STL Friday

Friday morning of graduation came early and found me putting on my button shirt and slacks. When I graduated from ASU, I wore a bolo tie that was my grandfathers, also the official state neckwear of Arizona. This time, I wore the Banana Republic tie that Saori got me for Christmas, and a Mexican leather bracelet.
I donned the billowy green robes trimmed with black velvet, and put on my giant hat and lavender tassel. I would like to find whoever decided architecture was and would forever be lavender in the regalia colors, and politely punch them in the balls. Lavender. What a weenie color.

We received our instructions for what to do at the architecture commcement at 6pm the day before, par for the course, but we never got any notice of what time to get to the university for the main commencement. The morning of, I went on the website and discovered we were supposed to be there at 8:00, not 8:30. Tay dressed sharp as well and we met up with grandma in the lobby, who couldn’t resist snapping some hotel lobby graduation photos.

Dew kindly offered a parking spot behind his apartment, so I directed dad over there, and headed off to the school at brisk walk upon arrival.

I met up with my classmates behind Brookings and of course, we spent about an hour milling around until we started processing towards the quad closer to 9. Big crowd, the square was really full, and people lined the way, shooting photos and waving at the parade of green robes.

Tay is a standout, so I caught his eye, not sure how he was able to spot me. Maybe because I was one of the 10% of students who elected to wear sunglasses as part of our regalia.

The human traffic directors also messed us up, somehow completely messing up our rows, such that a row of architecture graduates was seated three rows into the Law School. I was lucky to sit next to Silvino on my left, an unknown Chinese girl on my right, and JD graduates in front and behind.

The ceremony was fairly predictable, mostly boring, and overlong. The keynote speaker was the likeable and ambitious mayor of New Jersey, who will likely aspire to the top slot within a few election cycles. Juhanni Palasmaa was there, the Finnish phenomenologist architect, and he was awarded an honorary degree.

Finally! we were called to stand. At first, the people around me were so stunned, they refused to believe it. What? Oh yeah, we ARE architecture masters students. Then we got to hood each other, or at least, to try to hood each other, and simultaneously attempt to figure out if the hoot was facing the right way or inside out since these things don’t come with instructions or apparent sides. I hooded Silvino, and he hooded me. There was a short flash of aching sadness, as I’d imagined for so long the moment of hooding Saori, not just my girlfriend of many years, but also a friend with whom we’d traversed six and a half years of formal education.

Anyway, six million kilometers away in the German night, Saori watched us via the live feed. She texted me throughout the ceremony, letting me know she saw me and Silvino. I know she wanted to be here but the difficulty of leaving a project she really wanted to be a part of and the expense of travel outweighed the impetus to travel. I am sure it was a hard night for her.

All graduation ceremonies are the same. The usual bombastic speeches about achievement, responsibility, and the Future in Our Hands was as well worn as the academic regalia, and not nearly as interesting.
Meanwhile, the faculty doze, daydreaming of the moment they can change out of their hot regalia. They must dread this time of year.

I just rode through, looking forward to the mystical moment when our degrees are magically conferred upon us with the speaking of the words and the gesture of the hands, a Wizard of Oz moment of a sudden bizzare shower of degrees- a light sprinkling of Architecture Techology, a downpour of Masters, a veritable blizzard of Juris Doctor. Given the seating snafu, I should double check my degree to make sure I didn’t catch a Doctor of Law.

The ceremony over, we filed out and wound our way to the architecture building. We lined up again, pausing to steal a coke from the coolers, and processed once more up the hill, and then down the steps of Brookings hall to the crowd of beaming faces waiting in the oak allee. To be honest, this short parade was the highlight of my graduation ceremony.

The architecture graduation ceremony is actually really nice. We got the best seats in the house, a garden party graduation, protected mostly from rain and sun by two lines of massive, ancient oak trees on either side, with the stairs leading up to Brookings hall forming a beautiful backdrop.

The ceremony is also noticeably shorter.

The speaker was a local architect alumni, who spoke about magic and pulled a few cheezy tricks for the audience, who were so bewildered by what was going on, that we failed to appreciate the magic tricks until he started commenting about it. Apparently PD’s facial expressions were amazing.

The other faculty speaker was a retiring professor who spoke with passion and thinly veiled bitterness, at some moments nearly weeping as he commended the students and the time spent in the university. Reid was one of the student speakers, and he gave a nice, funny, short speech.

Ben Ferhmann was absent, was Katherine Dean, and Derek Hoeferlin, a group of professors I would have enjoyed seeing again. I only caught a glimpse of one of my favorite professors, Zeuler Lima, as he was leaving the bathroom after the ceremony.

