Though my affinity for Park Slope has not waned, wanderlust got the better of me last night as Josh and I ambled north into Fort Greene, the neighborhood once home to Richard Wright and Walt Whitman. Though similar to the Slope in its brownstones, patio dining, and children running through a park with messy ice cream faces, Fort Greene has a calmer, younger crowd, with men more likely to be carrying a tote bag than a baby in a papoose.
Always on the lookout for a restaurant that keeps prices low and food quality high, we settled on The General Greene, a relatively new spot on DeKalb Ave. Like so many others, The General Greene specializes in local, organic food, though this wasn’t obnoxiously displayed or shoved down your throat, that is, until you ate the food. There were no, “We’re Greene!” signs or “Keeping it Greene” plaques. It was nice to know we were eating locally and organically without it feeling like we were at a coop.
The restaurant was packed with Fort Greeners and Greene impostors alike, and when we finally squeezed into a packed bar we decided to settle on an appetizer of heirloom tomato salad, prepared with olive oil, fresh red onion, and mint. It was refreshing and cool and had an almost French feel to it. Jonesing for something a little more American, Josh and I both got the burger, a solid choice for a red-blooded man. It had aged cheddar and a mix of lamb and beef. Masculinity affirmed, we walked down the block to Fort Greene’s greatest attraction, the Brooklyn Academy of Music.
If cheaper rents, better subway lines, and fewer yuppies aren’t incentive enough to move to Fort Greene, its proximity to BAM just might seal the deal. A veritable treasure trove of offbeat entertainment, BAM is always showing something worth attending, and that night we chose to see “Man on Wire,” the story of French wire-walker Phillipe and his quest to cross the World Trade Center towers on a wire.
Phillipe and his crew started small, by scaling smaller buildings like the towers of Notre Dame in Paris and the Sydney, Australia Harbor Bridge. In the early seventies, just as the twin towers were rising, Phillipe made the impossible happen when he and his partners launched wires from across the twin towers and rigged them so that he could dance his way across. If you have vertigo issues, I would not recommend this film. If you can get your hands on some dramamine, however, it is worth seeing just for the purely stunt elements. The movie goes beyond simply recounting the dramatic episodes that lead up to Phillipe’s climb to the top of the world, as it chronicles the eventual disintegration of his team that got him there. Not surprisingly, Phillipe is a bit of an egomaniac and megalomaniac, which can at times distance him from other people.
What was most fascinating about all his travails was just how positively he was received by authorities. People in the 1970’s seemed to have a sense of humor about all this. In the wake of anti-terrorism efforts across the globe, not only could this kind of stunt never be pulled again, but I doubt the city would issue lifetime security passes to the building, as it did for Phillipe when he came off the wire at the WTC. The towers’ eventual collapse made his efforts even more ethereal.
The film, which is part bank robbery flick, part documentary, and part arthouse cinema, never loses its cool, much like its protagonist. Pushing the theme that no one has to have a reason to make something beautiful, “Man on Wire” challenges American rationale while showcasing a daring clown traipsing a quarter of a mile in the sky. How French.
As my time in the wonders of northern Ohio wanes, I wanted to make sure to highlight some exceptional local establishments in the Cleveland+ region, as the tourist bureau so deems. Though the “+” may symbolize Cleveland adding itself to other neighbor cities like Akron, Canton, and Youngstown, I like to think of it as the “+” next to a well-deserved “A,” at least for effort, at the following places.
I’ve already expressed my love for Cleveland’s trendy Tremont district, the one that houses Lolita, a restaurant whose staff now knows me, much to my embarrassment. Perhaps I’ve eaten their sumptuous burger one too many times. In effort to escape my comfort zone of comfort food, on a recent visit into the city that never sleeps until after the Browns game, we landed in Ohio City, yet another west-side neighborhood with restaurants to rival my Nabokovian standby. We chose Momocho, a hip Mexican joint with dangerously delicious margaritas and handmade guacamole.
I’m pretty sure Momocho means “Capable of eating 2 entire bags of chips and three bowls of guac” in Spanish, or at least that was my excuse for doing so. Exceptional flavors, like cucumber margaritas and goat cheese guac, not to mention fried grasshoppers, make it easy to forget that Lake Erie is in your backyard. Though I still think Lolita’s entrees outmatch those at Momocho, I’ve been craving their crazy combinations ever since I returned.
