last US diary entry

here's the last US diary entry that I did before we came home...

I had no net at the airport because I couldn’t be fucked paying $12 for it, so here’s the recap of our last 2 days in America:

It’s all over. I’m currently sitting at the airport at 9PM on Sunday night listening to ‘Indictment’ by Jawbreaker over and over. We board our flight home in a couple of hours and at 6AM tomorrow morning I’ll be at home on Australian soil.

We spent most of today at Knot’s Berry Farm, a themepark about 10 minutes down the road from Disneyland. We were originally going to go to Six Flags today because they had a $25US entry deal but we didn’t realise it was actually 100km away form where we were staying, so we bailed and hit up Knot’s Berry Park instead. It’s not s grand as Six Fags Magic Mountain, but it was pretty cool nonetheless. They have like 8 or 9 thrill rides, some like rides back home and others that aren’t There’s a magnetic roller coaster (ala Tower of Terror), a freefall ride (ala the Giant Drop), a hanging roller coaster (ala the Lethal Weapon) and also rides similar, but still with subtle differences to the Claw and the Wipeout at Dreamworld. Taking the Dreamworld comparisons even further, you can kind of see where Dreamworld takes a lot of it’s influence from by looking around at Knot’s Berry Farm. Ever wondered why Dreamworld has that weird goldrush vibe to some of the park? Yeah, they stole it from Knot’s Berry Farm haha.

Yesterday was a bit of a lazy day. We got up early to a bit of a disappointing breakfast of donuts and danishes (it seems that qualifies as a free breakfast in America) and then decided to sleep for a bit longer before heading out to Huntington Beach. We hit up a record store before heading to the beach and another one after so dudes could be vinyl nerds. I got Born in the USA and some Tom Petty live double LP and some zines and Sean bought like 793r82447747437534567 records as usual.

Huntington Beach was kind of boring to be honest. It was just a beach and the weather was overcast, not really beach weather. It was made a bit interesting by some intelligence contest where they were giving out free money that turned out to be religious propaganda (who else can afford to give away money?), some English punker called us ‘fags’ (which I don’t even understand? We were all just wearing jeans and tshirts). He was with who I perceived to be his girlfriend too, what a sick dude.

Saturday night’s Burning Fight show was at Pomona, a nice area outside of LA. Their was a cool antique lane with all these antique stores down the street from the venue and a cool little market with a band playing across the road from the venue. Lots of little art galleries open around there too which I regrettably didn’t check out. I got Thai some cool Thai fried rice while the second band was playing too. Pomona rules. So much cleaner than LA.
The start of the show was overcome with merchandise. Indecision records did a limited pressing of the Undertow discography CD ‘Everything’ on double LP and a triple LP Unbroken discography (complete with Smiths quote on the cover haha) just for this show and kids went mad for it. Biggest merch line I have ever seen in my life. I wanted to get another Unbroken Morrissey shirt at this show (I got a white one at Burning Fight Chicago and I kind of wanted a black one too) but the black ones sold out in small so I just got a baby blue one and a black one in large for a friend. Decent life.

The first band to play was Festival of Dead Deer. I didn’t like them at all haha. I’ve never been a massive fan of (real) ‘screamo’kind of stuff and that is what this reminded me of. I walked out and hung out outside after a few songs.

Threadbare were on next but as I’d seen them the weekend before and didn’t know a single song then and still don’t know a single song now I decided to skip it in favoured of the aforementioned Thai dinner.

I wasn’t too enthused by Portraits of Past either, not really my thing.

Undertow, Swing Kids and Unbroken were rad, but I can't really be fucked recapping any of it now haha. night.

America pt11

Today was our final day in LA, we're staying in Anaheim for 2 days before we head home Sunday night.

We slept in this morning, grabbed maccas on our way out of LA and then hit the highway down to Anaheim. We got to Anaheim around midday and were told our room wasn't quite ready so we went for a bit of walk while we waited. We're just around the corner from Disneyland which I guess would be pretty cool if we were actually going to go haha, but there's a lot of 24 hours shops and shit too though... in case we get hungry at like 2am or some shit.

The motel we're staying in for this last couple of days is a bit nicer than what we had for the rest of the week. Breakfast is provided every morning, we have a pool and we have free wireless internet in the room. Good life. We also have 3 double beds (in LA we had 2 singles and a fold out. tuff days.)

