After making Down by Law, film director Jim Jarmusch said New Orleans was a nation in itself , and after a Christmas week of exploring I tend to agree. N’Awlins aka Crescent City aka the Big Easy is like no other American city I’ve ever visited. A few observations about what makes it different:...
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Sami Sunchild seemed discouraged as she looked out the front window of the Red Victorian, her “Living Peace Museum” on upper Haight St. in San Francisco. Bargain-priced T-shirts lined the window sill all of them emblazoned with Sami’s colourful versions of the peace symbol. Behind her posters shouting peace slogans adorned one wall. Outside,...
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An old episode of Frasier, the television comedy set in Seattle, focuses on an impending strike at the fictional radio station where Frasier works as an on-air psychiatrist. Whether the script writers knew it or not, they were tapping into the radical history of a city that has the dubious or proud distinction of...
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Anyone who has read historian Richard White’s slim volume The Organic Machine will know of the energy and power generated by the mighty Columbia River. I knew it instinctively from living beside it for the first third of my life. Finally, Leola Jewett and I got the opportunity to drive much of its 1,500-mile...
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I curled my body around some blue-jean-covered legs as the human attached to them started to read a copy of The New York Times pulled from the antique rack in the cramped lobby of what is arguably the most famous literary landmark in Manhattan, The Algonquin Hotel. A momentary purr slipped out as I...
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John’s Grill. It doesn’t sound “historic”. Doesn’t even sound interesting. Of all the gin joints and chop shops in San Francisco, why pick this one for a late-night martini? Because this is where writer Dashiell Hammett hung out back in the 1920s. That’s right. Dash himself had lunch here regularly. Yes, the same Dash...
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