Beats N Burgers

So, the heart of the reason why I ended up in Oklahoma in the first place. If you remember last summer I went to Massachusetts and Rhode Island, states I was able to cover en route to the National Convention of Kappa Kappa Psi National Honorary Band Fraternity and Tau Beta Sigma National Honorary Band Sorority. I am a Life Member of Tau Beta Sigma, having joined at THE Eta Delta Chapter while playing clarinet in the marching, pep, and concert bands of Howard University.

That's me and my friend/ soror Melanie...you all first met her on my Illinois entries

I won't make this a post about the great feats and accomplishments of my organization, but I will say that sorority membership has allowed me to travel to many states and cities over the years. This time, my musical family brought me to the state of Oklahoma- where our National Headquarters is located. We gathered to dedicate a memorial garden in honor of our recently deceased founder Wava Banes Turner Henry.

That's Wava!

So, enough mushy mushy. Back to the reason you come to my blog! Stillwater is a city about an hour away from Oklahoma City. It's the home of Oklahoma State University, and again, the National Headquarters for our two organizations. I'll be honest, there wasn't a whole lot of ritzy glitzy stuff to do there- in fact it appeared most of the city was simply the campus of OSU, which is also THE largest campus of any school I've ever seen. Outside of the actual dedication ceremonies, most of my time spent in Stillwater was spent socializing with friends and fraternal family.

Headquarters!

One place I did get to visit though was a spot called Eskimo Joe's. It was STUPID packed, and obviously owned by a super proud Republican- the owners have signed PERSONALIZED letters from both President Bushes and their wives hung in the gift shop. The letters mentioned their famous cheese fries- something that everyone said we should try. However, we weren't actually that hungry so my sorority sister and I ate very light meals.

Eskimo Joe's

I ordered an Oklahoma traditional food- an onion burger- although it wasn't called that on the menu. Onion burgers started decades ago as a way for restaurant owners to stretch their beef longer. Once beef prices dropped, many just kept it up because the burgers just tasted great that way. 

My onion burger

EJ's wasn't a disappointment. The food was good, and once we were seated we were served promptly by a super friendly waitress. We even got cute souvenir cups with our drink orders. In fact, minus the stupid long wait (which is not their fault) I have no complaints. I DO, however, have an observation. The logo for Eskimo Joe's (as a black woman who is very aware of race issues in my country) sorta bothered me. I mean- it's an Inuit person with huge teeth and squinty eyes. Granted, I am apparently the only person who noticed this. I mean, it would be the equivalent of having a Native American mascot with cherry red skin or an African American mascot with big pink lips and a watermelon slice in their hand. But. They've been around for 20+ years, and seemingly haven't needed to address this. More power to them. I don't think they are intending the image to be harmful or anything...just...you know. Kinda noticeable.

Also ironic they chose a cold weather mascot in a city that was 105 degrees the entire
time I was there lol

Well readers, I still have quite a few entries for Oklahoma, and God-and-finances willing I will be in Atlanta, Georgia in a few weeks. You KNOW I've already got my touristy plans brewing. Until then, thank you all so much for reading along for my journey, and as always, I'll see you on the next adventure!

Proof Museums Can Be Fun- Even For The Reluctant!

My first day in OKC ended with a visit to the American Banjo Museum. Let me add that I was not alone. I was with a fraternity brother and sorority sister who were less than enthused about visiting this museum, but they were humoring me I suppose. We had coupons and a Groupon that made it even more affordable to visit and made it even more difficult to argue against visiting.

The escape from the oppressive 105 degree heat into the museum's generous air conditioning alone was reason enough to pay a few bucks to enter, but (as I, the museum lover, tend to do) really enjoyed my visit here. Amazingly, my friends did too- even if they weren't convinced it was really worth their time.

