Hip-Hop will never die...unless it eats at Hip-Hop...

There are a lot of dumpy places along the Tennessee Strip in Tallahassee that trade real character for cheep beer. The rule of thumb in places like these is that the music, ambiance and drink selection are secondary to the attraction of vacuous co-eds in search of a place to hang out the shingle. Nothing wrong with getting a little loopy and getting your swerve on, no, but that kind of thing can get a bit old once you're out of your early twenties.

Until the luster leaves the veneer, however, anyone who partakes is going to need greasy places to flush out the juice, so to speak. Happily, the Tennessee Strip is replete with places only too willing to add to your premature arteriosclerosis by way of seared beef, deep-fried chicken or braised cheese on soggy bread. At one time I was sure that the king of all of these places was Guthries, what with their Gut Box (an almost perfect 'drunk food'), but my bleary notions of sodden perfection were shattered at a stroke once I set foot inside of Hip Hop Fish and Chicken.



There's no obfuscation to this place at all; it is exactly what the rather odd name implies - a fish and chicken joint. I always expect there to be Hip-hop blaring out of hidden speakers in there when I walk through the door. Instead, there is only the smell of grease and fish, the deadpan disinterest of the counter girl and the inane blaring of the laugh track of whatever show happens to be on Fox just then. It's like stopping by your gross aunt's place for a nibble after you've been to the bar.

Does that not sound like the kind of place you'd want to stop and eat? Good - you're normal. But I'm telling you, after a night of boozing and hanging out in noxious clouds of second-hand smoke, when you're firmly in the grip of the grape and your throat is sore from attempting to converse over music you don't even like at low volume, after you've quit the pub and shambled toward home only to realize you're too hungry to sleep, Hip-Hop Fish and Chicken delivers the best late-night snack you can get in Tallahassee.



My recommendation? Get the Tilapia and chicken tenders. They're served over white bread (to soak up the grease) and fries (to add additional grease), and I like to put the Hip Hop Hot Sauce on everything, just to add a little additional grease-cutting power to my meal. This place is a bit out of the way for anyone who doesn't live in either a dorm or one of the many student ghettos close to campus, but it's worth the trip if you've got both a heavy drunk on and a designated driver (all of these qualifications are utterly moot, however, if Mr. T's BBQ is open. That place trumps any other place in town, at any time of the day or night, under any circumstances short of the death of a loved one. More on the phenomenal Mr. T's later).

One Kind Favor...

When I first started fishing in Florida I would go wade-fishing with a buddy of mine. We'd tie a cooler decked out with pool-floaties to one of us and tow it through the water while we waded, about waist deep, casting around for fish. Aside from being both a spooky and inefficient way to try to catch fish, it's also pretty ineffective. I don't think we ever caught anything other than catfish and stingrays this way. After an incident involving a 12-foot alligator following us around while we tried to scurry out of the water in submerged, ankle-deep mud, we gave up wade fishing altogether and my buddy bought a canoe.

Certainly, Florida is the right kind of place for a guy who likes to sit around in a boat trying to pluck fish from the water, and north Florida has a ecology unique to the northern Gulf - the salt flats. From the first time I got in the Gulf of Mexico, I've been impressed, stunned even, with the amount of life that is constantly teaming through the waters here. Nowhere in the Gulf, however, has been more impressive and significant to me than St. Mark's lighthouse.



St. Marks lighthouse is at the end of a long road that runs through St. Marks nature preserve. The preserve itself is about a 30-minute drive outside of Tallahassee and is a wealth of natural Florida pine forest and wetland. It's a pretty great place to see indigenous Florida wildlife, too - I've seen bobcats, water moccasins, alligators and all kinds of birds doing their respective thing in the preserve, but mostly I've gone out there to hit the water.



The lighthouse itself is a rather squat structure, but Florida is flat enough that it serves as a prominent landmark from a long way off. The waters around the lighthouse are shallow, 1- to 6-feet depending on the tide, and they are just chocked full of all kinds of sea creatures. I've been scalloping here during the season and I've caught trout, redfish and flounder, too, along with more pinfish and catfish than I care to think about. The aforementioned alligator incident occurred here, and I've seen both dolphins and sea turtles out in the water almost every time I've been. Because it's both so full of fish and so close to Tallahassee, it's a fair bet that it'll be a pretty busy place almost any time you go. There's a boat ramp very near the lighthouse, so if you stick around the shore you're likely to see a steady stream of boats coming and going.



