NC Day 5- Folk Art, Fancy Pizza, and Friends from High School
I started today by getting coffee at Blue Dot Coffee in Pittsboro. The coffee was really good, and they also had a mean chocolate muffin with white chocolate chips which was a deliciously gooey breakfast. It was also nice to actually get to see a bit of the town I'd been staying in for most of the week, because for the most part I've just been landing at and launching form dad's friends' house. It's a nice little suburb located pretty centrally in the state.
Before I left Pittsboro, I made a little pilgrimage to Clyde's Critter Crossing, a folk art haven for artist Clyde Jones. His whole house is decorated in little animals that he carved out of wood with a chainsaw and painted. They're fun and whimsical, and the whole community seems to have really embraced him, with plenty of lawns in the nearby area all sporting their own critters.
He even made road signs for his neighborhood. This one was my personal favorite because all good advice should start with the word "taint".
I kept the folk art fun flying by driving to Prospect Hill to see Shrangi-La a great Kinks song and a little stone village made by a guy named Henry L. Warrens in the 70s after he retired. I was shocked to learn that it was made nearly forty years ago, because it still looks incredibly in tact. I couldn't believe how fully fledged the little village was with 27 complete buildings really giving it a sense of gnome-sized community.
After Shrangi-La, I went back to downtown Greensboro because I felt like I barely scratched the surface of a cool town last night. I just kind of ambled around, and got instantly (and fittingly) drawn to the Ambleside Gallery because I saw a clay pot that initially seemed cracked, but then inside the crack was a perfectly crafted miniature Greek temple. I was weirdly mesmerized and I went inside the gallery and looked at every single work by these artists, just called BC Clay Art. The pottery on its own was impressive, but the sheer variety of different locales and architectural styles they were able to replicate in miniature inside the pots was jawdroppingly amazing. If I had a few hundred more dollars and a single stable surface, I would have bought as many as possible just to support these weirdly talented people. I talked to the guy running the gallery and his friend who was also there at length. He explained the pots were made by a team of two brothers (I forget if they're actually twins but I think they might be) who initially were just working on pottery and they got interested in the miniatures after a pot cracked in an interesting way by accident and they didn't want to waste it. He says they put a lot of work into historical architectural studies in order to be authentic. After he explained the pots, we just talked about art, traveling, and comedy for a little while. The two guys in the gallery were both also from New England which seemed like a pretty random coincidence but I guess as the creepy little puppets says, it's a small world after all.
After that gallery, I visited the Elsewhere Collaborative, a former disorganized thrift store turned into beautifully disorganized art gallery. Different resident and visiting artists create works using found objects that used to belong to the thrift store, and it's absolutely bizarre and wonderful. There were walls of action figures, homemade confessional booths, a miniature curiosity cabinet made out of an actual cabinet, and many more odd little treasures.
After working up an appetite. admiring all that art I decided to check out a place called the Mellow Mushroom. It's a chain of pizza places that I've only seen down South, but maybe they're more national than I know. I've been wanting to go one for a bit though because they always have funky art outside. This one was all decorated to look like a church with stained glass windows and everything. Maybe if Catholic churches had given me more pizza and beer as opposed to Jesus crackers and wine, I'd have kept going.
Because they had mushroom in the name, I felt like I had to get a mushroom pizza. It was fancy though, and had three different kinds of mushrooms, mozzarella, parmesan, a garlic and olive oil base, and an aioli and truffle oil swirl on top. It was rather decadent, and far too much for one person, so I saved half for lunch tomorrow and just savored the small portion I did have. I also had a weird beer, called Peppermint Stiletto Stout. I actually liked the minty taste of the beer itself, but it was a bad pairing with the garlic-y pizza. I probably should have seen that coming, but if it isn't obvious by now, my food and drink choices are made much more on impulse than any sort of refined palette.
After lunch, I drove up to Boone to meet up with a friend from high school, Justin, who was living up there. I had no idea he had moved to North Carolina, but he saw one of my instagram posts and reached out. It was a very pleasant surprise, and I was really excited to meet up with him and catch up.
Along the drive up through the mountains, I saw something I wasn't expecting to see this far down the eastern seaboard: Snow! A lot of New Englanders get very nostalgic for snow, and I got a twinge of that when I first saw it and then I remembered that I hate dealing with snow. I think people that like it the most are never the same people who had to shovel it and drive in it. It is pretty though, I'll give it that.
I met up with Justin and his girlfriend, Emily, at a local pub called conveniently enough called the Local. It was a great little bar and restaurant, and it was so nice to see my old friend. He graduated from Emerson after studying music production, he self-produced his own CD, and moved to NC after college because his girlfriend is going to grad school down there, and the cost of living is a lot better for recent college grads than Boston.
We all split amazing pulled pork nachos, and I got for dinner corn-bread dusted shrimp tacos with avocado mango salsa. I'd never had anything quite like that before, but it was refreshing and the cornbread went shockingly well with the shrimp. I paired it with a local beer called the Boonshine Long Winter Mocha Stout, which was really strong and really tasty and a much better food accompaniment than the peppermint. It was a great meal with great company.
If you wanna check out Justin's music, he's not the only kid from Rockland with a nifty little website:
http://shibaandthegirl.com/index.html
Favorite Random Sightings: Domestic Violence Thrift Store (I'm assuming this is a charity for survivors, but the name could probably have been worded a lot better); "We Buy Anything of Value!"; Mountaineer Madness; A depressing billboard that said "Tomorrow is not guaranteed" don't even know what they were trying to advertise
Regional Observation: Shockingly people who aren't used to snow suck at driving in snow. We got maybe one inch which like nothing to drive in but I saw at least half a dozen cars that had veered off the side of the road. I was much more worried about other drivers than the actual roads.
Albums Listened To: Live in London by the Pogues w/ Joe Strummer (when Shane got too strung out, Joe filled in as the lead singer and they did a mix of Clash and Pogues songs. My brother found this recording on vinyl and I recorded it into mp3s. It's really amazing); Live in London (Discs 1 and 2) by Leonard Cohen (two hours of gospel and poetry)
People's Favorite Jokes:
None today so here's one from the internet:
Two blondes walk into a tanning salon. The receptionist asks, "Are you two sisters?" They chuckle and reply, " No, we aren't even Catholic."
Songs of the Day:
He is one of the rare artists where I think his voice got better as he got older
