it's really just a tiny, but extremely vocal group of Southerners who not only cannot get over the ~~War of Northern Aggression~~ Civil War, but despite it having happened about 150 years ago, feel extremely victimized by the Union for not allowing the South to secede. They act as bitter and victimized as Poland still does about being invaded and slaughtered by the Germans and Russians, but in Poland's case, it's kinda justified. The whole victimization thing is what makes it so ridiculous. They just don't get that they were on the losing side of history.

And they're always trying to whitewash history by claiming that slavery was just one of many, many things that the ~~War of Northern Aggression~~ Civil War was fought over. Well, I decided do some historical research and see what some primary sources had to say. I found Message of Jefferson Davis to the Provisional Congress of the Confederate States of America which was delivered on April 29th, 1861 just a few blocks down the street from where I work.

Davis begins the speech by rambling on about state's rights. In the the fourth paragraph he talks about how slaves are crucial to the Southern economy:

[slave] labor had been so directed ... to convert hundreds of thousands of square miles of the wilderness into cultivated lands covered with a prosperous people; towns and cities had sprung into existence, and had rapidly increased in wealth and population under the social system of the South; the white population of the Southern slaveholding States had augmented from about 1,250,000 at the date of the adoption of the Constitution to more than 8,500,000 in 1860; and the productions of the South in cotton, rice, sugar, and tobacco, for the full development and continuance of which the labor of African slaves was and is indispensable, had swollen to an amount which formed nearly three-fourths of the exports of the whole United States and had become absolutely necessary to the wants of civilized man.

He then goes on to say:

With interests of such overwhelming magnitude imperiled, the people of the Southern States were driven by the conduct of the North [outlawing slavery] to the adoption of some course of action to avert the danger with which they were openly menaced. With this view the legislatures of the several States invited the people to select delegates to conventions to be held for the purpose of determining for themselves what measures were best adapted to meet so alarming a crisis in their history ... In the exercise of a right so ancient, so well established, and so necessary for self-preservation, the people of the Confederate States, in their conventions, determined that the wrongs which they had suffered and the evils with which they were menaced required that they should revoke the delegation of powers to the Federal Government which they had ratified in their several conventions. They consequently passed ordinances resuming all their rights as sovereign and Independent States and dissolved their connection with the other States of the Union.

So there you have it. Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederacy, in his first message to the Confederate Congress recapping how they got to this point, says that the South seceded because the Federal Government was going to take away their slaves (which they viewed as their property) and that would be bad for their economy. Case closed.

This is Alabama. We Speak English.

2010-04-25T19:55:00.003-05:00

Not to be outdone by Arizona, one of the Republican Gubernatorial candidates here in Alabama is running a TV advertisement to appeal to the xenophobes (aka the Republican Party):

Everything about the add is ludicrous.

Claim: Offering the driver's exam in one language will save money.

Fact 1: The test is computerized and the state already paid to translate it years ago.

Fact 2: One of the key industries in the state is automobile manufacturing. Honda, Hyundai, Toyota and Mercedes-Benz all have plants in the Alabama. Many foreign nationals working in the auto industry live in Alabama for long enough amounts of time that they need licenses but not long enough that they need to learn to speak English fluently.

Fact 3: The state could lose federal transportation funding if it only offered the test in English.

Also, when James calls himself a businessman, that reminds me of the Phil Hartman SNL Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer sketch where he would say something like: "I'm just a caveman. I fell on some ice and later got thawed out by some of your scientists. Your world frightens and confuses me! Sometimes the honking horns of your traffic make me want to get out of my BMW and run off into the hills, or wherever. Sometimes when I get a message on my fax machine, I wonder: 'Did little demons get inside and type it?' I don't know! My primitive mind can't grasp these concepts. But there is one thing I do know - when a man like my client slips and falls on a sidewalk in front of a public library, then he is entitled to no less than two million in compensatory damages, and two million in punitive damages."

But the best part of the ad, is when he looks down and pauses.

Mosquito Fogging

2010-04-20T22:51:00.003-05:00

Last night I saw my first mosquito fogging truck.

I tried to find an image of it online and this was the best I could find:

The truck I saw was put out a thick white mist. It looked more like this:

I'm sure that municipalities are careful about the pictures of the fogging trucks they post online.

I assume that chemical they spray with is somewhat safe -- if it was unsafe someone would have sued by now -- but it's been surprisingly difficult to find any information about it.

When googling, I noticed that some cities announce their fogging schedule, but all I could find on the Montgomery website was a one paragraph summary from 2008. I did find an old press release from the county that indicated that they spray with a chemical called BioMist 4+4. The fact sheet says not to get the stuff on your skin, and especially don't inhale it. I do actually have faith in government, even Montgomery city government -- I'd be really shocked if they are spraying with something dangerous, but then again, I suppose any kind of mosquito spray has to be somewhat toxic. So which is worse: West Nile Virus or BioMist 4+4?

Flying Perks

2010-04-13T23:20:00.010-05:00

I wrote this a few weeks ago but never posted it because it isn't unique to the South. But I'm flying tomorrow, so I thought I'd resurrect it.

Every airline lets its customers who pay the most board the plane first. Delta has taken this to the point that they’ve jumped the shark (apparently they stole the idea from Continental, but I’ve never flown on that airline and seen for myself how they do it). On Delta flights, first class, business class, BusinessElite, SkyMiles Silver, Gold and Platinum Medallion members, SkyTeam Elite and SkyTeam Elite Plus all get to board the plane first via the “Breezeway.” Putting aside the fact that allowing so many people to pre-board cheapens that privilege, the whole concept of the Breezeway is ridiculous. It’s a four foot stanchion with a carpet on one side and a sign that indicates that the side with the carpet is the Breezay for all the above mentioned passengers, and that the other side is for general boarding.

As silly as that is, it gets worse. When I flew through Atlanta a few weeks ago, when general boarding was allowed to enter the plane, people were walking on the Breezway side of the stanchion. I know! The nerve of some people. The Delta agent working at the gate panicked, and blocked people from walking over the Breezway carpet and insisted that everyone had to walk on the general boarding side of the stanchion. I hope the carpet was burned – after the shoes of the general public had touched it, I don’t see how a first class or SkyMiles passenger could be expected to walk on it. I’ve checked, and sure enough, the dirt on the soles of general boarding passengers is dirtier than the dirt on first class shoes.

If airlines really want to include a pre-boarding perk that’s worth something, they should give everyone in first class a hand-job at the gate.

Double-A Baseball

2010-04-09T18:20:00.002-05:00

Last night I went to my first Double-A baseball game – the Montgomery Biscuits vs. the Mobile BayBears. The Biscuits stadium seats approximately 7,000 and tickets go for $8 to $12. So every seat has a good view at a cost less than a movie ticket.

Even though it was the home opener with fireworks (which were surprisingly on par with the fireworks shows at Phillies games), it never appeared that the stadium was more than 80 percent full. By the 5^th inning people began leaving – despite the score being tied – and by the end maybe 20 percent of the seats were still occupied. I’m thinking that the low ticket price actually hurts commitment to the team. For so little money I’m sure that people buy tickets and don’t feel like they’re out any money if they show up late, leave early, or never even attend.

As for the game, the pitching sucked which made it a three and a half hour war of attrition. As little as I know about baseball, the head cheerleader knows less. At one point he said, “We’re only two points down!”

The mid-inning entertainment was excellent. The highlight was a baby race. Two parents handed their 5 month old children over to cheerleaders and then walked to the end of a 25ft runway. The babies then raced to their parents. It was exploitive, but highly entertaining. Also noteworthy is that in addition to shooting hot dogs and T-shirts into the stands, they also fire biscuits.

Final score: Mobile 3-2 in 10 innings.

Yellow Dust and Biking Follow-up

2010-04-07T22:34:00.005-05:00

There is so much pollen in the air down here that for the last two weeks everything is coated in a layer of yellow dust. A few days ago I sprayed my car with a hose because the pollen kept getting on my hand, but I quickly found out why no one bothers to clean their car in the spring -- by the next day it was recoated.

Surprisingly, my allergies down here are not as bad as they are in Philadelphia. Some of the trees that I'm allergic to are in my backyard, so my only explanation for my improved state is the cleaner air quality. In a city like Philadelphia, and especially New York, the air is so polluted that over the course of a day the pollution clings to your clothing -- your clothes end up smelling funky by the evening. That doesn't happen down here.

Biking Follow-up

After work today I biked farther into the heart of darkness. I was chased by not one, not two, not three, but four dogs (the last being a three legged dog). Apparently, some people haven't heard of an invisible fence. These dogs shot out off the property line and each chased me about a half a mile down county roads. And they were very fast -- even the three legged dog. Next time I'll need to bring a broom with me. I guess the owners aren't concerned about their dogs getting hit by a car.

Rural Cycling

2010-04-02T19:22:00.005-05:00

Now that it's warm, I drove about 30 miles south of the Montgomery where civilization ends to bike (I don't like biking in cold weather). South of the city there are a network of county roads that no one ever drives on, the terrain is mostly flat, and the roads are in better shape than the ones in the city -- so it's ideal for biking.

