urban bicycle journeys

I had never been to Jackson, Mississippi but because of one song “Stick in my Hand” I have spent many years thinking about the place. It’s a great song but is very tongue-in-cheek and gives no details about Jackson at all.

I have been married to Tootie for just over forty years. We met in New Orleans in the fall of 1981. On our second date I had asked her to go with me to a free afternoon performance of a New Wave talkingheadsesque band on the Tulane University quad, a band I had never heard of. Neither of us was a Tulane student. I was quite blown away, not only by Tootie, but by the Atlanta GA band Swimming Pool Q’s. I bought their record album at the concert and still have it. Because it was on a small independent label that music in 2024 is not available on Spotify or Apple Music. It is available on YouTube. At some point in the mid-1980’s the band signed a major label record contract, but they never were popular enough to be more than a backing band or playing in clubs. They still perform in the Atlanta area, sporadically, even today.

Their best song, both on the album and in their live performance was “Stick in my Hand,” a Stairway-To-Heaven or American-Pie style fantasy epic about Jackson Mississippi. I was not the only one listening. Because I incessantly played the album in the early 1980’s, many of our New Orleans crowd from that era were walking around with this song in their heads. Many remember it now.

Stick in my Hand! I certainly needed to bicycle around Jackson MS. It might be an interesting place. The author Eudora Welty spent essentially her entire life there.

Tootie and I live in New Orleans part of the year. Another great song “City of New Orleans” describes the train that even now runs New Orleans – Jackson – Memphis – Chicago, and back. I booked an Amtrak ticket from New Orleans to Jackson MS, a scheduled four hour trip leaving New Orleans at 1:45 PM. I took along the folding Bike Friday.

It was a very New Orleanean move that the city consolidated all its train stations into one Union Station in 1953 at about the time people mostly stopped riding trains. The station is only about a ten minute bike ride from my home.

I wheeled the bicycle inside. The train was leaving in about twenty minutes.

Boarding the train with a folding bicycle was easy. I was able to wheel the bicycle up to the train car entrance, waiting to fold it until the last minute. I only had to carry the folded bicycle about thirty feet before putting it in a lower level luggage rack.

I do mostly love Amtrak but it often feels like a third-world experience; usually nice but sometimes bizarrely amateurish. This specific train uses bi-level coaches. The seats on the second level are roomy and comfortable. In both directions the train was at most half full.

All Amtrak trains arriving or departing New Orleans roll very slowly the first several miles on tracks that dead-end at the station. I love my beautiful city but those first miles are incredibly ugly. The route passes both underneath and alongside the Ponchartrain Expressway. It is not just the homeless encampments.

It is best on Amtrak to bring your own food. I had brought from home an avocado, vidalia onion, and arugula sandwich on Dave’s bread, along with an Aquafina water bottle half filled with New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc. This all made the scenery go by easily. My seat was only one car down from the lounge car as we skirted the west side of Lake Ponchartrain.

I mentioned that Amtrak feels Third World sometimes. Don’t the employees have somewhere to go other than taking over seat sections?

Outside of certain routes mostly in the Northeast, Amtrak shares tracks with freight railroads. Trains stop and start seemingly at random. Our train sat for quite a while in the woods north of Hammond LA. They must have padded the schedule because we were only a few minutes late arriving in Jackson MS just before six in the evening. This was the view from the train window just before pulling into the station.

My return train was scheduled for mid-morning a day and a half later. I would have the full next day to bicycle around Jackson.

I bicycled that late afternoon around the central city. This being an American downtown, of course there were mostly vacant storefronts.

I will not attempt to dissect Jackson or Mississippi politics, urbanism, or race relations. I can only show what I see and experience. My biggest shocker of this trip was how vacant the streets of downtown Jackson were. It was as if a neutron bomb had gone off. It was the end of a workweek day in a state capital city and not only were there no people on the streets, there were almost no cars. Above the vacant storefronts most office buildings looked at least partially maintained. I am sure crime is a problem but in most crime ridden areas you see sketchy people standing around. Where was everybody?

On the train I had cut my finger by reaching into my bag and brushing against my razor. I wanted to buy some bandaids before checking into the hotel. In the entire downtown there is essentially no retail. A Google Maps search for “drug store” only came up with one place anywhere near me. It was not in the core downtown but was called Downtown Drugstore. I bicycled over there. On entering I realized it was a combination CBD dispensary and mini-mart. They had bandaids, although only one box left, and it was CVS brand, priced way less than what would have cost at CVS. The two guys running it were quite nice and they essentially asked me what I was doing here in this neighborhood. I told them. They grinned. As I left, one said:

“Stay safe, man.”

