santacarnage at the anticon

The costumed event started at noon when we met at the Paul Bunyan statue off of a North Portland Max stop.  We were a motley crew of men and women dressed in all sorts of holiday garb.  There were of course the traditional red-coated santas, but there were also people dressed as gnomes, elves, and one gentlemen wearing nothing but tye-dye long johns and a huge grin.  Many of the women wore variations of the santa suit with skirts and scarves as adornments.  Any santa with revealing clothing was immediately dubbed as sexy santa.  A few men had pimp santa garbs with velour capes and furry hats.  I wore a white top-hat and a red mask and was given the pseudonym of bandito santa.  Keegan wore a USC hat and a trailblazers jersey and took on the name of sporty santa. 

  There’s something about wearing a costume that makes any party better.  First off, costumes lend an otherworldly feeling to any event.  A costume indicates that it isn’t business as usual.  Because everyone looks strange it allows us to step outside the normal boundaries our superegos impose upon us.  People do not look as they usually do which inspires people to no act as they normally do.  We can be more fun, crazy, impulsive, etc (and a little alcohol doesn’t hurt either) Appearing differently makes you feel different.  Also, wearing costumes gives everyone in a group a sense of solidarity, a feeling that we are all part of a club.  Maybe you’re afraid to talk to a guy at a bar but if you’re both wearing one-piece track suits and leg warmers then a stressful sitiuation morphs into a humorous one.  As strangely attired individuals we are vulnerable to mockery by the general public but as a strangely attired group we can stand in solidarity and laugh in the faces of the sober, boring majority.  Recently I attended the most recent manifestation of a yearly event called Santacon.  This variation was called Anti-Con and took place Saturday, December 5^th in North Portland.  The sites were extraordinary, the people were outrageous, and the level of holiday cheer and drunkenness was incomparable to anything else that has ever been or will ever be.     

The excitement was palpable underneath the statue. Waves of santas would disembark from the MAX train and cross the street to congregate below the statue.  At its climax there were several hundred costumed inviduals, including a lone woman dressed as a dreadle.  Periodically the crowd would start to yell and cheer or someone would start a chant of “ho-ho-ho,” which would rapidly ascend in speed and volume. hand, I could feel that this was going to be a great day, looking out at the crowd under crisp, sunny Portland skies, holding my bag of treats filled with candy and condoms in one hand and a bottle of crown royal, hanging in a purple bag with gold strings in the other.

Keegan and I took some celebratory pulls from the crown as we walked down interstate towards our first watering hole.  The place was packed with santas.  We looked with dismay at the array of red coats and red hats all facing the bar and wondered how we would ever order a drink in time before the next stop.  Fortuitously a santa close to the door had ordered one too many whiskey and cokes and gave us one, “here you go, Santa,” the man said, handing us a drink.  “Thank you santa,” I replied. 

This was the first of many cordial greetings we shared with other santas.  A sense of old fashioned manners juxtaposed the usual belligerance of hard-core drunkenness, at the anticon.  As we walked through crowds at each bar people were exceedingly polite, always delivering an, “excuse me santa,” as they pushed their way towards the bathroom or the bar.  As I said, we were all in this mad project together. 

Our fears of not being able to order a drink turned out to be unfounded as we found our way to the front of the line at the bar in under 20 minutes.  Since it was still early in the day we decided to order a breakfasty drink of white Russians.  Feeling like a true Lebowskian I greeted some santas with a ‘hey dude’ as we sipped our drinks and surveyed the crowd.  A pirate santa walked past us holding a treasure chest.  I asked him what he was carrying and he showed me a display of several bottles of liqueur nestled in the chest, his personal stock of pirate bootie.  Throughout anticon people blatantly took outside drinks into bars.  Many indulged in drink while walking the street, and I met an underage santa who got into all the bars without trouble.  It appears that Saint Nick is above the law. 

After leaving the first bar we doubled back around to a neighborhood street close to our meetup spot.  People start proclaiming, “we’re going to the mayor’s house.”  At this point I’m getting a bit drunk and feeling confused.   ‘Does the mayor live in North Portland?’ I think to myself.  We stop outside a non-descript house and some santas jump onto the balcony and start cheering.  Another santa climbs a tree.  We begin ho-hoing again and the street is completely overrun with santas at this point.   

I can’t tell if this is really the mayor’s house or some poor, unfortunate sap whose front porch and privacy we were invading, but regardless, it was pretty damn funny.

Our walk to the next bar is a long one and I try to entertain my fellow santas with Christmas carols.  However, my voice is far from melodic and my recollection of lyrics is poor.  I often break down into unintelligible mumbles or humming to replace many of the lyrics that I have forgotten.  On the walk Keegan and I talked to a couple ‘colorful characters.’  One fellow told us that we had to check out the naked bunny ride on Easter (riders wear bunny tails and ears) and another santa told us she enjoyed the pleasures of glory holes (turn off your safe search features if you search that term on google)

At the next bar we ordered gin and tonics and sipped them while chatting with a guy about South by Southwest, a music festival in Austin.  I hung out with a reindeer too.  We bonded big-time. 

 

The next bar we went to was small so we decided to skip ahead to another drink station when we saw several santas pass us by.  This whole process reminded me of the Portland Bridge pedal where you stopped for refreshments at different locations to gain strength for the journey ahead, but, instead of water and bananas, we were fueling up with whisky, cigarettes, and chocolate candy. 

The next place was really hopping.  Santas lounged out in the parking lot smoking cigarettes, drank beers inside, and ate food at the tables.  We met a rotund she-santa who proclaimed ‘a merry Christmas to all.’  I ordered Keegan and I cans of Hamm’s as at this point I think we had quite enough hard alcohol.  I proceeded to spill my beer all over a pool table.  At this point in our journey our friend Sam met up with us, fresh from taking the LSAT’s.  He was dully impressed by our exceedingly inebriated states at 3-30 in the afternoon.  Out in the parking lot I found a wonderful gentlemen selling some of santa’s special cookies.  I purchased two for a quite reasonable price and split the first between the three of us.  The second cookie was eaten at around 1 am that night in an example of very poor decision-making.  Santa’s got one hell of a sweet tooth!

The next stop on the trek required a quick ride on the MAX train.  There was a short but heated debate among my esteemed colleagues about whether or not we should buy tickets.  Keegan and I had great confidence in the power of our costumes to get us out of any legal trouble and so we were of the opinion that tickets were not necessary on that day.  “There’s enough santas to take this city down!” I cried.  Sam, more rational and more sober at this point decided to buy a MAX ticket.

Our next stop is The Alibi, which, we are informed by another santa, is the only ‘real’ tiki bar in Portland.  But the doors are locked when we arrive.  Apparently, this tiki bar didn’t want a bunch of belligerant santas glugging down mojitos at their establishment.  What followed was 20 minutes of confusion interspersed with some pistachio munching and crown guzzling.  After a consultation of my trusty iphone maps feature we  relocated ourselves and took off for the next stop, the Mississippi food carts.

