Freak Shows, Fried Snickers In Bacon And Other Delights At The New York State Fair

by Dave Seminara on

Where can you eat a triple bypass, get a 25 cent foot massage, count mullets, see the head of a beautiful girl on the body of an ugly snake, mingle with filthy swine and pick up a novelty license plate emblazoned with the Confederate flag? That would be the New York State Fair in Syracuse, New York, which runs through Labor Day. Most Americans hear the words “New York” and conjure up images of an urban jungle filled with sophisticated people who drink fair trade coffee and don’t own television sets. But New York isn’t all about the Big Apple – it’s a huge state with plenty of rural, pastoral beauty and there’s no better place to get a flavor of the state’s small town charms than the New York State Fair, held every summer since 1841.

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I started my fair experience on Wednesday with a freak show. The cavernous fairgrounds are filled with farm animals, every type of fried food imaginable, midway rides and games, psychics, and hordes of people in all shapes and sizes. It’s sensory overload but a tinny voice coming out of a loudspeaker caught our attention.

STOP! WAIT! How could this ever come to be? She has traveled throughout the world telling her strange story of how her body transformed into an ugly snake to thousands of people. See Angel, the snake girl, with the head of a lovely girl on the body of an ugly, scaly, 200-pound snake.

My older son Leo, 5, and I couldn’t resist, so we plunked down $1.50 and headed inside. The “beautiful girl” was a haggard, middle-aged woman whose “story” seemed to consist of nothing more than her maniacal cackling, and we were kicked out after trying to shoot video (see above). But getting ripped off is an important part of any state fair experience, as is sampling all of the incredibly unhealthy food options.

I saw stands selling corn dogs, fried dough, dough nuggets, funnel cakes, and wild hog wings before I finally came upon a stand selling vegetables and thought that perhaps I needed a new prescription. Mushrooms, zucchini and cauliflower? But upon closer inspection, it turned out they were all fried. Phew. And then I came across Jim Hasbrook’s Fried Specialties, a kind of Shangri-La for people unconcerned by clogged arteries.

Jim sells just about anything you can imagine deep-fried: pop tarts, PB & J, lasagna, pizza, jellybeans, cheese curds, and a host of other delicacies.

“Last year we tried selling deep fried butter too,” Hasbrook said. “But it melts too quick and the truth is, it doesn’t taste that good.”

So Hasbrook dropped the deep-fried butter but brought back two other hugely popular specialties – deep-fried snickers wrapped in bacon, and a treat he calls the “triple bypass,” which is PB & J, two Oreos and two chocolate chip cookies, all fried, of course. When I asked Jim and one of his employees, Matt, if they felt bad about serving such decidedly unhealthy treats they were unapologetic.

“It’s no worse than French fries or chicken wings,” said Matt, a rail thin 20-something who said he eats the fried treats all day long. “People put a bad name on fried food because they think it’s so bad for you, but it’s really not because everything gets stuck inside your gut anyways.”

After spending roughly the gross national product of Namibia on rides and games for my two little boys, we almost bit on another freak show – a 29-inch tall woman on display for $1 a peak, billed as a “West Indies Cultural Exhibit.” Instead, we hit some of the farm animal exhibits – cows, sheep, goats, lamas, horses and, my favorite: pigs! In the Dairy Cattle Barn, I got to meet a few farmers, but felt like I needed to keep my voice down, as a host of others that had been up during the night tending to their animals were fast asleep on cots (see photo).

I bumped into Eli Stoltman, from Georgetown, New York, just as he was gently kicking one of his prize swines, trying to rouse him from a nap.

“I’m due to show him in the next round but the little rascal won’t wake up,” he said.

“What’s his name?” I asked.

“Well, he doesn’t really have a name because he’s going to be eaten,” he said, as the swine rolled back over and went back to sleep.

Visiting a state fair is like getting a snapshot of life in rural, red-state America. The food is plentiful, the people are open, honest and approachable, and you see plenty of not-very politically correct things, like Confederate flag license plates, mullet count boards and Captain Porkin’ T-shirts. Every urbanite should go at least once to see how the other half lives.