I stayed both nights at the Hilton Garden Inn, the former King Edward Hotel, built in 1923 across the street from the train station.

The hotel seemed different from the average American hotel, like an alternate universe, friendly but sometimes awkward. . There were essentially no restaurants near me so this first night I decided to eat in the hotel bar. They said it was closed because the air conditioner was not working. The guy holding down the lobby area was super nice. He compted me a second glass of wine as I sat almost alone in the brightly lit area usually used for breakfast. The short dinner menu included a fifteen dollar hamburger. It was unusual that the burger arrived with no adornments to the plate, no fries, no salad, with no catchup and mustard either. Still, it was delicious, one of the best hamburgers I have had in a long time.

Dessert was a breeze; free decaf coffee and a package of peanut M&M’s from the hotel’s little store.

The next morning I departed for a day trip by bicycle to see what Jackson MS had to offer. Alongside the train station was a bike lane through a neighborhood of vacant abandoned buildings. I felt like I was the first person to bicycle on it.

I had studied the Google Map of the Jackson area a little, and most of the money and development seems spread out to the northeast of downtown, along I-55 toward the suburban town of Ridgeland MS, about twelve miles from downtown. I had looked online for bike shops in the Jackson area, and the only serious bike shop looked to be in Ridgeland. I emailed them asking their recommended route for biking from downtown Jackson to Ridgeland. In their email reply:

Riding into downtown Jackson isn’t recommended.  There is no main bike path, and most of the roads are heavily trafficed, in a high crime area or very poorly maintained.  

The email went on to offer several routes in the Ridgeland area, which I am sure are nice. Nevertheless, I came here to go see Jackson! I took this as a challenge.

I have also committed myself to safety and to stay away from busy dangerous highways. My day’s plan was to ride northeast from downtown Jackson, but watch carefully and only stay on minor roads. If the situation appeared unsafe, I would turn around.

Out of the sixth floor hotel window the previous night in the darkness of many empty office buildings I had seen a brightly lit yellow sign, just far enough away to not be able to read.

I was able to find it a few blocks away the next day, only about a block from the State Capitol.

I discovered that four of five years ago this then-decrepit mid-century modern motel and its colorful sign were on National Historic Preservation Society’s national yearly list of Ten Most Endangered Historic Buildings. The property had been sold to the state to provide a parking lot for state employees. Despite pleas from preservationists they tore down the motel. Someone saved its sign and a little bit of the restaurant. A local sign company helped artsy locals completely rebuild the sign, which was re-erected only this year. Someone paid to rebuild the modernist restaurant, which to me looks fully restored but empty. There is no more motel. Hmmm. The internet offers no clue about the future. I saw no other restaurants at all in this part of town.

Very close to the motel sign and the State Capitol Building is this huge church, completely abandoned.

I cycled by the State Capitol. The lawn is meticulously maintained. There are not a lot of monuments, just one major statue honoring Confederate women, but also a smaller sign telling about 1960’s civil rights activists.

There was very little car traffic on a major road on which I cycled only briefly.

This attractive motel-looking building is now apartments. Note the fence. Jackson does seem to have a lot of fences.

I moved over to the less busy North Street, then through the Bellhaven area. This northeast side of town is busier, in a good way. I passed a couple of restaurants in older buildings that I planned to investigate later. I cycled by Bellhaven University.

I cycled through attractive 1920’s neighborhoods.

My regular readers know an observation from my travels: While much of America looks abandoned and falling down, five categories of America look funded in excess, gilded really. Medical centers top the list. (the others; universities, the military, wealthy residential areas, and airports.) The University of Mississippi is in Oxford MS, 160 miles to the north, but the medical school and hospital are in Jackson. North of Woodrow Wilson Avenue I cycled through seemingly dozens of shining new looking buildings associated with healthcare.

North of the medical complex was a bike path, really, along Old Canton Road. Unfortunately it lasted less than two miles.

After getting off Old Canton Road I was able to cycle through miles of interconnected 1960’s looking neighborhoods.

There seemed to be a lot of gated streets.

I crossed over I-55 to see how the cycling would be on that other side. Looking down the freeway I could see the “real” Jackson MS.