After we moved all our shit into the room we hit the road for San Diego where we were meant to be seeing Unbroken at a little venue at San Diego university called the Che Cafe. We stopped at a Hot Topic at a mall on the way so I could get some Twilight shit for my younger sister, we got some food, an auxiliary cable so we could connect Sean's ipod to the car (we'd been listening to the Wait in Vain album for like 3 days now) and we were off.

The drive was a fairly long one (not helped by crappy American traffic) but it looked kinda nice (lots of views of big hills, the ocean, waves etc.) and we got into San Diego city around 5PM. First impressions are a bit nicer than LA, it doesn't seem to have many shitty parts like LA, at least from what we saw anyway. We found it kind of boring because we couldn't find a free park anywhere close to the city so we bailed to the show early, only to run into a couple of other Aussie's on the way home and find out the show had in fact sold out about half an hour before. Damn. Turns out they only let 90 payers in. Sucks to be us. However, the nice Mark and Emma invited us out to dinner at an Italian place that specialised in the art of stuffing pasta in a garlic so we decided to join. It was good to get to hang out with a couple of locals for a couple of hours, the food was rad (vegie meatballs!) and it made the trip seem a bit less worthless. We bailed for home after dinner and just like last night, have been sitting around watching TV, lurking the net and reading for the last couple of hours. Good life.

Huntington Beach and Burning Fight again tomorrow. Good life.

America pt10

LA is pretty scummy really. I think I've realised after the last couple of days that there's not much reason to ever come back to LA as far as tourist places go. After spending 4 days in New York spending any amount of time in LA just feels stupid. The last couple of days have been alright, but it's certainly not the most interesting place in the world.

Yesterday morning we all slept in and then headed down the highway to Pasadena so I could go to a vegan shoe store to get some business shoes for work when I return to Australia. I left with 2 pairs of faux leather shoes and a faux leather belt. Good life. That'll keep me sorted for ages. Lots of good views of the mountains on the way out to Pasadena too.

The ladies at the store brought a vegan thai restaurant around the corner to our attention and we headed down there for lunch. Sean got this realluy greasy sub from dominos (yeah subs from pizza places... crazy haha) and Grant and I hit the vegan food. I got faux chicken chow mein, Grant got a burger (the restaurant had some western vegan food too it seems) and then we headed back towards the city to go to Santa Monica beach.

Santa Monica beach is rad. It was such a fine 'summer' day (well it's technically spring here but it feels like summer), the water was nice and cool and LA actually seems like a really nice place when you're walking along a cool beach. The Santa Monica pier is pretty cool too. (Except the ground being soooo fucking hot that Sean and I had to go and buy thongs so we didn't get burnt haha). There's a rad little arcade on the pier and while we didn't ride any of the rides, it makes for a good view.

We walked a couple of blocks from the beach to the Santa Monica plaza to do some shopping. The mall there feels like a decent Cavill Ave haha. Sean got a North Face jacket, Grant got some shoes and I got a faux leather jacket (seems like it was 'leather' day for me). We then walked back to the car and drove further down the beach to get a different look at what was going on. The venice beach pier is nowhere near as exciting (it's just a pier... no rides, stores or other cool shit), but we stood around for a bit, watched some dudes surfing and talked some shit.

After heading back to the hotel for a bit Sean dropped me at hollywood to go and see Jonah Matranga play. I found out the show was 21+ when I got there and I was worried I wouldn't get in, luckily I didn't get IDed and all was good. I watched another acoustic dude play a short set before Jonah and while I can't remember his name, he was pretty good.

Jonah rocked my world. He played a collection of new solo stuff, a couple of Newendoriginal songs and some of his older solo songs from his onelinedrawing project. It was rad. He seems like such a cool dude. I talked to him a bit before the show and he said he'd play aeroplanes for me but then he didn't get time to play it so he played it for a me and a few other people in the carpark next to the venue just after the show. What a rad dude! I picked up like $40US worth of Jonah music off him that I never bought in the past and then I met up with Sean and Grono and we bailed.

This morning Sean was meant to go to Boston to see Mind Eraser so we all got up early and dropped him off at LAX before arriving home to realise Sean had left his phone in the car. Fuck. I messaged the girl he was meant to meet in Boston about it and sent him mine and her phone numbers on the internet but shit still went wrong, trying to organise his phone stuff Sean managed to miss his flight to Boston. Fuck. Next flight would get him in too late for the show. Fuck. Such a shitty situation. When he called me and told me he just missed his flight and he'd be flying back to LA this afternoon (at his own expense) I was so bummed. Shit sucked.

