The Backpackers Are Beside BestBuy (entry 5 of 6)

Note: This is the fifth entry in this six part series. The even-numbered entries are located on our sister blog "The Daily Vampire" (www.nocturnalguy38.blogspot.com); here is today's entry. This series discusses how I took photographs of all seen public art displays in Roanoke, Va., which is part of the city's "Art in Roanoke" campaign.



I had just finished taking a photograph of "In Flux" at Vic Thomas Park. I went inside the neighboring Black Dog Salvage, which featured antiques and novelty items as well as the black dog, which is the store's mascot.



It was Monday, Austs 15th. And, there were now just two public art displays I had not found. They were "Glory Pipes" (featured here) by two Arizona artists and "Happy Wanderers" by local artist Charlie Brouwer (well, he lives in Floyd County which is near Roanoke).



Of the two, "Glory Pipes" seemed like both the easiest one to find and the most accessible one from Black Dog Salvage, which is located on Memorial Avenue just past the Grandin Village area of the city.



So, I headed to find "Glory Pipes," which is located in downtown Roanoke on Franklin Road at the SunTrust Plaza. This makes it sound easy to find, but that proved not to be the case.



I drove by striking Verizon workers, and waved at them. I heard a few days later on NPR that a woman in Arlington, Va., was mad at the strikers because they were delaying her Internet installation. She said something to the effect of how 'these people should just be grateful to have a job.' It never ceases to amaze me how many Americans, some of whom are actually independents or even Democrats, distrust the government, but have no problem trusting big corporations and mega-churches with ministers who look like '70s teen idols from "The Partridge Family."



I parked my car at a place which turned out to be fairly distant from "Glory Pipes." As I walked towards a bicycle shop, I asked a fellow pedestrian where the SunTrust Plaza was. She pointed directly across the street. I felt like a bit of a dork, but then again, I may have walked for 20 minutes on my own before figuring that out.



Once I got to the SunTrust Plaza, which is fairly close to Arzu Restaurant, a Turkish and international fine dinning establishment managed by friend Halil, I still had difficulty finding the sculpture.



I walked around the lawn, and then there it was.



According to the Art in Roanoke web site, "Glory Pipes" is made from LEDS, electornics, aluminum pipes and a steel plate. At night, apparently, the inner portions of sculpture glow. The artists say that the piece is meant to create dynamic tension and motion.



It happens to be a tricky sculpture to photograph, and one has to take adequate time to find the right angles.



But, I was able to snap a fair number of shots, and from there I went to the Mill Moutain CoffeeShop downtown and realized though it was mid-afternoon that "The Happy Wanderers" would have to wait for another day.



SIDEBAR_ The answer to our question last week about the distance between Abingdon, Va., the town near the Tennessee border where the Barter Theatre is and the Ford's Theatre in Washington, DC, was d) 5 hours, 45 minutes.

Quote of the Day-Woody Allen

We are actually quoting famous playwrights this month, but even though Woody Allen might better known for his films and his clarinet, he wrote several acclaimed one-act plays early in his career.



Here is his quote:



"Eternal nothingness is fine if you happen to be dressed for it."



SIDEBAR ONE: Sometimes, when you answer a trivia question, you just don't miss--you miss badly. That was the case when I guessed that former Somalian Prime Minister Mohamed Abduallahi Mohamed (he was only in office for eight months until June 19th of this year) was now working in Dubai.



As it turns out, according to the public radio show "The World," he is now working for the New York Department of Transportation in Buffalo!



SIDEBAR TWO: Though I am a human secularist myself, as the son of a late Turkish Muslim immigrant, I want to wish Muslims a Happy Eid al-Fitr, the conclusion of the month-long Ramadan holiday which falls on August 30th. I personally feel Muslims should be allowed to drink water during the fast to avoid dehydration for health purposes, but I respect the right for one to practice their traditional religious customs as they choose.



Irregardless of one's faith, we gather that a good place to eat Turkish food in the Sacramento, Calif. area is the Anatolian Table in the suburb of Rocklin.

Teaser: New Miniblogseries Coming Soon...

I don't want to give away too many details quite yet, but starting around Sept. 1st, I am hoping to post a new mini-series called "The Backpackers Are in Front of BestBuy" regarding my recent quest to find and photograph all seven public sculptures/works of art in my hometown of Roanoke, Va., which are part of a city-wide art project. (More info can be found at artinroanoke.com)



There were some misadventures and mistakes along the way, and the reason why I am going to title the mini-series "The Backpackers Are in Front of BestBuy" is because a sculpture piece called "Traveling Wanderers" by Willis, Va. (near Floyd, Va.), artist Charlie Brouwer shows two backpackers. The art piece is actually located in the vicinity of the very busy Valley View Mall shopping area. And, in fact, one person told me that phrase as I was trying to locate the sculpture.