Simply driving in and back from Ohio City reveals the full flavor of Cleveland as well. Though the street where Momocho rests is busy with diners and other rather bourgeois restaurants, blocks away sit abandoned houses, grocery stores locked up like Fort Knox, and rather unsavory signs for “Peep Shows.” Riding these streets is a bit like going back about 3 decades, since none of the buildings have changed and the characters that walk past look like the stepped out of Times Square in 1973. I swear saw a child prostitute a la Jodie Foster in “Taxi Driver” wearing white bellbottoms and smoking a cigarette. The ride is more bizarre than alarming, as old fashioned saloons and barbershops whiz by, a living metaphor for the city’s struggle to develop since its decline in the 1970’s and ’80s. Yet, with an impeccable pineapple margarita and some blue cheese guacamole resting in my stomach, I recognized that parts of the town had revived enough to support importing grasshoppers. Perhaps these are locally raised, free range grasshoppers, however; I had forgotten to ask.
Feeling a bit like a glutton for gentrification, we strolled further into Cleveland for a stop at another emerging neighborhood: Detroit Shoreway. I say it’s “emerging” because I spotted a rainbow flag, a public theater, and an independent coffee shop. Bringing my disposable income, I saddled up to this aforementioned coffee joint, the Gypsy Bean.
The Gypsy Bean is part coffee bar, part bakery, part United Nations, as its internationally themed drinks and decor provide an opportunity to taste a geography bee’s worth of worldly treats. This particular coffee shop bakery, so often simply a microwave or toaster at other establishments, is a true bakery easily spied behind the menus. Giant peanut butter cookies, oozing chunks of Jiffy, sat next to baklava and puffy muffins with almond toppings. I went for a “Skinny Londoner,” a foamy latte with butter toffee syrup and rum. At $3.50, I could have even been paying in pounds and it wouldn’t have been expensive. It certainly didn’t taste skinny, though that could have been the cookie I wolfed down with my British treat.
Here, the signs of sprucing up abound, as a new movie theater will open soon across the street and one of Cleveland’s best new restaurants, Luxe, is just down the block. Coming from Oberlin, we still pass abandoned factories one after the other, so it’s clear that one new java joint slinging mochas can’t make up for the post-industrial decline of an entire economy. It has managed to revive a city block, though I don’t think demand will grow great enough for it to take over the nearby factory. For now, I’ll just enjoy my cup in its shadows.
In Toronto, it takes a village, albeit a gay village, to bring folks together. On the eastern side of town, just steps from the University of Toronto and the bustling streetcars of downtown, lies Church and Wellesley, the neighborhood more commonly referred to as “the gay village.” In America, we tend to dub these enclaves, “the gay ghetto” or the “gayborhood,” but the Canadians, as they’re want to do, have shown a softer side. The gay village of Toronto is certainly not a ghetto, and it’s more than just a mere ‘hood. While it’s neither quaint nor conservative, it remains a village because everyone feels at home here.
Despite living in New York, I’m frequently disappointed at what our gayborhoods have to offer. Chelsea is full of men with no necks, no hair, and no personality. Greenwich Village is expensive and tame, though the vestiges of sex shops next to the Gourmet Garage recall brighter days. I’ll admit a preference for the East Village and Hell’s Kitchen, but these are hardly gay villages, simply boozy neighborhoods with bars and well-groomed gentlemen. Perhaps it’s simply because virtually every neighborhood in New York has gay nightlife, that we’ve forgotten about how charming a concept the village can be.
My fellow villager and I traveled from our nearby bed and breakfast, despite the cliche, and ventured up Church Street, the main drag of this queer neck of the woods. And drag it was. People watching is probably the only reason anyone even comes back to Church and Wellesley because god knows, it was not the food. I’m just as fed up with the now empty terms “diverse” and “multicultural,” but had I been sitting in the United Nations I don’t believe I would have used these signifiers so liberally. Not to be hyperbolic, but never in my life had I seen a gay neighborhood attract diversity beyond what kind of leather chaps one wore. In Toronto, the village people come in as many uniforms as the band itself, from lezzies on a ladies night out to a pair of older Indian fellows taking it all in with their cigarettes in hand.