Grant and I went for a walk around LA today. we found a cool place to get some cheap bakery goods for breakfast, some of it was alright, other stuff was kinda crap. Oh well. We walked down to Little Tokyo only to realise it sucks. We found a little Japanese Garden that I think was actually a hotel's private garden. Oops. Got Gelato in this little Asian mall and then headed back to the room to hang out for a bit before we went to get Sean from the Airport. I read some of Burning Fight and Grant just hung out.

After Sean was back in the land of the living we went and got pizza for dinner and to hopefully cheer up our weary friend. We were maybe going to go to the movies tonight but decided to stay home and just hang out. So we've been watching American TV and lurking the internet for most of the night.

We're leaving downtown LA to stay in Anaheim for a couple of nights before we go home. We're going to San Diego for a show tomorrow night. It should be alright.

America pt9

This diary entry is being posted a couple of days late because I didn't have much internet access over the last couple of days (it is Thursday now... this is Tuesday's diary entry)

We got into LA at 5:30PM last night, picked up our rad hire car and started our exciting week in LA. The hire car place was actually in Inglewood haha. It was really ghetto as. Crazy. Freeways overpasses in America are pretty crazy. Sean said traffic is pretty crazy as well. People are angry on the roads and the lanes are pretty thin supposedly. After a bit of a freeway drive we arrived at our hotel. It’s not very flash haha. It’s very basic. No wireless internet here like our Kansas hotel and no free breakfast either. We’ve gotta pay for our car parking as well. Gah. Oh well.

We spent most of the night just hanging out and getting settled in. Dudes lurked the internet a bit, I read some more of the Burning Fight book and we went and grabbed dinner at a Chinese restaurant down the road. I was keen to go for a bit more of a walk, but no one was keen and really, there’s nothing around us where we are. At least right now, LA seemed like a bit of a shithole. It’s was like 9:30PM and the place was literally empty. It doesn’t seem to have character like NY does. The area we’re staying in is fairly nice but it feels dead and anywhere that isn’t as nice, doesn’t feel cool… it just feels gross. Tuff days.

Tuesday morning started pretty easy. We all slept in, showered up, shaved etc. and then hopped in the car to go suss Hollywood. We parked next to Hollywood Blvd, Grant and I got pizza for brunch, we sussed the Kodak Theatre, looked at the star walk and sussed some dumb tourist stores. I got a couple of little things but as usual, most of it is shit. We ran into an Urban Outfitters and it was pretty rad. None of us bought any clothes but I got some books for family back home, some pretty cool little things, Grant got a Lomography camera and him and Sean also got a couple of cool books.

We spent the next while at the massive Amoeba records. Dudes got lots of vinyl and I felt like an idiot just buying CDs haha. I got a few Sunny Day Real Estate albums really cheap and a Drowningman album for like $3US. Good life.

We then headed down the street on our way back to the car where I ended up dragging us into a Museum about Psychiatry that for some naïve reason I thought wasn’t a propaganda machine. (An amazingly professional FREE presentation from a ‘non-profit organisation and there paying saying they heard about it from Scientology on the sign in list haha). Some of it made sense (like duh, eugenics sucks), but a lot of it was stupid propaganda and we decided to bail on it early.

We then went for a drive up the hills to get a rad view of the Hollywood sign. We got a photo near it and got some rad views of the city on our drive back down through the hills.

We then drove into West Hollywood to suss another record store. Sean found this amazing shoe store he wanted to go into, they had a fuckload of shoes. The nerds again went record shopping. I got another couple of Cds and a couple of old zines. One with a Jets to Brazil interview and another with Samiam. Good life. We then picked up dinner at a burger joint with heaps of vegie shit and then came home and we’ve been hanging out ever since. Good life.

We’re heading to the beaches tomorrow. Siked.

America pt8

This diary entry is being posted a few days late because I didn't have much internet access over the last couple of days (it is Thursday now... this is Monday's diary entry)

Right now I'm sitting on a lounge chair at Andrew's house at 8:30 Monday morning waiting for everyone else to rise for our day to begin. We fly out at like 3PM this afternoon so I doubt we're going to get time to do much, but hopefully we might have time to suss somewhere cool to brunch before we bounce. It would have been nice to see a little bit of Chicago city on this trip... but I think the announcement of those cool Friday preshows kind of ruined that. I'm not too fussed, we got to go to all the rad vego places anywayz.

