DESTINATION: Pittsburgh
TRAVELING COMPANIONS: Alaina and Pat
PHOTOS BY: Alaina ILLUSTRATIONS BY: Travis

I would like to begin this week's travel by explaining something that appears to be an error in my Daily Collegian column yesterday.

I used the word "brazier," which refers to a "large metal container in which coal or charcoal is burned," in place of "brassiere," which is "something to keep your female body parts from flopping all over the place."

While this may have seemed like a mistake, in actuality, I was making an artistic statement. And you can't question art.

On that note: What is art?

I decided to find out during this week's travel to God's city -- Pittsburgh, Pa. (Sorry Vatican!)

Pittsburgh happens to be the art capitol of the world. (By the way, I should have used the spelling 'capital' if I wanted to obey AP style. But I didn't, because I'm artistic.)

We have this awesome Pittsburgh Cultural Trust thingy that pumps a bunch of art into the veins of the city. Speaking of which, did you know that Pittsburghers bleed Heinz ketchup? Whenever I'm at a picnic and someone tries to pass me the ketchup bottle, I just stab my hand and say, "Nah, I'm good."

(I have been to the hospital on seven of the past 20 Labor Days. Also, I have hepatitis. And herpes.)

The destination of our travel was the Wood Street Galleries, which is a small, two-story art gallery that's built above one of the transit stops in town. Admission is free, which makes me wonder why more homeless people don't take advantage of this great sheltering opportunity.

Wood Street tends to feature what's known to art aficionados as "installation art." It is hard to define installation art, so I will provide a few examples. Two of them have been real installations, and one of them is made up. Can you spot the fake?

Example 1: An artist covers a floor with green apple candy.

Example 2: Ten blenders are placed on a table. Each blender contains goldfish. Visitors are told that they can turn the blenders on if they want to.

Example 3: Seventeen live deer are attached to the giant ball at Epcot Center with bungee cords.

Keep reading for the answer! The answer is 3.

Proof: Example 1; Example 2.

The particular exhibit at Wood Street was called "Echo." Here is the description of the exhibit provided by the gallery:

Hardesty's environments investigate the mysteries of perception, challenging our sense of our physical selves. The technological aspects of his work dissolve into sensual cues which elicit questions of where, what, why, and how, sometimes inducing a meditative reverie. In response to his work, we shift from the material to the metaphysical.

Yeah.

So we took the elevator to the one of the galleries and saw that it had been divided into two rooms.

In the room to the right was a metronome, a giant ball and a lit candle. I really only have this one photo of the ball:

I drew the other two things from memory for ya:

In the room to the left was a white hand with a speaker in it hanging from the ceiling and a blue thing with a laser projected onto it. Again, here is a drawing:

After that, we trekked up to the second gallery. That room contained two cameras embedded in walls on opposite sides of the room. The video from each camera was projected onto the wall that camera was embedded in. So the effect was kind of similar to what you see when two mirrors are facing each other.

I believe the question is how any of this qualified as art. If we're going by my 12th grade AP European History teacher's definition, it's only art if you can't do it yourself.

Well, I could have easily recreated anything in that gallery. I could have put a metronome on the floor, I could have lit that candle, I could have put up those cameras. I seem to recall making paper mache hands when I was, I don't know, four. I've used a laser pointer. And God knows I've handled enough giant balls in my time.

In the end though, doesn't the act of defining what does and does not qualify as art take all of the magic out of it? I like to think that I know it when I see it, just like Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart knew pornography when he saw it.

(Hint: You can tell something is pornography because it generally involves naked ladies and/or dudes. And those naked ladies and/or dudes are generally getting down with their bad selves, in that way, if you know what I mean, which I think you do.)

But really, anything you can see in Wood Street pales in comparison to a sight you can see not a minute away across from the Culinary Institute:

Look at all the chefs! They're adorable!

Expedition summary:

Money spent: $13
Miles traveled: about 270

Lessons learned:

-I can't draw a bra or spell a bra.

DESTINATION: Philadelphia, also known as "The Birthplace of Liberty" or "Not as Good as Pittsburgh."
TRAVELING COMPANIONS: Devon and Halle
ILLUSTRATIONS BY: Travis

Before we begin, here are ten fun facts about Philadelphia:

1. Philadelphia is a city in the United States of America!

2. Benjamin Franklin lived in Philadelphia for a while, though few Philadelphians are aware of this.

3. Philadelphia is listed as the third worst U.S. city for asthmatics.

4. There is a sculpture in Philadelphia that contains the letters in the word "Love" stacked on top of each other, with the "O" at a crazy angle. It is adorable.

5. America gave up trying to repair the Liberty Bell, just like it gave up on post-Civil-War Reconstruction.

6. Edgar Allen Poe thought Philadelphia was "a'ight."

7. A popular treat in Philadelphia is "water ice," which contains both water AND ice (which is also a form of water).

8. Philadelphia's train system is known as "SEPTA," which sounds like "septic," which is an adjective that may be used to describe SEPTA.

9. Philadelphia's children's museum is called the "Please Touch" museum. Ew.

10. While cheesesteaks were invented in Philadelphia, cardiovascular disease merely originated in Philadelphia.

In the interest of full disclosure, I should also reveal that last summer I co-wrote a column with Kevin Doran in which I conceded that Philadelphia is better than Pittsburgh. I should note, however, that my concession was made on Opposite Day, which renders it completely inconsequential.

(Here are some other things I have said on Opposite Day that have also thusly been reversed: "I love this salad," "That picture actually looks pretty good" and "No, I wouldn't like a billion dollars for free, Mr. Anonymous Businessperson.")