American gay neighborhoods, and more broadly gay culture, are known for exclusivity. When one imagines a gayborhood, rarely do images of Afro-Canadian lesbians and Middle Eastern middle-agers enter the fray. In Toronto, the spectrum was truly as colorful as the rainbow itself. Perusing Church Street, we witnessed trannies work it with all the fiercness Christian Siriano could hope for, straight and gay couples double-dating, vibrating walls from a Caribbean gay bar, and bears noshing on Canadian hot dogs. Myriad questions flooded my brain, but I had to stop for hot dog to recharge first.
New York is outdone, yet again, by the genius of the Toronto hot dog cart. While I soaked in the array of ethnicities and orientations on Church Street, I waited for a freshly grilled all-beef dog. This was no 7-11 overdone, steam-heated wiener. The attendant took good care to char the outside and leave it plump in the middle, much to my satisfaction. I was overwhelmed upon paying at the bevy of condiment options including requisites like relish, ketchup and mustard, but extending to sweet peppers, cabbage, mayo, and corn. I may have overindulged on the spices, but the hot dog hit the spot nonetheless, providing the necessary protein for a night out in the village.
Further inspection of the scene revealed greater layers of the crowds’ diversity and the most popular club on the strip, a lesbian bar. Now I had seen it all, as people from every direction pushed for entrance into Slack’s, a beacon of a bar I’d never seen replicated in all my years of gayborhood travel. This hood had every letter of GLBT smashed up together like the spices on my sausage.
I’ll spare you the deluge of rhetorical questions that were spinning around in my head, but I still have not been able to conceive as to why this paradigm for a village is so lost on America. New York is equally (dare I say it….) diverse, yet certainly not as well integrated as Toronto. It could be simply that I’m not going to the right places, but one of the reasons I dislike so many of the gay enclaves in America is because one kind of uniform white, male, gay culture prevails. This is not to say that Toronto is not influenced highly by these forces, but the congregation in Toronto’s village certainly made for a more interesting evening than another prance up 8th avenue in NYC.
Beyond the easy speculations such as Canada’s marriage equality and history of embracing multiculturalism, I’m still quite perplexed as to why my trip to this bastion of a hood made for such a neighborly night out. Despite her loss, Hillary had it right when she spoke on the value of the village. Maybe that’s why she always had an in with my people.
After a night spent sleeping in the luxury of a downtown Marriot, I awoke hungry and in search of my weekly Sunday addiction: brunch. Perhaps the only person in the twenty-two floor Marriot complex not on a business trip or entertaining small children, I decided to try to find my kind of people among the self-tanning, bleach blond western Pennsylvanian wives and their leather loafer wearing, golf club toting husbands beyond the confines of the hotel.
Leaving the continental breakfast behind, my first stop had to be for brunch. I chose Zenith, a vegetarian cafe and antique shop, all in one: http://www.zenithpgh.com/. The line for food can be quite long, so it was useful to have random bric-a-brac to mull over while waiting. Determined to eat somewhere hip, I carefully scouted out the address, used the GPS system, and made my way to 86 South 26th Street. Upon arrival, I saw a plate glass window with a mannequin’s head an an old sign telling me to vote for some stranger for city council. It did not look like brunch was available. I circled the block and tried again, believing that perhaps in a matter of minutes the door would be open and smells of lentil salad and vegan cookies would be wafting to my nose. I had no such luck, and in a tragically unhip gesture, I phoned the restaurant to find the entrance. It turns out, the door is simply around the corner, right by the gigantic sign that says, “Zenith” in robust purple letters. Had I been a New Yorker in the late 1970’s, I could only imagine myself parading down West 54th street asking passersby if they knew of this place called Studio 54. Perhaps I would have been more at home among the bleach and loafer crowd, after all.
My delay had only further churned my stomach, and I waited patiently among the folks who strolled in with me. These were locals, and I don’t believe they had any such problem snooping out the entrance. After a few turns milling about old chairs, porcelain dolls, and ancient American flags, a gentle maitre d’ led me to my seat.