When you first walk into the museum, you are introduced to the history of the banjo via an 8 minute presentation. It starts with the above grandfather and child having a conversation about the boy learning how to play the banjo. (Interesting fact, they were fashioned after the Henry O. Tanner painting "The Banjo Lesson".) From there you listen about the African roots the physical instrument has, and then move forward through it's place in American culture from slavery to minstrel shows to jazz to bluegrass.

From there you enter into a large, L shaped gallery that has some pictures and neat posters and information posted about the development and advancements in banjo manufacturing and musical influence, but what will stand out most are the dozens and dozens of beautifully ornate banjos. Seriously. When I thought of banjos previously, I thought about hillbillies and instruments made out of scrap metal. These were NOT that. See for yourself:

From there you walk past biographies of some of the more famous banjo players, and then head upstairs to find even more banjos including a very rare 1929 Gibson bass banjo.

There was a very catchy song playing on the second floor (it was actually The Gang That Sang "Heart of My Heart"). It came out of an exhibit that looked like an old school pizza parlor that talked about the band/restaurant named "Your Father's Mustache". It was an interesting surprise, but hilarious thanks to this sign here:

C'mon. THAT is FUNNY! And clever!

At the end, as we prepared our journeys off to Stillwater and Langston, we talked with the lovely woman at the front desk, who invited us to try our hand at playing one of the hands-on banjos at the front. It was a lot of musical fun that I was glad to share with my friends (especially as I gave them a semi-lecture of "See! You thought I was crazy but we enjoyed ourselves!).

More Oklahoma blog entries to come over the coming days. In the meantime, feel free to look at the rest of my Facebook photos from Oklahoma and all the states I've visited for the blog thus far. You can also check out a video I shot of a video in the museum (please don't hate me oh copyright lords and ladies!) and a photo of me awkwardly holding a banjo while my friend takes my picture.

Thank you so much for reading my blog, and as always, see you on the next adventure!

Tips for the Strip

I was in Vegas for 5 days.In that time I did a lot of bus riding and a lot of walking along the famous Las Vegas Strip. This is the part of Vegas everyone thinks about when they think about "Vegas". And it is pretty impressive. Huge casinos/mini worlds with bright lights loud noises all around. It was tacky and elegant all at once, if you can imagine that. This post is going to highlight some features of the Strip and give you a few of my suggestions if you find yourself on your first trip to Vegas sometime soon.

The Las Vegas Strip at night
Image from Wikipedia

First and foremost. I don't care how close you think that next building is-- understand that it is NOT. Vegas blocks put me in the mindset of New York City, in that the blocks were long, crowded, busy, and did I mention they were long? Look, I am an AVID walker...and even I was getting frustrated with how long it took to get to places. Even crossing the street could be a lengthy process- because of the large numbers of people walking around, they have installed escalators to take you up and over streets. Which I guess helps drivers, but easily adds time on to your already lengthy walk.Do yourself a favor, and pay the $20 for a 3 day pass to ride the Deuce Bus.

It felt like Christmas every time we saw one of these babies!

With temperatures that easily rise to over 100 degrees in the day time, these frequent, air conditioned beauties will be your best friend! They don't always stop directly in front of where you want to go, but they get you a lot closer, a lot faster than your feet alone will. At most stops there is an actual employee standing there to give directions and help orient you. Quite a few times my sister and I rode just to see the sights. The express version of this, the SDX, skips a lot of stops and gets you out to Downtown Las Vegas (read: old Las Vegas) a lot faster than the often sluggish Deuce will. 

The Las Vegas Monorail

Another transportation option is the Las Vegas Monorail. It doesn't stop at every casino, but it's even faster than the express Deuce. We rode it from our hotel (the MGM Grand) to Harrah's where we could transfer to a free shuttle to get to the Rio (which is off the Strip) and see Penn & Teller perform. This baby costs $5 each way to ride, though it's cheaper if you buy your tickets round trip ahead of time.

