What is it with me and Pennsylvania?
So last weekend I went up to Scranton, PA with lady_i who was performing at a Rockabilly weekender/car show at the Day's Inn.
First of all: HOT REAL ESTATE TIP! In Scranton you can buy buildings for a nickel! I exaggerate, but you can still get houses there (decent houses!) for under 100K. For 300K you can get REALLY NICE houses! For $700K you can buy a bed and breakfast on 45 acres of land with horse stables and a lake. Rather astonishing prices for a place that's only 3 hours drive from New York City, where a two bedroom apartment will cost you at least half a mil.
The whole hotel we were at seemed to be run by one family of bitchy women. The pillows were like a sack of roadkill and you had to hold down the handle for a few seconds to flush the toilet, but it was otherwise fine. We got to encounter a few colorful locals, like one hard-bitten middle aged woman with feathered hair, a coors light in one hand and a cigarette in the other, talking about the time her husband "punched out a fag" when they tried to take disco lessons in the 70's. I noted to Lady I that they were "a little TOO authentic."
We also got to eat at a chain restaurant called "Fresnos" which claimed to be "Southwestern", although, as I find often in the Northeast, food called "southwestern" bears little or no resemblance to anything I encountered when I actually lived in the Southwest. I got a taco plate, since I think of Tacos as a pretty safe food: easy to make and hard to ruin. However, this restaurant obviously put some hard work in, because they actually managed to ruin tacos! I will lay it out for you:
How to ruin Tacos:
1. Start by using flour tortillas instead of corn...while this will not ruin a taco, it does it no favors.
2. Underseason the meat.
3. Take a plate of 3 tacos and put approximately a half pound of cheese on them.
4. Heat the entire taco so that the half pound of cheese is melted, the lettuce and tomatoes are warm and mushy and the tortilla is soggy.
The rest of the weekend was fun, though. We got to go to the flea market across the street and I got a big stack of vintage cookbooks for $4.00 I also met this artist from Philly, whose work I really liked, and bought one of her prints.
And to summarize the mood of the weekend, I'd like to recount a conversation between two drunk young ladies that I overheard in the public bathroom:
Girl 1: Oh my god, I want to wear my slippers!
Girl 2: Bar and slippers do not mix.
Girl 1: But it would be SO FUNNY!
Girl 2: I wish I didn't have jello all over my shirt, because this sweater is so hot.
First of all: HOT REAL ESTATE TIP! In Scranton you can buy buildings for a nickel! I exaggerate, but you can still get houses there (decent houses!) for under 100K. For 300K you can get REALLY NICE houses! For $700K you can buy a bed and breakfast on 45 acres of land with horse stables and a lake. Rather astonishing prices for a place that's only 3 hours drive from New York City, where a two bedroom apartment will cost you at least half a mil.
The whole hotel we were at seemed to be run by one family of bitchy women. The pillows were like a sack of roadkill and you had to hold down the handle for a few seconds to flush the toilet, but it was otherwise fine. We got to encounter a few colorful locals, like one hard-bitten middle aged woman with feathered hair, a coors light in one hand and a cigarette in the other, talking about the time her husband "punched out a fag" when they tried to take disco lessons in the 70's. I noted to Lady I that they were "a little TOO authentic."
We also got to eat at a chain restaurant called "Fresnos" which claimed to be "Southwestern", although, as I find often in the Northeast, food called "southwestern" bears little or no resemblance to anything I encountered when I actually lived in the Southwest. I got a taco plate, since I think of Tacos as a pretty safe food: easy to make and hard to ruin. However, this restaurant obviously put some hard work in, because they actually managed to ruin tacos! I will lay it out for you:
How to ruin Tacos:
1. Start by using flour tortillas instead of corn...while this will not ruin a taco, it does it no favors.
2. Underseason the meat.
3. Take a plate of 3 tacos and put approximately a half pound of cheese on them.
4. Heat the entire taco so that the half pound of cheese is melted, the lettuce and tomatoes are warm and mushy and the tortilla is soggy.
The rest of the weekend was fun, though. We got to go to the flea market across the street and I got a big stack of vintage cookbooks for $4.00 I also met this artist from Philly, whose work I really liked, and bought one of her prints.
And to summarize the mood of the weekend, I'd like to recount a conversation between two drunk young ladies that I overheard in the public bathroom:
Girl 1: Oh my god, I want to wear my slippers!
Girl 2: Bar and slippers do not mix.
Girl 1: But it would be SO FUNNY!
Girl 2: I wish I didn't have jello all over my shirt, because this sweater is so hot.