Travelogue #15b
Its For Your Wellness and Being
Stupid hippies. Stupid me. From inside her van, a girl named Melissa assembled something for me to eat in the morning, outside of downtown Flagstaff, AZ. We--her husband, a streetbum drunk, and myself--had just pushed their van onto a curb in the residential area. The night previous, the husband-wife duo had announced from the open-mic stage, that they would be holding meetings in Heritage Square for discussion on "peace". It was an ambiguous offering--discussions on peace? Hell, they couldn't even have their van fixed and they were thinking about "peace". Fucking hippies. Their set included a rendition of Sublime's "Love Is What I've Got" and a song with the exact same chord progression as Weezer's "Say It Ain't So". Even after the other acts had finished, they had tried to get back on stage to sing the Weezer-rip AGAIN.
Worse, the hitched ride I had had from a retired New York lawyer confirmed it. "Yeah, there's a big hippie element that believes that downtown Flag has vortexes {sic}, energy and stuff." His face scrunched about the idiocy of it all. Then again, Frank (his name) would be hiking in the woods the next day, tonight driving in the woods to drop off food and water according to geocache points with coordinates. The future is now.
Regardless, Melissa was assembling me food on a cracker as her husband ranted about how they were trying to do away with labels on their food, putting masking tape over it to have less... ummm, I know exactly sure what the hell he was talking about. His conversation had a sinuous quality of not exactly conveying any definitive idea, just stabs at trying to persuade with logical fallacies. He would make a terrible lawyer but an effective politician.
"Here, Tom, its a tonic. Its cleansing." Melissa emphasized the word "tonic" as if she were giving me something special. When all was said and done, I had eaten a Saltine cracker, topped with onions and Oscar Meyer mustard. Sure, no labels. Sure, a... "tonic". Sure... Melissa offered one to the bum, who was ranting about a story he had forgotten he had ranted about the night previous {see next story}.
"Oh no, I can't eat that," said the bum. "I've got the acid-reflux." Then, he went on to say that electricity should be free. The bum gestured towards a house and explained how we could feasibly run a line off of theirs with semi-technical jargon.
"Do you guys want a beer? Tom?" offered the husband, producing a few cans of warm Natural Ice (Natty Ice, for the noobs), which was better than nothing. The bum lit up at the prospect of getting lit. Beer mixed with the "cleansing tonic", this early in the morning? I had heartburn in record time. When I was leaving the Men's shelter after taking a shower, the couple were outside, singing the Weezer rip-off song.
Fucking hippies.
The Bum's Evasion
Within minutes of meeting the husband-wife duo and the bum, passing around a Dragonberry-flavored Vitamin Water mixed with CHEAP vodka, a cop arrived on the scene. For once, the bum was superior with his Catch-22's:
The cop asks if bum is drinking.
Bum denies.
Cop finds alcohol and warns the bum that this was the 2nd time today.
The bum defies him, saying he can then be thrown in jail.
The cop replies "no", that he would not give him a warm place to sleep with three square meals.
The bum laughs as the cop threatens to give him a ticket.
The bum insists that he wouldn't pay the ticket.
The cops only recourse is to throw him in jail, which of course wastes city resources.
The bum gets neither ticket nor jail, instead being put up in a tiny hotel by his hippie-benefactors.
The bum never shuts up about the story, in between singing Merle Haggard's "Mama Tried" and "Worried Man Blues".
Its For Your Wellness and Being
Stupid hippies. Stupid me. From inside her van, a girl named Melissa assembled something for me to eat in the morning, outside of downtown Flagstaff, AZ. We--her husband, a streetbum drunk, and myself--had just pushed their van onto a curb in the residential area. The night previous, the husband-wife duo had announced from the open-mic stage, that they would be holding meetings in Heritage Square for discussion on "peace". It was an ambiguous offering--discussions on peace? Hell, they couldn't even have their van fixed and they were thinking about "peace". Fucking hippies. Their set included a rendition of Sublime's "Love Is What I've Got" and a song with the exact same chord progression as Weezer's "Say It Ain't So". Even after the other acts had finished, they had tried to get back on stage to sing the Weezer-rip AGAIN.
Worse, the hitched ride I had had from a retired New York lawyer confirmed it. "Yeah, there's a big hippie element that believes that downtown Flag has vortexes {sic}, energy and stuff." His face scrunched about the idiocy of it all. Then again, Frank (his name) would be hiking in the woods the next day, tonight driving in the woods to drop off food and water according to geocache points with coordinates. The future is now.
Regardless, Melissa was assembling me food on a cracker as her husband ranted about how they were trying to do away with labels on their food, putting masking tape over it to have less... ummm, I know exactly sure what the hell he was talking about. His conversation had a sinuous quality of not exactly conveying any definitive idea, just stabs at trying to persuade with logical fallacies. He would make a terrible lawyer but an effective politician.
"Here, Tom, its a tonic. Its cleansing." Melissa emphasized the word "tonic" as if she were giving me something special. When all was said and done, I had eaten a Saltine cracker, topped with onions and Oscar Meyer mustard. Sure, no labels. Sure, a... "tonic". Sure... Melissa offered one to the bum, who was ranting about a story he had forgotten he had ranted about the night previous {see next story}.
"Oh no, I can't eat that," said the bum. "I've got the acid-reflux." Then, he went on to say that electricity should be free. The bum gestured towards a house and explained how we could feasibly run a line off of theirs with semi-technical jargon.
"Do you guys want a beer? Tom?" offered the husband, producing a few cans of warm Natural Ice (Natty Ice, for the noobs), which was better than nothing. The bum lit up at the prospect of getting lit. Beer mixed with the "cleansing tonic", this early in the morning? I had heartburn in record time. When I was leaving the Men's shelter after taking a shower, the couple were outside, singing the Weezer rip-off song.
Fucking hippies.
The Bum's Evasion
Within minutes of meeting the husband-wife duo and the bum, passing around a Dragonberry-flavored Vitamin Water mixed with CHEAP vodka, a cop arrived on the scene. For once, the bum was superior with his Catch-22's:
The cop asks if bum is drinking.
Bum denies.
Cop finds alcohol and warns the bum that this was the 2nd time today.
The bum defies him, saying he can then be thrown in jail.
The cop replies "no", that he would not give him a warm place to sleep with three square meals.
The bum laughs as the cop threatens to give him a ticket.
The bum insists that he wouldn't pay the ticket.
The cops only recourse is to throw him in jail, which of course wastes city resources.
The bum gets neither ticket nor jail, instead being put up in a tiny hotel by his hippie-benefactors.
The bum never shuts up about the story, in between singing Merle Haggard's "Mama Tried" and "Worried Man Blues".
