FL Day 2- Curiosities, Cousins, and Cool Art Galleries
My dad and I started our day in Orlando, home of the only giant mice people let their children hug. We got coffee at the Drunken Monkey Coffee Bar, because I couldn't resist a name like that. It more than lived up to the name with great coffee, friendly service, and lots of cool art monkey themed and otherwise. I got their signature drink a Mojo Jojo because I make a point of always getting any Powerpuff Girl themed drinks I can. Okay I will be honest, this was the first one I'd seen but that is the new official policy. Besides being one of the greatest cartoon villains of all time, the Mojo Jojo is an iced coffee blended with condensed milk, cinnamon, nutmeg, and a barely noticeable kick of cayenne pepper. It was rich, creamy, flavorful, and absolutely delicious.
Re-energized, we went to our first stop for the day: Jack Keuroac's house. Jack Keuroac lived there while he was taking care of his sick mom and writing his book, The Dharma Bums. I like what I've read of Keuroac, but I'm by no means an expert. I still figured that since he was a fellow Massachusetts boy who drove all over the country, it was an important pilgrimage to make. Right now the house is set up as a workshop for young writers, so it's not open for the public to go inside, but it was cool to get a picture of my dad outside. He got to see Jack and Neal and Ginsberg do poetry readings back in their Beat days, and I think it was cool for him to take a little walk back in time.
Our next stop was a bit stranger as we went to Carmine Oddities Boutique. Sort of tucked to the side off a state highway, Carmine's has coffee, tea, a live music venue, and of course a pretty serious collection of all things bizarre. These include a meditating stuffed goat, early medical supplies (some of these my dad recognized from his 1950s pediatrician's office), a huge collection of old sci-fi and pulp magazines, weird art, and a meat themed puzzle. We loved it there.
Far and away, the thing that entertained me the most was this jar of raccoon penis bones. I can't imagine why Florida has a reputation of being an odd place.
ONLY five dollars? What a steal?
Next up, we drove down to a town called Vero beach for a family reunion. My dad's cousin, Barbara and Lou, live down there, and he hadn't seen them for quite a few years. He told me they used to be hang out a lot growing up, but then adult lives and the natural distance between Florida and Massachusetts got in the way, so he was just beyond excited to get to visit with them again.
We met with Barbara first because she's one of the founding members of a local art gallery, and we were hoping to get a little tour before lunch. Before we got to the gallery, she showed us around her house and showed us a lot of her own artwork, which was incredible. She's tried a lot of different styles and techniques depending on the demands of certain shows and her own creative impulses and excelled in all of them. Besides getting to see lots of great art, it was also pretty awesome to see my dad and his cousin hitting it off and reminiscing.
After the house tour, we went to check out Gallery 14 founded by Barbara and 7 other local artists. Their own work is on display, but they also bring in and curate lots of great work from artists near and far. A pretty big name, Derek Gores, was actually coming to a showcase of his collage work a few days after we were leaving town (which should be up now at the time I'm actually writing this if you're area and get a chance to see it).
I think Barbara's works that were on display in the gallery really showed off her artistic range with a mix of really impressive nature scenes and more abstract imagery in the background. I think here use of color in particular is really cool in these paintings, because they almost look like stained glass. The one on the left even includes a 3D element with specially coated paper being used for the flowers.
The rest of the gallery lived up to the high bar set by my second-cousin (I believe that's the correct relationship), and I was really impressed by the variety and quality of everything I saw. Being a small gallery, there's not a ton of space there but there was enough great works to rival a lot of the big museums I've gotten to see on the road.
My favorite thing by a non-family member that I saw were these complex, abstract hand woven baskets by an artist named Viola Place Knudsen. I loved everything I saw, but I think these more than anything else really left me in awe of a pure "How the hell did she even do that?" fashion.
Another highlight for me was the work of an artist named Francis Mesaros, who actually patented his own technique of using a palette knife to shape globs of paint into his desired images. I've never really seen anything like it before.
While those were my personal favorites, there really wasn't a week link in the batch so please check out the pictures below and also maybe check out their website for more pictures and better explanations than me and my dumb notes can give.
After the gallery tour, we got to meet up with Barbara's brother Lou and his wife at a place called American Icon Brewery. Housed in an old Diesel Power Plant, the brewery has a totally unique style and setting. They've also got some damn good food and beer. I got a flight of their Belgian Wit, Blonde Ale, IPA, Pumpkin Ale, Pilsner, and Stout. Unsurprisingly the stout was my favorite, but I was very pleasantly surprised by the subdued dark nutmeg-y flavor the pumpkin ale. Pumpkin's a weird flavor that can easily get too overwhelming, but I really love it when it's done well like this. For food, I got the Legally Drunk Goat burger, which had a lamb and beef burger, whipped goat cheese, special sauce, and raspberry jam. It was a complex barrage of flavors, but it was one of my favorite burgers I've tried and it was so good I was too busy eating it to take a picture of it. The other reason I probably failed to take a silly picture of my food was probably the best part of the meal: the conversation. This was the first time I could remember meeting my second-cousins, but family is family and connections came quickly and naturally and we had a great time talking about life, comedy, and the respective traveling we've all done. My dad was positively glowing, and not just from the booze. The old feller looked downright boyish he was so happy. This was a real special little side trip.