Now in alphabetical order, I sat between Peoples, Kelly and Perrodin, Chris. The walking graduation went with the smooth precision of much practice. The rain which sprinkled on us during the speeches disappeared, and we were left with the cooler overcast skies. Kelly was very distraught over the fact they’d messed up with her walk- they didn’t mention that she was graduating with honors, an award which is announced with your name.

They photograph you three times when you walk. Once, before you ascend the stage, with the audience as the background, once, when Heather passes you your fake diploma and you shake hands with Dean Lindsey, and once when you get off the stage with diploma in hand, with the school as the backdrop.
Click.
“Alexander J Perkins, with Honors,"
Click.
Click.

Graduate school was a lot of work, and I am so happy that dad and Neri and Tay and grandma could be here. I can barely remember walking across the stage. I remember the presidential for-the-photograph handshake, and I remember seeing dad up in front of the aisle trying to get a close up shot of me walking. There is a real sense of accomplishment or really just acknowledgement, that I am happy that I could share this with my family.

It’s a different feeling than the graduation I attended last year. Last year’s graduation ceremony convinced me, and I thought, Saori, that this was something worth coming back for. Last year’s ceremony felt more jubilant, more euphoric. December graduates just kind of get screwed. For spring graduates, you finish your triumphant moment, defense of your degree project, and there is the euphoria of completion, (and I am so happy that Tay was there for that, too) and the graduation ceremony follows close on the heels of the end of the semester, a public party after a week of parties with all your classmates.

Six months later, everyone has moved on, and you realize that you have, too. Those who return are happy, but they have returned to see old friends who are missed, and the happiness is tempered by nostalgia. Seeing your old friends for those fleeting moments is nearly painful as you simultaneously miss the great times in school and miss your friends even before they have departed.

Anyway. At the reception following the ceremony, I caught up with a few friends, and following the return of my gown (really bad timing, should have stuck around-missed a few group shots of close friends), we took off in search of food.

Barbecue food.

Pappy’s Barbecue food.

Which was so packed, the line went through the building onto the sidewalk. So went to Bogart’s, instead.

Bogart’s is the Dark Pork challenger to Pappy’s domination of St. Louis BBQ. Almost everyone I’ve talked to actually liked Bogart’s better than Pappy’s although Pappy’s retains the crowds and the wider publicity. Bogarts gets points for charm, located in Soulard, just up the street from the Soulard Market. We were able to find a table immediately. I thought the pulled pork was phenomenal, superior to Pappy’s but the ribs and bbq beans, as good and tender as they were, could just not touch Pappy’s. However, Bogart’s has definitely secured a spot in my book of top three best BBQ restaurants in the known universe (granted, I’ve probably only been to a few dozen BBQ restaurants. #1 still belongs to Head Country, in Ponca City, Oklahoma).

After our massive BBQ lunch, we drove back to the hotel and strolled along Euclid, window shopping in the CWE. Grandma’s stomach wasn’t sure about the BBQ, so she bailed and went back to the hotel to rest.
Dad, Tay, Neri, and I decided that the light was not to our advantage for more sightseeing, and we struck out for a St. Louis bar crawl. We began with the hipster brewery of Urban Chestnut, which makes some of my favorite beers in town based on German lines, and we enjoyed some Schnickelpickers in their sunny and tranquil beer garden.

We seriously classed it up for our next stop, the upscale and cosmopolitan Bridge in the Locust district. Here, we ordered serveral charcuterie plates, cheeses, little dishes, and a few different types of beer. My tastes, which tend to favor beers with more complexity and flavor, won titles such as “Butt Juice" and “Horse Sweat". Another round of Bud Light for the table, please! Actually, it was a lot of fun and everyone enjoyed trying new beers.

Our final stop for the night was a tiny blues livehouse down by where the railroad tracks cross the river in the old industrial area south of downtown. If it sounds a little sketchy, that’s because it is.

We’d missed Kim Massie at Beale on Broadway, but that friday, we had the fortune of hearing Marquis Knox play and doing his thing. I’ve seen Knox play a few times before, and this kid (a seriously huge kid, but only 22) plays a mean guitar, sings, and blows the harp. It was crowded but not packed in the dimly lit patio, and after our first round of cheap beer (Abida, in honor of the river and blues in general) we were able to sit closer to the stage where we had a good view of the band and all the middle aged white women dancing in front of them, along with a few drunk twentysomething baseball fans coming from the game up the street.

It’s great to hear live blues again. There’s a few things St. Louis does really well- beer, BBQ, blues, and donuts.

We stayed until Knox took a break from the set, and headed home a little before midnight.