Max Milano's Blog, page 3
August 31, 2018
Madrid's Craft Beer Scene
You don't come to Spain for the beer. That much is a well-established truth. In fact, you tend to forget about beer altogether during the first few days of your visit to Spain. That's because their wine is so good and so well priced. When you can get a marvelous bottle of Tempranillo while sitting al-fresco in a medieval plaza over a dish of black paella, then beer takes the back seat. Mainly because the said bottle of marvelous Tempranillo costs the same as a glass of plonky house wine back home.
The bar at Bee Beer in Madrid's trendy Chueca neighborhood.
And yes, I chose to ignore the hordes of lager-louts that regularly hit the shores of La Costa del Sol in my opening statement. But that's because said lager-louts don't even know they're in Spain, but instead in some alternative universe where Blackpool got relocated to the Med.
The truth is that Spanish beer is terrible. Whether it's San Miguel, Mahou, Alhambra, or Estrella, the runny lagers that fuel the Costas and wash down tapas all over Spain, are nothing more than yellow water.
In their defense, they are not as bad as Miller light; nothing can be. But that's a crime of a different sort, and mercifully, no one comes to Spain for Miller light either.
There comes a moment during each visit to Spain however (around day 7 or so) when you start to seriously wonder what it would be like to live like a local. But since you really can't ever live like a real local, you begin to think about the next best option: What would it be like to live like an ex-pat in Madrid?
Once you run through your list of ex-pat needs and wants, one item floats to the top: Craft beer. As beer snob ex-pats, how could we survive in a world of crappy beer?
That's when the burgeoning Madrid craft beer scene comes to the rescue. While no San Diego (not even Tijuana), Madrid's craft beer scene is spiritedly quirky, and it's not going anywhere but up.
Enter Bee Beer in Chueca. Madrid's Chueca neighborhood pretty much defines spirited and quirky. Long established as the city's gay epicenter, Chueca has evolved into a sophisticated (but still quirky) foodie mecca where all are welcome. After reading about the top five craft beer bars in Madrid, we decided to head to Chueca because it has at least two breweries/taprooms and also a trendy food market with an open-air terrace for sophisticated après-beer soakage.
#BeeBeerMadrid
Bee Beer is owned and managed by a Venezuelan ex-pat. He picked up a thing or two about the beer business by working at Polar Beer, Venezuela's top-selling lager.
Once inside Bee Beer's cozy bar, you know you're in good hands. The hands of a beer connoisseur. The tap list, while not extensive, is expertly curated, giving you the feeling of a relaxed neighborhood bar with an excellent rotating tap selection.
The curation and love for craft beer extends to Bee Beer's growing list of house-brewed beers. When we were there, we tried a house brew called "Coronel Mostaza" which turned out to be a wonderfully crisp ale with a touch of coriander (or was it mustard seeds?).
The rotating tap selection at Bee Beer includes all the classics you would expect from around Europe (Belgium and Germany have a strong presence), while also including American craft beer staples like Lagunitas and Sierra Nevada (cold stored and transported all the way from California).
Bee Beer's charm is enhanced by providing two artisanal cheese boards and cured meat options, sourced from producers in the Castille area.
So the next time you're in Madrid, head down to Chueca and check out Bee Beer and enjoy craft beer like you would at home.
Max Milano is the author of Hollywood Expats: A Story of Hollywood, Death & Love, available on Kindle Unlimited
June 7, 2018
The Mystery of Mount Shasta
By Max Milano
“They forgot they told us what this old land was for.
Grow two tons the acre, boy, between the stones.
This was no Southfork, it was no Ponderosa.
But it was the place that I called home.”
Jethro Tull. Farm on the Freeway.
Day 1: On the Mountain
We’re standing in the middle of the road, beyond the point where cars are allowed, and only the crazy and the brave continue.
Incongruously, my phone beeps. I have an inbound message responding to a question I’d posted on Reddit the night before asking about Mount Shasta. The Reddit handle is treezOH123 and the post reads like a mini-novel:
"I just read how John Muir spent the night up there with a friend. They left the summit at 3 pm after taking barometric readings then as they descended they got caught in a snowstorm. They didn't have proper winter clothes and had to lay down next to a lava vent as to not freeze to death which resulted in blisters and burns on their backs and the instruments they brought with them froze to John Muir's beard. Then in the morning they made their way back to camp with frozen clothing and had horrible frostbite that left Muir with a limp. Dude was a badass and a little cocky."
"Thanks. I'll write a short story about it.” I reply. What else could I say? I'd gone up the sacred mountain, right up to the snowline. We stood in awe, watching the landscape spread below us like a 1950's western in Technicolor.
The road ahead of us cuts through a forest of tall green pines that sway in the steady breeze like the masts of a thousand ships. But the wilderness is not silent at 8000 feet. The wind delivers a constant roar, like a jumbo jet in the distance. I can't image how bad it whips things around up at the 14000 feet summit. We can see it from where we stand, right in the middle of this empty road. A volcanic rim where the snow and stone ends and the sky begins. A perfect stratovolcano rising at the edge of Northern California, or at the center of the state of Jefferson, if you go by the trucker hats sold at the local gas stations. The mountain is a layer cake of dirt, pines and a wall of glaciers and black rock rising right up to the volcanic summit. The pimple of god. Visible from 150 miles away on a clear day. An active volcano. Ready to blow and wash all the sins away as far as the eye can see. The local Indian tribes knew this. Way before John Muir froze his beard on its icy slopes. They considered this majestic mountain sacred. A place to commune with the gods who lived up there, at the summit, where the wind would take their chants up to the heavens, on the back of California condors.
"I’ve read that scientists say it's overdue for an eruption," I hear my traveling companion say. She's a brown eyed girl. Pale as the snow above us. Jet black hair like the black lava slopes of the mountain. Monica is her name.
"As long as it doesn't blow today..." I say, thinking of Mount St Helens, further north. Another spectacular stratovolcano that infamously blew its top in 1980, unleashing an ash column 15 miles tall. The explosion took half the mountain with it, and spread ash to 11 surrounding states while triggering the most massive mudslide ever recorded, wiping out everything in its path.
"Scientists think that when Shasta blows, lava will flow for years, like in Hawaii..." she continued. "Revenge of the gods, or something like it."
I look up at the summit. No rumbles or ash clouds yet. Just a perfect volcanic rim, like the open mouth of a great white shark gleaming in the sky above us.
Day 2: Spirits of The Underworld
We leave highway 5 in the town of Weed, California. Weed is barely a town. More like a gas station and a diner and a Motel 6 on a valley floor of ancient lava flows and dry chaparral bushes. Spectacular snow-peaked mountains flank the valley. On one side is Mount Eddy, part of the Trinity Mountain range, and on the other, the massive hulk of Mount Shasta and Shastina, its sister volcanic caldera. We drive North-East of Weed on Highway 97, around the back of Mount Shasta. There is no sign of civilization here. Just miles and miles of dried lava flows and chaparral. Mount Shasta dominates our view on the right-hand side going northbound. The twin volcano complex of Mount Shasta and Shastina is best visible from this angle, and it’s absolutely massive. Our SUV feels like a spaceship on Jupiter's orbit. I'm getting gas giant vibes driving along 97 with the enormous mountain rising above us.
"Turn left on the next dirt road," says Monica. "The GPS is telling me that the lava tube caves are down this way."
I pull off the paved highway and enter a gravel road that cuts through the chaparral desert. A road to nowhere. You can turn 360 degrees and see no signs of civilization. Just more and more lava flows and chaparral, dotted with yellow wildflowers, and that massive mountain looming above it all. It’s hot in the valley, but there’s a ton of cold snow way up there on top of Shasta and it dominates the landscape as far as the eye can see. Ahead of us, beyond a craggy mountain range, pokes the snowy tip of another stratovolcano.
"That one's in Oregon," Monica says, looking at her handheld GPS.
We follow the GPS directions deeper into the high chaparral until we start to see strange dwellings behind walls of piled lava stones. You can see the pores on the rocks, like pumice. The narrow dirt road skirts these peculiar walled tracks of land. Beyond the walls, we can see rusted abandoned cars, old 1950's Airstream trailers, and outdoor toilets, but alas no houses. But someone is living here alright. Just not in a way we can understand. Instead of homes, we see piles of wood and sheets of plastic. Someone's gone back to the land. Or perhaps they never left it.
The GPS beeps and announces that we have arrived. All we can see is a widening of the dirt road and a pile of volcanic rocks ten feet high. No signs, no national park ranger collecting entry fees. Just a big old pile of rocks in the middle of a breathtakingly beautiful desert of weeds and wildflowers, flanked by stratovolcanoes.