I knew I was in the trendier part of town when I cycled through this parking lot.

I got about as far north as Briarwood Drive when I realized that the bike shop’s email might have been correct. There seemed no safe way to keep cycling northward. Since I had no real destination anyway I started cycling back towards downtown in a big loop, using interconnected streets of residential areas. A little later two neighborhoods of 1960-70’s houses randomly had a gate between them. What to do? I jammed the bike and myself through the bushes on the right side. I looked around for someone to be upset with me, and pedaled on.

I cycled through that other neighborhood. I guess the houses on that other side were nicer, but not by much.

In 2024 America if you do not want to go downtown the real estate industry will create a imitation downtown in the suburbs; this one near Whole Foods is called Eastover.

Just in time for a late lunch in that Eastover development I stumbled onto Eudora’s Mississippi Brasserie. On this day with perfect weather they were half open to the breeze.

Because many outsiders think that Mississippi has more of a race problem than anywhere else, I noted that likely a quarter of the patrons at this trendy restaurant were Black, something you don’t see in either Chapel Hill NC or my neighborhood in New Orleans.

I sat at a solo table outside. Some elderly well dressed women were having lunch.

I am back to reading Walter Isaacson’s biography of Benjamin Franklin. I ordered a local IPA and the tomato confit and quinoa salad with shavings of parmesan, a dish I doubt Eudora Welty would have known about.

As I was leaving and taking the lock off my bicycle I noticed the idyllic scene of others lounging in the fake grass plaza in front of the restaurant.

I cycled onward in the general direction of downtown. I cycled first back through the medical complex, then through another neighborhood of attractive older homes. One house had a couple of antique Land Rovers.

I was approaching downtown Jackson. That morning I had noticed a cluster of businesses in renovated 1920’s houses on the north end of the central city. I stopped at the coffee house Urban Foxes for an oat milk latte with one pack sugar. They had an attractive grapefruit pound cake on the counter, so I took a slice of that as well. Inside it was fun imagining who these people were, where they came from. A guy behind me was talking loudly in an English accent. Others just stuck to their computers.

I eventually headed back to the bicycle. Cycling on North Street towards downtown felt easy and safe. There was no one around.

I cycled towards my hotel through the seemingly empty downtown, even though it was a weekday. Other than law offices I had trouble finding storefronts with any actual retail. The single exception I found was a Fedex Office.

I went back to hotel for a while but about cocktail hour I cycled over to Cathead Distillery on the extremely vacant south side of downtown. I sensed this distillery has been here a while. They must do most of their business selling their liquor wholesale but they do have a bar. I sat near the only other customer who also was from out of town. We both chatted with our bartender.

I wanted to see the distillery and have one drink but I eventually moved on. I cycled up to that distinctive skyscraper, the Standard Life Building from 1929. There are no other occupied buildings on its block and I initially thought it was vacant. The scene was dingy and I felt mildly unsafe. A couple of guys walked by me at the entrance. They apparently had apartments inside. I walked briefly into the art-deco lobby which was intact but not all that impressive.

My dinner destination was Elvie’s, inside a 1920’s bungalow in that northern fringe of downtown near the medical center. Elvie’s was certainly the best restaurant I saw in Jackson proper. It was crowded on this Friday night. There were seats at the bar when I arrived but were soon filled.

I skipped an appetizer and ordered redfish almondine with a side of duck fat fries. Fresh fish in a bath of real butter with a mound of sliced almonds. What’s not to like? I could not stop eating.

Sitting next to me at the bar were an older couple who later introduced themselves as the parents of the chef. They had Uptown New Orleans connections, living there part of the year, near the old Harry’s Ace.

My train back to New Orleans would depart the next morning about eleven. That morning I again noodled around downtown by bicycle. I admired the streamline moderne 1940’s bus station which is restored due to its relationship with the civil rights movement. Its exterior is restored but it is empty and unused.

I later found the state fairgrounds a couple of miles away. I admired the architecturally impressive Mississippi Coliseum, from 1962.

Also on the fairgrounds was the weekly Saturday farmer’s market. A guy said he had baked the almond croissant that morning. It was perfect for the train ride, in lieu of lunch. I bought some fascinating artisanal earrings for Tootie.

Because I could see the train station from my hotel room window I could wait until right before the train arrived to walk across the street to the station. This is the platform in Jackson.

The train ride back was even nicer than the ride up; no delays at all.