In Atlanta, the first question is “What's your business?” In Macon, it is “Where do you go to church?” In Augusta they want your grandmother's maiden name. But in Savannah, the first question is “What would you like to drink?”
-Berendt,John
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.
Well, I think I’ll have a mint julep, thanks. Or a Mad Dogs and Beans’ cookies and cream milk shake from 1983 would be even better.
Today I toured Savannah in earnest, turning a two hour trolley tour into an entire day of walking around town.
I slept late, having stayed up watching the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie. The other two were pretty wretched, but the first one was really enjoyable. But what was going on with Johnny Depp? Its like he was in one movie and everyone else was in something different. He was in a comedy and everyone else was in a thriller. Depp was basically playing Keith Richards. Why didn’t they just hire Keith instead and cut out the middleman? Guess Keith and his Grand Canyon-like wrinkles and Grim Reaper façade would have scared the kids. Casting Keith might have made it a little difficult for Disney to get production insurance. Disney probably also wouldn’t have wanted to cast the Heroin Poster Boy. That would conflict with The Mouse’s phony baloney “family” reputation. On second thought, maybe they should just go all the way and make the ultimate anti-family movie. Have Lindsay Lohan play a sadistic kindergarten teacher, who joins a cult/child abduction ring led by R. Kelly and Dennis Rodman. Justin Bieber has a cameo, in which he gets kidnapped at age 15, gets brainwashed into being the worst singer in the world, and through some James Bond-style villain’s world domination techniques, is forced to become part of the cult. Together they go on a crime spree throughout the Southwest, all the while being tracked down by rogue FBI agents Bruce Willis and Colin Farrell (they don’t get along too well with their supervisor, cause they don’t always follow department policy). After lots of indiscriminate illegal in 26 states style sex and explicit drug and alcohol use, the whole thing ends up with Bruce and Colin killing everybody in a very bloody gun battle, with lots of explosions. Colin dies at the end in Bruce’s arms. Jessica Simpson, playing a newly deputized FBI officer (having returned from a forced stay at the Hollywood Fat Farm), steps in at the end to console Bruce and agree to go with him to Tahiti for a few weeks to “get to know one another.” Last line of the movie: “I guess I can give up my Knicks tickets for a couple of weeks.”
Hmm…speaking of not being in the same movie as everyone else, I’m not even in the same blog that I started. This appears to have become some sort of Hollywood script blog.
Now getting back to the point, which was how I spent my day in Savannah.
This day began with a hearty breakfast a few blocks away from the hotel at the Goose Feathers Café. On the short walk over, however, I passed the wrapped around the block and on to the next street line to make dinner reservations at the Paula Deen café, the Lady and Sons. I guess everyone in the world knows who this person is; I do not. I don’t live under such a big rock that I don’t know she’s some sort of Food Network star or someone of that ilk, specializing in Southern anti-health food. The “more butter and gravy = better” philosophy. The sort of thing that capped average Southern life spans at around 60. Every one of these people looks like they stepped out of a Southern Living party, or just like your middle school principal’s secretary Millie. Offhand I can’t think of any meal for which I’d actually stand in line on vacation (other than burgers at Port of Call). Nor any cooking show that I’d watch. That’s not entirely true though. I used to watch Justin Wilson’s old Cajun cooking show on PBS. Mainly it was because it was Cajun food, which at its best is simply irresistible, and for the stories. Like the Poo Poo Boudreaux story, or the state agriculture inspector story. Outside of dorms or Tarrytown, cooking is a daily basic activity. You don’t see any shows about cleaning bathrooms or doing the wash. At least not yet, I guess. Otherwise, if you want to know how to cook, buy a cookbook or take a class.
