Category Archives: Travel

Houston Gothic

Mar 3, 2014

Then there was the time I went to Houston with Bryn. Because neuroethics. Houston moves.

Boots were sold everywhere, and we lived in a hostel. It was nice; the art was bad. Free cereal patiently sat in Tupperwares. The wi-fi password was “peanut butter.” Dorm students were always cleaning the place up.

We found the goth club of our teenage dreams and got drunk. I nearly blew $14,000 on an eBay bid for Ian Curtis’ kitchen table from my Droid after Bryn told me it was for sale. But I didn’t. I already have a table. The next morning, I coughed out sushi in the street. Jerry Only told us we were his children in a boat that stunk of oysters.

Bryn spoke to the University of Texas about Alzheimers, but by then I was in a Los Angeles Lyft. It was all worth it. They play lots of goth music in Houston.

“I feel much more comfortable with the bass in my hand while I sing; that’s why I don’t have to do any dancing around. I’m not a dancing-around type of guy.” – Jerry Only

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Chicago Runaway

Sep 9, 2013

I ran away to Chicago as a teenager, and found a family immediately, via the Chicago Reader’s Help Wanted pages, where a little ad for a job at Ragstock rested, looking out at me like, “Hey, come get it.”

logan square ukrainian village suzymae

It was hard to get a job at Ragstock, my roommates told me. You just hung out and ate pizza and listened to metal. Everyone wanted to work there. I went in and applied. The job application was one of the best personality tests I’ve seen in my whole entire life. It was called “Draw a Face on the Cowboy.”

Billie Holiday the dog

To complete it, you had to draw a face on the cowboy. Offer your best joke. Tell the most embarrassing story that had ever happened to you. And tell something else, I don’t remember. But I did get the job. A kid who worked there had created the test. He liked my application a lot. He lobbied for me. He really liked what I wrote. Everyone did, but he really did. We ended up in love, moving in together, and eventually left Chicago together for the Northwest. Great test, right?

Amita Balla & Amanda Ross-Ho MCA Chicago

At Ragstock, I made minimum wage and learned to perfect my “street face,” the one that says DON’T FUCK WITH ME. I got DEEP into the Melvins, drew comics for approximately 60% of every shift, and learned about everything awesome on earth from my coworkers, all guys, for the next 3.5 years.

art by Amita Balla and Pitchfork picnics

The friends I made there are the smartest, most talented people I’ve ever met and I love them to death. When I recently went back to visit, I was prepared to face inevitable grown-up-hood. Everyone had gotten married/ had kids/ bought houses/ broken up/ found new work. Even though those years where I changed from a teenager to a twenty-one year old immeasurably affected who I am today, I couldn’t expect the same amount of time and energy we used to expend together. I couldn’t expect our friendships to pick back up again.

PITCHFORK MIA CHICAGO 2013

But they did. Like a real family, my friends made time for me. We fell back into friendship like no time had passed. Instead of loading boxes into elevators and ringing up customers together, yelling at suburbanites to “CHECK IN YOUR BAG!” I went to their shows and got my hair did at their salons and bought their paintings and met their kids. We’d grown up, but they were still there, still awesome, still inspiring.

TIMBER LANES CHICAGO

Chicago was not necessarily a city I’d dreamed about moving to. I ended up in Chicago on accident, crashing for a summer with a friend. I had no idea what Chicago was about, and actually had moments of panic when I would forget what state I lived in. Was it Illinois? Was that right? I really lived in Illinois?

CHICAGO POLICE PALACE FOOD STREET STYLE

Everyone asks, “But didn’t you hate the winters? Those winters, though!” Honestly, I didn’t mind the winters. Not even that first year when I didn’t have money to buy pants and wore these punk cutoff skinny jeans with legwarmers and hi-top Chucks that would get soaked in the snow. I had one red denim jacket I wore over a black hoodie every day until my boss took pity on me, mega-discounting a military parka so he could sell it to me for $4.00. I ate $2.00 cheese fries for lunch and got really, really sick because I put off going to the medical clinic VISIBLE FROM MY BEDROOM WINDOW until a month into bronchitis, but I didn’t give a shit. I was in a real city.

Andy Slater and Sharkula Chicago

A real city meant that you never had to stop exploring. That opportunities were everywhere, whether they were handed to you in the form of a life-changing minimum wage job, or whether you created them yourself by putting together your own shows, stapling flyers all over Milwaulkee Avenue and carrying your guitar and amp home from practice, alone in the middle of the night. A real city had neighborhoods and danger and bars where you could drink as a teen and best friends and enemies just waiting to reveal themselves.

EMPTY BOTTLE DANCE CONTEST

This summer, on my trip back to Chicago, I found myself at Club Foot, an old haunt, where I spent every birthday from 21 and up, bullshitting with Chuck the bartender and Lawrence Peters and Andy Slater and Frank Pollard. Shooting pool, playing Tetris, drinking Old Styles. That night was like going back in time. It was like going home for Christmas, if going home for Christmas was supremely awesome. It was like Oprah burst into my house all “Surprise! Your friends nominated you for a trip to Chicago! And my show’s back on the air!” It was like Satan himself appeared and said, “Suzy Mae, what is your fondest memory? I will take you there, for you have been obedient.” It was like being a cat in a cardboard box.

I was home, I was with family, I was in motherfucking CHICAGO.
773 forever.

xo,

suzymae

Travel Local: Chinatown, NYC

Aug 8, 2013

Living out of a backpack, aka Full Backpack style, is meant to reduce complications and open up more possibilities. Travel Local guidelines release tourists from the wheelied, neck-pillowed, map-fumbling stereotypes they may be, and allows for city exploration as a visiting neighbor. This means sticking to one neighborhood for the majority of your stay. Borrowing a bike and exploring on foot. Visiting the same juice bar each morning. Learning which way’s north.

