“Arthur blinked at the screens and felt he was missing something important. Suddenly he realized what it was.
“Is there any tea on this spaceship?” he asked.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
Photographs from the teacup races at Turner House in Oak Cliff, during the 2014 Tweed Ride festivities.
“There are those who love to get dirty and fix things. They drink coffee at dawn, beer after work. And those who stay clean, just appreciate things. At breakfast they have milk and juice at night. There are those who do both, they drink tea.”
― Gary Snyder
“You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me.”
― C.S. Lewis
“I say let the world go to hell, but I should always have my tea.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground
“Take some more tea,” the March Hare said to Alice, very earnestly.
“I’ve had nothing yet,” Alice replied in an offended tone, “so I can’t take more.”
“You mean you can’t take less,” said the Hatter: “it’s very easy to take more than nothing.”
“Nobody asked your opinion,” said Alice.”
― Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland
Shane Pennington’s screen inside the Dallas City Performance Hall, with Jazz Trio.
This has always been one of my favorite movie scenes,“We will sell our bracelets by the roadside; you will play golf and enjoy hot hors d’oeuvres. My people will have pain and degradation; your people will have stick-shifts. The gods of my tribe have spoken. They have said, ‘Do not trust the Pilgrims, especially Sarah Miller. And for all these reasons, I have decided to scalp you and burn your village to the ground.”
“The Greek word for “return” is nostos. Algos means “suffering.” So nostalgia is the suffering caused by an unappeased yearning to return.”
― Milan Kundera, Ignorance
After riding around in the increasingly inclement weather Saturday at the Cedars Open Studio Tour and Ride I was sore in the morning. Riding in the rain always wears me out… I’m not sure why. On Sunday was another bike ride – one I have been looking forward to. It was time for the 2014 Dallas Tweed Ride. The idea is to dress up in nostalgic dress – as best as possible and go out on vintage bicycles – if you have one.
I was one of the brave few that rode in the Tweed Ride last year. It was bitter cold – though still a lot of fun. I have a tweedy beret and a Goodwill jacket that I can wear with slacks and a tie – not historically accurate or as good looking as most others, but at least I can put forth a little effort dressing up. I put together my clothing and thought about my bike. I do have a semi-vintage road bike, but Nick has taken it over and installed clipless pedals so I can’t use it. I decided to take my folder – not vintage at all, but at least it’s efficient.
Thinking about the route I decided to drive down and park in the familiar lot on the west side of the Continental Bridge Park. I knew the ride would start downtown and end at the Turner House in Oak Cliff. I picked that spot because I new the ride back to my car would be mostly downhill.
I rode across the bridge park and through downtown to Dealy Plaza, where everyone was gathering for the ride. The weather was beautiful – it seemed almost impossible after the cold rain which had been falling the night before. If anything, it was a little warm… at least in the sun and out of the wind. I’m not good at counting numbers in a group like this, but I would guess about a hundred. That’s a pretty good group of people wearing odd costumes and wheeling around on outdated means of transport.
I knew a lot of folks from other bike rides – although some were surprisingly hard to recognize. We gathered up and rode up Main Street through downtown, then turned south and rode to Dallas Heritage Village. I remembered riding there once before for a Jazz Age Sunday Social. We stopped for some photos around the gazebo.
The Dallas Tweed Ride 2014 Posing in Dallas Heritage Village gazebo Dallas, Texas (click to enlarge)
Dallas Tweed Ride 2014
Dallas Tweed Ride 2014
We rode back through downtown and then across the Trinity River on the Houston Viaduct. Then came the long uphill ride from the river to Bishop Arts and on up 8th Street to the Turner House. I’m afraid that this stretch pretty much wore me out and I was happy and exhausted to reach our destination.
Once the sun began to set everyone started to take off home and I rode by myself – as I had planned, coasting down Edgefield to West Dallas and then Commerce Street into the river bottoms and back to my car. I had a fun time, though I was inexplicably bothered by how hard it was for me to make it up that long uphill. I also wished I had a vintage bike to ride and better clothes. I guess that’s to be expected this time of year – and fodder for upcoming resolutions.
I actually knew about all but three of these, but an interesting list anyway.
Grave of Clyde Barrow and his brother, Buck.
When I was nothing more than a sprout (or in this case, an offshoot) and lived in the Canal Zone, I was fascinated by the bananas that grew everywhere. Although everyone grew a little tired of eating them all the time, it was really cool to watch them grow and develop – and to realize that there are many types of bananas – most superior to the Cavendish that we buy in our supermarkets.
