(The title is apparently a US TV show about local government which I haven't managed to catch yet but is supposed to be good - and was appropriate enough for my day today).
(Actually, scratch that, I've just watched an episode on Hulu - it's very good!) Today I had my final meeting with the team at Bentonville City Council - with the Director of Parks and Recreation (see what I did there?). An early start but well worth it to see parts of the City I've not seen yet on a combined drive and walk along the network of trails and seeing the city's extensive parks. The City has had enough foresight to buy up distressed property when it comes on the market to enable it to be converted to park space and there are a range of different uses - including a dedicated dog park for "off leash" dog exercise. A couple of shots;
After this interesting start to the day I want to the WalMart museum at the original store - for a relatively small space there was a huge amount of information and history crammed in. I did feel a little brainwashed at the end of it, but certainly shows a different side to the business and the man who founded it. And it's very well curated and put together. Finally, the day took me to Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art. For the initiated (like me), this is a world class art museum built by renowned architect Moshe Safdie and funded entirely by Alice Walton, including a $1.4bn (yes, billion) endowment to enable free entry in perpetuity. It's an extraordinary space built with great sensitivity to its location and a great collection as I hope some of the pictures below show - a real sign of the commitment that the Walton family show to the locality that they come from and still live in.
The location of the museum in such a perceived "backwards" place hasn't necessarily gone down well with the art elite on the East and West coast, as seen in this video from the LA Times.
Kind of reminds me of the controversy in 2005 when the Royal Ascot horseracing meeting moved from their usual location to be at York racecourse for a year whilst its home course in Berkshire was being redeveloped. This was great for me as it meant that I got to go to a race meet I wouldn't ever usually see but there were all sorts of comments like, "isn't it a long way away". I distinctly remember John Humphreys on Radio 4 responding in unusually nuanced and subtle way, "well, it's not a long way away if you live in Leeds". (I realise that that will be totally lost on my American readers - sorry). Putting this new art gallery in Arkansas doesn't mean that it's "out of the way" if you live in, say, Fayetteville or Memphis or Oklahoma City...
Anyway, enough provincial chip-on-shoulder ranting, it's been another great day, need to plan tomorrow's fun now!
Something of a packed day today including some serious pre-conceptions squashed, a mini-road-trip and me being presented the Freedom of the City of Bentonville... As per yesterday's brief update I've had most of my original ideas about this part of the country challenged if not totally blown away today. One of my work colleagues told me before I left the UK that for a while he was planning to move here for work and was really looking forward to it. I looked at him a bit strangely and was somewhat sceptical. Well, I'd probably join him on the plane if given the chance now - seriously. Well, maybe I'd hold out a little longer for the Chicago option but this is a strong second! I met with three people from Bentonville City Council - Troy Galloway, the Director of Community Development, Mike Churchwell who heads up Transport and finally Mayor Bob McCaslin. A few thoughts and things learnt;
- Bentonville downtown is brilliant - could almost be a facsimile of a 1930s small-town America used for a film set but it's a living and breathing city centre mixed-use location - shops (including what looks like a great bike shop. I've not allowed myself to go in - there's only so far I can stretch my baggage allowance on flights...), restaurants, bars and offices. I note the irony that this is exactly what opponents of WalMart say their presence destroys but here it is, in their own home-town. A few pics inc one of the original WalMart (a five-and-dime store that's now a museum);
- I knew that WalMart either explicitly or otherwise encourage their suppliers (CocaCola, P&G, Unilever, Kraft, Nestle etc etc) to have an office here but I didn't know how big they were (up to 400 people) nor now many companies have in fact co-located in the Bentonville/Rogers/Fayetteville/Springdale are: around 1400 in total! There are some interesting parallels here with Boeing's supplier base in Seattle and how venture capital and legal firms have strong presences in Silicon Valley. -The City's daytime population pretty much doubles with the commuter influx into the City from surrounding locations but the focus at the moment has been to manage that traffic through more road building rather than any attempt to move people out of their cars. The team know that this is next but haven't yet been able to find a way to ease people out of their cars and into public transit in quite the way we've been able to do it in Nottingham and Europe more generally. - The City's relationship with WalMart is generally very strong but hasn't always been so - back in 2005 the company was working with central government to secure improvements to a particular road and had secured 80% of the funding - the remaining 20% to come from the City. Unfortunately no-one had thought to engage with the team at the Council which led to some red faces and hasty rejigging of budgets... - The Mayor spoke very passionately and from a position of knowledge (he headed up a Bentonville team for Kraft for many years) of the good things that WalMart do and how they operate in an ethical way. I directly asked if WalMart put people out of business and he said that wasn't the case. Like many people I've read books like 'The WalMart Effect' and been sceptical about the value that big-box retailers bring to the consumer landscape so it was great to be challenged in a knowledgeable way on those views. - The Mayor presented me with the Key to Bentonville - as per the photo at the top of this post to celebrate my visit. This was obviously a huge surprise and a great honour.