On my way out, I paid $3 to let a carnie guess my age.

“Take your sunglasses off,” he commanded.

I did as I was told, and he said, “There we go, I can see your age right there in your eyes.”

And sure enough, he nailed my age, guessing that I was two months older than I actually am. I had been hoping for an ego boost but left with a reminder to lay off the deep-fried snickers wrapped in bacon.

(Photos and videos by Dave Seminara)

A Tour Through The World’s Longest Bar In Düsseldorf, Germany

by Josh Wolff on

Taking advantage of a long layover in Düsseldorf, Germany last month, we took a team into the city to check out the reported longest bar in the world.

Bad news? It’s not an actual bar but actually a series of bars linking across several miles of real estate in downtown Düsseldorf.

Good news? It involves copious amounts of drinking and bar-related activities, including but not limited to: stag and hen parties, greasy food, massive steins of beer, shots and no shortage of laughing and shouting. Take a look at our trip above.

Vegetarian Travelers Still Experience Culture

by Elizabeth Seward on

“You can’t travel if you don’t eat meat,” says a person who likes to both travel and eat meat.

But that’s not true – of course you can travel if you don’t eat meat. Contrary to what many travelers and even travel writers believe, you can genuinely learn about and experience another culture without eating meat or any other food your diet restricts. I’ve traveled as a meat-eater, a pescetarian, a vegetarian and a vegan. I’ve watched as others have shaken their heads in disbelief, unsure of why I’d ever travel in the first place if I didn’t want to taste what steak is like in another country. I’ve heard some people claim that travel and meat eating are so inseparable that culture simply cannot be experienced while practicing a plant-based diet. This is misleading and unnecessarily dissuasive.

Culture is a term we use to describe myriad facets of any given society. Merriam-Webster defines the word as:

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a : the integrated pattern of human behavior that includes thought, speech, action, and artifacts and depends upon the human capacity for learning and transmitting knowledge to succeeding generations

b : the customary beliefs, social forms, and material traits of a racial, religious, or social group

Food is just one part of culture. Food is important because we need food to survive. We eat several times a day. We eat socially. We eat emotionally. We love to eat. So let’s get something out of the way: those who do not consume meat (or nuts, soy, gluten, alcohol or caffeine, for example) do still consume. I’ve visited countries around the world and sometimes I’ve eaten animals or animal products in those countries and sometimes I have not. But no matter what I eat, I’m eating unfamiliar food that is prepared in a way that is new to me when I travel. I’ve tried fruits and vegetables that I never knew existed but are simultaneously staples of the diet in other cultures. In that way, I’ve experienced the food of a different culture and all of the excitement that it brings without having to eat meat.

Because we spend so much time eating and because eating is often communal, having a restrictive diet can make it more difficult to eat with others, especially while traveling. If you don’t eat meat, you may have to disclose that to restaurants or hosts in advance. You may have to work extra hard to seek out places that serve what you want to eat. You may have to go grocery shopping while traveling (which is one of my favorite things to do and a good way to gain cultural insight, anyway). You may get lucky enough to have a host who is willing to prepare animal-free food for you. Some cuisines of the world are laden with meat while others are based in vegetables. The difficulty you’ll have eating as a vegetarian will depend on where you are. No matter the case, you will eat and what you eat will likely be different from what you normally eat when you’re at home.

What’s important to recognize though is that food is not the only part of culture. Similarly, an anything-goes diet is not necessary for experiencing culture. If you have dietary restrictions, that’s fine. I think we should treat food as medicine and think carefully about what we put into our bodies as regularly as possible, even when we’re on vacation. If you’re visiting a place wherein locals eat a cow tongue and lard custard, you don’t have to feel guilty when you choose not to try it. You can learn about this specific food, if you care to, by asking questions and by learning about the history behind the dish. Nothing compares to trying a dish for yourself, but you don’t have to try everything to be a good traveler. You can enjoy other aspects of the culture at hand. You can explore the arts community, listen to live local music and dance the traditional dances of the region all night long. You can listen to and share stories with locals. You can go swimming where locals go swimming. You can shop where they shop. You can visit their churches and schools and you can drink their wine.

