Excursions

A Neighbor Child delights in the bus

Hello all! Reporting live from our temporary home base of Jamestown, Rhode Island, where we will be for the next few days. We've been here since last Sunday evening, visiting my step mother Judy and step sister Sofia. We've been getting the bus organized and have been focusing on getting the bus blog up and running. We still have work to finish before we can take off for Thanksgiving with Ari's g-ma in NJ. Friday, I gave a tour of the bus to the neighbors and their two sons. They all loved it! The magnetic ceiling car was a big hit. Later that evening, my friend Shawn called me up and told me that her two piece band Super Bonheur was playing in Providence at The Witch Club, an underground show space/artist collective that was unfortunately soon to be vacated as the building had been sold. Ari and I borrowed a car and took off for the show at around 9:30. When we got there we instantly met up with Nick, the other half of SB, Jules (another friend from VT). We all went out for wieners and grilled cheese at a local greasy spatula joint down the street. Awesome. I talked to Eli! One of Nick and Shawn's friends about how he owned and lived in a converted school bus too. At the moment he is in providence, but around February he might be in Tucson, and if I am too, I can give him a lift to the next leg of his journey.

Nick and Shawn of Super Bonheur

We also went on errands with Judy and Sofia to an enormous mall. Coming from Vermont, we felt incredibly fish out of water. The mall had five stories of florescent lights and escalators, four blocks of things to BUY, an attached parking garage, a sea of humans, and had more stores than the entirety of what we call cities in Vermont (also they were all box stores). I'm proud to report that we made it out alive four terrifying hours later, and did not get consumed or suffocated.

The Ginormous Mall

Auuugh!

-Pete

Ari's first underground show:

While I’m honestly not a fan of punk musically, I loved the spirit behind the show. Of the four acts, none were professional musicians, but they were engaging in the act of creation, and it was clear that they were throwing themselves fully into it. The show had a wonderful homemade feel. There were examples of DIY ingenuity everywhere. Pete’s friends, Nick and Shawn, (who were infectiously fun during their portion of the show) had gerry-rigged a toy microphone and a ukulele through lots of distortion. The venue had a kitchen attached, and all the music for sale was all on cassette tapes. My comfort zone is the traditional/contradancing subculture, but I found this new and different subculture to have lots of wonderful elements.

-Ari

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