There's loads more info and detail that I captured but that'll do for now - safe to say that I'm hugely looking forward to my next few days here in NWA!
PS - managed to find some beer at the brilliantly named County Line Liquor today so I'm back in the game on that front. I'm in Benton County as indicated on this map so there are a number of options around but none that are hugely close! I learnt today that there's a ballot inititive (referendum) to make the county 'wet' at next week's vote.
PPS - longtime readers will be excited to hear that I got a haircut today - a snip (haha!) at $13.
Tired after a long day of travel (in no way do I regret saving £30 by booking a flight rather with two changes rather than a direct one to get me from Houston to Bentonville - oh no) but thought I'd just jot down a few thoughts on Bentonville / Arkansas so far. Walmart brings me here - and along with Detroit is probably one of the highlights of the trip for me in terms of my research project for the Roosevelt Scholarship. In no particular order; - when flying into Northwest Arkansas airport I was struck by how green the countryside was. I'd developed this mental image of Bentonville as a sprawling industrial city but it's a pretty small place (about 35,000 people) and set in some great countryside - not for nothing is Arkansas called 'The Natural State'. I think I'll fit in a visit to the Ozark National Forest whilst I'm here. - in the airport the majority of adverts on the walls are for companies focusing on retail and Walmart - offering to help with your supply chain, merchandising, sales etc etc - first sign of a true company town. - the map you get with your hire-car shows all the Walmart head office locations alongside hotels and restaurants - nothing else is worth a mention... - Benton County is dry - something I discuss here but had totally forgotten about. Had I remembered I might have saved myself 20 minutes wandering around a Walmart wondering where they'd put the beer... Meetings with Bentonville City Council tomorrow - more to follow.
Just a brief post to talk about some of the amazing food that I consumed this weekend just gone. I'm fairly sure that I've put on a lot of weight so far this trip and this weekend won't have helped. Back into cycling and running when I get home I think! In no particular order, we went to the following places with my capsule review alongside. Empire Cafe. An excellent lunch and chance to catch up with Brad and Louise, nice shady patio too and what looked like a great strawberry flavoured soda for the kids. Hugo's. Wow. Just wow - what a great place. A cool vibe, with a mix of couples, families and business meetings. I had the Barbacoa which featured some of the tastiest lamb I've had in a long time and also enabled me to learn a new word - cilantro. Oh, and the Oaxacan Rita margarita was excellent - a real smoky taste.
House of Pies. This was a welcome addition to the afternoon when flagging from a full day (with a two-year-old) at the Museum of Natural Science. I can personally vouch for the Apple and the Texas Pecan Fudge looked suitably artery filling...
Rudy's BBQ. This place was an excellent Saturday night choice - real rib-sticking stuff but unpretentious and laid-back. You order at the counter and get a kind of plastic crate to load your meat up into - we had a mix of moist brisket (to die for!), ribs and sausage. Plus the sides were excellent too. You lay your own table with butcher's paper and get stuck in - highly recommended!
Finally, we went for a brilliant brunch at a Mexican place and I had the best virgin Bloody Mary I've ever had - if only I could remember the name of the place! My Huevos Rancheros was phenomenal - perhaps second only to 'Kiosk' at the end of my road in Nottingham, as discussed here - but then I would say that wouldn't I!)
