Written By: Colin Offenbacker

I wish I could remember my first introduction to the pleasantly morose world of Tony Bourdain. The time, the place, and the specific piece of content that ultimately did me in remains as elusive a mystery as Percy Fawcett’s lost city of Z. Regardless of when the Bourdain gravitational well of travel, people, culture and food, first grabbed hold of my soul, it never the less ensnared me and has honestly changed my life for the better. Before I knew it, I found myself immersed in the lives of everyday people from exotic cultures in faraway lands. I was adrift in a sea of excellent literature from brilliant globally renown authors, utterly captivated by the various people, that I’d never before had the opportunity to understand or even comprehend. Through my television I was able to transport myself to the amazing and awe-inspiring destinations he visited. As I watched him dig into a bowl of hot and spicy noodles after a night out on the town in Vietnam with friends old and new, the steam from the bowl would waft out from my TV screen and into my imagination. His television shows were only one aspect of his work and life. Anthony Bourdain’s entire body of work can never truly be measured in any traditional or empirical manner. His influence affected and continues to affect people on a much deeper level. Coming from someone like myself who is anything but religious in a traditional sense or even a spiritual sense, the only word that seems to bring clarity to the level of influences he touches is soul. He spoke and continues to speak to the soul of our limited human experience.

Upon reflection, one of the most influential aspects of his work is his literary contributions. Tony was only one of the most accomplished travelers of our time. To borrow a term from one of my favorite films, the 1942 classic “Casablanca” I’d classify Bourdain as a true citizen of the world, although he was much more than that. I would equate his big break onto the world stage with the release and widespread adoption of his book “Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly”. I originally come from a culinary background. As drastically different and wholly divorced from my own experiences in the culinary world were from his own, this background provided a receptive place for his written words to embed themselves in my soul. From “Kitchen Confidential” and “Medium Raw”, to “Hungry Ghosts”, Bourdain’s personal contribution to the written word extends past his own writings. Through watching his shows and reading his books I was introduced to a whole world of renown but underappreciated literary figures. Joseph Conrad, Graham Greene, Paul Bowles, William Burroughs and Antonio Lobo Antunes to name just a few of the literary masters introduced to me by Mr. Bourdain through his own work. Today I proudly display his work right alongside them, right where he belongs.

There’s no argument that his various travel shows, A cook’s Tour, No Reservations and his latest show on CNN Parts Unknown, catapulted him to the top of the entertainment world. Simply labeling these projects “travel shows” do them a great injustice. There is a rather stark evolution throughout the life span of these shows, visible not only in the content itself but in the man himself. A huge portion of his life is documented, and as the viewer you aren’t simply getting a fluffy piece about the local tourist attractions with some overly excited host looking to exploit the environment, you’re getting a real-life look into the lives of the very real people who live and work in these places. You get to accompany Bourdain along a “Journey Without Maps” while he experiences the culture and attempts to grasp what it’s really like to be in a different place with different people who live parallel though strangely similar lives, grappling with the human condition.

I’ve been affected by the way he travels more than where he’s traveled. Though I would like to take full credit for my own “travel style”, I know however that it has been shaped around the way Tony portrays his experiences. Whether I’m in Ecuador, Sweden, Russia or different regions of the United States, one rule remains a constant; “Don’t be that guy, don’t be a tourist”. What I really mean by that is trying to blend in and experience the culture as the native people do. When my wife and I went to Ecuador to visit her family for the first time, though I’m a 6’4” tall white guy in a country in which the average male height is a little over 5’7”, I lived as they did, ate what they ate and went to places that they normally go to. I did some research before I traveled and made sure I wouldn’t be making any social Faux Pas by walking into a church older than my own country in cargo shorts and a Hawaiian shirt. That is just a single example, but I think it gets the point across. I’ll instill that belief and those values in my children and with any luck they’ll carry that forth in their own children. I’ll be eternally grateful for all that Bourdain has instilled within me.

I honestly believe I could go on and on at full book length describing what Anthony Bourdain meant to me and how he has positively affected the world and humanity as a whole but I’ll reserve that honor for a better writer than I. For now I’ll have to accept that all I can provide is a quick posthumous thank you to a personal hero of mine. A thank you that does little to no justice to him. As imperfect a role model/husband/father and man as he might have been, he is still one of my heroes and will be greatly missed.

My heart goes out to his family, his friends and all those whom were lucky enough to actually have known him. The man, the legend himself, Anthony Bourdain.

Episode 17 – oh so satifsying.

Don and Offie take another slow week to ease back into the swing of things and go over the recent supreme court decisions and a judge being recalled, as well as the future passing of animals, a test of Don’s vision, a quick change of venue and then how the American government is the best system that we have poorly implemented, China owns america, and of course SPORTS!!

Watch the pre-show on Youtube then listen to the whole episode on Soundcloud, Apple Podcasts or wherever else you do your podcast listening. Then if you feel so inclined, shoot us a message and let us know what you think about the show, us, this specific episode, anything really – we appreciate your input and support!

Written by: Colin Offenbacker AKA BigBirdOffie

Welcome back to the Salt of the Streets blog!

Before we get into our topic for the day and hopefully the discussion that we’ll start to have in the comments section below, I just want to remind everyone that episode 16 of the podcast is available in the post right below this one. If you haven’t listened yet, there are links in the post to a few of the main podcast hosts. It was a great time having our friends from Upper Left come up and hang out with us for a few hours, we had a great conversation so go check it out.

Today we’re going to be keeping it a little light, no hard hitting heavy stuff today, we’ll save that for our upcoming Dissents June 29th, so save the date.

