The best description of Craig Meek’s Memphis Barbecue came around 2 a.m.: “You wrote a book about your city through [freaking] barbecue. How cool is that?!”
The night was far younger than we realized. Someone invited us to have a drink at Wild Bill’s, which a local would later call “the last real place in Memphis.”
It was about 3 a.m. and time to eat dinner again. Even before leaving the Northeast, we’d labeled the ribs at Alex’s Tavern one holy grail of our Memphis quest.
The Ribs. Succulent, platonically moist, fall-aparty, infused with Memphis-style charcoal smoke, served with a dusting of finishing-spice and a side of sweet house sauce. In other words, perfection.
Maybe it was the way she said patty, but the patty melt won. We asked if she could cut ours into thirds. She smiled. I wondered how long she’d worked there and been forced to listen to stupid shit like this.
In 2014 the MBTA restored late night subway service to Boston on weekends. I stayed out all night the first two nights of the service to see who took advantage of it.
“At the heart of the matter is what it means to be from Queens, a 2.3-million-person slice of New York City that no one beyond its borders knows anything about.”
–Invitation to the first College Point Class Conflict Pub Crawl, October 20, 2006
Campbellton was a waypoint, a dot on the map between days 2 and 3 of driving north from Boston to the Gaspé Peninsula. We arrived late and rushed to grab food in the bar attached to our HoJo, attached to an aging mall, attached to the bridge to Quebec.