Secure Homebase

Secure homebase

I’m a big fan of Hotel Tonight, the app that allows you to make reduced-cost purchases after noon from underbooked hotels, but leading up to my trip, a few test-runs showed that apparently more and more people are becoming fans, too, and reducing availability. Selections had decreased and prices were higher. My “Travel Local” idea needed a home base, so I did some Yelping and found a Lower East Side HoJo in Chinatown. I picked Chinatown for its proximity to the Williamsburg bridge, and the “stay downtown, darling” advice of Gala Darling in her Love and Sequins chapter #11,
“It’s up to you, New York, New York.” Luckily, too. The night I arrived in NYC, I checked Hotel Tonight in my taxi to Chinatown, and found that a sports game had reduced availability and upped prices. Homebase secured! I win this round.

Daily Deli

Daily deli

So Chinatown was my new home, a place where unloading of edibles seems to happen each morning, and the summer trash is particularly offensive, reeking of chicken asshole and putrid fish guts. My first night, I discovered a 24 hour deli right on my block that made juices and smoothies. 24 hours a day. For five dollars. This type of thing does not exist in the twelve-dollar smoothieland that is Los Angeles. The Highline Deli became my daily stop, where the counter guys and I made friends: they made custom smoothies, pointed me to subway stops, and one night, as I experienced 3am drunk starvation shame, whipped up the most epic veggie and chicken wrap I’ve ever eaten. Imagine a drunk food better than tacos. This was it. (Tacos are my heart, so that’s saying something.)

Friendly Favors

Request friendly favors

Asking for something is the only way to receive it. I’m independent to a fault. But a quote from Neal Donald Walsch inspired me on this trip: “Life begins at the end of your comfort zone.” I asked friends for help, and I got it: a borrowed bike, helmet, introductions to new friends, IRL meetups with Internet friends, recommendations and invitations. I even got touristy with the HoJo staff, who were massively helpful in spreading out a giant subway map and giving me tips to navigate the city. A spread-out map is my biggest fear—I’m a shitty navigator and I HATE getting lost/ asking for directions—so this was pushing my comfort zone to the hilt.

Bike Bike Bike

Bike, bike, bike

I love biking. Especially on vacation. Cycling through the city is the perfect pace. You acknowledge your surroundings with every layer of attention: acutely aware (what are the drivers like out here?), contemplative (the light off that building is beautiful), logistical (OK, right in two blocks, then a left at the fork). Interaction is easier on a bike than on the street, and you can jump off to redirect your trajectory at any moment, if a sexy person, awesome shop, or enticing bar crosses your path. One thing I wouldn’t recommend: Citibikes. They’re unwieldy, top-heavy, confusing, and you have to check them in every hour. Not worth it. Borrow a freaking bike from a local, or rent a real city road bike.

Go Public

Go public

I am terrible with directions. And I’ve tried every psychological/ brain-training trick possible to change this, but invariably, I blank out when hearing directions, forget them immediately, and have no sense of north. This is my tragedy, and it makes public transportation most epic—the wrong bus, once entered, can send me down a rabbit hole of confusion and frustration. Pushing past my comfort zone, I MAKE MYSELF TAKE PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION. Even in Japan, where my grasp on the language was basic at best, my taxi-loving friend was forced to battle the complex subway fare system, tunnels, and connections with me. Conquering public
transportation in JAPAN (drunk, at that) is like winning American Ninja
Warrior. So in NYC, I took subways and buses when off-bike. Sure, most people there do, but that’s the Travel Local experience.

Neighborhood Watch

Neighborhood watch

Another reason biking is the best—I covered more ground than simply walking, and if (when) I got confused, circling a block on wheels makes you look like someone who’s into exercising, as opposed to someone who’s hopelessly lost and looking to be mugged. At night, I’d cruise around the Lower East Side, making notes on cool restaurants to visit next day, stopping into bars, striking up conversations, and then riding home to HoJo. You see the same people nightly, they open up. Familiarity drives affinity. It’s why we see the same commercial for yogurt 20 times during Passions, and why your favorite bar is the one where you get free drinks. By my last NYC night, I was getting free drinks.

Drop In FTW

Drop-in FTW

Being in Chinatown, I knew there would be some killer cheap massage action. Right on my block was Rich Feet… Rich Feet, where for $30 and an hour, you get a foot and leg massage that rubs the New York pavement’s abuse into submission. Down Allen Street was Marie Nails, where I practiced Japanese with a sweet manicurist who turned my nails into bejeweled works of art. Every lunch, I found a new place, dropped in, headed for the bar, and talked shit to the bartender, bar neighbor, or both. Bartender Andrew, above, and his superfab servers were my favorites, getting me drunk and giving me info on their Uptown neighborhood, post Museum of Sex visit.

Be A Neighbor

Be a neighbor

Part of traveling local is meeting the locals. My favorite conversations happened with people I ran into purely by coincidence. One person I met randomly knew a person I met the next week in Chicago. One teenager I struck up a conversation with at Pitchfork Chicago was the cousin of an ad-world friend I’ve hung with in Los Angeles. Randomly. How amazing is that? It’s a habit I plan to continue in my real Los Angeles life. Just this week, at a comedy show, solo, I struck up a conversation with the man next to me, who happened to work in my industry, and big shocker: we have multiple friends in common. Break your monotony. Open your eyes. Look at the person next to you. Say hello. The two of you have more in common than any other people on earth at this moment. Traveling local makes the world a smaller community, and a better place.

Live, learn, and say hello,

suzymae

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