by Colleen Hannon - December 10, 2007
I have a craving for real hot wings. I mean REAL hot wings. But I'm not thinking of Buffalo, New York. To me, hot wings come from a restaraunt in Anchorage, Alaska called Wings 'n Things.
The owners came from New York, but they didn't serve what are referred to as buffalo wings. It was their own custom recipe in five grades of heat with a generous heap of celery sticks and bleu cheese dressing for dipping. You walked in, gave them an increment of 10 and how hot you wanted them and then you were on your way with a foam box of spicy happiness. When I lived in Anchorage and worked downtown I got lunch there once per week. That's all I would allow myself on my diet. I heard through the grapevine it closed suddenly this last summer after almost 25 years. Unabashedly not authentic, but to me, those were truly the best. The place also served a Philly Cheese Steak to die for, but even I know better than to put a horse in that particular race.
In the announcement that the restaurant closed, I saw a bunch of people going on about how those weren't real hot wings and badmouthing that cheese steak. I thought it was kind of crass, but I see that in a lot of things. Go out to the Cheesecake Factory, and you'll inevitably get someone who complains that isn't real New York style cheesecake because it has fruit on it. Or someone will explain in great detail why real barbeque only comes from Lubbock, Texas (or if you want to start a fight, you can tell my mom's boyfriend it only comes from Kansas City).
That may be "real" to them. To someone who has never been east of Leavenworth, WA, that's not real. Some days I'm not even sure Kansas City is real. And I know New York is fictional. I see it on TV all the time. It gets me to thinking.
How many TV shows and movies have you seen showing a far off place? How many of them do you think are realistic? How many of us know anything but the movie? I read this article that someone wrote about how literature by and from LA wasn't a good portrayal of the place. I found that an interesting concept. You see, I firmly believe that the city and its environs are imaginary. Not to mention several others like New York and Washington, D.C.
I went to L.A. once in high school, but all I saw was LAX, Disney Land, and a my very first freeways. Definitely not reality. Since then I have taken a working trip to San Francisco, which I'm still not certain I really believe in. Like table-tapping, it could all be smoke and mirrors. I know Fisherman's Wharf was (though I believe in the Ghirardelli factory with all my heart). We stayed in a place that looked like the Hotel Monolith from "The Shadow" on the outside and the Barbie Dream Hotel on the inside. I touched an actual palm tree down in that park by Chinatown, and I'm almost certain they aren't plastic. I didn't take a core sample so I can't be absolutely positive.
L.A. is several times more pretend, and New York is entirely fictional. How much of the world has only seen New York through the eyes of "Breakfast at Tiffany's" and "NYPD Blue"? How many people only know L.A. via "L.A. Story" and "Pretty Woman"? I have seen downtown L.A. reduced to an expanding circle of red-hot rubble in "Independence Day", and seen the Empire State building speared with a huge green alien laser beam. How do you compare and contrast that with news coverage of the Loma Prieda Earthquake or 9/11?
For those of us from off the beaten path, we have it a little easier. If a movie is ever made about our hometown, we already expect it to have absolutely no resemblance to the real thing. Ask a Minnesota native about "Fargo". Ask an Alaskan about "Northern Exposure" or "Mystery, Alaska". I was talking to a friend of mine from Hawaii about watching the movie "Pearl Harbor", and he said it was really weird watching them blow up his house (not really, just where his neighborhood is today - from what I understand his house was built after the war entirely). But for those of you living in New York and L.A. and laboring under the sheer weight of all of the imagination of our media, I'm not sure how you do it.
How does it feel when half the T.V. lineup is from your hometown? Doesn't the very weight of it overpower the reality of the place? You would be watching all the time looking for some hint of the things you know and see. But things would never be wholely realized. How long would it be before you began to believe what other people were saying and showing about it? How long before the streets you walk to work each morning start to take on the cliches and patterns of the stories?
I understand that turnabout is fair play; you guys probably think Seattle is full of Kurt-Cobain-lookalikes and Starbucks coffee bars and Frasier's radio show. Well, we have a heck of a lot of Starbucks, that's true. And I'm sure there are quite a few real Rodeo-Rejects running frantically around L.A. There is always a germ of truth in these observations. But I know if I wrote an essay about Seattle, it would never cover the whole place. I would make some hopefully witty comments about the local costume (North Face jacket and a commuter cup from your favorite coffee house, no umbrella), or the fact that someone forgot to tell the city planners you're supposed to build on the flat parts of the land, not the sloped parts. But it would never come close to describing the reality of the place. And those of you from far off places probably wouldn't be any closer to knowing what this place is really like.
It's not just television and the rest of the media. Let's get back to my impossible hot wings. How many people think what's "real" are actually working off a depiction from the media? Who is to say what's a real hot wing? Is there some authority in Buffalo, New York that can come to your restaurant and assess the reality of your hot wings and your compliance to the standards they set for Buffalo hot wings? I don't know, but I highly doubt it. I'll bet there's a loose consensus somewhere, and the forces of the local Chamber of Commerce and marketing combine their powers to create the mythos knows as the "real Buffalo hot wing." And if enough people buy into it, you have a style in the making. That doesn't make it gospel, and doesn't make my idea of hot wings any less valid than theirs.
All this pondering aside, real life and practicality boils it all down to the fact that if I want decent hotwings, I get to make a pilgrimage to Hooters. According to the grapevine that's as close as we get in my current neck of the woods.
And no, I don't want to discuss if our waitress's salient features are real or not.
[Some parts of this article originally appeared in the readers' section of another publication - ed.]
Colleen Hannon is a Seattle-based geek of all trades and mom. By day you'll find her at her Daily Planet job, but by night you can find her at MsZilla, Gamerdad and Gamers With Jobs. Hmmm...we're seeing a trend here...