alright gotta remember the details… the next day we trekked out in west philly and walked around to get some breakfast with the folks we stayed with.

i really miss hanging out there all the time now that charlotte’s family is out in the suburbs so this was a nice little visit.

we went to some spot that had vegetarian and vegan food, then got a craving for some soda so we headed over to a deli spot for that jazz

for whatever reason we hung outside of the bodega/deli spot for a while. i think that’s a jug of iced coffee?

andre looks possessed in this one

really nice morning side light pouring through that morning so i snapped a lot of shots

i was going for that duane michals enlighted man kind of thing here but my  framing was just slightly off

these birds were pretty cool

later on we walked towards some sort of copy shop so drew could make copies of raw life. we passed by some sort of warzone home. it was crazy shit

we headed to a staples, ate some shit junk food and headed back on the road towards baltimore.

backseat motherfuckers

we played at this joint called the bell foundry but man was this show fucking shitty. we showed up around 9 maybe and there was another gig happening upstairs with the gal from ps eliot doin her solo stuff. pretty much ALL of balitmore’s scene was at this show so it seemed promising that folks would wanna let the good times roll and head down to our show.

apparently fucking not. the show ended at 11 and the entire scene headed home with maybe 18 stranglers sticking around. one dude was cool and was actually there to see us but what the fuck. no promotion at all i guess. oh, why is there a pennsylvania station in every state? did they invent trains and make it so that there always has to be a station named after them?

so the only good things about baltimore were the land of kush, a fantastic vegan eatery. maybe the best good i ate on tour, and the look of this venue. felt like the footclan hideout down there. would’ve been awesome if the promoter had told people about it and if people had filled the place in.

this band played

they were ok i guess. no idea. i can’t remember

once we finished playing we were pissed with the whole thing. these teenagers were fucking with drew and stealing andre’s beers (long story, not worth typing). we didn’t want to start a fight and we just decided to bounce the fuck outta baltimore and head towards the capital. we shelled out a few bucks for a hotel room to get some sleep.

the room was fine but holy fuck was it HOT AS SHIT in there. maybe 90 degrees. no joke. i turned the heat off and it was still brutal the whole night. i wanted to sleep with the front door open. better that we didn’t but man

we checked out and headed toward the strip in adams morgan. the whisper of vinyl records was calling.

the place looked totally different since i was last there, construction up and down the strip.

we went to maybe three different spots and i gotta tell you i spent maybe a hundred bucks on records that day. i hadn’t planned it but i couldn’t resist.

the first spot i wanted to go to was closed, i forget the name but it’s the punk specific shop. so we went to the one that remind’s me of kim’s first. i bought some DC specific records first

then we went back to the other spot and it was actually open. surprisingly they had a copy of raw life, which is drew’s zine, up on the rack. i asked him about it and he had no clue how it got there. pretty wild.

the rest of the day was spent driving around aimlessly around road blocks tryin to find our way to monuments and shit. every turn i took was blocked off and i was getting furious. not only that i had to piss and the rest stop i pulled off at in the heart of the monument strip must’ve been a gay meet up spot because two creepy as fuck guys stared at my while i peed. like the entire time. i actually cut myself off and bounced. that hurt. everything was the worst.

the show was stressful because the guys seemed nonchalant about everything and then drew wanted to walk to a whole foods (which he said was 2 miles away) before we played. i decided to go with him but 2 miles is four miles round trip. i think it might’ve been more than two miles too. we never ever made it when dre texted me we were on next. we basically ran back to the show and then found out that we were allowed to play after the current band. i was dead tired but we played well. people didn’t freak out (for any band really) but they were into it. we hung around a bit longer after the show ended but then i drove all the way back to andre’s solo after when we left. i was somehow in the zone. good first tour. no other pictures.