Did you know that all bananas are slightly radioactive?
I stayed up too late last night to watch most of what is one of the best movies ever made.
I’ve always found this to be one of the most frightening scenes in any movie. Starting with Lundegaard hoplessly struggling with the list of VIN numbers and then having Marge figure out that something is very wrong – you see the end of a person’s life right here. It’s awful – even if it’s somebody as reprehesible as Lundegaard. Ya, Darn tootin’.
An oh ya, this scene. I actually Googled Normandale Community College (seems like a nice enough place) after I watched it. It must be a short path from Juco to turning tricks in a snow-bound truck stop. Go Bears.
If you were to ask me (But why would you do something like that?) I would tell you I’m not a particular fan of action movies. However, looking at this list, I’ve seen all but about five of them. The others I liked (mostly) – so maybe I should try and finish it off.
If we do see all of them, or if we want more (I’ve been thinking I should write in first person plural more often) there there is always this:
I ate lunch at a splashy new dining spot at the edge of Klyde Warren, Lark on the Park, and chatted with the owner, the longtime Dallas restaurateur Shannon Wynne. When he commented, “Dallas has matured more in the last five years than in the past 25,” I asked him why this was. He guffawed in reply, “Well, it certainly can’t be the locals.” He added that the city had benefited greatly from new blood, and that they in turn had emboldened establishment Dallasites to reconsider the city’s possibilities.
While Mr. Wynne talked, I looked over his shoulder at the restaurant’s walls, which were covered with intricate chalk drawings that rotate quarterly: one by a local tattoo artist, another by a medical illustrator, a third depicting the University of Texas at Dallas’s top-ranked chess team. Meanwhile, outside, dozens of residents were tossing Frisbees, or ice skating. It occurred to me that while Dallas has always exhibited the capacity to surprise others, it had now succeeded in surprising itself.
Abby Magill, of Home By Hovercraft Klyde Warren Park Dallas, Texas
Milk Crate Bike in the reading area in Klyde Warren Park.
“They had laughed. They had leaned on each other and laughed until the tears had come, while everything else–the cold, and where he’d go in it–was outside, for a while anyway.”
― Raymond Carver, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love
One of my favorite new places in Dallas is the Cold Beer Company. It’s on the far east side of Deep Ellum, and has been built as the rebirth of an interesting old building. It’s in a good location, has nice outdoor seating, and, of course, a good selection of cold beer.
I rode my bike there and noticed the brick patio entrance. Right in the middle of the paving was a single brick marked “Lawrence, Kansas.” I asked the waitress about that and she said one of the owners went to Kansas University, my alma mater.
“And he likes to talk about it,” she said.
So when he came out of the back I asked him about KU and the waitress was right – he liked to talk about it. He seemed a little sheepish about the brick. “They weren’t supposed to put it right there in the middle.” I’m not sure I believed him.
We talked about Lawrence and the Kansas winters. When I would look around, the waitress and bartender would roll their eyes.
I think they had heard it all before – many times before.
Paving brick in front of the Cold Beer Company Deep Ellum, Dallas, Texas
Patio in front of the Cold Beer Company, Deep Ellum, Dallas, Texas
My Xootr Swift folding bike in the cool bike rack in front of the Cold Beer Company Deep Ellum, Dallas, Texas
“Don’t you just love those long rainy afternoons in New Orleans when an hour isn’t just an hour – but a little piece of eternity dropped into your hands – and who knows what to do with it?”
― Tennessee Williams, A Streetcar Named Desire
A lot of my photos from New Orleans are taken from my favorite spot. It on the corner of Governor Nicholls and Decatur in the French Quarter. There’s a bar/restaurant called the Mojo Lounge – and there is a table right on the corner, outside, on the sidewalk, under the balcony. I’ve been known to hang around until someone leaves that table and jump in. The Mojo is primarily a bar, but like a lot of bars in New Orleans, the owner is a chef and takes pride in his food. But the real attraction is the view from that corner table. It’s in the quarter, but far enough down toward Frenchman that it’s not too touristy. There’s a bicycle rental down the street and Wicked Orleans catty-corner across the street. That makes for an interesting parade all day and all night.
I discovered the place a few years ago after being caught in a sudden torrential downpour while walking away from the French Market one Saturday before Mardi Gras. I ducked in and ended up staying all day and most of the night.