After bidding farewell to the cousins but before fully setting out for the next open mic, I was in dire need of another coffee. We made pit stop at a placed called Grind + Grape, a hip little espresso cafe and wine bar. I fueled up on some more coffee which was quite good, and I got mesmerized by their chocolate covered chocolate chip brownie so even though I didn't have the faintest room for it, I got it to save for later.
With that we hit the road and continued to snake our way down the Eastern Seaboard to a placed called Delray Beach. We made it there with some time to kill before the mic so we wandered around to explore the downtown area and the titular beach. After wandering for a bit, I was in desperate need for a bathroom so we went into a place called Subculture Coffee, which looked very cool as well as equipped with indoor plumbing. I did feel obligated to get order a coffee, which was probably a little close to the previous coffee but also not totally unwelcome. I also happened to have picked one of the best possible places for a potty break, because their bathroom was for some magical reason completely decked out in beautiful Star Wars themed Chalk drawings. Between the bathroom art, the regular art, and the very good coffee, it would be a good stop for anyone regardless of how full their bladder is.
After the pit stop, the next place to snag our attention was a small art gallery called the Sundook Fine Art Gallery. The thing that initially caught my eye was a painting that looked a lot like the work my dude Joan Miro. I figured it couldn't be the real deal, but I was shocked to find that this little place in a beach front strip mall not only had original Miros, but some stuff by Andy Warhol, Peter Max (one of my dad's favorite artists), a real trippy piece by a folk artist named Red Grooms, and some far too sexual depictions of Jujy Fruits by an artist named Mel Ramos to name just a few.. I guess you really never know what you're gonna find around the corner.
The art theme of the day actually continued to the open mic because it was in a restaurant called Dada, that had a lot of surrealist flairs to their decorations like Salvador Dali coasters and fake keyholes all over the bathroom door. I was super into it.
I'd also heard it was one of the best places to get a meal in Delray beach, so after I got my name all signed up for the open mic, my dad and I settled in for a nice meal. Because of our big lunch, we opted for splitting an order of the house crab cakes but it ended up being more than enough food. The crab cake itself was tremendous, almost entirely lump blue crab with hardly any filler, doused in a trio of different sauces including a house mustard. Mustard would normally gross both my dad and me out, but we both had to make an exception for whatever the hell hey were doing so right. The rice and veggies that came on the side were no slouches either. To wash it down, I got a Sea Cow Milk Stout because of my deep love of stouts and the noble manatee. How the heck did anyone ever look at one of those things and think they saw a mermaid? Later between the meal and the mic, I also got a house dark and stormy which actually had fresh sliced ginger in it to accent the ginger beer and rum and it was mighty fine cocktail indeed, if a tad overpriced.
The mic ended up being pretty fun. Because this was a real restaurant and not a bar or night club, the seating was kinda funky with the comic only being a few inches from the front row, but it gave everything a fun energy. Being a beach town in Florida, the audience did skew a tad older, but I'd still say there was good variety in the crowd, but I think the high median age gave the room a slight distaste for more raunchy and/or political things and comics that avoided those areas tended to fare better.
My favorite comic of the night was a woman named Che Emmanuel (might have messed up that spelling). She was a young black lesbian, so definitely not typical of the audience in the room, but her material and her stage presence was so strong that she had everyone cracking up. I think it loses something without her delivery but my favorite line from her set was, "I was so glad when my cousin came out as vegan, because it really took the lightning away from me at family parties"
I also liked an older guy who was a visiting comic like me who did a solid set about trying to start dating again in his 70s. He told one story about a woman's hearing aid falling out in her soup and her then not being able to hear him trying to tell her that was really funny. His whole set had a sort of sweetness to it that a lot of younger dating stories tend to replace with vulgarity, and it was cool to get to see someone talking about something I can't say any other comedians I'd seen had any life experience with.
My own set went pretty well. I kept it very clean, but I started out with a longer story that wasn't quite high energy enough, but once I hit the punch line and got into some quicker stuff I feel like I ended pretty strong, and I could go finish my Dark and Stormy feeling good about how things went. Not a bad end to the day at all.
Favorite Random Sightings: Beefy King; Fantastic Sam; "Friends don't let friends kink and drive" (My dad got a real big kick out of this one, which to be fair is a good message but not one I think anyone thought needed saying); A store called Who's Karen?; Lowbrow Tattoos (at least they're honest)
Regional Observations: I have to say I think Florida drivers are the worst I've encountered outside of New York. The old people drive too slow and cautious, and the young people drive too fast and reckless. There's just no middle ground.
Albums Listened To (this was a pretty darn good day of music): Monty Python Sings by Monty Python; MoodSwing by the Joshua Redman Quartet; The Moon & Antarctica by Modest Mouse; Moondance by Van Morrison; Moondog Matinee by the Band (one of the best covers albums of all time); More Noise and Other Disturbances by the Mighty Mighty Bosstones; The Morning After by the J. Geils Band; A Most Immaculately Hip Aristocrat by Lord Buckley (possibly the strangest album I own which is saying a lot)
People's Favorite Jokes:
(this one is dependent on being said out loud and the real joke is confusing person you're asking which our barista nailed) There were 30 cows and 28 chickens, how many didn't? Ten.
Songs of the Day (this was hard for me to show restraint on):
A true work of genius. Blasphemy has never been this catchy
One of my favorite versions of one of my favorite songs. Van just kinda goes nuts at the end and does some hilarious high kicks before abruptly shuffling offstage. It's just incredible
Bonus Bizarre Video: