Welcome to Unfreedom

 The title of this post (part of it anyway) is lifted from an excellent book written by Timothy Snyder (The Road to Unfreedom) and one i'd advise everyone to read, particularly in today's political climate where the shit show has morphed into something more akin to gigantic bags of shit, lit on fire and tossed at any shred of decency that might exist... in fact i worry about Mr. Snyder as he may soon find himself being rounded up for "ideas that are Unamerican"... cuz that shit is coming kids, in fact this little post here could easily land me in an El Salvador prison once Elonia and his army of minions start scouring the web looking for "dissenters" to the Orange Shitgibbon's and Elonia's ideas of America and free speech... or as Chuck D once so poetically said, freedom of speech... just watch what you say... especially now that our own Bubble Boy Marco has cut a deal with El Salvador to house American citizens in their prisons... (for those who don't know young Marco earned the name Bubble Boy from his current boss, funny huh? seeing as young Marco was photographed and was outed as apparently working, remember in Elonia and Zuck da Cuck's world there is no fact checking but feel free to dig in on this one, as a Bubble Boy... what is a bubble boy? well those were young men who would be "available" at these bubble parties held by gay men back in the day, granted i got no problem with any of it seeing as the gay men i've known were always ridiculously fun to party with but when one is a bastion of conservative values it's a bit odd that one would earn extra money by being a rent boy.... something Bubble Boy Marco categorically denies, his explanation of those photos is oh so believable but i'm sure by now they've been scrubbed from the web...)  but back to the whole "free speech" thing, in the new America aka Dumbfuckistan the clamps are coming down, we are veritably sprinting towards dictatorship while many intelligent people are pointing out we are in the midst of a coup... hence why Speaker Mikey is sitting on his hands and vacationing, the shithead is in on it as well... 

In fact i would not be surprised if for some strange reason Congress took a recess right before Feb. 27... look up that date in history and one will find that a certain building in Berlin mysteriously burnt to the ground that day never to be replaced... overreaction? one could argue that i am,,, and do i expect them to burn down a certain building? well to be honest i'd say it's a fucking coin flip, a whole lot of knuckledraggers had no problem trashing it and shitting all over it's floor so hey why not bring some gasoline the next time? who needs a legislature when you have a king? kings, as we know, have divine rights and are the fucking mouthpiece of a chosen deity so fuck all that balance of power shit, that's for beta cuck soy boys is it not? 

But back in the Kakistocracy we are full speed ahead with jamming the biggest array of fucking idiots one could convene to run the most important departments we have... a list of the "best people" reveals and guy who is a sexual predator and raging alcoholic and who was in the National Guard to run the military... a woman best know for a fake soap opera involving mostly scantily clad, oiled and hairless men in tights rolling around together to run the education department... a known Russian asset who flipped parties when it became expedient to her career and who refuses to call a man convicted of spying a traitor (he now lives in Mother Russia) to run the intelligence community, a fucking absolutely batshit conspiracy theorist who has a dead animal fetish, a predilection for smack, loves raw milk (Neil deGrasse Tyson has stated if you think drinking raw milk is okay to look at under a microscope, he bets you wouldn't drink it after that, there's a reason it's pasteurized) and thinks that proven vaccines are harmful and ineffective, believes research on infectious diseases is useless and who is basically ignoring a bird flu epidemic, is fit to run the health department and that doesn't eve scratch the tip of it... add in the Jewish Nazi lil Stevie Miller (his own family's words not mine) and a certain South African with a sketchy visa who thinks he's, i don't know? a fascist Tony Stark? the flaming bags of shit are flying everywhere... 

Let us not forget that in the current climate, with bird flu running rampant, that the powers that be have shut down all info to not only the general public but to doctors as well, also freezing all aid and research... an interesting sidelight to this was a doctor i was listening to talk about the reason we don't have things like Ebola and other horrible diseases ravaging the US is because we help the world and look after our own self interest by stopping the spread or eradicating the outbreak where it's at... not anymore kids, the fuckwit Shitgibbon, who exhibits more signs of dementia than old Joe ever did and let's be honest, is being handled by a few evil and conniving motherfuckers behind the scenes, is once again of the mindset that if he pretends it doesn't exist it doesn't... fucking hell... we're fucked.... oddly this whole bird flu thing is not going to bring down the price of eggs anytime soon and correct me if i'm wrong but wasn't that a huge selling point for this moron? not to mention those same birds that lay eggs are also put on a whole lot of tables at dinner, that price is going up too as chickens are being massively culled due to the disease... and don't forget the cows, they get it too and while not as deadly it's going to fuck up that industry as well...  but at least gas will be cheap... uh... well.. not exactly... 

