People are really interesting. I love talking to people who have vastly different life experiences than I do. Some of the best stories are from people who are incredibly passionate about something that I have no interest in at all. For instance, accounting bores me to tears but if an accountant described his love for his profession to me I would be intrigued. It’s fascinating to discover what people put meaning to in their lives and what things they decide to invest time in. Last weekend I took a trip up to Seattle to ostensibly visit a law school. The school offered to pay my travel expenses so I decided to squeeze in a quick 24 hour trip between two work days. I had some interesting encounters with a woman who was establishing her own food cart in north Portland, a worker at a hostel who enjoyed break dancing, and a workaholic Serbian who had his sights set on Alaska. But the most surprising and enjoyable encounter occurred on my ride back to Portland on Amtrak. Tired and hungover I spent most of my time in the bistro cart, chugging waters and desultorily staring at the scenery passing by. I noticed that the gentleman manning the snack counter was the same individual who had worked on the train on my ride up. I had only spoken enough words to him to politely order a coffee on the way up but this time I decided to ask him a few questions.
At first glance he seemed rather dull. He was a hefty fellow with a large, bushy brown beard and he served food and drinks without much emotion, ringing people up and then returning to his seat behind the counter to gaze out the window. I could tell he was bored and how long his work shift ran. This led to a twenty minute narrative about his life. All I had to do was nod appreciatively and ask simple, leading questions in order to keep the story going.
First, my train friend gave me some details about the lifestyle of a person who works for Amtrak. He had worked in both long haul and short haul train routes. Currently, he works the Vancouver BC to Portland route. He has one day a week where he works an 18 hours shift, two days where he works a short shift, then three days off. In the past he worked the train that traveled from Seattle to Chicago. Doing this trip there and back would take a little over a week. While he was on the train he would work 18-22 hours per day. When he did get a chance to sleep he was relegated to a sleeping cabin that was the size of a spacious coffin. The train would arrive in Seattle and he would have one epic night out and then the next day he would return to the cramped confines of the train. He told me that as long as the people on the crew were cool then it was a tolerable existence but if the crew didn’t get along then the narrow hallways of the cars began to feel like prison cells. He told me that one of the benefits of the long hours and poor conditions were that he got a full week off at a time so he had tons of mini-vacations throughout the year. And with all the overtime money he had accrued he was able to go out to eat, see shows, and generally enjoy himself.
This fellow (let’s call him George because I forgot his name) had done more with his life than working on a train. He had completed two years with Americorps NCCC. One year he worked in several schools, including one for youth offenders. The other year he worked outdoors, mostly across the Midwest, building schools, and maintaining park trails. He is also a perennial student. He has attended eight institutions of higher education, including Evergreen College. While he has lots of credits he is nowhere near attaining a degree because he took a random collection of courses. He opted to take classes that interested him rather than focusing on particular subject areas. Two of the schools he attended give write ups as their form of assessment rather than grades, making transferring credits difficult. George plans to continue his education at a school called Naropa University (also named the Jack Kerouac school of disembodied poetics) in Colorado. This school was established by Alan Ginsberg in the 1970’s. It borrows many ideas from eastern religion and students can choose some unique educational options, such as living in a Buddhist monastery and taking a vow of silence for a semester. George hopes to use his time at Naropa to hone his writing skills in short fiction.
What a life George has had. I was impressed by the variety and breadth of his work and school experience. While I don’t envy his job, I do hope that when I am his age I have just as interesting a story to tell to another young person who is just beginning his or her own life journey.
Tuesday, 2 March 2010
Saturday, 13 February 2010
The next great adventure
I’m getting that travel bug again ladies and gentlefolk. It seems that anytime I start settling and extending roots in one place I get the urge to pull up camp and start fresh somewhere else. Recently I went on a trip to LA and while I was there I was researching ideas for the next place to travel. I don’t fully understand why I so desperately want to leave good situations where I live a happy and fulfilled life. This blog entry is a self-examination of my travel obsession. This blog started out based on the presupposition that travel is an important facet of my life and now I am going to take the time to parse apart the reasons why this is so. I need to figure out why I have this pressing desire for change and whether it would benefit me (whatever that means) to follow this unremitting compulsion.
