after gainesville we played pensacola at this club called sluggos, which is a bar/vegan restaurant/hardcore club, and we had rad $1 burritos. the local band that we played with was a bunch of kids that recently moved from the dominican republic and played amazing fast angry punk. they threw tortillas at the crowd and talked about the way that multinational corporations have a monopoly on the world's supply of food and about the drug war. that night we stayed with our new friend ryan, who is totally awesome. hes an older vegan straightedge dude that apparently used to live in richmond and we played an epic 4-hour game of uno.
baton rouge sucked. some kid said that we were gay because we talked too much, which pretty much characterizes the experience.
we drove to new orleans to stay the night, where we played scrabble, watched hgtv, and stayed up late telling ghost stories and talking like a middle school sleepover party. the last of us to go to sleep were mikey, davin, shiela (kingdom's roadie with a wicked new england accent) and me, around 6:30am. the bands had some much needed bonding time together. i feel like if you go on tour with a band and dont become good friends with them by the end, you've done something wrong.
the next day we spent 4 hours trying to eat and it was really irritating. we walked miles down the road that we were staying on trying to find a place to get vegan po boys but everything was closed, so we drove downtown. we parked on burbon street next to about 30 topless bars and wandered around into the french quarter where, around 4:30pm, we found a middle eastern place with mediocre falafel.
the new orleans show was rad; we played at a collective art/punk space and ate the most amazing vegan chocolate cake (thanks jen!) and vegan gumbo, which i've never had before. the last band, we need to talk, was badass. also, this guy called jesse camp who i apparently should have recognize was there heckling, drinking, and loved our band. he was visiting from new york and promised to come to the show at my house in brooklyn. we took a group shot with all of the bands and jesse.
that night we stayed at the same house and again stayed up late talking about anarchist politics and sexism in the hardcore scene.
on an hour of sleep, i woke up at 6:30 to drive 9 hours to nashville, which was the first drive that really felt like being on tour, because we were in the van so long that i stopped caring.

in my next entry: attrition picks up a hitchhiker and steals a beagle. to be continued...