The Big Crapple - New York, NY

September 07, 2016 by Alexander Bigbie

It seems as though every airport in America was designed with the sole purpose of making you want to turn around and get the fuck out again. They all have something of a timeless misery to them that forces you to question how America came to ascend such a prominent position on the world stage.

British airports are by no means architectural treasures but at least they have a semblance of character. Newark Liberty was a particularly faithful totem to America's panache for mind rottingly awful attempts at infrastructure. It reminded me of Reykjavik, a city famously designed by someone with a lobotomy.

Its dreariness doesn't just stop at the airport. The bus that takes you from Newark to Manhattan looked like it had been donated as a leftover prop from Con Air. This was confirmed by the words 'BROKEN!' carved, presumably with a shiv, into the plastic luggage holder. The exclamation mark was a particularly dainty touch, I thought.

The bus journey to New York also bestows some delightful views of Newark itself, which very much feels like a place where aspirations go to die. Newark, in case you were wondering, is America's third oldest city after New York and Boston. It sits about 5 miles west of its older brother and was formerly the car jacking capital of America. (It's also, incidentally, the headquarters of Audible Audiobooks)

Its one saving visual grace is that it's presided over by the New York skyline. A cobalt blue haze of towering monoliths screaming across the horizon. It boggles the mind to think of the millions of people who have laid eyes upon this sight for the first time and the varying set of emotions it has produced for them.

You would be hard pressed to think of another skyline that has elicited so much hope, wonder, terror, joy, relief, anger, and in such equal measures. One can't help but be completely enthralled by it.

The journey gave me a moment to think about whether or not there's any point to writing a travel journal at all here. I'm not exactly reinventing the wheel by doing a road trip down the US East Coast, so why bother?

The journals for Colombia and Iran had something of a connecting narrative. Both were countries that most people perceived as dangerous and the narrative was designed to persuade them to let go of these prejudices. (Iceland is the exception. I just wrote that because everyone and their cat seems to want to visit it)

A quick moment of reflection dictated that America actually fits this narrative ark quite nicely. In 2015 thirty six people were, accidentally or intentionally, shot dead here every single day. That's over five times more than Iran and Colombia combined. In truth, you should be far more scared about being in the US than just about any country. Especially as this trip will go through the most gun crazy states around.

I sort of fell in love with the lift's light at my sis's place

So I suppose the question is, does America also conform to all of its stereotypes (and will I get shot?) It's such well trodden ground here that we really know all there is to know surely? Either way, I hope this will serve as a useful guide to any reader and hopefully as a light diversion from your every day hustle and bustle.

As we drove into the city, I sat and marveled at my surroundings. I never cease to be amazed by American automobiles. They seem to perfectly embody the very essence of the country. Namely, the ability to take any basic utility and then square root all of its most salient qualities.

Never entirely satisfied, those super sized qualities are then blended with others to create an infinite Frankenstein of consumables. For breakfast I had a 'chocolate nutella croissant swirl'. An object so rich in sugar that even half of it would make you go instantly blind from diabetes. It was devilishly decadent.

In stark contrast, your average Brit would swoon over a slice of dry, tasteless red velvet sponge from the local tea shop. In an attempt to not appear overindulgent they would almost certainly offer most of it to perfect strangers, or simply leave most of it untouched.

New York feels very much the epitome of this indulgent mentality. You can find pretty much anything here and it will be delivered to you in 30 minutes or less. Be that a live ladybug farm, tampons, a sushi burrito, sex toys, or a lubed up Myanmese midget (these are all true by the way).

Despite all the creature comforts, New York is still an inescapably brutal city. From the metal skirting on all the sidewalks to the plumes steam that vomit forth from its bowels, it's very much a hard boiled place. No surprise then, that the term 'Rat Race' was born from its streets.

London is by no means Cake Walk but it does feel much more forgiving then this place. Failure here metes out a kind of suffering that Europeans simply couldn't stomach. Opportunities at redemption are also very thin on the ground.

My sister's street (Charles St) in the West Village

It's a hard city to love. I quickly came to this conclusion whilst sweating liberally in the baking Midtown heat, hoping to find someone kind enough to sell me a sim card.

I think the problem with a city like this is the weight of expectation placed on it can often lead to disappointment. Stumbling listlessly around streets all but enveloped by swarms of pedestrians, I could so easily see why people didn't take to this place.

Whilst New York can't be blamed for the weather, they have managed to get in my bad books for a number of other reasons. First and foremost, you basically can't smoke anywhere. While I'm all for the ban on indoor smoking, banning it in every park and outdoor seating area seems a little heavy handed. Even roof terraces are smoke free, which sort of defeats the point of being on one.

And when you do decide to throw caution to the wind and light up in a park, you'll not have more than three seconds before some busybody jogs up to you and politely reminds you that you are always about as close to a rat as you are to a pernicious New Yorker.

I really wished that I loved New York more but it was doing the best to bother me. Unable to cope with the heat in the streets, I desperately hunted for cooling breezes on a three and a half hour stroll from the West to the East Village along the Hudson river. It probably only burnt off half of my chocolate nutella croissant swirl.

This girl was bellowing Chinese from the book she was reading. It was rather wonderful.

On the way, stopped by the 9/11 memorial and was somewhat overwhelmed by the sight of it. I remembered having dinner at the top of the World Trade Centre as a child and simply couldn't fathom the sheer horror and devastation that happened here 15 years ago.

I refreshed myself on the statistics of that day and it only reinforced the inability for one mind to contextualise such a tragedy. 2,753 dead from 115 different nations. 1,609 of them left a spouse or partner behind. 3,051 children lost a parent. 1.8 million tons of debris. 440,000 New Yorkers suffering from post traumatic stress. The list goes on and on.

It's these statistics that go some way to explaining why it only took 28 days for America to begin an ill fated war on terror. It was very much a knee jerk from a dagger right to the heart of America and the repercussions will be felt for generations. I left with something of a heavy heart and searched for more mobile air by the Hudson.

Later that evening I went for drinks with a rather charming girl that I had shared an Uber Pool with earlier in the day. Although it was not the case in this instance, New York girls by and large sound like they've just hit their head on something very hard. Which is a shame really, as they seem to divert enormous amounts of energy into their appearances with rather satisfactory results.

I decided the best environment to test this was to go for a morning run along the Hudson. It confirmed my suspicions that girls from New York are best appreciated when they are all but mute.

Despite my negative early sentiments, New York certainly does do some things quite well. After the first few summers here the early settlers of this city must have sat down and said 'we really fucking need to do something about this heat'. A few generations later and now air conditioning has been installed just about everywhere it can be, even on the metro (London please take note).

As a result my pottering about the city has been punctuated by frequent darts into shops that offer welcome bouts of relief. Unfortunately that leads me to another gripe about the US. It's nigh on impossible to escape being bothered by assistants in shops here.

Conversations will generally go along these lines.

"Hi sir, is there anything I can help with you today?" A pained grin plastered across their face.
"No thank you. I'm just browsing." Job done, surely.

I'll then wander somewhat aimlessly and pretend to inspect whatever items are on offer while I quietly bathe in their cold air.
"That colour really suits your eyes, would you like to try it on?"
"Oh, no thanks. I'm really just looking around." Often shooting an expression that says 'can you not see that I'm about to die of heat stroke'.
They then allow a brief pause before resuming the onslaught.

"We've just discounted those as they're last season."
Another pause while I try to compose myself and prevent an accidental strangling.
"Just browsing thanks. I'll let you know." Accompanied by my most ebullient smile.

Often another colleague will jump in and try a pincer movement.
"Oh, my friend has a pair of these and he LOVES them. You'd look so great in these."

It would be fine if the item in question were not blatantly awful and not worth selling to a blind person. At this point I basically give up and forced to concede defeat. This happens just about any time I duck into a shop and I believe it's the same all over the country. It's the price of freedom I suppose.

I'm not sure if this is worse than the UK's approach. Most shopkeepers back home act as though they would rather get mauled by a bear than even feign a willingness to have you buy to their wares.

Aside from the air con, New Yorkers also have jaywalking down to an art form, which is something I very much approve of. Any opportunity to cross a road is seized with a kind of frenzied gusto that endlessly keeps you on your toes. Road crossings and signs are more a subtle suggestion than prescription here.

Another thing that they managed to get very right is the grid system. A system that I seem unfailingly excellent at getting wrong. One attempt at getting to the High line park on 12th street saw me emerge at Penn Station. That's 11 blocks away. Very much in the 'not even fucking close' category.