From time to time on the show I am, shall we say, gently reminded that I am a bit older than my co-host Don. I am by no means “old” but sometimes our slight age gap shows and my age manifests itself in hilarious ways. Being almost 31 years old now, I sometimes reflect on how things were when I was young and how they compare to our modern world.

Basically, we live in the future these days. More precisely, a future I couldn’t have imagined when I was a kid. When I think about how far technology has come, even just in the years since I moved out on my own at eighteen, it’s mind boggling. Almost every aspect of our lives is in someway touched by groundbreaking technology. Personally, societally and even on a species level, it has never been a better time to be alive. Yes of course things aren’t perfect but they are pretty good, especially if you were lucky enough to be born in a “modern” country like The United States

Let’s take right now for example. I’m sitting on my couch with a laptop typing out a message to share with anyone around the world wanting to access it. My wife is sitting next to me playing a game on Xbox with some online friends. That one sentence alone has so many examples of insane technology, once only thought to be possible in science fiction, I couldn’t possibly begin to describe them in any manner that would do it justice. My Iphone is on the end-table next to me, which is basically a handheld super computer capable of accessing almost an endless amount of knowledge via the Internet, and of course has the ability to communicate with just about anyone on the planet. And that doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface.

The signs of our futuristic world are everywhere.

All of this amazing technology has advanced our species even further up the evolutionary ladder. Advanced medicines have cured diseases once thought to be incurable. Private companies are embroiled in a new form of the 1960’s space race and thanks to things like Twitter we get access to public people once thought impossible, the President of the United States for example.

On that note I would like to pose a question to all of you out there. It’s a question I find myself asking a lot lately. Are we capable of keeping up with this exponential growth in technology on a societal level? I have my own thoughts on this but I’ll be saving them for a discussion with Don on the upcoming Salt of the Streets Podcast.

In the meantime, jump into the comments below and tell us about your thoughts on technology and its rapid growth rate. Is it happening too fast? Can we as a society keep up? We’d love to hear from you so let’s start a conversation!

Episode 16 in all its glory.

This week Don & Offie we were joined by SUPER special guests, Upper Left, to go over the amazing music that they create and how it’s done, conspiracy theories they could buy into, the differences in perception and how we grew up, a quick round of Mmmm That’s Bullshit, why hip hop beef is never a bad thing, and of course SPORTS!

This was an incredibly fun episode to record and we look forward to having the Upper Left boys join us again! Listen to their music by clicking on the link above & check out Episode 16 on Soundcloud, Apple iTunes or your other favorite podcast streaming app. The pre-show is also available on Youtube so you can check out our faces.

Thank you for listening & for your support!

Death is something that no one can avoid.

At least not yet. As I said in the title death is strange for many reasons. Some people experience a lot of death, and some people very little. Sometimes, a lot of the time, people get very upset very quickly. A smaller part of the population are calm in the immediate wake of a traumatic event such as the passing of someone close, and then later are hit by extreme emotion.

In the end of last year I lost my Aunt Jo who I grew up spending a lot of time with. She had five children who obviously were affected very deeply. She was an incredible woman who leaves behind her a legacy of achievement and compassion that will be continued through her children. In the aftermath of her passing I was very comfortable; I was not overcome with emotion, I was not clouded with distress. I was surprised at my ability to think logically and help lead my mother and my cousins through the immense tragedy they had all experienced. I spent a lot of time with my mom around then as it was her sister who had passed. It was something we had seen coming for a while, but is also not something you can ever fully prepare yourself for.

A few weeks went by until the funeral that we had for my aunt, and I’m truly not sure that I had shed a tear until that day. That’s not to try and express a sense of masculinity because I would be the very first to admit that I am very emotional, but simply to try and help highlight the point I am about to make. I cried a little during the service, mostly because it caused me so much pain to watch my cousins, five people I share blood with, and have spent huge amounts of my life with and known my entire life, experience such immense grief as they did that day and still feel to this day. But it was on my way home from Olympia that I think it really sunk in.

My wife and I were discussing what we would stop and get for dinner and then had somehow, possibly in the heat of a riveting discussion, we passed all of our options and now would have to either drive past our house or turn around to get something. Minor inconveniences on a normal day, but something about this hiccup on that day was the final straw. I immediately became hysterical, pulled over at a gas station 3 miles from our house and demanded that my wife leave me and allow/force me to walk home. With obvious hesitation she obliged and drove home and waited for me to arrive.

On the walk home I listened to Tell ’em Steve Dave and cried intermittently. The walk was slightly farther than I had estimated but it was what I had asked for. As far as I can recall, we went to bed shortly after as it had been an extremely long day. The following day I was supposed to go to work so I woke up at 4 A.M. like I normally do and went on with my routine. I sat on the couch while getting dressed and doing whatever else I do to get ready in the morning, and was overcome with emotion. I couldn’t stop crying, and ended up staying home from work that day just to spend time with myself. I theorized at that time, because of my own experience, that the people who have the delayed emotional reaction to large trauma are here to help those who deal with it immediately.  The delayed reaction is the brain allowing itself to think logically and side step the emotion that can cause people to make irrational decisions.

Both (admittedly simplified) sides of this emotional situation I think are necessary and vital to each other. In times of chaos there needs to be some people who are able to at least attempt to maintain order. And when those who attempt to keep the order are finally able to sit back and feel the very emotions they were attempting to control. Everyone needs to be able to experience and deal with trauma and tragedy and horror in their own way, but no one should do it on their own.

I know this was a heavy first topic, but it has been a very interesting week. We are having some guests on this week and so the show will also be a little different but I think we have some really great stuff in store for you. Offies blog post will drop on the same day next week and the pod will be out on Monday. Thank you everything.