 

Pizza and beer, a combination for the ages!  At the food carts we ran into a Scottish documentary film maker, an anarchist santa, and a cigarette bumming Jesus.  It was the last stop on our tour and my memories are quite fuzzy, but from what I remember, we had a great time.  Inside we played a round of quarters.  We co-opted a fellow who was sitting at our table to play as well.  I’m not sure if we made any of our shots and some time into the game our table partner told us, “I just want to enjoy my fucking drink.”  I guess some of us were losing our Christmas cheer.  At some point I drop my bag of goodies, spilling candy and condoms everywhere.  A pint glass that I had stashed away also fell out, spreading glass all over the floor.  After picking up my possessions I popped a couple Hershey kisses into my mouth.  Chewing them they felt a bit more crunchy than normal. I started to fear that some of the glass shards had gotten into the candy but once I pop something sweet into my mouth I never go back, glass shards or no.  Well there was more beer to be drunk and we visited another food cart corner and well, you get the point…  

Well that’s about all that’s fit to print on this year’s anti-con.  It was a smashing success and I hear there’s another santa crawl on the 19^th.  I might just have to bust out the suit one or two more times before the holiday season wraps up.  Ho-ho-ho to you all and happy Chanukah too.         

     

stories told to me

I’m originally from Denver but it wasn’t until I got to LA that I got into drugs. I was a drug dealer before that but I didn’t do the drugs. Well, except for the ecstasy and the acid and the shrooms. But when I got into LA I started doing meth. I’m not going to lie to you like some other guys do and tell you that I’m so glad that I’m off of it and it was terrible. It was fucking awesome! The girls, the parties, staying up all night. I miss it every day. I would get meth so good it would burn a hole through the bottom of the plastic bag.

Everyone I knew growing up was wealthy. I grew up in a completely excessive environment. Some kids from my school would get their blood drawn and then do a bunch of coke afterwards so that they would get really fucked up. Their systems would be weak from the loss of blood so they would get totally tweaked on not as much blow as they would normally take.

There are tons of ways to buy weed in San Francisco and I know most of them. I was showing some kids around town a few weeks ago. We were walking around Golden Gate Park and I bet them that I could find pot in less than 5 minutes. It actually took around a minute before someone approached us asking if we wanted some nugs. I ended up trading him my jacket that I had bought at goodwill for some herb. Back in high school I used to buy from these asian kids. They would pick me up in their tricked out street-racer cars and we would tear around the city Fast and the Furious style while we did the deal. My favorite way to get pot now is the delivery services. You call this number and you get weed delivered right to your place. He shows up at your door with it in a brown paper bag. Several times the pot would show up at the house at the same time as the pizza guy. One-stop-shop!

I took a trip out to Jersey to visit some friends. It was fun, 5 days of straight partying. One of the nights we went out to the bars. We were standing on the balcony of a bar smoking cigarettes. My best friend’s friend, Danny was with us. She has a little kid so she doesn’t get to go out drinking much. She was really drunk off just a few drinks. There were some cops standing by their cars outside the bar and She just started screaming at them “pigs! Fucking pigs!” I couldn’t believe it. Then the cops came up to the balcony and started talking to me. They thought I was the one who was yelling at them. They took me down to their car and put me in the backseat. I was freaking out. I had two grams of coke on me and I was pretty drunk and blow which wasn’t helping my nervousness. I would be totally screwed if they caught me with it. That’s when I remembered that I also had 3 ecstasy pills on me that I was planning on giving to my friend. I was thinking ‘shit, what do I do? How do I get rid of this?’ At this point my hands were cuffed in front of me so I could still use them. I dug into my purse and pulled out the coke. All I could think was that I had to get rid of it. I opened the bag and started eating it. But I couldn’t get it all in cleanly and some of it spilled on the seat. The seats were black plastic and the powder was easy to spot. That’s when the cops came back in and trained their flashlights on the seat. They saw the powder and asked me about it. I had to admit what I had done. That’s when the Jersey cops went off on me. They started saying things like “you’re a fucking ugly person. You need to get back to Los Angeles. You’re ugly and disgusting.” At this point I was really freaked out, drunk, and coked out of my mind. I was crying and crying. Then they let me go. That was it, they just let me off and they never searched my purse for the ecstasy. The coke I at eventually hit me hard. I couldn’t even talk really, I was kind of emitting these high pitched squeaking sounds. I stayed up all that night.



Dude, don’t ever hook up with a hot chick. That’s one piece of advice I can give you. It’s not worth it. They try to pull all sorts of shit. Alice told me that we could only have sex once a week because she didn’t love me. Then she complained that it hurt when we had sex. She made me get her warm clothes after we did it. That doesn’t seem normal.

We were at a party and Sasha was wasted. She walked up to me and she told me, “you’re so cute. I really want to make out with you right now.” So I was like ‘alright, I guess I’ll make out with you’, so we did. She was so wasted and she was squeeling and shrieking, and she asked me to go back to her room, and I said that sounded fine to me. So we went back to her room. We were hooking up on her bed. She’s still so drunk, rolling around. I’m getting kind of bored so after a while I steel up the courage and say in my deepest voice, “so, you wanna fuck?” But she doesn’t answer me because she’s passed out. She starts snoring and I gather up my stuff and quietly leave.

My wife could beat me up. She’s a big lady. She’s got some guns on her. She’s Latino too which means she uses her shoes as weapons. There could be two closed doors between us and she would still manage to hit me in the head with her flip-flop.

When I was a young guy my friends and I loved talking to strange women. I had the prefect pick up line. Most pick up lines are cheesy and I don’t believe they work but this one was golden: “Hi my name is Eli do you want to go swimming tonight?” It sets the perfect tone. Your not asking to date them or do something serious. It’s a fun, simple activity, and it involves taking off your clothes! I always lived in apartments so we had access to pools and hot tubs. When I lived in Arizona my friends and I all financed scooters. We found a place that would let you put $17 down and $17 a month. We would ride around town on our scooters with flip-flops and board shorts. It was so easy to pick up girls with the swimming line. We didn’t even need to stop the scooters, they would jump on as we rode past.
“Come swimming with us,” we would say.
“But I don’t have a swimsuit.”
“It doesn’t matter, neither do I.”
“But your wearing one.”
“oh yeah. Whatever, let’s go.”
I actually met my wife with the swimming line.

Last Friday my friends and I drove into downtown Portland to go to one of our regular bars, the Tube. The Tube is located in the Chinatown neighborhood next to a nightclub with stripper poles called Dirty and a nightclub with a mechanical bull called Dixey. This area has one of the highest densities of clubs and bars in Portland. It also has the highest density of homeless people. (They used to be called bums, vagabonds, and wastrels in less sensitive times. Now some people suggest that it is more appropriate to refer to them as the housing challenged.)

Homeless are drawn to chinatown because there are many shelters and soup kitchens in this area and because it is a prime spot for panhandling. There is a lot of foot traffick, and most of these walkers have disposable income and are intoxicated, two factors which make panhandling at least marginally profitable in this area.

On this particular night we were walking past a bus stop on Burnside and second. While we were waiting for the light to turn a man at the bus stop turned to me and asked if I could spare some change. I noticed that, at the same time he was asking me for money, he was sending a text message on his iphone. Obviously this man was not housing challenged, unless he mortgaged his house for the opportunity to check his e-mail and facebook on the go. Reflexively I replied, “sorry man.” This is my normal response when people hit me up for cash. Generally I don’t give money to people who on the street because it doesn’t seem fair to give to some and not others, and I’m certainly not forking over cash to everyone who asks me for some. A moment after I delivered my knee-jerk response my mental gears started spinning and I asked myself, “why does a guy with an iphone need money from me?” Galvanized by the absurdity of this situation I turned around and asked him, “So, how much money are you trying to get? Do you have bus fare?”

“Naw man,” he said. “I need to get $1.50 for the bus.”

“Well good luck” I told him as the signal changed and we crossed the street.