As true of most locations in the vicinity, Goose Feathers Café is located in a historic (which around here means older than 100 years) brick building just off City Market and Ellis Square. It specializes in great breakfasts. Around 9:30 or so it was filled with tourists and a few locals, and later with Paula Deen devotees. The workers were cheery and helpful. Not at all like the sour, annoyed waitresses at the angry lesbian breakfast place in Point Reyes, the Pine Cone Diner. Geez, despite the good food, one trip to that joint will scrape the sparkle off your day for sure. Of course, that place was mostly empty on a sad and lonely Monday, and located in a fairly deserted little hamlet; an Allman Brothers’ “Stormy Monday” for sure.
Over breakfast, I learned that Solomon Burke had passed. Now, this guy was a real treat through the years, especially at the Jazz Festival. He sang some really fine R&B and soul songs like “Cry to Me” and “Everybody Needs Somebody to Love.” He was part of that early 60s return to roots movement, which the success of the early, gritty Rolling Stones of all people had made possible. I first saw Solomon Burke at the 1993 Jazz Festival. He was wearing a purple satin suit, and had a young man on stage nearby acting like a valet, holding his cape and generally attending to Mr. Burke. It was the same James Brown schtick made famous on the original TAMI show. He also starred as the lovable drug kingpin Daddy Mention in The Big Easy, only to have lovable rogue cop John Goodman whack him in a drive by shooting. The last time I saw him was at last year’s Festival. Though mostly confined to a wheelchair, he still belted out about an hour’s worth of songs, and absolutely commanded the stage. To captivate a huge crowd like that from a wheel chair, well that’s something only a true master could accomplish. Sorry to see him go.
After a great bagel/egg/spinach/cheese breakfast, it was a short walk to the Old Savannah Tours location to begin the tour. The walk over was really enjoyable, for the most part. Savannah’s downtown streets, as mentioned in the post about the day before, are quite lovely, with historic, Spanish moss-draped oaks covering most sections. I passed through several historic squares, all meticulously tended.
Numerous trolley/bus tour companies plying Savannah’s historic area all day; my hotel recommended this as the best one. It had an option where you can get on and get off along the tour to walk around, which I exercised frequently. The tour guides are quite knowledgeable and relate lots of historical facts, a few of which I’ll unfold here. Savannah is about 60 years younger than Charleston to the north. Founded in 1733 by James Oglethorpe, who also founded the Georgia colony, Savannah provided a buffer protecting Charleston against the Spanish in Florida. Just goes to show, it wasn’t that long ago that we were just a bunch of tribes arguing over spoils. The town was laid out on a grid system around 24 town squares, and all but two are still in existence. Chippewa Square is the location of the bench where Forrest Gump was sitting at the beginning of that movie. The historic district is 2.2 square miles. The city has numbered and registered every oak tree in the historic district. The city painstakingly cares for and preserves each, to the point of denying building permits that might injure one.
I departed the tour trolley at Forsyth Park, the old town’s main park area outside the squares. I first stopped at the Mansion on Forsyth Park Hotel, an old Victorian mansion just outside the park. It’s home to a cooking school, art gallery, and an excellent restaurant. One of those kinds of places that serves “high tea.” Then I explored the park. It’s somewhat long and narrow, with a wide open space at the center ringed by shaded sidewalks, tennis and basketball courts, and a bandstand. At its northern end, it has magnificent fountain imported from Paris in the 1850s. Lots of kids were playing in a playground near a converted old Army facility, now the park headquarters. Forsyth Park resembles parts of the Battlefields Park in Quebec City, with a distinct French design influence and vast wide open recreational space. To the south and west of the park lies a Victorian District, which the tour guide termed Savannah’s “Haight-Ashbury.” That’s a pretty wild exaggeration, though there was a coffee shop and natural foods grocery store across from the park, which in coastal Georgia probably does constitute a hippie district. The town bohos clearly reside at the Sentient Bean coffee shop. This area resembles a downscaled New Orleans Garden District. The homes are somewhat smaller but remarkably well preserved, though there’s just a bit more “edge” than you’d see near Commander’s Palace, for example.
