Downtown Under Siege

After the freedom fighters burned down the 7-Eleven the other businesses downtown got spooked and boarded everything up real quick.

7-Eleven Sent to Heaven

After the rioting last night we took a stroll around the neighborhood to survey the damage.

I got a new face covering. Could go either bankrobber or street vigilante at this point.

We're getting the whole nine yards disaster response. They called the national guard.

And issued a 9pm curfew.

At first glance the only evidence of a crime I could see was the apostrophe they put in "amigo's".

As we walked closer to the police station we saw some news vans. That's always a good sign.

They burnt down the local 7-Eleven. My understanding was that fireworks set off inside the building did the job.

Civil Unrest

There was a riot in downtown St. Louis tonight in response to the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

A phalanx of riot police marched down the alley underneath the apartment window. This was definitely a time where I was thankful that the apartment does not face Washington Avenue.

I could see some military vehicles.

There were a ton of characters creeping around that were giving me a bad vibe.

Helicopters circled overhead.

Eating in Manchester

As I mentioned, my computer was removed from my apartment by a stranger in a "borrowed forever" sort of arrangement. They did not take the power cord though, which gives me a small amount of satisfaction.

Well after a darn good laugh with Mike and Clarence in the southern part of the country, I took a train up to Manchester to visit my good pal Zishan, whom I also met during my days of teaching English in Japan.

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Of course without my damn pictures I don't have much of a reference to remember what the hell I did in Manchester. Blah. I remember food seeming even more of a central topic here than it normally is when I travel. A big reason for that was that I had chosen to travel to see Zishan during the month of Ramadan.


I hadn't thought about it before, but Zishan may be the single Muslim person I know. So Ramadan was an unfolding mystery to me. The rule is that you can't eat(among other satisfying activities) from dawn to dusk.  This seemed like it would present a serious problem in some neighborhoods, where the businesses and customers are all observing an entire month of fasting, it seems like owning a convenience store would be pretty slow going.  That could be considered a drawback in my Manchester visit timing I suppose, with a lot less activity on the streets, but I think I learned more about a new culture as a result.  Good trade I'd say.  Now, there were a few situations where I tortured Zishan by eating in front of him, but I did it all in the name of science.

The whole staying inside during the day and only eating at night situation called for plenty of vampire jokes, which Zishan pretended weren't funny but I think we all know the truth. There was a particularly amusing scene in a buffet restaurant where I seemed to be the only non-muslim customer. Everyone just sat and talked, ignoring the food laid out for them. When the clock struck the exact minute that the sun was officially "down", there was a mad rush to the food line. It was fun.

I remember the architecture was much more industrial seeming here than it London. I assume London got the worst of the WWII bombings, so perhaps that's the reason for the difference. There were smaller public disturbances set off in Manchester around the same time as the London riots. I remember seeing a burned out store front or two in the main shopping areas. And there you have it. Manchester.

I Rocked Down to Electric Avenue

I hadn't been to a museum yet and I was starting to feel the itch. I chose the Imperial War Museum. Who doesn't like a good war museum now and then?

The museum is housed in the old building of the infamous Bethlem Royal Hospital. It was the definition of a madhouse, and the short version of its name, bedlam, came to mean mass panic and confusion.

The museum was great, but it was also very large. I probably made a mistake trying to see everything in chronological order, because I was more interested in the museum's treatment of modern wars but I was pretty beat by the time I finished WWII.

Funny little carrier pigeon delivery system.


There was a cool Trench Experience where visitors can maneuver around through some dark trenches and listen to British mannequins talk about the war. Spooky stuff.

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From the museum I headed over to Brixton. I was especially interested in the market there.

Brixton is the unofficial capital of the British African-Caribbean community. My guidebook pointed out a couple of song references to Brixton that I found interesting. One was "The Guns of Brixton" by The Clash.

The song is a response to the heavy handed force used by police in the area. It was released about a year and a half before the first Brixton Riot. I thought this was really cool, because I've been listening to the Clash for years, and especially liked this song, but I had no idea what its lyrics meant.

The other song mentioned was "Electric Avenue" by Eddy Grant. The actual Electric Avenue was called such because it was the first street in the UK to be lit with electricity.

I could post the music video, but where's the fun in that? Here's the opening scene to Pineapple Express.