Seated among plants, natural light, and patrons dining solely on vegetarian fare, it was easy to gather that Zenith is an eco-friendly place. You might expect then, an almost stereotypically “green” crowd of energy-efficient light bulb toting, grassroots organizing, circle drumming types, but the crowd was surprisingly diverse. There were certainly enough Obama stickers in the neighborhood to beckon a Democratic crowd, but a smattering of ethnicities and occupations convened on the smorgasbord at hand. I had always assumed that Pittsburgh wasn’t exactly the place where an all-vegetarian brunch would have patrons lining up around the block, but Zenith certainly put my own stereotypes in check.
The check itself was perhaps the most shocking part of my journey to this South Side destination. For $10, I had an unlimited buffet of a variety of salads and side dishes including a black bean salad, pasta salads, cold peanut noodles, broccoli salad (though not the kind my mom makes), bread and hummus, among others. For those Oberlin readers, it was like the most outlandish and extravagant coop spread you could ever imagine. Also included in the price is your choice of entree. I was almost too full on my starters to nosh on my Jakarta wrap, a seasoned tofu spinach wrap with tangy sesame dressing and yellow rice. At the end of all this, dessert awaited me, and I chose from a plethora of pies, cakes, and other yummy baked goods. Let me reiterate one more time: $10. If you have not already bought a plane ticket and map quested this destination, do so now. Regardless of where you live, you will probably save money going to Pittsburgh for the weekend than staying at home. Another benefit to traveling to Zenith was its prominent location in Pittsburgh South Side, a neighborhood worth visiting even if you don’t have time for brunch.
Frequently the South Side brings comparisons to New York’s East Village, the neighborhood against which all others are judged. While I recognize that both offer eclectic dining, coffeehouses, bars, galleries, and performance spaces, the South Side has something the East Vilage does not: community. New York’s East Village is amok with twenty somethings like me, drinking and carousing until early in the morning, spending our disposable income that should be in savings, driving up rents, and barfing on the sidewalk on our way home. Touring the South Side in the middle of the afternoon, I saw all the things I love about the East Village as well as a broader spectrum of ages and occupations of those who inhabit the area. It appeared to be a much more livable neighborhood, one where you don’t pay a thousand dollars for a shoebox that has bedbugs.
After leaving my vegan brethren on the South Side, I traveled North to the neighborhood of Oakland, home to the University of Pittsburgh. Though only a couple of miles away, Oakland is a vastly different scene than the South Side. Here there are sprawling quads, Gothic cathedrals, and the tallest academic building in the Western Hemisphere: The Cathedral of Learning
Part Midtown skyscraper, part church, this spiraling structure certainly stirred my academic spirit. Built in the middle of the Great Depression, the Cathedral of Learning houses a majority of the humanities and politics classes. It stood in stark contrast to my own collegiate cathedral, King Hall at Oberlin:
What King lacks in architectural grandeur, it makes up for in gender neutral bathrooms, something Pittsburgh building just can’t offer. Inside the cathedral, I felt like I had just teleported to Oxford.
It didn’t exactly come off as a cozy corner nook in a comfortable library where one might want to settle in with the collected poetry of Wallace Stevens, though perhaps the austere surrounding stimulate academic enrichment more than lattes. I investigated their famous department of Rhetoric and Composition, leaving a note for the head of the department to call me at his convenience. He must be on summer vacation because I haven’t heard back yet. I’m hoping I can just get in without taking those pesky GREs.
While I imagined myself knee-deep in books in the middle of the place of worship/place of learning, I realized that my time in Pittsburgh was waning and there were still more neighborhoods calling my name. Though inappropriately sounding, especially for a Sunday, the Strip District was my next stop. Named for its narrow geographical position close to downtown rather than adult entertainment options, I ventured forth from Oakland to get the skinny on the Strip. What I found confirmed a hunch I’d had from the start of my journey: Pittsburgh residents like to eat.
Lining the streets of this area along the waterfront are open air markets, Italian bakeries, butchers, and specialty shops that sell gourmet popcorn, fudge, and chocolates. The Strip District is Pittsburgh’s version of Little Italy, without the vapid touristy flair of many major cities. These Italian shops don’t play “That’s Amore” while you peruse an overpriced wine list. They simply churn out authentic, delicious cheeses, pastas, and meats, kitsch on the side. If you do go to Pittsburgh, head to the Strip District on a Saturday morning, when the majority of vendors are open and the streets are teeming with locals preparing for dinner parties that evening. Murals provide further eye candy along the way.
