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Mixed Mediums

Wobbling On A Corner In Winslow Arizona

Levis® didn't build the railroads, the Irish and the Chinese did. But Levis® did outfit those laborers. The 501 jean was introduced just before completion of the Atlantic-Pacific route, the same route incidentally that our merry band has been rolling...

All images by Misha Vladimirskiy/FilterlessCo

Levis® didn't build the railroads, the Irish and the Chinese did. But Levis® did outfit those laborers. The 501 jean was introduced just before completion of the Atlantic-Pacific route, the same route incidentally that our merry band has been rolling along on. Without them would the railroads have been completed? Certainly, but your great, great grandfathers wouldn't have looked nearly as macho in the family albums.

Annons

But we didn't get off to the quickest start today. There was a stowaway on board. Some plucky girl who'd snuck in and was refusing to leave the Frank Sinatra car. You'd hardly blame her. That particular car is nicer than most homes. When she does leave and the whistle roars, the train picks up speed to about 90mph for the Santa Fe-Winslow leg.

It's funny you don't realize you're going that fast till you step between cars, poke your head outside and feel your eyelids peeling back over your forehead and your teeth jiggling like dice inside your mouth.

Joining us today on the train were the girls from THEESatisfaction, Giorgio Moroder and Cat Power. And all talk is of road-trips, cars breaking down, the smell of sticky bodies cooped inside tin boxes on the highway, the hitchhikers who became lovers and so on.

Cat Power and me are talking engine parts. Trannies and carburators. She laments an old VW and I reminisce about a 30 year old Volvo last seen on the back of a tow truck in Queens.

Of course none of us would have any stories like that if we'd just taken trains. The only technical problems you have to deal with on the Silver Quail are finding a straw for your bloody mary or keeping your balance while smoking between the cars.

But that does mean, there's lots of time for other things. Giorgio, Cat, Stas and the other Cat from THEESatisfaction are all picking up instruments as they walk through. Giorgio sits at the various keyboards like a patient school teacher who's given up his Saturday afternoon to tutor the gifted but wayward kids.

We hit two happy hours en route thanks to mountain time becoming pacific time and we're all wasted as we arrive into Arizona. It's Cat Power's fault. She started handing out mugs of tequila as the train was pulling in. Trains are like boats though. The wobbly floor suits a drunk. It's only when you step out onto the platform and the ground stops moving but you're still swaying that you notice you've maybe had too much.

And that's how we arrive in Winslow. This part of the world is roasting during the day and cold as a penguin's nipples at night. It must have been hell laying that track. I don't know how the Chinese got by but I'm pretty sure my Irish forefathers wouldn't have been worried about putting straws in their drinks at the end of the day or could ever have had too much.

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