Later in the night after enjoying a set of house beats and classic hip-hop tunes by resident dj, Dr. Adam, my friends and I stepped outside for a cigarette. We were approached by a man in a wheelchair who asked us if we could spare a dollar. One of my friends reached in to his wallet and handed him a dollar. My curiosity piqued by my earlier encounter with the man at the bus stop I decided to question this fellow about his life and his needs. One always assumes that a panhandler is either using the money you give him for necessities like food or to feed another necessity for some people, a drug addiction. But after the iphone encounter I realized that there could be a multitude of reasons for panhandling such as being unprepared for practical concerns. Maybe some people start panhandling because they’re bored and then realize that they have a talent for it. I could even imagine panhandling as a dating strategy, “hey you got a dollar? While you’re at it can I get your number too?” But, let’s put hypotheticals aside and get back to the dialogue…

ME: It’s pretty cold out here isn’t it?

Dude: Yeah, it is, really cold.

ME: Do you have a place to sleep tonight?

Dude: No, no I don’t.

ME: Are there shelters around here where you can sleep?

Dude: Yeah there is but there’s long lines and you have to wait hours to get in.

ME: Wow, that’s a long time. You have to wait for hours?

Dude: Yeah, well like an hour. They fill up fast.

ME: And are there places you can get food?

Dude: Yeah, there’s cafeterias. But they don’t have much variety.

ME: What do you prefer, eating at those places or panhandling.

Dude: Panhandling. They don’t give you any selection at those places. You have to eat what they serve, noodles and sauce. When I panhandle I get to eat what I want.

ME: What’s your favorite place to eat?

Dude: Izzy’s. I love Izzy’s. Ten bucks and you get all the pizza and ice cream you can eat.

Me: Oh, yeah that’s a good deal. How about Chipotle, do you like Chipotle?

Dude: Naw, it’s ok. I at there yesterday and they don’t put that much meat in their burritos.

…

At this point my friends had finished smoking and were headed back into the bar so I cut the conversation short. I wished the man a good night and returned to the music and merriment.

I’ve found recently that it’s pretty fun to strike up random conversations with folks, especially folks that have a lot of time on their hands. People that aren’t in a hurry give you detailed and sometimes personal stories. Often these can be people in service capacities such as waiters, cashiers, and people who give out free samples. My friend Shoshone liked to chat up people who campaigned for political campaigns and religious groups. These people can be pretty interesting but you have to be able to not be bothered by their constant attempts to convert you or conscript you.

This particular conversation gave me some more insight into poverty and its many forms. Firstly, there is visible poverty and invisible poverty. The most visible poverty is that which is right in front of your face. The man who stands in front of you asking for a quarter or a dollar. But there are many forms of invisible poverty. I didn’t encounter any of the homeless people that night who chose to sleep in shelters because they were already inside for the night. There are also many people who are poor to the point that they cannot afford food or other basic needs but who have some form of housing, often provided by relatives. There are those that are too proud for charity, who will not ask for help even when they need it. Then there are others who are working poor. Perhaps they have enough money to make ends-meet but are living in bad environments or in pain. One of my coworkers at Jakes has been catering for 30 years. He has persistant shooting pains traveling from his right hand to his right elbow which are a direct consequence of carrying heavy trays over and over and over again. But, without health insurance, there’s little he can do to treat his injury.

Another point that really hit home after talking with this man was that panhandling is a lifestyle choice. Perhaps not in cities like Los Angeles where social services do not provide much support for the poor, but in liberal cities like Portland where there are plenty of agencies who provide for the needy, someone panhandles because they choose to. One can some obvious examples of this walking past Powell’s books on Burnside. There’s often a woman who juggles balls and scarves or a man who wears punk clothes with patches and has a cat on a leash. I would guess that these young people come from relatively stable and prosperous families but are attracted to the idea of floating around from city to city, living hand-to-mouth and day-to-day. These are the Kerouacian panhandlers. My buddy Ben informed me that they are called ‘Crusties.’ Once winter and its attendant rains arrive they quickly disappear from the streets, probably back to their parent’s basements.

Eat your Hearts Out

Consumption is a topic that I’ve discussed on this blog before. Consumption is an important topic here and now for several reasons. Firstly, because we are Westerners and Americans we are consumers so it is important to define our consumption niche. Companies court us with their advertisements every day to try to get us to consume their brand of goods. It’s nice to know what brands fit your own personal sense of culture and style so that, even if you are giving in to the consumer-commodity culture you are doing so intentionally and with a purpose. Secondly, consuming well is important to good health. If you consume too little you can become weak, meager, and dull. If you consume too much you can become corpulent, unhealthy, and physically and emotionally dependant on the materials you consume.

I was at a dinner party a few days ago and a friend mentioned that he was eating more than usual, that his appetite seemed insatiable in recent weeks. Several other people in the room commented that this was the case for them as well. It was postulated by the group that this increase in appetite coincided with the weather turning colder. We decided that, perhaps, everyone eats more in the winter. We all put on a protective layer of flubber for the winter months. Our holiday menus reflect this habit. Thanksgiving is full of fattening foods like pumpkin pies, mashed potatoes, and gravy. Christmas is also a fat man’s dream with lots of baked goods, cinnamon buns, and stocking stuffers filled with jelly beans, rolos, and other amazing, teeth rotting substances.

Perhaps this urge to pork out in the winter is embedded in our genetic code. It was the monkeys who were able to increase their caloric intake and put on a protective layer of fat that were able to survive the winter months. Those skinny, Paris Hilton-esque monkeys must have died off pretty quickly once the first frost hit. However, this might only apply to those who live in a climate that gets cold in the winter. Southern Californians are doomed to be tanned and thin all year round. You poor bastards.


Since I’m no longer a college student (well technically its been 11 months since I’ve been enrolled in school but I’m still basking in the afterglow god-dammit!). I’ve been trying to be a little more discriminating with my consumption patterns. It’s nice to have one’s own tastes and preferences and stick to them. My friend Wolf is a perfect example of someone who knows what he likes and sticks to it. He drinks Whiskey and smokes spliffs and rarely strays from those habits. I respect someone who doesn’t have the attitude that any commodity of any variety will suffice as long as it fills your stomach or gets you ‘fucked up.’

I try to drink good beer when I drink beer. Being in Oregon is great for this habit since we have such an amazing selection of microbrews. Along with drinking nice beer should come an increased knowledge of what one is drinking. I want to know what the difference between a port, lager, and a stout is. I’ve also bought a book on bartending and mixed drinks which I hope will inform me more about the world of spirits. Despite this I am still intimidated to order a mix drink at a bar unless I am sure exactly what it’s ingredients are.

Last week I went to a sake tasting and sampled several varieties of the drink which, this is news to me, is traditionally served cold. I would like to take some tours of distilleries and breweries in Portland if anyone elese is interested. Eventually I might even get around to food and cook a meal one of these days!

I think my musings about food and consumption have been motivated by my employemt in the food and hospitality industry. At Jake’s we serve some expensive and rarified foods such as salmon with dungeonesse crab, oysters on a half shell, pork belly with bean cassoulet, and crème anglais (fancy word for ice cream) with seasonal berries. As a server I get to sample all of it. Some of it is great and some of it isn’t. The people who have been serving at Jakes the longest complain about the food the most. “Not stuffed salmon again, I’m so sick of that.” When you consume a luxury almost every day it ceases to be a luxury and starts to be a chore.