Aside from glee, the only feeling I carried with me on the way out of Pittsburgh was a touch of nausea, after all the food I’d managed to pack in during my two day stay. Though Pittsburgh offers cuisine from every possible background, the Midwestern spirit for excessive consumption, whether its Afghan or Ethiopian, abounds here. Pittsburgh’s messy mix of ancient factories and new urbanism, its die-hard Steelers fans and equally die-hard art critics make this reemerging industrial giant hard to define. Like an excellent vegetarian salad, its texture is complex and its flavors somewhat contradictory. That’s something I can definitely sink my teeth into.
Following a recent trip to Pittsburgh, I am ready to leap higher than Jennifer Beals in a sweat-stained unitard to express my newfound love for the steel city. Flashdance, filmed in the early 1980’s, portrayed a rough and tumble town where a girl could dance at night only if she knew how to weld during the day. The rules have sinced changed, however, since yours truly can’t weld to save his life and spent the day gallery hopping and dining on Thai food rather than melting bronze pipes in a factory. My hands are almost too nimble for chopsticks, so I can’t imagine how they might handle a blowtorch.
To say that I am breaking the story on Pittsburgh renaissance might obfuscate the recently published piece in the NY Times highlighting the resurgence of Pittsburgh as a bright spot on the confluence of three rivers: http://travel.nytimes.com/2008/07/06/travel/06hours.html?incamp=article_popular_5. This fluvial fun fact as my only background on Pittsburgh prior to embarking on the trip, I shoved off with the Times article in tow set on investigating their finds and doing some trailblazing of my own.
The most striking part about arriving in Pittsburgh is adjusting to the barrage of geographical features that emerge as you drive west into the city. In the sprawling Cleveland environs, any slight increase in elevation gets labeled a “mount,” and dense, lush forests have long been bulldozed over by suburban wasteland. At the foot of the Allegheny mountains, Pittsburgh meshes urban and rural and industrial and pastoral all at once. Staring across the city skyline, lofty skyscrapers mesh with forests and factories, and the pesky red stain of the Heinz corporation marks prominent streets, buildings, and ballparks in every conceivable direction.
The only name proliferating more than Heinz in this riverside town is that of Andy Warhol, Pittsburgh’s most fashionable native son, second perhaps only next to Orrin Hatch, that is. Despite drug abuse, sodomy, and even his spiteful claim, “I am from nowhere,” no other city has best memorialized the 20th century’s most commercially successful artist. Warhol’s name not only lines the doors to a 7 story museum dedicated to his collection, but also to the bridge that gets you there. Having to pay one dollar for every minute of fame Warhol conjectured I’d have in the future just to enter this establishment initially made me frown like a technicolor Mao, but the price of admission mattered little once I made my way through the opening exhibit of the museum. Inspired by Warhol’s affinity for the industrial, the exhibits themselves are housed primarily in concrete loft spaces, which lends to the approachability of the subject matter. A stuffy Louvre it is not. Here children play with the interactive installation art and elephant wallpaper, while adults gawk jealously at the dated celebrity photographs of Jodie Foster, Jerry Hall, and an infant Mel Gibson.
More than simply showcasing Warhol’s celebrity, the museum celebrates the artist and the principles by which he lived through its loud, bizarre, and playful exhibits. Most noble, perhaps, is the simple fact that there is a gigantic structure financed by the Carnegie Institute to honor a drug using eccentric gay man steps from the Pittsburgh Pirates stadium. It is, in fact, the largest museum in the world dedicated to one person. Though Andy moved on from Pittsburgh and found a home in New York, his work undoubtedly emerged from a Pittsburgh past where he witnessed mass production and the kind of commercial America he invoked in so much of his pop art.
A city that has long celebrated production in every arena, Pittsburgh’s art scene shows no signs of cutbacks anytime soon. The Warhol Museum, while formidable, is not the only place to see experimental pieces, as nearby the Mattress Factory houses a variety of extraordinary installation pieces. The museum is dedicated to installation art and allows artists to build site specific works. All of this lends to an air of something often missing from museums: fun. The installations at the Mattress Factory were inventive, interactive, and frequently terrifying. Though certainly more cerebral than a theme park, the Mattress Factory spiked more adrenaline than I had anticipated.