Despite having spent time last night working on a route, when I got to my starting point, I just headed down a road without checking my map. After 30 minutes I realized that I must be on the wrong road or had gone past my turn. After consulting my iPhone, I learned that I wasn't going in the direction I intended. I was able to work out a new route and the rest of the ride was uneventful.

While there were a good bit of homes (mainly modular and ranch style), I maybe saw a car once every 5 minutes -- that was about the extent of signs of human activity. There was also an abundance of tiny churches.

Below are two videos of the roads:

Dinner.

Walking

2010-03-25T18:23:00.002-05:00

In Montgomery there is a serious anti-walking culture. This incident is pretty representative of the attitude people have towards walking:

I went out to eat lunch with someone at a place where you order sandwiches to go. We placed our order and were told that the wait would be 15 minutes. I told the person I was with that there was a store down and around the street that I wanted to check out -- a .2 mile distance according to google maps. I started walking down the street and the person I was with headed towards my car, expecting that we would drive to the store. I think that they were genuinely shocked that I was planning on walking the distance, which I insisted we do. I cannot fully comprehend how anyone would believe it's reasonable to drive a .4 mile round trip, especially when it's not hot, cold, raining, etc.

Babka catching on in Alabama

2010-03-21T14:49:00.004-05:00

Every time I go to New York I bring back chocolate Babka and Rugelach from Zabar's.

Rugelach

Babka

No one down here has ever heard of them before (and no one watched Seinfeld -- cinnamon is a "lesser babka"). But they've caught on with my co-workers. Now, other people are bringing them back from Zabar's when they're in New York. I feel like I've successfully imported a little yiddish yank culture down South.

ATL

2010-03-14T20:56:00.009-05:00

Last Saturday I went to Atlanta to hear the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra perform the Mahler 3.

Because I wanted to see the spectacle of the bingo rally in Montgomery at noon, I didn't make it to Atlanta until 4:30 PM. As a result of the limited amount of time I had, I mainly hung out around the mid-town area.

View Larger Map

The main point of interest was Piedmont Park:

The park includes: open grass areas, recreational fields, lake, and botanical gardens.

I was captivated with how in the mid-town area, a suburban-esque residential neighborhood butts up right against a business district with office towers.

Here's the view looking down a street near Piedmont Park:

And here's the view when I turn 180 degrees:

And these are the homes on the right side of the street:

But if you turn back around and head half a mile towards the office buildings, this is the view:

I thought that was kinda crazy.

The Orchestra was pretty good. Technically excellent, but devoid of a unique sound. Robert Spano lead an efficient performance, but it lacked the interpretational insight that someone like Michael Gielen brings to the Mahler 3. Gielen, for instance, pushes the woodwinds and brass to the front of the balance, and isn't afraid to let them sound raw and vulgar. But still, it was well worth the 320 mile drive (roundtrip). It's so much more fun to hear the music live than on recording.

Finally, I used my time in Atlanta to eat as much sushi as possible -- something that Montgomery lacks.

Some other pictures:

A museum cannot official be called a museum unless there is a Calder.

Right to play bingo = civil rights

2010-03-10T23:06:00.005-06:00

Since I last wrote about the Alabama Bingo Wars, the situation has only further escalated. To briefly recap, gambling in Alabama is illegal, but bingo is legal in certain counties, and bingo machines, which are really just slot machines, are legal if they meet certain criteria set by the State Supreme Court. The Governor has declared that none of the machines in the state meet the criteria (he has no way of really knowing this) and he is trying to shut all of the bingo halls down.

Bingo halls have shut down on their own in order avoid being raided by the Governor’s anti-gambling taskforce. Even if the bingo machines are legal, the owners of the bingo halls rightly believe that once their machines are removed for inspection (and assets onsite seized), it will take months of legal wrangling to get them back. As a result, hundreds of workers (or thousands – it depends on who you ask) are now out of a job.

Meanwhile, Democrats in the State Senate tried and failed to pass a bill that would place a question on the ballot that would let the voters to decide if gambling should be legalized in Alabama. While the bill was terribly written, the bill’s death was a PR nightmare for the Governor. 1) The Governor has taken the position that the people should not be allowed to decide if gambling should be legalized and has failed to articulate just why; and 2) His objection to gambling is that it’s immoral, and yet, he accepted campaign contributions from Native American tribes that own casinos in Mississippi. Further, the former head of his anti-gambling taskforce got caught winning a jackpot at a Mississippi casino, and the current head of the taskforce accepted $100k in gambling money when he unsuccessfully ran for Attorney General a few years ago.

The jobs issue has become the chief rallying cry of the bingo operators, and last weekend they blew on Oberon’s horn for help. It appeared in the form of Jesse Jackson.

Last Saturday Jackson led a sparsely attended rally and march where he and others compared the Bingo Wars to the Civil Rights movement, and specifically voting rights (the rally took place the day before the Bloody Sunday anniversary).

Now, I think there is a legitimate racial element to the Bingo Wars. The majority of the employees at the bingo halls are black, and a lot of small counties that have legalized bingo and depend on its tax revenue are predominantly black. The Governor has never addressed the fact that his vision for a bingo free Alabama will put a lot of people out of work and dramatically shrink many counties’ budgets. And it also didn’t help when his wife, the First Lady of Alabama, asked hecklers at an anti-bingo rally to show respect to a “Southern lady.” But Jackson jumped the shark by comparing the “struggle” for legalized gambling to the struggle for equal rights.

One thing he said that struck me as particularly ridiculous, was that he asked the Governor to stop sending hundreds of State Troopers to raid bingo halls because the swarm of law enforcement officers reminds people of anti-black police tactics from the 1960s (for the record, the owners of the bingo halls are white, and I doubt any of them participated in civil rights marches in the '60s).

The rally itself was poorly executed. The MC packed in so many speakers in before Jackson that Jackson didn’t begin speaking until 40 minutes into it. For whatever reason, the MC was trying to delay Jackson speaking as long as possible. At one point he said: “Is that Joe Bob down there? Joe Bob, come on up here and say a few words.” No one there wanted to hear what Joe Bob had to say. Probably 30% of the crowd left before Jackson spoke. I only listened to Jackson for a few minutes because I had other things to do that day.

Here’s a short video from the rally and some pictures:

Bloody Sunday Anniversary, Brought to you by American Airlines

2010-03-07T19:55:00.024-06:00

Today was the anniversary of Bloody Sunday in Selma, AL. The annual tradition to commemorate the occasion is reenacting the crossing of the Edmund Pettus Bridge, minus the whole getting beaten by state troopers thing.

For VIPs and members of Congress, the day began at Brown Chapel, where "the Selma Voting Rights Movement officially started on January 2, 1965, when Dr. King addressed a mass meeting in Brown Chapel in defiance of the anti-meeting injunction." The church holds a commemorative service for the VIPs.

Brown Chapel

Whatever seats that were not taken by the VIPs were opened to the general public. I showed up nearly 3 hours before the service -- early enough to be first in line and one of only 20 members of the GP to get in.

Line to get into the church

The service was an AME Sunday church service, combined with dingataries giving speeches about the Civil Rights movement. The most "interesting" speech was by C.T. Vivian who argued that the reason blacks prevailed over the racist white southerns was because they prayed harder. No, really. At one point he said something to the effect of: "after the Civil Rights Act passed, we went to church to thank god for the passage of the bill. The white southerners who were against it didn't go to church to pray for god's help in their struggle." He went on to say that we have entirely god to thank for all of the civil rights victories (so MLK being a brave and brilliant had nothing to do with it? -- maybe god inspired him, but he certainly did a lot more than just pray for divine intervention). I wonder if Vivian realized just how extreme he was being.

After the service there were a throng of people outside of the church waiting for the march to the Edmund Pettus Bridge to begin.

Outside the church

As a result of being in the church, I was able to get to the head of the pact where the Congressional delegation was. I noticed that there were a lot of people wearing Boeing hats, and I soon found out that Boeing had paid to fly the Congressional delegation down to Selma.

Everyone in a blue hat works for Boeing

Now early in the day I had noticed people who were giving out lit about the an Air Force tanker contract that Boeing and Northrop Grumman are feuding over. This is relevant to Alabama because the tankers could be built here, which would be a huge cash infusion to the state and would create a ton of jobs. And then it hit me: Boeing has turned the Bloody Sunday anniversary into a junket to lobby members of Congress about the tanker contract. I overheard one lobbyist telling someone that his company probably won't even break-even if they win this contract -- they're just doing it to make sure jobs come to Alabama. I almost gagged on my own vomit. It looked liked there were 5 lobbyists per member of Congress. And then the second realization hit me: While the church hadn't let the money changers through its doors, it had done something worse: let lobbyists enter. But then, things went farther downhill.

As the march began to approach the iconic Edmund Pettus Bridge, I saw this:

I understand that the event needs sponsors -- I'm sure the city and county could not afford the police overtime -- but really, do you have to let American Airlines cover up the name of the bridge?