Another option is to hail a taxi. Let me go ahead and tell you that your best bet for catching a taxi is to hoof it to the closest hotel to you, and waiting in line with everyone else- it's nearly impossible to get a cab off the street! I will say every last cabbie we had was friendly, and the rides were reasonable. I don't think we paid more than $10 to get anywhere, and most of the cabs had the machinery to take credit cards (a huge plus for me as I rarely carry cash!)

The Luxor

There were lots of beautiful buildings along the strip, but my personal favorite was The Luxor Hotel and Casino. Shaped like an onyx pyramid, and for some reason beaming a bright light up into the sky, my sister and I came here often- especially when we found out both the MGM and Luxor (and a host of other properties, including New York New York with it's awesome looking roller coaster that I didn't get to ride...) are owned by the same company. The main perk of the Luxor? They not only had the best tasting food from the casinos we tried, they had the most AFFORDABLE food on the strip! Whereas a breakfast buffet at MGM cost us nearly $40 each, at the Luxor, we paid $18 for the buffet- and they have a non-buffet menu with prices starting at $9 for pancakes. Our wallets were very pleased when we found this place!

The famous "Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas" sign

Then there was that Vegas icon I talked about on my post on the Neon Museum- the famous "Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas" sign. Remember how I said that no matter how close things look, they are much much farther away in reality? My sister and I walked for nearly 40 minutes down Las Vegas Boulevard to get a picture of/with the sign. I went at night, following other travelers' advice that said it's let's crowded than in the day- but I paid the price for avoiding the confusion. Because the night is SO dark and the sign is SO bright, it was nearly impossible to get a good picture. There were "professional" photographers there, but they were so busy arguing among themselves they didn't even bother to try and help us until we'd already taken our shots. Take my advice if you wanna see it. Get up early, ride the Deuce to Mandalay Bay (the last stop in that direction) and be prepared for another 20+ minutes of walking. Take the pic early, then scramble back up to the Luxor before it gets crowded for breakfast.

The beautiful Bellagio

My favorite thing of the entire Strip experience, was getting to see the magical Bellagio Fountains. I have been amazed by them, seeing them on different shows about travel, engineering, and the wonders of water. I was impressed by my hotel and all the attractions of Vegas, but when you reach the part of the Strip where the Bellagio is you are quickly reminded that not everyone comes as a budget traveler lol! In the summer, the shows run every 15 minutes, and I was able to catch on of the longer performances, "Luck be a Lady" by Frank Sinatra. You can see my YouTube video of it below:

Well folks, I still have a few more entries for Nevada, and soon I'll be off to OOOOOOOOOklahoma! (Just bought my plane ticket this morning!

As always, thank you for reading my blog, and I'll see you on the next adventure!

Awesome Museum Alert!

I love going to museums, and you will see lots of them by the time I finish this blog up. As a self-professed history nerd, I love them and get a true thrill and exciting tingly feeling being around the ancient, rare, and beautiful trinkets of time and culture. However, I also know how many of you feel about museums....

Image from doughslam.com

I won't take this post to argue about how awesome museums are...but I WILL take this post to tell you about possibly the most exciting and engaging museum I have EVER been in...the EMP Museum in Seattle. With a focus largely on popular music history (think of it as a younger but cuter sister of the Rock n' Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland), the museum also covers major nerd bases with science fiction and fantasy exhibitions too. It's loud, colorful, and a lot more laid back than your typical historical institution...and quite frankly I see it as the direction museums could be slowly inching towards.

Let's start with the building. First off, it's huge (140,000 square feet to be specific). I wasn't able to get a good shot of it from any angle because it's so massive. No ivory towers here folks, this place has steel and aluminum of different finishes and colors sculpted in abstract shapes that make the building seem like a giant flowing sculpture in its own right. It's directly next to the Space Needle, and the Monorail actually travels through an outer swoop of the building.

