Boarders, breakers, bikers, ballers, brawlers, bleachers, beachers and stoics, their eyes fall soft and easy from the sunlight and the glare. There are ex-cons, short cons, gamers, marks and framers, an entire promenade divided equally between predator and prey. There … Read More
Author Archives: Bob Hill
Bob Hill’s America: Day Seven (Desert Sands)
The temperature reaches 95 by midday and I stop off to change my blue jeans into shorts. The fan is playing catch-up and there are dead flies on my grill. The windshield is dirty, the interior is scolding and the … Read More
Bob Hill’s America: Day Six (From The Mountains to The Prairies)
Weaving, winding, carving deep through snow-capped mountains, Utah summits grasping weakly to what still remains of winter. The Douglas firs fall down in breakneck order, the empty streets feel like the backdrop from some movie. I stop for gas outside … Read More
The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (AKA ‘The Case Against Stan Lee Syndrome’)
The problem with The Amazing Spider-Man 2 – in a word – is Stan Lee. That’s two words, I know. But they both refer to one concept, that being the idea that blatant, shameless self-reference is the bane of any … Read More
Bob Hill’s America: Day Five (Wyoming)
The air falls fresh and thinner at this altitude, the gusts like offshore gales. The roads come filled with tumbleweed, the dirt lays soft like sand. The grass grows sharp and arid, the freight trains last forever. My room in … Read More
Bob Hill’s America: Day Four (Nebraska)
Nebraska is the most beautifully barren stretch of land I’ve ever known. Gold and desolate, wind-swept prairies, low-hanging clouds that bunch and tear like cotton, stiff-whistling winds that bob and weave through rusted wire, empty lanes where old jalopies cruise … Read More
Bob Hill’s America: Day Three (Why Walk When You Can Take a Train?)
Home of the World’s Largest Golf Tee, Home of The World’s Largest Windchime, Home of the Annual Popcorn Festival … everything along this stretch declares itself to be the bullshit home of something. The selling points are meager, designed to … Read More
Bob Hill’s America: Day Two (The Flatlands)
I meet Keith outside a rest stop in Indiana. Keith is a truck driver, slumped over and shapeless, wearing XXL sweat pants that clash beneath his paisley. Keith moved down this way “a while ago,” satisfying a mandatory prerequisite for … Read More
Bob Hill’s America: Day One (The Vital Signs of Pennsylvania)
The first day is a day of reminders. Reminders to disconnect appliances, to lock all windows and doors, to double-check for laptop and adaptor, Paxil, toiletries and phone. The first day is a day of refamiliarizing myself with the mechanisms … Read More
America
(A 7,000-mile road trip as told in words and pictures.)