I did a little googling when I got home, and found this press release:

American Airlines is Official Carrier for the 2010 Bridge Crossing Jubilee Event

This and Boeing left a bad taste in my mouth for the rest of the day. The whole event had been co-opted by corporations.

I'll leave with you some video on the bridge, including impromptu remarks from Rep. John Lewis, and some pictures.

Heading towards the American Airlines Bridge

Over it

Looking back

Some sexy single

Price of Fruit

2010-03-04T18:01:00.003-06:00

Despite being near two ports (New Orleans and Mobile) and Florida, the price of citrus fruit in Montgomery ranges from high to insanely ridiculous.

At the supermarket the other day Navel Oranges were being sold for $1.59/lb (these were from California). I weighed two oranges; they came to 1.35 lb. So with sales tax, they would cost $2.38, or $1.19 each! That's insane.

Grapefruit is a little more reasonably priced. Bags of 6 large Florida grapefruit were being sold for $3.84 (w/tax), but $0.64 per grapefruit is still pricey, especially given the short shipping distance.

And of course, the really crazy part is that the 10% sales tax even applies to food.

Gardening: Part II

2010-02-27T21:26:00.005-06:00

Today I built my raised garden bed, which turned into an all day affair.

Wood + supplies.

Frame constructed using Gardener's Supply raised bed corners.

Soil delivery.

Slightly filled.

Fully filled with brick path.

I ordered 4 cubic yards, which was slightly more than I needed, and it looks they delivered over 5. Moving 4 cubic yards less 50 feet took about 5 hours. Now I'm going to have to spend tomorrow morning finding some place to dump the remanning 1+ yard.

cars REDUX

2010-02-21T22:24:00.002-06:00

A follow up from an older post about cars.

I spotted this car while biking this afternoon:

Gardening

2010-02-20T17:31:00.005-06:00

This morning I finally went to Home Depot to buy wood to build a raised garden bed.

The interior of my car has about 7.5 feet lengthwise of storage space, and the wood I wanted was 10 feet long, so the drive home was interesting:

I asked the staff at Home Depot for help with securing the wood so that it wouldn't slide out of my car while I was driving -- I figure they do this kind of thing all the time. Their big suggestion was using some twine. Well, duh.

I took full advantage of getting to drive with the trunk open and blasted Gershwin -- a fellow Yiddish Yank -- on the five mile drive back home.

In Need of Roadside Assistance

2010-02-15T22:42:00.003-06:00

Since living in Alabama I've noticed something on the highway that I doubt is unique to the state, but I certainly cannot recall seeing in the mid-Atlantic region. If I drive for more than 10 minutes on I-85 or I-65 (the two interstates that go through Montgomery), I'm guaranteed to see an abandoned car on the shoulder. During trips of over an hour I'll see many cars that appear to have been left on the shoulder.

Maybe I was just totally oblivious to this when living in Philadelphia, but during the many, many times on the Schuylkill, I-95, Northeast Extension, and NJ Turnpike, I rarely can recall seeing abandon cars on the shoulder. Maybe PennDOT and NJDOT were more aggressive about removing them?

But here's the thing that really strikes me as weird. Typically there is a 20ft grass area to the right of the shoulder. If I'm going to pull over to the shoulder and get out of my car, and especially if I'm going to abandon my car, I would pull into the grass area to minimize the chance of me or my car being hit by a car on the highway. No one does this. And who the heck are all of these people who are just leaving their cars on the shoulder? These cars typically don't appear to be clunkers. I would wait with my car for the tow truck to pick it up.

Snow Storm!

2010-02-11T20:24:00.004-06:00

According to the Pat Robertson school of thought, central Alabama is being punished for not being conservative enough with 3 to 5 inches of snow tomorrow.

Everybody is panicing because the most snow Montgomery typically gets in a winter is a dusting. The City doesn't have any snow removal equipment or salt, so it doesn't take more than an inch or two to shut everything down. By noon today the public schools, colleges and state government all announced that they would be closed tomorrow.

This evening I decided to go down to the supermarket to gawk at some good old fashioned pandemonium.

The supermarket must have reached capacity because every single shopping cart was in use.

Predictably bread, eggs and toilet paper were top sellers:

Kinda strange was that citrus fruits and strawberries were cleared out, but vegetables were fully in stock.

I expected that there would be a huge dent in the milk, but the shelves were totally filled. While I suppose the supermarket was aggressive about restocking the milk, I didn't see anyone with it in their carts. In fact, the drink of choice seemed to be soda and Gatorade.

I'm kinda of tempted to go back tonight before it closes to see what things are like, but I'm sure I can find something to watch on TV instead.

Incidentally, the NYTimes has a good blog post on the politics of snow removal.

Causing Trouble at Local Dem. Party Meeting

2010-02-09T19:07:00.002-06:00

At last night’s monthly Montgomery County Democratic Party meeting two candidates appeared as guest speakers; one was running for State Rep., the other for Agriculture Commissioner (yes, it’s pretty nuts that they elect an Agricultural Commissioner – the job entails food safety and protecting consumers from fraud).

Both spoke about why they were running for office, why we should vote for them, and waxed poetics about being proud Democrats.

Then came Q&A time.

My question was: “Both of you talked about how proud you are to be Democrats, how important the Party is, but on both of your literature (their staffs distributed palm cards) no where do you say that you’re Democrats. The message that sends to me is that you don’t want people to know your Party affiliation, that maybe you’re even embarrassed by it.”

The Agricultural Commissioner candidate stood up first. He looked at both sides of his palm card and then said that he was proud to be a Democrat, this was a mistake, and that he’d contact his printer to have “Democrat” added to the palm card.

Next the State Rep. candidate spoke and rambled for two minutes that it was also a mistake, but people should vote for him first and foremost because of his agenda and values.

Then someone else in the audience asked the State Rep. candidate: “How long have you been running?”

A: “Since June.”

Q: “So you’ve been running since June, and you’re just noticing now that your literature doesn’t say Democrat?

The State Rep. candidate then rambled for three minutes about how party affiliation isn’t important, we get too hung up on that, etc. etc., but then remembering that he was at a Democratic Party meeting, he occasionally interjected how proud he was to be a Democrat.

On my way out of the meeting he pulled me aside and admitted that he didn’t give a good answer to my question, that the truth is that he’s running in a +12 Republican district, and that he needs Republican votes to win.

I responded by saying that the problem with the Democratic Party is that they’ve allowed Republicans to brand us to the point that candidates like him are afraid to be identified as a Democrat, and that he shouldn’t show up to a Party meeting asking for support from the Party while giving out literature that hides the fact that he’s a Democrat – at least have two versions of your palm cards and bring the “Democrat for State Rep.” version to meetings like this.

Expedia and USAir FAIL

2010-02-05T16:40:00.003-06:00

So I'm in Philly and New York this weekend. I went to print my boarding pass last night I got a message that the flight had been canceled and that I needed to call USAir. Most of the airlines began preemptively canceling all flights going in and out of Philly after 3pm today last night because of tonight's snow storm. While I expect to get screwed and then pistol whipped by USAir, I thought Expedia would be better.

Neither USAir or Expedia notified me by email that the flight had been canceled -- I only found out when I tried to check-in. After being on hold with USAir for 20 minutes, getting through, then having my call dropped, then on hold for another 30 minutes, I was able to book an earlier flight into Philly. Had I waited to print my boarding pass until the morning of the flight and found out at that point that the flight had been canceled, I would have been up shit creek. The last flight out of Atlanta was at 3pm (which I took), and USAir canceled their 5pm, 7pm, and 9pm flights -- I was competing with all of the people on these flights for a seat on the 3pm flight.

Now here's the best part: USAir would let me change my flight free of charge as long as I took a flight that left within 6 days of today. This policy makes sense if something unexpected happens with the weather, but they canceled my flight 24 hours early, before any snow had fallen.

Final complaint: if the only way to change flights is to call USAir, they need more operators and a better phone system. I saw on twitter that other people were having the exact same problem. USAir had all the calls go through their main customer service number -- they should have a special number for these kinds of reschedules.

I'm still fuming that I never received any email notification -- I'll be sending angry emails.

Troy, Storytelling and Red's

2010-01-31T12:17:00.017-06:00

On Saturday morning I drove down to Troy, AL for the Pike Piddlers Storytelling Festival.

Troy, AL

Troy is 45 miles southwest of Montgomery on a state highway -- it's a drive through rural Alabama and even a little swamp land.

Troy has a population of about 15k and a university with the same name. I walked around the downtown area for a bit, which is really just a town square with shops on all sides.

There's also a confederate war memorial in the center of the square (that's how we roll in the South).

Being the cynical person I am, the shopkeepers must have receieved instruction from the chamber of commerce about being friendly. Every store I went into I got a big hello and an equally warm goodbye. Even a random person who held a door for me at a shop gave me a long "have a good day -- thanks for visiting." (Not surprising, people can quickly spot that I'm not from these parts.)

Storytelling

The Storytelling Festival was very entertaining and funny. It featured: Donald Davis, Kevin Kling, and Elizabeth Ellis. The name makes it sound more quaint than it really is. What these people do, telling stories, is exactly what David Sedaris does, though they were not quite as R-rated as Sedaris. Each storyteller told stories for about 45 minutes.

