Celebrating Unsung Corners
The making of a sacred MLK Day ritual, 10 years running
No one is entirely sure where the idea first began. We were barstool philosophizing about the American spirit, maybe. Probably considering how many places there are to make a life.
Almost certainly we were bemoaning the winter. It was January after all, and at least one of us must have gone ankle deep into a curbside slush puddle on our way to the bar. Instead of escaping winter’s harshness, our friend Julijs wondered, what if we leaned into it as fully as possible? It was besides the point that none of us could afford a last-minute tropical getaway, so soon after Christmas. The point was: doesn’t it stand to reason you’d find some nirvana in acceptance of the condition of suffering, rather than by escaping it? What’s the most winter you can possibly winter?
Three Amtrak tickets later and we were on a nine-hour train to Buffalo, New York for the long weekend. Our Airbnb host picked us up from the train station, coolly unruffled by the 17 inches of snowfall thus far that day. “You’re visiting Buffalo? Like…recreationally?” she cracked her gum skeptically.
That was the beginning of a beloved annual observance: the MLK Day Adventure.
In 2016 we learned Buffalo was the most perfectly designed city in America, with its rings of unbroken parks (pre-Robert Moses). We trudged on foot through a blizzard, landing at a bar whose derelict DJ booth held the suggestion of dance nights where NHL players would come to do cocaine and cut a rug in the ‘80’s.
In 2017 I have no concrete evidence or memory of our whereabouts except for a photograph of a bottle of Red Stripe, with two shards of acrylic fingernails lying abandoned on the surface of the bar behind it.
In 2018 we spent the day in Bensonhurst, eating pizza at a mafia joint, perusing bakeries with perfect marzipan cornucopias, and landing up at a horse-race themed bar that none of us could ever find again to save our lives (despite being in our own borough).
In 2019 we drove upstate as far as Hudson, which holds the distinction of the coldest EVER MLK trip.
In 2020, we were in Detroit, spending a negative windchill day in the Schvitz, retracing the steps of Prohibition-era gangsters and midcentury swingers.
In 2021 we were separated by time and tide and contagion, and linear time was meaningless.
In 2022 we were in Wildwood, New Jersey, stargazing at the beach against the frigid midnight wind, and walking past stall after stall of kitschy, shuttered beach clam shacks and soft serve joints.
In 2023 we were truly shocked by the hilly topography of Omaha. We danced with greybeards at the Zoo Bar in Lincoln, and staunchly refuted local claims that the reuben sandwich was invented in Nebraska.
In 2024, we peered into the defunct steel furnaces in Scranton, PA, and discovered the unspeakable wonders of Old Forge tray pizzas, invented for miners, and characterized by their bubbling patina of …American cheese.
In 2025, our tenth ritual, we rubbernecked the mansion of a mob boss, sniffed around the landfill turned public park in progress at Fresh Kills, and experienced the highest point on the entire eastern seaboard, leaving with more questions than we started with about life on Staten Island.
It would be easy to say we always go to an “unexpected” location. Or even to say, glibly, that we only choose a sort-of sad destination; something with a down-in-the-mouth quality. Somewhere you’d never vacation — at least not in January, for god’s sake. All of those suggest a kind of contempt for the place, which is counter to the genuine delight that we experience in our journeys.
We may not be able to easily define it, but we each KNOW intrinsically what makes for a proper MLK destination. You might discard a suggestion for not being “in the spirit of it”, and everyone knows just what you mean. Close to home or far, it has to have some quality that surprises us, or demands exploration. Something that challenges us to find the best in an adverse condition. An element of camp is a plus. [Scranton is camp. Staten Island is camp – don’t ask me to explain.]
There are infinite possibilities and pleasures in the places that aren’t anyone’s destination. We find ourselves examining the American condition head-on. And not just the face it puts on in its most hospitable, navigable, and touristed places.
Most of all, though, is the way that a tradition forms. Slowly, and then all at once, it is something inviolable and precious. It expands and contracts to include other fellow travelers, and it transmutes the doldrums of mid-January into a time of anticipatory pilgrimage. You can’t say “why” the magic works, but in the warmth of the neon glow, you just know.
Where to next?
Duluth
Reno
Baltimore
Boise
Pittsburgh
Other? ______________
“There are infinite possibilities and pleasures in the places that aren’t anyone’s destination.” Is so wonderfully true. I vote Reno or Boise because they are secret art towns