"Are we here?" Monica asks as we start looking for a way to climb up the rocks. There's a path up ahead, flanked by tall porous stones. We climb into the rock complex and start looking for a way in. The path splits in multiple directions, all ending in a dead end. We head back and pick another path. This one drops below the stones and curves around a dead tree that stands there like a sentinel. Its dry branches supplicating up to the heavens like a dead Joshua Tree. Then we see it, obscured by tall grass, but there it is. The huge mouth of a cave. Tall like a cathedral, its floor covered in a slope of massive boulders from an ancient cave-in. From where we stand, the cave has no end, or so it seems. It's pitch black inside and smells like bat guano, but we can't see any bats.
"Well? What do we do now?" we asked each other. The slope of broken boulders extends downwards for at least 10 feet and looks like the perfect place to break your neck or at least a leg.
"Now we go in, right?" I ask, unconvincingly.
"What if we break a leg? We're in the middle of nowhere. Who will get us out? There's no cell reception out here."
I look around. We're in a hollow bowl. Surrounded by massive lava boulders.
"The guidebook says that there are three caves,” I say. “The first two are relatively short, and the last one is 3 miles long. I think that this one is the first of the two smaller ones. The long one is the furthest from the entrance".
"What if there's more than one entrance?"
"Well, there's only one way to find out."
The bat guano smell was present, but not overly intense. My biggest concern were the boulders. They piled in a downwards slope into pure blackness. I'd been inside lava tubes before, in Hawaii, and knew that the light will penetrate at least 100 feet or so. We'd give this cave a chance.
We tackle the first boulder like toddlers getting off a high chair. Ass first. We sit on a big rock and scramble down slowly to the next block below it. Each stone is massive and strangely boxy, with big wide flat angles where one can sit and slide down to the next one. About halfway down our eyes adjust to the darkness below. There’s a sandy floor ahead. Above us, a cathedral-like ceiling, massive and airy. Behind and above us, the brightly lit mouth of the cave is shrouded in green weeds.
We finally reach the sandy floor. Once inside, the cave wasn't that dark after all. There’s a dim light ahead. The guidebook was right. The first two caves were short. The last one 3 miles long.
We walk towards the light at the other end. The cathedralesque mouth of the cave narrows into a semi-perfect tunnel. We continue along a sandy floor, examining the smooth rock walls with the palms of our hands. No stalactites or stalagmites here. Melted rocks formed this tunnel from the center of the earth. The red-hot core slid through like a freight train from hell, leaving behind this hardened rind. Up ahead, a roof cave-in provided the source of light we could see in the distance.
"Look, there's graffiti here," said Monica.
She was using her cell phone light like a torch.
"Doesn't look like any graffiti I've ever seen," I mumble after examining the lettering in the dim light.
An angry bird. An angry god? Eyes that pierced at you in the dark. Feather-like strokes surrounding a dagger-like beak. Everything painted in two-d. Like Egyptian hieroglyphs.
And below the strange painted creature: Yreka Tribe - 1917. Written in neat white stenciled letters. Like a road sign from 100 years ago.
We stare at the letters and symbols in the dark-dawn of the cave. Behind us, on the sandy floor, we notice a perfect stone circle with cold ashes inside. The descendants of whoever had painted this were probably still using this cave semi-regularly. The stone circle was too perfect. It wasn't laid out 100 years before. We didn't touch the ashes, but there was an excellent chance that it was still warm because a faint wisp of white smoke snaked out of them like an enchanted serpent.
"What do we do now?" She asked. "You think there are people here?"
"Probably not right now...maybe they come at night, hence the fire."
We’d seen a video online the night before of a local native tribe confronting a group of new age hippies that came every year to the Mount Shasta area. The new agers looked like extras in a Stonehenge-era drama. Druids and Celtic tattoos. The local tribes were not happy with the hippies trampling on their sacred ground. Damaging the delicate desert flowers. Desecrating their land.
"The last thing we need right now is to run into a band of pissed off Indians who have it in their head that we're hippies messing around their land," I mumble incongruously.
"But we're not hippies. Right?" she asks in a slightly fearful voice, and we both start to laugh.
"We never saw the end of the video. What did the Indians do to the hippies?" she asks among fits of laughter.
"I dunno. Scalp them? They all needed a shave anyway!"
She looks at me with disapproval.
“This is their land after all,” Monica said after a pause. “We probably shouldn’t be bothering them if it’s like a special time of the year for them. We should show respect.”
I just pointed the way towards the light ahead of us.
"We might as well get to the end. See what's out there”.
The light turned into brightness. Tall weeds greet us. There’s blue sky above. We are in a large section of the lava tube that has caved in, who knows how long ago. It runs for over 2000 feet. What was once the roof of the cave, now lies on the cave's floor. There are hundreds of jagged boulders. They'd been there for so long that dirt and weeds cover most of them. To our right lays a path. We can see a stone bridge at the far end of the deep chasm we’re in. It’s a section of lava tube roof that hasn’t caved in, leaving behind a spectacular arch or rock.
We walk under the stone arch and into another roofless caved-in chasm about the same size as the previous one. At the far end there’s another gaping black mouth obscured by tall weeds.
"There's the second cave," I say.
We approach the second cave and discover the same conditions as in the previous one. A massive pile of boulders heads steeply down into blackness. Only this time it’s at least double the distance to the cave bottom.
We crawl on our asses, boulder by boulder until it gets too dark to continue. I put my feet in front of me and feel nothing. Only the void is in front of me. I turn back and see Monica frozen in place.
"Stop," I say. "Let me get the cellphone light."
"Why do you think I stopped? I can't feel anything below me," she says in the dark.
I fumble for my cell phone and turn on the torch.
The dim ray scans the boulders like a searchlight, stopping at her feet. Beyond the edge of the ledge where she’s standing is a 10-foot drop.
"Wow, do not move," I mumble, pointing the light down at my feet.
There’s also a drop at my feet. The next boulder below me is at least 12 feet away. We'd reached a chunk of rock bigger than the rest.
"Let's scramble along the side," I tell her, holding her hand and guiding her towards a smaller set of boulders on the right-hand side of the cave.
"Why do you think I stopped?" she says in a trembling voice. "I couldn’t feel anything below my feet. It was bloody terrifying".
"We got light now," I say unconvincingly.
A few ass scrambles later we reach the cave floor. Soft, black, volcanic sand greets us. It’s like walking on the surface of the moon. The light from the cave entrance looms high above us. Like a distant planet beyond our reach.
"Ok, let's go on," I say. Pointing towards a large black sand dune covering half the cave tunnel ahead. A dim light peeps from the other side of the dune making the cave ceiling glow in an eerie light.
Monica goes ahead of me as I fumble with the cellphone light. I can see her halfway up the dune. I turn off the torch and follow her but notice that she has stopped. There's a look of concern in her eyes.
"Keep going," I whisper from the bottom of the dune.
She stays frozen in place. A deer caught in the headlights.
I quicken my pace to reach her. It's hard to run uphill in the sand.
Her eyes are open wide. She'd definitely seen something. Something that perhaps we didn't want to see.
I'm a few feet from her now. I can almost touch her.
"What's up?" I whisper. Was my voice trembling too?
That's when I hear it. Very faint at first. It comes like a dream from another world. Slow and low. Rumbling through the cave like an ancient howl.
I stop in my tracks for a second. The howl has a cadence. Wild and exotic and otherworldly. I put a finger to my lips, indicating to Monica to stay quiet as I run past her towards the top of the dune. The light is a bit brighter up there. But also the sound. It's not an animal howl. It's too repetitive for that. But it's not a song that I've ever heard either. Definitely human. A chant.
Monica joins me at the top of the dune. Below us is a massive rock chamber. A perfect circle has caved-in on the roof of the cave, towards the far end of the chamber, creating a natural skylight. A spotlight of sunlight all the way from the sky flashes down to the cave floor.
At the center of the light, we can see a figure. A man with long hair. His arms outstretched in supplication. He’s chanting in an unknown language. Repeating the chant over and over again and looking up into the light. On the cave floor near him we can see a woman and a small child. She’s crouched on the sandy floor. She has straight jet-black hair, braided, and seems to be holding a small flute. She joins the man's chants every couple of bars with a staccato chorus in what sounds like a strange Asiatic language. Short, fast words or yelps against the man’s long, sorrowful laments. Their chants and counter chants complement each other. This is an ancient song. Passed from father to son, from mothers to daughters, since the beginning of time. There’s no doubt we’re witnessing something we were not really supposed to witness. A private ceremony on an ancient land. Deep inside of it. The deeper the better to reach the spirits of the dead.