During my 11 block ordeal I stopped in a church hard and saw a group of volunteers giving homeless people's pets free medicals and vaccines. There seemed to be something of a cruel irony that the owners were refused a similar service. They just looked on with a expression that sat somewhere between bewilderment and exasperation.

Free health checks for dogs belonging to the homeless

New York had begun to grow on me by my third day here. For every example of grinding poverty and injustice there seemed to be a counterbalancing moment of kindness and generosity. Although the homeless still seem to get a bum deal most of the time.

America seems particularly adept at churning out a brand of insane homeless person unmatched by any other country in the world. During a walk through a park in the East Village I saw someone masturbating and smoking crack simultaneously. Quite a feat.

I'd been told by long-term New Yorkers that the homelessness and panhandling in the city used to be so bad that people would decamp to Calcutta in order to find respite. Apparently now it's infinitely better. I could only half agree.

New York is, and always has been, a city of extremes. An unknowable, ever changing beast of a place that grinds people down if they don't give her a wide berth. No one I met here wanted to stay more than a few years. It was, for nearly everyone, a place that one had to endure for a time and then leave. "Why don't people stay here?" I asked Mary Lou, my Uber friend.
"Because you would go insane."
I could only agree.

I even managed to fall for the metro (a little). Such easy light to shoot in.

There were, therefore a few caveats that one had to accept before you could let New York into your heart. Firstly, Midtown is full knobs/tourists and a hellhole that must be avoided at all costs. Secondly, you need to have an escape route, or forever be damned. Finally, you shouldn't keep track the cost of living here. That will also send you into a deep and prolonged depression.

On my final day in the city I caught up with some old friends over a bottomless brunch. New York's answer to the age old problem of the hangover is that you diligently line up at restaurants around the city and at 11am you pay around $30 and get trashed again with a rich, heavy (often Mexican) meal. There's nothing quite like a Lobster Benedict and 8 margaritas to really shake the cobwebs out.

In something of a stupor, the four of us decided to drive to Harlem. One of our group, Max Toomey was a bright young polymath studying journalism at Columbia and had lived in Harlem for the last year. We had met a few years back in Burma where he had been given the role of EU political corrospondant at the tender age of 23.

Harlem has been up and coming for some 25 years and on first inspection it seems that it was finally coming. So far it has still managed to avoid the worst of the hipster invasion that shrouds most of Brooklyn in a blanket of gentrification. It's only a matter of time for this place sadly.

We sat at a trendy new bar full of well groomed while folks and talked about New York life and its many foibles. After a few more drinks we decamped to a more local watering hole and then finally to Max's rooftop in Harlem.

Well lubricated, we watched as the low sun set the brick tenements ablaze with a luxurious crimson evening light. It was my last sunset in New York and the finest I'd seen so far.

We all sat and quietly marveled at the rich chorus of the city's sounds and colours. I wondered whether I should try my to endure this place for a year or two. After all, It would be a shame not to put yourself through all of this misery. Wouldn't it?

My thoughts then turned to the impending journey to the Deep South. Tomorrow I had a 12 hour drive to South Carolina. This, I felt, would be where I would be able to get to the heart of America and where the adventure could really begin.

The Redneck Riviera - Myrtle Beach/Charleston, SC

September 06, 2016 by Alexander Bigbie

My last night in 'The North' was spent with Sebastian Hove in a town called Bayonne in New Jersey. Sebastian and I had been friends for around 15 years and he was, without doubt, a true and unique character. He was a Dane by birth who had misspent most of his youth around here getting wasted and throwing eggs at houses.

I remember when we met all those years ago that I took to him almost instantly. He exuded a kind of breezy charm that was as disarming as it was refreshing. Spending time with him was like hanging out with your favourite childhood TV character. Kind, loyal and a total pain in the ass when he wanted to be.

His kindness extended far enough to lending me his beloved old Ford Focus for this two week endeavour. He owed me absolutely no favours and I was incredibly touched by this gesture.

In the morning we gorged on a hearty roadside breakfast of pancakes and omelettes in a Bayonne diner. We hugged goodbye at his office in the docks, presided by the soaring cranes of the New Jersey Port. Soon after, I was on my way. Gracefully sounded off by ship horns and groggy, road worn teamsters.

It didn't take long for the darling old Ford to make her little idiosyncrasies known. Almost instantly, it became apparent that her break disks were warped in the extreme, which meant that the whole car vibrated uncontrollably when the breaks were applied. It was like driving a paint mixer.

She was also bereft of a catalytic converter that simultaneously gifted her the acceleration of a continent and the rumble of a low flying B52 bomber. The noise was an issue almost all of the time, especially at low speed.

After 5 minutes on the road I tried to adjust my rear view mirror and it promptly fell off and couldn't be mended. During motorway lane changes, she would frequently and uncontrollably wobble, as though all four wheels wanted to go in separate directions at once.

It felt like I had borrowed my own funeral casket as opposed to the Millennium Falcon I'd hoped for.
Sebastian's words echoed in my ear.
"She needs a little bit of work, but ultimately she's solid as a rock."
She really needed to be. My journey was over 3000 miles long, taking me all the way past the Bible Belt to New Orleans and back again through a dozen or so states. It was time to start praying.

I had learnt with some delight that, unlike most states, New Jersey still has a legal requirement for someone to pump your gas for you. I stopped at the last gas station in the state and asked a rather forlorn looking gentleman to "fill 'er up with regulah please."

Petrol here is worryingly cheap. A full tank was just shy of $20. Which meant a 10 hour drive cost all of $50. It's little wonder that public transport here is woefully depleted. No one really needs it as even people technically classed as below the poverty line can still afford a car.

After a few hours, I stopped for lunch at an industrial park in Herndon, Virginia. A former colleague was based there and I always relished a chance to catch up with him. Anthony Doherty was the kind of Irishman that everyone should have on their Rolodex. He was gifted with an ascorbic wit that was dryer than a nun's crotch. I wondered what on earth they made of him here.

Buoyed by our lighting quick catch up, I hit the road to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. A place widely referred to as the Redneck Riviera. It's very much a well earned monicker. South Carolina was the first state to secede from The Union and one of the most deeply Republican in America.

The black population there were governed by the deplorable Jim Crow Laws that were widely enforced until the early 70s, well after the Civil Rights Act of 1964. These laws essentially enforced a second class status on blacks in America. In every possible facet of their lives they ensured that no black person would have the same rights and opportunities as whites.

Even in the 70s a black person could be confronted by impossible and often ridiculous test when they turned up to a polling booth. One such example included asking them to guess how any marbles were in a jar. They also imposed literacy tests on black voters brave enough to show up. I had a go at one online and can attest to the fact that they were created with the sole purpose of being utterly incomprehensible.

Those in slightly less enlightened states would just be beaten senseless or lynched for entertaining thoughts so above their station.

The journey was notable for its complete lack of any scenery at all. This starts to grate on one a little after 6 hours. Sadly the famous Route 1 down the East Coast had been replaced many years ago by the hulking juggernaut of Interstate 95. A monster of a road that slices 2000 miles down the coast from the Canadian border to southern Florida.

This is what every Interstate East of the Mississippi looks like

I'm not exaggerating when I say that in 600 miles of driving in 6 different states, the landscape barely changed at all. It's something of a testament to the sheer size of America that this could be possible. In Britain, no two hours or even minutes are often the same on a motorway journey.

The issue was mainly the result of a thoughtful effort to minimise the visibility of the interstate by shrouding both sides of it in an endless wall of trees about 30 feet high. It felt much more claustrophobic than any road I'd driven on. Not quite the open road of my wild imagination.

The trees were only disrupted by a grimly curated succession of chain fast food restaurants and mediocre strip malls. Not a single chrome plated, linoleum floored diner in sight. Just another Arbys, Dennys, Dunkin' Donuts, KFC, Burger King, Olive Garden and so forth.

I'd had a rare moment of foresight and downloaded an audio book before the journey. It was the only thing that stopped me from going completely insane. My car's little idiosyncrasies weren't exactly helping matters. The vibration from the break disk was gradually turning my wrists into the consistency of jellied eels.

Google maps sensed that I was near the end of my tether and took me off the interstate and into an altogether different world. Within minutes, I was in the deep rural south of my imagination and I couldn't be happier.

Without hesitation, I switched off the air con and threw open all the windows. An immediate rush of dense, humid tropical air flooded the car and I realised why it was all worth the effort.

It was that perfect, magical evening light where the clouds were completely saturated with dying pink rays of the sun. The sound of crickets filled the air. Passing me by on both sides were the unmistakable homes of middle America. Perfectly rectangular, Woden and adorned with trees thick with Spanish Moss.

