Spooky in Salem

Every October, we make a point to drive out to Massachusetts and visit the Witch City. A place well adorned with witchy artwork and spooky attractions to lure tourists into spending maybe just-a-little-too-much money. This being our third year, we have found our favorite spots. Some may say this vacation sounds a bit redundant, but to us, it's comfort.

First place to stop: food. After driving four hours, the first thing we want to do is eat, even before checking into the hotel. The number one place for me to recommend is Flying Saucer Pizza Company, right in the heart of the city. Being vegan, it's difficult to find good "veg za" literally anywhere, but this place has amazing vegan choices as well as "regular people" choices. We always split the vegan garlic knots and each get a small pizza to ourselves. Mine was vegan mozzarella, caramelized onions, olives, cherry tomatoes, and walnut-pecan pesto. My better half got some sort of pulled-pork mac-and-cheese Sriracha madness. The whole restaurant is, well, nerd themed. Star Wars movie posters, action figures, nerd fan art, and comic-themed everything. At the bar, they always have something good to watch (last year we watched Beetlejuice, this year Buffy was on and the scene playing was when Willow goes all spooky evil on everybody). The hallway to the bathroom is shared with the café it's adjacent to and it's covered with some of the coolest paintings I've seen. They even made a point to turn light fixtures and hardware into little robot faces. The staff is always polite and friendly. Just getting to stop here makes the trip worthwhile.

After moseying around and taking in the new shops and stops, we stop at Harrison's Comics, right down Essex Street. All within five-hundred feet from the pizza place. This. Place. Is. HUGE. They have an amazing (and very well-organized) selection of comics, toys, vintage figures, cards, and a candy section with the perfect variety. Again, they have a great staff that is well-equipped to help with whatever you're looking for.

From here, we stopped at a cute café to grab coffee, and soon headed to our hotel for the night. Day two involved checking out street vendors and the stores on Main Street. The big lure of our second day was that it was Friday the 13th. Upon driving in, we saw a "rando" dressed as Jason Voorhees with a body slung over his shoulder. Other than that there wasn't much else to be said; not even a tattoo special. We checked out the "It's Alive" exhibit at the Peabody Museum, which was SO rad, and all from the Kirk Hammett collection (I don't care for Metallica, but I do love old sci-fi and horror). Featuring old movie posters à la Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff, among a ton of other amazing pieces, my favorites were the saucer-men prop, The Creature from the Black Lagoon mask and poster, Mothra poster, and Night of the Living Dead poster. We got to go through the rest of the museum, rendering some really amazing works. My ultimate favorite was a ceramic piece depicting the seven deadly sins, created by Russel Biles.

The first year we went, we stopped in Cambridge to check out a comic shop and Armageddon Shop Records, which is hands-down the best record store I've ever been to. The variety is mainly Hardcore-Punk-Metal, which is our jam. They have a wall of apparel you can typically only find online, a wall of cassettes, and a little zine section, which—hell yeah. I picked up an Extortion record, Jello Biafra's Beyond the Valley of the Gift Police record, and a few zines. That's the kind of place I can blow a paycheck in. Hopefully next time around, we'll swing over that way.

More tourism, more picture taking. After that, and some vegan whoopee pies and coffee, we ended our trip with a stop at The Village Tavern for dinner. I had a falafel sandwich with olive tapenade and veggies, which was seriously so good. Sky got pumpkin raviolis that he was super stoked about. This time around, we made some great food choices; all-in-all it was a successful trip. Great food. Amazing art. Fun shops.