I have analyzed my own pattern of consumption using the handy device that I call ‘my portable psycho-analyzer.’ I have noticed that I really enjoy giving myself what I like to call ‘treats.’ In Spanish the word for dessert is ‘postre.’ It has the word-root post meaning afterwords. I enjoy food or drink when I perceive it as an extra or as something in addition to the merely sufficient. Rarely do I eat dinner and then not think, “hmmm, what else can I enjoy?” Whether this be a beer, an ice cream, some chocolate, or a smoke depends on the night. I like the word postre and its accompanying connotations better than dessert. The word dessert makes me think of someone getting ‘their just desert’. It brings to mind the idea that we deserve dessert or that it is part of the ordinary, necessary, and sufficient. I prefer to think of it as living in beautiful excess. The postre is a sign of culture and a symbol of a life of leisure.

A Loving Hate

There’s a band I like called She Wants Revenge. Their most famous song is called ‘Tear you apart.’ The lyrics discuss the ways in which the lead singer is going to literally tear an unnamed woman apart. The refrain of the song goes something like this, “I want to hold you close, soft breath beating heart, as I whisper in your ear, I want to fucking tear you apart.”

Undoubtedly the song has violent undertones. Many people have complained about the song’s lyrics. They assert that, beyond being violent, the song is also misogynistic, in that it encourages violence towards women. I, however, have a different interpretation of the song. I think the urge to tear the woman apart that the singer expresses is not a violent urge but a sexual urge and it is an urge that the singer feels but would never literally follow through with.

I would argue that the urge to rip his lover asunder is a product of the attraction the singer feels to the woman rather than any sort of antipathy. I think most people have had feelings similar to what the singer describes. Freud defined our most basic motivators to action as eros and thanatos, love and hate. They are not bipolarities but are actually closely related in the human psyche. When we feel really passionate about someone being physically close or intimate doesn’t seem to be enough. Our passionate feelings boil over into violent ones. The urge to rip your partner apart, to tear them asunder, to claw them into shreds is a common emotion. In Punch Drunk Love Adam Sandler’s character expresses his love by saying that Freud when he stated that love and hate are closely related and are drawn from the same force. They are both primal passions. It is an almost inevitable seek more and more personal and intense ways to express our love. Angelina Jolie and Billy Bob Thorton both famously carried vials of each other’s blood around in order to express their love. It is a common practice among close friends to commemorate a friendship by trading blood. Some people get tattoos of their lovers names engraved on them. It is as if these people are proving their devotion through a rite of pain.

Along with a desire for pain we also have a desire to be subsumed. By subsumption I mean this as a process where we lose our own ego feelings. We lose our ideas of ourselves and our ability to rationally process thoughts. We become one with our exteriority. Freud referred to this as the feeling of the sublime which he called “oceanic” in nature. I knew a woman who told me that when she has sex she likes to literally be pressed so hard that she cannot breath. This is an expression of the desire to lose oneself in the passion of the moment.. In the famous Greek work on love, ‘The Symposium’ one character describes a myth in which, back in the misty annals of time, men and women were fused together at the hip. These joint creatures had both sets of genetalia. The act of sex, according to this myth, is our attempt to recombine into our original configuration. No matter how hard we push and shove and try to squeeze ourselves back together, the link is doomed to be incomplete and ephemeral. I always liked this image of two people futilely rubbing against each other in an attempt to create something that has been lost forever. As single human beings we have definite physical and emotional boundaries, walls which act as boundaries between us and the rest of the world. But, during sex those boundaries are partially dissolved.

Parables I created while stuck in a cubicle 3 months ago

parables:


Traveling is better done with other people.

Trust people until they break that trust, then don’t trust them again

Coffee is extremely addicting

I can be as disciplined as I want to be

Don’t be too complacent but don’t be in too much in a hurry either

Sex doesn’t make everything ok; it just makes everything a lot better

Offices are soul-sucking places which inspire gossiping, backstabbing, lovehandles, and flabby asses

If you constantly move from place to place then people will miss you and treat you better than if you are dependably around all the time

Don’t be ashamed of your shortcomings, they are probably also your strengths

The law never really does anything, and when it does manage to do something it is entirely inadequate and required way more work and bullshit then it was worth.

Environmental law is a joke. We brutally demolish more forests with needless copying and endless boxes of documents than construction companies ever will building houses.

Pretend to be confident and others will believe you are and, eventually, they will trick you into believing it too.

People don’t usually surprise. Most follow routines and those that don’t follow routines don’t follow them routinely.

Don’t try to be everything to everyone but try to be something to someone.

College is a rare environment, hopefully you took advantage of it.

You aren’t a drug addict or an alcoholic, you are a college student, and soon you won’t be one, but will you be the other?

Being afraid of having a social phobia isn’t the same as having a social phobia.

Being sensitive and neurotic had its downsides but I also miss it. Insensitivity and pragmatism are comfortable but more predictable and less creative.
There we were on the brink of salvation and despair.


poetry:

Sweaty circles dancing

Lunacy noises in the night

Two figures cut morbid silhouettes in the night

Creeping



Beats dripping base like a Novocain dream

The crowd raised their hands, extended fingers jabbing sky

Electronics, lasers, pastels, big belt buckles, tribal paint, funny vests, feathers and body glitter

and the two slithery shapes tapped their feet,

so sly, lurking and creeping



chills are running up spines

sweat puddling, running in rivulets

it’s what the party runs on, its steam and its engine

the motor of the thing is that human feeling

the crowd howls and squeels

bodies shake and brains shiver

behind frosted sunglasses four eyes stare as four legs lightly pump

those two slinky fellows straight creeping


there's the creeps among humans like vampires amidst mortals

blood suckin, bass humpin...scene feelin, adrenaline stealin

Greyhound diaries pt 2

So there we were, stuck in Medford Oregon, at a truck stop, on Christmas eve, with nothing to do and no idea of when we would be rescued from this strange limbo. Most of the greyhound passengers stepped off the bus and lit up cigs, smoking and bitching about the crappy situation we were in. At the time I didn’t smoke so Sean and I stood outside with our hands stuffed in our pockets, complaining like the rest of them. Our breath steamed in plumes from our mouths and the ground was littered with piles of white snow. I looked at these little clumps of precipitation and cursed them for putting us in this situation. What I should have been cursing, however, was Oregon law. Everyone knows bus and truck drivers are all cranked out on methamphetamines anyway, why not let them drive overtime?



In the next several hours I became intimately aware of my surroundings. The truck stop had a fairly extensive mini-mart and Sean and I spent several hours checking out their wares; snow-globes, stereos, mini statues of deer and wolves, postcards, auto supplies, and tons of junk food and drinks. There was also a taco bell and subway attached where I spent some cash on excitingly named but terribly crafted food items like crunch wrap Supremes and veggie delights.



I felt the worst for the passengers who had to manage their kids. There was no way to keep children entertained in these dismal surroundings. The kids of a single mom who were sitting in the seat across from us on the bus ran wild around a little arcade, spinning the steering wheel around on the racing game and pounding on the glass of the ‘claw’ machine, hoping that this would result in one of the stuffed animals falling out. The mom paid little attention to her children’s antics. She was only roused from her own reverie if it appeared that one of her kids was annoying or harassing another passenger, and even then this was no guarantee that her parenting instincts would take over. On the bus her kids were rough-housing and screaming and she would delegate her parental duties to her eldest son, telling him to ‘shut them up.’ She spent most of her time playing snake on her cell phone. When the kids got really out of hand her discipline techniques mostly revolved around threats such as “you guys better shut up right now or,” “when we get to grandma’s house, I’m gonna beat your asses bad.”