Outside of them were men in John Deere hats diligently mowing their lawns while their children played in lush, verdant gardens. Rusted, leaning metal post boxes with names like Cherry Grove, Honeysuckle and Moonbeam Park lined both sides of the road.

In the distant horizon were thick curtains of rain waving gently in the gentle southern airs. I took in endless lungfuls of hot, sweet air and smiled like an idiot as I made a wing shape with my hand and held it out of the window.

Compered with New York it was like being on Neptune. It felt like this landscape hadn't changed for an eternity. This was The South of literature, poetry and cinema that had been such a big part of my imagination and I was bang smack in the heart of it.

In a less tangible sense it felt like a homecoming. My grandfather was born in Lynchburg, VA and his father was from Tennessee. I had cousins in Both Carolinas and Georgia. There was therefore a sense that somewhere, this part of the world resided deep in my DNA.

I was so breathlessly happy that I pulled over to take it in and to top up on fuel. The gas station felt like it belonged in a Norman Rockwell painting. The pump dial still revolved and made a satisfying ping when you had reached your fill. I shared quiet communion with the heat and the crickets and made my way to my great friend Jessie in Myrtle Beach.

We only saw one another on average once a year and I began to look forward to a warm and loving hug after a testing day on the road. Although by now the thick South Carolina airs had subdued me somewhat, and I felt a great deal more human again.

I'd known Jessie Washington for over 18 years and could happily testify (as others would no doubt) that she was a true force of nature and a real wonder of a human being. Her great gift was to see the world through what my mother calls 'Gods Glasses'. It's that magical ability to be able to make light of life and laugh at just about anything, no matter how tough things get. It's the quality I search for most in people.

Despite having a Danish grandmother her father was a black reverend from Arkansas and she had spent most of her life in the South, having moved there from New York. She graduated from Harvard, has an MBA and attended Juilliard as a viola player. Throw this all together and you get a recipe for one of the most interesting, fun and lovable people you (or I) have ever met.

We spent the day pottering around the various diversions of Myrtle Beach. I tell you, without any restraint, that Myrtle Beach is where taste goes to die. Redneck Riviera was a well deserved moniker. This is what Miami would have looked like it it had been built by a bunch of drunk hicks. But I sort of loved it. It was all just so delightfully average and free of airs and graces.

A local Wal Mart the size of Stanstead Airport

I noted with a touch of glee that, unlike New York, smoking and drinking are both cheap and barely frowned upon here. This is the kind of place where I could happily get hammered on a beach wearing a string vest and a Hawaiian shirt and no one would bat an eyelid. So we set about it.

The trucks and cars here were just that little bit more chromed and muscular than their northern brethren. More often than not they bore one or more 'Trump' stickers. Although the lawns mostly seem free of attempts to designate one's political leanings. This is no surprise really as there's more chance of me shagging Jennifer Lawrence than this state voting for a Democrat.

Jessie and I spent much time discussing the state of race relations in America. Until Obama become president, race simply wasn't anywhere near as openly talked about by white folks in America. Or at least, not with the kind of fervour it was currently experiencing.

People were even talking about a 'Post Racial Society' before 2008. It was clear now that Obama's election had, tragically, been a catalyst for a the unearthing of a pre-existing, insidious undercurrent of white Racial hatred.

This discourse was mostly the preserve of disenfranchised whites. A group of people who see their country, their old industries and their very way of life running away from them thanks to progressive values and globalisation. Myrtle Beach was very much a ground zero of this kind of person.

To me the Trump 'movement' feels very much like the death rattle of these sorts of folks. The white working class make up a smaller percentage of America than at any time since the industrial revolution. And they weren't going down without a fight.

The venom, anger, hatred and vitriol makes so much more sense when you get down here and see that these people just want things to pretty much stay as they are, and maybe go backwards, just a little.

I have a deep reverence for the imagery, music and literature of The South and how it had come to occupy such a large part of American collective consciousness. But from an outsider looking in, many of these people needed to wake up and smell the waffles.

America is the most powerful and wealthy country in the world because it has always been a pioneer or an adaptor and has thrown its doors open to the rest of the world. Closing borders and propping up dying industries isn't going to help anyone in the long term.

In fact the poorest people in America are likely to suffer the most. Unfortunately, explaining the economics of isolationism to a hillbilly is like trying to describe the virtues of eating bacon to an Islamic fundamentalist.

That evening Jessie and I went to The Broadway at The Beach. An enormous and completely artificial seaside promenade. In every way it was a celebration of consumerism and conspicuous consumption. An orgy of flashing lights, fairground attractions, fireworks, shopping arcades, bars and food. Flagons of food. It was about as tacky and American as it gets and we loved it.

Only in America could find such pleasant and diverting ways to satisfy your every unknown craving so totally. It never ceases to amaze me at how little time it takes you to find a source of food here. I don't think I've gone more than 20 minutes without encountering a host of options offering the same shitty, nutritionless and undeniably tasty food.

Myrtle Beach specialised in this sort of eatery and we were a little desperate to go somewhere with a menu that wasn't laminated. So we took ourselves off to Charleston for the day in search of better food, architecture, culture and fewer rednecks.

Before heading off, we breakfasted at the local Waffle House. One of The South's most venerable institutions. For $7 you can get the All Star Special. A combination of waffles, bacon, hash browns, toast, butter and whatever else you can force past your overstimulated taste buds. I note that the clarified butter here gives you the added benefit of showing you exactly how your arteries will look after one too many trips here.

Charleston didn't fail to deliver. A gently captivating peninsula jutting into a bay, it contained some of the finest examples of southern colonial architecture in America. Little wonder then, that it's the premier wedding destination in the country.

The houses were so old here that on some you could still see the harrowing sight of fingerprints from the slaves that formed the individual bricks. Outside of New York this had been the largest slave port in America. The first shot of the civil war was also fired from Fort Sumter, just a few miles down the road. In American terms, thats about as historical as it gets.

Last year, a 21 year old man called Dylann Roof walked into the Emanuel African Episcopal Church here. He sat for an hour as he prayed with the black congregation during a Bible study session. Without warning he pulled out a gun and brutally murdered nine members of the congregation.

We went past the church itself and it was a powerful reminder that this was a country in the midst of a racial crisis. The saddest part is that no one seems to have an answer for how to fix it. It was an interesting time to be in a place that was in the process of asking itself a great deal of very difficult and searching questions.

In spite of its dark past and recent horrors, Charleston was still an utterly charming and genteel city. It felt much more like a large town really, and was so laid back that it was practically horizontal. It was also quite prosperous and finding a menu that wasn't laminated and didn't have pictures was very easy.

After much pottering about and some rampant pulled pork and oyster abuse, we left with full stomachs and happy hearts. It was a perfect contrast to Myrtle Beach and a reminder that The South is, like America, a place of stark contrasts and full of mostly pleasant, well meaning people.

Tomorrow I would spend the day exploring Georgia and looked forward to the adventures it might bring.

Gorgeous Georgia Part 1 - Suwanee/Chattahoochee River/Rabun Bald, GA

September 05, 2016 by Alexander Bigbie

In the morning I went to visit the clinic that Jessie's mother ran. Dr Dode Washington was the fifth in a line of Danish medics and had co-founded an OB/GYN clinic. Dode radiated a pure and joyful aura the likes of which one rarely encountered. It had a much more genuine feel to it than many people here here and you really knew that it came from a place deep from within.

In an effort to educate her staff on world geography she had put up a world map in the office. One nurse had apparently asked her where the UK was and she'd frankly had enough. When they found out I was from London a particularly bouncy girl saluted me and said "top o' the morning to ya!"
I politely explained that Ireland was not in the UK and she seemed a bit confused.

"But y'all so close you must be practically the same country."
"Oh yes, we're best of friends."
"That's what I heard. Also, aint' Milton Keynes where them hipsters are from?"
"Yes. All of them." I said, with a slightly impish smile.

Incidentally I found out from Jessie the first use of the word 'hipster' is originally a word used to describe trendy black jazz musicians of the 40s. The word may even be a derivative of a West African word 'hipi' meaning to open one's eyes.

Another, jelly roll shaped nurse saw that I was (with a deep sense of irony) wearing a cap with an American Eagle spread above a slogan saying 'God, Guns and Guts -, Let's keep all three'. She jovially confided that she owned 32 handguns and a number of assault rifles.

I asked her what on earth she could possibly do with that many weapons and she, without a hint of irony, cited the Zombie Apocalypse as her excuse. It speaks volumes about a country that people can genuinely believe this and be still considered to be an acceptable and mentally balanced member of society.

