Springsteen in Pittsburgh, 2014, High Hopes tour It was getting dark and I had just arrived at my first-ever airbnb.com homestay—airbnb is an online community where you can book a place to stay at someone’s house, or rent out a room yourself. It’s a step up from couchsurfing.com since you pay to stay, but places are generally much less expensive than hotels. And more personable. The place I’d chosen was out in the country, a miniature Victorian village of tiny buildings constructed on a woman’s farm, eight miles outside of Ithaca, New York. It was C$32. From the photos, Karenville—named after the owner—looked exactly like the kind of eccentric, laid-back, friendly sort of place I wanted to spend the night. I was on a solo road trip—a birthday present to myself last month—on my way from my home in Wakefield, Quebec, to Pittsburgh, to see Bruce Springsteen the next night. Staying in hotels didn’t appeal. Airbnb and Karenville did.
Except as I looked around I realized this place looked nothing like Karenville. I was on a lonely country road, parked in the driveway of what looked like a regular farmhouse, no miniature Victorian village, and no Karen—shown in her profile picture to have long silver braids and lots of animals. I re-checked the directions that google had given me on the airbnb site. I had the right address. I tried knocking on the door of the farmhouse but nobody was home. Finally, a car pulled up and an elderly couple with some grandkids in the back eyed me suspiciously.
“Who are you?” said the woman, rolling down the window.
I explained my predicament. It took them a few minutes to warm up to me and believe my story, but after seeing the address on my ipad they were convinced.
“Looks like you’ve been scammed,” said the man behind the steering wheel. “There’s no B&B anywhere around these parts. I’ve lived here all my life. Never heard of this woman, or a miniature village.” He chuckled.
“Did you pay her already?” asked one of the kids in the backseat.
“Yeah, I did, through paypal.”
“Well you can kiss that money goodbye,” said the woman, shaking her head in a way that showed her disgust with the depravity of the modern world.
“But Karen seemed so nice,” I said. “And the place seemed real. Look at all these photos!” I held up my ipad again.
They didn’t know what else to say and I sensed they wanted to go inside now that the excitement was over. Feeling dejected and confused I drove back to Ithaca. Just an hour earlier I’d eaten at the Moosewood Restaurant and had wandered around the pretty town, watching students and parents getting tours of Cornell. Now back in town, I found a Starbucks with wifi, found Karen’s contact info and sent her a message through the airbnb site: “What’s going on? I went to the address and it wasn’t Karenville. Are you real?”
Karen wrote back immediately. “Yes! I’m real! Google maps refuses to give my proper address on the airbnb website. It must be because we’re off the grid and kind of hidden. Sorry about that! Come back and go a further quarter mile down the road. My husband will meet you out there with a flashlight. We don’t have electricity and it’s dark.”
Except for the correct address, which is rather crucial, Karenville turned out to be everything Karen claimed it was on the website: a rustic, tiny, off-grid ‘village’ where you can stay in an old-fashioned ‘hotel’ that’s ten by ten. Karen’s husband gave me a tour the first night of all the buildings, each one like a dollhouse for grownups.
The next morning Karen told me about her frustration trying to get airbnb to give the right address to her guests. I also tried to contact them about this but got frustrated myself when I realized there is no ‘Contact Us’ page. For such a huge company—serving 192 countries and reportedly worth ten billion dollars—this is shocking, and arrogant. After saying goodbye to Karen, I stopped by the farmhouse of the old couple to let them know that Karenville is, in fact, real, and just a quarter of the mile down the road.
My next airbnb stay was in Pittsburgh, in a treed neighbourhood of old houses and spring blossoms on the boulevards.
First, I’ll tell you about the concert. You can skip ahead if for some reason you don’t know about Bruce Springsteen and the energy he generates wherever he goes.
The Springsteen concert was fantastic, as always. Whenever I’m in the midst of one of his concerts—dancing, singing along, trying to take it all in—I’m on such a high that I sometimes feel that if I died right after that would be okay; I could go out on a high note.
"The band played their usual thrilling, high-octane, three-and-a-half hours, and when they finally left after the last song, Bruce Springsteen didn’t."
On the afternoon of the concert in Pittsburgh, I’d made friends with some fellow fans as we’d lined up to try and get ‘pit’ tickets (where you can be right in the very front as opposed to just on the floor) and I was with the same people again at the concert—a fun Pittsburgh couple, and two cute young lawyer guys who turned out to be from Toronto. While waiting for the concert to start, we’d discussed Rob Ford, Toronto’s most interesting neighbourhoods, Downtown Abbey, and other concerts we’d been to. The five of us ended up becoming fast friends, hanging out and dancing together throughout the show. The band played their usual thrilling, high-octane, three-and-a-half hours, and when they finally left after the last song, Bruce Springsteen didn’t. He just stood there by himself, hesitating. He didn’t seem to want to leave the stage.