But despite the occasional traffic and over-large alligator, St. Mark's is a beautiful place to fish, hike, bird-watch or picnic. There's a visitor's center near the entrance that'll walk you though the local flora and fauna, and plenty of picnic tables and open BBQs strewn about the preserve. You'll be able to find a good photo-op about every ten feet here and I'd be surprised to hear of a person spending some time in the preserve without seeing something pretty breathtaking.

If you go, though, I'll ask you this one favor - Please don't feed the alligators that hang out near the lighthouse. Seriously. Don't.

Two wheels of fury....

Lake Ella sits just north of the center of downtown Tallahassee. It is a modest little man-made pool of water, populated by hordes of dim-witted mutant ducks and more than a few Georgia Slider turtles. Around this little lake are a small selection of specialty stores that cater mostly to jugglers and women who need either shoes or exotic gifts. These stores have been set up in what looks like an old motor-hotel; all hewn-rock bungalows arranged in a line. Most of these stores are cute and quiet and clean and good for little other than a summer diversion. One notable exception to this is Joe's Bike shop, probably the best bike shop in Tallahassee.

Joe is a New Yorker who moved down to Tallahassee for a slower way of life. He's an affable guy, always joking and willing to hang out with regulars on the stoop. His place is far from a mega-store, but carries just enough bikes and equipment so that you'll always be able to find what you need, and he has a pretty well-stocked and busy shop in the back as well. He employs a couple of guys to help him around the shop (one of whom, Pete, lived in the same one-horse town in Oregon that I did during a portion of my high school years - we even know some of the same people. Small world), and he usually has a ton of reasonably priced used bikes out front to choose from.



The real reason to patronize a place like Joe's, though, is the laid-back customer service and local feel of the place. I rode my bike all through my undergrad and I can't tell you how many times I took my ailing machine in to Joe's only to ride out an hour or so later, totally fixed up and wallet only slightly worse for wear. Joe's is that kind of place - get to know the guys and they go well out of their way to see that you're taken care of. I made sure to drop a six-pack by now and again by way of repayment, but the pleasure of that was all mine anyway - they're a fun bunch of guys to hang out with and I'll miss them terribly.

Oh, just as a side note, this place is a regular haunt of people from all ends of the bike-riding spectrum. You'll even find a fixie kid hanging out there now and again - that said, there's a place down in Railroad Square (which I'll write about later) called Krank it Up that rents out space and tools for bike repair on a pay-what-you-want basis, and is staffed by a pretty cool bunch of people. If I were more tech-savvy about my bike than I am I might have made more use of Krank it Up than I did, but asside from being an engineering dimwit I like the guys at Joe's enough to enjoy stopping by. Anyway, there you go.

There's a joke here that I can't pin down...

When I was a kid there used to be this Sicilian pizzeria down the block from my grandmother's house. My grandfather, a northern Italian, wouldn't go there because he said Sicilians were dirty, but I enjoyed walking down the block from my grandmother's house, stepping into the dark, smokey interior of the little pizzeria on the corner and ordering from the dusky, surly men behind the counter. They spoke in grunts, never smiled, constantly smoked, and made the best fucking pizza I've ever had*. I've since judged every pizzeria I've ever been to on a spectrum based on that place - spooky/quirky/delicious on the good end, and Dominoes on the other.



Decent Pizza in Tallahassee sits squarely on the end of this spectrum farthest from Dominoes. Rather than make the obvious and hackneyed attempt at a witticism on the name, I'll just relate here that it's the best pizza in Tallahassee and a pretty good place to hang out in, too. Booths run down one side of the space and ovens line the other. Tattooed, mustachioed guys throw pizzas the old way behind the counter, and they make all the sauces and bread right in the kitchen (i.e., nothing's shipped in). Black Sabbath is as likely to be coming out of the sound system as Steve Earl is, and they have Dr. Pepper in the old-fashioned little bottles (the 8 oz. kind). Along with rotary phones, asbestos ceilings and rubbing dirt in your wounds, smoking in the kitchen has gone the way of the shag carpet, but this is the kind of place in which I wish it were still OK. It would fit it.