Outside the Mojo Lounge, New Orleans, Louisiana
Two orange bikes rented from A Bicycle Named Desire, French Quarter, New Orleans, Louisiana
“He was a boy, just a boy, when I was a very young girl. When I was sixteen, I made the discovery – love. All at once and much, much too completely. It was like you suddenly turned a blinding on something that had always been half in shadow, that’s how it struck the world for me. But I was unlucky. Deluded.”
― Tennessee Williams, A Streetcar Named Desire
There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet
an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says
“Morning, boys. How’s the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a
bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes
“What the hell is water?”
—-David Foster Wallace, from the 2005 Kenyon Commencement Address
It’s a short work, actually a transcription of a commencement address, and readily available in book form or online.
There are a lot of good ideas here, but I want to look at one piece of text – a description of the hell everyone’s life can become if we give in.
By way of example, let’s say it’s an average day, and you get up in the morning, go to your challenging job, and you work hard for nine or ten hours, and at the end of the day you’re tired, and you’re stressed out, and all you want is to go home and have a good supper and maybe unwind for a couple of hours and then hit the rack early because you have to get up the next day and do it all again. But then you remember there’s no food at home — you haven’t had time to shop this week, because of your challenging job — and so now after work you have to get in your car and drive to the supermarket. It’s the end of the workday, and the traffic’s very bad, so getting to the store takes way longer than it should, and when you finally get there the supermarket is very crowded, because of course it’s the time of day when all the other people with jobs also try to squeeze in some grocery shopping, and the store’s hideously, fluorescently lit, and infused with soul-killing Muzak or corporate pop, and it’s pretty much the last place you want to be, but you can’t just get in and quickly out: You have to wander all over the huge, overlit store’s crowded aisles to find the stuff you want, and you have to maneuver your junky cart through all these other tired, hurried people with carts, and of course there are also the glacially slow old people and the spacey people and the ADHD kids who all block the aisle and you have to grit your teeth and try to be polite as you ask them to let you by, and eventually, finally, you get all your supper supplies, except now it turns out there aren’t enough checkout lanes open even though it’s the end-of-the-day-rush, so the checkout line is incredibly long, which is stupid and infuriating, but you can’t take your fury out on the frantic lady working the register.
Anyway, you finally get to the checkout line’s front, and pay for your food, and wait to get your check or card authenticated by a machine, and then get told to “Have a nice day” in a voice that is the absolute voice of death, and then you have to take your creepy flimsy plastic bags of groceries in your cart through the crowded, bumpy, littery parking lot, and try to load the bags in your car in such a way that everything doesn’t fall out of the bags and roll around in the trunk on the way home, and then you have to drive all the way home through slow, heavy, SUV-intensive rush-hour traffic, etcetera, etcetera.
—–David Foster Wallace, This is Water
The excellent piece goes on to explain how important it is to not let this sort of thing get to you, to realize that we are all in the same boat, that we need to look at life in a non-selfish way and go with it – or else we will go mad.
All good advice and interesting thought provoking… but I want to present an alternative. Find out about this shit and simply don’t do it… or rather, figure out something else.
For example, I know all too well the hell of exhausted grocery shopping. So I decided not to do it.
My goal for this year… and probably for next year too, is to never drive my car to the grocery store. My commuter bike has room for a pair of big, cheap panniers I found at Wal-Mart of all places. With those and a backpack I can carry a goodly bit of groceries – enough to get by for a few days.
This has transformed my grocery shopping from a gas-fueled frustration fest into a series of fun little mini-adventures, complete with fresh air and a little exercise.
It helps that I have five grocery choices within easy cycling distance from my house. I define that as less than, say three miles… and no killer streets.
First is the Super Target – good for general shopping. They have bike racks sort of hidden in little alcoves near the entryways. This is the closest place to the hell described in Wallace’s speech. But, somehow, when you have ridden a bicycle to a store, it’s impossible to be overly frustrated at the inevitable delays. You simply feel too silly.
Bike racks tucked away at the Super Target store.
Then there is the Fiesta Mart – a Hispanic slanted grocery store. It’s the farthest away – maybe two miles – but a nice route, mostly bike trail. It has a beat-up but serviceable bike rack around by the propane cylinders.
My commuter bike, with panniers, waiting at the Fiesta Mart bike rack.
Those are the only two groceries with bike racks near where I live. No big problem – they all have cart racks, which can be locked to as well as a dedicated rack. In the other direction – in Garland, actually – is the Saigon Market Mall – a big, cool Asian Market – good for noodles, fresh vegetables, and fish.
Then, very close to where I live is an Aldi – great for staples like milk and eggs. It’s nice to buy milk there since it is uphill from my house and I can ride up there light and coast home heavy.
