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Articles and Reviews
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Savannah, Georgia Savannah, Georgia is one of the oldest cities in the United States with a population of about 130,000 and was my destination for a work-related training seminar. A handful of Canadians made the trek to the Deep South for the seminar that was dominated by Americans from all over the lower 48 and from Hawaii. Traveling from Vancouver requires a stopover either in Chicago (United) or in Atlanta (Air Canada), but for my group of three, we went with United due to the better hours available for the flights. For both segments of the trip down, I had an aisle seat, so could not see much of Chicago or Savannah from the air. However, for the trip back, I lucked out and got section seats to myself, so I could look outside the airplane window and marvel at how massive Chicago is.
>> One of the stone driveways connecting Bay St. to River St. - rather foul smelling and home to thousands of sand gnats I wondered if it was really that hot in Savannah, or was it simply the connector not being air-conditioned and intensifying the heat of the sun beating down on it. I got my answer when we stepped outside of the airport to hail a taxi – Savannah really is that hot. I don’t recall the temperature on the first day we were there, but it was likely around 35 Celsius (95 Fahrenheit) if not hotter and while I know what heat is about being from the southern interior of British Columbia, I never knew what humid really meant until I walked around Savannah in the later afternoon sun. My hometown of Kamloops has summertime temperatures ranging from mid 20 Celsius to nearly 40 Celsius, so it’s comparable to what Savannah offers, but Kamloops is dry as a bone and is nearly a desert. We have sagebrush, cactus and rattlesnakes in the surrounding hills and I normally can’t stand Vancouver summers because of the humidity. However, Vancouver is nothing compared to what easterners and southerners receive. The air is absolutely thick with moisture and you can’t walk a hundred feet without breaking out into a sweat. Southern culture is known for a slow and leisurely pace (actually, most sun-filled regions are known for this) and now I know why; it’s the only way to get around while maintaining some measure of dignity and composure from the oppressive heat and humidity. Every business, bar and restaurant we entered had the air conditioning running and I believe our taxi driver when we asked about having to use it year round and he remarked, yes, they do use the air-conditioning year round. But, to be fair, I’m sure many in the US think that we in the Great White North have to use heaters all year round for our igloos J I would state though that with each passing day, I seemed to acclimatize to the heat a little bit, but only so long as the clothing was kept light and breezy. On the last day in Savannah, I wore blue jeans and a black shirt (in preparation to return to Vancouver) and I was miserable when my coworkers and I took a last walk along River Street. The Food >> River St. during a late afternoon thunder and lightning storm with heavy winds that eventually forced everyone to vacate the hotel's deck from where this photo was taken The first night was dinner at an Irish pub with potato soup and fish and chips. The fish were in triangular wedges and the chips were round instead of being French fries. Not bad, but the outside was a bit too fried and crispy dry compared to what I’m used too. Same with the chicken, but the inside meat was okay. Portions are also larger than what we would normally receive in Vancouver, which I think is generally an American thing for large meals. The only meals not overly generous in size were the ones at the hotel’s lounge, for which, I’d say Canadian bars are more generous for the same kind of money paid. Throughout the conference days, we had breakfast and lunch provided by the sponsoring organization (an association of Canadian and State regulators). Pretty much everyone attending said the lunches were not as good as prior conferences (I wouldn’t know since this was my first), but breakfast was rather interesting and one that made us Canucks known to the Southerners. Breakfast was continental, which typically means fruits, muffins and cereals. However, on one morning there were biscuits and a sauce that to one of my coworkers looked like cream of mushroom soup. She wondered (out loud) why would they serve us biscuits and soup for breakfast. We later found out that the soup is in fact gravy and that the “mushrooms” in it were sausages. Biscuits and gravy is a regular staple of Southern cuisine and the Canadian comment/question about cream of mushroom soup became fodder for snickering and joking by the Southerners. Now, given all the jokes about Southerners, you know it’s something when you end up being the butt of their jokes J
>> My coworker and I marvelling at the ability to take a cool one on the road with us in public; awesome! One custom that I really like and wished were in place in Canada is the ability to buy a cold beer in a bar and then ask for a plastic cup and take it out in the public. You plan a little sightseeing walk around the city and think that the heat is going to be brutal and wouldn’t it be nice to have a cold one with you along the way. Well, damn right you can and you can replenish yourself along the way at other bars. This is just righteous! Canadians think much of themselves and their ability to drink, but we’re actually still very reserved with our drinking that we cannot walk around with open air alcohol, nor can we walk into a 7-11 or other small grocery store and buy cold beer, as is available in the US. The only exception is Quebec where open-air alcohol is still not allowed (I think), but small stores can sell wine and beer. However, having said that, I must say that the beer brewed in the US leaves something to be desired for those of us used to at least 5% alcohol content. Regular brand beer lack the snap of regular brand Canadian beer and light beer in the US is like drinking weakly flavored water. Some places sell 40 ounce bottles of beer for $5, which seems like a great deal, but if you bought light beer, after 20 ounces, it gets tiring having to drink something with all the bite of a toothless garter snake. The Architecture Walking along River St. also does not give you a sense of how good the architecture is because while River St. is old, it’s also a bit run down. It looks more like a back alley than a tourist trap district of gift shops, pubs and bars. Moving away from River and Bay streets and into the heart of the city itself reveals the true historic nature of the city. Many homes are over a hundred years old and have true character from having survived some pretty tumultuous periods of American history. Touring the city by foot allows you to visit all the little parks spread out over regular intervals. Every couple of blocks there seems to be a park with statues and monuments dedicated to a person or event. One of these little parks, Chippewa Square, is where Forest Gump’s park bench is located, or rather, I should say, was located. The bench made famous by the movie is now in a museum to protect it from the elements and the many thousands of rear ends that want to sit on it. As you walk further south, you will eventually reach the largest, Forsyth Park with an impressive fountain at the end of a tree-lined walkway. This walkway is gorgeous and it’s photographic moments such as this that I cursed my decision to only bring along a digicam instead of my he-man Nikon rig (suitable for she-men too).
The Ghost Tour I was interested in doing one of the ghost tours offered and when one of my coworkers mentioned that she was going on a trolley ghost tour, I joined in. The fee was $25 for a leisurely 90 minute trolley-style bus ride along some of Savannah’s more notorious haunts.
Since the tour was at night, it was hard to get a sense of where exactly we were in the city and be able to come back during the day. We drove by one of the parks where a girl was hung from a tree in the corner, which to this day has no Spanish moss growing from it like just about every other tree has in Savannah. We drove by one of the old row houses where another young girl died and apparently continues her restless roaming. As the bus drove by the house, the driver mentioned that she can still be seen waving from her window, which caused all of us to look up and low and behold, there was a silhouette of a girl waving from the window of the house we were driving by. However, instead of getting chills and a whiff of ectoplasm, I got a big whiff of cheese instead from the obvious fake setup. One of the conference attendees mentioned how 90-percent of these ghost tours make things up with only 10-percent having any legitimacy of ghostly hauntings. While there are walking tours available instead of doing the bus as we did, the bus tour did have one benefit that the walking tours did not offer, which was a tour of the haunted Sorrel-Weed house.
One day, his wife walked into the servants’ quarters and found the owner engaged in a rather awkward moment with a slave girl. The wife walked out, went to the top of the house and flung herself to her death. Later on, the slave girl was found hung in her room. There may be more history to this house, but the story of the wife and the slave girl would be the genesis of the haunted beginnings. The current owner of the house actually lives in it, using the top floor as his personal residence while allowing the bottom two floors to toured on a regular basis. Our tour started in the basement where we were led into a room that had a large voodoo symbol painted on the floor with two voodoo altars. After a short intro about the significance of voodoo to the original owner of the house, we were led upstairs (all 13 steps) to one of the living rooms where another tour guide provided more information about the original occupants of the house. We were then led into an adjacent living room where the doors were closed, the lights were dimmed and a recording was played back for us. The recording was made by the Sci-Fi channel team filming the house and beyond the normal din of background recording noise, we could hear faint voices shouting and screaming. My impression was of a man shouting “Get out!” As soon as I heard that, my mind recalled Eddie Murphy’s famous standup comedy recording, Delirious. In this routine, Murphy makes fun of horror movies and why, when something really bad starts to happen, the people in the movies stay in the house. Murphy specifically made fun of the Amityville Horror, along the lines of, “Oh honey, this is such a beautiful house, the kids are playing in the yard and…GET OUT!...too bad we can’t stay, see ya.” I’m with Eddie on this one. If you’re in a house and it’s haunted, y’all just get the hell out, toute de suite. I’m a skeptic myself, but hey, why tempt fate J We did the tour on Friday night and then returned on Sunday afternoon by chance on our way back from Forsyth Park. The group of us were outside joking about haunted houses when a girl came outside from the house to place brochures in the front gate. We asked her about the house and she stated that it was indeed haunted and that she had experienced various incidents during her time working there. Things such as being locked inside of rooms and being hit over the head, for which I asked, why was she still there (she ignored me). Another person asked how long do workers last at the house and she replied, about six months.
