Yup, that’s Misty hanging on the balcony of the Thunderbird Lodge in downtown Redding, CA waiting for a bag of crystal from Darryl who lives in his van at the Stardust Motel.  Or maybe she’s just waiting on me, so we can get the hell out of Redding and head up to Dunsmuir, CA for a snowy weekend of Real Americana.  Redding is a beautiful downtown, especially if you like signs.  Otherwise it’s a maze of streets that don’t go anywhere, and mess of strip malls and big box stores.  Except downtown.  Downtown is a retro paradise with cheap motels, taquerias, and cocktail lounges.  We hung out at the T-Bird, then hightailed it to Dunsmuir, formerly Pusher, CA , a little railroad mountain town buried in a blizzard.  Dunsmuir is amazing, and if you don’t like river swimming in the frigid Sacramento, check out the community pool or the private pool at the Cave Springs Motel…

The slideshow: Redding to Dunsmuir, CA

The Americana Lodge, the Stardust Motel, and the T-Bird Lodge and Pool, all in beautiful downtown Redding, CA (from top).

Cave Springs Motel, downtown Dunsmuir, the Dunsmuir Cafe, a mural in downtown Dunsmuir, the community pool, and Misty and David outside the California Theatre (from top).

No, no…not the one with David Bowie.  He’s English for fuck’s sake!  But I did take some liberties with the Clash in this A-maze-ing video.  Though not Americana, the hay labyrinth at the Arata Pumpkin Farm more than compensates.  If you have the means, please put the wheels in motion and roll down to Half Moon Bay.  This place is fantastic, and after petting the Billy Goat, your hand will smell like Chevre…not American, but cheese nonetheless.

Momma say: “you gotta love americana.”

Yes indeed momma. You do. And Fort Bragg knows it. And the Lion’s Club knows it. And Briana knows it. And every damn sweetheart at the Electric Festival knows it.

Misty and I are driving down Hwy 1 south out of Fort Bragg. We just finished a plate of Nachos and some pints at the North Coast Brewery. I watched two guys there put their cell phones together like competitive Gameboy, and try to expedite a file transfer from Blackberry to Blackberry. It was amazing.

Anyway, south down Hwy 1, and theres some kinda neon blazing out of the West. It’s a carnival, fronted by a Mini-Golf course, and it’s my birthday weekend. Coincidence? Definitely not. It was ride time.

They had the Demon drop renamed Super Shot, the Zipper, the Sky Swings, and some other ride mimicking hanggliders on a Merry-Go-Round platform. It was the most exciting thing since I got my Helene Curtis dryer chair with three heat cycles.

We bought 20 tickets for $20 bucks. Misty grabbed some cotton candy, and we proceeded to get dizzy. First up, Sky Swings. I’m giggling like a wisdom tooth patient video taping everything in sight in love with shaky cam and the kids are going nuts. Killer Mexican three-piece suits with hats everywhere, boots, buckles, and White-Ts. And makeup.

Zipper is a deathtrap. Misty pointed out that suspended 40′ in the air attached to a steel oval welded to a hydraulic arm and revolving on an axis locked inside a steel cage with my head smashed into my neck and knees dislocated might be dangerous. I laughed because its a really ridiculous situation to be in. Especially since its a carnival and if there’s a fire, I’m burning alive watching my thighs melt into the safety bar while the blue Pacific mocks me with its soothing coolness. But then the damn Zipper starts moving again, and you’re spun around in mulitple dimensions of the degree 360, like Space Camp should be, and it’s so hard to be scared. Unless you’re Misty.

Briana rode the Hang glider Merry-Go-Round 3 times. We joined her on the 3rd. She was pretty calm, about 7 or 8 years old, Carnival was just passing the time. I think the footage speaks for itself.

Lion’s Club gets serious applause for this thing. What a crew. Best birthday gift they could’ve presented. Except of course if the parking lot guy would’ve put down his glow wand, ripped off his safety vest, and offered me his LC Satin Jacket, Fort Bragg Chapter. That would’ve been something.

Sweet Mary. We rolled out 6 deep to Sacramento looking for trouble and what did we find? A cinderblock shop building with a double steel door guarded by an armed mercenary and people exiting by the droves with brown paper sacks. Charlie was baffled. He kept asking what we thought was going on in there and all we could come up with was weed. Lots of weed. And probably legal. Or legal enough to be that damn belligerent. There was a lot next door, chainlinked 14′ high with razor wire. Inside was a gravel-paved vacancy of weeds and a transmitter, and chickens. A chicken concentration camp. Where nice chickens, probably artists go to die a gray soviet death of gravel and birdseed. Across the street was a body shop, and I watched a pimped-out purple pickup haul a purple single prop plane out of the depths of hell. It parked on the curb, a Honda civic roared out, then purple pulled right back inside and the steel roll-down door fell shut.