Their pizzas are huge - really big; but you can order by the slice and they have a few beers on tap to wash it all down with too. I can't say I have any specific memories to relate to Decent Pizza as such, but it is a hell of a place to grab a slice and I'll miss it heaps. Oh, they close kind of early for my taste (10 on weekends and most weekdays), but it's worth the effort of getting there early to have a bite. In fact, it's a pretty good place to start off your evening with a couple of beers and a pie, come to mind, so maybe the early cut-off is intentional.



No, probably not. Lazy hipsters**.




*Until I ate at Satchel's Pizza in Gainesville, that is. That shit's the BEST!
**Incidentally, Halima is not a drunk. That is my beer.

Tear ducts...

One of the first weekends I spent in Tallahassee, a couple of friends of mine dragged me along to a place called Waterworks. It's the only tiki-bar in Tallahassee and has both an eclectic drink menu as well as an appetizing sandwich menu. A few years ago they used to have live bands several nights of the week, as well as a DJ spinning pop and 80's nights on Fridays and Saturdays, but they've since moved on to a more minimalist methods of crowd control.

The inside is dressed up with rattan and bamboo, and there are hula-girl mugs and stuffed pufferfish behind the bar. The windows that face the street have a constant cascade of water flowing down them (hence the bar's name) and the parking lot is lined with coconut palms. The bartenders are knowledgeable enough that you can ask them to, "make me something fruity..." and they'll both happily oblige and surprise you every time (one of the bartenders is even from New Orleans and will make you the best Pim's Cup you've ever had). Fridays and Saturdays they have a DJ throwing down tracks and it gets busy enough in there that you'll have to either get friendly with everyone between you and the bathroom, or bring along a big, big friend to make you a path through the crowd.



Waterworks has changed in recent years, no two ways about it, but I don't think it's for the worse. They went smokeless this year, which is a very welcome change, and they hired new bartenders. The area around Waterworks, what might be called the Downtown Meridian Corridor (though it's technically on Thomasville Road), has blown up in the past year or so - enough that if you get bored at Waterworks you now have your choice of egress to either a wine bar, a Coffee Pub, and Irish pub, a French bistro/bar, a techno bar/club, a socialite wine bar, a Decent Pizza shop, a sushi restaurant/bar, a frat/biker bar or Whataburger. All good choices for whatever mood you're in.

But Waterworks has a charm all it's own - charm enough to make all the other nearby choices seem lackluster by comparison. It's the local hipster hang-out (hipsters who drink, anyway), but it's also a popular spot for grad students and professors from FSU. You might think that a place like that sounds pretty pretentious, but Waterworks has an endearing way of diffusing all that intellectual ego and transmogrifying it into a wonderful opportunity for conversation.



Aside from the charm, location and kick-ass menus, Waterworks has been the sight of more than a few firsts for me. Waterworks was the place I first went out dancing when I got to Tallahassee; I met the first girl I seriously dated in Tallahassee there; I 'discovered' several bands I now love at Waterworks; I picked up my first ever one-night-stand in Waterworks; Waterworks is the only place I've ever gone out to publicly dance wearing a diaper (post costume party dancing - pictures may be forthcoming). It's a unique place, and attracts unique people and opportunities.

Personal firsts and bests aside, I'd like to give a shout-out to Don 'Q', the owner of Waterworks. I don't know where he came from (nobody knows, I think. I get the impression that he just sort of appeared here one day, as if by magic), but I can tell you that he's managed to conjure up two of the best places in Tallahassee out of shear vision and willpower (Waterworks, of course, and Cicada market. More on the market later on). He's a gracious and endearing host who has made an indelible impression on the local culture of Tallahassee, as well as loaning me his canoe at least twice (though I'm not sure if he's aware of the latter. Thanks Don!). I will surely miss Don and his watering hole quite a lot, and hope that they are here for many years to come.

There's a lot to love...