One thing I forgot to mention last time was all the cool Australian people we met over the weekend. I wish I'd had time to talk more but it was a pretty action packed 3 day so I can't really say I did. Our friend Ryan from Brisbane was in town as well, so it was rad to get to hang out with him abroad for a few days, he's rad.

I met some rad American people too. Everyone has been so friendly on this trip. I think I'm gonna hate life so much when I go back home. Behind at uni, back at work, massive debt, no girlfriend to hang out with etc. etc. Oh well. I'll worry about that later, here's a recap of the last couple of days:

Saturday we got up at like 10AM and headed straight to the show. Met the rad singer from Thought Crusade on the bus there. Grabbed a bite at this place across the road from the venue. I got some cheese fries. They were alright but never again, far too cheesy for my liking. A lot of amazing bands were playing today so it was a bit daunting sitting out the front waiting for it.

After some frigging around with merch (there's a recheck fee for the compulsory cloak room so they said you're best to buy anything you want before you go in), I got inside to see the last few songs of Thought Crusade. Good band. pretty straight up hardcore. Convicted were alright but pretty forgetful, just heavy, basic hardcore.

SOUL CONTROL are where it's at. Such a good band. I knew they were Krishna but for some reason I'd never checked them out because I thought they sounded like Shelter or something? Singer had one of the best stage presences I have seen in my life. So glad to have seen them. They covered Inside Out at the end of their set.

It was rad to see Betrayed again and also to get to see some of the LP songs but I think Aram was talking too much on stage and Todd didn't look too into it. (Maybe he was just out of practice?)

Ringworm were amazing. They look so metal haha. The Promise, Numb/Blind to Faith and Consumed/13 Knots were all played. Such a heavy band.

Damnation AD and 108 were both very cool. Both very passionate and very heavy bands. Also, they are both bands that I own material by but have somewhat slept on in the past. Will be keen to check more out when I get home. I was very impressed by the performance of both bands.

Trial were probably the pick of the weekend. Greg Bennick is such an intense frontman that is so confident on stage. He has something to say but at the same time he doesn’t fuck around. The songs are heavy and energetic and the crowd went mad. Are These Our Lives??????

I don’t know how I felt about Disembodied. They appealed to my childlike soft spot for massive ridiculous mosh parts but they didn’t really have enough else going for them for me to enjoy it. I think I’m getting too old to find stupid pit calls like ‘c’mon I wanna see some blood on the dancefloor’ anything but lame. I’m sure some people are really in love with the band but I certainly won’t be checking out more of their material when I get home.

After the show we headed down the street to a café called Pick Me Up to get some sick vegetarian foodz. I got some vegan French toast and it was pretty definitely a bit too massive for my liking haha. It was good food but I felt sick for a couple of hours after it.

We headed down to a little local theatre after dinner for a midnight screening of a movie called Holy Mountain. I don’t think I appreciated the experience as the time as much as I do now because of how tired I was but it was pretty cool. A guy at the theatre gave a quick introduction about the history of midnight movie screenings (sometimes certain ‘midnight movies’ were screened for a few months straight as kind of a cult thing… people wouldn’t go to see the movie itself but mainly to just hang out. Often going to see the same movies multiple many, many times). Holy Mountain itself was a pretty fucked movie. As Andrew said it was like being stuck in someone’s fucked up dream. Just full of really weird shit and with not much point at all. The highlight is definitely when some dude in the movie yells out ‘rub your clitoris on the mountain!’ and this chick proceeds to fuck the mountain hahaha. Good life. It was a really fucked movie but I don’t think it was anything more or less disposable than say something like ‘She’s Not That Into You’ (that is playing on the flight right now… while I’m sitting here writing this and listening to Arrows).

Sunday began with breakfast at an amazing vegetarian/vegan restaurant called the Chicago Diner with our friend Ryan Sim. They do vegetarian or vegan versions of American ‘diner’ style food (generally you have a choice of say scrambled egg or scrambled tofu as the vegetarian/vegan alternatives). Some of the other guys got some humungous meals that I have now forgotten but I stuck to a moderately sized vegan breakfast with ‘bacon’ strips, scrambled tofu, some fruit and some toast.

The first bands up today were Harms Way and Convicted, decent to watch but generally just forgettable moshy hardcore bands. I’m sure the kids in the pit were excited and I was bopping my head along a bit, but I certainly didn’t bother buying either bands stuff.