Sims Diner is on Broadway, right in the middle of all that amazing activity. What a street. It’s a tiny one room hole in the wall where “Mama Sim” cooks up the most fantastically buttery and funky soul food in the Valley. Walking in to the TV blaring SciFi, the dining room was dynamite. Sourstraws waiting on the table for us (Brant had one), perfectly charming plastic tablecloths, and an empty buffet line set the scene. On the walls were pics of Malcom and the Panthers, and the best little kid on earth scrambled around shy and high as a kite on sugar, sometimes screeching an attention grabber at the lot of us. After some time, and I do mean some time, we ordered. This is a patient place, as in you better damn well bring your patience. It ain’t fast food, for that matter, it ain’t slow food either, as in “slow food movement.” This is deep fryer paradise, and a literal creamery of delight. I got the chicken and waffle special. Misty had a porkchop, grits, and some sides. Charlie got the chicken fried steak and eggs, and a side order of biscuits and gravy. Dani and Siobhan both had grilled cheese with super salty fries to Siobhan’s delight. Cans of coke to drink, and lively discussion topped off the experience. Not from us, but from another table of youngsters from the neighborhood who got the “buffet.”

“Ya’ll got the buffet?”

“Yeah. It’s in the back?”

First of all, if a buffet is “in the back,” then it’s not a buffet. This point was later verified by Mama Sim herself, when she chastised the two young’uns for trying to take-out an order of greens. Apparently, if you’re at a buffet, you can’t get it to go. I looked up buffet tonight:

1. a piece of furniture that stands at the side of a dining room; has shelves and drawers
2. a meal set out on a buffet at which guests help themselves

Perhaps Mama Sim goes with option #1: furniture at the side of the dining room with shelves and drawers, cause guests sure as hell weren’t helping themselves. Instead, they had to order plates of greens and such, and were wearing out dear Mama Sim. I won’t go into detail on the actual altercation, cue Brant, but in the end, I learned a valuable lesson from Mama. Don’t ever cross my own race, because it just ain’t right. It’s whats keeping us all down.

Hell yes Mama Sim. You make a damn fine chicken and waffles ’cause the butter and syrup are all melted together in the little pitcher and because I love your style. We all left Sims to great enthusiasm for our return, being such polite nice kids. The bill for six of us, under $60, even with sides and tip. Damn fine soul food.

Sweet. I can now consider myself a so called blogger, for whatever that may be worth. Let’s get into the background of this so called “real americana”. The original idea came to me in a very different form, as I was thinking about what to do after graduate school. The immediate response and most obvious was of course to get a job, make money…and then what? Where was, nay where is the satisfaction in that? I absolutely forbid the idea of my life becoming a reiterating Dilbert strip. So, my obvious response to this scenario was “Fuck That!” which honestly leaves me between somewhere the line of living with my parents or bumming change for the rest of my life. So, I compromised and came up with the solution that ever high school graduate determines is the event that will forever change the souls of not only themselves but everyone he or she may encounter. Road trip. Yeah, a road trip, but this would be no ordinary trip by horseless carriage. No, this would be the road trip that would connect me back to my roots. No lasers, no computers, and most importantly no arrogant assholes to deal with on a daily basis. This would be a road trip sampling the “best” diners and the “best” bars in the shitting small towns that no one would ever visit as it is not a direct exit of the interstate. Of course, ideas often are never fully realized. So, start out exploring the local area. Who knows, maybe in the end it will happen. But for now, this is the beginning. Lets get down to the nitty gritty.

D dubya and I randomly stumbled across this oasis of americana on our way to the bike shop. Of course my immediate attention was to the title “Pancake Circus” followed by the astonishment of the seafood text in the “Steaks Seafood Salads” subtitle. Seafood and Pancakes…glorious. However, I should also point out that whenever we mentioned this to our friends, well…needless to say our enthusiasm was shared between the two of us and no one else. Curiously enough, seafood was not to be found on the menu anywhere. Disappointing to say the least. Other aspects definitely made the experience worthwhile though. Cheap circus clowns hanging from the ceiling, short order cooks wearing toque’s and for whatever reason safety glasses, a sassy waitress, and probably one of the most random things I have seen in a restaurant outside of Montana or Nevada would be Keno. Ahh…who doesn’t love playing keno after church on a Sunday morning while munching down some on questionably delicious pancakes.

