Cowboy Boots.
Perhaps the most astounding thing about traveling is the tourist. We've all seen them, mocked them, or even snapped a memory they will take home in hopes to share with the loved ones back home.
A few weeks ago I took the tube in London randomly dropping in on parts of town and sharing a cigarette with a random 2pm passerby. I didn't take a camera with me to the London bridge, but just my cowboy boots and time to kill.
"I'll kick your American ass!" were the words I heard from just a few feet away. It was 3:30pm on a weekday and I had discovered London. A few coins bought me a stale draught and a tall wooden stool. Just beyond the London Bridge that Dicken's brought us, there's a forgotten tavern behind the fish market that reeks of beer and cigarette smoke. If you get lost among the old pebble streets and tall unlit alleyways deep in the annals of South London you'll find a heavy wooden door with no windows. It's one of the oldest speakeasy's in England and you won't find a sign outside; they don't sell postcards inside. It's a place where women hold their own and men stop in for a pint before they head to the factory, shipyard or other jobs you've never even heard of.
I took a drink of courage bought the two blokes a drink and sat down next to them. You don't buy people a drink you don't know. I ended up drinking the two warm beers. Tommy had a broken leg and used a cane to walk, the outcome of a bar fight just a few months past. The other was probably the one that ran his mouth, but from his awkwardly healed knuckles I let him. We drank alone for several hours with the sixty year old hag pouring us drinks. They both would lean over the bar screaming, waving their hands in conversation telling me about the London that doesn't make the magazines,newspapers or photos tourists bring home.
A few times I touched some nerves as the conversation ran into politics then football. We didn't once mention the museums, the places they'd traveled to or the the places I'd been. What we'd done in our lives, and what we did for a living was as imporant as who was buying the next round. As the tavern became more and more crowded we simply talked as three working types about the injustices of life and the aspirations perhaps we all share in common. They were there to watch the Barcelona game and soon the old hag behind the bar turned into three beautiful bartenders racing to keep up with the growing crowd.
Josey had her black hair pulled back and wasn't offering, but the bearded old men that sat at the bar with their rolled up cigarettes used words I didn't understand, haggling her to come home. One ended up with a beer in his face and the bar cheered and roared on as before. An hour later I was buying drinks for an Old RAF pilot who's name isn't as important as what he'd done in his life.
I asked when the bar closed and I was told, amidst much laugher, "when it's time." So much for clocks and so much for rules. This was the London I was searching for.
I bought Josey a few shots and discovered the penance of drinking with a bartender. Perhaps it was the lack of tourists, perhaps it was the congregation of normal people I didn't fly 3,500 miles to meet. But this was the Lodon I'd take with me. Josey asked of my cowboy boots and the Indians I'd shot from my horse, perhaps it was as relevant as my question about Beefeaters. As we both laughed we finished another rye. She grabbed my hand and smiled before she scuttled away to tend some rowdy blokes across the bar.
The pictures of London I could see from my Marriott hotel room, but the people, the people of London are much different than the vendors at Piccadilly or the Black Cab drivers that drop you off at Buckingham.
As I flew back over the pond my copilot asked me of the places I'd visited and the things I had done.
"You should have taken the time to see the stage of Shakespeare Theatre or the inside of Buckingham Palace..."
I simply nodded and smiled quietly as we climbed through 43,000ft. Perhaps without knowing the people, snapping the photos, riding the tube and visiting the "must see places" seemed halfhearted when visiting foreign places. I'm told the "staples" need to be seen in life, like the Pyramids, the Statue of Liberty, the Great Barrier Reef. Perhaps we can even say we know a place because we've spent a week there. But museums, statues and works of art don't make up a people. People create those things as a reminder, not as a representation. Bloody Staples....
I thought about these things as we flew the 6 hours home high above the frozen Atlantic looking out at the contrails of aluminum tubes bringing hordes of tourists eastbound. My copilot thumbed a Reader's Digest as my eyes remained fixated ahead at the great blue ocean.
I imagined knowing Shakespeare through Cliff's Notes, understanding Picasso through a poster or faking a British Accent under my London Fog overcoat. Perhaps one day I'll visit the Queen's gems, perhaps one day I'll wish to brag about my photo atop the Tour Eiffel, but not today. I'd rather spend a few pounds in a pub that was passed over by Fodors and get to know the people that are the pulse of a city.
My "Eastman-throw-away" can't share those things when I come home. The photos would surely get shown a few times then stored in some box tucked away in an attic for years. But how different is a photo you took of St Peters Cathedral from something you've seen in a magazine? I'm not religious, but how can you recant the feeling of the cold stone floor hurting your knees as you confessed your intimacies alone with only the tall echoes in the candle lit darkness? Life happens behind the photos...I've left my camera at home and bring instead my pair of cowboy boots to help discover. The photos perhaps could remind me of a few things but they won't explain the world...
Sure a picture is worth a thousand words, but what are a thousand words worth?
---Jake