"Aooooweeeeeoooaaaoooweeeooooaaooweeeeooo" sings the man in a sad wail. Arms up to the sky. Were the gods up there?
"kayakkatakkayakkatak" repeats the woman in a rapid staccato that punctuates the hymn-like wailings of the man.
"What do we do?" whispers Monica. “I really don’t want to disturb any sacred ceremony. I mean, this is like, their church, right?”
"I don't know. Maybe we can walk back before they notice we're here".
"O.K., let's do that."
As we retreat, the young child next to the woman stands up and walks towards the circle of light. The man lifts her up in his arms and up into the center of the light and continues chanting. His long black hair gleams in the concentrated sunshine pouring in from the skylight above.
We walk back down the dune the same way we came in and back up the tunnel until we reached the massive pile of boulders again, this time from the bottom end, like the stairway out of Hades.
"Now what?" Monica whispers to me in the dark.
"Now we climb out," I say, as the wails deep inside of the cave start to get louder and louder, a single man no more, but now a chorus. A chorus that escapes through the skylight, from the bowels of the earth and flies higher and higher on the back of a magical California condor high on peyote until it reaches the sacred mountain of the ancestors that rule above this old land.
All words & images by Max Milano.
Max Milano is the author of Hollywood Expats: A Story of Hollywood, Death & Love, available on Kindle UnlimitedApril 30, 2017
Romance of the Sierras
“Wading through the waste stormy winter…
Thank you for your wine, California,
Thank you for your sweet and bitter fruits.
Yes, I got the desert in my toenail
And I hid the speed inside my shoe.”
The Rolling Stones
When Spanish explorers arrived upon the snow-covered mountain range that separates the high desert from the fertile flatlands of the Central Valley of California, it must have reminded them of the snow peaked mountains rising above the arid plains of Granada and its Moorish Palace of The Alhambra, called the Sierra Nevada. So, in their infinite originality for naming newly discovered places in the New World (the choice is usually a Saint’s name, a town in Spain, or occasionally a Hispanization of a local indigenous name), the range was christened The Sierra Nevada of California.
Nestled among the jagged snowy peaks of the Sierra Nevada, one finds Lake Tahoe, the largest alpine lake in North America, and the second deepest. Its snowmelt waters are crystal clear and run deep, so deep in fact that local lore speaks of divers who have seen Victorian era bodies at the bottom of the lake at a depth of 1600 feet, fully dressed and perfectly preserved by the icy, clean waters. One such body belonged to a young woman, still pale and beautiful after 150 years, wearing a whalebone corset. Local lore continues to say that the diver tried to bring her up to the surface by tying a rope around her waist, but as the body rose from the deep blue darkness, into the sunlit shallower waters closer to the surface, she disintegrated into dust, her whalebone corset the only thing that made it up to the boat that was winching her to the top.
Many Gold Rush era stories abound, including of a mad English sailor who became a hermit on an island on the Lake’s Emerald bay and occasionally rowed out to visit the saloons on a lakeshore town, fighting huge waves when winter storms whipped the Sierras. The mad Englishman could be seen downing shots of whiskey with his 3-fingered hand. He’d cut off two frostbitten fingers himself after his boat capsized on the lake during a severe storm.
But the mother of all Sierra lore is the story of the Donner party, a group of Wagon Train pioneers, who became stranded and snowbound in the Sierras during the bitter winter of 1846-47.
Their provisions depleted, they first ate their horses, then after weeks of hunger, shot their Indian guides for food. After that, they descended into a cannibalistic game of Survivor, with the party splintering into factions, all hell bent on eating each other. Of the 87 original members, only 48 survived the cold and starvation and rifle fights that broke out where the losers were eaten, sometimes without the benefit of a fire.
The Donner pass section of Highway 80 commemorates the ordeal as it crests the Sierras. You can see a Gold Rush era train trestle across the chasm of the Truckee River hugging snowbound ridges, making it easy to imagine what it would have been like to have been trapped in these mountains back in the winter of 1846-47.
These were the thoughts that occupied my mind as we reached 8000 feet on Highway 80. The heavy snows from the winter of 2016-2017 had transformed the Sierras into a winter wonderland with 12 feet of snow under the bright sunshine and mild temperatures of mid-spring.
We left the highway at Truckee, a Gold Rush era town named after an Indian chief, and as we drove up its main drag, the aptly named Donner Pass road, we saw a collection of mid 19th century Western style saloons, hotels and restaurants, all refurbished and enjoying the bustle of Truckee’s newest resurgence as a gastronomic destination just a stone’s throw away from the slopes of Squaw Valley, Lake Tahoe’s premiere sky resort, and site of the 1960 Winter Olympics.
“Hey, hasn’t Truckee become a bit of a microbrewery town?” my fiancée asked as I drove slowly along the main drag, looking for an inviting Saloon.
“The only thing I know about Truckee is that Charlie Chaplin filmed Gold Rush here back in the 1920’s” I said, remembering a scriptwriter friend that was a huge Charlie Chaplin fan.
I did remember that tap-rooms in West Hollywood had started to serve some prime Belgian sours from Truckee so we parked to do a quick Google search that revealed 3 different microbreweries in town.
Selecting the one with the best reviews about their sours, we quickly left the main drag and found ourselves in the woods above town on the other side of Highway 80. Most new hipster breweries follow a pattern that’s very different from the classic microbrews of the 1990’s. Those were usually located in town, right in the main commercial area, and served food to go with their list of hoppy IPAs, lagers and occasional stouts.
But modern microbreweries follow a different pattern. They are hipper, more Belgian focused vs the German styles favored in college towns back in the 90’s. Sure, they always give a nod to their origins, usually in the name of world class IPAs, but the real draw here are the Belgian style sours.
After driving through more woodland and lumberjack yards, we finally arrived at a nondescript building in a warehouse section of town that housed the Lake Tahoe Mountain Brewing Company. A group of grungy snowboarders milled about drinking outside. They all gave us a long, suspicious look as we exited our Tiguan with California plates. Their lumberjack shirts, long hair and goatees would not have been out of place back in Seattle, circa, 1992, only that these guys wore ski pants under their checkered shirts.
Inside, the crowd was more of the same. Grungy lads and ladettes, fresh from working on the slopes as instructors or snow groomers. The place screamed ‘locals only’, but there were Belgians sours to be tried, so we would not let their semi intimidating gaze slow us down one bit.
The chalk board menu revealed a treasure trove of tart, barrel aged sours, some with blackcurrants, some straight saisons. The nod to the 1990’s de rigeur was present in their selection of double hoppy IPAs. My theory is that the skunky IPAs appeal to the stoner crowd surrounding us. We sat at the small bar and surveyed the scene. A pool table, a fireplace, a large retail fridge with an impressive bottle selection of locally brewed Belgian saisons, and, in keeping with the hipster tradition prevalent today, no food, and alas, no food truck outside.
We’re used to this by now, so we ordered our Belgians and sipped them slowly. Fortunately, their bottle selection was great, so we took a couple of their locally brewed Belgian saisons to try later at home.
Leaving the ski-bums behind, we pressed on eastwards on Highway 80, towards Reno. The lights of the casinos gleamed at us from the valley below as we wound down the Sierras into the old school un-cool (but still charming) offerings of the Downtown Reno Casinos.
RENOWe use Reno as our base to explore the Sierras around Lake Tahoe because one: Downtown Reno is only 30 very scenic minutes away from the $500 a night posh lakeside resort of Incline Village. Our room in Reno at one of the 5 star hotels downtown is usually never more than $65 per night, including free valet service (makes a difference when you’ve packed for winter).
Downtown Reno, unlike Las Vegas, hasn’t quite evolved. I’ve been coming here for a while, and nothing has really changed. The same multicolored shaggy carpets, the same crowd, the same cheesiness. But there’s something strangely reassuring about that. While Vegas changes, and grows every year, Reno still feels like that U2 video for the song “I still haven’t found what I’m looking for”, shot in Downtown Las Vegas back in April 1987, before Las Vegas had gone corporate and still preserved all that seedy charm that Reno has managed to maintain, in spades.
Glen Alpine Falls HikeWe got up early the next day as the sun rose above the city, the view from our 28th floor looked away from the Sierras, where the edges of the city end up in miles and miles of scrubby high desert.
The drive from Reno to Incline Village on the shores of Lake Tahoe peaks at a spectacular 8200 feet. The snow from the last winter piled so high that the bears awaking from their slumbers had to hang out atop trees, looking down on 12 feet of snow, high enough to cover road-signs and houses.