While walking through the park, I saw what appeared to be an entire class from SCAD sketching trees. Later when I resumed the tour, I learned that SCAD owns 65 buildings in the historic district, and has an enrollment of approximately 8,000 students. Let me tell you about art school. Its right up there with taking breathing lessons. Either you can paint, sculpt, carve, or whittle, or you can’t. Who taught Picasso to paint? Felipe Jones? Art school is just an excuse to get Dad to keep paying your bills while you spend your time smoking pot and watching Scooby Doo on the Cartoon Network. Its right on par with film school in that regard. Utterly useless. Case in point—SCAD operates not only a theatre (where it currently is showing a movie festival), but also an equestrian center just outside of town. What these have to do with art or design is beyond me. These are the kinds of things one would feature in an adult never-ending summer camp. Like art school. An art school degree, much like a University of Oklahoma degree, is merely something you can use as a coaster (or in a pinch, a diaper).
As I resumed the tour, I learned that yellow fever epidemics claimed thousands in the 1800s. It got so bad that the city government sealed off hospitals, and only allowed them to remove the dead at night so people wouldn’t see how many corpses there were. But, was it really yellow fever, or another zombie uprising? Why all the secrecy? Also, the Civil War didn’t claim most of the historic buildings in town as it had many other southern towns. The Confederates decided to evacuate rather than defend the town, so Sherman decided to spare it from his march to the sea.
Walking around the town commercial district after the tour, I saw that it was alive and bustling with shoppers, something very rare in this day of mall-driven shopping and dining. Though malls and WalMart have killed off most such old commercial districts, this one appeared to be thriving. Many local stores and even some upscale chains populated several blocks, creating a de facto outdoor mall. Late in the afternoon I stole away to Green Square (not sure if this is technically true, but such bad Tennessee Williams language fits the environment of intrigue and elegance all around me), enjoying the late afternoon sunbeams streaking through the oak and moss canopy and the historic buildings surrounding the square. With the early evening heat on the wane, I sank into one of the park benches (to rest my increasingly aching back), and slowly settled into a kind of hypnotized trance. Sort of like falling half asleep. The squares can tranquilize their patrons. Just like a Ben Affleck movie.
That evening, after watching Monday Night Football countdown, I had a great dinner at a riverside restaurant, Vic’s on the River. From my bar seat I watched the first half of the Vikings-Jets game, the triumphant return of Brett Favre to play one of his old teams. By that, of course, I mean, watching Favre throw an interception to end the game. Its like an old sitcom. No matter what the story that week, a key game in which Favre is quarterbacking always seems to end the same way. Who knew? But at the time I enjoyed a fantastic dinner consisting of softshell crawfish with peach glaze over arugula to start, followed by crab stuffed shrimp with white wine sauce and local vegetables. At the other end of the bar, a piano player belted out a medley of probably every 1960s and 70s TV show theme song—Andy Griffith Show, Gilligan’s Island, I Love Lucy, All in the Family, Star Trek, just to name a few. It’s a little disconcerting trying to eat shrimp while “Space…the final frontier…” is running through your mind. No reason given for omitting the I Dream of Jeannie theme.
To end the evening, I walked on over to Broughton Street to have a taste of ice cream at Leopold’s Ice Cream. This locally owned establishment has been family owned and operated for over 90 years. The current owner, a Leopold, happens to moonlight as a Vice President at Paramount Pictures. Movie memorabilia lined the walls, and other relics furnished the place, including an authentic jukebox with some really great titles (and real 45s). The ice cream is made on premises in small batches. Eschewing my normal anti-sugar diet, I had a small serving of chocolate chip, which really hit the spot. As it was a pleasant evening, I sat outside, next to the SCAD theatre marquee, which was advertising in bright lights for the SCAD movie festival. About a dozen students milled about, no doubt pondering another tomorrow filled with such excitement as drawing a tree or riding a horse. All in the name of design greatness.
Next-on to Charleston!
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