Our tour began in the basement of the museum, where Yumi Kori’s piece, “kamata,” started our journey on a bit of a terrifying note. Kamata, which means, “in the distance,” in Japanese, is a pitch black room with a bright, rectangular light at one end, beckoning viewers. Perhaps it was just my guilty conscience, but I felt like I was walking into hell. White noise clouds your thinking and the dizzying darkness increases your paranoia. Luckily, hidden handrails guide the journey.
Elsewhere in the museum, other exhibits play with darkness and the reactions of visitors to this darkness. In the permanent collection a series of installations by James Turell confront viewers with two visions: what they see and what they think they see. Traveling in the darkest room in which I have ever been, I open and close my eyes several times to see if I can tell the difference between the two. Open, shadowy figures dance, floating in space. Closed, my dizziness stops, but the shadows remain, forcing me to wonder what I imagine and what is out there. Adding to my puzzlement are the other visitors, none of whom I see but only hear, smell, and feel, as my size 14 shoes crunch on those beneath me.
Light shines elsewhere in the museum, most brilliantly perhaps in Yayoi Kusama’s “Infinity Dots Mirrored Room” pictured below.
Part Studio 54, part McDonald’s PlayPlace, this exhibit invites viewers to dance, pose, and groom themselves among the bevy of mirrors that cover the space. Again, visual wizardy makes the room appear much larger than it is, though the laughter and frivolity of the space is no trick.
After climbing through installations, some of which cut through the floorboards and jutted out the windows, I explored the neighborhood that houses such funky displays. Understandably, this north side spot is artsy and chock full of homosexuals. I’m not sure what it is about old Victorian homes and middle aged gay men, but for this neighborhood, dubbed the Mexican War Streets district, it was like moths to a flame. Everywhere I turned there was a gorgeous home mid-refurbishment, much like the gorgeous Inn on Mexican War Streets, shown below:
In a nearby coffee shop, I asked how much rent was around the neighborhood. The chatty barista mentioned casually that she and her roommate pay a total of $700 a month for a 2.5 bedroom home on two floors. Were I not enjoying so much a vacation from work, I might have quit my job and moved at that very moment. Though extraordinarily comfortable among the Victorians, the gays, and the cheap rents, I was determined to see the real steel city and use my streetwise sensibilities to get to know the gritty underbelly of this industrial giant.
I began this quest at an upscale Asian-fusion restaurant called Soba, in the trendy district of Shadyside. What the area lacked in grit it made up for in boutique cupcake shops and patio dining. The restaurant was on the elegant side, with a never-ending waterfall and inventive cocktails, like my martini with shaved almonds, coconut milk, gold sake, and amaretto. Over the course of the rather luxurious meal, I devoured savory rare grilled Ahi tuna, peach-infused pork fried rice, calamari with lime and chile, and a dessert of fresh peaches, almond ice cream, and vanilla chantilly: a typical steelworker’s dinner, no doubt!
Though my ability to sleuth out the city of 1980’s films may have faltered, my sense of direction had great assistance from a new addition to the car: a GPS system.
Sleek, silver, and eerily prophetic, the GPS system knows exactly where you are and exactly where you want to go. All you need to do is type in your destination address, and it navigates you there, even accounting for detours and traffic. When you’ve made a mistake, it gentle proclaims, “recalculating,” and sets you on a new course. Letting this Jesus take the wheel, I arrived at Brillobox, a bar and concert venue named, of course, for Warhol’s ever-proliferating pieces.
The bar is meticulously designed with bright, red vinyl benches, a glowing jukebox, and kitschy flair adorning the bottles of liquor and tables. Second only to the advantage of sipping on inexpensive beer is the freedom to smoke inside. Though I don’t smoke, I revel in the bar smoke, this perhaps getting me as close to the Pittsburgh of old as I’ve been all day. Brillobox, however, is a bar distinctly of the present. Its young clientele, wearing everything from biker shorts to the latest in American Apparel t-shirt dresses, suggest anything but an archaic city. I wonder constantly what makes Pittsburgh outshine Cleveland, making my city by the lake look more like the dark installations I’d seen earlier that day and Pittsburgh the mirrored room with sexy young people and bright lights.
