This is E Street, Davis. Click on the image to see it in more detail. Actually to see it in even more detail, go to the actual place. You have to stand just by the bins near The Hotdogger, near the rear of Uncle Vito’s, the pizza place. Well not just pizza, they do beer and fries and other things. They show sports. It’s nice, I’ve sketched in there before. When I first moved to Davis it was actually a Chinese restaurant called “Wok’N’Roll”. Wok’n’roll. Wok. ‘N’ Roll. There is another place in south Davis over where I used to live called “Wok of Flame. Not having an American accent I did not get that pun at first. Wok of Flame? IS there a Rock of Flame, is that a thing I need to look up, like Rock of Ages (which is another thing I don’t understand but nevertheless laugh when Iron Man uses it to refer to Loki). Now with Wok of Flame, when I realized, oh that is supposed to be ‘Walk of Flame’ but even then it was like, but I still don’t get it. What is the Walk of Flame? Took me ages to realize it means Walk of Fame. That’s two puns in one. So I started to think maybe all the other shops and restaurants in Davis were punny references to things I didn’t get? At this point I should roll off a load of Davis shops and restaurants and try to make vaguely funny guesses at what they could potentially be puns for, in a completely silly manner, but honestly I feel like I’m above such frippery. No, ha ha ha no no I am totally not above that actually so here goes. The Avid Reader, is that a reference to David Ginola’s Bird Feeder? No, that doesn’t work, not even close. Being a punster in the ‘Wok of Flame’ league is harder than you might think. But Wok’n’Roll…that works too because you have woks, and you have spring rolls. And it’s like Rock’n’Roll. I used to eat there sometimes on Saturday when I worked at the Avid Reader (my first job in Davis was at the David Ginola’s Bird Feeder) and to be honest, Wok’n’Roll wasn’t very good. I didn’t like the food much. I just liked their name.

Anyway, enough wok-ing down memory lane, back to this sketch. This is E Street, like the Band. The building on the left is the Dresbach-Hunt-Boyer Mansion which was built in 1875, I have sketched it before (remember my Davis centenary sketchcrawl last year?) but not from this side of the street. There is also Mansion Square behind it, with lots of various businesses which may or may not have punny names, like ‘A Better Place to Bead’, I don’t know what it’s referring to.

Actually I have a story from this building on the right, when I first came to Davis, before I had any job (back when I’d spend the day playing scrabble by myself before leaving the apartment at 4pm and go to the library to translate Anglo-Saxon poetry; boy I needed a job) (this was before I started drawing Davis) I interviewed for Kaplan, who did all the SATs and GREs and stuff. I ultimately never got the position, which I think was teaching people how to pass those exams, exams which I had never ever taken myself because I’m from the UK and we don’t require them, but I did get on very well with the people there and had to do a presentation on the subject of my choice. Now you might think, well that’s an obvious one, drawing, or maybe history, or even historical language, no definitely football shirts. Interactive Theatre. You’d be wrong. What I decided to talk about was Black Shuck. You know, Black Shuck the ghostly dog who terrorized East Anglia hundreds of years ago. Black Shuck who had this massive great big eye and breathed fire and burnt church doors with his paws. Black Shuck used to keep me awake at night. Black Shuck scared the living bejeezus out of me. He was huge, like a horse, and would roam the country lanes of Suffolk or wherever, and cars would feel his icy flaming breath (seriously myths and legends, make your mind up). I used to have nightmares about Black Shuck, like he would for some reason seek me out in my terraced house in Burnt Oak, north London, and, what? Roar at me? Burn me with his imaginary paws? Look at me with his massive single eye that looks like a bowl? Black Shuck, ridiculous, silly ghost stories. Like the Beast of Exmoor, or the Hairy Hands of Dartmoor. Yes, the Hairy Hands of Dartmoor, look them up, it’s one of those great local English legends.

That’s not a very interesting story actually. I may even be remembering it wrong, maybe I did talk about Interactive Theatre, leaving the Legend of Black Shuck story in my notebook, deciding last minute not to bother anyone with it. Memory can be a funny thing. Not everyone remembers everything the same way, so what is reality? Speaking of memory, one more thing to add about this sketch. Until about ten years ago there used to be a massive tree which stood right in the middle there, huge thing it was, towering high above the Davis skyline. It was leaning though, to the left (left-leaning like much of Davis), leaning to quite a large extent that if it fell it would have probably meant the end of Mr Dresbach and Mr Hunt and Mr Boyer, so they chopped it down. I still see it, like the ghost of trees past.