The Downtown Excursion
 
Man, the downtown excursion turned out to be extremely fun and filled with Saturday Night Fever. It’s just too bad I can’t put a soundtrack to it. Ironically, I started my walking tour around 6 or 7 but by the time I had finished night had fallen and so my friend and I walked our tour in reverse and snapped all the pictures that we had forgotten to do. It was pretty hot, even at night, so if you see the sweat stains it’s not because I’m on 11 Red Bulls and it’s Tuesday May 6th at 5 AM... it’s just that I did this responsibly, on time. Well that about covers it. Here’s what we saw. The state capitol immediately filled me with a sense that I was in Greek mode. Seriously. There were some corinthian columns, there were some ionic columns, and there were some doric columns. In this picture of the capitol’s excellent rotunda one can see some ionic columns. On the front façade of the capitol once can see some corinthians, and on the reverse side of the capitol in this little area that looks like it would be better used as an executive swimming pool you can see some dorics. State trooper McGee, or whatever her name was, actually let us into the building. This was surprising, considering I look like a hippie activist and I was worried that my excessive pandering made me look more like a creep than usual. Luckily they apparently have to make rounds or something, so we accompanied her with the one condition that we did not document that we were in the capitol after hours. So we have no pictures of that. However, I felt like I was at St. Peter’s Basilica as I stared at the roof of the capitol and soaked in the artificial light from the outside of the capitol that was actually coming inside at night. I kind of felt like I was at some kind of Pink Floyd concert, but I had “Stayin’ Alive” by the Bee Gees stuck in my head. I really wanted to scream loudly, but McGee or whatever decided it would be a better idea to - well - I don’t know - not do that because we would have been descended upon by a group of state troopers. Questions would have been asked. Bad things would have happened. However, I laid there in silence as I pondered the sweet and soft echoes of a janitor sweeping in the distance. So we left the Pantheon and marched onward to the Star of David at the visitor center. We ran into a bit of a snag here. It was too late to enter the church for some reason so we kind of got screwed. It’s a nice church from the outside (not) and it’s grey and dark and dreary. But to attempt to make up for it I did find some seriously cool things: Elements of the grotesque at the State theater! Yes! You can’t really see it well, but above my head and above the marquee are some really nasty looking medusa-like heads above the windows on the top of the building staring down at me, making me feel like a Victorian monster. If I could only connect I’d say that this would even make me feel as emo as Jude at times. Below we found some really cool Victorian looking houses on San Antonio Street. Somehow we ventured past the Driskill on our way back but forgot to take photographs. But here’s me at the capitol again! Hooray!