Life is good in Portland. I could easily spend many more enjoyable months doing exactly what I have been doing in the city of my birth. I have several jobs which satisfy me in different ways. I enjoy my work and also feel that I am well compensated for it. I have a job serving food to rich people at a fine dining hotel. This job pays pretty well and I work with some interesting folk (hippie burnouts, alcoholics, general depressants, and one mad Russian). I also have two gigs working as a coach for kids, one teaching gymnastics at a large gymnasium and one at a school cafeteria teaching my own passion, breaking. Coaching is rewarding work. It’s my first time working with kids and I am learning how to be assertive, gaining leadership skills, and group management skills. It also makes me feel more like an adult. I have to make decisions and enforce them. Surprisingly, these kids see me as someone who knows what he is talking about and I have had some great moments watching the kids improve their skills under my tutelage. Working with kids is a delicate balance of encouragement and constructive criticism. Yesterday was a great day at the gymnastics center. Usually I have to coax, prod, and weasel the girls into working on the skills they are supposed to work on but that day one of the girls said “I like to work” and skipped our fun event, jumping on the trampoline, in favor of working on her bar routine.
No only do I have a great job, I also have a great group of friends in the city of roses. I am lucky enough to live near many of the friends I made in high school. We know each other well and after years of association we have a comfortable ‘kicking it’ groove. We have fun whether we are going out or just chilling and staying in for the night and I think we have struck a good balance between these two. Portland has lots of great bars and clubs to visit as well as fun events such as art walks, pub-crawls, and movie screenings. Many of my friends live with their parental figures so we have houses stocked with board games, flat screen tv’s, and stereo systems. In addition to my high school buddies (nicknamed ‘the running dog’s by my father because we all met through running together in the cross-country program) I also have several friends from college in town and some new friends that have developed through socializing and work that I can hang out with in case I need a change of pace from the uniformly serene nights in suburban paradise.
Then, of course, one cannot forget that living with mom and pops affords me an extremely cushy lifestyle. People say that in the 20th and 21st century humanity has seen an elongation of the adolescent period. Careers, marriages, and children are increasingly things that people are putting off into their 30’s and 40’s. As a 23 year old living at home with no imminent plans of fleeing the nest I am an example of this trend. Lots of the things self-sufficient adults have to worry about do not bother me. Do I need to worry about cooking dinner? No. Do I need to worry about paying rent and utilities? No. Do I even need to worry about fixing the broken light in my room or changing the oil in my car? No, my dad loves taking care of practical things. (But yes, I do worry about putting gas in my car and rotating my laundry, and I wipe my own ass too!)
Of course things aren’t perfect here. I miss my college friends a lot. I don’t have a lady friend in the city of roses, and, although living with the parents is cushy, it doesn’t really scream cool (my friend Taylor told me that if I bring over a woman I should tell her that I live in a single unit apartment that I rent from an older married couple.
So my work is satisfying, my social circle is entertaining and diverse, and my home life is comfortable and stable. Could it get any better? Yes! I have even been able to satisfy my travel bug with short vacations because my work schedule is flexible and it’s possible to take time off if I schedule this time far enough in advance. Since moving back from college I have been to LA twice, San Francisco once, Oakland once, San Luis Obispo once, and Eugene twice. I am also in the midst of planning another short trip to Seattle. So what’s the problem, David? Friends, family, work, play…who could ask for more?
***
I think it’s that feeling of adventure that I am missing out on while living in Portland. I’m going to law school in late-August and this fact looms over me like a foreboding, paper-spewing, fun-gobbling behemoth. The average age of a law school student is 26. Since I will be 23 when I start I consider myself as ahead of the curve in the professional/career advancement/responsibility type game . I am worried that, with my early entrance into graduate school, I will miss out on all the crazy/awesome/eclectic things young people do before they enter into stultifying careers where the best perks are free coffee and bagel Fridays. Once law school begins my chances for random adventures diminishes. First off, the massive amount of debt I will accrue unless I can convince the admissions committee that I am a lesbian, Native American with Downs syndrome will deter me from doing any sort of travel. Second, I just won’t have all the free time I do now. During the school year studying is a full time commitment, then, over the summers, the best students will get internships in the field of law in order to accrue valuable experience/brownie/networking points. If you’re going to pay the equivalent of a house for an education then you better have a good idea how you’re going to make some money once the final school bell rings.