The road was plowed to perfection and the sky was a high desert blue, not a cloud in sight. We pass the ‘locals only’ ski resort of “Mount Rose”, families, kids and hipster snowboarders with goatees and dreadlocks march uphill to ski in perfect 48-degree weather. We hit the top of the mountain and can see the deep blue waters of Lake Tahoe, glistening in the sunshine, surrounded by jagged snowcapped Sierras heavy with pines and a very fat layer of snow.
We decided to skip the crass commercialism of South Lake Tahoe, with casinos and bars and nightclubs, but instead veer away from the lake, towards a destination we had found online that promised a hike up in the Sierras to a spectacular Alpine waterfall. Why do they call these lakes and waterfalls ‘Alpine’? I’ll never know, we’re not in the Alps, last time I checked. Perhaps a more appropriate name would be ‘Sierran’ in honor of the Sierra Nevada range that spawned them.
The trailhead for this waterfall was so remote that our GPS didn’t have it, so we pulled it up on Google maps. Fortunately, by some miracle, we were still in range (we usually aren’t).
Google maps asked us to leave the main road that circles Lake Tahoe and soon we were climbing through a burnt-out forest. Ghostly half burnt trees and charred tree trunks pointed at the clear blue sky as if in accusation. We reached a sign that warned us that it wasn’t an officially maintained road, barely wide enough for one car. There were waterfalls at the end of this one lane gravel road, so we pressed on. I was happy to be driving our trusty VW Tiguan 4 with 4-wheel drive, because the gravel road quickly became a muddy mess, with clear streams of snowmelt crossing it at regular intervals. 5-foot muddy banks of snow bordered the gravel path for the entire length of the bumpy ride. Soon we were driving along the edge of another lake, much smaller than Tahoe, but just as spectacularly beautiful. Summer wooden dachas dotted the shore, built above small pontoon docks, but there were no boats on the lake.
At the end of the road we found a small wooden fire station with a red firetruck parked outside. Someone had piled the snow on three sides of the station, creating a 10-foot protective wall of white.
We geared up and sloshed uphill in our hiking boots. There was an inch of snowmelt on the gravel, and a wall of snow in front of us. The trail had been long covered up with what must have been 12 feet of snow. Someone had carved steps in the snow wall, making a kind of snow path, 12 feet above the real trail. We climbed the snow steps and found ourselves looking at a steep path of snow ahead. Massive pines and redwoods grew on either side and a deep snowless well surrounded each tree trunk. We steered clear of the trees because the snow surrounding them looked dangerously fluffy. Climbing uphill we could hear the waterfall roaring somewhere above, behind gigantic banks of snow and more trees.
The snow path was surprisingly compact and it was relatively easy going. It felt right out of “Call of the Wild”, climbing on snow this deep. The snow trail curved and bent and continued rising until we leveled at a snowy hill-crest. We were still standing on a layer of snow that was several feet thick. And there it was, just behind a group of broken redwoods that looked like a giant had snapped them clean midway; a wide expanse of dark copper rocks, with a roaring waterfall gushing down at 3 levels. Welcome to Glen Alpine Falls. Thank you, California, you’re the gift that keeps on giving.
All words & images by Max Milano.
March 18, 2017
Reading Call of the Wild at Jack London's Grave
By Max Milano
BostonThe book was 'The Call of the Wild & White Fang'. It was purchased in a vintage bookstore in Harvard Square that features 1930's squeaking floorboards and cherry wood ladders on railings lining its book shelves. When the book was purchased, the other customers were mostly iPhone clutching teenage freshmen (and women) on late-night book runs that then hurried back into the frozen night before the forecasted snowstorm arrived (and while the Starbucks were still open).
The book then endured a two-hour tarmac-taxiing adventure at Logan airport in pure whiteout conditions, tucked away cozily inside a Victorinox laptop bag as heavy snowfall accumulated on the 777's wings.
The snow forced the pilot to return to the gate twice for de-icing. The green goop of the de-icing liquid competed fiercely against the snow and ice for dominance of the 777's wings. Boston Logan was declared to be under white squall conditions, but the pilot was determined to take off. And take off he did, with a mighty roar of the engines that delivered violent jolts inside the cabin, until the 777 (and the book within it) burst out of the stormy lower clouds and into the calm of a full moon and an ink black night sky at 35000 feet.
The venerable Harvard Books. Since 1932.
CaliforniaOnce back in sunny California, the book sat on a coffee table for a week. It remained wrapped in its Harvard Books bag, while its owners toiled away in the salt mines of Silicon Valley, just to be able to live hand to mouth in the not-so-high-anymore plateau of two six-figures a year.
It wasn't until the weekend arrived, with its promise of Sonoma vineyards and spirited hikes in the rolling hills of the Valley of the Moon that the book beckoned. Didn't Jack London own a ranch up in Sonoma? Didn't the dream house he tried to build there, among a grove of Redwoods, burn to the ground only one month before he could move in with his wife? Didn't he die young, at 40, battling late stage alcoholism like (according to Hemingway) most good writers should? Write drunk, edit sober, Papa used to say.
Jack London never quite recovered from the terrible blow of losing his beloved Xanadu among the redwoods. He vowed to rebuild but his heart and his health we not in any shape to face such a daunting project. He died three years later, leaving behind a veritable castle-in-ruins among the Sonoma Redwoods, just steps from his grave.
The story had all the dramatic elements needed to provide a perfect day of history and nature. The book beckoned to be held, to be packed inside a hiking backpack, never mind the extra weight. It was time to drive up to Sonoma from Silicon Valley to pay our respects to one of the greatest American writers by reading 'Call of the Wild' at Jack London's Grave.
101 NorthThe top of the Golden Gate Bridge's towers scraped marine-layers of fog as we drove along highway 101 North, above the Golden Gate. We had the Pacific Ocean to the left, and the wide expanse of the San Francisco bay to our right. The bay was dotted with hundreds of sailboats that gave the day an air of hurried celebration. As if someone was trying to squeeze in all the blue skies they could before the heavy evening fog rolled in.
The rainbow arch of the Robin Williams bridge came next, followed by the hilly affluence of Marin County, with its million-dollar bay and bridge views and Ferrari dealerships. Then a Spanish revival mission style church hidden behind a grove of cypress trees and roaming cows. Soon after that, we find ourselves driving along rolling vineyards and faux Tuscan wineries, heading towards Sonoma Square and its whitewashed mission church and presidio (the northernmost in the state). There's a square across from the mission church with a 'Bear Republic' proclamation statue (memorializing California’s insurrection from Mexican rule in 1846).
Jack London State ParkLeaving Sonoma Square, we drive deeper into wine country, where forested hills open way to row upon row of vineyards and a little less obvious affluence. This signifies old money, non-flashy but quirky. The type that keeps a 1950's Morris Minor convertible in perfect shape in the garage just for weekend jaunts around the vineyards of Sonoma, Napa and Mendocino County. Or perhaps they take the Morris Minor out for Hitchcockian drives along the Sonoma coast up to Bodega Bay to see the famous seagulls and to hear the sea lions bark beyond the rolling fog on black islands just beyond the bay.
Old money might also keep a red tartan wool blanket in the back seat of said 1950’s convertible Morris Minor, along with a bottle of Macallan's to be shared by a bonfire as waves crash over black rocks and the harbor seals breathe heavily in the fog beyond the break. Or maybe it’s you that's breathing heavily, because you’re drunk and in love and you get to sleep on a black beach with a bonfire, as the fog rolls in at dusk. Because you haven’t lived unless you wake up with your loved one, shivering and wrapped up in wool blankets and covered in black sand next to a smoldering driftwood fire as the sun rises over the hills behind the beach and the gray whales start spouting and breaching just beyond the break. You’re hungover and feel like death warmed over, but you’re as happy as you've ever been because you’re in love. But you’re not old money, not even close, but you're still quirky, or so she tells you before she kisses you good morning out there on the black beach on the Sonoma Coast.
Racing green 1950's Morris Minor 1000 convertible, among the vineyards.
All this I write in a frenzy after gulping a shot of Woodford Reserve Kentucky Bourbon (write drunk, edit sober, right?) at the Jack London Saloon at the foot of the hill that will take us into the gates of Jack’s former ranch and now a State Park. Perhaps I drink because I’m intimidated at Jack’s prolific writing habit of putting down 1000 words per day, no matter the conditions. Whether he was in the middle of the frozen Yukon, or in the steamiest tropical South Pacific island, he always made time to put down 1000 words per day in longhand.
