Weekend Downtown Users borrowed my cell phone

I don’t spend a lot of time in downtown on weekends. It’s a very different place than it is on weekdays.

Weekday downtown users (WDDUs) stream in to the parking garages and tall glass buildings five mornings a week, only to return to their quiet little neighborhoods in the late afternoons and on weekends. It’s organized, rhythmic for the most part, well-kempt.

On weekends, my pleasant little city becomes Attack of the Bodysnatchers, but the only bodies being snatched are covered in scabs and tattoos. The place is fucking gross. I was mostly amazed that they keep this alternate slice of Portlandia so well hidden from us WDDUs.

Where do all these Weekend Downtown Users (WEDU) go? I should have never asked that question – they’re obviously looting the WDDUs neighborhoods on weekdays. Or maybe once downtown fills up with all us WDDUs, the WEDUs just blend in. Yeah, ok. We’ll go with that.

So I rode into downtown today (Sunday) to meet a friend and check out a movie. The WEDUs were in full junkie-fucking effect. I nearly ran over a few on my bike.

As we walked out of the theater after the show, my friend and I talking about the flick, we were asked by a tweaked out twenty-something couple (mind you, the worst looking twenties you’ve ever seen) if they could borrow a cell phone. They added some sob story about trying to get a ride back to Texas.

I had about a split second for the following thought - Don’t be “The Man.” Lend em the phone. Aww, man, I don’t want them touching my phone. That shit is personal. I understand if you’re a young lost kid, or an elderly person, or someone in real trouble that they didn’t create themselves. But not this bullshit... Don’t be “The Man.”

So I handed over the phone. One of their scabby claws grabbed it. The guy’s actually. He dialed a number with his back to me, hung up and dialed another.

I tried to continue a natural conversation with my friend about the movie we just saw, but it was useless. I was way too busy stressing over the Hep D he was leaving on my phone, which I will now never use again.

I know I shouldn't be surprised by all of this. It happens in major metropolitan areas all across the country - the seedy side exposed once the worker bees evacuate (a phenomenon, by the way, worthy of a documentary). I just thought my town was different.

So if you’re reading this, and you ooze something infected anywhere on your body that’s visible, let’s just play our respective roles. You be the disgusting junkie messing up my nice little city. And I’ll be “The Man.”

My Inner-Hippie

Back in my college days, I did the whole hippie thing. Not very original, I know. Especially going to college in Madison, Wisconsin. That’s like saying, I went to Vassar and did the lesbian thing. Or I went to Florida State and did the date rape thing. Totally cliché.

Perhaps even more embarrassing, there was no altruistic motive behind my peace, love and happiness. I wasn't saving baby seals or feeding the world. It was just me, a pair of Birkenstocks, and an unruly Jew-fro experimenting with recreational drugs, while driving an old VW all over the country to see jam bands like the Grateful Dead and Phish.



The natural progression for this post-college wannabe was to head west. Portland Oregon to be exact. But what happened next was completely unexpected. No sooner had I unpacked my Guatemalan backpack, than I shed the whole youthful facade, starting with my hair, shaved down to a quarter of an inch. And with my new cop-like buzz cut, I quickly adopted an uptight behavioral pattern, which completely belied my previous "don't harsh on my mellow" vibe.

At the time, I was neither proud, nor ashamed of my former identity. I saw the humor in my fickle transformation, but at the same time, I had no real interest in returning to that free-spirit lifestyle. That was the old me and the new me had a new rep to establish.

Years passed and I pretty much settled into the persona I formed in those early Portland days. I moved around a bit for my career, met a nice girl, got married and had a baby. We moved back to Portland, bought a nice house, in a nice neighborhood and own a nice car. I went from “hippie” to “yuppie," carrying on the great American cliché.

But this summer marked 17 years since my last brush with the patchouli crowd, and I was finally ready to relive a little slice of my dirty past. Phish announced they were playing the Gorge Amphitheater, just a scant 4.5 hour road trip away, and it seemed I had found my venue. With a couple of hall-passes from the wives, an old friend and I set out on our own 24-hour summer tour.

We arrived at the campground about four hours before show time and all the old memories came wafting in through the car windows. Kind veggie burritos. Errant Frisbees. And yes, an obscene amount of freshly burned cannabis. The nostalgia felt warm and refreshing but through the dense fog of dried up desert dust, cigarette smoke and body odor, I could see that this place was filthy. Garbage strewn about. Aimless slobs casually invading your space. And a line-up of gas-guzzling, luxury RVs as far as the eye could see.

These weren’t the merry pranksters or the Abbie Hoffmans I aspired to all those years ago. These weren’t the young and the free. These people looked old and rough. They needed more than a shower. They needed a blood transfusion.