This idea that culture cannot be experienced without throwing caution to the wind and eating whatever is set before you while traveling is misguided. I’ve traveled and eaten in the places I’ve traveled to with meat and without meat and the difference between the two is hardly memorable at all for me. Travel might be a more difficult if you have diet restrictions, but travel might also be more difficult if you have other restrictions – like being too scared to go free-diving with the locals, insisting on speaking English in a non-English speaking country or not going out dancing because you don’t like to dance. Lest we continue even further down the wrong path when discussing travel with others, let’s remember that learning about and experiencing another culture is not contingent solely on what you do or don’t eat.

Question In Venice: What Would You Cook When You’re Looking To Score?

by David Farley on

“I’m on a boat!” I kept singing to myself. “Everybody look at me because I’m sailing on a boat.” I was referencing the “Saturday Night Live” skit in which Andy Samberg and T-Pain sail the seas making this one simple proclamation. But this was no ordinary sea and I was on no ordinary boat.

I was on a yacht owned by the Missoni family sailing around the Venice lagoon. I wasn’t, though, sipping champagne flutes with a bunch of well-fed, blue blazer and gold button-clad Italian gazillionaires. I was on the judges’ boat at the San Pellegrino Cooking Cup. I won’t go into all the details except to say it’s perhaps one of the most bizarre cooking competitions, ever. Mostly because it takes place on a boat while that boat is racing. I wasn’t sure what food-loving billionaire was smoking when he concocted this idea but I liked it.

One benefit in covering the Cup – besides eating well, of course – was that it allowed me to see parts of Venice I might not normally have seen.For example, I stayed in Giudecca, a neighborhood away from the main arteries of the city and a refuge from the perpetual tourist crush. There were so few tourists there (except for at my hotel, of course) that, at times, the area felt almost desolate. The only problem was that staying there, one is dependent on water taxis and the vaporetti. On the morning of the cooking competition, I accompanied the chef contestants to the Rialto marketplace, a wonderful outdoor market where fishmongers and farmers called out their goods in their very distinctive Venetian accents. There were huge live crabs (threatening to crawl away), squid big enough to feed a palazzo, plus-sized creatures from the sea, cheese, meat and, of course, plenty of colorful vegetables and fruits. I’d been to Venice a small handful of times in the past but I never encountered this market, which is smack in the center of this city. For a town that’s increasingly losing its “real” life, the Rialto market is about the liveliest of live places in Venice. And these people, these real Venetians, and I were standing in the space and doing business where their ancestors have bought and sold things since the 11th century.

I also got to spend time in the 10th-century monastery of San Giorgio on the island of San Giorgio Maggiore, near Giudecca. It was here where the closing ceremonies took place. I strolled around the arcaded walkways, this time a champagne flute in my hand.

And while I did all this, I had a video camera with me (okay, it was my iPod) and when I encountered the chefs in the competition or the judges (who are some of the most renowned chefs in the world, by the way), I asked them all one question:

What would you cook if you were looking to score?

As you’ll see I had to re-phrase the question slightly differently to account for language proficiency and so on. But the answers were varied and intriguing. And, if anything, hunger inducing.

Reconnecting In Maine

by Elizabeth Seward on

She was my childhood best friend and, at my persuasion, she moved in with me in New York from Pittsburgh. For nearly a year, we conquered even the most harrowing parts of city life together. She was a painter. We shared a studio space. We collaborated to create events that combined both music and art. When my band went on tour for the entire summer, she came with us and helped with driving and selling merchandise. But all of that concentrated time together backfired and by the end of that year, we had a falling out. She moved out of my apartment; she moved out of New York. She started a new life in Boston. She got a puppy. I sent her emails every now and then, hoping to maintain a thread of contact despite our mutual need for general distance. She always wrote back, even if it took a week or two. She came back to New York once for a night to visit her friends, including mutual friends. I saw her for a second, but the climate between the two of us was still tense and unforgiving. Twenty months of embarrassingly little communication passed and then I asked her to go to Maine with me.