***



Eventually Sean and I had exhausted all the entertainment options at the truck stop. We decided that it was time to buy some 40’s and drown our sorrows in ass-tasting malt liquor. But when we approached the counter the cashier immediately pinned us as hapless greyhound riders and informed us that it was store policy not to serve alcohol to those poor dimwits who chose to ride the dawg. I was offended by her assumption that, because I was forced to ride the bus, I couldn’t purport myself in a responsible manner under the influence of alcoholic spirits, but, after the next scene I witnessed at the truck stop, I understood why their policy was in place. Greyhound passengers are a volatile lot and adding alcohol to the mix could only make matters worse.



I had taken notice of the blind man on the bus at our first rest stop, he was hard to miss. I’m not sure if he was completely blind but he walked with a cane to guide himself and his eyes had a certain milky quality that indicated a severe retinal condition. He was dressed quite colorfully in a red, one-piece sweatsuit with a garland of plastic marijuana leaves draped around his neck. You wouldn’t think that a blind man would want to pick fights with the more visually able for fear of severe physical punishment, but this is exactly what happened in Medford. I went into the bathroom for probably the 100th time at the truck stop and I had to squeeze by the aforementioned blind fellow and a young latino kid who were talking animatedly back in forth right in the path to the urinals. It was the blind guy who was doing most of the talking.



“Yeah man, I’m from LA you understand. Tough place, you gotta stick up for yourself. Yeah, we gangstas. That’s right. I’ma blood and you’re a crip. That’s the way it is.



I could tell that these two had a lot of energy so I avoided eye contact and got out of the bathroom quickly. As I was leaving another fellow came in with headphones over his ears. He was nodding slowly, listening to his music. As the door to the bathroom swung shut I heard the blind guy ask aggressively what he was listening to….



Ten minutes later the music listener emerged from the bathroom and approached a few other greyhounders who were loitering outside. They didn’t appear to know each other but they were all African American and this seemed to strike an immediate note of solidarity. “Come on you gotta help me out. This guys trying to start some shit.”



Suddenly they were all outside, the teenage gangster, the blind gangster, and several guys on the other side. There was some shouting and pushing going on, all instigated by the handicapped pothead. At one point a subway employee went outside to break it up and was rewarded with a sharp shove from the blind fellow. At this point the police showed up, handcuffed him, and drove him away. What an ignominious end to his holiday trip. I always wondered where he was going that Christmas and weather there was anyone who would miss his presence on the holidays. It was hard to stay positive at that truck stop, and harder still for those who didn’t have a warm home to go to. Our situation had turned from awful to awful/comical.



After hour six some of the hounders had called in complaints and a news station showed up to record our plight. At this point Greyhound, fearing a publicity debacle, generously gave us all one free meal at either subway or taco bell. How gracious of them to give us a choice!



Hour seven arrived and there was no sign of an impending rescue. The bus driver assuaged our fears every hour or two by telling us that a bus was on the way with an extra driver to spell him. But buses would come to the truck stop every hour with only one driver. They would refuel and then go on their merry way, leaving us stranded and wondering if we would ever get home. For most of the time that I was stuck at the stop I had been on the phone with my mother, a perennial worry-wart and hypochodriac. She grew increasingly distraught as time progressed and offered to buy me a plane ticket from Medford back home several times. I consistently declined, knowing that there was no guarantee that flights were running into a snowed-in airport and also not wanting to leave my friend Sean behind. But as my patience thinned my will broke down and I finally took her up on the offer. I said a farewell to Sean and ordered a cab to take me to the airport. After going through security it was dark outside and I waited with one other person in the tiny airport for my very own rescue flight back home. Then over the intercom I heard an announcement in a now familiar tone of apology. My flight had been cancelled. So it was back to the ticket counter where they gave me a voucher for a hotel room.



Sitting in a hotel room by myself on Christmas eve was a depressing affair and I decided I needed to go out to keep myself occupied. I walked about a quarter of a mile to the nearest mall/shopping center in this poor excuse for a town. But, because it was Christmas eve, pretty much everything was closed. At the grocery store a worker was stacking up the carts for the night and the rest of the restaurants were darkened. Around the other side of the square I ran across a god-send, an all-you-can-eat Chinese buffet. Of course, the Chinese weren’t taking Christmas off. They had their own calendar and their own holidays. I was reminded of my Jewish friend at that moment who told me that Christmas was always the time his family would go out to movies because the theaters were empty while the good Christians were at home spending quality time with their families. In the restaurant I chowed down and drank a beer. I was the only person by himself in the place. There were mostly families and couples, largely overweight (pun intended). Making my scene more pathetic I was wearing a slightly too small red shirt with a picture of Santa’s head on the front, enscribed with the words, “ho ho ho.” After my fine dining experience it was back to the hotel room for another beer and a James Bond marathon on tv. All in all, not a terrible way to spend a holidays eve.



Well the next morning my flight did take off, although there was a final suspenseful moment involving a 30 minute delay for de-icing. At this point I was understandably pessimistic and I figured I would be spending Christmas in Medford with my Asian pals, wallowing in my sorrows and bathing in orange glaze from the sesame chicken. But we did take off and I made it back home at around 6 am on Christmas, about two full days after I had left Oakland. A 2 hour flight turned in to a 16 hour drive which turned into a 48 hour odyssey. Later Sean reported to me that Sean greyhound had been unable to find another driver and had sprung for vans to drive the stranded dawgers to Portland. Ironically, he made it back to the city around the same time I did. But he was subjected to one more indignity. Apparently a man on the van got drunk off cheap vodka on the last leg of the journey and alternated between crying and beating his wife. Nice.



Well you would think that this would scare me off riding the dog forever but now I find myself purchasing another ticket. It’s just so cheap, I can’t resist.

The Trip from Hell

We live in a technologically advanced age which comes with its own benefits and detractions. The benefit is that we enjoy refrigerators, gastric bypass surgery, slurpees, and the plethora of other inventions science and Techne have provided for us. The bad news is that we come to expect and rely on the comfort and convenience technology provides for us. But sometimes technology does fail, especially in the face of our creator, Freaking God almighty. I found this fact out the hard way when i became a sacrificial lamb to the transportation gods in one of the most horrific odysseys since, well, The Odyssey.

The trouble started when Portland received a flurry of snow at the end of December last year. Usually Portland has a mild climate but this year global warming royally fucked things up and Portland was buried in a couple feet of snow. It wasn't a nice powdery coating like the white stuff on the slopes of Utah ski resorts. It was a heavy, sticky precipitation. I was in Oakland staying with a friend for the beginning of the winter break. My mom called me the day before my flight, "David, have you checked your flight. It's been snowing pretty hard up here. We're worried that your flight got canceled."

Sure enough my flight was cancelled and, after navigating through the labrynthine underground of Alaska Airlines automated phone service, I found out that they couldn't reschedule the flight until the 26th because of all the rescheduling and delays that had been caused by the snowstorm. The only solution I could come up with so that I could make it back for christmas was to buy a greyhound ticket and bus it up to Portland the next day. And thus began my own version of Planes, Trains and Automobiles (minus the fat guy and the trains).