My traveling companion reminded me that back in the day there were plenty of cracked out punks, who would rip off their own bro’ for another nitrous balloon. The shows never were about hippies, he said. Just a bunch of bums who want to dress up in funny outfits and take drugs. He was absolutely right. I was disillusioned.

The music started and I was able to relax a bit, actually enjoying what I had come all this way to see in the first place. And then it occurred to me, as my head involuntarily bobbed up and down to newer songs I never heard before - I had inadvertently become the hippie I mistook myself for all those years prior. Only with less hair, a button down shirt and a bad attitude. Here's how I figure it:

1. I ride my bike to work everyday, part of our whole one-car family plan to keep the fuel consumption low.
2. We are a staunchly organic household (mostly due to the wife and her chemical objections).
3. Our summer veggies come straight out of the backyard compost garden.
4. My kid starts summer camp today at a farm called Mother Earth, where she’ll be stomping barefoot on locally grown berries to make jelly.

I’m not complaining. I just thought I was going through a phase.

(P.S. Sorry to leave you with the maggot post all this time - I really had nothing of consequence to say).

Internet-1, My Garbage Can-0

I had never seen a maggot in real life. Until two nights ago, when I opened the outside garbage can only to find hundreds of the little buggers crawling all over my shit. Truly, the creepiest, non-threatening things put on this earth.

My father always used the expression, "that (something he had just scarfed down) could gag a maggot," the sound of which always caused me to gag slightly, myself, but made me think a lot about what a maggot eats.

And there was that scene in Poltergeist, where the dude reaches for the piece of steak and maggots scurry out, which scared the crap out of me. So I went searching for the clip online. I didn't find it. Instead, I found something far more horrible. In fact, what I saw in my trash can, were just adorable, little, organic, prepubescent flies, by comparison.

I urge you not to watch this.

The Chemicals May Just Kill You - A Love Story (Part 2)

Now that the character of my wife has been firmly established, we'll just pick up where we left off, only to say again, the woman has some intense sensitivities to the world in which we live.

One sensitivity that's been rearing it ugly rear lately, is her aversion to the WIFI waves that are passing around us, specifically when we use or get close to the laptop. Here's the first article that comes up in google on the matter.

This rules out all sharing of funny youtube videos, or picking out new house furnishings online. There will be no quick looking up of movie times. And if you want to stream in some music, you best be doing that on the desktop computer upstairs - the same desktop that gives off the signal my laptop receives. Shhh, don't tell her.

Last night we were discussing ways to save money and the topic of cancelling cable came up. I was all for it. We could get Apple TV (can anyone recommend?), kaibosh cable and netflix, and only buy the shows and movies we want to watch.
This would force us to choose our television viewing wisely, not just grow numb to the nightly channel surf, hoping tonight we land on something, anything other than House Hunters International and the 11 pm Chelsea Lately or Jon Stewart debate. We might even start reading and listening to music more. We were giddy with the possibilities. So much so, that my wife leaned over my shoulder to read about Apple TV on the evil laptop.

And then she saw it. Big, bold lettering. "Wireless to the Extreme."

The waves! The waves would be all around us everytime we watched tv.

Bye, bye Apple TV. The moment was fleeting but the love was real.

Suck one, Twitter

In past posts, I've bemoaned the popularity of twitter. Like here, here and here.

I've since tried to open my mind to the social network and learn to use it for the good of my career. I've tried to find the insightful and the relevant among all those shameless tweets.

And then this showed up in my email.




I'd like to thank my coworker for passing this along, and reminding me why I was right all along.

The Coffee Shop Saga, Part 5

If you've been paying any attention at all, you'd know that I'm forever searching for a proper coffee shop.

Somewhere in between my house and my office, where I can sit down with a decent Americano and write.

Somewhere that won't tack on an extra dime to my $2 drink, forcing me to bust up another bill, or worse yet, go into debit.

Somewhere without an owner that calls attention to my doody time whenever I ask for the bathroom key. Actually, fuck that. Somewhere that doesn't require a bathroom key at all.


(Ed. Note: Playing attached video provides recommended soundtrack for the remainder of this post and is referenced below - the music is incredible but watching people dance to it, not so incredible).

I thought the last place was it. And while I haven't completely given up on them, they are a block and a half off my direct route to work and they tack on the extra dime to my Americano. I've also grown increasingly unhappy with my co-clientelle there. But without a viable substitute, my move was all talk.

Last night, some friends in the neighborhood told me about Cartola Coffeehouse on NE 7th. The same block as the neighborhood dry cleaners that no one actually uses and right next door to ghetto quickie mart, where 40-oz bottles of Old English outsell all other items combined, 10-1. The same block where my wife and I witnessed two old friends greet each other with a hug and the motto "once a 7th street gang member, always a 7th street gang member."