Besides, I feel that he’s watching. Portraits of Jack loom all over the Jack London Saloon. Mostly black and white photos of his globe-trotting exploits, plus vintage Hollywood movie posters of his most classic adaptations: "Conflict", with John Wayne (1936), "The Call of the Wild", with Clark Gable (1935), "The Sea Wolf", with Edward G. Robinson (1941).
My courage hence built up, we hike up to the big house that Jack’s wife built after his death and that now is a museum dedicated to his life and times. There we admire the vintage curios: Carved Polynesian idols, vintage revolvers, a black and white picture of Jack without a shirt and his arms crossed behind his head that's more 1990’s Herb Ritts Vanity Fair cover than 1920’s Kodak Brownie.
Jack posing. Vanity Fair style.
On the second floor an old lady with white hair plays the piano, a vintage piece of music from Jack’s lifetime. I can see the trail that leads to Jack’s grave from the second-floor window and feel that it's time. The book beckons, it even has a vintage dust cover, perhaps it may even be a first edition.
After a short hike among eucalyptus trees we see a hillock looming above us. The hillock is crowned by a knotted tree guarding a tiny picket-fenced cemetery. As we approach the tree, we note the thick green moss on the picket fence and on two small wooden grave markings. I've never seen wooden grave markers before. The graves belong to two Scottish pioneer children that died on the property in the 1870’s. A lot of children died young in the 1870’s and Jack had felt a curious sense of peace up on that knoll. The wood from the grave markers is bright green and heavy with moss, but their inscriptions are still legible after 140 years: “Little Lillie, died Aug 1877. Little David, died Nov 1876”.
1870's graves of two Scottish pioneer children.
Jack wanted to be buried up there with these two pioneer children, perhaps he felt that their presence on the knoll somehow permeated the spiritual vibrations of the land around it. A kind of still-life, haunting, yet still beautiful, that perhaps served Jack as the memento-mori that fueled Jack's carpe diem lifestyle.
Just steps from the two Scottish children’s graves is another small picket-fenced yard. Theres a rough half-buried boulder at its center with no engravings whatsoever. This was the spot Jack chose for his ashes to be buried and so they were, shortly after his death in 1916. His wife’s ashes joined his in the 1950’s. Without the picket fence, this would just be another rough boulder up on the knoll. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Back to nature, back to the wild that created all of this.
I stand in front of the half-buried boulder, pull out the book from my backpack and start to read:
“
CHAPTER 1
INTO THE PRIMITIVE
Old longings nomadic leap,
Chafing at custom's chain;
Again from its brumal sleep
Wakens the ferine strain.
Buck did not read the newspapers, or he would have known that trouble was brewing, not alone for himself, but for every tidewater dog, strong of muscle and with warm, long hair, from Puget Sound to San Diego. Because men, groping in the Arctic darkness, had found a yellow metal, and because steamship and transportation companies were booming the find, thousands of men were rushing into the Northland. These men wanted dogs, and the dogs they wanted were heavy dogs, with strong muscles by which to toil, and furry coats to protect them from the frost.”
Reading Call of the Wild at Jack London's grave.
“California, always a boomtown” I ad-lib. Once it was the gold rush, but aren’t we just the next wave in this chain? Aren't we just the present-day gold rush pixel pushers? The digital versions of a ‘strong of muscle’ dog, built to be used hard, but never loved. Fed but not cared for beyond the minimum requirement to do the job, or until you either freeze to death or collapse from exhaustion on the side of the trail or until you see the light and burst the chains to heed the 'Call of the Wild'. And heed the call we should, just like Jack did. I think that was his message.
Max Milano
Coupa Cafe, Palo Alto,
CA.
March 2017
All words & images by Max Milano.
Max Milano is the author of Hollywood Expats: A Story of Hollywood, Death & Love, available on Kindle UnlimitedOctober 15, 2016
Ireland: The Unforgettable Fire
“Ireland has a comfortable relationship with ghosts. Dublin might have an Ikea and motorways and tourist traps that sell whatever passes for Irish symbols these days (usually Guinness and shamrocks), but scratch the surface (even within the city itself), or better still, take that unexpected exit from the motorway and onto a gravel one-lane country road lined with hedges and farms, and be prepared to be face to face with ghosts, pagan symbols, Celtic crosses and the weight of a terrible history that still soaks the bogs and the green countryside with the sorrow of widows, dead famine children and drowned revolutionaries". Max Milano
"As the failing light illuminates the mercenary's creed
The home fire burning: the kettle almost boiling
But the master of the house is far away". Jethro Tull. Thick as a Brick
Moydrum Castle
The knock came in the middle of the night. The Baroness awoke to the cries of servants and the ghostly glow of torches outside the stained-glass windows. Angry Irish voices outside demanded to speak to the Baron, but the master of the house was far away. It was July 4th, 1921.
The men knocking on her door were all members of the IRA, some had previously belonged to the Irish Volunteers and a couple claimed to have been in the thick of it during the Easter Rising of 1916. They’d started their march from nearby villages, some still smoldering after the British Army passed through the day before, torching many a thatched roof.
It was from similar thatched roofs where the rifles the IRA men were holding had come from. Straw makes a good hiding place for Mauser rifles and revolvers. The men with rifles marched in the dark, wading through ancient bogs and jumping over hedges and stone walls, scaring sheep and scattering cattle. They made a motley crew in their flat caps and fedoras and tweed jackets. Groups of armed men from separate villages met up in a field behind the castle. Torches were lit. Doors banged on. The Baroness, still in her nightdress, gathered her children and ordered the servants to carry anything of value. She must have felt like Marie Antoinette, why couldn’t these Irish rabble rousers simply eat cake?
The Baroness’ coachman hooked up the horses, hustled her and the children inside his coach and cracked the whip.
The horses leaped with a whine into the inky night, while behind them torches were flung over neo-gothic turrets, like some medieval siege. Soon the sky was alight, a castle no more, a monstrous bonfire more like. An unforgettable fire.
Moydrum Castle: The Unforgettable Fire
U2
Fast forward 63 years. It's the summer of 1984, and Dutch photographer Anton Corbijn is driving around the same Irish countryside, looking for inspiration for an album cover. The locals had mentioned an old ruined castle covered in ivy across the fields. Anton must have had a flash or recognition because the castle was on the cover of a photography book he carried for research on this project. It was perfect. A faux-gothic English manor house no more, because by the time Anton saw discovered it, the ivy had caressed the ruins for decades and covered its roofless walls with thick greenery. The band loved it.
Anton and the members of U2 jumped the fence that separated them from the ruined castle, scared a couple of cows, and took that now iconic album cover. When the album made it to stores the world over, the cover made a statement that the music contained inside struggled to make: That U2 was searching for gravitas and weight, both musically and lyrically. I remember seeing that album cover when it first came out, and the impressive photograph said it all: There’s something there on that ancient land, something that spills the secrets of Irish paganism, even when wrapped in the trappings of Christianity, like in the ancient Abbey of Clonmacnoise, across the fields from Moydrum Castle. Nothing escapes the green of the land in Ireland, nothing escapes its pagan embrace. It predates the English and the Vikings. There's something there that can't be paved over by motorways or McDonald's parking lots. It's a sadness and a glory, its ghost stories told in pubs late at night when the wind howls in from the Irish Sea, it’s the spirit that haunts the old bogs and ancient ruins set against green fields, it’s the weight of the Island’s savage beauty and terrible history, and yes, ghosts. Plenty of them.
Irish GhostsIreland has always had a very comfortable relationship with ghosts. The casual visitor looking to check out a “real” Irish pub in Temple Bar might leave with the idea that Ireland, and the Irish, are as jolly as they are commonly depicted around the world, with a cool, “gift of the gab”, and the “luck of the Irish”. Furthermore, they might leave with the impression that Dublin is a modern European city - trendy and cosmopolitan (which it is, sort of).
Yes, Dublin might have its obligatory Ikea by the motorway that generates traffic jams on Sundays for its 99-cent breakfast, plus tourist traps galore selling whatever passes for Irish symbols these days (usually Guinness trinkets and anything with shamrocks), but scratch the surface (even within the city center itself), or better still, take that unexpected exit from the motorway and onto a one-lane gravel country road lined with hedges and farms, and be prepared to be face to face with Irish ghosts, pagan symbols, Celtic crosses, Norman castles, and the weight of a terrible history that still soaks the bogs and the green fields of the countryside with the sorrow of widows, dead famine children and drowned revolutionaries.
WinterOur first experience with Irish ghosts was during the Winter of 2016. Our first time in the Republic of Ireland after been holed up in Belfast for months working on a TV pilot and then Season One of what we’d hoped would be a successful TV show for an American production company. We’d spent our first couple of days exploring the “Irish Disneyland” that the area around Dublin’s Temple Bar has become (with notable exceptions, more on that later).