Donald Davis was the clear audience favorite and probably the best. He took a bunch of random stories about his grandmother who lived in Appalachia and weaved them together into a cohesive narrative. One of his early stories involved visiting his grandmother when he was 9. During the visit a neighbor asked his grandmother to "layout" his dead wife. 30 minutes later, he ended his storytelling talking about his grandmother's funeral (a few decades later), saying that when he saw all the makeup the undertaker had put on her, as well as the clothes and the way her hair was done, he finally appreciated the service his grandmother had provided many years earlier. The undertaker didn't know his grandmother, and thus, dressed her in a way that made her unrecognizable to the people who knew her. It wasn't all sad stories though -- most were amusing and told with wit.

Red's

After the storytelling I drove to Red's Little School House Restaurant for lunch.

Red's is 30 miles south of Montgomery, off a back road, very much in the middle of no where. It's considered one of the quintessential Alabaman restaurants -- it seems like everyone who has lived in the state for a while has gone there at some point. To give you an idea of its popularity, when Jessica Lange was in Montgomery filming "Big Fish," she would eat at Red's. No one, though, is quite sure how she knew about it (clearly someone must have told her about it).

Like all the restaurants here, it's traditional Southern, but served buffet (there's also a menu). Part of its mystique is its location, as well as its ambience -- the restaurant is a converted school house. It's the kind you would see in movies set in the 1920s and 30s -- large single room, hardwood floors, long wood tables, etc. They still have pictures of all the Presidents in the dining room, including Obama. Here's a picture of the inside form an Alabama tourist guide:

I thought the food was excellent and they had these amazing fried cornbread biscuits. I totally forgot to try out their pies, so I guess I'll do that next time.

Pioneer Village

On the drive back to Montgomery I passed by something called "Pioneer Village." From the road it looked like a bunch of log cabin homes. I of course had to check it out.

It was closed and really ammounted to nothing more than antique shops and hotdog stands. You cannot see it from the pictures, but there were Coca-Cola signs on everything -- just like in pioneer times.

The antiques must have no value because they were left outside:

Bingo Halls and Political Corruption

2010-01-27T23:03:00.006-06:00

The local news cycle down her is dominated by bingo halls, so I guess I should talk about that.

Way back when, the State Legislature legalized small stakes bingo so that it could be used by churches and non-profits as a means to fundraise. A lot of states do this; nothing original here.

At some point a very clever person said, "hey, instead of having people play bingo using paper cards, why not have electronic bingo cards." Yaddi, yaddi, yadda, today the state is covered with bingo halls, that contain electronic bingo machines, which are essentially slot machines, and there is no regulation -- there is no law that governors the operation of electronic bingo machines and bingo halls. Pretty much anyone can go and build a bingo hall. And when I say that they state is covered with them, every weekend at least one of the bingo halls in the area is flying a blimp over town.

While electronic bingo machines and bingo halls clearly go beyond the legislative intent of legalized bingo, the law is so vaguely written that they're not necessarily illegal. Over the years state legislators have talked about doing something -- officially legalizing bingo and then regulating it, or shutting the whole operation down -- but little action was ever taken. Bingo has been around for so long that it has become integrated into the economy (billions are wagered on electronic bingo each year) and many Alabamans enjoy playing it. So this brings us up to the last few years...

The current Governor, Bob Riley (R), has a major hard-on for gambling. He's decided that electronic bingo is illegal, that he's going to shut the bingo halls down one-by-one, and he has formed an anti-gambling task-force to accomplish this.

Whenever Riley tried to shut a bingo hall down it lead to a lawsuit -- the bingo hall claimed that it was operating within the law. Last year the question of the legality of electronic bingo finally went to the State Supreme Court. At the end of the year the Court ruled that electronic bingo machines were illegal, unless they met certain criteria, such as: players have to mark the electronic board -- the machine cannot do it for them; players have to call bingo -- the machine cannot do it for them; players have to be playing against other humans -- they cannot be playing against a computer.

Riley declared that the Court agreed with him, that electronic bingo was illegal, and continued trying to close down bingo halls. But the bingo hall operators have moved fast to reprogram their machines so that they meet the Court's guidelines. ~~Ahab~~ Riley keeps pressing to close them down, but he's getting no where because the bingo halls are complying with the Court. Alabamans seem to agree that Riley's obsession with closing them down has become ridiculous because: (1) gambling is so wide spread, (2) if it were just legalized, regulated and taxed, it would bring in a lot of tax revenue, and (3) the law simply is not on his side.

Last week, the head of the Governor's anti-gambline task-force had to resign his position because he got caught gambling (and winning) at a Mississippi casino. And this, as they say, is where the plot thickens. I'll leave it to you to read this article, but it turns out that the anti-gambling Governor took money from some interesting sources with an infamous lobbyists. It's a must read.

Recycling and Cars

2010-01-25T22:46:00.003-06:00

Cars

An automotive trend that seems to be unique to the Montgomery area is taking a late 1990s large American sedan, giving it a hideous paint job, oversized wheels, and flashy hubcaps. Pictured below is one of the tamer paint jobs (I've seen purple and green):

I'll see one or two a day, and I know I'm not seeing the same car over and over again because the paint jobs are unique.

Recycling

Because there is no curbside recycling, I've been hoarding cardboard in my spare bedroom since I came down here in October.

I finally hit a critical mass last week when the mountain of cardboard had reached fire hazard height. The city does have 24/7 recycling drop-off sites, so on Saturday I loaded up my car and finally went to one.

Notice that they do not accept plastic.

Transportation

2010-01-20T23:22:00.002-06:00

The weather has finally returned to normal here -- mid 60s -- so I've begun biking to work. One of the benefits of a small town is that there is no traffic, especially after 5:30pm. Not only are the roads wide open, but the major streets are three lanes, so I can pretty much turn a lane into a bike lane -- when there is traffic, the cars stick to the other two lanes. Given this, the city really should just create dedicated bike lanes. But that will never happen. Montgomery is even more behind the times than Philly -- while every other American city is expanding recycling, in Montgomery they eliminated curbside recycling collection to save money (yet, there is still twice a week trash collection). Oh well. It will all be part of my mayoral platform.

MLK Day and BBQ in Birmingham

2010-01-18T18:40:00.005-06:00

MLK Day Alabama Style

This afternoon I was flipping through the Montgomery Advertiser while waiting for my order at Cafe Louisa and I came across this:

I think it speaks for itself.

BBQ in Birmingham

I was win Birmingham on Saturday to see the Met Opera's live HD Broadcast of "Carmen," and afterwards, I checked out Bob Sykes Barbeque in Bessemer (about 20 minutes south of Birmingham). No one had recommended it to me, but RoadFood.com had given it a good review.

From the outside it looks like a McDonald's, but once you get inside, you can see that it's a serious BBQ place. Take a look at the indoor barbecue grill:

You also know that they mean business when there's a roll of paper towels on every table.

Lastly, the menu is pretty intense.

I went with their classic dish: barbecue pork sandwich.

I thought it was pretty good. Most of the barbecue pork sandwiches I've had down here so far, such as the ones at Dreamland, have had way too much bbq sauce, which smothers the flavor of the pork, makes the bread soggy, and the sandwich a total mess to eat. This probably reflects that Bob Sykes puts a lot more effort into the preparation of their meat than other restaurants, and they want to make sure you can taste it.

Next time I go I need to bring a lot of people with me so we can order a lot and do it family style.

Local Dining

2010-01-14T23:52:00.007-06:00

I've been making more of an effort lately to try out authentic southern style restaurants.

Davis Cafe

It's a bit off the beaten path -- there is Section 8 housing down the street (at least that's what I think it is). From the outside the Davis Cafe looks like a home; there is only a small sign indicating that it's a restaurant. When I saw that the menu was hand written and photocopied, I knew it was going to be fantastic.

I ordered the fried chicken with blackeye peas and lima beans as sides. I thought everything was very flavorful. The chicken was just spicy enough to have some kick, and was juicy. My table was also given a ton of corn bread. The decor of the restaurant certainly added to the experience. They do a breakfast which I'm going to have to check out.

Derk's Filet and Vine

Derk's is like a Zabar's or Di Bruno Brothers of the South. It's half cafeteria style restaurant, half market selling meat, produce, wine, beer and other foods. I haven't shopped at the market yet (despite it being very close to my house), but I've had lunch there. It's always packed -- it's clearly a local favorite. Their food breaks with southern tradition a bit. One of their sides, for instance, is wild rice. Southern sides are mainly made from greens, beans, peas, and okra. They also don't fry their fish and chicken as deeply as other restaurants. I think it's decent, but I have yet to be won over. I do need to try shopping there.

Martin's Restaurant

Just about everyone says that if you want an authentic southern meal, Martin's is the place to go. Try to imagine vinyl tablecloths, wood paneling, and a lot of old people. I went the other night and got the Famous Fried Chicken Dinner, which includes: two pieces of fried chicken, three sides and tea, all for $10. I was really disappointed. The chicken was dry and completely tasteless, like someone forgot to add even pepper and salt. For sides I got pinto beans, mashed potatoes and green beans. They were all so rich and sweet in flavor that I couldn't eat them. The only good thing about the restaurant was that instead of serving bread, each table was given baskets of corn muffins and biscuits.