My mother refers to her greyhound traveling experiences as 'riding the dawg.' If you haven't ridden greyhound before then let me clue you in on the delights of this outfit. Firstly, no one rides the bus in America unless they absolutely can't afford any other form of travel. Because of this greyhounds are often packed with colorful characters. One can count themselves lucky if there are merely some idiosyncratic charecters on the bus. My friend Romey related a delightful story to me about riding the greyhound from San Diego to Los angeles. In the seat behind him a surly fellow got angry at his girlfriend and stabbed her in the shoulder with a small pocket-knife. The bus had to stop for several hours while the cops carted the man away and a sanitation squad covered up the blood soaked chair. Then of course their's the famous beheading incident http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,396043,00.html but that happened in Canada so I wasn't too worried.

I loaded up on snacks and drinks in anticipation of the long ride (a projected 17 hours)before I boarded the bus. We left Oakland right on time and arrived in Sacramento a short two hours later. This is where we experienced our first delay, an hour waiting in Sacramento for another bus. No explanation was given to us poor passengers. I entertained myself by eating a hamburger in the station. It wasn't the best food I could have gotten but I was afraid to leave the station because I didn't know when exactly this bus would decide to show up and take us out of Sacramento, the polyp on San Francisco's asshole. In the station I met Sean, an old friend of mine from high school. He proved to be a lifesaver later on in the ride when my patience and sanity began to fray.

Once we left Sacramento we had a long haul ahead of us, up through the rest of Northern California and southern Oregon. I dealt with the boredom as best I could, listening to my ipod until it ran out of batteries then reading a book I had brought called "Farewell to Catalonia. I borrowed a book from Sean, Lolita, and was entertained by the musings of a pedophile for a couple hours. The farther north we got the colder it got and once we hit the pass between Oregon and California we were forced to stop for an hour and a half while the bus driver wrestled with winter chains which he probably had never had to put on his tires before. Shortly after the chain up stop we pulled into a gas station/convenience store for a piss/snack stop. Sean and I ran around in the snow, breath steaming out in front of us like little cumulous clouds. It was late night and the air was crisp and it felt good to stretch my legs which had been atrophying for the past 12 hours or so. We were all looking forward to getting through those last four or five hours of the ride and enjoying Christmas eve with our families. But fate, mother nature, that fickle old man in the sky, or whatever name you prefer to put to forces beyond human control had other plans.

***

I slept fitfully through the rest of the night and in the early morning we stop off in a little town called Medford. There's a small greyhound terminal there and we stop for a minute while the bus driver confers with people in the office. None of us think anything of it and we pay little attention as we he gets back on the bus and we take off again. About 10 minutes later we pull into a gas station and the driver stops, cuts the engine, and pulls up on the emergency break with a deffinitive "EEeeeek."

"Attention passengers. I have to inform you that, under Oregon law, I have reached the maximum number of hours that I can legally drive in a day. Because of this we are going to have to wait here until a relief driver shows up. This should only take a couple of hours. I'm sorry but there's nothing I can do. Now there's food inside so feel free to rest and eat until we are reay to go again."

Groans and inchoate rumblings followed this proclamation. Most of us trudged outside. Those who smoked, which seemed to be everyone on the bus except Sean and I, lit up and the rest of us shuffled our feet, huffed our breath, and shuffled about in the cold with our hands shoved firmly in our pockets.

"This is bullshit," Sean said. "Yeah man, I know." But there was nothing we can do.

Well the wait turned out to be longer than expected, eight hours longer to be exact. In this time we were treated to some less than chivalrous behaviour by Greyhound passengers and the staff of the gas station, Subway, and taco bell which made up this little slice of paradise we were in. To make matters more frustrating we were only a few hours from Portland with no mechanical issues or bad weather blocking our way. It was only the commercial driving laws which prevented us from making the rest of the journey.

party party!!!!!!!

Music festivals come in many shapes and sizes. there are giant one night blow-outs such as the halloween rave 'Monster Massive" in Los Angeles. There are multi-day outdoor affairs with their attendant campgrounds and art installations such as Bonaroo and Coachella. Then there is MFNW, a multi-day bar, pub, and concert hall crawl. This is one of my favorite music festival formats because it gives passholders an excuse to binge on music and sample drinks all over the city for a whole weekend. Two years ago I went to a similar festival in Brighton, England and I loved checking out all the little bars and clubs in the city I never had the chance to visit. Last weekend MFNW took over the West and East sides of Portland,turning the whole metro area into a festival grounds.

My friend and I had been looking forward to the event for weeks. We had dutifully highlighted shows of particular interest, taking into account the venue's relative locations and the popularity of the talent. After talking to some other concert goers we found that we weren't the only ones who circled the dates Sept 18-20 in our calendars. One women we talked to at Dante's had created a her own printed itenerary with the sequence of shows she was going to attend culled from the official schedule as well as backup shows if the venues she had scheduled to go to were full. We knew that our nights weren't going to go exactly to plan. In fact, we hoped that we would leave the schedule behind as we followed the winds of adventure in several nights of booze, music, weed, and random encounters. So here, in true gonzo style, is my MFNW experience:

Day I: This is more of an appetizer then a legitimate kick-off to the festival with artists playing at only one venue. The real shenanigans begin on thursday when all stages are in full swing. But my illustrious compatriot, Keegan, and myself are ansty and staring at our shiny new green braceletts. These braceletts give us an all access pass to the festival (well besides the multiple VIP areas and the venues which are full of ticket-buying concert goers who get to skip in fron of us, but more on that later). We try to make it downtown for the Portland Chello project but miss their preformance. I've had a soft spot for Classical instruments playing rock music ever since watching the members of Apocalyptica wail out Metallica riffs on stand-up bases. We have a beer or two and listen to the mellow musical musings of some acoustic-guitar-playing-melodical-singer-songwriter but our hearts aren't in it and we return home, resting up our energy for day two of the festival.

Day II: Begins with a bang as we head to the Wonder Ballroom for the early show in the lineup. The Helio sequence puts on an awesome show. The drummer sported a huge grin through the entire set, seemingly ecstatic at playing in his hometown. Every time he banged on a drum his face would light up with joy and his grin would stretch ever wider, reaching demonic proportins. The spiffy lighting effects and the projected 'bandz in the hood' sign get us in that magical MFNW mood and I take a quick snapshot with my iphone. On the way out we were rejected entry to the VIP beer garden and a tricked out school bus that appeared to be a silk-screeening clinic. "I guess we are just AIP's (average importance people" I told Keegan.

***

The next stop is across the river to another ballroom, The Crystal. Keegan and I are full of Jaeger and mirth as we enter the venerable loft space. The Crystal is a beatiful establishment and the bouncing and swaying floorboards make it feel like your dancing on a spongy trampoline. The first act we see is a bit of a disapointment. A pianist wails away on distorted key notes which ricochet from the walls at a spectrum low and warbly enoug to kill dolphins. I didn't know that a piano could sound so jarring. Then Explosions in the Sky hit the stage and blew us all away with their resounding psychadelic rock sound. One of our friends who had bought a ticket for the show was in a walker, as he was the victim of a recent motorcycle accident. We used his handicap as an excuse to push us towards the front of the crowd. I gotta say that the band was great but I was pretty disapointed in the Portland fans. While Explosion's music isn't exactly dance-pop, they do play some bangin tunes that appreciate a little bit of crowd reaction. Maybe a few dance steps, perhaps even a little skanking or moshing are in order? But instead the portlanders stand stoicly with hands in pockets, staring blankly at the preformers. "These kids need to stop being so self-conscious and go a little mad hatter" I told Keegan. We turned heel after half the set and headed down to the Roseland. On the walk down MFNW run school buses passed by, filled up with passengers.