I suppose it made sense to have all those guns. There was no chance in hell of her outrunning a zombie, or a glacier for that matter. In any case I felt America could do with a dose of Apocalypse and the opportunity to shoot something that wasn't a fellow human being. It might be what this place needs. Given how close Trump is to the presidency, this doesn't seem like an impossibility.

On my way west to Georgia I decided to stop in a town called Camden for no reason in particular except that I was hungry and it looked of a size that may support one half-decent restaurant (perhaps even one without a laminated menu).

Camden turned out to be an unexpectedly pleasant little town and one steeped in history. In fact it was the oldest inland city in South Carolina. I parked myself at the bar of the Old Armoury Steakhouse and Seafood. It didn't take long before I had a new friend called Henry.

"Y'all from Camden?"
"No, just passing through to Georgia. Anything worth looking at in Camden?"
"Na. There ain't shit to do here."
I politely acknowledge this and return to the menu.

"y'all like Pokemon?"
It seemed Henry was keen for some conversation.
"Pokemon Go? No, Not really."
"Aw, thats a shame. Camden the best Pokemon catchin' spot in South Carolina. Maybe the whole South."
I paused for a moment to digest this.
"Is that why there's a sign saying no guns on the door?"
"Naw, that's for black people." Came a shout from one of the white waiters.

Henry was, as you can see, black but seemed to take this quite well. I only hoped they were really friends. Henry and I got along just fine and he kindly bought me an endless parade of bourbon shots. He kept asking me to stay for the evening so we could watch the opening Tigers game together. It was a sweet gesture but I had a schedule to keep.

Stumbling a little through the baking hot streets of Camden, I decided that I needed a bit of history to sober me up. Thankfully I had passed the Historic Camden Revolutionary War Site on the edge of town and made my way over there (very slowly).

At the entrance there was a sign saying welcoming trainers to the site of Historic Camden. It turns out Henry wasn't as many sandwiches short of a full picnic as I'd thought.

The receptionist had absolutely no clue about the site itself and simply provided me with a 'self guided' A4 sheet of paper that was packed with information about Historic Camden. Unfortunately the information on it was dull beyond measure. In any case, Historic Camden really consisted of a few locked 18th Century replica wooden houses scattered around a car park. They looked much like any other American house, just a little older, smaller and a emptier.

The former garrison town of Camden was marked on the map and promisingly surrounded by large Woden fortifications that I could see 100 yards away. Sadly a closer inspection revealed that the old town was still concealed under several feet of earth. Permission was never granted to excavate it, for reasons I can't quite fathom, and so you are politely invited by a sign to imagine it. 'I didn't pay five of my hard earned dollars to use my sodding imagination', I grumped.

A little crestfallen and slowly poaching myself in Georgia's intense August heat, I remembered that Henry said the house where they made the (historically dubious) film The Patriot was in Camden. There was no mention of it on my Historic Camden PhD sheet but a 15 second walk quickly revealed it at the top of the hill overlooking Historic Camden.

The Kershaw Cornwallis house was built in 1758 by the town founder Joseph Kershaw (Mel Gibson), a native of Yorkshire, England. It was then seized by the notoriously brutal Lord Charles Cornwallis in 1780 during the Revolutionary War. I say notoriously brutal but I'm just basing that on his portrayal in the film. It's worth remembering that 75% of Mel Gibson's historical epics are just plain wrong and the remaining 25% IS dubious at best. After Cornwallis' tenure the house was later turned into a orphanage. During the Civil War, The Unionists, always keen to leave a good impression, burnt it to the ground, along with the rest of Camden.

The rather fetching Kershaw-Cornwallis House

Thanks to the efforts of a band of dedicated restorers, the house was completely rebuilt in the 1970s. Unfortunately there are no pictures of the interior so they just sort of guessed that bit. Which wasn't an issue as it was (no surprises here) locked anyway. Despite being a replica, it was still a very fine and handsome house and worth the sweaty slog to admire.

Whilst feverishly mopping my brow I realised that, aside from the receptionist, I hadn't seen another soul at this place in the hour or so I'd been here. Although this wasn't a huge shock given the quality of the offering.

I then noticed a car driving very slowly towards the house and concluded it must be some overweight sightseers that we sensible enough to avoid the heat.

Closer inspection revealed four greasy teenagers, each diligently glued to their phone screens. I then noticed a sign on the steps of the house welcoming Pokemon Go players to the Kershaw Cornwallis House. If it gets the little bastards interested in history then why the fuck not? I thought, quietly jealous that I wasn't playing Pokemon Go in an air conditioned car.

Once the bourbon was well rid of me, I made my way to Suwannee (A town in the suburbs of Atlanta) where I would stay with my old friend Sunny whose fiancée's family had very kindly offered to put me up. Sunny was my old university housemate and a friend who, like Jessie and Sebastian, I loved dearly and saw all too rarely.

He was a delightfully wild soul, a teetotaller vegetarian since birth and one of the most courageous and restlessly determined people I've ever met. He had a boundless curiosity to make sense of the world around him but was sometimes capable of moments that were were of singularly awe inspiring absentmindedness. On one occasion he managed to lose his wallet, passport, phone and access to his bank accounts in a single day. That's impressive, even by my standards.

He'd somehow ended up getting engaged to a thunderously attractive girl called Natalie from Suwanee and was trying to break his way into the film industry here. From what I gathered there was still some more breaking to do but I had no doubt he would succeed in one form or another.

Her family lived in a suburb of Atlanta that was, I feel a tad ambitiously, called Edinburgh. It was a heavily gated community replete with swimming pools, tennis courts and other pleasantly diverting things that rich folk do in their free time. I was immediately reminded of the kind of houses that I used to create on The Sims after shamelessly entering a cheat code to enrich myself. Much to the sudden ire of my new found Sim neighbours.

In the afternoon I drove with Sunny to a Hindu Mandir (temple) that I'd read about while researching things to do Georgia. Sunny was a deeply spiritual person (I do my best but am frankly rubbish at religion) and I felt that he would appreciate it. The Mandir is actually the largest outside of India and reminded me that America never ceases to be able to delight and surprise in equal measure.

It turned out to not only one of the most beautiful religious sites I'd ever seen but also on of the best curated self guided tours. They had spared no expense. Built in 2007 from Italian and Turkish marble and Indian pink sandstone, it took only 17 months to complete. Given that 1.3 million (mostly volunteer) man hours were required to build it, it's an extraordinary feat of what human beings can accomplish when they stop bickering sort their shit out.

The construction was done as a giant jupigsaw puzzle consisting of 34,000 individual pieces that all slotted perfectly into place. It was a building of the most unique beauty and felt all the more surreal for being located in the rather dull suburban sprawl of Atlanta.

We spent a serene hour wandering around the enchanting pillared prayer hall, flanked by happy Hindus going about their usual prayer routines. I've done this sort of thing in churches, cathedrals, mosques and Buddhist temples around the world but this was my first hands on experience of the Hindu religion. And what a beautiful religion to discover.

I quietly resolved that India would be the next country on my hit list and we departed as the dying sun kissed the the top of the resplendent ivory towers of the Mandir.

Much like Historic Camden, there had been absolutely no tourists of any description. Perhaps the Mandir should lobby to have it turned into a Pokemon Go gym. It may, at least, bring a few non-hindus here to appreciate the majesty of this place for themselves. Compared to your average American evangelical megachurch this was an accomplishment several orders of magnitude greater and full people who can string a full sentence together.

A night out on the many bars of Atlanta revelead that no one here is aware that the largest Indian Mandir outside India is in Atlanta. But then again, the biggest one in Europe is in London and I've never visited, so the pot is sort of calling the kettle black here.

The next day we had a kayak trip organised with some friends of Natalie and Sunny's. Ben, Ben and Michel were true Southern Gentleman and the five of us got along famously. It was as perfect a day as you could get in Georgia. Clear sky, low humidity and an acceptable temperature. It felt like the most perfect English high summers day.

We met at one of the Ben's apartments that morning. He was every inch the bachelor, having just bought a vintage Mrs Pac Man arcade console. It stood about 6 foot high, with that wonderful fake wooden cladding, the chunky red plastic buttons and joystick thick with dust that had probably been deposited by a sweaty, spotty teenager almost 30 years ago.

In Ben's bedroom I got to play with 16 gauge, pump action, laser guided shotgun. I pointed out that he lived in a gated community and by all logic should be pretty safe.
"People get robbed here all the time."
"But they won't know if you've got a gun, so it's not strictly preventative?" I queried, still slightly bemused and fiddling around with his shotgun.
"You just gotta protect yourself here" said the other Ben, while pulling out a pistol from his person.
"I keep this little baby on me at all times." He said, pulling the magazine out.