I knew that Houston had a rep for good food but I hadn't realised quite how great it was going to be - no wonder they eat out the most of all Americans!
The other surprising thing about Houston was how green it was. We went for a walk in Hermann Park but even outside this the streets were very green and leafy - a function of the kind of neighbourhood I was in I suppose but even so.
When I worked out that I'd be able to pass through Houston and catch up with an old university friend Brad and his wife Louise and son Sean I was keen to experience some real American football. Having been to see Leicester Falcons play once and been a bit underwhelmed I really wanted to see what the fuss was all about! Unfortunately the Houston Texans were out of town the weekend I was there but Brad assured me that a trip to see his Alma Mater, Rice University play on the Saturday would be just as good. We headed over just after 11.30 to try to catch some tailgating which there was a small amount of, as below, but then headed straight into the stadium for the main event. I'd been given a quick briefing on the rules before getting there (which did remind me of the hour I spent trying to explain cricket to my hosts in Seattle - thanks for being patient with my stupid questions Brad!) but I was still not sure if I'd follow all the action.
In a slightly surreal moment a guy came up to us at the queue for the ticket office and handed over three tickets with the words, "You need tickets? Here take these" and wandered off with no request for payment - bargain!
The game was against Southern Mississippi University whose mascot is a Golden Eagle - a fair foe to face off against the Rice Owl (as seen at the top of this post). The first thing that strikes you when entering the stadium is the sheer scale. Rice is a pretty small university even by UK standards - c. 4000 undergraduate students - but the stadium holds 47,000 people! There weren't that many people there on this slightly chilly (for Texas!) Saturday in October I can assure you. (As an aside the stadium was where JFK made his famous declaration that we go to the moon because it's hard, not because it's easy: "We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade
and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they
are hard, because that goal will serve to organise and measure the best
of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are
willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we
intend to win, and the others, too". And apparently this is the one time that the stadium was filled to it's old capacity of 70,000 people). And apart from the scale of things, the spectacle is much more impressive than even a professional sport game in the UK - the players run out onto the pitch through an inflatable tunnel and dry ice and there's a proper half-time show (of dubious quality admittedly but, still).
I won't try to do a play-by-play account - you can get that here but let's just saw that it was a great afternoon's play - probably more enthralling than the baseball (my report of that here) as although it's similarly stop-start in terms of the action, when things get going they really get going - I was cheering good plays and abusing the referee with the best of them by the end of it!
Not sure it's quite supplanted cricket in my ranking of sports to go and see (and I certainly wouldn't get up at 1.30am to get tickets for it) but I loved the authentic experience and might be tempted to follow a professional team in the future. The NFL are committed to bringing a series of games to Wembley and according to this there might be a plan to create a UK team to play in the NFL in the future - bring it on!
Or, "Travelling for 15 Hours and Still Being in California". I left Yosemite early-doors to make sure that the rest of my day's travel got off to a good start - and glad I did as it was a bit of a marathon! I drove for four hours across California - which was just a beautiful as the way into Yosemite although I took a slightly different route. The only radio station I could get a reliable signal for played solely country music which was an interesting accompaniment. Most interesting was the constant political advertising (both pro and anti) for Adam Gray - not a politician who had previously crossed my radar and running for a relatively junior position he certainly has provoked some serious emotions - the attack ads were really vicious and the responses to them no less trenchant! Made it to San Jose safely enough (via a small detour to try to find a petrol station before giving back the hire car) and was very early for my flight to LA. But to be honest I was grateful of the chance to just sit down and chill-out: I'd been either walking or driving for the last three days so it was nice to just do nothing. Flight was fine, if anything the internal flights have very quickly lost any glamour they might have had and are just a bit tedious now and I successfully negotiated LAX's huge number of terminals (and satellite terminals) to find the departure location for the FlyAway bus to the city's Union Train Station. This was very cheap ($7) and very efficient - negotiated through rush-hour downtown traffic in about 40 mins. So I ended up very early in the station ahead of my second Amtrak trip - all the way to Houston. Had resigned myself to a terrible station dinner and sitting in some uncomfortable seats but happened to stumble across Traxx Restaurant which looked nice and so decided to treat myself to some proper food. For less than £30 I got a two course meal with wine and the opportunity to sit in a very nice location whilst I waited for my train - eat your heart out Burger King! Eventually I thought I'd outstayed my welcome so wandered over to see if the train was ready yet and was able to get on and make myself comfortable in my sleeping compartment. I was taking the Sunset Limited so was hoping for scenery as good as that as I saw on my first Amtrak trip. I was a little disappointed - essentially West Texas is a lot of cactus and desert and not a lot else - there was little in the way of settlements and other action that broke up the Montana scenery.