“What’s he doing?” people asked. The lights were on and everyone seemed to be holding their breath. Then Bruce walked over to an organ, sat down, and started talking as he noodled around on the organ keys. You could tell this wasn’t rehearsed. Everything he said was off the top of his head. He said he realized he’d been playing the guitar for almost fifty years. Fifty years. He couldn’t believe this. He talked about how much music had meant to him, how it had saved his life. Then he said if it wasn’t for us, for his fans, he’d be nothing. He wanted to thank us, to “thank us for showing up so often.” “You’ve added so much to my life,” he said, as if he couldn’t believe his luck. I was thinking, Geez, you’ve added so much to our life. You could tell he meant every word he spoke. Then he sang a couple of songs.
It was probably the most genuine heartfelt moment I’d ever witnessed in a public space.
Now back to airbnb, not nearly as interesting: I got horribly lost trying to find my way back to my airbnb place. The woman who owned the house where I was staying had kindly printed me out directions the night before to get to the concert downtown. I figured all I had to do was backtrack to get home. But no. The main road I’d come in on was a one-way street. I ended up in a dodgy neighbourhood at midnight asking directions at a gas station where the girl behind the counter was behind bullet-proof glass.
When I finally got back at 1 a.m., I worried that I was waking up the home owner and her boyfriend. We all shared a bathroom and my bedroom was right next to theirs. Then at 6 a.m., they were the ones who woke me up with what was either a blender, a hair dryer, or a stealth bomber in their kitchen.
Clearly, this was another drawback of airbnb. It can be a little cozy. But for fifty dollars, I wasn’t complaining. My bedroom was lovely and had a cushy bed.
At the last minute I decided to book a final airbnb at the half-way point. There was no way I could make the ten-hour drive home on five hours of sleep. Although, again, I got ridiculously lost roaming around the Rochester suburb in search of this last airbnb place (I really need a GPS!) when I finally found it, it was perfect. The friendly, twenty-something owner of the little bungalow had cleaned up her craft room for me. The bed in her craft room was a luxurious retreat of duvet heaven and I slept ten hours straight. It cost $30.
Overall, I’m so impressed with airbnb (except for their lack of a Contact Us page) that I might try renting out our tent trailer for some summer nights, right in our woods in Wakefield. Thirty dollars for a night including a vegan breakfast? I’ll just make sure the address is right.
Click here for my blurb and video on Springsteen's Born To Run: Top 40 Travel Songs of All Time (Worldhum.com)
“What’s he doing?” people asked. The lights were on and everyone seemed to be holding their breath. Then Bruce walked over to an organ, sat down, and started talking as he noodled around on the organ keys. You could tell this wasn’t rehearsed. Everything he said was off the top of his head. He said he realized he’d been playing the guitar for almost fifty years. Fifty years. He couldn’t believe this. He talked about how much music had meant to him, how it had saved his life. Then he said if it wasn’t for us, for his fans, he’d be nothing. He wanted to thank us, to “thank us for showing up so often.” “You’ve added so much to my life,” he said, as if he couldn’t believe his luck. I was thinking, Geez, you’ve added so much to our life. You could tell he meant every word he spoke. Then he sang a couple of songs.
It was probably the most genuine heartfelt moment I’d ever witnessed in a public space.
Now back to airbnb, not nearly as interesting: I got horribly lost trying to find my way back to my airbnb place. The woman who owned the house where I was staying had kindly printed me out directions the night before to get to the concert downtown. I figured all I had to do was backtrack to get home. But no. The main road I’d come in on was a one-way street. I ended up in a dodgy neighbourhood at midnight asking directions at a gas station where the girl behind the counter was behind bullet-proof glass.
When I finally got back at 1 a.m., I worried that I was waking up the home owner and her boyfriend. We all shared a bathroom and my bedroom was right next to theirs. Then at 6 a.m., they were the ones who woke me up with what was either a blender, a hair dryer, or a stealth bomber in their kitchen.
Clearly, this was another drawback of airbnb. It can be a little cozy. But for fifty dollars, I wasn’t complaining. My bedroom was lovely and had a cushy bed.
At the last minute I decided to book a final airbnb at the half-way point. There was no way I could make the ten-hour drive home on five hours of sleep. Although, again, I got ridiculously lost roaming around the Rochester suburb in search of this last airbnb place (I really need a GPS!) when I finally found it, it was perfect. The friendly, twenty-something owner of the little bungalow had cleaned up her craft room for me. The bed in her craft room was a luxurious retreat of duvet heaven and I slept ten hours straight. It cost $30.
Overall, I’m so impressed with airbnb (except for their lack of a Contact Us page) that I might try renting out our tent trailer for some summer nights, right in our woods in Wakefield. Thirty dollars for a night including a vegan breakfast? I’ll just make sure the address is right.
Click here for my blurb and video on Springsteen's Born To Run: Top 40 Travel Songs of All Time (Worldhum.com)
My random taste of Bruce Springsteen video below (all footage by Laurie Gough)
Karenville, Ithaca, New York
Springsteen in Ottawa on Wrecking Ball tour, photo: Laurie Gough
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