Are You A Tourist In Your Own Town?

[telemnemonics]

You have primer?!? Luxury !!

There's a town in Maine called Buxton where folks is so po' they no way can affo' primer.
So, many in the region call duct tape "Buxton chrome".

 

[Geoff738]

I'm the King of Kensington!

Man, I miss Kensington market so much. It’s changed quite a bit since I moved out here though. Hardly any veg stands anymore. House of Spice is still there though.

Cheers,
Geoff

 

[Jakedog]

I’m very tied in with the music community and the people who support it, obviously. I wouldn’t say I do a whole lot outside of that.

I live in a suburb now, since we moved out of the city. It’s a double edged sword. Safer neighborhood, better schools, but a serious lack of culture and diversity, as well as independent business. It’s mostly your typical suburban strip mall stuff. I’m friendly with my neighbors, but we don’t hang out or anything. When I do stop to talk to them it’s obvious they’ve always lived in this type of place, and we just don’t have a lot in common. I get the impression most of the people who live where I do don’t leave the suburb much except for work, and don’t understand why anyone would. I mean, we have all the stores anyone could need, lots of chain restaurants, churches, groceries, why in the world would you want to go into the city? I don’t get it, but I’m a little gritty where it counts.

There is however, a separate phenomena in my town, which is the east side/west side division. Folks really don’t cross the River much, if ever. I go to the east side occasionally because there are a couple of really cool venues over there that I sometimes play. But other than that? Man, the east side is like a foreign country to me. I don’t know my way around, and I always get confused over there. Lol. It’s bizarre, really. It’s like two different cities. And not in a cool way like Minneapolis/St. Paul.

 

[telemnemonics]

I’m very tied in with the music community and the people who support it, obviously. I wouldn’t say I do a whole lot outside of that.

I live in a suburb now, since we moved out of the city. It’s a double edged sword. Safer neighborhood, better schools, but a serious lack of culture and diversity, as well as independent business. It’s mostly your typical suburban strip mall stuff. I’m friendly with my neighbors, but we don’t hang out or anything. When I do stop to talk to them it’s obvious they’ve always lived in this type of place, and we just don’t have a lot in common. I get the impression most of the people who live where I do don’t leave the suburb much except for work, and don’t understand why anyone would. I mean, we have all the stores anyone could need, lots of chain restaurants, churches, groceries, why in the world would you want to go into the city? I don’t get it, but I’m a little gritty where it counts.

There is however, a separate phenomena in my town, which is the east side/west side division. Folks really don’t cross the River much, if ever. I go to the east side occasionally because there are a couple of really cool venues over there that I sometimes play. But other than that? Man, the east side is like a foreign country to me. I don’t know my way around, and I always get confused over there. Lol. It’s bizarre, really. It’s like two different cities. And not in a cool way like Minneapolis/St. Paul.

Kinda like when i lived in Brooklyn, but did everything in Manhattan and knew most of Manhattan pretty well to like the back of my hand, but really only knew my corner of Brooklyn plus 10%.
Actually I think a lot of Manhattan while being thought of as worldly sophisticated, has locals who really never leave their little plot.

I worked in Soho and there was an old guy who got hired for the shipping job but had lived in Brooklyn his whole life. Every day at closing time he asked me again how to get home.
In his 60s and was just trying Manhattan for the first time.

 

[trev333]

We do have a real Tourist in our area... Jim Toomey... their drummer, He immigrated here in the '90's....

just before Dave and Annie formed the Eurythmics...

he just turned up and started playing with local blues bands at our local pubs and we got to know him well. At the time we hadn't heard of the Tourists when he told us. Someone did find an LP of theirs and here's Jim in the pics... no way! he wasn't an just old scotsman spinning us a yarn...

He runs a drum school in Noosa now...

 

[Jupiter]

There's a town in Maine called Buxton where folks is so po' they no way can affo' primer.
So, many in the region call duct tape "Buxton chrome".

Only thing I know about Buxton is there's a lot of hayfields up there

 

[bluesfordan]

that tree was hit by lightning, and then felled by high winds 5 years later. Actual location was in Ohio.

 

[oregomike]

I know people who only live in their houses and go to a few stores in their town, not involved in any civic activity, don't know their neighbors and when we tell them about some cool event that is happening in their town, they are always surprised and always ask how we heard about it.

We know most of the neighbors (for better or worse) for the houses around us. And we know a lot of the people who run the local stores, we have favored waiters etc. We even have some of that in some other towns that we visit often.

We are involved with a couple of different groups etc and we like walking through town and saying hi.

How connected are you to your community?

Hood River is a small town, which is good because I'm a creature of habit. I have my favorite places to have a beer or whiskey (when I'm drinking) or favorite taqueria, so I bump into everyone. I know the checkers at our grocery, and they know me. People say hi. Somehow we have about 4 households on my street who have someone who plays music. Funny story, one of them pounded on my garage door while I was practicing drums. I had thought it was someone about to complain about the noise. I opened the door and it was my neighbor who was like, "Hey, I have a studio and we jam every Friday. We need a drummer!" Been jamming and writing every since. Pretty cool.
Anyway, it's a welcome change from the Bay Area where people couldn't care less whether or not we existed, and would prefer to stare at their phones more than say hi to anyone.

 

[Harry Styron]

Hood River is a small town, which is good because I'm a creature of habit. I have my favorite places to have a beer or whiskey (when I'm drinking) or favorite taqueria, so I bump into everyone. I know the checkers at our grocery, and they know me. People say hi. Somehow we have about 4 households on my street who have someone who plays music. Funny story, one of them pounded on my garage door while I was practicing drums. I had thought it was someone about to complain about the noise. I opened the door and it was my neighbor who was like, "Hey, I have a studio and we jam every Friday. We need a drummer!" Been jamming and writing every since. Pretty cool.
Anyway, it's a welcome change from the Bay Area where people couldn't care less whether or not we existed, and would prefer to stare at their phones more than say hi to anyone.

I visited Hood River for the first time last year. What a nice town in a beautiful setting! I wouldn’t spending my remaining years there.