We like traveling off the beaten path, but it doesn’t mean we don’t enjoy checking out the tourist traps, just in case we’re pleasantly surprised by an unexpected pub around a forgotten corner, or a hole in the wall serving an unexpected third world cuisine in a European city.
Therefore, after doing the typical stuff in Dublin, the Guinness Storehouse, the Book of Kells and the Harry Potteresque Long Room at the Library of Trinity College (highly recommended), we’d absconded to a pub found by a simple Google search for the “oldest Pub in Dublin”. Following Google maps on our phones, we found ourselves crossing several streets while dodging double decker buses in the rain, to be guided through a narrow brick archway down a cobblestoned path to the “Stag’s Head”, a Pub that looks and feels like it probably did 100 years ago, right around the time of the Dublin uprisings, all dark wood and multicolored stained-glass windows. A Church for Whiskey.
Victorian Advertising, on the sidewalk, inviting passersby to enter an alley to find The Stag's Head.
Selecting a shot of Connemara from the menu (the only peaty Irish whiskey still in production) and a couple of frothy pints of the black stuff (Guinness), we proceeded to find a quiet corner at the Stag’s Head back snug. Back in Victorian times, the snug was the only place where “decent” women could congregate and order a glass of sherry. A pint of beer would have been unladylike for a young woman back then.
The Stag's Head: A Church of Whiskey.
A cold drizzle kept tapping the stained-glass roof of our snug as we huddled together against the bone chilling humid air. Ireland has its ways to make you feel frozen and wet at 50 degrees Fahrenheit.
“Feels like Los Angeles in the winter,” said my trembling fiancée and travel companion as she sipped her Guinness. It’s a little-known fact that LA can make you feel as wet and cold as Dublin can, when the conditions are right, usually around early January. The fact that we’re back to wearing shorts by St Valentine’s Day, doesn’t mean that we Angelenos don’t suffer our fair share of northern hemisphere winter, but I digress.
The black stuff settling, time to read the news. The main bar at The Stag's Head.
We had been planning this Dublin trip ever since our work exile to Belfast began nine months ago, and now that the show was picked up for another two seasons, our 'California Dreamin’ had to be replaced with long weekends in Dublin, Reykjavik, and our beloved Paris, where we were considering buying a flat, only that the writer in me wanted it to be in the Bastille district, preferably in an old Parisian apartment building with a Café downstairs, seeping with history and Parisian mould, but my more practical fiancée preferred the more modern buildings with indoor heated parking of La Défense. Guess who won that argument?
“Here’s the Pub”, my fiancée (who's name is Monica) said, passing me her smartphone. The phone’s bright screen lit her pale face like a candle in a darkened church.
“Ok, let’s go there tomorrow”, I said, reading about Sean’s Pub, in Athlone, right in the center of Ireland.
“It dates back to 900 A.D.”, continued Monica, “Boy George used to own it in the 80’s!”.
“Ok, we’re going”, I replied.
“We have tickets for that play at the Gate Theatre”
“We’ll be back in time”.
The Stag's Head: The stained glass skylight at the snug bar.
I have a soft spot for Irish actors, some of my favorite members of the profession were born on either side of the border that rips this green island apart. Both sides produce equally great actors and actresses, so I was very excited about our play the next day. Furthermore (now this counts as my own private Irish Disneyland), it was a production of “The Importance of Being Earnest” by Oscar Wilde. The fact that good ol’ Oscar was born just a few blocks from where we currently sat, sipping pints of Guinness and taking shots of Connemara whiskey, warmed my scriptwriter's heart.
“We’ll be back on time”, I repeated, not knowing how difficult it would be to fulfill my promise if the Irish Ghosts had anything to do with it.
The Stag's Head: Stained glass, the whiskey menu, the main bar.
The Bride of MalahideThe next morning, we left our Airbnb in the posh-ish seaside suburb of Malahide as the pale northern sun was just about rising above the estuary that separates the village from the Irish Sea. I’d gotten up earlier for a quick jog around the village and the green fields surrounding Malahide castle. I love jogging in Ireland, one minute you’re following a wet, muddy trail, the next you’re facing the ivy-covered walls of a ruined abbey with green and crooked tombstones dripping in morning dew.
Malahide Abbey
I paused for a moment to admire the Castle. More like a grand old house with high castle turrets and rock walls. I’d read somewhere that the grand hall could be rented for weddings and tried to imagine having a wedding in the same hall where 14 members of the Talbot family had sat for breakfast one fine July morning in 1690, only to all be dead by dinnertime, on the bloody fields of the Battle of the Boyne. Both a family and an entire country forever changed in just one day. But that’s Ireland for you. When calamity reaches you, it’s often as harsh and unforgivable as the land is green and beautiful.
A turret behind the trees. Malahide Castle.
I wandered into the cemetery in the ruined Abbey grounds and stopped by a white raised tomb surrounded by metal spikes. It was the Bride of Malahide’s tomb: Maud Plunkett, she was maid, wife, and widow in one day, after her husband (Sir Walter Hussey) was killed on their wedding night in the 1490’s. People still talk about it to this day, like a dreadful affair plucked from the scandal papers. The fact that poor Sir Hussey was pierced with a spear by a love rival, who later went on to marry fair Maud Plunkett, added to the salaciousness of the whole affair that inspired a 19th-century folk ballad by Gerald Griffin called “The Bride of Malahide.”
It all starts very well, in the first verse:
“The Bridal of Malahide”
An Irish Legend.
The joy-bells are ringing
In gay Malahide,
The fresh wind is singing
Along the sea-side;
The maids are assembling
With garlands of flowers,
And the harpstrings are trembling
In all the glad bowers."
But by verse 17 things are not so gay:
"The dead-bells are tolling
In sad Malahide,
The death-wail is rolling
Along the sea-side;
The crowds, heavy-hearted,
Withdraw from the green,
For the sun has departed
That brighten’d the scene!”
But it’s the final two verses that convene the sad optimism that permeates everything on the island of Ireland, if only you take the time to explore a bit deeper, or get up a bit earlier for a jog around a ruined abbey cemetery:
“How scant was the warning,
How briefly reveal’d,
Before on that morning
Death’s chalice was fill’d!
The hero who drunk it
There moulders in gloom,
And the form of Maud Plunket
Weeps over his tomb.
The stranger who wanders
Along the lone vale
Still sighs while he ponders
On that heavy tale:
Thus passes each pleasure
That earth can supply -
Thus joy has its measure -
We live but to die!”
The Abbey in the courtyard of Malahide Castle
ClonmacnoiseThis old Victorian poem based on a crime committed back in the 1490s was on my mind as we drove away from the city and into the Irish Midlands that winter morning. The pale winter sun was as gloomy as it had been back in the day Sir Hussey was skewed, his life and bride stolen. But now there are motorways on this green, sad land, and petrol stations too, and Audi dealerships and fast food, and the computerized voice of our GPS guiding us to a 1000-year-old pub in the middle of an island that had seen more sorrow that it can soak up in all its smoky bogs.
That’s when we saw it. Just another sign on the freeway: Clonmacnoise.
“What’s that? Sounds interesting”, I asked my latte-sipping fiancée, her eyes half open as she balanced a Starbucks venti cup and her smartphone in her half-gloved hands.
“It’s an old Irish monastery dating back to 544”
“544?”
“Yep, not 1544, not even 1044”.
“Ok that’s even older than a 1000-year-old pub, let’s check it out”.
The GPS voice complained that we’d left the freeway, so I turned it off. All of a sudden we were racing along a wet gravel one lane country road, framed by the stone walls of farmhouses. The gravel had hardened with the morning frost and our rented VW Golf glided over the slick road with no hope of breaking if any of the Irish cows we could see along the fields decided to step out onto the road.
That’s when I saw it. A small bread van. Small for American standards, but big enough to cover the whole lane ahead of us. There was a small hill behind it that had shielded it from our view all along, until now. I knew I couldn’t stop. It was one of those moments when time slows down and your mind starts to review all the accidents Americans get into in countries where they drive on the left. You only get one chance to react, and one chance only, but if you react the American way, you’re dead.
Perhaps it was our driving vacation the year before to South Africa, or the year before that to New Zealand, that saved us that morning, I’ll never know for sure, but my reaction was mercifully the correct one. I pulled the VW Golf to the left, the opposite direction to what I should do back in California. There happened to be a large barn next to the road, with a driveway just large enough for a VW Golf to skid to a halt while the Irish bread van shot by at full speed. I felt our side mirror on the driver’s side wince and snap, clipped by the van. It had been that close, but the bread van carried on the narrow lane, at full speed, oblivious of a trembling American couple next to a red barn door in the dawn mist.