One photo and I'm going to try to upload and video that I took on my phone - so poor quality but will give a sense of it I hope!
Eventually arrived in Houston and was picked up by my friend Brad. Despite living here for most of his life, Brad had to look up where the train station was - and I don't blame him to be honest, it was basically a shed and one track - compared with the incredible art-deco and impressive stations in other cities, it's nothing at all that you'd notice if you weren't looking for it! Brad took me over to the house and it was great to see Louise his wife again and also meet two new additions to the family - Ginger the dog and Sean their two year old son who is a real star! More to follow including how I've lived up to Houston's reputation as the city that eats out the most in America and my trip to an American football game - I know you're both looking forward to that Gary and Alex N!
Another cold night and I woke up to very stiff limbs after the exertions of the last two days. Still, was determined to make the most of my last day in Yosemite so I forced myself out of the bed and out to face the world! At least it had stopped raining - the major hazard now was being hit by snow or ice dripping off the trees. I decided to get out of Yosemite Valley and see some of the rest of the National Park. I understand that most visitors don't ever leave the Valley so I decided to buck the trend and see what else was out there. I'd also read about the giant Sequoias and thought that a visit here wouldn't be complete without seeing them. This entailed a drive of around an hour to just beyond Wawona and I was a little trepidatious to do this drive given the change of weather over the last couple of days. However, all the "Snow Chains Required" signs were firmly spun away from the road and unilluminated so I pressed on. The drive was quite pleasant actually with very few other cars on the road and the roads were by-and-large dry and clear. It was noticeable however that the snow at the side of the road suddenly appeared once I passed 5000ft of elevation. There were a number of look-out points along the way but I pressed on to get to the parking area at Mariposa Grove as quickly as possible. In the end, the biggest stress was finding a parking space and enduring the queue for the toilets at Mariposa Grove - phew! In the summer there is a tram (sic: actually a sort of open air minibus) available to take you around the Grove but I eschewed that and pressed on on foot. There was a really good explanatory guide available for just 50c that included a map and explanatory text. The trees really are incredible - at least 2000 years old and so resilient. I learnt that they actually thrive on the regular fires that occur in the forest and their roots can spread for 70metres or more underground. I pressed on beyond the usual tourist route and up to Wawona Point which offered some great views out over the valley. And on the return I went down the road rather than the path which I pleased I did as I meant I got to see the little beauties you can see below. Some photos offers a better description than any of my text...
This is one of the first Sequoias that you see and the one that many people turn around after seeing. He is a beauty but there are some treasures later on too.
Like this, a replacement for the famous "drive-through" tree that eventually succumbed to the damage that that carving did to it. You can walk through this dude and it is really amazing to get a sense of the scale and size when you're inside it.
This is the original tunnel tree, left in its felled state as a reminder of the damage that past generations have done to the trees and the neighbourhood in general.
These two shots are from the Wawona Point lookout. Note the snow on the mountaintops alongside the lush green valley below. And the two smoke streams in the second photo - I wasn't sure if they were from residential locations or were forest fires.
Tomorrow I leave Yosemite at the crack of dawn to: (deep breath) drive to San Jose, get a flight to Los Angeles, then a bus to LA Station and a train to Houston. I then get to relax on the second of my Amtrak journeys (36 hours of food, scenery and occasional stops). Plus I'm really looking forward to seeing my friend Brad who I met at university in my first term and haven't seen since - it's a testament to the strength of the friendship developed in those ten weeks that he offered without hesitation to host me for a weekend on my trip. Can't wait!