Blacklisted were pretty fucking cool. They busted out most of the new album, a song off the demo, the EP and Eye for an Eye off the First Blood split. George was really energetic on stage and kids were getting into it. Definitely one of the best bands in hardcore. It seemed like they were going to close with Wish (the last track off the new record) but their set got cut short by one song due to time constraints. Damn.

Have Heart were really good. I missed them on their first tour of Australia and I actually missed them in NY on Sunday night due to our delays but I was certainly impressed by how energetic the whole band is on stage, especially Pat Flynn. They only played like 6 songs though and I was bummed that Pave Paradise was not included.

Next up was Threadbare. I’d never heard them before but to my untrained ears they sounded like a fairly standard 90’s hardcore band. They reminded me a lot of 108 and Damnation AD who played the day before.

Split Lip (or Chamberlain… they actually changed their name halfway through their career) were probably the surprise hit of the weekend for me. Really melodic emotional music kind of like a cross between 90’s emo and maybe a more rocked out hardcore influenced band like Quicksand. Hearing another non-hardcore hardcore scene band be so good made me feel even dumber for not watching Guilt the day before (who were another band that evolved beyond hardcore you could say). I picked up the LP Split Lip had on sale and I’m certainly keen to be able to check it out when I get home.

Reach the Sky were a band I tried to get into many times when I was younger. I liked a lot of other Victory stuff from around that time when I got into hardcore but for some reason Reach the Sky never clicked with me. I think it was the fact that I was never at peace with the singers voice and I always felt the songs sounded a little too basic. I really wish I’d became at peace with Reach the Sky earlier than yesterday now because they really were on fire. So much energy on stage combined with a crowd that was so happy to see them. Such a good live band.

Bane were pretty amazing. Their set was a little short but they still reminded me why they are one of the most passionate and sincere bands to exist in the hardcore scene. Can We Start Again and Swan Song were definitely highlights in what was still an amazing set. Good band.

For some reason the crowd didn’t seen too into Converge but they still played really well. Bannon said some cool shit on stage and they all seemed really into it. A lot of rad songs were played including the whole of over 10 minute epic Jane Doe. I was kind of weirded out by how long they played for (they played for an hour) considering the fact that bands sets had been cut short earlier in the day but oh well.

After 2 days of waiting for it, Unbroken were up next. It was pretty crazy. A humungous amount of kids were into it. You should have seen Grant after the show! It was like he was either high, drunk or had just turned into some form of giddy child. It was really rad to get to see one of the most celebrated metallic hardcore bands of the 90s in the flesh. ‘Life.Love.Regret’ is a really classic hardcore record and while Unbroken are not my favourite band, it’s cool to know that I was able to witness a collection of really rad 90s metallic hardcore in the flesh. They were certainly about 40 times better than Disembodied haha. And I got an Unbroken shirt with Morrissey on it.

Pick Me Up was our port of call again for dinner. I stuck to just getting a side dish but ending up ending some of Ryan’s rad stir fry as well. Good life. Ryan came back home with us to lurk our internetz and then we said goodbye to a friend we won’t get to see again for a couple of months. We were going to hang out this morning but because America is this retarded place where it costs you money to not just send but to receive text messages as well and you cannot be called if you have no credit, we had no way of getting contact with each other so we decided it was easier to just say our goodbyes that night. He’s heading to London for 6 weeks on Tuesday but we’ll see him again when he gets back home. Safe travels Mr Sim.


This morning we were meant to be get up early to head off when Andrew left for work at 6 but it turns out he decided to just do a halfday at work because he was feeling a bit suck so we left about 10 when he headed into work and the morning started with me beginning this blog.

We hit up Chicago diner for brunch again this morning where I decided it was time to indulge. I got an amazing vegan choc chip milkshake and the vegan breakfast bowl which contains vegan mince, scrambled tofu, potato with 2 ‘biscuits’ (ie. Scones) on top. It was pretty massive but probably also one of the best meals I’ve eaten all week. Like most food I’ve eaten this week, it had a bit of lack of vegetables. I’m not a big fan of salad and it seems hard to get vegetables in meals you buy sometimes in any form other than salad so apart from potato, I’ve been a bit light on the vegetables lately. So I’m pretty keen to hopefully get some vegetables for dinner tonight. Maybe a vegie stir fry or something. That would be rad.
See you soon world.