One interesting side worth mentioning was pineapple with American cheese. One of my friends ordered it, but I could not bring myself to try it.

Becoming an AL resident

2010-01-12T23:38:00.004-06:00

I had a watershed moment today: I finally applied for and obtained an Alabama license plate.

I've waited so long to do this mostly because I'm lazy, but partly because I felt a little pride in driving around the Deep South with my Pennsylvania license plate. Now when I drive to another state, people will look down on me as an Alabamian (though the Cornell decal should help distinguish me -- or maybe make things even worse). On the flip side, having a local plate should make me less of target for law enforcement. I still have to change my driver's license. Once I do that, I guess the transition is complete.

I have to recognize the State of Alabama for how easy the vehicle registration was. The whole process literally took less than 5 minutes. At the state office (where there was no line) I presented them with a copy of my title, proof of insurance, my driver's license, and told them my Alabama address. They then pulled out two license plates and told me to pick one of them (the one I did not go with said "God Bless America" along the bottom). They then swiped my credit card, printed out the registration, gave me the plate, and that was that. There was no paperwork to fill out or anything. I didn't even have to produce proof of residency. I was genuinely shocked with how fast it went. I asked them twice if there was anything else I had to do regarding my vehicle. Alabama doesn't require me to transfer the title and there are no emission inspections.

Better view of the license plate art:

Hank Williams Follow-up

2010-01-09T11:21:00.002-06:00

Someone saw the Hank Williams videos on YouTube who was also at the grave on New Year's and they sent me this email:

----------------

Hey [redacted], a bunch of us came down from Cleveland on a band tourbus and picked me and my husband and a couple of other folks up in Nashville and we all went to Montgomery.

We had played at Noble's for New Year's eve as part of a Hank Williams New Year's celebration and then everyone went to the grave site. We all played at the Hank Williams museum the next day and then went home, it was a blast! I am a big Hank fan, he was an amazing songwriter and wrote so many incredible songs all before the age of 29 before he died. Incredible.

Anyway, it was a blast...I loved the comments about the Hank impersonator, kind of a weird thing, they weren't very friendly to us unfortunately, but we sure had fun!

Thanks again and all the best

[redacted]

-------------

That's devotion which I can relate to -- I've planned three trips to Europe around John Eliot Gardiner concerts.

Cold Weather

2010-01-06T19:11:00.003-06:00

Most of the nation is dealing with unusually cold weather this week, but you already knew that.

Down here in Alabama, the temperature is about 20 degrees below the norm. I can deal with cold weather, but the problem is that none of the buildings, including my home, are cut out for temperatures below 35 degrees -- it's getting into the teens at night. Because winter last about two months here, someone did the math way-back-when and it's more cost effective to have a few very expensive heating bills than put insulation into a building. Do folks want to take bets on what my gas bill will be this month? My heater is running non-stop just to keep the temperature at 67.

At least I'm not alone with this problem -- all of my co-workers are complaining about it too.

And tomorrow snow is in the prediction. It's probably not going to stick, but if a weatherman were to announce that accumulation will be one inch, apparently all of the businesses and schools will preemptively close.

A Hank Williams New Year

2010-01-03T17:34:00.004-06:00

A Montgomery New Year's Eve tradition is going to the grave of Hank Williams around midnight (pictured below -- Hank is on the right; Audrey, his first wife, is on the left).

Hank is to Montgomery as Ben Franklin is to Philadelphia. There's a the Hank Williams Museum, and there are some statues of him around town.

Anyway, people gather at his grave on New Year's Eve because he died around midnight New Year's Eve. Once it's the new year, semi-pro musicians (putting it nicely) perform Hank's music and music by other country musicians. About 60 people turned out for this event. And they come from surrounding states, such as Tennessee and Florida. One of the musicians was wearing a 1950s version of a cowboy suit -- think Back to the Future III, but all black leather with white tassels. It was quite a sight. Another guy had on a massive ten gallon hat and overcoat. They sang for about 30 minutes and then abruptly left.

The event is not organized by anyone -- it just happens on its own. The musicians just show up because of their love for Hank.

About half the people there were like me -- they just came to see the spectacle. The graveyard is next to a residential neighborhood, so a number of people wander over for the show.

I shot some video of the singing. There was no lighting so you cannot see that much.

New Orleans Wrap-up

2009-12-28T22:01:00.008-06:00

Click here to see more of the pictures I took.

I need to reiterate the insanity of cars being let into the French Quarter. On Saturday night the Quarter was predictably packed with people. And at every intersection there was a traffic jam. The police were out in numerous places trying to direct traffic. What were all these people doing driving around the FQ? There’s no place to park near the restaurants and bars. The FQ is small enough that you can park on the outside and walk anywhere in it.

Here’s a picture that captures the extreme narrow dimensions of the shotgun homes. I really would have liked to see the inside of one to see what the layout was like.

From peering down into the alleys and over some of the fences, it's clear that many people have impressively large yards.

Overall, it was a good trip. My only criticism of New Orleans as a tourist destination is that it lacks an anchor tourist attraction -- there's no major museum or cultural site. Even a relatively small city like Philadelphia has numerous attractions that you could spend hours in, such as: The Art Museum, Independence Hall area, UPenn Museum, The Philadelphia Orchestra, etc. The biggest thing is the French Quarter, which after 3 days, I'm ready for new scenery.

The next time I go I’m not going to stay in the FQ. The Garden District seems like the ideal place to stay: the area restaurants are better, prices are lower, you don’t get raped on the parking (all the FQ lots started at $20 for 24 hours with no in-out), and the trolley will get you downtown and into the FQ in 10 minutes (and it only costs $1.25).

Tacky Picasa slideshow:

New Orleans: Day 3

2009-12-26T18:28:00.002-06:00

I focused on museums today.

The first stop was the New Orleans Pharmacy Museum, which is a museum dedicated to the early history of pharmaceutical drugs in America. Among the many facts I learned, was that when heroin was first introduced, the majority of addicts were women because they did not have a vice -- respectable women did not get drunk. As the museum put it, men would go out to bars to get plastered, and women would stay home and get high.

After that I went to the Louisiana State Museum. Housed in the Cabildo, the site of the Louisiana Purchase Transfer, its permanent exhibition is dedicated to the history of Louisiana from pre-colonization up through Reconstruction.

In the afternoon I decided to do something touristy and went to Cafe Du Monde. It's famous for its coffee and beignets -- fried dough covered with a cup of powdered sugar . The line moved incredibly slowly -- I waited 20 minutes. I could not understand what was taking so long because there are really only two things that you can order: coffee and/or beignets. When I got to the head of the line I found up what the hold up was. The Cafe sold something called "black coffee," that apparently no one had heard of before. Person after person asked, "what's in the black coffee?" I blame this on Starbucks.

I didn't think the coffee was anything special -- it was really pretty bland -- but the beignets were delicious. Only if there was a way to combine bacon with them.

New Orleans: Day 2

2009-12-25T18:28:00.010-06:00

Today I went to the Lower Ninth Ward to check out the "Brad Pitt Homes" -- homes built by his Make It Right Foundation. The New York Times recently ran an article on them.

I decided to skip paying for the bus tour of the Ward -- it's $35 and the reviews were highly iffy.

The houses are very cool; they all have an avant-garde look, but because different architects designed the homes, there is lots of variety.

The Times articles says the homes have been criticized for placing form over function -- had the destroyed homes been replaced with the same style of shotgun homes, many more homes could be built for the same money as the Pitt homes. The shotgun homes are hideous. When you build a neighborhood that looks like a ghetto, it's going to become a ghetto. People do not have any pride in where they live; they do not take care of the neighborhood. Pitt's homes are all clustered together; despite the barren landscape that surrounds them, the cluster looks like a warm and inviting place to live. It's a clever way to reinvent the neighborhood.

As for the rest of the Lower Ninth Ward, it was pretty desolate. It looks like most of the debris has been cleared. There are still some dilapidated homes that have yet to be torn down, but the landscape is mostly populated with empty lots where houses used to be.

There were some other white people driving around in cars doing the same thing as me, but none of them got out of their cars (even though I had my car, I took the bus there so I would have to walk -- I thought that was the best way to get the full experience).

After the Ninth Ward, I took the bus, then the trolly to the Garden District to see the homes of the rich.

The neighborhood lives up to its name -- there are trees and plants all over the place -- and the homes are very impressive. There were a lot of other people out looking at the homes -- with most things closed on Christmas, I guess this was one of the only activities to do today.

For lunch I found a sushi place -- Montgomery doesn't have much sushi (at least nothing I would eat), so I haven't had any since I left Philadelphia in October. I used the opportunity to stock up. I ordered a 18 piece sashimi tray. The sushi chef thought I was nuts. He kept telling me that the tray was meant for two people. Before he started making it he wanted to confirm that I really wanted all of that fish.