I think another reason I want to travel is that I have a masochistic urge to be uncomfortable. I want to be stuck in the pouring rain trying to change a tire on the side of a dirty interstate or half starved backpacking through snowy mountain fields. That sounds like fun. For me, the great dichotomy that marks the difference between the good life and the bad isn’t comfortable and uncomfortable or success and failure, it’s interesting and boring. I can deal with failure, what I can’t deal with is monotony, stability, sameness. I relate to that wild impulse Christopher Mccanliss exhibited in “Into the Wild” when he burned all his money and took off into the great unknown. I feel incredibly lucky and grateful to have been born into a social and economic situation that has afforded me more luxuries than 99% of the world possesses, but, at the same time, I want to honor the blessing I have received by challenging myself to live outside the comforts of my life. Some people just can’t accept being happy, safe, and prosperous and I think I’m one of them.
Another reason to travel is to learn some practical ‘man skills’. Something that has always bothered me about myself is that I don’t know much about practicalities. For instance, I can’t fix a drain, change a tire, lay a hardwood floor, or power wash a wall. On a camping road trip you can’t do these things but you can learn such useful skills as: starting a fire, conducting routine car maintenance, cooking on a campfire, reading a map, navigating through woods and roads, and surviving adverse weather conditions. Right now my life is relatively hip and urban. I sit at coffee shops drinking lattes reading books with characters who are experiencing severe cases of existential ennui. I visit thrift stores, watch movies at independent theaters, and dance at nightclubs. I love all these activities but they also make me feel a bit effete. I want some survivalist, man vs wild skill points. I want some grime under my nails and some hair on my chest.
So now that I’ve described in minute detail all the reasons why I want to travel and all the reasons why I don’t need to, here’s the travel idea. I’ve done a few car trips but they’ve always been variations on the same theme. - Depart from point A and travel north or south along the general area of the I-5 corridor. I’ve traveled up and down the West Coast plenty of times but never made any advances into the great central part of the states. I haven’t even set foot in Idaho which is right next door to Oregon. I know nothing about the South or the Midwest. There’s tons of cities, towns, and countryside that I am dying to explore in this country. I think if I had my druthers I would take a southernly route through the US, traveling through New Mexico, Texas, Louisiana, then travel up the Eastern seabord hitting North Caroline, Washington DC, New York, Massachusetts, then swing back around through the northern part of the US through Illinois, Montana, Colorado.
In high school my favorite author was Jack Kerouac. I loved the energy he wrote with and his fast-paced, jazz-inspired prose. I was fascinated by his manic characters who had too much energy to burn, who traveled across the continent with little or no pretence to practicality. The beats were about experiencing adventure and they cared little for material or professional gain. They were basically wild creatures who didn’t want to work or do much of anything productive. Instead they expelled energy in massive exhalations by criss-crossing the continent in cars and trains, screaming, drinking, smoking, and fucking along the way. As the first counter-culture figures the beats were the ambassadors of cool and one could do much worse in my book (not yet written) than to immulate their hijinks. I have always dreamed of hitting the road like Dean Moriarty and ‘balling that jack straight through the great heartland cat.’ (my poor impression of beat lingo)
So there are several possible strategies for an awesome road trip this summer. one idea is to do a cross-country road trip in a car like the one I described above. Another, more modest proposal is to do a tour of the Western states (Oregon, Utah, Colorado, Arizona, Nevada, California) in a car. This may be more practical considering I either have to (A) us my 1986 volvo station wagon which tops out at 55 mph for the trip or (B) ask my parents to borrow one of their cars. Another is to buy an Amtrak train pass. You can buy passes for an affordable price which allow you to board the train multiple times in a given week or month. In this fashion one could travel across the country about as cheaply as driving without having to worry about the car breaking down. This would also give me more leisure time to read, write, check out the scenery, and talk to