- Chicago blurring away in our dust!
Day 13 – 9/29/10 After we leave Palatine we drive late into the night and stop at a rest stop in Jackson, Michigan to spend our first night in the back of the van. The van is comfortable and the curtains I hung in the back ward off the blinding semi truck brights. We discover that rest stops make for great places to crash for a good night of sleep and a crappy place to powder your nose in the morning – there’s no hot water! So we make our way to a gas station a few miles away to freshen up and eat breakfast out of the back of the van. Alice calls her step-mom Ellen, who grew up in Detroit, who advises us to check out Cass Street and Forest Ave where she used to live to see a typical Detroit neighborhood. The evidence of a city brought to its peak by the auto industry and then sent crashing down after its withdrawal is all around. We hit Detroit a few hours later and quickly find out that confidence in strangers is a bit lacking here after stopping at three different gas stations to try and find a bathroom, all to no avail.
We stop at Cass Cafe to eat and sit for the majority of the day at the suggestions of Lauren Begent and Seth Walker, another traveling duo that we came to Detroit to meet up with who aren’t able to spend the day with us because they’re in the process of struggling with the Detroit police to get Seth out of jail. You can read more about their encounter with the Detroit po here as well as Seth Walker’s other Facebook notes on the right to travel with out a license, etc.:
Later, we meet up with Seth and Lauren at The Sweet Epiphany Cafe where they’re playing their last feature set after a few weeks in Detroit. Seth and Lauren have been on the road since before the National Poetry Slam in August and have shows booked across the country all the way through February. They’re true gypsies and even teach a workshop on Guerrilla touring. Read more here:
The crowd at Sweet Epiphany is slow to gather and at first it seems like the show is going to be a wash, but eventually a good crowd builds and the MC for the evening, singer-songwriter Deekah, takes the stage with her acoustic guitar and opens up the night with a powerful cover of Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy” and a handful of her own original compositions. Then the open mic begins and it quickly becomes evident with all of the snapping, hollering, and cheering that this crowd can put out as well as any bar full of drunks. Between performers, DJ Untitled (aka Chris), who invited us out to the show to open for Lauren and Seth and cooked a whole tray of delicious veggie pasta just for us, keeps it bumping and also gets up to the mic to share a few great poems of his own. I’m feeling under the weather, so Ezra fills in for me on the mic, spending a good portion of his 15 minutes doing a capella rap verses, which wins him the crowd. A woman named Maia even jumps up on the mic later to proclaim, “If you buy Lil Wayne, Gucci Mane, Waka Flocka Flame, and all that other nigga shit you should buy his shit!” (It should probably be noted here that Maia is black.) Ezra loves Lil Wayne, but decides to take it as a compliment, though probably not a good quote to go in his bio. Next is the main event: Seth and Lauren take the stage and deliver an unbelievable show. Lauren rips it up on the violin, playing a few minutes of her own wicked variation of a concerto by Mendelsohnn. Seth brings the entire audience close to tears with show-stopping performances of his pieces “Glowstick Girl” and “A Tree Story.” It’s inspiring to see such a strong performance of pieces that he’s probably been doing three times a week for their whole tour. Afterwards, we have to sneak out early to get on the road – next stop Geneseo, NY!