The markets were really cool, though I didn't feel the need to buy anything. Lots of Caribbean accents floated through the stalls selling fresh produce and meats.

Here's a shot of Mike's apartment.

This is probably my favorite place in his neighborhood. Everywhere there are kebabs, food advertised as Halal, and foreign tongues and dress. No one told the owners of this old school pub, though.

Oh, Mr. Milito, Your Money's No Good Here

I've been in London about a day now. The majority of that time was spent getting to Mike and Clarence's place and taking a jetlagged nap on their couch. I know both of these guys from teaching English in Japan, and I imagine there's about a hundred pictures of each of them throughout this blog already. I'm about to go to afternoon tea with Mike at a fancy looking hotel, so I will be brief.

After getting off the plane I had the pleasure of standing in the immigration line for a long time. The whole thing is really silly to me. I realize they have a job to do, but the questions they ask remind me of interrogating Japanese students during "conversation tests" in my teaching days.

"What's your job?" "Student"
"What are you studying?" "Marketing"
"Where are you staying?" "My friend's house"
"What's the purpose of your visit?" "Sightseeing"
"What sights do you want to see?" "All of them."

His story checks out.


Mike's place is in Islington, and I took the underground as it was the cheapest option.



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So I'm sitting on the tube, the ride must have been an hour, when the train stops, and everyone gets off, and it doesn't start up again. Great. A train worker pokes his head in the door and says that the Picadilly Line is now closed in both directions because a train is "smoldering" on the tracks. I don't know if this was riot related or not (I doubt it) but it was unsettling regardless. Luckily I was able to take another line the rest of the way and Clarence was kind enough to meet me at Finsbury Park station.

Clarence was hungry, and I was still pretty groggy and couldn't say if I was hungry or not, so we went to a cafe after dropping off my luggage.

I'm pretty much obsessed with doing local things, so I had the full English breakfast. It was giant. Highlights included a slice of black pudding and a giant pile of beans. It was enough food for like four people.

I finished my meal, paid for the food, and even put a pound in the tip dish even though Clarence said it was unnecessary. What a great guy I am. We are about a block away when the cafe's cashier catches up with us, holding the damn £20 note I'd just given him. He said he couldn't accept it because it was too old. What!? I handed him a different one. Nope that was too old too. So we walked all the way back and had a chat with the manager(we really should have just said tough crumpets and walked away; sometimes I think I'm too polite for my own good). Back at the cafe they were all really rude about it. I finally found a note in my pile that was to their liking. Another customer in line was also getting huffy, explaining that on new bills the watermark of the queen faces the picture of the queen. Really, do I look or sound like I care what you are talking about, when I have a pile of money that is evidently not suitable to buy things? How old the damn things could have even been when they had holograms on them is still confusing. At this point I'm a bit worried that I am holding a pile of fake money, bringing to mind my Peruvian counterfeit run-in. There was a bank across the street that luckily was willing to exchange these totally unacceptable notes for slightly differently shaded notes that all the looked the same to me. Crisis averted, day is saved. Mike told me not to embarrass him by saying "the queen faces the queen" at opportune moments all day. I won't be stopped.

Mike and I went to Camden market after he got off of work. Thing is, there were riots all over the place yesterday, so now all of the shops are closed, the streets are sparsely populated save for the packs of police patrolling the streets, and sirens were frequent. It seemed to me that the action in London was mostly over, but I've read that there have been riots in other cities as well. I'm not a huge shopper, so honestly I thought the area was cooler in its current state anyway.




I picked a pub that I thought sounded cool out of my guide book, and Mike was kind enough to accompany me there. At one point we sat in the front row on top of a double decker bus, which was a pretty darn cool view.






The pub I picked was The Spaniards Inn, which sounded cool because it had a lot of history. It dates to around 1585. They mentioned several cool people who liked to hang out there, but I got the hint some of it was advertisingly convenient "legend". Dick Turpin the highwayman lurked here, Dickens visited and mentioned the place in Pickwick Papers.

It was mentioned in Bram Stoker's Dracula.

The place was definitely cool, but I wouldn't say you could sense its ridiculous age by looking inside. We got a couple pints and chatted, but the food was too expensive so that was the extent of it. We had some awesome Indian food then went home. Mission Accomplished.