other train riders. The downside I see to the train expedition is that I would be limited to traveling to whatever places the train stops at and it would cut down on the wilderness exploration side of the trip since trains mostly travel through major cities. In any of these scenarios I would bring my bicycle, either on top of my car or with me on the train, and I would ride for exercise and fun every day. Tying for a distant third in potential trips would be doing a motorcycle or bicycle tour trip. I love the idea of doing either of these but what makesme hesitate is that both of these require a lot of planning and there is a lot that could potentially go wrong. There is only so much gear you can bring on a bike so packing right is very important and I don’t have a lot of technical knowledge that is required to deal with potential maintenance on a bicycle or motor bike
The road trip I have in mind would not be just a mindless, partying gallivant through a bunch of cities. It would be a trip with a philosophy. I would mostly travel through areas of outstanding natural beauty, state and national parks. I would live life at a more basic level and experience things at a slower pace. There would be some imposed hardships on the trip. I would stick to a strict budget so that I can afford to travel for a long time. I would prioritize my accommodations on the trip by price. Most of the time I would camp or couchsurf at friend’s houses. I would use hostels only for when I came to a large urban area where I didn’t know any locals and I would avoid hotels altogether. Second, I would avoid junk food and fast food chains. Sometimes when I travel I compromise my diet because the easiest food to grab on the road is at gas stations and fast food chains right off the highway. On this trip I would shop for food at grocery stores or, on occasion, eat at local diners. I would avoid food altogether from national chains. What’s the point of traveling if you’re eating things you could easily eat at home. Lastly, I would make every attempt to meet new people and record these encounters. As a traveler I would feel obligated to aid other voyagers in their adventures. I would pick up hitchhikers whenever I drove past (as long as the don’t look tooo sketchy) and I would do some couchsurfing through the social networking site.
Life is good in Portland. I could easily spend many more enjoyable months doing exactly what I have been doing in the city of my birth. I have several jobs which satisfy me in different ways. I enjoy my work and also feel that I am well compensated for it. I have a job serving food to rich people at a fine dining hotel. This job pays pretty well and I work with some interesting folk (hippie burnouts, alcoholics, general depressants, and one mad Russian). I also have two gigs working as a coach for kids, one teaching gymnastics at a large gymnasium and one at a school cafeteria teaching my own passion, breaking. Coaching is rewarding work. It’s my first time working with kids and I am learning how to be assertive, gaining leadership skills, and group management skills. It also makes me feel more like an adult. I have to make decisions and enforce them. Surprisingly, these kids see me as someone who knows what he is talking about and I have had some great moments watching the kids improve their skills under my tutelage. Working with kids is a delicate balance of encouragement and constructive criticism. Yesterday was a great day at the gymnastics center. Usually I have to coax, prod, and weasel the girls into working on the skills they are supposed to work on but that day one of the girls said “I like to work” and skipped our fun event, jumping on the trampoline, in favor of working on her bar routine.
No only do I have a great job, I also have a great group of friends in the city of roses. I am lucky enough to live near many of the friends I made in high school. We know each other well and after years of association we have a comfortable ‘kicking it’ groove. We have fun whether we are going out or just chilling and staying in for the night and I think we have struck a good balance between these two. Portland has lots of great bars and clubs to visit as well as fun events such as art walks, pub-crawls, and movie screenings. Many of my friends live with their parental figures so we have houses stocked with board games, flat screen tv’s, and stereo systems. In addition to my high school buddies (nicknamed ‘the running dog’s by my father because we all met through running together in the cross-country program) I also have several friends from college in town and some new friends that have developed through socializing and work that I can hang out with in case I need a change of pace from the uniformly serene nights in suburban paradise.