When we arrive outside the Roseland we find that Girl talk is rammed full of dance-happy portlanders and we are forced to take our bracelets elsewhere. We hightail it over to Dante's and check out We were promised jet-packs and another Scottish band which followed them. I was greatly impressed and fearful when, upon entering Dante's I was confronted with, what appeared to be a bad guy from super stree fighter. The bouncer that night was an intimidating charecter, outfitted with tribal tattoos across his entire face, plenty of ear guages, septum piercings, and other metal accountremant. He also carried a large hunting knife and what appeared to be a pair of handcuffs. This guy looked like he could eat two or three eastside skinny jean hipster bouncers for breakfast. Inside Dante's Keegan and I succumbed to the insistent schtick of a cute camel salesman and both purchased a pack of the cancer sticks. It then proved exceedingly difficult to convince the camel girl that we, in fact, did not want to recieve weekly camel promotions and coupons. I don't need my smoking habit to be advertised to my family. I'd rather leave the smoking for dingy bars and urban nighttime strolls. To round off the night we dragged our drunk and nicced out butts over to the Ash Street Saloon where we watched folk powerhouse "The Dimes". I dug the band but not the bathroom which was one of those exceedingly awakward 'its too big to be a single but not big enough to be a double' affairs. With a relieved bladder and an aching gut from pizza, beer, jaeger, and cigarettes I drove back home.

The word 'free' and its attendant concept and meaning present an interesting definitional problem. When we say we get something for free what exactly does this mean? Most of the time the implication is that we received something beneficial without having to give up anything valuable in return. We wouldn't say we go a bruise for free (no one values bruises) or that America won the Afghanistan war for free (it cost us valuable lives). But free can be deceptive.

In a new book called free, author Chris Anderson describes different ways companies brand their products as free and the different meanings the word can take. In todays economy something may be free if you make a qualifying purchase such as 'buy one soup get the second one free.' In this situation free is being used when it would be more accurate to call the deal, 'buy one get one half off.' Another common tactic corporations use is to not charge for a product but then to require users to sit through advertisements. Hulu streams tv for free to computer users but incorporates its shows with commercials which cannot be fast forwarded through. Another example is facebook which has millions of die-hard users who rely on it every day for their social networking needs. Despite its popularity, facebook if absolutely free, but its loaded with advertistements. We are still paying for these services, not with money but with our time. The time we use to look through these advertisements is not free time. In addition, advertisement is subtle in its deployment and manipulation and may cause us to buy products we have no need for simply because we were swayed by a pretty face on a commercial.

Free products or discounted products can end up costing us more than we expected. It's a feature of human psychology that we appreciate a deal. When we think we are getting something for less than its normal price we are pleased. This causes us to buy things which are discounted which we might not have bought at all in another situation. for example, imagine the baskin robbins across the street is having a 39 cent scoop deal on ice cream which is lasting one day. Now, you have a big dinner and aren't hungry but the deal seems too good to pass up so you buy the ice cream. Was this really a 'deal?' Take another situation, you are out for drinks with people you don't really care for. The conversation is awkward and stilted. You think to be polite you should stay for a few minutes but you are looking for an excuse to make an early exit. Then, the person next to you offers to buy you a beer. Do you take it? It's free so its hard to pass up, but again its not really free. the price of the drink is that you have to stay at the bar for the time it takes to drink it. Depending on your feelings on ettiquette you might even be obliged to buy a round of drinks in return.

There's nothing wrong with being frugal but, finding a good deal is more complicated then it first appears. When making a purchase we should look at all the hidden prices that come with that product whether that price be monetary, social, caloric, or temporal.

What the fuck are we drinking????

Our culture is in love with the principle of the free lunch. Consumers want to have the enjoyment of products without experiencing the penalty. In the case of coca-cola people want the flavor and sometimes the caffeine without the calories. I find it amazing that people worry about the calories in coke and ignore its more horrible side-effects such as the amount of rot the sugar will cause on your teeth or the carcinogens which make up the flavor in the chemical stew of diet coke or coke zero.

and take a look at this newly marketed product:
The contradiction in this advertisement seems to be patently obvious. Vitamin water is supposed to be drunk in accordance with an active lifestyle. Like Gatorade it is a drink marketed to an active set of people who migh enjoy the drink before or after exercise. So why should it have zero calories? Calories are good for us, they are what our body thrives on. Fat is good for us too. If we are exercising and burning calories and fat reserves then we need some way to replace these calories. Skinny water is another aspect of the weight loss phenomenon which emphasizes cutting calories and food intake as the best way to lose weight. Personally I think that a better, easier, and healthier way to lose weight is to exercise more, eat healthier food such as vegetable and fresh fruits, and avoid processed foods or fast foods. Weight loss should be a natural product of living a healthy lifestyle, not just a goal in itself. Alright, sermon concluded...

My social life at this point is strung up and down the Western Coast of the Great US of A. Most of my friends and relatives live in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland, and Seattle. After a brief foray to the east coast I made the relatively easy decision that the left side of the country is the place for me. It's the people, the nature, and the cities that make the West Coast a prime place to live. But now I'm confronted with a problem. With my social network strung between several different states along an expansive coastline, how am I going to see everyone?

I have been disapointed with the options for travel up the coast and along the I-5 corridor. Sure there are plenty of reasonable plane fairs between these cities but for the unemployed, poor traveller, there aren't a lot of premium budget options. If you can get together a few people for a car trip then prices are reasonable but if you're driving by yourself its better just to fly.

I wish there were more car share options for travellers. Back in the day our parents simply stood by the side of the road and stuck their thumbs out for a ride. But nowadays with the unibomber, Ted Kazinsky, cocacola zero, and other social menaces it just doesn't seem prudent to leave one's life to the mercy of the road. The internet should be the new place for hitchhikers. Our parents don't trust the anonymity and openness of the web but people in our generation use their computers for everything, only turning to RL (short for real life) solutions when absolutely necessary. Instead of bumming rides on the road travellers should be able to plan their trips ahead of time by signing up to online communities and arranging trips. Everyone could offer something, whether it be a car, money for gas, or maybe conversation and companionship on a long train ride.

An online trave/rideshare community would have several benefits to traditional hitchiking. First, people could plan their trips ahead of time so that making it to granny's funeral didn't depend on the wim of big rig truckers. Secondly, the online community could fulfill multiple functions. It could be a place to arrange rideshares, exchange travel tips, dispense travel warnings, and act as a social network to keep people who met each other while travelling connected. But its most important function would be to make travelling up and down the coastal states an easier and cheaper journey. In my mind I can envision listings offering and asking for rides from Vancouver BC down to San Diego.

Right now there are a few websites that serve some of the functions I am describing. Craig's list has a rideshare option but listings are always posted at the last minute and rides usually don't cover long distances. Ridester is the most popular rideshare only website but its listings are woefully limited. couchsurfer.org is an online travel community but it is more oriented towards connecting people for cheap or free accomadations rather than for transportation. I am now putting out a call to all techno nerds: let's make this website for the mutual benefit of all!

Last night I was riding the metro back to Eagle Rock after another spectacular night of breakdancing. My joints ached and my body was freezing cold. The layer of sweat I had quickly accumulated while dancing had immediately chilled when I stepped outside, making me a sopping wet, shivering mess. I had no idea how long it was going to take for the train to arrive. Across the station I noticed two breakers from the session. The younger guy, Adam, was practicing a spinning move and his brother Donnie was watching. I had met both of them last week on the ride back home. Among the still forms either sitting or standing, the bboys stuck out like little spots of energy. I decided to go over and say what's up. I needed some conversation to distract me from the pains coming from my frozen and aching body. I walked across the station, giving them a wave and a little bit of a two-step. 'bboy bboy," I said conspiratorily.