America pt7

Right now I'm sitting on Andrew's floor, a bit sore from the couch I slept on last night but all is good. I have big black X's on my hands (seems they decided to mark me as underage the old way last night).

Last night was pretty rad. We were all pretty fucking tired by the end of it but the bands ruled. Their were 2 shows technically... but I'm just gonna talk about it like it's 1. The local bands were pretty rad. Boiling Over and Poison Planet bought some moshy Boston worship, Disnihil played some dirty hardcore punk... but they were a 4 piece with no front man. Hardcore bands without frontmen feel weird. It kinda kills the vibe. Wait in Vain were fucking cool, Timm the vocalist was certainly getting into it. Moshing all over the stage and shit. Good life. Indecision were rad too. I didn't know which vocalist it would be but it was the original one and from what I saw, they generally played the earlier shit. My only problem with Indecision I guess is the fact that they released that weird last album where they claimed aids was created by the government etc. Wacko. Kind of ruins their credibility a bit I guess but oh well, they sounded fucking hard and A LOT of people were siked. Singer could have been a little bit more animated but they were still good. Hope Con were like the best band in the world. Soooooooooo angry and they played like 12 songs. Both Converge sets were awesome, they stuck to a lot of the more familiar shit for the earlier set and then did a lot of different stuff in the second one. It was cool. So many kids were into it.

Anyway, it looks like we're about to bail so I guess this photo blog won't be getting posted today either haha oops. One day I will do one.

tattoo

tattoo woot haha

America pt6

We're in Chicago on the ground now hanging out with our cool new friend Andrew, but here's a recap on yesterday I wrote earlier today...

New York has been a blast. Sitting here at the airport about to hop on a flight to Chicago, I almost don’t want to leave. We saw so much in our 4 days but if we’d had some more time, I think we could have seen so much more. New York is a city that bleeds so much culture that it’s hard to explain. You really don’t come to terms with how amazing of a place it is until you’ve been there on the ground and experienced it for yourself. There’s so much character in every street, everywhere you turn there is a cool building, a cool store, a cool person or a cool, unique situation going down. I’m not sure what it’s like to live there because the magic may wear off in time, but at least as a holiday location, it’s the coolest place in the world.

Here’s a recap of our last day in New York: (written on our flight from NY to Chicago)

The plan for today was to head over the Manhattan Bridge to Brooklyn, walk back over the Brooklyn Bridge, head to China Town for lunch, maybe get tattooed at NYHC tattoo and then eat at Red Bamboo again for dinner. Here’s how it all panned out…

Over the last couple of days my Vans pretty much shat themselves. The back half of the sole on my right foot was half hanging off. They felt fine to walk in, but I probably looked like an absolute idiot. I guess it serves me right for taking one of my oldest pairs of shoes as my only pair when I travel halfway across the world.

Anyway, our first port of call for the morning was a shoe store in Union Square so hopefully I could get myself some new kicks. We stopped at a café for breakfast on the way. I devoured some cool cake loaf thing, some chocolate soy milk that wasn’t that nice and a vegetable omelette wrap that also wasn’t too stunning. Oh well. We ate breakfast, Sean and Grono got massive coffees and we left. It was a pretty cold day today as well so I think they were glad for the warmth.

The 2 shoe stores in Union Square didn’t yield much success for me. They had a buy one get one for half price sale which worked out well for me because I was looking at getting 2 pairs (one for my younger sister back home and one for myself) but it all came crashing down when at one store I found a rad pair for my sister but nothing for myself and at the other store Sean was going to buy a pair of New Balance sneakers, but I couldn’t find a pair of myself or my sister. Gah.

We then hopped on the subway to head over to Brooklyn. We caught one of the subway lines that went over the Manhattan Bridge (as opposed to going through tunnels under the river) so we could get a rad view of the Brooklyn Bridge downstream as we went past. We hopped off the train at the first stop after the bridge so we could trek down to the river side so Sean could check out the famous BMX/skate spot known as the Brooklyn Banks. We only found out when we got down to the river that they’re actually on the Manhattan side of the river. (The name ‘Brooklyn Banks’ only relates to the fact that they’re under the Brooklyn Bridge) Oh well, it was cool to have a bit of a walk around. We saw some cool buildings and I saw a mini beach with a ‘Danger: No Swimming’ sign next to it haha.
The walk back over the Brooklyn Bridge was pretty rad. You get an amazing view of both Manhattan and Brooklyn and all the way out to Liberty Island and Jersey City. There’s some information about how they made the bridge along the way as well.