Then, of course, one cannot forget that living with mom and pops affords me an extremely cushy lifestyle. People say that in the 20th and 21st century humanity has seen an elongation of the adolescent period. Careers, marriages, and children are increasingly things that people are putting off into their 30’s and 40’s. As a 23 year old living at home with no imminent plans of fleeing the nest I am an example of this trend. Lots of the things self-sufficient adults have to worry about do not bother me. Do I need to worry about cooking dinner? No. Do I need to worry about paying rent and utilities? No. Do I even need to worry about fixing the broken light in my room or changing the oil in my car? No, my dad loves taking care of practical things. (But yes, I do worry about putting gas in my car and rotating my laundry, and I wipe my own ass too!)
Of course things aren’t perfect here. I miss my college friends a lot. I don’t have a lady friend in the city of roses, and, although living with the parents is cushy, it doesn’t really scream cool (my friend Taylor told me that if I bring over a woman I should tell her that I live in a single unit apartment that I rent from an older married couple.
So my work is satisfying, my social circle is entertaining and diverse, and my home life is comfortable and stable. Could it get any better? Yes! I have even been able to satisfy my travel bug with short vacations because my work schedule is flexible and it’s possible to take time off if I schedule this time far enough in advance. Since moving back from college I have been to LA twice, San Francisco once, Oakland once, San Luis Obispo once, and Eugene twice. I am also in the midst of planning another short trip to Seattle. So what’s the problem, David? Friends, family, work, play…who could ask for more?
***
I think it’s that feeling of adventure that I am missing out on while living in Portland. I’m going to law school in late-August and this fact looms over me like a foreboding, paper-spewing, fun-gobbling behemoth. The average age of a law school student is 26. Since I will be 23 when I start I consider myself as ahead of the curve in the professional/career advancement/responsibility type game . I am worried that, with my early entrance into graduate school, I will miss out on all the crazy/awesome/eclectic things young people do before they enter into stultifying careers where the best perks are free coffee and bagel Fridays. Once law school begins my chances for random adventures diminishes. First off, the massive amount of debt I will accrue unless I can convince the admissions committee that I am a lesbian, Native American with Downs syndrome will deter me from doing any sort of travel. Second, I just won’t have all the free time I do now. During the school year studying is a full time commitment, then, over the summers, the best students will get internships in the field of law in order to accrue valuable experience/brownie/networking points. If you’re going to pay the equivalent of a house for an education then you better have a good idea how you’re going to make some money once the final school bell rings.
I think another reason I want to travel is that I have a masochistic urge to be uncomfortable. I want to be stuck in the pouring rain trying to change a tire on the side of a dirty interstate or half starved backpacking through snowy mountain fields. That sounds like fun. For me, the great dichotomy that marks the difference between the good life and the bad isn’t comfortable and uncomfortable or success and failure, it’s interesting and boring. I can deal with failure, what I can’t deal with is monotony, stability, sameness. I relate to that wild impulse Christopher Mccanliss exhibited in “Into the Wild” when he burned all his money and took off into the great unknown. I feel incredibly lucky and grateful to have been born into a social and economic situation that has afforded me more luxuries than 99% of the world possesses, but, at the same time, I want to honor the blessing I have received by challenging myself to live outside the comforts of my life. Some people just can’t accept being happy, safe, and prosperous and I think I’m one of them.
Another reason to travel is to learn some practical ‘man skills’. Something that has always bothered me about myself is that I don’t know much about practicalities. For instance, I can’t fix a drain, change a tire, lay a hardwood floor, or power wash a wall. On a camping road trip you can’t do these things but you can learn such useful skills as: starting a fire, conducting routine car maintenance, cooking on a campfire, reading a map, navigating through woods and roads, and surviving adverse weather conditions. Right now my life is relatively hip and urban. I sit at coffee shops drinking lattes reading books with characters who are experiencing severe cases of existential ennui. I visit thrift stores, watch movies at independent theaters, and dance at nightclubs. I love all these activities but they also make me feel a bit effete. I want some survivalist, man vs wild skill points. I want some grime under my nails and some hair on my chest.
