Archive for the 'art' Category

Casco Antiguo

Saturday, February 24th, 2007

Anti-bush graffiti. Street kid. Panama City

Casco Antiguo, Panama City, Panamá.

I was trying to take a picture of the graffiti when this kid jumped into the frame and tried to extort money for the photo.


Taller

Saturday, January 6th, 2007

hand painted sign for a bicycle repair shop, El Salvador

La Puntilla, Costa del Sol, El Salvador.


More on Maine

Tuesday, August 15th, 2006

downtown Gardiner Maine at night

(Downtown Gardiner. That’s pretty much all of it too.)

That’s right; we rented a car in Lexington, Kentucky and drove to Maine. Via Pennsylvania, New York, Boston, and those excellent booze warehouses in New Hampshire.

Once more, we imposed ourselves upon our friends Kurt and Ilana (and Kurt’s mom, Karen, whose kitchen we totally commandeered on a nightly basis), who have since moved from LA, where they were our last visit. Kurt was in the midst of remodeling a very old downtown brick building that was originally plastered, quaintly, with horsehair. Plucked horses. Holding the plaster together. Kurt is a modern man though, and was using drywall to cover up the mayhem. His tenants had recently moved out of the top floor apartment so we got an entire apartment for our very own during our stay in Gardiner. It was a cute place right downtown and our neighbors were extremely friendly and had names like “Stoner Dave.”

Beverage & Redemption. Funny sign. Gardiner, Maine

(You know, just the local beverage and redemption place.)

We spent the majority of our Downtown Gardiner, Maine mornings on the prowl for breakfast. We started with the Isamax Bakery, a place I learned was named after the founder’s two children—Isabella and Maxx, not after some gnarly industrial detergent, and famous on Oprah for Whoopie Pies.

Whoopie Pies

And we bought some Whoopie Pies.

Cheyenne with large Whoopie Pie

(Here’s a really big one! You have to love it. I love it.)

Joshua went with the ‘classic’ and I went with some newfangled ginger cookie one. The coffee was good. The Whoopie Pies were, um, well, we were not interested in eating the entire things to find out. They are sort of like Hostess except homemade—a chocolate cake thing with “cream” inside. But the cream is really weird, dense but airy and sort of grainy, despite assurances by the bakery lady to the contrary. Evidently there are a lot of people making whoopie pies in Maine but Isamax is the original. For what it’s worth.

The next day we made it about thirty feet more to Bagel Mania. Coffee is okay (the Isamax coffee was actually better) and DAMN do they put a lot of cream cheese on their bagels. Breakfast #3 was at the bakery almost to the corner. Coffee was not very good but the cookies and pastries were great. I had this almond and white chocolate chunk cookie that was packed with much butter so that it cooked out all flat and crunchy and lacey. Damn I already miss baked goods.

We did some hiking, some driving around to see random things like bizarre church signage and cool hardware stores.

funny church sign, Maine

This one sort of channels the 1988 Bobby McFerrin hit “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” and that annoying “Got Milk?” ad campaign.

drills at a salvage store. Maine

tools at a salvage store. Maine

hand saws at a salvage store. Maine

Many, many old tools. Particularly old saws and manual/hand drills. Three floors in an old barn of the stuff stacked all willy nilly. Plus a few randoms like the sheet music for the 80s hit “Ghostbusters” or a coat/gun rack made of the four upturned hoofs of a deer topped by a furry cranial cap and antlers.

deer foot coat hanger

(This. God.)

Being Maine and all, we drove to a fishing harbor and bought live lobsters from some lobster fishermen. These lobsters have big ol’ claws on them (prudently rubber-banded shut) unlike all the lobster I’ve ever had—the Pacific/Caribbean spiny lobster, which look pretty much the same but without claws; they also have really long antennae. The Maine variety is supposed to be superior in flavor. On the drive home we discussed the most humane way to kill them. It turns out there are many ways to kill a lobster but all of them are sort of grim, really. We ended up just dropping them in the boiling pot but only after Karen hypnotized them by rubbing the backs of their shells. I don’t understand the logic behind it but they stop wiggling and sort of go limp. I guess it’s something you just know when you live in Maine.