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Maine was the only continental U.S. state I hadn’t seen at the time. I read about an oceanside, dog-friendly resort just north of the Maine border and brainstormed a plan and presented it to her. After making sure she could get the time off from work, she agreed.

The cheap Chinatown buses that run nearly every hour from NYC to Boston and other major East Coast cities were means of regular travel for me. I arrived to the dumpy sidewalk corner where everyone waits for the bus thirty minutes early, luckily lugging only a backpack. I boarded a subtly bad-smelling bus and did what I always do on buses: alternated between staring out the window while listening to music and focusing intently on my laptop screen writing. She picked me up in downtown Boston. I was happy to see her – relieved even.

We went back to her house in Newton where I met her nearly 2-year-old Boxer and walked bemusedly into and through her strange home. She’d been living in a house that belonged to her godfather and she didn’t have to pay rent, but there was a catch: her godfather’s family stored anything they wanted in the house and on the property. A few rusted cars, all of which were out of commission, lined the driveway. I twisted through the maze between a handful of couches in the dark living room, passing an adjacent room that was so thick with the brush of dusty excess that it served no purpose other than storage. There were a few bedrooms upstairs and old mattresses were scattered throughout them. My eyes scanned each scene with rapidity, immediately finding items to remark on as if I were perusing the merchandise in a house-sized garage sale. The only section of the house she’d organized was the basement, which she had turned into an art studio. I asked her if she’d thought of ways to create more functional living spaces in the rest of the house, but she seemed to think that if she worked hard and made it look nice, that someone in her godfather’s family would suddenly notice the improvement and decide rent was owed. So she left it all the way it was.

We used her car to get to the resort in Maine, a place called The Cliff House Resort & Spa. Barring just a few wrong turns, it didn’t take us long to reach our destination. We pulled in late afternoon and were shown to our room. Our room belonged to the comparatively dingier side of the resort that contained the older building wherein dogs were permitted. No one else was staying in that wing of the hotel at the time and our balcony overlooked steep rock cliffs that dropped off into the Atlantic. It was perfect. We woke up at sunrise to walk the dog and stared out at the orange and pink beams of light over the ocean with gratitude. We stuffed ourselves with delicious seafood, blueberry pie and wine for three days. I had mussels, foie gras and raw oysters for the first time. When we weren’t eating, we were in the hot tub or the pool. When we weren’t soaking, we were getting massages or body wraps. We even had a masseuse come to our room and give the dog a massage, as if to prove to ourselves that such a service really did exist. He didn’t seem to like the massage at the time, but he fell asleep drooling as soon as the masseuse left – comatose. And when we weren’t doing any of those things, we talked. I had a crush on my now-husband at the time, but I wasn’t quick to admit it.

“I don’t know, E. Sounds to me like you like this guy,” she told me.

“Maybe,” I confessed.

Instead of taking the highway back to Boston, we decided to drive down the coast (I wrote about the drive for the Iconic Road Trips series earlier this summer). It took us roughly five extra hours to take this route, but it was worth it. We stopped for coffee (Seacoast Coffee Company) and photo-taking and got back to Boston with enough time left over to join her colleagues for a dinner at the restaurant where she worked before I boarded the 10 p.m. bus back to NYC. I hobbled onto the bus drunk, having taken too many generously poured, gratis glasses of wine from her manager. The bus smelled strongly of urine, as most Chinatown buses by nightfall do in my experience. I smiled, despite my gagging, at the small vacation I now had under my belt. I’d seen a new state, tried a handful of new things and made good with one of my oldest and closest friends. I woke up in Manhattan and took a taxi back home to Astoria.