Astoria is a game that punishes everyone who plays (part one)

June 8, 2010 18 Comments read Attractions, Oregon, Pacific, Travel, USA, West

I drove to the beach house on Saturday, which took nearly half an hour longer than anticipated, owing to a crawl through Long Beach proper due to a city-wide garage sale. I suppose that city council members have the very best of intentions when planning these events: “It will draw people into our community! Perhaps they will spend additional money at local businesses!” but in reality it means that everyone puts out a cardboard and sharpie or plywood and spraypaint misspelled sign* every few feet, a nouveau shanty-town facade indicating that perhaps the townspeople believe you might like to pay for the privilege to paw through their filthy offcast items, grubbing to the bottom of a bin for a moth-eaten t-shirt or a warped record that’s “only a quarter!”, eyes shining like you’re a modern-day Columbus, scouring the seas for a new world of bargains. One of these signs even indicated they sold guns, the subtext being that they could shoot out your tires if you did not stop and rummage properly through decaying cardboard boxes of clips and rusty tractor parts. When I finally arrived, the plan was to load into a few vehicles and drive to Astoria to visit the brand-new Goonies museum located inside the Heritage Museum, so we dutifully packed in and made the drive, only to be informed by a bemused and patient woman behind the counter that not only was the Goonies museum NOT located inside the Heritage Museum but it was also not yet open; the grand opening was set for the following weekend. She then gave us a map and indicated on it where the museum would be opening, the location of the Goonies house, and other notable filming locations in the area, and we decided to check those out, after we checked out what the Heritage Museum had to offer, since we had to wait for the rest of the group to show up, regardless. In many, many cities, museums dedicated to local history are soul-crushing book reports of boring, with hand-lettered placards wobbling and trailing off as even the writer passed out through tedium and disinterest. History only ever comes alive when you focus on people’s pettiness, their foibles and jealousies and greed-based motivations, their lusts and passions, to the point where you marvel that anyone accomplished anything whatsoever. My high school history teacher, Mr. Burmeister, knew this, as he whispered to the class about cocaine addictions and powerful whores, and passed around bayonets with a thrust that indicated that he knew precisely how to disembowel an enemy combatant or a bubblegum-popping girl at the back of the classroom. The Astoria Heritage Museum knows this as well, not only focusing on the seedier elements of their town’s history, calling themselves ‘The Most Wicked Place on Earth’ but actually offering up a role-playing game so you could picture yourself as the bar-fighting, prostitute-visiting, bootlegging, opium-smoking, born-again Christian who gets sucked right back into bar-fighting and visiting prostitutes you know you would have been in those less-lawful days. Each player decides what job they might have had in those days (cannery worker, traveling merchant, etc), and that job determined the starting amount of chips the player had, representing the amount of money you had for shenanigans and sundries. You then spun a wheel to determine your destination/fate; you could be off to visit the prostitutes first thing or perhaps chat with a policeman on his beat. We played the game rather half-heartedly until Rachel shouted from another room “I JUST *DIED*. My body was washed away in the river, never to be seen again!” Our collective eyebrows shot up; our interest was piqued. “You can DIE in this game?” Some of us became opium addicts. Some of us were hung by our necks until dead. Some of us were beaten to death with our own brass knuckles, or shot with our own guns. Some of us tried to live the honest life of a policeman only to be killed by bootleggers. Some of us were shanghaied and sold into slavery. Some of us made infamous friends in prison who led us into yet more trouble. Soon, we were skipping around, spinning the wheels and having more fun in a history museum than anyone has a right to have. Should your journey lead you to the church, they had a pulpit from which you could preach fire and brimstone…

^{Holy shit, I’m going to make an amazing benevolent dictator!}

…before getting sucked right back into sin.

After a while, we had all died in pretty much every way possible, so we made our way back downstairs to see whatever else there was to see. As we thundered down the stairs, the woman at the front desk laughed and said it certainly sounded as if we had enjoyed ourselves, and we chorused back that we absolutely had an excellent time. Could a museum that housed the Death Game possibly hold any more treasures? By law of averages, isn’t one supremely fun thing more than most museums have? This museum also contained a tiny fort. Clearly intended for children, we wedged our way through the hole in the wall and claimed it in the name of immature adults everywhere. Inside, there was a lighted campfire, a few bunk beds, the bottoms of which were coated in hay, and an animal skin of one sort or another. Now that I reflect upon it, it actually is entirely possible that NO ONE was supposed to go inside, that it was intended as a peepshow display instead of as an interactive playground. Regardless, we had our fun.

^{How DARE you awaken She Who Has Hair Full of Hay?}

I know what you’re thinking. Surely, surely a museum of this caliber could not possibly have three fun things, right? WRONG.

After we finished our coloring pages/word searches, we realized the others did not intend to join us, so we decided to traipse around Astoria ourselves, coins in pocket, as if we hadn’t just learned about the dangers of the town. To be continued… *Seriously, if you can’t spell ‘garage’, why not try for ‘car hole’?