I couldn't imagine it. Trendy, bourgeois coffeeshop? There? Nah-ah.

And here I am. Sitting on a plush, cushioned bench, working on a white marble-topped table, under cool, low lighting, listening to my newly heavily rotated, Menahan Street Band on the cafe speakers and drinking a $2 Americano, made with Stumptown coffee. And I haven't strayed one foot off of my direct route to work.

If I had any complaint at all, it would be that the place is a bit intimate for me to sit down and work comfortably. But the Americano is only $2.

For now, this will do.

Panic at the Dentist's Office

I pried my sweaty body off the pleather recliner and bolted upright. The hygienist stood behind me making copious notes in my permanent file.

"Do you really have to write all that down?," I asked pathetically, the color just now returning to my face. "I'm fine, now. Seriously. Let's just do the cleaning."

"Oh, this? It's nothing," she told me with that bullshit cheeriness that all dental hygienists have mastered. "I'll be done in just a second, here."

What she was writing, in that permanent file of mine, was how I had just completely lost my marbles, right there in her chair. Not because I'm scared of dental work, mind you. I've had root canals and gum grafts and really had no problem with it. I just lost my fucking shit. And while she chalked it up to a possible heart condition, which really isn't any better on my permanent record if I were to ever apply for new insurance policies, the truth is, I just lost my fucking shit.

It all began with a set of lost keys, which caused me to run late for my appointment.

Then came my ride in. The route to my dentist's office combined with the ornery behavior of that morning's motorists, made for an absolutely harrowing commute. I spent the last few minutes before locking up the bike, reflecting on how close I came to becoming road kill.

That had me all freaked out, and then I began to worry about my blood pressure. A few weeks ago, I saw a new doctor who told me my blood pressure was a little high. That makes perfect sense given my make-up, but remarkably, I typically test low. I knew I was going to the dentist soon, and I know they test my blood pressure before every cleaning, so I figured I'd just check in again, once I got there. But now I was heading into this test with a heart rate that could jump-start a Boeing 727.

As I entered the office, I asked the receptionist for a glass of water. It was cold. Delicious. I was about to blow a blood vessel.

They led me back to my room, sat me down in the reclining pleather chair and took my arm.

"So, I just had a pretty gnarly bike ride in and I'm afraid my blood pressure is gonna be high."

"Oh, you'll be fine," she said all bullshitty as she slid the sleeve over my bicep. "Let's just see here."

Pwsshh, pwsshh, pwsshh.

"Oh my! You are high."

My heart hammered away at the inside of my chest. "Like how high?" I stuttered.

"Oh, about twice as high as last time. It's fine." All bullshitty. "We'll test it again in a few minutes. What'd you eat last night? Or for breakfast this morning? Something salty?"

"I eat super healthy," I pleaded with this woman, hoping she would give me a better prognosis. "My wife's a food nazi. We eat kale and whole grains and shit. And everything's organic." But then I started thinking, if I am having a heart attack, this may be the last woman I speak to before I'm unconscious, so I better 'fess up, now.

"I love cheese!" I blurted out, full of shame. "It's my only weakness. "I love cheese and I like butter, too, but I rarely indulge in butter." My dental hygienist nodded. "What's high blood pressure mean exactly, anyway?," I wimpered.

My hygienist, a former emergency medical technician, felt it her job to tell me all the gory details about what happens to the human blood stream when all systems are not go. I would share them here, but that was the part where everything went out of focus.

The color had completely left my skin. I could tell from the tip of my now grey nose. Sweat poured in a steady stream down either side of my face and into my ears. And my heart was fucking killing me. I kind of thought I was about to pass out, but my mind raced to think of anything else I might want to tell my dental hygienist before I went into in a coma.

I jumped out of the pleather dentist chair and moved to a more upright seat facing the hygienist. "Could I get another cup of water?" Wait no! She had just told me that the water in your body puts pressure on the outside of your veins and capillaries making it hard for them to push the blood stream along.

The bullshitty hygienist finally went and did me a solid. She got a wet towel for me to cool myself off. And that was all I needed. She tested my blood pressure again. I was making my way down. Things were sharpening up. I had a sip of water - just a sip - and gathered my composure that had spewed across the room.

"Thanks for the towel. I think I just had a bit of a panic attack. You started telling me all about blood vessels and I just got a little wooz-"

"Well, it's important to know those things," she barked back.

"Ok, ok. Whatever. Can we just clean my teeth, now."

"Sure," she said. "I just need to make a little note."

In that cheery, bullshitty voice.