So now that I’ve described in minute detail all the reasons why I want to travel and all the reasons why I don’t need to, here’s the travel idea. I’ve done a few car trips but they’ve always been variations on the same theme. - Depart from point A and travel north or south along the general area of the I-5 corridor. I’ve traveled up and down the West Coast plenty of times but never made any advances into the great central part of the states. I haven’t even set foot in Idaho which is right next door to Oregon. I know nothing about the South or the Midwest. There’s tons of cities, towns, and countryside that I am dying to explore in this country. I think if I had my druthers I would take a southernly route through the US, traveling through New Mexico, Texas, Louisiana, then travel up the Eastern seabord hitting North Caroline, Washington DC, New York, Massachusetts, then swing back around through the northern part of the US through Illinois, Montana, Colorado.
In high school my favorite author was Jack Kerouac. I loved the energy he wrote with and his fast-paced, jazz-inspired prose. I was fascinated by his manic characters who had too much energy to burn, who traveled across the continent with little or no pretence to practicality. The beats were about experiencing adventure and they cared little for material or professional gain. They were basically wild creatures who didn’t want to work or do much of anything productive. Instead they expelled energy in massive exhalations by criss-crossing the continent in cars and trains, screaming, drinking, smoking, and fucking along the way. As the first counter-culture figures the beats were the ambassadors of cool and one could do much worse in my book (not yet written) than to immulate their hijinks. I have always dreamed of hitting the road like Dean Moriarty and ‘balling that jack straight through the great heartland cat.’ (my poor impression of beat lingo)
So there are several possible strategies for an awesome road trip this summer. one idea is to do a cross-country road trip in a car like the one I described above. Another, more modest proposal is to do a tour of the Western states (Oregon, Utah, Colorado, Arizona, Nevada, California) in a car. This may be more practical considering I either have to (A) us my 1986 volvo station wagon which tops out at 55 mph for the trip or (B) ask my parents to borrow one of their cars. Another is to buy an Amtrak train pass. You can buy passes for an affordable price which allow you to board the train multiple times in a given week or month. In this fashion one could travel across the country about as cheaply as driving without having to worry about the car breaking down. This would also give me more leisure time to read, write, check out the scenery, and talk to other train riders. The downside I see to the train expedition is that I would be limited to traveling to whatever places the train stops at and it would cut down on the wilderness exploration side of the trip since trains mostly travel through major cities. In any of these scenarios I would bring my bicycle, either on top of my car or with me on the train, and I would ride for exercise and fun every day. Tying for a distant third in potential trips would be doing a motorcycle or bicycle tour trip. I love the idea of doing either of these but what makesme hesitate is that both of these require a lot of planning and there is a lot that could potentially go wrong. There is only so much gear you can bring on a bike so packing right is very important and I don’t have a lot of technical knowledge that is required to deal with potential maintenance on a bicycle or motor bike
The road trip I have in mind would not be just a mindless, partying gallivant through a bunch of cities. It would be a trip with a philosophy. I would mostly travel through areas of outstanding natural beauty, state and national parks. I would live life at a more basic level and experience things at a slower pace. There would be some imposed hardships on the trip. I would stick to a strict budget so that I can afford to travel for a long time. I would prioritize my accommodations on the trip by price. Most of the time I would camp or couchsurf at friend’s houses. I would use hostels only for when I came to a large urban area where I didn’t know any locals and I would avoid hotels altogether. Second, I would avoid junk food and fast food chains. Sometimes when I travel I compromise my diet because the easiest food to grab on the road is at gas stations and fast food chains right off the highway. On this trip I would shop for food at grocery stores or, on occasion, eat at local diners. I would avoid food altogether from national chains. What’s the point of traveling if you’re eating things you could easily eat at home. Lastly, I would make every attempt to meet new people and record these encounters. As a traveler I would feel obligated to aid other voyagers in their adventures. I would pick up hitchhikers whenever I drove past (as long as the don’t look tooo sketchy) and I would do some couchsurfing through the social networking site.
Tuesday, 15 December 2009
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.
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 19th. 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.
Friday, 11 December 2009
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.
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.
Saturday, 28 November 2009
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.
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.
Thursday, 19 November 2009
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.
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.
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.
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