My friend Alex Wein and I decided to head south for the winter, like a kind of migration. We drove 3000 miles in 2 weeks - from Baltimore to Miami.

Here is some of the stuff that happened.

Our first stop was Fayetteville, North Carolina. Alex knew a kid there called Christian who used to be a great skater until he fucked his knee one too many times and had to have it re-built. Now all he does is play Xbox and take drugs - not necessarily in that order. He has the hugest safe in his bedroom packed full of drugs and money, and he carries a gun. He thinks he’s a gangster.

That night we didn’t sleep and the next day we met up with some friends who took us to their favourite skating spot. It was a great place. Apparently they used to have a skate park but the owner was busted for stealing, or something, and it was closed down.

We left Fayetteville and headed through North Carolina to South Carolina (makes sense). En route we decided to stop off at ‘South of the boarder’ the best Mexican theme park outside of Mexico.

It had a Mexican roller-coaster and Big sombreros as well as big model animals like monkeys, dogs and dragons - most of which had little or nothing to do with Mexican culture.

We went up the big sombrero to admire the view.

When we were up there we found that the middle part of the sombrero was covered in graffiti. It said stuff like - ‘I love bob’, ‘big dick love little dick’ and ‘fuck Mexico’.

There was also quite a lot of racist graffiti. Obama’s work goes on!

After the delights of ‘lil Mexico we bought a t-shirt, some fireworks and whiskey, then hit the road. Our next stop was Atlanta but our plan was to stay in the Clermont Hotel.

The Clemont is where punk hero GG Allin died and we’d heard a rumoured that his room has been kept the same ever since. He played a lot of shows in The Clemont Lounge (a strip club) under the hotel so we went to ask the staff about him. As we opened the door we were confronted by about 6 huge signs saying NO CAMERAS and a guy ran from the bar demanding our IDs. We said we just wanted to know about GG.

Thankfully the bartender noticed I was from England and this seemed to win him over a bit. He started going on about our ‘green and pleasant land’ and eventually invited us in. We sat on the edge of the bar and listened as he told us the tales we wanted to hear. He also kept grabbing passing old strippers to ask them if they new GG - one of them claimed to be in one of his videos.

There were two younger bar staff who were really friendly and after the first guy offered to buy us a drink the bar lady gave us another on the house. Alex bought a t-shirt and after being told that I could “NO WAY” take any photos we said our thank yous and left.

All that had wet our appetite and still hot on the GG trail we went into the hotel and asked if we could see GG Allen’s room. The small Lady behind the counter said she had no idea what we were talking about. “Whats GG?” she asked. We just asked to rent a room, but again we were denied. She told us that it wasn’t a hotel anymore and was going to be knocked down. After giving her the Larry David eyes for a good couple of minutes with no response we left.

Defeated we searched for another place to spend the night. Eventually we rolled into a nondescript motel and happily passed out. We weren’t so happy in the morning however, when we awoke to find huge holes in the ceiling and cockroaches.

I think it’s always worse to find a dead cockroach than an alive one. If cockroaches are the only things that will survive a nuclear holocaust and something in that motel is killing them, then I reckon we’ve not got much chance!

Getting out of there as fast as we could, we called up some Atlanta friends that Alex knew from school and agreed to meet them at THE BENCH.

The Bench is really just a grass bank next to the entrance of a train yard, but I like the name. We huddled around our cinder block fire, drank 40’s and listened to the stories and songs told by the tramps and train jumpers.

This is how I spent my Christmas eve.

The guy above is Alabama Slim. He sang songs and told tales. At first you could clearly hear every word he said, but by about the 7th bottle of gin his stories had degenerated into low guttural grunts. Full of gin he told Alex that he loved him and that he wanted ’something special from him’. As he pulled his trousers down we decided it time to leave.

We thanked our friends and hit the road. Next stop - Jacksonville, Florida.

Despite our best efforts we couldn’t make it all the way to Jacksonville because Alex was starting to fall asleep at the wheel. Christmas eve night was spent in a motel in the middle of nowhere with a bottle of whiskey in the company of Jay and Silent Bob. Merry Christmas!

We arrived in Jacksonville on Christmas day and spent the day on the beach with a friend from New York.

We wanted to go skating, so we asked some friends where we might find a good spot. Unbeknown to us is that Jacksonville is the home of the almighty KONA skate park - it’s in Tony Hawks video game!

The park is the oldest privately owned outdoor skate park in the USA, and possibly the world. It cost $10 to get in and you had to rent a helmet (which sucked). But even lame headgear couldn’t put us on a downer - IT’S KONA TIME!!!!!!

We skated from 10 in the morning till 10 at night. I’ve never skated so much in one day. If you ever go anywhere near Jacksonville you have to go here.

The next day we meet up with our friend Jessie. She had been studying at MICA in Baltimore with Alex and just moved home. Her parents kindly offered to take us in, so for the next couple of days we were comfortable, chilled by the fire, drunk beer and went to the zoo.

After that Miami lay ahead of us and we hit the road again with the image of golden beaches, brilliant sunshine, and babes on roller skates driving us on.

MIAMI!!!!!!!!! All that is going through my head right now is Will Smith.

But sunshine or no sunshine, I didn’t like Miami. The people are weird, the city is laid out in a bad way, there are no traffic lights and the bars sucked. We skated around for a while then found a hotel and got drunk. Oh and Miami made Alex dress like this - BAD ASS.

The next day we went and checked out the gallery O.H.W.O.W, which is run by Aron who also runs aNYthing in New York. I dropped off some zines with the guy working there to put in the book shop and had a look around. They still had stuff up from the ART Basel show.

Above - Tim Barber.

They had a mini out back that we wanted to skate it but the guy said he was closing to go to the bank or something -lame. So feeling kinda lost and with nowhere to go we decided to head back to Jacksonville - our new home.

We spent new years eve with Jessie’s family; surrounded by great people, great food, great booze and great fire works. I ended up in a freezing cold swimming pool and didn’t take any photos, except this one  - yep, we got gold teeth.

After new years day we went to Jessie’s grans house to ride go carts and play catch. This was our last day before heading back to Baltimore.

The journey home was long and uneventful. I couldn’t stay awake in the car, the only music that could keep us awake was Blink 182. We sang all the way home.

Baltimore - the greatest city in America (apart from Jacksonville).

Thanks for your time.