Both of these people were by no means rednecks. Ben with the pistol was actually a professional biologist. Unfortunately there's just something of a pervasive paranoia in America, and especially the South that means people here don't feel safe, ever. Which struck me as being a bit non-sensical given that the most dangerous thing around here was actually the guns themselves. They certainly kill more people here than pretty much anything except old age, drink driving and cancer.

Once we were done playing with guns and Mrs Pac Man we set off. The Chattahoochee river was, like every attraction has been to so far, completely deserted. A broad, tree lined body of water that cut right through the heart of Georgia. For seven hours we had the river to ourselves, watched over by the occasional placid Egrit and slightly more energetic fish flinging itself out of the water for reasons that escape me.
We did as many men have done before and got jovially plastered on beer and rum. Occasionally we would attempt to paddle. But mostly we just drifted aimlessly down the gently flowing river and made merry. It was as peaceful a way to spend a Saturday as one could hope for.

My thoughts drifted to the infamous scene in Deliverance where three hillbillies attempt to gang rape a party of city slicker canoeists whilst they rest on the shady banks of a Georgia river. Ben informed me that the film was set only a few miles away from us which really put me at ease. We drifted onwards and I kept one ear finely tuned to anything that sounded like banjo music wandering across the gentle waters.

What you don't want to see on a riverbank in Georgia

Thankfully the day passed without great incident. One of the Bens lost his mobile and Sunny and I both managed to get charred by the intense Georgia sun. But no accidental drownings or gang rapes.

After a restorative dinner at Chick-fil-A (by far the best American fast food has to offer) we said our goodbyes. Tomorrow we were due to hike to the top of Bald Mountain, near the North Carolina border, something I was greatly looking forward to.

The next day Sunny, Natalie and myself rose early to get to the mountains of the Chattahoochee National Park. They had a wedding to get to and I had been informed that there was a nice hiking trail nearby so I tagged along.

The wedding was at the Brasstown Valley Resort & Spa, which I never actually saw so can pass no judgement. I had a hot date with Miller's Trail, a path that blazed a 9 mile loop through the surrounding forest and the mountain in sat on.

The trail was absolutely glorious and once again I found myself completely alone. After a few minutes I couldn't help but feeling like I was being watched. The canopy was so dense that barely a ray of light touched the forest floor. It felt like the trail hadn't been walked for a day or two, a suspicion that was confirmed after accidentally eating several large Spier's webs that had been diligently weaved across the path.

I only found out later that day that the most poisonous spider in America is a native of these forests. The Black Widow spider has a venom is so toxic that a well aimed bite can kill within an hour or so. Had I known this at the time then I probably would have been a little less relaxed as I happily charged like a maniac through seemingly endless sticky barriers of spider's webbing.

During some research about America I had stumbled across some rather jarring crime statistics which were now popping into my head again. 5000 murders a year here go unsolved. There are as many as 100,000 active missing persons at any one time in America. That's one person every 40 seconds or 2,300 a day. That's a shit load missing people!

There are, according to the FBI, on average 50 active serial killers in the US at any one time. Just drifting around, aimlessly or purposefully searching for the next person to bludgeon and gently steam away in a drum of acid. It would be unbelievably easy to hide a body in this country, there's just so much of it to go around.

These cheery thoughts danced though my head as I pushed on through the dense undergrowth. After another hour or so I had become a little more relaxed and began to thoroughly enjoy the hike. The forest had an ambience that was all consuming. A gentle chorus of various insects, birdsong and the occasional falling acorn. The latter nearly giving me a heart attack at one, particularly placed, section of the hike.

Merrily plodded along, I kept catching single strands of spider web with my ankles, like trip wires. I had images of suddenly being whisked away by a Shelob like spider into the canopies and wrapped up in a snug cocoon of webbing and becoming 100,001 on America's missing persons list.

In the event, the walk passed without great incident, save for a mildly diverting wasp sting on my ankle. I think that everyone should be forced to spend a few hours on their own doing this sort of thing every few weeks. Being alone with one's thoughts feels like something of a luxury these days and is probably as improving as any anti-depressant. Except of course, if you are depressed, in which case waking alone anywhere alone isn't strictly advisable.

That evening we had planned to summit Bald Mountain. The three of us drove to a place called Beegum Gap and met with six orhers, including Ben and Ben. They had been drinking all day and were tardy. By the time out party was assembled, the sun was well below the horizon.

A dearth of torchlight and proper equipment meant that we fumbled awkwardly up the steep incline for two miles before we eventually reached the summit in the pitch darkness. When all the torches were off, we could see the glowing eyes of Georgia's many spiders quietly surveying us from the dense undergrowth.

The summit was simply unforgettable. It's the second highest peak in Georgia and we were at the highest point in any direction for around 100 miles. An old fire watch tower had been built there in 1910 and a platform still remained intact at the top. In the far distance, Atlanta glowed gently on the horizon like the dying embers of a fire and the whole of North Carolina was spread to one side of us.

Once camp was set up, the cloud that had been blotting out all the stars decided to put out and gently opened up to a sky so rich and dense with starlight that made you want to weep at the absolute enormity of it all.

One of our merry band had very thoughtfully brought some weed along. It wasn't long before our group were giggling like schoolgirls and merrily holding our gently wheezing frankfurters over an open wood fire. We were the only people up on the peak and we very much felt like the lords of the Manor.

My bed for the night was a hammock strung between two trees on a sheer cliff edge. Above me, the dense, calming glimmer of stars in the night sky and to my left, the gently brooding amber flecks of light in the Georgia countryside. I fell asleep feeling like the luckiest person alive.

Gorgeous Georgia Part 2 - Emery Creek, GA

September 04, 2016 by Alexander Bigbie

For my last day in Georgia Sunny had something special in mind. We had planned to head a few hours west to Emry Creek where we would Powow with a chap who went by the name of Tom Blue Wolf. From what I'd heard and read online, Mr Wolf was a character that felt more like he belonged in folklore rather than a mere blinking, farting bag of flesh.

He was the direct descendant of Creek Indians and had founded The Earthkeepers, an organisation dedicated to teaching people about the relationship between indigenous American peoples and the earth. And how us spoilt, slovenly Colonials could learn a thing or two from it.

Among other things, one (I hasten to add independent) website describes Tom as a spiritual guide, peacemaker, fathkeeper, musician, artist, herbalist, naturopath (I don't know either), environmentalist, author and lecturer.

Further online digging also revealed that he was the consultant for a number of major Hollywood motion pictures on how to accurately portray Native American culture and behaviour in their films. The Oscar winning classic Dances With Wolves is probably the most notable of these but there are many, less awesome examples.

He was, in short, something of a polymath and clearly a man worth meeting.

We arrived at the creek and were greeted by a stocky, bushy haired man in his 60s. he was sporting a pair of worn out jeans and a plain black t-shirt. Given the list of current occupations and former achievements on his CV, I had sort of expected something a little less prosaic. However his personality did not fail to delight.

He had a great expanse of a face that looked as though it had been hewn from the trunk of a California Redwood. Everything about his broad, dense features betrayed a wisdom, deeply held in his being. He spoke with a captivating cadence that sounded like the imaginary love child of Geronimo and Dennis Hopper's Kurtz worshipping hippie in Apocalypse Now.

Over a lunch of cold cuts, I got to understand more about how Mr Wolf saw the universe. According to Tom, everything around us is "just energy, frequency and vibrations - that's all there is."
Somewhat mesmerised, I could only nod in agreement.
"The three things in the world I care about most are bee pollen, water and children. That's it. You know what I mean?" Sort of.
Save for the last one, those certainly weren't the concerns of the average Londoner. I pressed him on the merits of beekeeping.

"Bee pollen is like stardust man, it's everything. When you eat it, you're eating the foundations of everything around you." Quite how this came to bee, I wasn't too sure as I was too bemused to press for clarification.
"I played my bees some Vivaldi man and their production was like, whooosh! They fuckin' loved it."

During our conversation I mentioned an ancient Historic site in Zimbabwe I'd been to and he retorted, in a rather blasé manner, that he had a home there.
"How did you find yourself owning a property in Zimbabwe?" Surely, this was one story too far?