As I said earlier, no seafood. Which in retrospect is most likely a good thing as I was severely hung over during this excursion. However, I still feel robbed on a purely metaphysical aspect. Instead of my whimsical dreams consisting of an exotic dish of lobster tail served on top of a wasabi based syrup over a fluffy blanket of pancakes, I chose the “Pancaked sandwich” . As true to the name as you could ever get, picture a club sandwich-replace the bread with pancakes, the turkey and bacon with a sausage patty, and the vegetables with a hard fried egg, the mayonnaise with an abnormal mound of butter and voila! you have the pancake sandwich.

I honestly wished that I could say it was delicious without lying to you, but hey who says I can’t. It was damn fucking good. Take my word for it, for I will not lead you astray. What else would you expect from this place? To add to this incredibly mediocre meal was the mediocre coffee. On the plus, It was bottomless so drink up. Splash a little milk, by a little I do insinuate enough to make a mini latte, some sugar and if Jesus himself were drinking this coffee, he would of course give it the good ol’ American thumbs up.

On the back of your ticket is a questionnaire to rate the performance of the food and the service. In the extreme possibility that you or your loved one was not satisfied with either, a sad clown with a popped balloon will somehow convey this to the owners and managers.

In the end I will leave you with this. What would have been a top notch place in the early days has sadly become a haven to only those you experienced it first hand back in the day and to those who wished we had, such as myself and my friend.

Hell yes! At the Pancake Circus. This is not your typical circus. Though I confess, the last circus I went to was with Grandpa Welsh at some arena in Cincinnati and the only food I inhaled were Cheese Balls by Planters. Which are excellent. But they’re not pancakes.

I don’t even like pancakes, but I like the idea of a Pancake Circus. A place where Pancakes tame lions and ride bicycles across tight ropes. A place where there’s a Bearded Pancake, or maybe a Pancake with three boobs. There’s none of this at the Pancake Circus. There is however, a suspicious amount of iconography reminiscent of Winnie the Pooh, a pretty substantial Clown Painting collection, vinyl booths and an inviting counter, chefs with tall hats and safety goggles, a waitstaff of extraordinarily personable gals, and lots of coffee.

The food sucks. That is to say, I don’t like pancakes and I’m eating at the Pancake Circus. I ordered the corned beef hash, as I have a tendency to do, thanks to a long running experiment where I investigate the origins of corned beef hash. I also don’t like corned beef hash, but I sacrifice for science. My sample size is steadily increasing (n=23), something I’m very proud of. If you’re curious, corned beef hash bears the surname Hormel and probably arrives via Sisco. Needless to say, the corned beef hash is no good at the Circus. I suggest the Big Top Breakfast, as it was suggested to yours truly by Irene, our lovely waitress.

Original CBH: http://hashthingsout.blogspot.com/2007/11/bite-of-history.html, an amazing resource for corned beef hash and real americana-esque postings on the quest for CBH in Seattle.

Pancake CIrcus CBH!

The coffee was excellently mediocre in a way that my tastebuds, barely rested after an evening of Buddy Weiser and Joe Camel enjoyed. The cream splashed into brown mug like a white knight rescuing my mouth from the bitterness of overroasted beans, and then all at once, life was perfect. Until I ate Pancake Mountain, with it’s snow cap of whipped butter and avalanche of syrup. It made me ill. Seriously. I spent the next three hours slightly nauseous and woozy. And I only ate half a mountain.

The crowd varies.

Cute crowed at the PC

First time at the Circus I watched a large group of folks playing Keno and occasionally taking a bite out of Pancake Mountain. This time, it was a nicely mixed crew, and Big Money and I had a field day taking pictures. Especially of the table.

Tony the Tiger’s Bail Bonds!

The point of this site isn’t to review, but to document. That said, this place is perfect on a hot day, on a cool day, on a rainy day, on any damn day. Just don’t get the hash, or the pancake sandwich, or the chicken fried steak and eggs. Or do. Because it’ll make you happy. Happy to know the food sucks, you’re ill, and you don’t care. And that’s what it’s all about. Clowns, safety goggles, Keno, Pancake Sandwich, nausea, and some shitty coffee. Dreamy.