One Classy Lass

April 6, 2010 17 Comments read California, Masticating With Mellzah, Pacific, Travel, USA, West

My dad and I packed in quite a bit during my last day in San Diego. The first step was packing our stomachs. I’d mentioned some nostalgia over the Walker Brothers pancake house in Chicago, and by whatever grace exists in the univese, they’ve opened ONE location outside of chicagoland, and that location is in San Diego. When I am willing to get into this sort of a line for a pancake, know that it is no ordinary pancake, it is the best damn pancake on earth.

I’m serious. After cramming myself dangerously full of apple pancake and perfect thick-cut bacon, it was determined that we would go ride bikes around Mission Bay. Here’s the thing about that. ‘They’ say that once you learn to ride a bike, you’ll never forget, and that may be true. It took me much, much, MUCH longer than my peers to learn how to ride a bike. My parents hadn’t realized that scabs on knees could possibly become so thick prior to the ‘Melissa attempting to ride a bike year(s)’. So while you may never forget how to ride a bike, let me assure you that if it’s been, say, a good fifteen years since you’ve last straddled one, the first few miles are going to be white-knuckled and shaky. Granted, it was a Monday, so pedestrian traffic around the bay was not as thick as it would be on the weekend, but it was more than thick enough for my tastes. A woman jogging with a double-wide baby stroller cut in front of me, and I worked at keeping a safe distance behind her…but then she slowed down. I couldn’t go around her, as a large group of people were walking in the opposite direction, with a large dog that kept bounding into my lane of ‘traffic’. At this point, I was traveling slow enough to wobble and didn’t know what to do. So, of course, I panicked, yanked the handlebars taking the bike off-path into the sand and then promptly flipped over said handlebars. You never forget how to ride a bike…in the manner to which you are accustomed. We rode for about eight more miles after the, er, incident, and by the end I was doing quite well–riding a lot more confidently, doing a few things off-path without (or with less) fear, engaging street traffic without shitting myself, and only wobbling when reaching back to make sure my wallet hadn’t popped out of my pants pocket as it is wont to do. After we returned the bikes, we took a good long walk to Pacific Beach, seeing as how we still had more time and it was a gorgeous day.

There are wee cabins sitting out on the pier at Pacific Beach that you can rent. I think it would be lovely to spend a night or two sleeping out above the ocean. After we walked back, we STILL had a little more time, so we wandered around Seaport Village a bit. One of the pedicab drivers noted my ‘Benjamin Franklinstein’ shirt and offered us a free ride to wherever we were going, but we declined since we didn’t really have a destination. From Seaport Village, it’s only a short distance to the airport, so my dad dropped me off in plenty of time. It only took me five minutes to get through security, so I decided to get a cool beverage while I waited to board the plane. It was then that I realized how badly my arms were burned, when my skin crinkled in that taut, uncomfortable way as I reached for my wallet. This is another significant piece of evidence that I don’t learn from my mistakes. When I went to Hawaii with Alex, we went snorkling, and I didn’t think to put sunscreen on the backs of my legs, though they’d be hanging out of the water all day long, and consequently got one of the worst burns of my life. This time, I gave no thought to the idea that in the act of riding a bike, my arms would be stretched out in front of me and hence much more exposed than they are normally. That’s how I wound up with a totally elegant farmer-tan-line burn. At the moment, I’m flaking and leaving DNA evidence everywhere, so I must be careful not to commit any murders until AFTER I’m done healing.

You put the beer in the coconut and throw the can away

April 6, 2010 2 Comments read California, Pacific, Travel, USA, West

The day after the tire incident was pretty low-key. We wandered around Fashion Valley before it opened, waiting for the new tires to be put on the car. We then went for a walk at Spanish Landing Park.

This is a sculpture about beating cancer but for all its attempted symbolism, the people who emerge don’t strike me as powerful. They look like they’re flouncing away from something frightening. There was also a bronze elderly woman holding a purse on the other side. I touched the purse, and my dad cracked there was no way I was going to get that purse away from her since she went through the Depression. Art: Apparently my family cannot appreciate it.

It was a nice walk up and down, and it was a good chance for us to talk more about opportunity and regret, going with the flow versus going with what you want.

After the car was fixed, we had a late lunch with my dad’s friends Jason and Edward, who had us rolling with stories about the hot new bellboy working at their condo and the letters they anticipate to receive about SOME tenants harrassing the staff. They also didn’t realize the condo they had bought was really, really wine-themed (each room style was named after a type of wine, the place has resident wine parties, and the condo came with a wine fridge and a set of plastic wine-glasses so they could drink in the common areas). Subsequently, they are looking forward to the day the rehab amenity is announced. With lunch and some beer deeply entrenched in my stomach and the very late night the night before coupled with an early start, I decided to take a nap and promptly slept the rest of the day away.