GA Day 6- Seafood, Swamps, and Southern Art
I spent today in Augusta, partially because I heard it's a really cool town and also largely because it's only about an hour away from Columbia so I could still go back and see Ally after I was done sightseeing and she finished with work.
I started out going to a place called Bodega Ultima. I initially only intended to go there for coffee because they were supposed to have some of the best in the city, but when I saw that today's special was a soft shell crab sandwich, I was enticed into getting an early lunch. I'd never had soft shell crab before, despite clearly having already consumed an inordinate amount of crabs thus far on this trip. I was expecting the crab to be steamed as opposed to deep fried, even though I guess that's probably the most common way of doing soft shell crab, and I must say deep frying a crab found a way to make an already pretty ugly animal even uglier. As gross as the crab looked, the sandwich was so good. There was a really good house aioli on top that added a nice fresh flavor on top of the greasy deep fried goodness. Even better, the sandwich came with homemade french fries that were really fluffy and great. The coffee also lived up to my expectations, but I did almost ruin it with too much milk. I've found that I tend to prefer coffee places where the baristas add the milk for you than when you add it yourself. You'd think it would be better to have control over the milk to coffee ratio, but I'd rather just trust the professionals.
After lunch and caffeine, I decided to hit up the Morris Museum of Art. It had much fewer automated instruments relative to the last Morris Museum I went to in New Jersey. It's almost like they're not in any way related. Instead this Morris Museum had lots of good Southern Art.
The first thing I saw in the hallway to the main entrance was a series of old time photographs. I liked these because they featured a lot of playful pictures of early Mennonite children, and it's always fun seeing kids being kids even in environments you tend to think of as being kind of strict.
Once in the main lobby, I was greeted by some local blown glass art, which I'm always happy to see. I was particularly impressed by one artist's sculpture in the shape of a glass of coca cola, because I had to look at probably more times than I should have to realize it was dyed glass and not actual liquid.
There was a special exhibit on an artist named Hattie Saussy, who was a very highly regarded Southern Impressionist who was sort of forgotten and then rediscovered. Her work was really lovely, but unfortunately because a lot of it was on loan they didn't allow photography. I did find a pretty nice shot of her painting the Footbridge on google images though.
The first room of the permanent collection was a gallery of Southern Portraiture. This isn't really my thing, but the thing I did think was really interesting was the fact that Samuel Morse, of Morse Code and inventing a telegraph fame, was initially an accomplished portrait painter before moving on to science-y stuff. It's both really cool that someone could be so talented in such different fields, but also kind of sad that his impressive accomplishments in both fields are kind of outdated now.
My favorite gallery was the outer hallway with all the modern and contemporary Southern Art. It ran the gamut from pretty abstract to surrealist to highly representational. Highlights for me (top row) were Preacher by Benny Andrew, Bargain Basement by Lamar Dodd, and Man with Necktie by Philip Morsberger.
The modern and contemporary galleries wrapped around the galleries of Southern Impressionism, landscape paintings, and Civil War paintings. These were really beautiful and felt very distinctly Southern in a cool way.
Between these two sections my favorite modern piece was called I Can't Sleep by Jim McCrady. There's just so much going on in there both stylistically and in terms of content. I feel like every room in that apartment house has a novel's worth of character and details in it. Similarly, my favorite piece from the earlier art galleries was a Civil War piece called Attack at Harper's Ferry by John Mooney. He was actually a confederate soldier who was at the attack and then afterwards painted this from memory. If the perspective looks kind of strange, it's because the painting is actually round and fitted on a semi-circular wall. It was like a low-tech IMAX.
I almost left the museum before realizing there was a special exhibit on the bottom floor of artwork by an artist named Jonathon Green, a very influential Southern artist who's vibrant, lyrical paintings document and celebrate different aspects of African-American culture and experience in the south.
One of the best things though about the Morris Museum had nothing to do with what was inside it, and that's it's sweet location right on the city's Riverwalk. Augusta is right on the Savannah River, and the views are pretty breathtaking.