It turns out that he had brokered a peace deal between two bickering African tribes on a sand bank that had appeared overnight in a river that bordered their territories. After successfully brokering the deal, the chief of one tribe asked him "Tom, where are you from?" Tom confided that he was from a number of places.
"I will give you a house in my village Tom." Said the chief gesturing, presumably, to a domed mud hut.
"Now, Tom, you will have a home." Apparently he threw one of his daughters into the bargain as a kind of performance bonus.
"She was just there to get the house ready." He said, a tad bashfully.

It turned out that Tom had also spend much of his childhood in Whitney, England (yes, where David Cameron is an MP). In his 20s he also lived with with a little known folk singer called Leonard Cohen.
"Was he a good flatmate?" I enquired, no longer that surprised about anything anymore.
"Nah, he was a crazy drunk Jewish bastard! Always dressing up like a goddamned undertaker."
This all sounded quite plausible.

Tom's other occupation was the hosting of regular 'Sweat Lodges' where, as you may have divined, a group of willing participants sit in a small hut, heated by scalding stones and you sweat loads. Often this will be accompanied by a raft of hallucinationagenic drugs. Different guest Shamans were invited from South America, Africa, India and other exotic locations in order to practice their respective ceremonies here.

Each Shaman ritual would usually involve a different drug with a more specific spiritual purpose that would aid communication with whichever spirits happened to be in the neighbourhood. Some of these rituals have been known to last over 36 hours.

"There's an ayauasca ritual this Saturday, if you wanna join? It's gonna be real intense."
I politely declined but was intrigued. I had read that CEOs of some of the World's biggest tech companies and corporations are frequent visitors here. If anything, it would be a great networking opportunity.

He was in the process of renovating a wooden assembly hall that presided over the ceremonial Sweat Lodge site. Sunnny and I politely offered to help about with some of the building work as we had an hour or two to spare.

And so it came to pass that we spent a hot, sweaty afternoon installing the pinewood ceiling to Tom Blue Wolf's assembly hut. It was not quite what I'd expected from my visit, but it was surprisingly fulfilling.
This is how it started with L Ron Hubbard (Scientology's founder), I thought. First it was helping to tile L Ron's new bathroom, then you wake up and you're Tom Cruise.

Incidentally, Mr Wolf also claimed to be a fully Cleared Scientologist (the Scientology equivalent of completing Goldeneye on 00 Agent). There wasn't any evidence to support this but I hoped it was true. According to Tom, he'd done it to see what all take fuss was about and then stick a middle finger up to them once he'd Cleared. Even now, they still call to invite him as a guest speaker to events after 30 years of ignoring them. That's a worrying level of dedication.

Our reward for helping finish Tom's ceiling was a trip to a local waterfall to wash the sawdust and the fibre glass shavings off of us and then a dinner at a local Mexican diner.

We were joined by his wife Sonja, his child, and a man called Derek who seemed to be helping out with the building work. His wife was in something of a mood after a stressful day at work and was giving him a bit of the cold shoulder. In an attempt to satiate her, he was resorting to the classic male preserve of baby talking.

It was a herculean effort to contain giggles while watching this towering personality and apparent transcendental medicine man having to step down from his tower and make a cutesy baby voice. His attempts seemed to be falling on deaf ears. This left me somewhat concerned at his abilities to goad whichever spirits were up for that particular sweat session. But then again, even hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. So perhaps even this feat was a little beyond his earthly set of abilities.

Sunny and I had a two hour drive home to digest our rather unusual day with Mr Wolf. I had expected to come away saying that he was a total nutter but many of the things he said made plain sense. Before us Europeans arrived in America the Native Americans had thrived in this country for many thousands of years. They had a diet that contained over 2000 different meats, fruits, vegetables, nuts and herbs. To put it in perspective, the colonists arriving on the Mayflower were on a diet that was closer to 200 varieties. There is, in short, a lot we can learn from their (old) way of life.

It was my last sunset in Georgia and I was a little forlorn to say goodbye to Sunny and Natalie. I'd had some wonderful experiences here and I could really see why so many people had such nice things to say about the state. Now my attentions turned south and to the anticipated Highlight of the trip, New Orleans.

Poverty Porn - Alabama

September 03, 2016 by Alexander Bigbie

I hugged Sunny goodbye at 6am, invigorated and full to bursting with happy memories. I wanted to get to New Orleans for mid-afternoon and hoped to beat the infamous Atlanta rush hour traffic.

The journey would take me through the great states of Alabama and Mississippi and I couldn't help but make a few stops as I don't exactly get to visit such esteemed places very often. In Georgia Ben had summed Alabama up as "a beautiful state filled with the worst fucking people in the world." I can happily (or perhaps sadly) attest that Alabama conforms to just about every stereotype I'd heard of, and even a few new ones.

First off, Alabama, I'm delighted to report, is the only place I know of that still sells cassette tapes(without so much as a whisper of irony). To put this in context, the last place I managed to procure a cassette tape was seven years ago in Marrakech - and even that was quite an effort to find. No such trouble in the great state of Alabama. I had my pick of Hank Williams, Dollie Parton, Willie Nelson and a few other, less dazzling stars of the country scene.

Everyone in Alabama seemed to bear the wrong end of some physical or mental affliction. In the gas station shop I stood completely transfixed watching a toothless, malting weed of a man in a greased vest, listlessly floating around. He hummed atonally, as only the purest lunatics can do, and was affectionately stroking Twinkies and other soft confectionery that happened to drift within reach.

"You aawn that shit agayn Jim?" Boomed the gas station proprietor, replete with a wolverine haircut and handlebar moustache.
"Nah maaan, I cleayne now." Another slight shuffle. "I cleayne." Now in a slightly wounded tone, accompanied by a good deal of feverish scratching.
He paused for a moment, then glided over to the counter and simpered. "Y'all can spot me a pack a Kools on creydit?"
Needless to say, Jim made his way from the gas station empty handed.

I was feeling a little guilty about taking so much interested in what was, essentially, poverty porn. Not entirely satisfied, I decided to lunch in a town with the 'fasten your seatbelts' monicker of Atmore, Alabama for an even bigger hit.

It would be kind to Atmore to say that the town had probably seen better days. Whilst desperately scanning the place for somewhere that served food it quickly became apparent that I was barking up the wrong tree. A walk down Main St revealed a worn out succession of pawn brokers, loan sharks, thrift stores (one enticingly named New York Fashions) and a jewellery store. On closer inspection the latter just turned out to be another, more upmarket, pawnbroker.

I did find a cafe but I had sadly missed the two hour daily slot when it was open (10am-12pm every day except Sunday, in case you were wondering). I made my way back to the interstate and stumbled across a place called The Anchor on one of Atmore's charming little side streets. A massive fleet of pickups were parked outide so I divined that it must at least be serving something.

It didn't fail to disappoint. The Anchor was a serious hillbilly hangout. Although quite a classy one it seemed. A hand written sign on the door forbade 'string vests OR baggy shorts'. Every one of its patrons was as white as driven snow, sunburnt, wearing a camouflaged baseball cap and spoke in an unmistakable, barely intelligible Alabama drawl.

Strangely, this was the only restaurant on my entire trip where the waitress didn't ask where I was from. The fact that I was from England was probably a little beyond her understanding. In fact I was quite sure that I was the first person who wasn't from Alabama that had ever darkened The Anchor's doorstep. They probably just assumed I was one of America's squadron of wandering serial killers and just didn't want to probe too much.

I had the lunchtime special. A BBQ pork sandwich with slaw and potato salad, followed by pineapple upside down cake. It was actually rather tasty, although it was clear that the 70 plus section of the town were having their way with the menu. The slaw and potato salad looked like they had been passed through an industrial mincer and were served using what I can only imagine was an ice cream scoop.

The plates also looked like they had been donated by the local retirement home. Given that so many of its inhabitants regularly ate here, they had probably just brought their own and The Anchor had quietly amassed a collection. They were made of reassuringly thick, drop-proof plastic and adorned with three shallow troughs aimed at prevening any accidental food cross contamination. It was all so jauntily institutional.

Over lunch I decided to see whether the state laws in Alabama were as dumb as most its inhabitants seemed to be. In Alabama, I'm delighted to report that it is illegal to wrestle a bear, have an ice cream cone in your back pocket, play dominoes on Sunday, wear a fake moustache in church, salt a railroad or (my personal favourite) 'flick boogers into the wind'. Together they painted a very illuminating portrait of the everyday behaviours of the average Alabaman.

In the face of such a paucity of diversions, I would have assumed (as is the way down here) that one would be allowed to allot a fair chunk of leisure time to your nearest and dearest. However Alabama has recently acquired some of the most stringent laws concerning incest in America. Presumably this was because it used to be so endemic that everyone in Alabama would have developed a forehead the size of a drive in movie theatre were it to continue for another generation or so.