New Orleans: Day 1

2009-12-24T22:31:00.005-06:00

I spent most of the day walking around the French Quarter, enjoying that I was in a city that was walkable with sidewalks. The City has done such a good job of keeping 20th century buildings out of the Quarter that the whole place has a foreign feel to it.

Bourbon Street is the PG-13 version of Amsterdam's Red Light District.

Bourbon Street: Strip Clubs.

Amsterdam: Live Sex Shows.

Bourbon Street: Women selling jello shots on the sidewalk.

Amsterdam: Drugs being sold all over the place and the air saturated with the smell of weed.

What's so American about the Quarter is that cars are allowed in it. Half the Quarter is essentially an outdoor mall with bars, restaurants and shops. Every European city that has something similar closes some or most of the streets off to traffic. It's crazy that they don't do this in the Quarter, and it's even crazier how reckless the drivers are in it.

Right outside of the Quarter is St. Louis Cemetery #1. I thought it is neat how vertical the cemetery was due to limited horizontal space (pictured below is a four person tomb tower). Apparently people would form societies so that they could pull there money to buy a large plot of land in the cemetery and then building a tall multi-tomb mausoleum.

The downtown area feels like a Northeast city with its many turn of the century brick and stone buildings.

I was surprised how much of a dump Canal St. is -- lots of cheap retail stores and fast food joints. For those familiar with Philadelphia, think Market Street between City Hall and 6th St.

One other complaint of the city: the streets are in horrible condition. It looks like the streets have not been repaved in at least 10 or 15 years. There are massive potholes and cracks everywhere. Where they have filled them in, often too much asphalt has been used leaving the road quite bumpy. Further, some of the streets are not asphalt but concrete slabs. These streets are totally deteriorating. Pedestrian street lights are also out all over the city.

New Orleans

2009-12-23T23:22:00.002-06:00

I've been slow to post lately, but I'm in New Orleans for a few days, so I should have a lot of good material.

Two observations

2009-12-16T23:08:00.002-06:00

For whatever reason, paying by check is very popular down here. Every time I go to the supermarket I see at least one person pull out their check book to pay. It doesn't seem to be a race or socioeconomic thing -- a wide range of people do it. And it's a real pain in the ass because it holds the line up -- it takes a while for the cashier to process the check. Haven't these people heard of credit or debit cards? Maybe once every three years I would see someone pay for something at the register with a check in Philadelphia.

For a while now I've noticed that lots of people have water coolers on their porches. I finally found out that people keep bottles of beer in them -- I've observed people going out of their homes, removing a few bottles from the cooler, and going back inside.

This really doesn't make much sense since it's not cold outside. I guess I could understand doing it if you have a very small fridge, but it seems to be a common practice. I haven't asked anyone yet what the deal with this is in fear that there is a perfectly obvious logical explanation for why you should keep your beer outside in a cooler.

Bacon + Chocolate

2009-12-12T11:03:00.003-06:00

For an office potluck lunch I made bacon covered chocolate with sprinkles -- I figured that it was unusual and that people would get a kick out of it. About 90% of people were horrified and genuinely shocked when I told them what I made. One person gave me a look as if I told them that I had killed and skinned their child, then turned the skin into a human body suit, and fed the left overs to my dog Precious. The other 10% thought it was the greatest thing ever.

The shock from people was kinda ironic considering how everything down here is deep fried. My head is still spinning over deep fried Thanksgiving turkey.

The idea isn't exactly original, and the logic behind it is sound -- salt helps enhance the flavor of chocolate -- but I suppose it may be more of a recent Northern phenomenon to try and figure out a way to put bacon into everything.

Anyway, one suggest for people thinking of making this delicacy is don't put too much chocolate on the bacon. You can easily throw off the salt to chocolate ratio and smother the bacon flavor -- it ends up just tasting like regular chocolate. Sprinkles are key. Without them, the bacon looks like something that was fished out of the toilet.

Fox News Southerners

2009-12-06T23:41:00.004-06:00

I had my first run-in with a southern conservative.

On my flight from Philadelphia to Montgomery, the person next to me saw me reading a Newsweek article on health care reform, and he said, "I hope you agree that the health care bill shouldn't pass." I of course replied that I was hoping it would pass. He then responded: "I don't want to give someone a handout." So I asked him, if someone walks into a hospital bleeding to death and they don't have health insurance, should they be refused treatment." He said, "they do treat everyone." Me: "I'm asking you if the person should be treated if they cannot afford to pay for the treatment." He said yes, and I pointed out that he did in fact agreed that all people should be entitled to a basic level of medical care regardless if they can pay for it." From there he started going through everything Fox News hates about Democrats.

1. Socialism. I pointed out to him that the rest of the Western world has some form of universal health care -- are they all wrong? He said yes. We have the best healthcare in the world. My response: then why is it that the US ranks about 50th in life expectancy? He then rambled on about how we're not socialists in America, we're not **gasp** Canada!

2. Death Panels. He then started saying that having the government make decisions about your health, about when you die, was extremely dangerous, and that's not the government's job. So I said, "you prefer having a health insurance company, that only cares about profit margins, being the one making these types of decisions?"

3. Debt. He complained about the national debt, and went on this tirade about how we should never borrow money, and that in his personal life he never borrows money and only buys what he has cash on-hand to purchase. I asked him if he had a mortgage and he did.

4. Stimulus. He thought too much money was being spent on infrastructure and that there was no public good in paving roads, that people could get by with cracks in the street. I didn't bother to respond to this.

He finally went on about how America was founded by Christians who believed in limited government, that the Constitution says nothing about health insurance, the country should be run based on what the Constitution says, and that the Constitution is a Christian document. I don't know how the religion thing came in, and I thought it was a bit ironic. I didn't know Jesus, but from what I've heard, I think he'd be in favor of universal health care. I pointed out that many of the founders were deist who were heavily influenced by the Enlightenment. He thought his trump card was that "liberty" comes from the bible. I pointed out that the context it was used in, in the Declaration of Independence came from John Locke and the Enlightenment. Thankfully at this point the airplane landed and I was able to make an exit.

More thoughts on food

2009-12-04T21:50:00.008-06:00

I've decided that the quintessential Southern food is not a food, but a drink: sweet tea. It's ice tea with a few tablespoons of sugar. If you can still taste the tea, it aint sweet enough to be called sweet tea -- you should only be able to taste the sugar. People joke that you know that there's enough sugar in it when you can drop a spoon into the glass and it stands upright.

Sweat tea is served as if it were water here. At my company's holiday party every place setting had both water and tea. At restaurants the sweet tea options are featured prominently at the top of the menu -- fruit flavoring is added. This wiki article does a good job describing the Southern sweet tea obsession.

The other major regional difference is the total lack of bagels here. The truth is that it's an ethnic food -- you can only find them in cities with Jews. But in those cities, its popularity transcends the Jews. Apparently people have tried to open Manhattan Bagel type cafes/restaurants in Montgomery, but they always failed. The supermarkets sell Philadelphia Cream Cheese, but I'm not sure what exactly you're supposed to use it for without any bagels (ok, I realize that cream cheese is an ingredient in other foods, but it's still strange that the primary food it goes with is missing). That reminds me of when I was in Florence. The breakfast buffet at my hotel had Philadelphia Cream Cheese, but now bagels. Really, what were you supposed to do with the cream cheese? Put it on bread?

I've done some mail ordering from DiBruno Brothers; Zabars will follow soon.

Montgomery Symphony Orchestra

2009-12-01T22:59:00.004-06:00

Last week I attend a concert of the Montgomery Symphony Orchestra. It was without a doubt the worst classical music performance I have ever heard. Half the instruments were out of tune, the string playing sounded like cats being thrown into a fire, mistakes galore, etc. I was wincing non-stop throughout the performance. I really tried not to, but I couldn't help myself -- every time the violins played it felt like I was getting kicked in the balls.

If the local newspaper were to have written a review of the concert, I don't know what they would have done. If you have any kind of integrity as a journalist you would have to point out just how mediocre the orchestra is, but doing so would probably make you pretty unpopular in a small town.

The only hope for the Orchestra is to fold and regroup as a chamber orchestra. Being a smaller sized ensemble will allow them to ditch most of the bad musicians, perform in a smaller hall that has better acoustics (the Orchestra plays in a 1930s movie palace that makes The Academy of Music sound like the Amsterdam Concertgebouw), and provide more rehearsal time.

A lot of what the Orchestra plays is "pops" music, and in some ways that does a bigger disservice to listeners than butchering Beethoven and Brahms. Gershwin requires the same virtuosity as Mahler (a real treat are the Cleveland Orchestra's three Gershwin recordings -- one, two and three -- the best being Maazel conducting the tone poems). I really wish these small town bands would stick with crapping on Mozart and Dvorak -- at least there are many excellent recordings that you can quickly cleanse your ears with.

The fact that people live in denial of the Montgomery Orchestra's mediocrity is a testament to how desirable having an orchestra is -- it's one of the marks that you're a major city. Philadelphians should be a little more appreciative and supportive of their orchestra, especially considering it is one of the best in the world.