Finally, there is an India Bazaar in the same center. Great place for rice, beans, and, especially spices. Their spice aisle is a wonder – I love to stand there and simply smell.
Locked up on the cart rack in front of the India Bazaar
I know that the Wallace speech deals with much larger and more subtle issues than how to get your groceries. But in this tough world we need all the weapons we can muster and being able to roll out of the garage on a cheap, used, crappy bicycle instead of a smoke spewing SUV makes life a little bit easier to bear. For everybody.
“Let’s talk of graves, of worms, and epitaphs;
Make dust our paper and with rainy eyes
Write sorrow on the bosom of the earth,
Let’s choose executors and talk of wills”
― William Shakespeare, Richard II
We lost about half the ride at Lee Harvey’s – but here’s the rest at the Santa Fe Trestle Trail. (click for a larger, better version on Flickr)
A week ago I went along on an organized bike ride that, in the spirit of upcoming Halloween, explored three of Dallas’ historical cemeteries. I left the house and rode to the DART station, taking the train downtown. This was the last week of the giant State Fair of Texas and the trains were packed with last-minute fairgoers, but I made it without any problem. I rode from the West End Station down to the Continental Bridge Park and met up with about twenty folks there.
This was a very peaceful and interesting place. It’s one of the oldest cemeteries in the city and is full of locally famous folks – the names on the tombstones are reflected in many familiar street names. One feature is that when they constructed the cemetery they left the native trees – making it one of the few first-growth forest spots in the city. There are a number of unique sub-species of trees found only there.
We rode around without stopping – I plan on going back soon for some photography there.
Leaving Oakland Cemetery we went a few blocks up a side street and stopped at an ordinary small rental property. It was the house where Ray Charles lived for a few years in the 1950s – while he was making some of his most famous music. I had no idea there was any connection between Ray Charles and the city of Dallas – the house is not marked or preserved in any way. The local blues scene was influential on his musical growth and style at the time. He was traveling a lot – but became a regular performer at local clubs like Woodman Hall and the Arandas Club.
Ray Charles’ rental home. Dallas, Texas
We rode back on side streets into The Cedars where we stopped for lunch and a beer at Lee Harvey’s – which appeared as we turned the corner like an oasis in the desert.
The day was getting long and I thought about heading home, but I was convinced to ride back across the river to another historical cemetery, Oak Cliff Cemetery. It was another interesting and beautiful spot – but the sun was starting to set so we headed off to our last destination, Western Heights Cemetery.
I was getting tired and started to fall behind the main group. A strong cyclist stayed back with me and we became separated from everybody else. It was dark when we made it to Western Heights. We waited for a bit – but the others never made it.
Historical Marker at Western Heights Cemetery Dallas, Texas
The most famous person buried in Western Heights is Clyde Barrow. A few years back I visited Bonnie Parker’s grave, north of Love Field. Her family insisted on her being buried far away from her infamous partner – there has been some interest in having them moved together over the years, but nothing has come of it.
Bonnie Parker’s Gravesite
We clambered over the fence to take a look at the grave of Clyde and his brother Buck.
Grave of Clyde Barrow and his brother, Buck.
It was getting late and I was a long way from home, so I took off, riding back to the Trinity River, over the Continental Bridge and catching a train at the American Airlines Center back to Richardson. We had ridden a little over thirty miles, which is a long way in the city, especially for me. There is nothing better than a fun and exhausting day.
Sometimes I fold my bike when I’m locking it up. I’m not sure why – it certainly doesn’t make it any harder to steal – you could simply pick it up and throw it into a trunk. Maybe I hope it makes it look less like a bicycle and more like a random pile of pipes and parts.
I was thinking about David Lynch’s surreal, preposterous, and insane version of Dune, the movie from 1984. I read some old reviews – everybody hated it. A lot of people walked out. Someone said, “It sure isn’t Star Wars.”
Now, after all this time, I realize that (although I can’t even say Dune is a good movie) I actually likeDune better than Star Wars. It has certainly had more of a lasting effect on how I look at the world, that’s for sure.
I mean, what other movie ends with a real WTF knife fight to the death between Sting and Agent Cooper with Captain Jean-Luc Picard watching.
“If I stayed here, something inside me would be lost forever—something I couldn’t afford to lose. It was like a vague dream, a burning, unfulfilled desire. The kind of dream people have only when they’re seventeen.”
― Haruki Murakami, South of the Border, West of the Sun
Bill Chance 