Eight Seconds in the Hookah Bar:

The Blend is a hookah bar in downtown Asheville. Lounge-central for many. For these four, it was a place to relax, love, and inhale. This is an eight second span of their slim moments spent in the hookah bar. I stumbled upon the place when a friend invited me out to take a stroll through the unconventional enigma in the south. Music of every genre gave our trip a soundtrack and we spent a few hours walking through the allies rife with graffiti and abstract art.
I've stared at this picture for many hours and remember my short pop through this bar vividly. The hookahs were well-crafted, shiny, and smoked excellent. The flavor we choose (Orange Creme Soda) was delicious and spot-on. Gotta love good shisha. The spirit of fellowship and good vibes hung pungent in the air at The Blend, and the music filled every corner with its rumbling bass (however, that could just be because I sat on the couch right under the speaker).

I want to go back.

A Compliation of Travels Lacking Detail

So yeah, I've mostly come away from this whole experience of travel writing with the notion that I do not like travel writing. Most of the places I've been to I was super young, dragged along by family and it is all a blur now. It's not that I'm lazy, or don't value details, I'd just rather write about music and movies.. Something I'm trying to get into at TNR. More music please..!

I've been inside the St. Louis Gateway Arch around the time I was a sophomore in high school and what I remember from that was how much bigger it was on the inside in comparison to the tiny pod we rode to get up there. I was hauntingly reminded of September 11th and occasionally thought to myself, "What if this thing is attacked next?" I don't remember the view outside of the arch, and I vaguely recall my father taking a picture of me while looking out the windows. We had traveled to Missouri to see family and go to a football game but this small detour made me feel super tourist-y. I kept looking up. My dad - ultra-tourist - carries around a video camera and camera in a bag across his shoulder and makes sure to embarrass us all just a bit with by taping us walking or a view. My dad isn't the kind of tourist who sports the ballcap with the city name on it or a Hawaiian tee-shirt; his vacations are pretty unique and relaxing. He does, however, love to get us all on the camera.... And then he posts it all over FaceBook with a small educational blurb as the caption. He keeps it classy while making sure everyone knows where he's been.
This is how the majority of my vacations go and this is why traveling will forever remind me of my dad. I always wonder what he would think about a place and I'm pretty on cue at sensing when he's about to pull out the camera.

See, I highly doubt my professor would consider any of this travel writing. It's profile stuff....
I just don't really have great retention in this brain of mine.. Something I'm trying to correct.

In a previous post I mentioned my fishing trip at the beach. On the road to the beach, there is only one thing I remember and that's the underwater tunnel. I was always so fascinated. I would watch for as long as we drove steadily into the abyss. I oddly felt safe as we drove through the dark concrete chasm that we were all aware was surrounded by insane amounts of salt-water. It could easily take us out if it so pleased.

I'm sorry, Jenny. This is just how it is. I love to travel. Not so much experience a place, but just go and move. And I move fast. Is there such thing as move-writing? The only time I really experience is when I go to a place, that forces me to go to another. Such as hiking.

not by me - courtesy to owner, you know who you are.

I was living in Asheville and my uncle suggested that I go to Triple Falls. This hike was short, nothing really grueling about it but there was a rather steep incline that neither me nor my friend were ready for. The dog seemed to mock us with how easily he scaled this trail. Once we descended again, the trail was short and we stepped on to rocks. High above us were two waterfalls and below us another. Triple Falls. They were nothing like Catawba, the little pools and the trickling water, no, these were huge, expansive and loud. I didn't know there could be such flows of water and I had to yell to talk to my friend right beside me. The mist glistened in the noon sunlight and I could see the faint colors of a rainbow in the rushing rapids. It was a lovely day. We sat on the rocks at ate some lunch while my dog frolicked in the forest and water. Had to lay out a towel for the beast to sit on as we drove home. It was a short hike, but memorable. Glad I had company and a dog.

Travel writing? Not my thing.