Mobile, AL and Dauphin Island

2009-11-27T23:26:00.015-06:00

I had the day off today, and I used it to check out Mobile, AL.

I was impressed with the number of trees in the city and how dense the tree canopy was. In the picture below, you can see how the trees have overtaken the street signs and lights.

My first stop in Mobile was to the Oakleigh House, a Greek Revival mansion built in 1833.

I learned a few interesting things about 19th century home design in the deep south. In the picture above you'll notice a staircase that goes up to the second floor deck. That deck was the main entrance to the house. The lower level was used for storage. The main part of the house was built up high to keep bugs out (there were no window screens at the time) and to improve airflow. Mansions of the era were also built in a t-shape to help improve airflow.

After taking a tour of the house and walking around the surrounding area, I headed down to Dauphin Street in the Dauphin Street Historic District.

It's kinda like South Street: lots of bars, cheep restaurants, and second hand shops. It's all very clean and it looks like many of the buildings had their facades torn down, and then rebuilt. Off the street there are many cool historic homes.

Also on Dauphin Street was the very impressive Cathedral of the Immaculate.

After doing a lot of walking, I checked out the docks.

Nothing to report there except memories from Season 2 of "The Wire."

After I had my fill of Mobile I drove down to Dauphin Island, approximately 37 miles south of the city.

The island is a barrier island, sitting more or less between the Gulf of Mexico and Mobile Bay.

Getting to it you go over a bridge with a massive incline:

On the island I visited the Dauphin Island Sea Lab, which has a estuarium dedicated to the ecology of the Mobile-Tensaw River Delta, the Mobile Bay, the Barrier Islands and the Gulf of Mexico.

As neat as that was, there was something much more impressive and interesting about seeing all of the oil rigs out in the Gulf of Mexico.

It was difficult to capture with a camera the sheer number of rigs that were out there, so I took this picture once it got pretty dark so that the rigs in the distance could be seen with their lights:

The island is also home to Fort Gaines.

For more pictures of Mobile, click here.

For more pictures of Dauphin Island, click here.

Southern Food

2009-11-23T21:48:00.006-06:00

I finally had my first encounter with real southern cuisine.

My company had a catered southern Thanksgiving Day lunch. All week leading up to it I keep hearing people talk about how amazing the caterer's "dressing" is. I had no clue what dressing was, and I had to ask someone. It's stuffing, but instead of being made with white bread, it's made with cornbread (and includes lots of other things, like: celery, butter, slightly beaten eggs, butter, bell peppers, butter, etc.).

As you can imagine, it has a pretty thick and gewy consistency. After all the build up to the dressing, I thought it tasted pretty bland -- there's nothing in it to give it any flavor. But everyone else raved about it, and it was the first thing that the caterer ran out of. Other items on the menu included cooked string beans that were covered in a sweet but bland sauce. And there was mac and cheese, which I detest. So I pretty much only ate the turkey, which was quite good.

Now you're all going to find this much more interesting:

Apparently down here in Alabama, most people deep fry their turkey instead of roast it.

At lunch today two of my co-workers walked me through how to deep fry a turkey; this website has good in-depth directions, but in short, this is how it's done:

1. Buy an outdoor turkey fryer, protective gloves, and a long sleeve shirt.

I stress "outdoor" because deep frying a turkey is quite messy. Many people do it on their driveway so that they can hose everything down afterwards.

2. Inject the marinade into the turkey.

3. Drop the turkey into the deep fryer for 30 minutes to an hour.

One of the main reasons this is so popular is that the cook time is typically under an hour, where as roasting a turkey is an all day affair.

I'm of course going to have to try deep fried turkey, and I'll spend the next few days hunting for a restaurant that makes it.

Street Lighting

2009-11-18T21:17:00.003-06:00

A major difference between a city like Philadelphia and Montgomery is street lighting.

The lighting level of most streets at night is low enough that I should really use my high beams, but there is too much traffic on the road to use them. Markings on the pavement are particularly difficult to see at night.

Tonight I had to go to the FedEx distribution center on the edge of town to pickup my new computer (sidebar: I hate FedEx. They deliver packages to my neighborhood at 2:00pm -- nothing really new or surprising there. Realizing that this was going to happen, I called FedEx in advance and asked that they hold my package at the distribution center and never put it on the truck. No dice. FedEx tells me they have to make at least one delivery attempt. Apparently they have a contract with the shipper... yaddi yaddi yadda... it doesn't matter that I am the customer and that I just want to pick it up. So they make the delivery attempt, I'm not home, and at that point FedEx will hold the package. On the phone they tell me I can pick it up anytime after 5:00. I show up at 6:30 and they tell me I have to wait 45 minutes because the package is still on the truck. 45 minutes comes and goes, and they give me the wrong package -- it turns out there is another Levi in Montgomery. So around 7:30 I finally get the computer).

As I drive to the distribution center, the amount of lighting quickly decreases until there is none. There are people on the road and buildings nearby, so it's not like I'm in the middle of no where, but there is zero lighting. And even with my high beams on, the road markings are so faded that I cannot see them. So part of my platform for Mayor in 2011 will be more street lighting and repainting all of the roads.

The computer:

Confederate Memorial Park

2009-11-15T23:32:00.004-06:00

I went to the Confederate Memorial Park today (33 miles north of Montgomery).

This was the first place I've been to so far that was really in the middle of no where. Neither GPS nor Google Maps could get me all the way there, and I got lost on a dirt road trying to find it (for the record, this was the first time I've gotten lost on a dirt road since I moved down to Alabama).

In Apocalypse Now they say, "never get out of the boat." Here, it's "never get off the interstate."

After a quick u-turn I was able to find my way to the Confederate Memorial Park.

It was pretty disappointing. It was just two very small cemeteries for Confederate war veterans, a small museum that I wouldn't pay the $5 admission fee for, camp grounds, and a nice half mile nature walk.

I decided to check out some of the dirt roads, and walked a 2.5 mile loop. The weather was fantastic; mid 70s and sunny. I love wearing shorts in November.

On the drive back to the interstate I passed by a sheriffs car that was parked by the side of the road. I of course made sure that I was going under the speed limit. As soon as I passed the car it pulled onto the road. I nearly shit myself. I still have my PA license plate, so I figured that was a giant bull's-eye on my car. I wasn't pulled over or anything -- it was purely coincidental. It will be a while, though, until I forget the feeling of dread when I saw that car pull into the road in my rear view mirror.

Selma, AL

2009-11-11T22:24:00.005-06:00

I used my day off today to go to Selma, AL.

The city is most noteworthy for "Blood Sunday" and the successful voting rights march to Montgomery. The Edmund Pettus Bridge is one of the most recognizable sites from the Civil Rights Movement, so it was pretty neat to get to see it in person and walk across the bridge.

Downtown Selma has a strip of interesting (and decaying) historic buildings. To give you an idea of how small the city is, finding an ATM was fairly difficult. I went to two gas stations; neither of them had one. I then went to a Wachovia; still no dice despite it being a bank! I asked someone at a drug store if they knew where an ATM was; they had never heard of an ATM. After 15 minutes of wandering I finally found one in some obscure southern bank.

Near the downtown area there is a fairly large neighborhood composed of historic southern homes (many date back the middle of the 19th century). Many of the homes have been fully restored, so I had a good time walking around looking at them. I have to say, I think ceiling fans on porches are very cool. According to Wiki, "Selma boasts the state's largest historic district, over 1,250 structures."

I stopped in the Sturdivant Hall House Museum, which is supposed to be the most impressive of all the historic Selma homes -- I believe it. The interior was huge and ornate. You cannot see it from the picture below, but the backside of the house is a network of stairways. This was done so that the slaves (the tour guide couldn't bring herself to use that word and called them "servants") could access any room in the house without having to walk through the house. So the bedrooms all have decks with staircases for this purpose. And the kitchen is in a small building next to the house -- again, this was a way to keep the slaves out of the house. I thought that was interesting.

I also went the National Voting Rights Museum. All it is, is an in-depth look at the events leading up to Blood Sunday. With a name like that I was expecting more, but it was still worthy of my time.

Overall, good trip.

Click here for more pictures from Selma.

Long weekend

2009-11-08T18:58:00.004-06:00

For fun I took an evasive driving class. The lessons/driving course included: emergency turning, emergency braking, driving in a figure 8, j-turning, and the slalom.

The class took place on an abandon airport runway with several hundred cones.

Most of the exercises boiled down to the importance of holding the wheel at 10 and 2, ocular driving, and that you should accelerate, not brake, when making a tight turn at a high speed. What's ocular driving? The idea of looking where you want to go instead of focusing on an object(s). Driving in the figure 8 was used to demonstrate this. The course they laid out was very tight -- the angle of the curve looked too tight to fit the car. If you focused on the avoiding the cones, you'd end up hitting every one of them. If you focused on the space in front of the car, you could make it through. The first time I did it I was watching the cones, and sure enough, I took about half of them down. The next time out I just focused on where I wanted the car to go, and it worked.

