Tour
Summer Tour 2003
This page is devoted to our trip from Richmond to Miami and back(as told by Jimmy). The pictures are designed to help those of you who can't read.
Once upon a summer in '03 ANF woke up extra early to start their trip to Florida! When we started out the brake lights on our trailer weren't working so we were on a race to get to Florida before it started to get dark...I'm sure there were beautiful things to see and pleanty of people to make fun of on the way down to Florida but I was playing Pokémon on my gameboy so i saw nothing. After several hours of playing pokémon we arrived just out side of Jacksonville. We went to walmart to buy an cable/video input output converter so we could play the playstation 2 on the hotel tv's. Then we went to the red roof in that was kinda cool. After one night there i decided that just outside of Jacksonsville sucks almost as bad as Jacksonsville. The next day I woke up extra early (which was the general trend thru the whole trip) and I walked to a gas station and got some doughnuts. 3 hours later everyone else was up and we were pretty much off to the next motel. After an hour of confusion we found out that N. Hollywood Ave is totally different than S. Hollywood Ave. We found our home away from home, The Shell Motel (Freaking best place in the whole state of Florida) in Hollywood, Fl. Our room was small.
But our motel owner guy was the cooles Cannuck I have ever met. It truely made me look at Canadiens in a whole new way.
Here Reese, being the awesome guy that he is, fixed our trailer's brakes and so we were ready for nocturnal travel. YO If you are a band and you are going down to the southern beach area of florida you must stay at the Shell motel...We'll be putting all their information up on the website soon. I don't remember the order of things that we did too well but aside from trying to push eachother into the pool with our clothes on we went to Key Largo, with the cruddiest water i've ever seen.
HOWEVER we had our first MIKE the sloth sighting!!!
I think later that day we decided to go further down the keys until we found some water that didn't look like it came out of a sewer. Right past the "Island of the dead" -Right macon?- we found peace and tranquility and a smelly car!!
It was here that I collected and kept some small clam shells and we kept a hermit crab. I, of course, didn't remember about them until 3 days later. And the whole time we're all wondering...why the hell does the car smell so bad??!?!? I guess it was about this time that we said our goodbyes to our favorite Cannuck and went to Aventura, FL to play our first, of two, shows. We played at boulevard Billiards with the likes of the SKADILLACS.
We went on after them but the whole time we were there I was at the bar enjoying my age priviledges and talking to this guy.
Trash!. Yeap thats his name, Trash...he's actually a pretty common figure there in Aventura...good guy. Right after this show we drove to Reese's G-ma's house some where near Gainsville. And she was a big help and we are all really gratful for that. Also grateful that when we get there the first thing she does is punches Reese in the arm saying "Reese...You never called me!" I guess you had to be there. After sleeping for a few hours we drove from Reeses Grand-mas to ATLANTA, GA.
I think we all agree that Atlanta is the greatest place we've been to play a show...I mean where else have we had our name on a Marquee?
The man to make the show possible was my man TRUCK(turn head sideways to the right)
and truck was in SKATAMATIC who played headlined the show and they are all really good guys
We ended up playing first which was actually pretty cool. I have to admit that playing to a crowd of people you've never seen before is a bit intimidating
But everyone in Atlanta was extremely nice and down with supporting their local scene. It's really hard to find a place on the east coast that is still extremely enthusiastic about ska...but i want to thank all these people for being at the show....and instead of naming you all i'll just put another picture.
All the bands were amazing. But the TAJ MOTEL TRIO
really rocked and blew me away. I had heard them on a compilation called "still standing" and they were just like "yeah, that song was just really a joke at first and we decided to keep it." heh...When we joke around we get songs like Mike the Sloth! yeah buddy. Right after that show in Atlanta we drove straight home. Macon is cool because he drove pretty much the whole time and didn't kill any of us. Thanks to everyone who helped us out and even everyone who wanted to help us out...sorry we couldn't make it out to any other places...i don't thing the summer time is a good time to visit FL...So maybe next time we'll come when its a bit colder here in VA. Peace in the Middle East!!