SIDEBAR: Last week, Chef Ludo Lefebrve hunted a buffalo down in rural Colorado and served it for dinner at Biker Jim's in downtown Denver for the Sundance Channel series "Ludo Bites America." This week, the reality show came to our neck of the woods as the chef went all over the Tarheel State (including a legal moonshine still in Madinson, NC- yes, I know that's an oxy moron) to fix a pigfest at Gravy Restaurant on Wilmington Street in the heart of downtown Raleigh. Among the items, Ludo served up were: fried pig ears and pigblood pudding (yes, we were wondering if that was a dessert item too).



Ironically, this episode is running during Ramadan. Since my late father Mehmet Gokbudak came from Turkey, I should mention that there are several good Turkish restaurants in Raleigh.



None of these restaurants serve pork (and, if I have to tell you why, then perhaps that explains why Republican candidate Rick Perry is turning to global warming denialism), and this would include The Bosphorous Restaurant in Cary, NC- Raleigh's largest suburb. They have a great chicken kebab by the way!



SIDEBAR TWO: We also want to wish kudos to Lewisburg, WV, for being named the 'coolest small town in America' by "Budget Travel" magazine. The tows in some 90 miles north of Roanoke, Va.



Oh yeah....so much for the proposed hiatus!

Things We Learned on Google Today- President of Turkmenistan Has Very Long Name

We don't have a list of every world leader in front of us, but we firmly believe that Turkmenistani President Gurbanguly Berdimukhammedov has the longest surname of them all! He became president of Turkmenistan in 2007 after replacing 'president for life' Sapurmurat Niyazov who died in December of 2006.



The current president, like the man before him, has been cited for human rights abuses by Amnesty International (amnesty.org), but hey we worry more about Republicans here! And, in all seriousness, while human rights abuses are a serious matter, I want to focus on this very remote country that few Americans have probably been to.



The capital of Turkmenistan is Ashagabat, which sounds like a city in a "Harry Potter" book, which has a population of 695,300.



Afghanistan, Iran, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan border this former Soviet Republic.



There is apparently lots of unique cuisine in Turkmenistan, including the national dish plov (pictured here) which consists of mutton, rice and carrots.



Blogger Jon Rosenweig visited Turkmenistan and he discovered some other foods there, including chorek, which sounds similar to the Turkish dish borek, both of which consist of baked bread. There is also kohlbasa, a lunch dish made from fried kielbas with onions and boiled eggs.



Turkmenistan is the seventh former Soviet republic we have profiled in this series; Belarus was the pervious one.



SIDEBAR_ He's back. "Independent Weekly" in Durham, NC, is reporting that fringe Republican candidate Vernon Robinson will challenge Cong. Larry Kissel (D-NC), a moderate in North Carolina's 8th district.



Robinson, who has been nicknamed The Black Jesse Helms, challenged Cong. Brad Miller (D-NC) in 2006, even though he does not reside in Miller's 13th district.



To our knowledge, the only political office that Robinson has ever held was in Winston-Salem where he was a city council member who allegedly missed a lot of meetings.



Robinson also managed to get lots of media attention, even outside of North Carolina, for his racist anti-Hispanic ads back in 2006.

Road Trip- Trenton, NJ, to Seattle

Like Bela Lugosi, our Road Trip series has returned from the dead!

Today, we ask you the faithful blog-reader, and if you are one of the 13 people reading this blog you are quite faithful!, to guess how far it is from Trenton, NJ, to Seattle, Wash. (well, there is only one Seattle, right?).

To do this, we Mapquested the mileage between two Turkish restaurants in each zip code. Our choices were the Trenton Kebab House in Trenton and the Bistro Turkuaz in Seattle.

Here are the choices:

A) 48 hours, 40 minutes

B) 46 hours, 30 minutes

C) 45 hours, 10 minutes

D) 43 hours, 20 minutes

SIDEBAR: It seems like Burlington, Vermont, where it is 70 degrees as we speak would be a nice place to me especially since it is scorching in my part of the world. Today, it was 98 degrees in Norfolk, Va., 97 degrees in Baltimore and 93 degreees in Philadelphia!

SIDEBAR TWO: Though we haven't listened to the music of Los Straitjackets as much as we should, we want to wish the band's guitar player Danny Amis success in his battle with cancer. The Nashville-based band plays Spanish-language versions of rock and roll favorites and they are known for sporting Lucha Libre (Mexican wrestling) masks on stage. A benefit concert for Amis will be taking place soon according to the NPR show "Fresh Air."

Amadeus in Bethesda- Entry 3 of 3

While we did not stay at an old motel in northern Virginia, the hotel stay with the other people in your party is perhaps the most challenging part of any trip.