My fiancée said nothing, her latte survived with just a minor spill, but her terrified eyes said it all. I moved the wheel with my trembling hands and crawled down the path to an intersection bordering a wet estuary. Just a few feet away from us stood the ruined abbey. Appearing and disappearing in the mist, Celtic crosses dotting a very ancient cemetery. Welcome to Clonmacnoise the sign said. We had arrived. We had arrived indeed. The mist made the Celtic crosses ahead seem to be in black and white. The sky the color of lead, but the grass green and bright. Brighter than it should, considering the dim light and fog. If you fall silent you can hear the old ghosts whispering. No wonder this place has been sacred since pagan times. There's something there. Among the waters of the estuary beyond. In the cold black stones. In the frothy white fog. In the sudden rays of sunshine that break trough once in a while when you least expect it. There's something in this ancient land. In the bogs and in the firewater. For now I'm just content to suck it all it all without finding an explanation.
The Old Abbey at Clonmacnoise
All words & images by Max Milano.
September 20, 2016
Mexico Wine, Beer & Caviar
The border between San Diego, USA, and Tijuana Mexico may look like a straight line on a map, but in reality, it’s a twisting village of alleys, stalls, carts, and shops that’s cut in half by a river of traffic and pedestrians going in both directions. Parking lots, money exchange houses, fashion outlets, and drive-through Mexican car insurance booths on the American side, vs taco stands, hole in the wall restaurants and countless pharmacies hawking Mexican Viagra on the Mexican side.
Welcome to Tijuana...
We’re on a footbridge above the river of traffic heading southbound from San Diego into Tijuana. We stand in a sort of purgatory. Not in the USA anymore, but not quite in Mexico yet. In just a few steps we’d walked from the first world of freeways and bright plastic fast food chain restaurants, and into the third world chaos of the San Ysidro crossing
Some may say that San Ysidro is your typical Mexican border neighborhood, only that this neighborhood isn’t Mexico, it’s just a spot on the map, a purgatory on the line between two very different worlds.
As a pale orange sunset descends over the sea in the distance, we run into an excitable babble of African or Creole French. We're surrounded on the footbridge by a group of young African men with backpacks strapped to their backs. Some have climbed onto the railings and are pointing down to the river of traffic below.
Since our crossing from San Diego, I’d begun to absorb the chaos of San Ysidro through a Manu Chao song playing on my smartphone.
“Welcome to Tijuana, tequila sexo y marijuana”, Manu sings to a ska beat on my left ear while I try to figure out what the commotion was all about with my right one.
The young African men were getting more excitable by the minute but I couldn’t understand their French patois. Monica, my traveling companion, who'd studied French in an American school in Lyon, casually pointed to the traffic below us. The cars hadn’t stopped but were slowing down to avoid a middle-aged Mexican man who was sprawled on the pavement below us with a pool of blood slowly spreading like a red halo from the back of his head.
“Welcome to Tijuana”, Manu continued singing in my left ear, “Con El Coyote no hay aduana!”.
Yes indeed, with The Coyote there’s no customs. Was that a coyote lying dead below us? How did he end up in the middle of the busy southbound lane of traffic from San Diego to Mexico?
“You think he was pushed?”, Monica asked. She’d overheard one of the young African men say that Le Coyote was trying to rip them off.
A Mexican fire truck appeared below us and the Africans on the bridge took off slowly as if appearing casual was the key to avoiding trouble with the Mexican cops.
“Welcome to Tijuana, con El Coyote no hay aduana!”
No customs indeed, only that for this particular coyote, his customs avoiding days were over.
Caesar Salad, Caviar Tacos & RevolutionThe next day I check the local Tijuana online news from our hotel room on Avenida Revolucion (Hotel Caesar's Tijuana). They’re calling it a suicide. According to the local news, the man was depressed. Only that, apparently, Mexican men don’t believe in depression (this according to the bartender that served us at Ceasar’s on Avenida Revolucion later that day).
A caesar's at Caesar's of Tijuana. All dark wood, polished brass and black and white photos of the Hollywood stars that dined here in the 1920's on the walls.
“We very Catolic contree”, the bartender said with a grin as he poured our ice cold draft beers in the 1920’s air-conditioned splendor of Ceasar’s.
“We don’t killer ourself”, continued the bartender, “we don belief depresion. Da is for the Gringos. In Mejico, if you depress, you go to un congal (whorehouse/Stripclub), you do a bit of yeyo (coke) for tree day, you come back feel like superman! I hear the pinche mayates (Africans) pay cinco mill pesos each to get to Longo (Long Beach), but El Coyote want 10 mill. But I don now nothin. Ju no hear nothin from me”.
I guess that in Tijuana (more than anywhere else perhaps) there’s always two kinds of news, the official, and the ‘word on the street’. The truth may lay somewhere in between, just like the border, in purgatory.
Welcome to Tijuana, tequila sexo y marijuana.
The local news also said that Tijuana was now receiving large groups of French Speaking West Africans hoping to claim asylum or to somehow get stateside, perhaps with the aid of the plentiful coyotes that work the border. So that explains the French patois on the bridge. Only that the local press didn’t think these young men were from West Africa at all. The local press suspected that the young black men arriving in Tijuana as of late were from Haiti, but claimed to be from Senegal and other French-speaking African countries to avoid deportation from Mexico (due to a lack of treaties between the Mexican government and many African nations).
Welcome to Tijuana, con El Coyote no hay aduana…
With The Coyote there are no customs indeed. That’s why there’s always more Coyotes because there’s always more customers. But perhaps it’s time to stop thinking about the border and head downstairs to Caesar's Restaurant for their famous Caesar salad, because yes indeed, there’s a lot more to Tijuana than the border. Tijuana is a culinarily famous city in its own right, and one that is in the middle of a foodie revival at that, so naturally we wanted to check it out for ourselves.
Caesar's of TijuanaAvenida Revolucion has seen better days. The donkeys painted as zebras are still there, as well as the ubiquitous pharmacies flogging Mexican Viagra in large handwritten signs. The souvenir shops are still there as well, but a number of the terrace nightclubs have suffered a severe case of 'Mexican lightning', or what the local news calls 'electrical problems' leading to fires that of course are covered by insurance because business is down. One of these burnt out hollow shells on the terrace is the legendary Aloha bar, where Carlos Santana cut his teeth in the 1960’s. But we were not here for the hippie days of the 1960’s, we were interested in another, more elegant era, back when Avenida Revolucion was the epicenter of high-class drinking and gambling, thanks to prohibition stateside.
The bar at Caesar's of Tijuana. The draft beer is ice cold, local and there's a house variety
Stepping into Caesar's of Tijuana is like stepping back into the glamour of the 1920’s. Black and white photographs of Golden Era Hollywood stars who dined there adorn its walls. Laurel and Hardy, Fatty Arbuckle, Micky Rooney and others. The place is all dark wood, polished brass, and air-conditioned bliss. A respite from the heat and overall tackiness outside. We sit at the bar and order a pair of draft beers. They carry a lager and a Mexican amber, both brewed by Cerveza Tijuana, a local micro-brewery, plus a Caesar’s lager, also by Cerveza Tijuana. We settle for the amber.
For soakage, we order their famous Caesar salad, and caviar tacos. I sip the amber and talk to the bartender about the scene we’d witnessed at the border the evening before. He's talkative and friendly, but we couldn’t figure out when the jokes ended and the truth started. It was just like on my first visit to Avenida Revolucion back in the late 1990’s. Upon seeing the Donkeys painted like zebras, I’d asked the guy manning it why he'd painted his poor donkey that way.
“He borne this way segnor”, was his reply behind a toothy grin.
The caviar tacos arrived. I’m usually not a big fan of trying to poshen up traditional street food, but this is the perfect exception.
The caviar is black and briny. Tiny pearls that pop in your mouth with every bite. It complements the crunch of the shredded cabbage and white Mexican cheese inside the tacos perfectly. They wash down with the amber beer like the Mexican haute cuisine that they are.
Now for the pièce de résistance. The waiters roll in a cart with a large bowl of lettuce. Surrounding the container is an accouchement of sauces and condiments. Anchovies, a large chunk of parmesano reggiano cheese, croutons. The waiters are all dressed impeccably in white shirts and black vests. They take the art of mixing your Caesar salad table-side at Caesar's very seriously. We're sitting at the bar and still get the full show, only that we have to turn around to face our cart.
The salad is perfectly crafted. With just the right amount of parmesan flakes and anchovies in the sauce. A couple of amber beers later and we were ready to explore what we really came to Tijuana to see: it's budding craft beer scene.