After all that exhausting art and nature, I was about due for another coffee so I went to the New Moon Cafe. The coffee was quite good, but the aesthetics really stole the show. Particularly a lovely painting of Skeletor and He-Man fighting. Masters of the Universe was really big in my household growing up, and now that I'm a semi-adult everything about the clearly half-thought out world of the show is very funny to me. Skeletor is my favorite. Why is he a skeleton but also muscular? Why does he talk like that? Why isn't he the one who lives in a giant skull? There's so many questions that the show barely tries to answer. The other thing I really loved was that they just had a jar of random quotes for you to take. The one I got was from James Brown, "Hair is the first thing. And teeth the second. Hair and teeth. A man got those two things he's got it all." I think that speaks for itself.
After coffee, I went to Phinizy Swamp Nature Park. It was supposed to be a must-see in Augusta, and I didn't know what to expect because I associate swamps with being gross and nature parks with being beautiful. The truth ended up being more towards the latter than the former with massive mossy trees still holding on to some of their greenness despite the January-ness. I bet the park would look even better in full bloom, but I liked being there because it reminded me of both Shrek and Swamp Thing. I wish I meant the highly regarded Alan Moore comic book series Swamp Thing or even the vaguely enjoyed B sci-fi film adaptation, but really I mean the barely coherent cartoon adaptation that was never picked up for a full series but somehow ended up in our family VHS collection.
After the swamp, I made my way back to Columbia to meet Ally for dinner. She was pretty tired after her shift, so we just ended up eating at her work. This wasn't a bad thing though, because the restaurant she works at The Grand isn't really like anything I've seen before. It's a high end restaurant and cocktail bar, but also a bowling alley. I would never have thought of trying to combine all those things but I'm glad somebody did. The food was out of this world, and about a million steps beyond the nachos and microwave pizza I'm used to at bowling alleys. I got a Shrimp BLT, and it was very honestly some of the best shrimp I've ever had. Fat, juicy, flavorful, and really well complimented by the b, l, and t.
After dinner, we went back to Bar None for drinks. We had a really nice time, but leaving to start making my way further South was a bit sadder this time, because I wasn't going to be going to any states bordering South Carolina again any time soon so it felt much more uncertain when I'd be able to see my friend again.
When I did make it down to my Air BnB in Savannah though, I was greeted by the shower curtain below, and it made me a bit more confident that everything's gonna work out just fine.
Favorite Random Sightings: Memaw Had One Antiques; A billboard that said "I love you $90 worth" because who says we're materialistic; One Hour Cleanerizations
Regional Observations: The accents have been the most stereotypically Southern in Georgia, but there's so many students and recent graduates looking for good jobs somewhere with reasonable cost of living that the accents can still be pretty all over the map.
Albums Listened To: Mingus at the Bohemian by Charles Mingus; Mingus Dynasty by Charles Mingus; Mingus in Wonderland by Charles Mingus; Mingus Three by Charles Mingus (is it obvious I like Mingus?); Minstrel in the Gallery by Jethro Tull (this was an album I had totally forgotten that I really enjoyed); The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill by Lauryn Hill (a real genre-bending masterpiece. She's a great rapper, a great singer, and she struck a major blow for taking female MCs seriously and also reincorporating live instrumentation in hip hop. what's not to love?); Misfits of Ska by Johnny Socko (just Art Show); Mitch All Together by Mitch Hedburg (probably the comedy album I've listened to the most in my life. I feel like hearing Mitch for the first time was a huge switch going off in my brain where I first learned that stand up comedy could be so weird and different and also brilliant at the same time)
People's Favorite Jokes:
The boiling water was talking to the egg and said, "Why can't you get hard?" And the egg said, "Because I just got laid"
Songs of the day:
not from any of the albums today, but it's hard to find any good videos of him actually performing so I bent the rules a little.
How the hell can she deliver a performance this good while pregnant?
RIP
Bonus Look Into My Brain: