Thursday night/Friday morning was our second stop at a Denny’s for the tour. It actually took us a bit to find one. Some of the locations that came up in the GPS, well, there just was not a Denny’s there. Who knows. Anyway we found one around 3am, we ate our food, parked the van at a nearby lot and got ourselves a bit of rest.
We arrived in Philadelphia around lunch time. Paul h
ad remembered hearing about some great places to get “the best” cheese steak sandwich from the show “Insomniac Dave Attell”, so we popped in the address for Geno’s and headed over. Parking was a bit nutty, but we got a spot not too far away from the place. Paul and I got in line while Jim took a walk around the area. The line was long, but the service was way fast. As in get your food within 30 – 45 seconds. Pay and get your sandwich at one window, then pay and get you drink and cheese fries at the next (they had birch beer, yum!). Then there were benches around the outside. The sandwich was pretty good, and the fries were drenched in cheese. Was it the best? I don’t know about that, but it was pretty good. Next time we will have to find one of the local, maybe not so touristy, places to try. Just to compare. From there we walked around the area dropping off flyers for that night’s show. The weather was somewhere around the 80’s, and it was sunny. We had actually been pretty lucky weather wise so far for the entire tour. Alexandria, VA there was some rain. But we were all loaded in by the time that hit, and it was done by the time we were ready to leave. And same with Albany, we seemed to have just missed the rain.
After food and flyering we made our way over to the Raven Lounge. We were in downtown Philly, so there were cars and people everywhere. Parking was not easy, especially 
with an large 12-passenger van. And the parking garages would not take over-sized vehicles.  But luckily enough we found a spot to squeeze into not far down the street, and we walked back up to check the place out. It wasn’t officially open yet, but the manager let us in. It had a cool feel to it, dark and artsy. There were multiple floors and we were to play on the 2nd. So more stairs, bummer. And this was the smallest staircase we had to work with so far. Because of the size of the venue, this isn’t probably a place that we would try to book at again. Although as I said it had a really cool feel to it, if only it was just a tad bigger. The stage was just barely big enough for the two of us. Plus they didn’t have a PA for live bands, so I had brought mine. Which I had no problem in doing, it was a bummer to have to bring the PA for just 1 show, but we were doing what we needed to do to play shows. No regrets at all. Plus this was a last minute show. We had some difficulty booking a show for that night and the Raven Lounge was kind enough to offer us the night, even though they weren’t necessarily set up for live acts such as Streak.
 So that was pretty rockin’ of them to let us do our thing. After checking the place out Paul and I headed back to bring the van around for unloading. We unpacked onto the street and while Paul and Jim started loading in I set out to find a parking spot. I finally found an open lot way down the street. On my walk back I had called Mrs. Streak and we talked for almost 10 minutes and I still wasn’t back to the club. So it was a bit of a distance. It was about a 10min walk, and with traffic it was at least that long of a drive. For the show we had one DJ (Anthony) and a solo act by Grant that went on just before us. Both did some great stuff and really helped set things in motion. In this photo Paul and I have all of our stuff crammed to the sides so that the opening solo act can have some stage space. And that pole you see, it is not a stripper pole as one might think. Management told us it was a “support beam”. I mean, even though the ceiling looked very sturdy, one can never be too careful 😉
The show was fun, even on the cramped stage. John (Diabeticus) from the 16volt boreds was there as well as a few friends he brought along. And not only did they attend the show but they also help unload after the show, which was very cool of them! Once everything was loaded in the van we decided to try and find a place to get a drink. On the search for the seeming elusive brewery, we figured we would try out the “Nodding Head Brewery”. On our 1st pass this place looked way, way to swanky for us. Remember, we just got done playing, been living in a van all week, and haven’t had showers since Tuesday. Everyone inside had dress slacks, fancy shirts, and were drinking martinis. Not quite our scene. So we pulled up another one and headed in that direction. Once we got close we found a place to park, and set out on foot. Alas, this place had been closed for some time as well. So we figured we would try our hand at the “Nodding Head”. What’s the worst that was going to happen, they were going to kick us out? Eh. Along the way a normally dressed man came up to us and said “Can I ask you a questions?” To which I speedily replied “You just did”. He then said thank you, seemed satisfied with the response, and proceeded on his way. It was a bit odd, maybe that was all he wanted? We may never know. We got over to the “Nodding Head”, and it actually looked as if it was closing. But we figured we would try anyway. We opened the door and wallah, a staircase leading up. We then realized that the swanky bar downstairs was not the “Nodding Head Brewery” at all but some other bar. The “Nodding Head” was actually upstairs. Yeah, we were quick on that one. The beer was good, I got myself a “Grog”. It was tasty, but thankfully not strong enough to bust anyone out of jail with (Monkey Island fans anyone???).
From there we decided we should probably find a place to take a shower. Considering we were heading back home the next day and seeing our missed loved ones it would be nice to not stink so bad, haha. The 1st truck stop with showers that we had found via the web actually wasn’t open anymore. So I pulled into a gas station to pull up another one. Got it loaded into the GPS and then headed out again.  I pulled back onto the main road and within 30 seconds we had two state cops pulling us over. So let’s see, tour check list. Denny’s at 2am or later? Check. Living in van with no showers? Check. Getting pulled over? Check. Apparently when we had stopped at the gas station I had turned off the head lights, and with the street lights didn’t realize. Oops. They were actually not too bad, and it could have been much worse. They pulled all our licenses, did checks, grilled us with some questions, the works. At least they didn’t make us pull all of the equipment out of the van. And in the end they let us go, even directing us as to where the truck stop with showers was located. The truck stop was actually really clean. But still we made sure to wear sandals, don’t go barefoot in public showers… eeewww! After we were clean we drove a bit more and then decided to get some sleep at a rest stop somewhere in NJ. zzzZzzZzzzZZzzzzz…
Thanks for reading! Next tour recap: Albany (Mechanicville), NY – The return home show!
Chris