Not so Irish, Irish Pub

This story just occurred to me.

One of my earliest photo assignments for The News Record, I went to a bar to get pictures for a review. I completely overestimated my own knowledge of this camera, so I figured I would take the assignment. What could be easier than snapping pictures of a restaurant? I told all my friends how I was going to go to this restaurant and they would probably be in the paper. A couple decided to come with me and the assignment developed into a dinner date, as well.

I had just gotten my camera and (as stated before) grossly overestimated my own ability to use it. The camera was set to auto-everything and I had only ever taken pictures in the daylight when it was certain to produce nicer pictures. I had been instructed to change my settings to manual and start metering all my shots. That's when things changed. I had all my numbers backwards which made it difficult to quickly determine which numbers to set on my camera to get a well-lit shot (still have to remind myself to this day which numbers are lighter or darker). I also had no clue what ISO was and believe I may have shot all my pictures from that night at ISO 100 (the lower the ISO the less light a camera will take in). So, I proudly arrive at an ill-lit bar without any suspicion that I was carrying around a camera that wouldn't be able to capture enough light to make a picture adequately visible.

This place was called "Bagpipes Irish Pub," located in your local Cincinnati downtown. Aside from this being my first photo-trip it was also both me and my friends' first trip downtown. All of us were a little on edge, using the phone GPS to direct us there and seeming very stereotypical as we watched it closely for the next change. We completely forgot about parking and circled a couple blocks before we found a spot at a distance that was too far for us to look like we knew the area, but close enough that the length of the walk there made no negative impression on us. As we stepped into the establishment, we were greeted by a Guinness Harp and an over-friendly host who quickly showed us to a table that wasn't even in the vicinity of the bar but in a rather silent backroom that was awaiting rush hour and a couple reservations. My group and one other couple were sitting at wide, circular, and rather cushy booths looking out to the empty tables. Our drink orders were promptly taken although we did not see the beverages until much later.

While waiting for the elusive drinks, I parted from my friends to look around the place, carrying my doomed camera with me. Occasionally, I'd snap some photos but what really got me was how nice the place was. A shiny, blue stage greeted me as I re-entered the room with the bar. A circular bar that enclosed a crystal clean tap with an assortment of glasses like I had never seen before and on either sides were high booths filled to the brim with customers. The bar was lively and many waitresses milled around in kilts taking orders and mingling with the patrons. I began to dwell upon all the Irish pubs my father had dragged me to over the course of my 19 year old life (and I went to many pubs). Never had I seen such a beautiful pub.
That's when it hit me. Beautiful? Pub? Those words don't seem to make sense together. All the pubs I'd been to were crowded, intensely noisy, and entirely unkempt. Pubs should be built into the dirt of the ground; uneven floors, oddly placed tables, but with a staff that is highly attuned to their customers and knowledgeable about the menu. Something I did not see at Bagpipes. I also found myself taken aback by the lack of an Irish name for the place. Why "Bagpipes"? The Irish do have their own version of the instrument but aren't bagpipes notoriously Scottish? In the past, I have been to Irish pubs with names like "Fado's," "O'Hooley's," or "Hannah Flanagan's." Something that screams "This place is full of beer and red-haired individuals." I questioned all this in my head as I steadily took pictures. The final thing that pestered me about the place was the waitress uniform. A white shirt and a kilt. A plaid kilt, at that. While again the garments are prominently Scottish, the Irish wear a solid colored kilt instead of plaid. A minor mistake, but if the owners want to call this an "Irish Pub," I think there is a responsibility to cover all the bases, right down to the waitresses' uniforms.

At precisely the right moment, I peeked back around to my table to see the drinks being served and I sat down to think about what I wanted to eat. The prices were higher than I expected them to be, especially for what little they had to offer, so I choose the cheapest - but most appetizing - dish on the menu. The room had started to fill with people and my friends were excited as we chatted for the rest of the night. I returned home that evening excited to upload my photos only for that feeling to come crashing down when I realized how poorly each frame had turned out. I turned in the best few I could possibly pick out (probably to the dismay of my editor). I reflected on my own time at Bagpipes as I read the story my picture sat next to in the following issue. They author wrote a fairly positive review of the place but it did not seem to me that he had ever been to multiple Irish pubs.

