Ohio Day 1- Shrubberies, Schwarzeneggers, and Shrunken Heads: A Day in Columbus
I started my first official day in Ohio by hitting up a stop on the Columbus Coffee Trail. I had not realized before, but Columbus has quite the local coffee scene and many of the independent shops have banded together to be a part of Columbus Coffee Experience. They offer punch cards for the chance to get a free t-shirt, which promotes you going to multiple coffee shops while you're there. I was going to do this anyway but it was nice to have the added incentive.
I started with Impero Coffee. The cafe is in a neighborhood of Columbus called the Short North, which is the really hip downtown area of the city. I liked Impero a lot. It was very cozy, there was cool art on the wall, and the baristas were really friendly. Today was also the coldest day of my trip so far, so it was the perfect day for a hot coffee.
After my coffee, I stuck around the Short North and went to a restaurant called Melt. My friends from the area recommended it, but when I saw this mural from inside the front window I really didn't need much convincing.
For the record, yes that is Macho Man Randy Savage in the lower left hand corner. He's a former Columbus native, even if he sometimes seemed like he came from a completely different planet. WWE was always big in my house growing up, and the Macho Man was one of my brother's and my favorites because clips like the one below are just so damn funny whether they were meant to be or not:
The cream containers are just so small in his giant paws. The interviewer really handles this impressively.
The food lived up to the mural as well. Melt specializes in grilled cheese sandwiches, and they are unreal. I ordered a sandwich called the Dude Abides, because the Big Lebowski is one of my favorite movies and the sandwich came with meatballs and fried mozzarella. I accompanied this cheesy beast with a special Halloween beer brewed for the restaurant. It was an IPA but also flavored with ginger and coconut which balanced out the hoppiness somewhat. Still not really my cup of tea, but the sandwich made up for it. I only ordered a half sandwich but I don't know how anyone could eat more than that.
I tried working off the meats and cheeses by walking around The Ohio State University's campus. It's essentially the size of a small city in and of itself. I feel like school's in the Northeast just don't get that big. All the buildings were either old and brick or new and glass, and it was all really impressive. It's still a college campus though, so there were lots of discarded red solo cups everywhere. My friend's mom said that when they have football games, the whole giant stadium fills with people coming from all over the state. I've literally never seen anything like that, and I wish i could have seen what the city looked like during a game.
After walking around a bit, I got another coffee at Buckeye Donuts. I was still too full to stomach the idea of eating a donut, but coffee I was okay with. I ordered a Buckeye Coffee, because it seemed relevant. The baristas said it was flavored with chocolate and peanut butter, which sounded pretty good, but what I wasn't expecting was that it would be just absolutely loaded with actual peanut butter and chocolate syrups as opposed to some of the more watered down flavorings. It was delicious, but maybe a tad more decadent than what I was looking for.
After my coffee, I saw two of the most impressive pieces of public artwork in Columbus. The first of these is a big sculpture of Arnold Schwarzenegger to commemorate his first American bodybuilding championship right there in Columbus. I think I would have enjoyed it a bit more if there was a statue of Danny DeVito right next to him, but I was still very happy to see the old Mr. Universe flexing away.
The next thing I saw was somehow more impressive than a bronze terminator. In the Columbus Topiary Garden, some local artists completely recreated George Seurat's iconic Sunday in the Park with hedges. It was pretty much breathtaking.
The rest of my pre-dinner pursuits were more literary. I got to see the childhood home of one America's greatest humorists, James Thurber. He was screenwriter, novelist, essayist, and cartoonist, probably most known nowadays for having written the Secret Life of Walter Mitty. When I was younger, my dad gave me his book, My Life and Hard Times, to read, which features several absolutely hilarious stories that take place in his house in Columbus. It was really cool to see the actual places, where these stories happened. It's free to tour the house, and inside they a lot of original artwork that he drew for the New Yorker and manuscripts he wrote. Perhaps the coolest thing in the house is that inside Thurber's childhood closet are the signatures of hundreds of future humorists who make pilgrimages there to pay tribute to a man that inspired him. Thurber's gift at finding the sublime and the funny in the totally ordinary clearly left a mark.
