What, you think I make this shit up?
Meanwhile, Tyler and I were on our way to Salem, Massachusetts.
The 4-hour drive was relatively uneventful, minus finding out at a gas station that Lance Armstrong was kind of a douchebag all this time, and an ensuing conversation trying to decide if he could still be counted as an inspirational cancer survivor. We made it to our hotel well-caffeinated and ready to go.
After changing, getting hold of a map and list of local happenings, and doing our usual being-excited-about-our-hotel-room thing (Oh my god look, we get a couch! There's a cute little coffee packet! Quick, pocket the complimentary soaps!), we got a taxi into downtown Salem.
Hilarity ensued.
There were people everywhere. And half of them were wearing one or more of the following:
-a top hat
-a cheap velour witches cloak and/or hat
-a masque
-fake teeth/hair/makeup/eyelashes
Exactly like that.
There were also a number of people in full costume. There were ghostbusters, Victorians, vampires, witches (of course), and even a dude leading a chick on a collar and leash. Think "kinds of people who listen to Evanescence." The only place I'd seen more eccentric people at once was...
Nope. Not even Portland can take the cake on this one. I'd never seen more eccentric people at once than I did in Salem, Massachusetts.
There were also con-artist psychics and tarot readers everywhere. Every other shop had a little booth at the back where you could have your fortune read. And I've never seen a wider selection of pentacles, both the Wiccan kind like I wear and the inverted kind like those silly satanists wear, in my entire life. There were street performers, street vendors, street dwellers, and people dressed like street walkers. There was a statue of Samantha from Bewitched, about 50 million witch museums (Salem Witch House, Witch History Museum, Witch Dungeon Museum, The Spellbound Museum, Salem Witch Museum), and even more haunted houses.
Yes, even this.
We spent most of the day wandering around, looking in shops, avoiding children, and maintaining a constant supply of caffeine to our bodies. Once the nighttime set and all the candy corns, pumpkins and fairies went home, we had a delicious and fancy dinner (and bottle of wine) to ourselves at a gorgeous seafood place on the water. I mentally critiqued the food stains on the wine list and the fact that they brought us bread and butter 10 minutes before they brought us any silver, and then left like a 30% tip because I might be a bitch in my head but in practice, I'm really very nice.
We had a good time.
Then we went to a pub where there was karaoke and a strange mix of local young people, local mid-40s bikers, and a couple of out-of-towner witch ladies awkwardly looking to have a good time. Both Tyler and I were hit on by strangers (as usual, Tyler much moreso than me. He has a vibe that draws women of all types, and I have a vibe that drives almost everyone but nerds and teenagers away). We got drunk. We met people. We helped a blind girl sign up for karaoke and then listened to her belt out the most fantastic karaoke I've ever heard, and if you know my sister Hayley then you know that's saying something. And even more impressive, she couldn't see the words on the screen, which means she had both the words and the cues totally memorized.
Our taxi ride back to the hotel featured a very talkative man with the strongest Bostonian accent I'd ever heard. I actually scribbled down some of the things he was saying in my little notebook, in a drunken scrawl, just so I could remember later. He called himself "Big Bob" and said each of the following things, in one context or another:
-"It's fuckin'--pahdon my French--crazy heah" (probably in reference to the traffic)
-"Most 'a these people stay at a place cahlled Mo-to Lodge"
-"He hit a cah"
-"He was tryin' tah run from the frickin' cahps. Puddle jumpah"
-"Lookin' at the stahs"
-"I can' undahstand these folks from Texas. 'I'm fixin' tah do somethin'.' Fixin' tah? What's whrong with it?"
Until then, I had thought Julianne Moore was exaggerating her character on 30 Rock's accent (she played Jack's Bostonian childhood sweetheart) for the sake of hilarity. But I discovered: not so. She did it pretty damn realistically.
(Bonus: this particular clip makes fun of both the Boston accent AND the Maryland accent!)
The next day was less hilarious, because fewer crazies came out on Mondays, but we had a good time. We saw a couple of museums, went in some more shops, and paid our respects to Giles Corey and John Proctor and the other victims of the trials. We left around 4:30, thinking "this is awesome! We'll be home by 9!"
Such fools we were.
We grossly underestimated Boston traffic, and proceeded to suffer through about 2 hours of crazy before we got out, including one frenzied search for somewhere, anywhere, that I could pee (I have a squirrel bladder).
We made it home in one piece, and one crystal pendulum, one rose quartz pebble, one pentacle necklace, one tarot deck, one fairie, and many memories the richer.
I also took this picture at one of the shops:
No caption can possibly do this justice.
Yup. Kooky place, that Salem. Much kookier than the Salem I grew up with. This one:
The beautiful capitol of Oregon/Portland's neglected sister (think Jan Brady).
Happy Halloween, readers! Be safe, have fun, and don't bone anyone dressed like an Angry Bird!
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