Plaza FiestaWe step out of Caesar's on Avenida Revolucion, a bit worse for wear but determined to find the local bus to Plaza Fiesta. It turns out that the cool kids have abandoned Avenida Revolucion and have decamped to a labyrinthine pile of pubs behind Plaza del Zapato on Avenida Insurgentes.
Spanish Colonial: Plaza Fiesta
We find our bus after walking past more pharmacies, zebra-donkeys and craft shops than can be handled in several lifetimes. The bus heading up Avenida Insurgentes waits for us on a side street. In Mexico, buses wait in street corners for customers. Drivers ask you where you’re going and point to the correct bus waiting to get half-full before it can go on its way. We hop on this almost full minibus. The passengers are all locals, and we’re the only gringos on the bus, or at least Monica is. As the bus gets going we see the downtown shops start to slip by: Santeria emporiums, Seventh-day Adventist halls, taquerias, shoe shops, craft shops, and more and more pharmacies with handwritten signs selling Mexican Viagra, Mexican Ambien, Mexican Cialis, you name it, they got it.
The driver stops to let us out on Avenida Insurgentes. Taking a local bus in Mexico is akin to taking a shared taxi stateside. Plaza del Zapato is a large Spanish colonial building with a Mexican fountain, red tiles and whitewashed walls. Inside they sell shoes presumably. We walk around the side of the whitewashed walls towards a pile of craft beer signs. It’s two in the afternoon, so most places are closed, but we find that a couple of them are open. We pick one on the second floor and sit by the bar. The place has a weird Tolkien theme, with beers named after Game of Thrones (or Lord of the Rings?) characters. The second brewery we hit is located downstairs and we're told it's actually famous (Cerveceria Mammut), but we’re the only ones there apart from the bartender and his girlfriend. She’s a young Mexican hipster girl with a nose ring, black Doc Marten's boots and a white T-shirt that reads: 'Satan is My Sugar Daddy'.
Mamut Craft Beer. Plaza Fiesta, Tijuana.
“I’m in pig heaven”, Monica says as she sips her cactus sour beer on the bar stool next to mine.
“Beers are only like $50 pesos, what’s that? A buck?”.
“And they're pretty good too.”
“Pretty good? They’re bloody excellent”.
She was right. The craft beer here was as good, if not better than what we could get stateside, and we’ve been everywhere in search of craft beer perfection: San Diego, LA, Orange County, San Francisco, Humboldt County, Sacramento, Chico, you name it.
The afternoon extended languidly before us with each sip. As the temperature started to lower and get more comfortable, we began to see more punters come in. Mostly gringos in Teva sandals and cut off shorts and hipster beards ordering pints for their Mexican 'girlfriends'. Time to move on to the bar across the alley.
Border PsychoThe taps at Border Psycho are all glass dildos. Not sure if it was cheaper than proper tap handles, but they sure do the job. The beer is just as excellent as in the other two places we’d visited. There was a grill on the far side of the bar manned by a cook in a chef hat. We order some freshly grilled pork belly and Mexican style pulled pork to go with the beer.
Border Psycho: World class craft beer & glass dildo handles.
“Now we’re really in pig heaven”, Monica said.
I couldn’t agree more. I can safely say that there’s nowhere else in the world where you can find so many craft beer bars in the same location. Plaza Fiesta is a veritable megamarket for a craft scene that could probably be the best in North America if the cartels and the Trumps of the world don’t get in the way. I was living in San Diego back in the early 2000’s when narco gangs had gunfights in the streets. Most local businesses suffered, but now that the narco violence has calmed down in the immediate Tijuana area, businesses are back, and the hipsters have taken over a former seedy plaza and transformed it into a place that most beer travelers must add to the top of their list.
Mexico Wine Country & Tijuana Craft Beer: The MovieMexican Wine Country: The Valley of Guadalupe
They say that the Guadalupe Valley is Mexico’s answer to Napa. It certainly feels like Napa before the mega-corporations took over. It's bucolic and rustic but make no mistake, the wine is world class. The grapes are picked at night to keep them cool and avoid rapid fermentation. They're making world-class reds and oaky whites. Like most of Mexico, it’s rustic on the outside, but posh inside, once you are allowed past the well guarded gates.
To get to the Guadalupe Valley we first head back to San Diego Airport to pick up a rental car. You need to stop at one of the drive-through Mexican insurance companies on the American side of the San Ysidro crossing. After that, you simply drive into Mexico. There’s no border control southbound into Baja California. You can drive south up to 100 miles from the border to the town of Ensenada without having to show your passport. If you do decide to drive further south, you need to find a local police station in Ensenada to get your passports stamped.
We weren't going as far south as Ensenada. After a beautiful coastal drive above the maritime layer of fog snaking in from the Pacific, we turn inland towards Tecate and the Valley of Guadalupe.
Most Americans think of Tijuana as a place for teenagers and desperados, but Baja occupies a prime position in the pantheon of Mexican Regional cuisine. With fresh seafood and wines, it resembles California cuisine or even Spanish. Several well-respected Mexico City-based chefs hail from Baja California. Another aspect of Baja in the eyes of most Mexicans living further south is that the Ensenada and Tijuana area are considered very 'cold' when compared to the deserts and beaches further south the Baja Peninsula. Hence the feeling that the cuisine and wines of the region are exceptional. Somewhat more akin to the cuisine of Northern Spain, highlighting the fresh seafoodbut with solid Mexican roots and flavors.
Mexican vines.
The more we drive inland, the more picturesque it gets. We see goats and horses ruminating along the side of the narrow country road that cuts thought the valley. It’s dusty country, with rustic mountains to the north and east but the spring wildflowers are out in full glory, painting everything in bright yellow splashes.
The GPS tells us we have arrived. It’s a small town in the middle of nowhere. A mission style bell tower with wine barrels embedded inside an adobe wall greets us. We get off the main road and drive down a dirt track, scaring the chickens and hens roaming free all around. There’s a stone wall and a guarded gate ahead. We’re buzzed in and all of a sudden, we could be in a winery in Napa or in Spain. Row upon row of vines spread before our eyes. Ahead of us looms a modern building made of glass and stones. The single-story building is very long and clearly designed to blend in with the land as it spreads for several hundred meters among vineyards. We later learn that the building houses hundreds of oak barrels where grape juice becomes wine. It's where the magic happens.
We’re greeted by winery staff and told to park and join them in the outdoor tasting room.
Monte Xanic wine tasting.
“Welcome to Monte Xanic” the girl behind the tasting room bar greets us as we settle to enjoy the view. The tasting room is a simple bar under a large tarp at the edge of the vineyard. She sets glasses in front of us and proceeds to take us on a journey of their winery, from how they pick the grapes only at night to how they produce oaky whites and world-class reds. There’s only one other couple there, they've come up from Mexico City to check out the Ensenada wine region. They're from Italy we soon learn.
We continue our journey along the Guadalupe Valley. There are about 150 wineries there now, all lined along rural dirt roads that snake off from the main tar road. We pull on to a dirt track at random and head towards a white mission style building ahead. Welcome to Adobe Guadalupe winery the sign says. A film crew has taken over the winery (the Walking Dead they say), but it's siesta time, and everyone's sleeping and out of sight. We see many trailers, cranes and other film crew equipment. We head into the main tasting room to get out of the Spring heat.
As we sip oaky white wine, chilled to perfection, we’re happy that Mexico is becoming not only a craft beer destination but a veritable contender in the wine world that’s giving Napa and Sonoma a run for their money. Salud!
How To Get There
Fly to San Diego and rent a car to get to Tijuana and to the Guadalupe Valley. San Diego Airport car rentals allow rentals as far south as Ensenada. Ask first as not all rental companies allow it. Get mandatory Mexican car insurance near the border (on the US side). Several drive-trough Mexican car insurance shops can be found near the San Ysidro border crossing. There's no passport control by car southbound into Mexico (apart from 'random checks' until you drive south of Ensenada, approx. 100 miles south of the border). Take the toll road along the coast from Tijuana to Ensenada until you see the Tecate exit towards the Guadalupe Valley wine region.
Links:Tijuana only: Cross the border on foot and take a local bus to Avenida Revolucion. Then take another bus to Plaza Fiesta and back from Plaza Fiesta to the border. You can get Mexican pesos right at the border before Mexican immigration (you do Mexican immigration at the border when you cross on foot).
Images & Music by Max Milano. Sample of "Welcome To Tijuana" by Manu Chao.
Max Milano is the author of Hollywood Expats: A Story of Hollywood, Death & Love, available on Kindle Unlimited