I left Atmore happy in the knowledge that we were unlikely to cross paths again. Unsurprisingly, I now felt even more guilty about having such a morbid fascination for a place that really was just a meat grinder for poor, malnourished, dumb and uneducated hicks. I promised myself that one day I would come back to the state and see if there was more to this place. I have no doubt there would be. There always is.

Falling for the Big Easy, Part 1 - New Orleans, LA

September 01, 2016 by Alexander Bigbie

With Alabama well behind me I was soon crossing a broad, flat bridge over Lake Pontchartrain and passing downtown New Orleans. I tell you, without hesitation, that I've never taken to a place as rapidly and unreservedly as I have with this city. From the moment I arrived, I was completely and utterly enchanted by the place.

One of the Interstate highlights of the drive down

My host in NOLA was Tommy Slattery, a native of this city and every inch a Southern Gentleman. He was larger than life character and an associate at one of the most prestigious law firms in town. I felt quite certain that he was destined for great things.

We had met at University and become good friends while he was spending the summer in London. We even moved in together for a brief period. He possessed a strength of character, joie de vivre and generous nature that set him apart from most people you meet. He could happily charm the skin off a snake and doubtless (if pressed) sell ice to an Eskimo. For five years I had repeatedly promised a visit and I was finally honouring it.

To prepare visiting friends he had put together an intimate and very personal city guide that I had skimmed before my arrival. It opened with a Maxim stating that in 'New Orleans we like to say that we are not the worst-run city in America, but we are the best-run city in the Caribbean'. and that 'New Orleans natives enjoy no compliment more than a visitor stating the city feels like its own country'.

After spending a morning wandering the French Quarter on a guided walking tour, I soon came to realise how true these statements were and why this place really does feel like no other city on earth.

To the immense frustration of our rather rotund guide Stacy, the walking tour got off to a less than magical start. We entered a dark alleyway off Jackson square and were confronted by a man clutching what I can only describe as the biggest penis I've ever seen (on the internet or otherwise). Poor Stacy was so taken aback that she involuntary blurted "CHRIST THAT'S A BIG DICK!" A sentiment that was vociferously echoed by a fellow female tourist in her late 70s.

Poor, sweaty Stacey desperately herded us to another, less diverting, street and we proceeded to learn about more wholesome aspects of the city. A brief introduction to the city's history is the best place to start in understanding why there is such an essential sense of difference here.

New Orleans had only really come to being as the result of a rather desperate, and completely fraudulent marketing campaign. Founded by the decorously named Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville (JB for short) in 1718, the colony initially proved to be a hard sell. I'm not sure what all the fuss was about. Back then it was a veritable abundance of alligators, poisonous snakes, insects, disease, murderous indians, extreme humidity and rampant criminality. The question really should have been, who wouldn't want to go there?

JB, Founder of New Orleans and marketing Mad Man

Undeterred, JB wrote a series of marketing pamphlets describing the place in terms very much unlike those mentioned above. For good measure the pamphlets also described a towering mountain so filled with gold that it practically haemorrhaged it.

He diligently sent them all over Europe, presumably with his fingers and toes tightly crossed. Most people who received them had the good sense to realise that this was total pugwash. However a gang of German would be colonists didn't quite see the wood for the swamp and merrily set sail. It would be a gross understatement to say that they were a tad dismayed once they had finally braved the arduous, five month sail.

As a result the first large group of settlers here were actually Germans and not the French or Spanish as you may have supposed. You can see evidence of this on the tombstones of the old Lafayette cemeteries but mercifully not the food, beer or sense of humour. They were later joined by larger numbers of French and eventually, the Spanish.

Domestic policies in France didn't exactly do wonders for its desirability as a colony. During the 1730s, in an effort to kill two birds with one stone, King Louis XV completely flushed out the contents of one of Pairs' biggest prisons and then shipped them to this new, inhospitable colony. Many actually begged to be reincarnated in France once they had heard of their final destination.

The crew included pimps, rapists, murderers, thieves and prostitutes. Just the sort of people you want to help you build a happier and more prosperous future. JB had not been given much advance warning of this influx of new guests and you can only imagine his delight when the first ship arrived.

It's little wonder then that the place quickly developed a reputation for extreme iniquity and depravity. At one point things were so bad that even the prostitutes were high tailing it. In an effort to satiate his sex starved colony, JB sent men into the bayous to kidnap local Indian woman. As you can imagine, the Indians didn't much care for this and despatched these men without a great deal of impunity.

In desperation, JB resorted to sending weekly letters to Louis begging for more women to be shipped to the colony. His wish was duly granted and after a mere 14 months, another ship arrived.

Unfortunately for New Orleans, Louis had a rather dry sense of humour and had delivered the colonists 200, presumably terrified, nuns to to play around with. Thankfully for the nuns, God was still the most revered force around and they were just about the last people on earth you would fuck with, so to speak.

Charles II of Spain gained control of Louisiana (and consequently New Orleans) from France in 1763, until Napoleon reclaimed it briefly in 1803. In need of a few quid to fight his wars with the British, Napoleon sold Louisiana for $15m (then a territory that stretched from the south all the way to the Canadian border) to the United States.

At the time, The US was also a little strapped for cash and borrowed the money from Britain. How Britain didn't have the foresight to realise that by lending the US money, they were effectively financing a war on themselves, is a question for someone more qualified than myself to answer properly.

Already you can see a picture appearing of a place that did not self-identify as American. The Spanish and French descendents of these settlers developed a separate Creole identity and were culturally distinct from the rest of America, and remain so today to some extent.

New Orleans also differed from all its other neighbours in the way it treated slaves. Thousands of refugees from the Haitian Revolution of 1804 arrived in the city, including 3000 free people of colour and 3000 black slaves. Because of the precedent set by such a large number of free blacks (25% of the population), slaves in the city were given the unique opportunity to buy their freedom. This was part of a special French set of laws governing slavery known as 'Code Noir'. It allowed them to work on Sundays and keep any earnings for themselves in order to achieve this end.

Although the Code Noir was still highly restrictive, it led to a much higher percentage of free slaves in the state (13.2% in Louisiana compared to 0.8% in Mississippi). They were also more literate, healthier and much more prosperous than their southern neighbours.

Toussaint Louverture, leader of the 1803 Hiatian uprising. Generally considered to be the genesis of the civil rights movement

Although it was still nowhere near to an equal rights society, compared with other parts of America at the time this was positively enlightened. There was also a strong streak of matriarchy and high tolerance for interracial marriage. Even today, blacks and non-blacks here enjoy a state of race relations better than the vast majority of the country and especially in relation to the its southern neighbours.

Throw in a liberal splash of both voodoo and more liquid spirits and you begin to see why this is one of the world's most bewitching and captivating cities. It also boasts a number of notable achievements including the invention of the cocktail, Poker, cotton candy, movie theatres, America's oldest running boozer (Lafitte's, 1770) restaurant (Antoine's 1840), street car system (1835) and, of course, Jazz.

A quick pootle around the various bars in the French Quarter also revealed that the people here are friendlier, better educated and a great deal easier on the eye then those of their bordering states. New Orleans, it's safe to say, was a real winner.

In the 19th century it seems friendliness of a certain sort was less welcome here. In an effort to guard the chastity of young ladies, wealthy families in the French Quarter would stash them as far upstairs as possible. Undeterred, young bucks would climb supporting balcony poles in order to give their own poles a seeing to. Noticing what was going on, the pillars were then greased by protective parents (or presumably their servants).

This grease still failed to adequately prevent their poor daughters being deflowered so more extreme measures were needed. And so, grizzly looking spikes were added to everything that could possibly prove too tempting for an over sexed 19th century would be Romeo. Given the link between the balcony crawling lothario, they were given the very cutesy name of 'Romeo Catchers.'

In the evening Tommy introduced me to the best fried chicken I'd ever had (Willy Mae's). Never entirely satisfied, we made our way to a local bar called Scooter Browns. There we guzzled on 30 cent oysters and beer until we were almost sick. The local way of taking them was on a salted cracker and smothered in lemon and cocktail sauce. I was, as they say, in hog heaven.

Another, very handy thing about New Orleans is that you can carry alcohol in an open container almost everywhere. They even have drive through liquor stores if you're too drunk to walk. Although we may take it for granted in Europe, the right to drink in public is very much the exception here in America.

Outside of the bustling city centre, New Orleans has a deeply sensual and mystical aura that you bathe in as you wander its streets. By night, gas lit lamps gently dance outside many of the homes and streets are still washed in a hazy amber glow from its streetlights. Although the latter are being phased out by bright white LEDs which is frankly mortifying.