The lobsters were quite excellent; we extracted the meat and tossed it in a pan with butter, olive oil, salt, garlic, and a little parsley. We also had leftover chanterelles and miscellaneous mushrooms that Ilana made into a lovely ragout. As an appetizer, Kurt made toasts with Brie and this awesome chestnut preserve we picked up from a co-op in Belfast that had a warm and honey-like flavor. Another complicated and tasty dinner.

Kerstin Gilg with Maine Lobster

Another food thing that Maine does very well is the roadside ice cream place. Often in a stand-alone building with a front window and a large parking lot. There are some really good ones and they always seem to have about a zillion flavors. Another thing, observe portions before ordering because it turns out that ‘small’ is something of a misnomer. We actually saw a person once order the large and it came in this siamese-twin cone contraption in order for the mountain of ice cream to possibly fit. The look on the guy’s face as he was handed this bounty of dairy might have been described as “triumphant.” We were advised to order ‘mini’ or ‘kiddie’ or ‘tiny’ or whatever the local slang happened to be and that was plenty.

country market with hand painted signs. Maine

(Parting shot. We stopped here for sandwiches on our way to a hike on the coast. A lobster roll, by the way, is a toasted hot-dog bun thing with lobster tossed in mayo inside. They can be good but often are not.)


Church signage

Saturday, August 12th, 2006

There are a lot of churches in the US, particularly in the vicinity of Arkentuckylvania.

Glad Tidings Assembly of God Church Sign. God has only one kind of love - everlastin

A mildly suggestive message.

Melcroft Assembly of God Church Sign. Jesus - No Roaming Charges No Lost Calls Unlimited Minutes

Church for the consumer culture. Where do they get this stuff?

Little River Baptist Church Sign. Prayer - Wireless Access to God W\H - Out Roaming Fees Worship 10:30 AM

A less coherent version of the sign above. There must be a newsletter of snappy sermon topics that these guys all subscribe to.

County Line Church of the Bretheren Sign. I love you but hate your sin - God

Yikes.

Bishup Seabury Church Sign. Now Accepting Reservations for Eternity Jesus is Waiting for Your Call

On the aforementioned Holy Cell Phones, surely.

Family Worship Center Church Sign. Come with a burden leave with a song. Keep him lord of your summer.

Lord of Summer!

Second Baptist Church Sign. Vacancy every sunday at 11AM

Huh?

Church Sign. Vacation from God? Sunday 10&6

I’m confused again.


Lexington, USA

Sunday, July 30th, 2006

It takes a surprisingly short amount of flight time to get to Kentucky from San Salvador. The three-hour flight to Houston featured a “Breakfast Sandwich” of a sunny-side up egg, beans, cheese, and ham with an overall effect of, well, sort of weird; a monumentally boring movie that should have been interesting about the McCarthy era and radio; and excruciatingly desiccating air conditioning that had me seriously considering putting Vaseline up my nose in an attempt to keep from mummifying. Houston was underwhelming at best: the immigration guy barely raised an eyebrow when we said we’d been out of the country for nine months and the customs guy was utterly unconcerned with how many bottles of Marie Sharp’s habanera sauce I was carrying and just waved us through.

Joshua’s cousin Jeff picked us up from the Lexington airport and we headed to his place to hang out for a couple of days until we could pick up our rental car. This is the first time we’ve been back to the states in nine months and Kentucky is a little extra surreal. The place is really beautiful from the air—it looks like an abstract leaf pattern with light and dark green patches (grass and forest). On the ground, one is struck by the immense clean and neatly dotted freeway. And that all the grass is mowed. Kentucky in the vicinity of Lexington is one vast manicured lawn.

There are also a lot of churches that appear to be able to accommodate more than the actual population available. They have snappy signs to help attract prospective church-goers.

Southside Church of Christ sign. God never turns off his security system

Hip. Serious. Relevant.

A few other things are different since I last remember.

Since when is BP the vanguard of Eco-correct?

In case you can’t read this, it says, “natural, whole care, anticavity and tartar control, plus whitening gel fluoride toothpaste,” CINNAMON CLOVE flavor! Gel! Whitening! AND tartar control!! I nearly jumped out of my own skin in the middle of the whole foods when I spotted this. We’ll be carting no less than ten tubes of this stuff back to El Salvador.


Cheyenne Weil, Joshua Coxwell