Next up I went to a neighborhood called the German Village. If the name isn't a dead giveaway, it's a village that was historically German. While there I went to the German Village Book Loft, a giant 32 room book store made comprised of old buildings that at one point had been a general store, a saloon, and a nickelodeon theatre. It was really impressive, and the thing I liked the most was that each of the 32 rooms had its own soundtrack playing so you'd get different musical experiences as well as you walked from room to room.
After the book immersion, I got some more coffee at a place in the village called Strauf's. The coffee was very good, and the cafe is surprisingly spacious and open pretty late so it made for a nice place to sit down and get some writing done.
At a friend's suggestion, I also went to see the Scioto Mile, a public park along the Scioto River. It was too rainy to really enjoy the park, but it looked like it would be beautiful in the spring and the summer. I also saw this statue on a nearby bridge, and almost had a heart attack before realizing it wasn't real so that was something.
For dinner, I went to local favorite, Dirty Frank's Hot Dog Palace. I order the Slappy Pappy's Super Sloppy Hot Dog, which came with a meat sauce, bacon, and french fries. And to wash it all down, I had a Columbus Brewing Farmhouse ale, which I thought was pretty solid and flavorful. The hot dog was really good (and crazy cheap for how much you got), but the thing that really made it stand out above most hot dogs I've had was the steamed poppy seed bun. Ooh boy, I'm still thinking about it.
I still had a little bit of time to kill before the open mic, so I looked around a local record store, partly because I was behind on new music and mostly because the store had the best name I have ever seen: Magnolia Thunderpussy. I purchased far too many CDs because I was so taken in by the place and felt like I should support them. The friendliness of Midwest revealed itself again, as I ended up chatting for a while with the cashier about music and comedy and then he found out I was a performing tonight, he said he'd try to stop by after work. And he actually followed through on it! I feel like that would have been such an empty nicety coming from someone in the Northeast, but he came by the bar and hung out for most of the mic. I thought that was so nice, and as he was someone who had studied slavic languages in college and would soon be moving to Russia, we didn't exactly run out of interesting things to talk about between people's sets.
The mic was at a bar called the Shrunken Head. My friend who started doing stand up in Columbus recommended it highly as his favorite mic of the week. I can see why! It's a cool bar, drinks are cheap, and you actually get a bit of a supportive non-comic audience which was really a big selling point. Over 20 comics showed up, which really surprised me because Columbus isn't exactly a big city so I was impressed that they had such a large comedy scene. Even more pleasantly surprising than the quantity was the quality. This was a really good mic. Nobody really bombed, there was a diversity of styles and performers, and even though people were working through new stuff that wasn't always polished I think everyone got at least one good laugh which you really love to see.
My personal favorite comic of the night was a guy named Ian Miller. He did a bit about how only white people are allergic to peanuts "George Washington Carver found a way to revenge from beyond the grave". That cracked me up.
Another highlight for me was a weirder bit by a comic named Jameson Rogers, where he tried to talk about the new season of Stranger Things without giving any spoilers so he just described his own emotional reactions to scenes with silly noises. It's hard to do it justice, but it was very silly and very funny. I feel like a lot of comics couldn't commit to or pull off such a weird bit but Jameson really nailed it.
I was also very impressed by some younger comics from OSU who said it was their first or second time doing an open mic. They definitely seemed a bit nervous, but their premises were extremely good so they have a ton of potential and I hope they stay with it.
My own set went pretty well. I'd say it was above average, in that all of my big punch lines really seemed to land, but I could have done better with some of the smaller punch lines along the way and maybe changed up the order a bit. All and all though I was happy with it, and the night was a great introduction to the Columbus Comedy Scene.
Favorite Random Sightings: Babies and Beyond; Dudleys Tat2ooz (too much style Dudley); Chunky Armadillo; Mad Mex
Regional Observations: Columbus has really cool street art all over the city. They also have posters on the main street highlighting cool stuff and historical areas around the city which is a great idea.
Albums Listened To: Godfather of Ska Anthology (disc 2) by Laurel Aitken; Goin' Home by Art Pepper and George Cables
People's Favorite Jokes:
What's the only thing happier than a dog with three legs? A dog with four legs
A kid fell in some mud. That's a dirty joke
Song of the Day:
Good old Jamaican Rock n Roll. Laurel was one of the originals.