For my mom and I this was particularly awkward because we have very different lifestyles and our own unique quirks. I like to read and listen to the radio or watch movies on dvd at home in North Carolina. I actually seldom watch regular tv unless there is a sporting event or a show on PBS that interests me. My mom however watches lots of network tv, and she was happy to find out that the CBS show "The Mentalist" was on tv.

Thursday night was the only night we spent at the hotel, and we arrived back around 9:20 p.m. We were both hoping to catch one of the local 11:00 newscasts to hear about President Barack Obama's surprise visit to DuPont Circle, an area of Washington, DC, where we had dined earlier in the evening, at the Turkish restaurant Ezme.

We got caught up along with everyone in watching his motorcade from the side of the road with yellow tape being placed to prevent anyone from getting to close. For the police officers, who I found myself surprisingly sympathizing with more than normal, the greatest challenge was actually communicating with passing joggers who were probably listening to Kenny G on their I-Pods.

The rumor was that Obama was dinning at a pizza place on P Street, just a few doors down from Ezme, and this was communicated to people through Twitter. As it turns, yesterday, at long last, I found out that the rumor was about sixty-percent accurate. Obama actually met with a big financial donor above the pizza place, and pizza was provided for them by the establishment.

But, none of this was mentioned on the 11:00 news, nor was in the express version of "The Washignton Post" which is a free paper mostly aimed at DC Metro commuters.

So, in the 90 minutes between the end of the CBS shows and the late local news, I had decided to barricade myself in the hotel room's bathroom while listening to the great classcial composer Gustav Mahler on WETA-FM, Washington, DC's excellent NPR station which is at least 90-percent classical music. I also took a copy of the current issue of "The Atlantic" with me into the bathroom.

My mother wondered what the heck I was doing. When I explained, she was even more confused. I simply wanted peace and quiet, and amazingly enough, for those 90 minutes, I actually got it.

Road Trip (2 of 20) March Madness Journey from LA to East Lansing

Today, we continue our Road Trip series with a special look at two teams who will be facing each other in the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament, otherwise known as March Madness, on Thursday night. The UCLA Bruins will face the Michigan State Spartans at 9:20 New York time for a game in Tampa, Fla.

The two schools have rich basketball traditions. The Spartans won the 1979 NCAA championship thanks to Magic Johnson who became a legend for the Los Angeles Lakers.

As for UCLA, they have won more NCAA men's basketball titles than any other school as they 11 in their trophy cases. According to mentalfloss.com, UCLA is also the most popular university in the country as the school gets about 60,000 applications each year.

UCLA also has a strong women's gymnastics program, which has won several NCAA titles. One of our favorite college gymnasts of all time Yvonne Tousek was a member of a 'dream team' squad that won many titles some eight years today. But, today UCLA maintains a strong gymnastics team thanks to the likes of Tauny Frattone, a junior who was named specialist of the week by the Pac-10 recently.

The Spartans are also among the 18 schools with gymnastics teams. Tragedy ensued the team right before the season started as gymnast Kathryn Mahoney was paralyzed after a horrific fall on the vault. But, the team has continued on, as Spartans gymnast Jackie Berg scored a 9.8 on bars recently at a meet in Norman, Okl.

So, today, we are asking just how far apart these two schools are. Instead of focusing on the campuses themselves, we will explore the distance between Sofra Kebab Express, a Turkish restaurant on Venice Blvd. in Los Angeles and the studios of the award-winning WDBM college radio station for Michigan State.

If you happen to wish for a Korean pop song, you can listen to 'Asian Invasion' on WDBM and tell the host Elsie that we were the ones who told you about the station. Their request line is 517-884-8989. Of course, if they get mad at us, we will deflect all responsibility!

So is the distance between Los Angeles and East Lansing, Mich:

A) 32 hours even
B) 33 hours and 20 minutes
C) 33 hours and 40 minutes
D) 34 hours and 30 minutes

The answer to our last road trip between Spartanburg, SC, and New York was B) 11 hours and 49 minutes.

Beers from Around the World_ Hansa from Norway (#44)

Today, we are reviving our Beers Around the World series with Hansa, a Norwegian brew that is produced in Bergen and Sarpsborg (Norway's second and fifth largest cities, respectively).

According to an Internet web site, it is apparently available in some parts of New Jersey. But, somehow, we don't expect halal markets in Paterson are the place to look, though when we have time we can ask Mayor Jeff Jones (yes, he is the mayor of Paterson) if he knows of a place to find Scandanavian beers in town. Of course, since I'm half-Turkish, I can make fun of halal markets where one can always find great yogurts actually, especially if they are from Bulgaria or Lebanon (I should say that Turkish yogurt is perfectly good too before I offend my constituency---not there are many here in Welch, W.Va*).