My friends seemed to enjoy the place, but they don't scrutinize things as much as I tend to. I suppose this trip wasn't that great, but it proved a learning experience for me.

adventures in grey.

This always happens to me when I try to write. I start getting extreme writer's block and I just skip out on writing all together. I feel like I get into patterns with my writing and don't bring anything new to the table. It's really lame and I hate it. I don't necessarily care about my grammar or punctuation... I guess trying to free-write while at the same time actually having assignments to write... well, the assignments and class related ones take precedence. Although.. this is technically "for a class." I just feel like I'm writing the same old thing over and over again and I'm not sure if I like it or not. And it's especially hard with three jobs and 17 credit hours. Ugh. I've also been very unhappy in all aspects of life. Work, school, home... especially home. I miss North Carolina.

So, a long time ago, when I was say... 11ish, my grandparents had a small chicken coop. They're notorious for their ever multiple chickens, ducks, dogs, cats, and peacocks. Yes, it's a small farm. They also have a garden that they both tend to every summer and send me off to college with a fresh supply of corn, green beans, carrots, and potatoes. And lots of chicken eggs.
Anyhow, when I was 11, this chicken coop was also a play area for me and my two cousins, Kayla and Sylys. They're all grown up, live in Colorado, and go to college now... This chicken coop had an open area that had a roof, two open windows, a cot looking wooden plank and a "kitchen" (or what me and my cousins liked to call a kitchen). It wasn't the cleanest thing. Dusty, old, rickety and grey... Oh, and smelled pungent of chicken poop. The chicken coop was adjacent to the playhouse and on more than several occasions, we would collect eggs to cook in our kitchen. My grandmother had made many rugs to liven up the place, and we constructed curtains for the empty windows (they got knocked off quite often). This was our playhouse. And we had many an adventure in the chicken coop playhouse.
Once, I entered the house, cousins in tow, and we began reorganizing the place. "Home designer" we called it. As I lifted one of the numerous blankets that littered the place a large, spindly, harry wolf-spider darted off into a corner. I had no idea what a wolf-spider was, or that they were harmless. "Tarantula!" I shrieked, threw down the blanket and got the hell out of the playhouse. We didn't go back very often after that because of the "tarantula infestation."
Another quite traumatizing event happened when I was around 14 years old. I felt nostalgic for the old, grey playhouse and convinced my cousins to feed into my need to go look. I sighed as we examined the old place for soon my grandparents would tear it down and replace it with a big red barn. I had been standing on one of the old rugs that lined the place when suddenly a sharp, horrible pain shot through my leg from my ankle. My eyes shot down and in a split second I realized that angry yellow-jackets had built their nest under this particular rug and I was standing on their home. They wouldn't stand for that, so, as yellow-jackets do, they began to bite me. Once again, I fled the playhouse with such speed that I'm not even sure my cousins realized I had escaped. Yelling loudly at the pain, my immediate response to rid myself of these horrific bugs was to scrape my leg on the ground. I'm not sure when they let go, but before I knew it, my dad had carried me away into the house and my grandma began applying baking soda to my swollen ankle. Luckily, I'm not allergic to bees... So I'm able to tell you about it today.
On a lighter note, the playhouse wasn't just a source of random traumatizing events, it was a source of pretend-time for three little girls who loved to decorate their grey house and make it something of their own. We brought our favorite toys in there as "customers" during the time we agreed it was a restaurant and parents would visit us often so we could give them as elaborate of a tour as the one room area would allow. The barn that now stands in its place is a wonderful barn, the chicken coop is still the same, but I do miss that playhouse from time to time. It wasn't all that bad when you got past the yellow-jackets and tarantulas.