July 15 - August 15, 2005, I went on a month-long tour de force of North America, blabbing about the project, gettin in the media's face, and discovering what money means in other parts of the world.
It's among the most revealing things I've ever done in my life.
But let's get down to the meat of it:
My cameraman Jeff and I started off on a sunny hot day in a rented car, a blue Toyota. First stop:
New York.
The trip started in New York, Queens to be exact, at the last stop of the W train. It was a very revealing four days. When I got there the New York Jones Soda rep, the friendliest guy in the world with the best accent in town, dropped off six cases of soda. Nice!
At midnight that night (about an hour after we arrived) the new Harry Potter book went on sale. My friend Janette, who we were staying with, asked if we wanted to go downtown with her and stand in line for it because she is a big geek. Off we went.
New York is huge, beautiful, filthy. As Janette said in Times Square: "It smells like chocolate ... and piss. Welcome to New York!" It's so damn TALL, and I kept thinking of the countless amounts of money that have gone into developing the infrastructure alone. It's an incredible place, history and money and accumulation seethe out of every pore ... accumulation of money, accumulation of stories, accumulation of poverty.
We got to the line at a bookstore, which was a block long. From the line we were standing in we could see other lines, Janette doing cell phone reconaissance the whole time, while hundreds of people walked past our line waving their copies of the book in our faces and yelling "Suckas! We got it at Borders!" I've never seen such hubub in my life. I've read most of the books and I love them, and I most definitely tip my hat to anyone who can ignite imagination in millions of children, but there's no way in hell or Hogwart's I would pay $40+ for one of them in hardcover. I was, evidently, alone in this, as we were standing with at least a hundred and fifty other people - a great many of them in full costume - all panting to get in the store and heave whatever amount of money was required over the counter to get their very own copy.
We watched a budding romance between a thirteen year old boy dressed as Harry Potter and a thirteen year old girl dressed as Harry Potter standing in front of us. They introduced themselves to each other as Harry. It was cute, if not a little disturbing.
The legend is that the witer, JK Rowling, was a struggling single mother when she wrote the first book and is now one of the richest bipeds in the universe. I don't know how much of it is true, maybe all of it, maybe none, but I keep thinking about that - there always seem to be these legends of overcoming all odds to become successful, wildly successful beyond your wildest dreams. JK Rowling, my most fervent admiration for making something that sends children from 4 to 400 into seething wizardly spending fits. Maybe I need to write a book.
The next day we ended up at Coney Island, for the Siren Music Festival, which is a huge free festival on the Island. I was planning on unloading a bunch of Jones Soda, but unfortunately it was really foggy and rainy that day, and the crowd was significantly less than expected and not really flowing anywhere so we got some footage instead. We ate a Nathan's hot dog and went on the Cyclone, where I nearly threw up said hot dog and have never been so scared in my life. (Everyone that bought a post card from the first leg of the trip got a Cyclone one!)
There's a game at Coney Island called Shoot the Geek where you shoot paintballs at a guy who runs around a pit and hides behind things. An observer in front of me remarked to his friend, "I can only shoot when I'm driving."
Jeff, like me, is a big fan of understanding cities by walking around them as much as possible. So after Coney Island we walked, and walked, and walked. We stickered on every available surface:
Here's a detail so you can see what the writing said:
If you can appreciate that reference, more power to you. Bob, wherever you are, people still love you.
Apartments are also about $1200US for a closet. I don't know how people live there. Everyone bitches about Toronto because it's one of the most expensive cities in Canada, but it has nothing - nothing - on New York. Jeff and I went down to the financial district during the day, there were hundreds of people running around in zillion dollar suits having important conversations on cell phones. Power suits, power lunches, power walking. Like any financial district n the world, but times eleven million. Bizarre.
We were there because we went on the Staten Island Ferry, which is gloriously free:
We got off the ferry at Staten Island to find a drink. Everything was closed. It's a weird place.
We ended up on Clinton Street later, because I'd always wanted to see it because of Famous Blue Raincoat (shut up). A different place entirely; people on the street, laughing and carrying on, all this bustle, little chic restaurants peeking out from between shops stuffed to the doors with discount wares, like tigers in the reeds. Dropped off a copy of the trailer and a letter at what I was told was Morgan Spurlock's house.
That night I was invited to be on The Overnightscape by the show's awesome host Frank. It was in New Jersey, so off we went. Frank has a professional studio set up, it's really cool:
Go find the show from July 19th or thereabouts and listen to it. Frank is possibly the nicest guy in the world, and gave me a bag full of stuff essential for a roadtrip, like sunscreen that "discourages insects" and a tiny rotating disco ball. Sweet!
The next day we were Philadelphia-bound for a day. On the way we stopped in with the formidable Scott Crawford, who tried to get us a microphone for podcasting. No dice in New Jersey. He took us to this restaurant called Giovanelli's, where we had the sandwich experience to end all sandwich experiences.
For $5 I got something called a Fat Bastard, which contained gyros meat, garlic sauce, a chicken burger, two mozarella sticks, lettuce, tomato, onion, mayo AND french fries, all in a hoagie:
I have never paid five dollars for so much food and intestinal distress in my entire life. I ate about a quarter of it and wanted to die. Jeff, however, made love to his Fat Cat (contained two cheesebugers somewhere in there) and would argue that it was five bucks well spent:
We eventually got to our lovely and amazing host Tara's house just outside Philly. I spent the next morning on the John DeBella Show:
(I look like hell. It was 7am.)
John and his crew got people to phone in and offer me work. The accepted offer came from a guy who needed a female spokesperson for his website, and offered me $500. There was also a woman who offered me $100 to CLEAN HER HORSE, which sounded like a lot of fun.
I phoned the woman with the horse but she wasn't going to be at her stable until the day after I left, which was a real let down because I was looking forward to that. The guy with the website and I arranged to meet later that afternoon, so with a few hours to kill Jeff and I looked around the city. Philadelphia was weird; in many ways it was beautiful - lots of old stuff, lots of monuments, and lots of art - but kind of felt like a convention town. We were only there for 30 hours in total and only really in the city for six, so I think that may have had something to do with it.
Anyway, the guy and I were supposed to meet at 2, so we hung out until then. I tried to get hold of him, couldn't. Later, still couldn't. Aw damn. The next morning as we were driving out of town towards Maryland he called very apologetic and told me that something had come up but he still wanted to do the exchange, and could I send him a press pictue and we'd work out some sort of endorsement and he'd send me a cheque, and if I was ever in Philly again he and his wife would love to have us over for dinner. Awww.
(For the record: As of this date, still no cheque.)