The more time I spent in the city, the more things I found to recommend it. Unlike most American cities, you can actually cycle here without the almost certain chance of being eaten by a lorry. They even, and this is a real shocker, have a few actual cycle lanes.

Over dinner Tommy helpfully explained the layout of the city and the different characteristics of each neighbourhood. Of these, the most attention grabbing was the West Bank neighbourhood. Being American and chronically incapable of dealing with more than two syllables, this has, a tad predictably, been shortened to just Wank. And of course people from his district, with a great deal of pride and total ignorance of its British meaning, refer to themselves as Wankers.

Falling for The Big Easy, Part 2 - New Orleans/Suwanee/Winston Salem/Newark

August 18, 2016 by Alexander Bigbie

On Saturday I was introduced to my first ever Po Boy sandwich. It was so called because it was fed to striking streetcar drivers who couldn't afford a square meal. They would come to a diner and the waitress would shout to the kitchen "Here comes another one of them poor boys." If the Kitchen staff were in a generous mood then they would cobble together stale bread and any fried leftovers and they could forage from the floor.

The name was, predictably, abbreviated to Po Boy and is New Orleans' signature Sarnie. I loved it and it echoed many of the city's most salient qualities. Namely it was cheap, unpretentious and unhealthy.

For the the evening, Tommy had been lucky enough to secure us the VIP box at the Tulane College football game. It's safe to say that I know more about brain surgery than I do about American football so I asked him to explain a few of the rules at lunch. With the aid of detailed napkin diagrams, plasticine models, videos, and much patient explanation, he set about his task. But by the end of lunch, I still knew more about brain surgery.

In the afternoon we visited a real life bayou outside of the city. Tommy had been here many times before and had promised a veritable treasure trove of local wildlife. But it wasn't to be. We walked for almost an hour and saw nothing except rather bored looking banana spiders. Tommy was already beginning to apologise profusely for failing to deliver me me a single item of interest.

Nature had, in her fashion, decided to wait until the very end of the walk to deliver the goods. They came in the form of an 8 foot long alligator wearing a toothy grin that could only be described as deeply menacing. Although no part of him moved, occasionally the membrane on his eye would lazily peel across and you knew that he was just conserving the requisite energy to tear your arm clean off.

The other walkers on the path soon had their fill of gator photos and pissed off. As soon as we were alone Tommy turned to me, wide eyed and with a grin almost as broad as the gator's and said.
"Shall we fuck with him?"
Without a moment's hesitation we began throwing whatever organic detritus we could forage in the general direction of our new found friend. He didn't move a millimetre.

I'm quite certain that a whole chapter of the Darwin Awards has been dedicated to such nakedly idiotic behaviour as molesting alligators. I have to say that it's incredibly good fun and we were only throwing twigs and acorns so there was no danger of actually hurting the poor creature. During our exertions I concluded then that if I'm doing this now then I'd likely be doing this kind of dumb shit until the the day I die. Which won't be long if I keep trying to piss off grumpy alligators.

After some time we reached the conclusion that he didn't give two fucks about us and so we made our way back. En route we were greeted by an adolescent gator (who we also fucked with just a tiny bit). We then, unsurprisingly, proceeded to get chased and hissed at repeatedly while running in the manner of excitable schoolgirls.

Our final reptilian encounter was with a Coppermouth snake, one of the most venomous and aggressive in America. Even people in Alabama don't fuck with Coppermouths, they just shoot at them. We kept our distance as it locked its fearsome gaze on what I was quite certain was my groin.

The college football game in the evening was an extraordinary event (by my standards at least). Tulane stadium has a capacity of 10,000 and was completely full. This is considered microscopic in college stadium terms. Some are as large as 120,000 and are full to capacity every week end.

To put this in perspective, the biggest sporting event in the British university calendar is the varsity rugby match between Oxford and Cambridge. This draws in maybe 25,000 in at best. Far smaller than the average crowd at even the most minor college football game.

To add to the sense of spectacle, the opposing team had brought a 100 person strong band with them. It was an all black college form the south and I was reliability informed that it was one of the top bands in the country. Their performance did not fail to raise the hairs on my neck. It was all so wholesome and felt anchored in a glorious epoch when cars looked like spaceships and you could guiltlessly drink martinis at lunchtime.

By the end of the game I was still none the wiser on its seemingly endless parade of silly rules but I certainly had a few observations on the sport. In many ways, American football fans behave much more like English rugby fans as opposed to the lumpen savages that tend to support their namesake. At one football game in London I saw a 10 year old girl shout "YOU FUCKING CUNTS!" Repeatedly for 90 minutes, warmly encouraged by her doting father. That certainly wasn't the case for this sport, even down in the bleachers.

To me, at least, the sport seemed like more of a religious focal point for people to meet, eat and get a bit pissed. Hooliganism just isn't a thing here.

The next day I went to an NFL game between the Oakland Raiders and the New Orleans Saints. I had been informed by Tommy that Raiders fans were a total bunch or rotters. However, closer inspection revealed them to be mere lambs in comparison to the kind of bottom feeding pond scum that 'soccer' has produced. They don't even separate the fans here and you can drink in stadiums. Enough said really.

The Saints game was played in a packed 80,000 seat stadium, bang in the centre of the city. As you would expect, this being America, the food and beverage offering was outstanding. They even had a dedicated Bloody Mary stand, should that take your fancy. Even though I mostly had no idea what was going on, it was an incredible spectacle. Replete with the usual accoutrements of fireworks, cheerleaders, giant flags, cheesy entrance videos and all kinds of 'punch you in the jugular' manufactured drama.

When it came time to leave New Orleans I did so with a very heavy heart. I had somewhat fallen for the place in a way that I hadn't expected from my unrelentingly icy nature. It had everything I wanted from a city, including that X factor that is so lacking in other American cities. I hoped that one day I could spend a little more time here and really get to know the place.

It was time to make my way back 1500 miles north to Newark, with only three days to achieve this feat in the Ford death wagon.

The first leg ended with a lightning quick pit stop at he Ulmans in Suwanee. Despite a very late arrival, Sunny and I still made the time for a gentle moonlit stroll around Edinburgh. I would miss him dearly, and everyone else I was leaving behind for that matter.

My final stop was in the city of Winston Salem, North Carolina. Through connections that I had never fully understood, I have a fairly large extended family based in North Carolina. The way I understand it, they are the descendants of my American grandfather's cousin, Douglas who had sadly passed away recently at the age of 94.

Either way, they were a delightful bunch and it had been 15 years since I last saw them so we had some catching up to do. I was greeted by great aunt Rosina. To say that Rosina was a force of nature would be a grave insult to nature. She was 93 but had the mental acuity better than most 30 year olds.

She was flanked by Jackie, one of her three black carers. Rosina was one of the most loving and kind people I had ever met but was also capable of treating her staff in a manner that was positively medieval.

Her butler Chuck was the very definition of long suffering. Apparently he'd been fired more times than he'd had hot dinners (which probably wast that difficult). I'd heard that she had become a little ornery after her husband of 50 years had passed away suddenly. Apparently before his passing she was known to mutter the occasional 'thank you'.

Yet to me and many others I'm sure, she was a paragon of loving virtue and kindness. My car could barely fit the food she gifted me for my drive to Newark. Although she still had her moments. At dinner I we were talking and it was very apparent that she was from another era.

"Alexayner." (She had a southern accent thick as molasses)
"I've been reyadin in the gossip magazines that coloured and non-coloured people are getting married and breedin' nowadays."
At this myself and her lovely daughter Angela choked on our cornbread and gently reminded her that it wasn't 1850 anymore.

At dinner chuck dressed in an oversized white jacket and bow tie and rather nervously served us ribs and salmon. Once I'd gotten over the slightly anachronistic nature of it all I started to mull over the last two and a half weeks.

I suppose my only disappointment with the trip was just how smoothly everything had gone. When I realised just how perilous my mode of transport was I had expected almost certain death. The fact that I was cruising towards Newark up the sumptuous interstate 81 was something of a miracle. That and that fact that America has finally given me a half decent motorway to drive on.

Interstate 81 blazed a glorious trail through the blue mountains and was delightfully traffic free. It was even host to the Gaffney Peachoid of House of Cards fame.

In New Jersey I was more than happy to part with the old girl and return her to her former master. I was sad to say goodbye to America and her many Alabama shaped imperfections. It's no surprise that people love it here. But that could always change. I just hope that it doesn't totally fuck itself come November.