Tallahassee's been good to me. I've been here for about as long as I've been anywhere and I can honestly say that I've been happier here than any place else I've ever lived. I moved here from Seattle six years ago, and was worried at first that I'd have a hard time finding my place in a small town like this, but Tallahassee has a strange way of making space for you if you stick around long enough to let it. Like anywhere else, it's got its positive and negative points both, but on balance it's a beautiful place to live and is just chocked full of pretty great people, too. Ultimately, though, it's a small town, and unless you're ready to settle down (or have lived in a small town your entire life) it can get a little claustrophobic. It's the kind of place I can see myself returning to once I retire, but for now I've got to run off and do a little more exploring.

I have about three weeks to go before I set out across the country on my motorcycle, and before I leave Tallahassee for good I'm going to run around taking stock of the things I've grown to love about it. Like any great place, Tallahassee is made up of a patchwork of great things strewn amongst a garden of regular old stuff, so weeding out the things you like takes a little doing. What I'll write about before I go is the product of six years of snooping around, but I'm sure there are things I'll either leave out or never found for myself. If you have a suggestion or feel like I left something out that is glaringly obvious to you, let me know and I'll try to sneak it in at the end, pretending like I was hip to it the whole time.

In any case, the first and perhaps the most fitting - The Leon Pub.

The Leon Pub is the very definition of a 'hole-in-the-wall' sort of place to grab a beer with your friends. From the outside, it looks like the kind of place you're likely to get shivved in if you're not careful, but once you're inside you get to see pretty quickly how your first impression was wrong.

The place is small and friendly. Two pool tables only barely fit in it, and even then you'll have to ask the people in the bar to watch out now and then while you take a tricky shot. There is a dart board on one end and an old-school table Pac-Man game on the other. A 80's-era jukebox sitting adjacent to the men's room pumps out classic rock and New Orleans jazz. Unless you get there before 9 pm, a haze of cigarette smoke thick enough to curl up on obscures your view through the bar. The tables are close and the stools are rickety and there's a half-inch layer of dust on anything higher than six feet off the ground and anyone you meet in there is just as likely as not to be too drunk to tell you their name. However this sounds to you, the real attraction of the Leon Pub, its saving grace, even, is it copious and amazing beer menu.

Hands down the most extensive beer menu I've ever seen, anywhere. They've got about 40 beers on tap all over the bar, and about another 200 in the bottle. I counted them one night with a friend - really, there are that many. They sell beer in either pints or liters, and they accept only cash. They don't sell food or cigarettes or anything other than beer, wine and mead (they used to sell chips, but don't they don't anymore), so it's a good idea to either eat before you go or bring some nuts along with you. The diverse and eclectic beer menu draws a lot of people in, a lot of interesting people, so go prepared to chat.

I had a conversation there with the only man I've ever met who had actually had his toes cut off in an escalator as a child (I mean, you always hear about that but you never actually MEET anyone it's happened to, right?). All the toes on his right foot - gone. It looked like a duck flipper. My buddy and I were there once when a drunk old guy bought everyone in the bar a round with a bucket full of quarters. I got in a fight there once and got thrown out by the bartender - the same bartender who bought me a round the next time I came in. Sounds weird, but it's just that kind of place. I don't really go there very often anymore, but I'll miss that place like you wouldn't believe. Funny how you tend to forget to take advantage of some of the greatest things around you until it's almost too late.

I went there tonight for a beer, just to say goodbye, and noticed a poster in the men's room that read, "Please Drink Responsibly," to which someone had added in a shaky hand, "...or die trying." Heh.

Shortly, I will go...

I have decided to make a cross-country motorcycle trip from Tallahassee, Florida, to San Francisco, California. I'll be leaving in about a month and am guessing that the trip will take about two weeks to complete, so I've decided to start this blog to keep track of both the process of preparing and the trip itself.

In later posts I'll detail what I'm packing, the route I'm planning to travel, who I'm planning to visit along the way, why I'm traveling now and what I plan to do when I get to where I'm going. For now, suffice to say that I'll be riding my 2002 Suzuki GS500 outfitted with a couple of saddle-bags and a backpack, a bed roll, canteen and the bare minimum of other luggage. I'll be making a mostly southern passage, avoiding the mountains of Colorado and the open fields of the mid-west. I'll be traveling through Florida, Georgia, Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, and California.

Any tips? Any suggestions? Comment here or email me at pecinpah at yahoo dot com to let me know.