Photography in Savannah The W1 acquitted itself well given its limitations, but as nice of a camera as the W1 is, a camera with a tiny sensor is just not going to produce as nice a quality as a D200 or D2X. As much as I’ve groused about Nikon SLR noise at high ISO settings, I would have gladly lived with such noise to have ISO 1600 available in some of the locations I was in. ISO 400, the max ISO on the W1, just didn’t cut it for some shots where I could have used faster shutter speeds in dark environments. However, photography is often a compromise and while I would have much preferred the D2X along with my usual kit of 12-24, 17-55, 70-200 lenses and Gitzo tripod, this would have been a bitch to have carried around into the bars that we visited after the full days of training seminars. So while certain of the W1 shots (at ISO 400) look rather crunchy when viewed on the monitor at large magnification, better to have some shots than none at all. Next time around, I’ll likely bring the D200/18-200 kit as well as the W1 and use the appropriate camera depending on where I am or when I’m going out sightseeing. Although I only have JPEG files from the W1, I still put them through Adobe Lightroom for some basic edits and to create some galleries from them. One gallery I created is of 99 selects that I felt would look good as sepia toned files to better convey the long history of Savannah and what I felt when I was walking through the neighborhoods (link provided at end of article). Walking by one of the parks, we observed a little photo session going on for a baby girl dressed in white with a matching headband. Being a geek, I stood and observed for a couple of minutes and noticed the large reflector lying on the grass and then the type of camera the photographer was using. At first glance I thought Contax, but that was quickly shunt aside after seeing the shape of the prism and noticing the camera had a Speed Grip, which quickly confirmed that the camera was a Bronica ETRS model. Which means, believe it or not, the photographer was using film, albeit medium format 6x4.5 film.
Conclusion However, once I got out of the tourist trap area and into the real Savannah, I came away with much appreciation for the historic nature of the city. I would love to return for a more leisurely photographic stroll through the parks and neighborhoods…but, perhaps not in the middle of summer with the heat and humidity.
Click here to view some more Savannah photos, but converted to an antique, sepia-like tone to convey what the old city felt like to me (some are dupes of the color ones above). |
Correspondence & About this website Copyright © 1998-2008 Edwin Leong |
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After the regional commuter plane (made by Bombardier, a Montreal-based aerospace company that invented the snow mobile) touched down in Savannah and I made my way out of the airplane, there was an immediate blast of heat from when I stepped off the airplane to entering the non air-conditioned connector to the airport.
My last meal in Savannah was southern fried chicken; my only dalliance into the local cuisine and truthfully, only because the restaurant was out of steaks (I come from cattle country and I need regular exposure to a nice, bloody…er…juicy rare steak).
In all seriousness though, Southerners do live up to their reputation for being warm and welcoming even if we never got any “real” breakfasts like bacon, sausage, or ham and eggs with hash browns (or waffles and pancakes). I didn’t get to eat a regular breakfast until the last day in Savannah when we bought our own breakfast at the hotel’s restaurant.
This house was featured on the Sci-Fi channel, so there seemed to be some bonafides to the claims of being haunted. The original owner apparently turned his back on his Haitian heritage and was cursed by the voodoo gods. 
Since I was in Savannah for work-related training, I didn’t think I’d have much opportunity to do some serious photography, so I decided to leave even my most basic SLR kit of a standard Nikon D200 and 18-200 VR lens at home in favor of the take anywhere Sony W1 digicam.
