AL Day 2- Drive-Thrus, Drinks, and Damn Good Pizza
Today started with a big ol' breakfast at a place called Urban Standard. It was styled to look like a big old fashioned European cafe, lots of brick, open space, and sculptures. The food was pure Southern though.I got the Urban Breakfast plate, which came with eggs, hickory smoked sausage, grits, and a big buttered biscuit. Everything was perfection, the sausage and biscuit in particular standing out as being some of the best I've ever had. To wash it all down I got a mighty fine iced coffee.
After breakfast, I got a pleasant surprise when Chris Ivey, the host from the mic last night, gave me a call and said he had gotten off work early and wanted to know if I wanted to hang out. I jumped at the chance to get to be shown around Birmingham by such a cool and funny dude.
We met at a place called Saturn/Satelite. Everything there is future , space, and music themed. Lots of Sun Ra records on the wall, which is cool because I didn’t know that he was actually from Birmingham and not really a space jazz alien. Saturn’s coffee claim to fame is that they were super ahead of the curve on nitro cold brew. I felt that even I’d had a coffee not too too long ago, I’d have to try the specialty. Chris and I hung out for a bit talking about comedy and movies. It was nice to get to geek out about all the big Oscar contenders from this year. We both agreed that the Florida Project was probably the most powerful, particularly for him because his daughter is about the age of the main girl in the movie. We did disagree a bit about Three Billboards, but I thought his criticisms were much more valid than the more prevailing criticisms I’ve seen online. He recommended a few low-key indie movies I hadn’t heard of before, and highly recommended Phantom Thread which, despite liking everything Paul Thomas anderson has made so far, wasn’t really on my radar.
We ended up chatting so long that we both worked up an appetite, which might be possibly my favorite way to work up an appetite. So we went across the street to what Chris assured me was the best pizza in the city: Post Office Pies. I am unsure if it ever was an actual post office, but I was not led astray about the quality of the food We ordered some garlic cheesy bread (or is it cheesy garlic bread?), and split a chicken alfredo pizza. The pizza was incredible, with gigantic chunks of perfectly grilled chicken and the cheese on both the pizza and the garlic bread was out of this world. To wash it down, I had a No Joka Mocha Stout from Avondale Brewing Company which hit all my beer sweet spots.
We stayed there for close to another two hours talking about comedy, sharing road stories. I liked just listening because he’s been at it for longer than me and I had a lot to learn. His stories were also just hilarious so I can really picture him being a natural story teller when he does longer sets than hosting. It was a great way to spend my late morning/early afternoon. Christ actually just recorded his first album so keep an eye out for him, and you’ll be glad you did!
After bidding a fond farewell to Chris, some leftover pizza and I made the three hour drive to a small town called Seale to see something called the Drive-Thru Museum. If you're not sure what that could mea, it's not about the history of Drive-Thrus but instead it is a museum made of stacked shipping containers with windows cut into them so you can see the exhibits from the comfort of your own car. It looks a little something like this:
The Drive-Thru museum is the brainchild of local folk artist Butch Anthony. Anthony initially started a more traditional Museum of Wonder to showcase his taxidermy and art work, but created the Drive-Thru Museum to help prevent too much crowding in the small space in the small town. The collections contained in the storage unit are a bizarre and wonderful mix of paintings, sculptures, taxidermy, and found objects. When describing his art on his website, Butch says: "I can weld steel, mix concrete, paint, throw clay, bend wire , sew cloth, and hammer a nail. Mix all these together and you got Intertwangleism." He's not wrong either and the sheer scope and variety of the different exhibits is very impressive even if the oddness of the content might throw some folks off. Because all my photos were taken from a car with pretty bad glare, I don't really do the place justice but I recommend clicking on the thumbnails and trying to zoom in to actually get a look at every thing despite my poor photography.
I think my favorite piece (and one whose photo actually came out alright) was this painting of the young Shat-man as Captain Kirk with a skeleton painted over him and the words "Same Ol' Crap Different Location" scrawled along the top. It's provocative, and in front of it is a row of baby chicks so what's not to love.
After driving thru, the museum I started heading back to B-ham. Along the way, I made a pit stop in Tuskegee to see The Oaks the home of Booker T. Washington. Washington was the first president of the Tuskegee Institute one of the first colleges designed specifically to promote Black excellence and self-reliance (although his critics would likely say that he did not do enough to directly challenge White Supremacy at that time). His home is very cool though in that it was built by students at the institute with bricks they made themselves, so it works pretty well as a piece of art, a feat of engineering, and a political statement towards the value of Civil Rights. Unfortunately by the time I got there, it was closed for touring and all of the cafes in Tuskegee had also shut down for the night so I didn't get to see or do much there besides just look at it, which to be fair was still pretty cool. If I could do the day over, I would have gone there first and then the Drive-Thru museum, but you live and you learn.
After The Oaks I finished the trip back to Birmingham. I wasn't hungry after all the pizza, but I felt like trying a local brewery before settling in for the night. It had just started snowing however, so almost all the breweries and taprooms were closed as soon as the first flakes hit the ground. Luckily for me, the good Trim Tab.Brewing Company were willing to weather the non-storm. I really liked it in there, because it was cozy and there was cool art all over the walls.
For beers, I got a flight of four beers: the Language of Thunder Cumulus, a bourbon barrel aged stout with coconut and vanilla; the Pillar to Post, a malty Rye Brown Ale; the Paradise Now, a raspberry and cherry berliner-weisse; and a special small batch New-England IPA because it reminded me of home even if I don't love IPAs. The darker beers were unsurprisingly my favorites, but I think I slightly preferred the solid rye flavor of the brown ale to the more bizarre (but very good) flavor concoction of the stout. I was very surprised by how much I liked the berliner-weisse, because normally fruity beers are too sweet for me, but the cherry kind of undercut the raspberry with a little bit more darkness and it was also more of a full bodied beer than a light beer which helped a lot. The IPA was an IPA. All in all it was a nice way to end the day.
Oh and case you were wondering how much snow shut down every other place in the city:
Favorite Random Sightings: A Truck with a sign that said "Don't Bump" (i sort of thought that just went without saying); a Building with a sign that "I was not made for this weather" justifying them closing early; "We clobbered big city prices!"; Real Life Church (as opposed to what?)
Regional Observations: To give all fairness to the city shutting down over so little snow, I was told by some locals that there are virtually no plows and I think people's tires are different in the South that are less equipped for snow and ice than tires up north.
Albums Listened To: Nilsson Sings Newman by Harry Nilsson (an amazing collaboration by two of the golden boys of snarky pop satire); Nirvana by Nirvana; No Code by Pearl Jam; No Self Control by the Planet Smashers; No Worries by Various Artists (a bunch of east coast ska and punk bands made a collab album to help raise money to pay for the medical bills of Efren Santana, Hepcat's Sax player)
People's Favorite Jokes:
"my GPA"
Songs of the Day:
A Beautiful song for some reason over cute videos of a dog. No complaints though
This is my favorite Nirvana Song. I think I like any punk song about grandmas
The Other Nilsson songs showcases Harry's voice, and this one really shows off Randy's writing