Sipping on my bottled Framboise, the lights of Brillobox start to blur and I realize that it’s been a day good old Andy might have enjoyed himself. Too tired to dance like a maniac, I return to my hotel to rest up for tomorrow and clean the non-existent grit from underneath my fingernails.
It’s been a week already since I’ve indulged in some of my favorite Midwestern cuisines, and I wanted to share them with those who might be interested in spicing up their tired plates of organic hummus and whole wheat pita. The following are not for the culinary faint of heart. I’m not entirely sure why Anthony Bourdain hasn’t taken his fearless cooking show, “No Reservations” to the outskirts of the Illinois/Iowa border because the following salads certainly know how to shock. Sometimes, they even taste good.
WATERGATE SALAD
Named the Watergate Salad because of its meteoric rise to fame during the Watergate Scandal, this gigantic green dish is certain to bring out the jolly in anyone. Though pistachio lends its name to the green pudding contained within, not a single pistachio nut is to be found! The nut of choice for this Midwestern nod to DC gets its prefix from the giant blue stores that abound in sprawling rural towns: the walnut. The salad is festive and fresh and perfect for a holiday gathering, though it may invite some uncomfortable political remarks in mixed company. Once the wounds have healed, both Democrats and Republicans will be licking the bowl by the time you’re through.
In a large bowl, mix together pudding mix, pineapple with juice, marshmallows, and nuts. Fold in whipped topping. Chill.
BROCCOLI SALAD
With all those crunchy broccoli stems, this one might look like a true healthy choice. A real Midwestern cook knows there is no such thing, so she furtively hides the secret ingredients of mayonnaise and bacon behind all those benevolent broccoli stems and plump raisins. Another reason why this broccoli tastes so good: the cup of sugar that went into the sauce.
Ingredients:
5 cups fresh broccoli florets
1/2 cup raisins
1/2 cup sunflower seeds
1/2 cup cooked, crumbled bacon
1/4 cup of red onion, chopped
1 cup of frozen peas, thawed
1 cup mayonnaise
2 tablespoons vinegar
1/2 cup sugar
Directions: Combine broccoli florets, raisins, sunflower seeds, crumbled bacon, chopped onion, and peas in a large serving bowl. In a separate bowl or large cup, whisk together mayonnaise, vinegar and sugar. Add dressing to the salad and toss to mix well; chill thoroughly before serving
DORITO’S NACHO TACO SALAD
So, you’ve just finished watching the Cubs game and all you’re left with is a loss and a bag full of Dorito’s crumbs. As I like to say, when God gives you Dorito’s crumbs, you make Dorito’s Nacho Taco Salad. Since it’s the Midwest, we don’t like to get too spicy, so the closest thing we get to salsa is Italian dressing. This dish is really fusion in its attempt to bridge both Mexican and Italian cuisine, and the result is literally sweet. You’ll have to taste this south of the Tuscan border delight for yourself
Ingredients:
Beef: 1 lb. ground beef
To taste; chili powder, onion powder, season salt, garlic powder, Worcestershire
Brown it.
The Mix:
1 head lettuce
Tomato
Onion
2 c. shredded cheddar cheese
1/2 lb. Doritos nacho chips, crushed up
Kraft Italian dressing
PRETZEL SALAD
They may be disguised beneath a puffy white layer of whipped cream and cream cheese frosting, but it’s worth digging for those crunchy Bavarian snacks at the bottom of this gluttonous concoction. I personally like to anoint the pretzel salad with the very bread product for which it is named, though evidently this chef did not. This is the beauty of the Midwestern salad, as each one becomes its own very beautiful variation on a theme. Like snowflakes, no two pretzel salads are alike. Here’s how to make your own:
FIRST LAYER
2 cups coarsely crushed pretzels
3/4 cup melted margarine
3 tablespoons sugar
SECOND LAYER
1 (8oz) pkg cream cheese
1 cup sugar
2 cups whipped topping (small container)
THIRD LAYER
1 lg pkg (6 ounces) strawberry flavored gelatin
2 cups boiling water
1 (10oz) boxes frozen strawberries
Preheat oven to 400°. Put first layer in a 9×13x2-inch pan. Bake 8 minutes. Remove to cool.
Second Layer – Beat sugar into cheese, stir in whipped topping. Spread over cooled pretzels.