Upon returning to Manhattan, we found the Brooklyn Banks. Sean got pretty excited. I just thought about video games. Afterwards, we headed down to Chinatown to suss Vietnamese for lunch. Sean found another cool BMX spot on the way and then we got some food. I usually get noodles and make myself look like a retard when I eat Viet so I decided to forego noodles this time and just get rice. It turned out a lot better. The food was rad. We sussed a post office after to get some stamps for post cards (which I still haven’t sent, I’ll be home months before they even arrive and they’ll be postmarked Chicago. Oh well. I was planning to do it at night but we ended up staying out later than expected), looked at some cheap shit in some Chinatown stores (5 I heart NY shirts for $10US! ridiculous!) but didn’t buy anything.

We had nothing to do for a couple of hours before heading to NYHC to hopefully get tattooed around 5PM so we headed back to Union Square so I could once again try and get some vans. No luck. We headed home for a little while to dump some shit off and have a rest. I had plans to spend ages on the internet but then the wireless didn’t work. Oh well. Sat around for a bit, ate some chocolate, paid for some internet at the hostel and then we bailed to NYHC tattoo.

When Grant called the night before the lady working said she might have some time after 5PM tonight but it all worked out perfect when we got there because another tattooist happened to have turned up early for his appointment that night so he had some time to kill, meaning Grant, Sean and I were all able to get tattooed straight away. Grant got the unbroken lyric ‘my hands are open’ on his wrists (a phrase that will no doubt get 400000000000000000 comments like AHAHA WHAT ABOUT WHEN YOU CLOSE YOUR HANDS?!?!?!? From retards like me, but oh well), Sean got THE bars on his right leg I think and I got ‘hollow’ on my left wrist, a little tattoo I’d been wanting to get for a while but never had the time/money + I am a chicken. I thought my fear of needles would be an issue with tattooing but it wasn’t. It’s painful but I survived.

We ran into I guess the guy who runs NYHC promo company Black’n’Blue Productions at the parlour while we were there and he told us about a Murphy’s Law show in Soho tonight. Band on stage at 10PM. We saw the flier on B9 that arvo but decided to not bother so we could go out to dinner, but now that we found out we found go after dinner it seemed a bit more attractive so we decided to hit it up.

We headed back over to Greenwich Village, Sean dropped some zines off at Generation Records and we headed to Red Bamboo to have dinner. Grant and I both got the BBQ half ‘chicken’ and Sean got Mango ‘chicken’ with rice. It all looked amazing, tasted amazing and was generally just AMAZING. Probably the best restaurant in the world. I wish it was in Brisbane.

We then headed back toward NYHC tattoo to the trendy Soho district (where all the clothing stores we went to yesterday were) to see Murphy’s Law. It turns out they were playing at the release of a photo book that I guess chronicled the NY streets over the last however so many years. Pictures of guns, police, kids smoking etc. We rocked up at 9:30 and found out it was supposedly 21+ and their were a lot of kids sitting around outside who I don’t think were going to get in. Shitttttt. However, our new found Black’n’Blue Productions friend came to the rescue and we were allowed inside (and they didn’t check our IDs ^_^).
Murphy’s Law hit the stage just after 10PM. Stigma was in attendance and a lot of old NY moshing by old dudes was going down. I must confess that I have never really listened to Murphy’s Law and the idea of hardcore with a trumpet and a saxophone isn’t really my thing, but it was pretty cool. The band was loooooooose as, I don’t think they really gave a shit at all haha. A pretty cool send off to be seeing an old NYHC band in NY the night before we leave. We bailed just after they announced they had a couple of songs left and we got the subway home. I crashed out very soon after. Another massive day.


This morning was pretty boring so I won’t bother mentioning much. My bag is feeling pretty full, it wasn’t as cold as yesterday but it still wasn’t nice, Sean and I got angry at each other at the train station cause I’m a retard and lose my cool far too quickly, we got driven to the airport on a driverless train (a la Half-Life), ate Burger King chips for breakfast now here I am sitting on this plane. Hope Con, Indecision and Converge twice tonight. Crazy.

Chris GB listening to Morrissey and the Smiths on the mac on the plane in the 09. ‘Live at Earls Court’ is rad. I’m out.

will post pics soon I promise haha