"Hey, what's up man?" the younger replied. "haha, white boy can dance huh?" Donnie said, couching his comment in a laughing tone. We exchanged high fives, we did the slap and pound thing. I actually pride myself on knowing what type of greeting to give to people depending on the situation (the slap and pound, the high five, the slap and shoulder pound, the hug, the half hug, or the handshake) and this seemed like the best option at the moment.

“Ah, not much. Just waiting for this fucking train,” I said, hoping to commiserate over something we both could understand, the awfulness of the public transit system. Sometimes it’s difficult to communicate verbally with other breakers. We are all so hyped up during the session, sweating bullets, thinking of move variations, checking out the guy in the corner doing a windmill nut-grab, that we can’t really muster the energy or the attention to have a coherent conversation. Plus I really don't know anything about these people except that they can do some awesome shit with their bodies.

We bullshitted a bit more about future dance sessions and then the train finally arrived, late as usual, and we hopped on. Once the doors swung shut and the chime sounded the question that both of them wanted to ask sprung forth, “so you white?” Donnie, the older brother, asked me.

“Well, yeah, I guess,” I answered awkwardly, giving a little chuckle and a shrug of the shoulders as if to say I couldn’t help the fact. “My dad is Polish”

“Polish?” Donnie interrupted, saying the word as if he had never heard it before.

“Yeah, you know eastern European, and my mom is English, Irish, that sort of thing.”

“So you all white.” Adam said in a definitive way. It was as if my description of my background didn’t make a difference. It didn’t matter what part of Europe my ancestors came from. I was white to these kids and that’s all that mattered. I realized at this moment that they probably didn't dealt with people who were “all white” very often in their lives. They might have friends with mixed backgrounds, know people with some caucasion blood, but not like me. This is one of the things I love about LA. If you walk around the city you notice that everyone is a blend of brown. Most people aren’t immediately distinguishable as a certain ethnicity type. They are a mixture of cultures. One of the first times I went to the breaking session, I went to sign my name in on the sheet. There was a space for ethnicity. I noticed that one person had simply written, East LA, as if this region of Los Angeles was its own distinguishable community. I paused for a moment, staring at this square where I was supposed to identify myself, and then I just left it blank, probably because I didn’t want to write the word 'white' which seemed so god-awful boring.

After teasing me a bit for my white boy status our conversation turned to other things. We talked about what we liked about bboying and different types of graffiti styles. Then the topic of food started and once again our differences started to surface.

“I’m going to go home and eat as much pork and rice as I can.” Donnie told me, running his hands through his hair which was sticking straight up from sweat. I noticed, not for the first time, that his hands were decorated with a snake-like tattoo, winding up his arm and through the webbing between his thumb and pointer finger.

“Yeah, I kind of sugar loaded right after we left, I had a twix and a power aid and now I’m not that hungry but I should probably have some real food.” The train shook and I reached over to grab at the pole set in the middle of the train-car.

“Is that a white boy thing,” Donnie said, laughing at my confectionary-laden diet.

At that moment I laughed, thinking that this was a silly comment and that eating candy was a ‘me’ thing, not a white thing. I have always had a sweet tooth and I can’t resist treating myself to some sugar, especially after I have worked out hard and felt that I earned a bit of indulgence. But once I got home and the conversation seeped further into my brain I realized that it is a white thing. Donnie and his brother aren’t spending money like I spend money. I probably take out around $20 a day from the bank. Some of this goes to groceries, toiletries, and other essentials, but a lot of it is spent on little things. I might buy a coffee at starbucks, or a cookie at subway, or a bottled water at 7-11 or a nice bottle of beer at the corner liquor store. None of these small, incidental purchases cost much but they end up totaling quite a bit of cash when I buy at least one, sometimes several of these items a day. Donnie isn’t spending money like this. He waits until he gets home to eat a meal and I’m sure he isn’t buying bottles of Evian after the break dancing session like I do. The other reason that consuming like I consume is stereotypically white is that the wealthier i.e. the whiter you are, the more likely you are to consume non-essential things on a routine basis. One of my friends lives part-time in Napa, an area of sprawling mansions and wineries. He shops at a store which is entirely devoted to the non-essentials. This store caters to the wealthy and stocks items such as: organic jams, fine cheeses, aged wine, Italian olive oil, natural sea salt, and dark chocolate. These are not things that one finds at your local supermarket. On a more mundane scale, many of the things I take for granted and rely upon as comforts are not enjoyed by the poor. Take coffee for instance. There is not a coffee drinking culture among poor people. I remember catering a lunch once and drinking a cup of coffee after we had eaten our meal. I was the only caterer who drank coffee. The other people considered it as simply something we served to the guests.

Poor people do not have the luxury of feeling tired or the leisure time to try to get rid of that feeling with a drink. Poor people simply stick it out. And to say that coffee is a cure for tiredness is a lie. Everyone who drinks coffee knows that if you are truly exhausted coffee isn’t going to improve your performance on anything. It might prevent you from falling asleep but its not going to help you ace the SAT if you’re taking the test at the end of an all-night bender. Coffee makes us perkier, dissipates low levels of sleepiness, and makes working a bit more tolerable because all of us have a little buzz going. It’s a non-essential that poor people do without.

Well Donnie and his brother got off at the next stop and I was left alone to my philosophical, bourgeois musings. Maybe Donnie and I come from different world with different habits I thought. But we both love being bboys and that’s all that matters.

I love Portland and I have to put in this entry about it. I know this is supposed to be a travel blog but I am rationalizing making this entry because I am a visitor to Portland now more than a native inhabitant. Coming back to the city for five days as a visitor put it in a new light for me.

I feel conflicted tooting Portland's proverbial horn because there are so many people who have already done an excellent job of doing so. Portland has an unbelievable reputation. There are constantly articles in the New York Times talking about how hip and eco-friendly Portland is and I have had countless conversations with people who haven't been to the city but want to really bad because they hear that it's 'so cool.' All this Portland ego-stroking used to really get on my nerves. I didn't understand what was so great about it. I was born and raised around the city and while I enjoyed some of the spots with local flavor such as Powell's, the bookstore that spans an entire city block (not as big as it sounds, Portland's blocks aren't nearly as large as a bigger city's blocks) and voodoo donuts, the donut store open all night long, I found the city rather small compared to the other metropolises on the I-5 corridor (Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles.)

It takes some seperation to find out what you truly love. This is true of both women and cities. Coming back to Portland made me appreciate old things that I had taken for granted and discover new things that I had not previously known or enjoyed about the city.

Old Thing: Walking around downtown there are always a ton of people. there are people walking on the sidewalks, riding bicycles in the street, and hangout out in squares. Not like LA where you feel like an intrepid adventurer if you step outside your car. New thing: Oregon beer culture is great. Walking through the beer aisle in Safeway is like walking through a speciality drinks store in any other city. Old Thing: Running in Tryon Creek state park. I used to do it a lot when I was younger but I forgot how lush and beautiful the forests are. New Thing: drinking coffee and reading books in the cafes downtown. Portland has a great coffee culture I wasn't aware of. Walking in the pearl district I see a coffeeshop every block. Old Thing: Going out to good movies that are pretty cheap. Portland has a ton of movie theaters that play intellectually stimulating films at low costs, with nice seating too!