Third Layer – Mix gelatin, boiling water and strawberries together and set aside 10 minutes. Pour over cheese mixture; chill thoroughly.
MIDWESTERN HARDTACK
Like the simple folks of the Midwest themselves, these recipes show us just how far staples like mayonnaise and Jell-o will take you. The preservative possibilities are endless, yet there’s no need to sit on these recipes. Hungry picnic and potluck attendees are waiting for you to bring out your inner Julianne Moore trapped in a ninety-fifties housewife, so run out and pick up the requisite marshmallows and bacon bits before summer’s expiration date runs out. No amount of Jell-O can stop that.
Every morning before school I hosted a thirty minute prep period for students who needed help doing homework or studying for a test. Not only did this provide an opportunity for me to get to know my students outside of a more structured class setting, but it also gave me the chance to see what they ate for breakfast. One of my favorite students, Timothy, came in every morning eating what he called a “breakfast burger.” Now I know I just enumerated on the delights of the tasty Lolita burger, but I’d never suggest giving that to a child for his first meal of the day. Timothy would saunter into the room, slump down in his chair, and unwrap this:
Yes, those are home fries at the bottom of the bun. Our school is a mere 100 feet from a Burger King and only three blocks from a McDonald’s, institutions that many of my students patronize on their daily walks to school. Timothy would down his double burger between 8:05 and 8:20 every morning, and no one batted an eye. His egregious choice made me further inspect other students’ breakfasts, many of which consisted primarily of chips, candy, and soda. One of my favorites was the “champagne” beverage found below:
I never ventured to snag a sip from one of the many middle school students who quenched his thirst with this particular cocktail, but I could only imagine what Korbel and Pepsi might taste like when mixed. The closest thing to juice I ever saw was Sunny D, which packs enough sugar to send a small rat into a diabetic coma. I knew there was a crisis at hand, but I didn’t understand the magnitude of it until I recently watched a documentary entitled “King Corn,” an account of just how pervasive and dangerous products like sodas and fast-food burgers are when they contain high fructose corn syrup and other corn byproducts.
“King Corn” follows two recent college graduates for 9 months as they plant and harvest one acre of corn in the rural town of Greene, Iowa. Friendly Midwestern folks help these green thumbs along the way, but they are soon to realize the industry in which they are taking part is not very friendly at all. Corn, they discover, has altered America’s agricultural industry, economy, and health, in gargantuan ways. Government pressure to expand the production of corn in this country caused small farms to collapse and ignited the corn syrup industry responsible for sweetening some of our favorite junk foods. High fructose corn syrup, one of the main ingredients in soda, is particularly dangerous because of its ability to raise blood sugar levels and encourage obesity. Excess corn also replaced grass diets for the cattle we consume at our 4th of July BBQs, harming both the cows who are unable to digest grains and the human consumer who indirectly eats the growth hormones and antibiotics fed to the cow to keep it alive before slaughter. The film puts a whole new spin on the majestic fields of corn you imagine winding up on some family’s Thanksgiving table.
The real loser, beside the cattle that is force-fed food it can’t digest, is Timothy. Nearing the last day of school, Tim came in one morning looking awfully sullen and holding not his typical burger but a tupperware container. “What’s the matter?” I asked, staring down at his droopy brown eyes.
“I’ve got high blood sugar,” he replied rather disdainfully. He seemed most upset not because he was on his way to having juvenile diabetes but because his mother had sent him off to school with pasta salad for lunch and no money to buy a burger on the way to school. Tim’s case is sadly unremarkable, as people living in low-income neighborhoods are twice as likely to develop diabetes, no doubt because of proximity to the very fast-food restaurants and corner stores that stockpile foods high in corn syrup.
My first rule for next year is going to be “always be respectful and never drink soda.”
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Named the Watergate Salad because of its meteoric rise to fame during the Watergate Scandal, this gigantic green dish is certain to bring out the jolly in anyone. Though pistachio lends its name to the green pudding contained within, not a single pistachio nut is to be found! The nut of choice for this Midwestern nod to DC gets its prefix from the giant blue stores that abound in sprawling rural towns: the walnut. The salad is festive and fresh and perfect for a holiday gathering, though it may invite some uncomfortable political remarks in mixed company. Once the wounds have healed, both Democrats and Republicans will be licking the bowl by the time you’re through.