As for Hansa, it was founded in 1997 and the Hansa Borg brewery has 26 percent of the beer market in Norway. And, apparently, beer has been in Norway for close to one thousand years.

SIDEBAR: Earlier today, while taking a quiz on mentalfloss.com we learned that Crown and Sugarlof is the name of a London pub, which happens to be on Fleet Street (where the macabe musical play "Sweeney Todd" takes place) as opposed to a Charles Dickens story. Apparently, the pub has a very relaxed atmosphere and they are not open on Sundays, which makes me wonder if the owner might be someone from Provo, Utah?!

*-We don't actually live in Welch, W.Va, but we understand they have a great drive-in movie theatre there!

DC Diary- I Want to Go to the Holocaust Museum

We conclude our diary of the family trip to Washington, DC, with some tips on how to get your voice heard when traveling to any part of the United States, the world or The Milky Way, with members of your family or even your friends.

When traveling with groups, one of the main disadvantages is getting your voice heard, especially if you make considerably less money than anyone in your party. (I would not advise taking a trip with the Kardashians, and I'm not saying that because I'm Turkish and they're Armenian!).

Reverse psychology is one possibly effective method which could work though I did not try it myself.

A few trips back, I actually went to The Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC, to see an exhibit about the infamous 1936 Berlin Olympics, which turned into a propaganda outlet for Adolf Hitler (this was before the museum guard was tragically murdered at the museum some two years ago). The museum itself is very fascinating, but of course, it is quite depressing. As much sympathy as I have for the Jewish people and what they went through, I realized I could never go back to the museum again.

So, of course, it is a place that I would say I wanted to go to if in a group of more than four people. You will inevitably have one person say: "I want to go to the Smithsonian," or The Textile Museum or The National Zoo, so if you tell the Kim Kardashian of the group that you must, absolutely, positively must go to The Holocaust Museum.

Then, everyone will say: "Hmmm...that's too depressing, can we go somewhere else?" That's when you say The National Building Museum or the Folger's Shakespeare Library (yeah, I may be the only person in a group of 20 who would choose those places). And, amazingly enough, you might just get your way.

Since, Washington, DC, has quite a lot going on, there were indeed several places, we didn't get to visit and a few places that I hope to visit some time in the near future.

They include the 9:30 Club where a band called The Virginia Coalition performs on Jan. 15 (yes, I think it sounds like a lobbying group that should be on K-Street too), the Politics and Prose bookstore where "Washington Post" music critic Anne Midgette talks tomorrow night, the Studio Theatre which is getting set to perform "Marcus, or The Secret of Sweet" and two Turkish restaurants: Cafe Divan and Meze.

I must profess that I was very intrigued when I glanced over at Meze's web site (mezedc.com) and saw that they offer Saturday and Sunday brunches with beef sausage. I can imagine this might be confusing to some Anatolian villagers from a place like Yozgat, Turkey, who would seemingly paranoid that all sausage products must come from Porky Pig!

PS_ The image above is from the acclaimed 1985 documentary "Shoah" about the Holocaust. It lasts nine hours long, but it is said to be one of the best films about the subject ever made.

Bonus Silly Photo to Fill Space- Ayran

Today, we feature ayran, the yogurt milk beverage that is very popular in my late father's country Turkey. An Istanbul taxi driver named Atilla Kalkan gave me the recipe back in 2008. Alas, efforts to find him on Facebook failed (though there are a lot of Atilla Kalkans out there!).

One can find ayran at Harmony Market in Cary, NC (Raleigh, Phone: 1-919-380-0077) along with other Turkish food items with the noteable exception of raki (the Turkish version of the greek spirit ouzo) as they do not have an ABC license.

For our friends in Georgia, ayran should be available at Bereket Turkish Grocery in Atlanta (phone: 770-613-9950), where one can also get a Cola Turka...a Turkish cola beverage which once featured commercials with Chevy Chase! (Yes, that is true).

One can not find ayran at Texas Tavern in my hometown of Roanoke, Va., though it can be found (if you ask) at Arzu International, which is also downtown. So, if you are inclined to have a cheesy western at Texas Tavern for breakfast (a scarmbled egg sandwich with a hamburger pattie and cheese, ask your doctor before eating!) and Izmir kofte (lamb dish which unlike cheesy westerns does NOT cause heart attacks) for lunch at Arzu then the Star City is the place to be!

NOTE: Ayran was one of the items listed on my Christmas wish list. Of course, this is ironic because Turkey is a Muslim country and I actually prefer Festivus over all religious holidays. The beverage can also be purchased online in the United States (and perhaps Canada) from tulumba.com in New York.