The creative writing faculty at SIU get less inspiration from John Cheever than from the fine spirits poured at the Cellar, a bar that doesn’t necessarily want you to find it. The number’s unlisted and the door’s not numbered; look for the dark, hard-to-read shingle hung in a corner of the parking lot along Illinois near Main, next door to Paul Hampton Photography, 101 W. Monroe. Even if nobody’s falling off his chair spouting poetry, the Cellar’s a cozy hole: they’ve got meat sandwiches for three or four bucks, all-around cheap drinks, and Elvira pinball.
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The Shawnee National Forest surrounds the Carbondale area, its parks offering obvious fun for lovers of nature and sport. Giant City State Park (the Illinois Department of Natural Resources post is at 235 Giant City Road, Makanda, 618-457-4836) is fairly large, and though the flagship path is only a mile long, it’s rated rugged, winding between teetering boulders and swell vantages. The park brochure quotes former Illinois DNR site superintendent Bob Kristoff on the park’s name: “The early pioneers…thought [the rock formations around the trail] looked like the streets of a city, a giant’s [sic–lonely giant!] city.”
The sign outside says singles are $19.95, doubles $29.95, and weekly rates are available; it doesn’t tell you where you can download pictures of stripping coeds now that the Internet porn ring at the Sunset Motel (825 E. Main, Carbondale, 618-457-5115) has been busted up. As of last March, the fun is gone, but at those prices why not bang your head on an infamous board? The lodging’s complete with plastic lawn furniture–in the rooms.
And finally, no trip to any college town would be complete without a visit to an outdoor hippie mall where you can hear folksingers warble while you (no kiddin’) smell the pot grow. The flagship of this, er, cultural phenomenon–basically a strip mall of shacks set in a pretty valley at the intersection of Baptist Hill and Makanda–would appear to be Southern Sisters Workshop (514 Makanda, Makanda, 618-457-8508), which carries a stereotypical assortment of obviously handmade goods. Don’t go near the place if you’re unfond of unleashed dogs, though; if you absolutely must have flax or hempen chaps before you’re attacked by some mongrel, Southern Sisters has an outlet in downtown Carbondale (Southern Sisters Roots Too, 400 S. Illinois, 618-549-5560).