Space Needle, Monorail, and a piece of EMP

Peeking up to the sky from one of the entrances

image from empmuseum.org

This is the first museum I've been to that features science fiction and fantasy (as in myths and legends- nothing perverted folks!) in a way that makes it accessible to everyone from hardcore, costume sporting geeks to those who have no clue who Bilbo Baggins is. Highlights include original Tolkien books and drawings, the original Lion costume from the 1939 classic 'The Wizard of Oz', plenty of costumes from the many 'Star Trek' series, an original Superman costume, and the silver skull face from Terminator. As a HUGE 'Dr. Who' fan, I loved being so close to a Dalek- even though if I were really in an episode I would be running for my life.

EXTERMINATE! (but not really)

Suit used in Michael Jackson's "Thriller" video

If this doesn't creep you out even a little...

The largest portion of the museum is dedicated to popular music. There's a giant funnel-shaped sculpture made out of musical instruments- that actually play music. A gallery dedicated to Seattle native Jimi Hendrix featured clothes and instruments and tons of video footage of the late guitarist. I gotta admit I knew very little about him before going through the exhibit (and watching footage of him play in the Sky Church allegedly envisioned by Hendrix with a larger than life sized screen that rotated video footage of various music artists as well) but now have a better respect for him as a musician.

Giant instrument sculpture 

Jimi Hendrix poster

Jimi's "Sky Church" room with the best screen I've ever seen

Another great musician from the state of Washington would come years after Hendrix had already died- Kurt Cobain of the group Nirvana. There was a gallery dedicated to them and the grunge movement of the 80s and 90s. Now, as a black girl growing up in the inner city, it wasn't "cool" to listen to rock music the way it is now. So my friends and I would watch MTV and sing along and bang our heads in the privacy of our homes, and only publicly acknowledge liking the rap and R&B everyone else listened to (I mean, we liked that music too...so it wasn't that difficult). Anyway, for me going through that particular gallery reminded me exactly how far I've come in my life- and about how much suicide (an issue I take very seriously) affects people you don't even realize (Kurt Cobain killed himself in 1994- I still remember MTV News interrupting some random video with the breaking news). I felt like I was paying respects to this guy and his former band, and I am so happy this was part of the EMP experience.

Entrance to the Nirvana gallery

Clothes, a guitar and an MTV Moon Man
(VMA Award) from  Kurt Cobain/Nirvana

One of the In Utero creepy angels

One of the most historic rooms was dedicated to the advancement of the electric guitar throughout rock and roll history. It was a very dark room, with a video playing discussing the early blues guitar players that were the roots of rock and roll music. While I LOVED the guitars (they have a ton of one of a kind instruments and some really cool electric basses and cellos too) I did NOT love the woman unable to control her too-old-to-be-disruptive son who was running and yelling.

One of the more interesting instruments there

The last major exhibit I saw there was "Women Who Rock", which sadly ends September 22, 2013. While I enjoyed the exhibit, it wasn't exactly what I thought it would be. Whereas I thought I would learn more about the struggles of female musicians in a music history context, this was more mini biographies with career highlights jazzed up with famous outfits and pretty pictures. It was also a little misleading- often you would read about the career of the artist pictured, but the outfit wouldn't be from the same era. I took pictures of nearly every outfit there, though, and enjoyed singing along to the music playing throughout the gallery. Some of my favorites (by outfit, singer, or both...) were:

Cher's famous Native American costume next to an outfit worn by Donna Summer

Lady Gaga's meat dress

MY IDOL Janet Jackson's Rhythm Nation Hat and Jacket

Well, I could go on and on for quite a few more paragraphs about how much I loved this place. I would recommend you spend AT LEAST two hours there (I spent closer to three and nearly missed my cruise ship because I stayed longer than anticipated). My ONLY gripe is that it's a little confusing trying to find the elevators to move from floor to floor. The highlight of my trip there was the top notch customer service every employee had. The one desk associate even helped me get directions to the (much further than Google Maps led me to believe!) bus stop so I could get on my cruise. Kudos to that magnificent team!

Well, I have a TON more photos from this museum and all of my adventures on my Facebook page. Go on through, "like" it, and I will see you on the next adventure!