The j-turning was thrown in for fun. Step 1: gun the engine in reverse. Step 2: as soon as you hit 35 mph, take your foot of the accelerator, grab the bottom of the wheel and swing it around. Step 3: once the car has rotated 180 degrees quickly shift into drive and slam the accelerator. At no time do you use the brake. After each turn you could smell rubber in the air. It was obviously the highlight of the day.

The slalom was by far the hardest thing to do. To make the turns you have to accelerate, which is counter intuitive.

Yesterday I went to the Montgomery Museum of Fine Art. I wasn't expecting the Louvre; my expectations were a notch above a collection of hotel art. The bulk of the collection was modern art. This must be where the MoMA left overs go to die. The Museum sits in a large park, which I found is a decent place to go running or biking -- I returned the next day with my bike. So it wasn't a total wasted opportunity.

I also took a tour of the Alabama State Capitol. The building itself is pretty unremarkable, but so are most state capitol buildings I suppose (apparently PA's building is one of the two or three nicest). The tour guide made this big deal about how tens of millions of dollars were recently spent to restore the building to how it looked in the 1850s; it must have looked really awful before the restoration. The building is just really bland -- it looks like the ran out of money when building it.

The building is much more noteworthy for all the important Civil War and Civil Rights events that took place in or around it, such as the founding of the Confederacy and the march from Selma to Montgomery.

Today, the General Assembly no longer uses the building, and the Governor only keeps his office there so that the building can legitimately be called the state capitol building.

Outside the building is a memorial to Civil War veterans with this offensive inscription:

Pictures of the State Capitol Building:

College Pride and Slave Market

2009-11-06T00:11:00.004-06:00

The pride people display for ASU and Auburn football surpasses Philadelphia and the Eagles. Not only do half the cars here have a specialty college football license plates, but the cars also have window flags and giant magnet logos. I don't get how people can spend so much money decorating their car -- I'm sure it all comes to over $100.

I decided to do my part for displaying college pride:

Once or twice a week I use my lunch break to explore downtown Montgomery. The other day I went to the slave market. There's nothing really left, but apparently the dock a few blocks down the street where the slaves would arrive is more or less still original.

So I've now been to a slave market and a Nazi concentration camp. To complete the trifecta I need to go to a Russian gulag.

Move In: Part II

2009-11-01T18:23:00.004-06:00

I've been slow to blog this week because all of my stuff from Philly was delivered. I've been unpacking it, organizing the apartment, etc.

Before:

After:

Most important, is that the TV and audio system are setup, and the CD collection is here:

Birmingham, AL

2009-10-24T20:07:00.003-05:00

I went up to Birmingham today to see the Met's live HD broadcast of "Aida" (Birmingham was the closest city to have a movie theater that was carrying it).

On the drive up I65 I came across this:

It's a giant Confederate battle flag perched at the top of a hill right up against the road. The Alabama Division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans bought the land and put the flag up as a gigantic "fuck you" to everyone who objects to the Confederate flag. It's the first real indication I've had that I'm now living in the South. I saw a sign for some kind of Confederate memorial or museum nearby; I'll have to check it out.

After the broadcast I drove to downtown Birmingham and walked around the area. I started with the 16th Street Baptist Church that was bombed by the Klan in 1963; four girls were killed.

Across the street from the church is Kelly Ingram Park. There are sculptures in the park that depict the violence inflicted on civil rights protesters during a May 1963 protest in the park (you've most likely seen footage of it in civil rights documentaries). Apparently people have complained that the statues are too vivid -- well, the police really did unleash attack dogs on children and blasted them with fire hoses. They show the truth. Suck it up.

Downtown Birmingham was actually quite nice.

You can view the pictures I took here.

There are lots of well kept brick and stone buildings from the 1890s through 1940s. It looks like they haven't ever torn anything down. The town, though, was deserted -- it's a business district with no restaurants or shops. It's a shame because it could be a great downtown area because of all of the historic buildings.

Misc Apartment Stuff

2009-10-22T20:51:00.007-05:00

One of the major downsides of urban apartment living is that you have no place to barbecue. So I went and bought a barbecue the other night. Home Depot had an end of the season sale -- only $100. And you'll notice that it is on my deck.

I tried out the neighborhood pizza place tonight, Tomatinos. While it's no Mama Palma's or Slice, it was pretty good. And I can walk to it. Their larges cost up to $25; that's expensive even by Philly standards. I'll have to investigate.

Some pictures of the apartment:

Moved into Apt

2009-10-20T21:25:00.002-05:00

Despite all of my stuff being in Philly, and being unable to get it shipped to me until next week, I moved into the apartment. I didn't want to keep staying in the hotel which was isolated at the edge of town. I got an air mattress so I wouldn't have to sleep on the floor, and a few hundred dollars worth of stuff from IKEA (had to drive two hours to Atlanta).

The trash collection situation is unusual. Two days a week they collect "trash" -- anything you can fit into a 96 gallon city issued toter (that's right! After attacking toter users and haulers for 9 months, I'm now a toter user). Once a week they collect "garbage" which is anything in a bag. So that means I have trash collection 3 times a week. And I pay the city a fee for this.

The title of this blog should have something about shopping centers in it. I went to Target tonight for bed sheets. I quickly pulled the location up in google maps and saw it was a few miles down a road off exit 11 on I85. So I'm driving down the road, see a big shopping center and pull onto it. I can't find Target, look up the location on my phone, and see that I need to drive a few miles more. I get back on the road, a minute or so later hit amother shopping center, and pull into it. Still no Target. I pull out my phone and see I need to keep driving. I hit another shopping center and this is the one with Target. To get back to I85 I need to keep driving down that road. Another mile later I hit a fourth shopping center. Montgomery is the frigging shopping center capital of the south. And the 10% sales tax is killing me.

Initial Montgomery Impressions

2009-10-16T22:13:00.007-05:00

So I've been in Montgomery for 5 days now. It's surprisingly normal. With few exceptions, there are all the same stores here that there are in any other city. There's even a gourmet supermarket called The Fresh Market. It's a pretty good substitute for Di Bruno Brothers, so I can officially live Montgomery, AL.

Despite housing the State Capitol and a slew of government buildings, the downtown area is always desolate. Even at rush hour there is no traffic or pedestrians. I'm planning on biking there because it is always so wide open. The rest of the city is suburban -- single family homes with lawns. Having a car is a must -- there are no sidewalks. One final note about the city: there are shopping centers all over the place -- it seems like way more than a city of 200,000 can support. There are 3 Wal-Marts within the city limits, all within 5 miles of each other. That feels like a lot.

During lunch on Wednesday I walked over to the First White House of the Confederacy. For some reason I found it incredibly creepy that self-guided tour always referred to Jefferson Davis as President Jefferson Davis. Besides learning that Davis was the greatest American ever, the tour also taught me that General Lee didn't know his ass from his elbow when it came to warfare, and Davis had to tell him everything to do (so does that mean Davis is to blame for the military failure of the South?).

I was able to find an apartment quickly. I'll post more on it later, but it's two bedrooms, probably 900 sq ft, has a deck, yard, hardwood floors, and is across the street from a strip of (non-chain) restaurants (I've eaten at two and they're good). The real estate broker wanted $700 a month; I'm a bit nervous that I was able to get him down to $650 with little effort. I feel like there must be something wrong with the apartment. The only problem I foresee is that the kitchen does not have a garbage disposal. I'm tempted to spend my own money to have one installed. The apartment also has hookups for a washer and dryer. After seeing the costs of the cheapest units at Home Depot, I think I'm just going to use the laundromat down the street. When I factor in energy costs, it's going to take years for these units to pay for themselves.

Philadelphia to Montgomery

2009-10-11T10:56:00.000-05:00

Day 1: Philadelphia to Richmond, VA
Day 2: Richmond, VA to Charlotte, NC
Day 3: Charlotte, NC to Montgomery, AL

Nothing to report from the drive -- I didn't kill anyone and I wasn't killed. Many thanks to my co-workers in Philly who got me some Cannolis from Termini Brothers; I ate them all in the car on the way down to Richmond.

Because I have yet to find an apartment in Montgomery, I loaded up my car with the essentials for living:

Clothes
Bike
2 month supply of pasta, tomato sauce, and balsamic vinegar from Di Bruno Bros
Salad spinner

Once I find an apartment I'll have the rest of my stuff shipped down, which mostly consists of:

CDs
DVDs
Books
TV
Audio Equipment
Furniture

The people who know me well won't be surprised to hear that the CDs take up more cubic footage than the furniture I own.

This got me thinking about how much stuff I own that is replaceable. My irreplaceable items come down to this milk container:

In it I have three external hard drives that have all of my computer data going back to the first computer I owned (minus my video projects from college -- they're on two other drives), and the Szell Centennial Compact Disc Edition (live recordings of music George Szell never commercially recorded -- the Cleveland Orchestra released a limited number of box sets in the late 90s; it's been out of print for years; it seems unlikely that these recordings will ever be released again). If everything else were to accidentally be destroyed, as long as the insurance company paid up, it wouldn't be that big of a deal.

The Car:

2009 Honda Fit Sport

I averaged 38.8 MPG