So you may be wondering at this point: "Why would you go to Philadelphia if you are so obviously not a fan?" or "How can I increase my bust size without expensive and potentially dangerous plastic surgery?" If you are wondering the latter, I cannot help you. If you are wondering the former, I would refer you to Travis' Travels Week 3, in which I explained that:

Unfortunately, sometimes a grumbling stomach can override good judgment...

Yes my friends, the main motivating factor of this trip was free food -- specifically free food that I would get for volunteering at a journalism conference at the DoubleTree Hotel in downtown Philadelphia. See Devon's blog for details.

So excited was I for this free food that I forgot to bring my camera with me on the trip. But rather than neglect the multimedia aspect that has made this blog such an overnight success across the globe, I have decided to depict various events from my trip using drawings instead.

While the conference went from dull to interesting to dull in a cosine pattern and the free food was mostly delicious, we did manage to see some cool things while we weren't trapped behind the registration desk:

We saw this woman running across a bridge into the city. The funny thing was her leg movements were very strange, as if she were a duck who was just recently turned into a person who decided to get some exercise.

After that was the art museum. It was chock full o' art, or so I would imagine. I didn't actually go inside. The only thing I know about this place is that sweaty people like to run up and down the stairs and pretend that they're Rocky. Well guess what, people: You're not Rocky and you never will be! Stop wasting your time running and start eating more Fritos!

When we were walking to the SEPTA station, Halle and I saw two blind people holding hands and crossing the street. Perhaps they were on a blind date(!) Or maybe they were just really close friends. I dunno.

These guys were neat. They were part of some religious group that thinks wearing white robes and having beards is cool. I must agree! One of them was holding a sign. I noticed a girl taking photos of them as they walked by. I wonder if she shared those photos with her pals on Facebook. Or maybe she just went home and cried herself to sleep, wondering why none of them invited her to be a part of their awesome cult.

So yeah, those were the highlights from Philly in a nutshell. For the most part, the city was noisy and smelled like pee.

Anyway, on our way out of town we decided to stop at a Wawa convenience store, for we had heard tales about how wonderful Wawa is. Supposedly it's like Sheetz, if Sheetz was good.

Devon drove us to Wawa, and here is my artistic interpretation:

The place is wonderful. They have pre-made snacks, pretzels stuffed with spun gold and leprechauns who tend to your every need.

The wonderfulness of Wawa completely erased every criticism I have ever made about Philly from my mind. Philadelphia is officially the best place on earth. Now I must return... for more Wawa... for Glory... FOR SPARTA.

Expedition summary:

Money spent: about $15
Miles traveled: about 400

Lessons learned:

-Go to Wawa, look in the drinks section, see that they have "Wawa Water" and see if you don't laugh.

-Calling out professional journalists on typos in their blogs is a great time for everyone.

THIS IS THE LAST TRAVIS' TRAVELS OF THE SUMMER. WE WILL CONTINUE IN THREE WEEKS!

DESTINATION: Creepy alley behind Lion's Pride
TRAVELING COMPANION: Kevin
PHOTOS BY: Travis

This week's travel blog begins with a phone call.

One of our Collegian reporters, a man by the name of Andrew, called me as I was designing one of our award-winning "If You Go" information boxes.*

"I need to talk to you about your blog," he said. "You're stretching too hard to fit places into a preconceived notion. The library was kind of funny, but going for the Sopranos reference with the diner was not necessary."

I felt like asking him: "If I was making up the thing about Dean's Diner being run by Mafiosos, then how do you explain why my grandfather was driven off of a cliff two days ago with a note tattooed on his back reading: 'DO NOT WRITE ABOUT US AGAIN OR YOU'RE NEXT'?"

(Just kidding: My grandfather has actually been dead for years.)

Regardless, I realized that perhaps I had been playing it too safe since the blog about Jarcy's. So I bring you Part One of a sporadic Travis' Travels series:

THE SHADY BASEMENTS AND BACK ALLEYS OF STATE COLLEGE
PART ONE: THE CREEPY ALLEY BEHIND LION'S PRIDE

This is the entrance to the alley. It looks fairly innocuous on first glance, but as soon as you enter, you're greeted with the following message:

Ron is the anti-Christ!? Thanks for ruining the ending to Harry Potter, graffiti! (Just kidding again: I'll reveal the real ending later in the blog.)

Venturing further into the alley, we saw that these graffiti artists are apparently very into Pac-Man:

The question mark man / philosophical motif seen in the above photo also continued throughout the graffiti:

As Kevin and I ventured further into the alley, the place began to reek of urine. It's hard to imagine why, but if I were to venture a guess, I would assume that people had been peeing there.

The further we went, the darker it got. This was weird because the alley wasn't even covered. Kevin looked up and saw a bat fly overhead. It was getting a bit freaky:

So I set forth into the final leg of my journey: venturing into the completely pitch black part of the alley.

Not having a flashlight, the only information I could get about my surroundings came from the occasional flashes of my camera and my weak cell phone backlight.

If only I were Harry Potter, I thought to myself, I could just yell "lumos" and have the light from my magic wand suddenly illuminate the alley. Then I remembered that at the end of book seven Hermione decided to become a death eater and used the killing curse on Harry Potter before selling his liver at Knockturn Alley. So maybe being Harry Potter isn't that great after all.

This was the door at the end of the passage:

Weird enough... but then I looked up and got the punchline:

Obviously Jesus couldn't save this alley from scary-ass graffiti. Ba-zing!

Expedition summary:

Money spent: $0
Miles traveled: 0

Lessons learned:

-Calder Way is the scariest freaking place in the history of the world

NEXT WEEK: THE FINAL TRAVIS'S TRAVELS BLOG OF THE SUMMER! WHERE WILL I GO NEXT? WHO KNOWS! MAYBE PHILADELPHIA? ONLY IF YOU'RE LUCKY!

*This is a lie. Our "If You Go" boxes have never won an award.