What we have going on here is plain and simply a coup... it's a word being thrown around a lot and what worries me about that is the fact when the word is tossed around it begins to lose it's meaning... as writers like Orwell, Huxley, Fromm have pointed out previously, they who control the language control the power... add in now they who control the information, the data, the algorithm, control the power... when Elonia and his merry band of teens and twentysomethings are accessing private information anyone not sporting a red hat should be wary, while the current iteration of the American Gestapo are wearing ICE uniforms it won't be long until the new branch with stylish new uniforms is announced devoting it's time and energy to round and "re-educate" the "radical left"... who is the radical left? anyone who disagrees with the authoritarian in charge.. or his cabal of ministers or his unelected best bro rich guy oligarch who believes that it is actually he who has been given this divine right... but it's probably much more simple than that... Elonia is a bigger narcissist than the Orange Shitgibbon, something hard to fathom but true, Elonia believes the world should be reshaped to his liking so he can stockpile money in his quest for everlasting life... it won't work out that way but what's the difference, he'll destroy everything in his path while convincing his fellow oligarchs and plutocrats that it is within their rights to lay waste to the lumpen prole as since they are the wealthy they are obviously more valuable to the universe than the masses, some will add in that this is what "god" wants as well... let us not forget the need to wave the "good book" in order to pacify a certain segment of the population... keep the filthy masses well doped up on the religion and the sheeple will follow damn near blindly... 

(Speaking of that "good book", one might want to remember the name Russell Vought... old Russ here is the architect and author of a certain Project 2025, the Godfather so to speak, Russ is balding and bespectacled and should scare the shit out of any free thinking human, Rusty here wants Dumbfuckistan to adhere to a Christian Nationalist sharia law, knows how to play the game like his buddy Stevie Miller and has some frightening ideas for the future... women should be ready to give back their rights and any non-white male (or female for that matter) should be ready to be escorted to the border and tossed over... Rusty is slick and is now in charge of the OMB, the department that controls the purse strings which is exactly where he wants to be, he's smart enough to lay low and pull strings and most of the Orange Shitgibbon's "ideas" and plans come straight from Rusty and his shitbag think tank... )

Granted with the new surveillance state taking shape some of us might not have to worry about that... the fact is we all may soon be writing in code to get ideas or information across, much like the Soviet writers did back in the 1960s and 70s, we'll be speaking a language veiled in secrecy as to avoid an all expense paid trip to Guantanamo or a sunny El Salvadoran prison... and yet a vast majority will think this is hyperbole... every time i see some cracker crying on social media about how they lost their benefits and can't believe it happened to them, followed of course by their previous posts trumpeting their love of the Shitgibbon and the first bro, i want to tell them that they're next, it would be easy though unproductive to bask in the glow of their stupidity and comeuppance but these posts are nothing more than political revenge porn, someone should be telling these people posting their misfortune that they were warned, told straight up that this was coming and somehow they still voted for the Shitgibbon and his minions so they could control it all... the really frightening part is the fact the Fascist propaganda machine of the White Grievance Party and it's media outlets are on full blast about the overwhelming mandate given to the Orange Shitgibbon by the denizens of Dumbfuckistan... the facts of course prove this otherwise, of the last 20 presidential elections he ranked 18th in margin of victory, meaning the other two below the last one were the electoral college nonsense of Dubya and the Shitgibbon's first term losing the popular vote but winning the electoral college thus the office... but if one pounds home the point of this fictious mandate the drooling knuckledraggers will believe it, mainly because they want to... facts, the truth, they no longer matter in the alternative fact and post-truth era... 

So what do we do will become the next big question... sadly of the 90 odd million eligible to vote who didn't the answer is simple, most likely nothing... for those that support the Shitgibbon and the Project 2025 shit show the answer is the same... some will start to realize how fucked they are when they begin to suffer the consequences but even then some will still believe in the divine right of the Orange Shitgibbon and his bro Elonia while Rusty pulls the strings... for the rest of us the words civil disobedience will become paramount... it will also involve great risks to our personal freedoms... to start the general strikes now being called for should be brought to bear with full force, nothing gains the attention of the uber-rich like fucking with their money, when the proletariat stop the producing and consuming then the cash spigot gets cut off or slows down... which should also, to use a favorite term of the WGP, trickle down to how we spend our money, companies that donate or back the current regime should be boycotted at all costs, those that cut programs like DEI due to fear of repercussions the same, any funds available should be donated to places like the ACLU, to organizations like Planned Parenthood who face extinction under the merry band of Christian Nationalists who love the fetus but hate the children, to Democracy Docket run by the brilliant Marc Elias, but remember, with Big Brother Shitgibbon, First Bro Elonia, Shitbag Vought, fascist Lil Stevie Miller, all of these actions, even something as innocuous as donating money could find you rounded up... and the more power and control they grab the less chance any of us will have to escape it's reach, there will be no recourse, no justice, just submission or punishment.. (one of my theories and fears is that these protests and strikes might be exactly what the Project 2025 cabal want so that the Shitgibbon can declare martial law...)

So here we are... sadly most of my fellow Dumbfucks won't even recognize or pay attention to what's going on until it walks up and bites them on the ass, see again 90 million non-voters... others will give up or give in, some will start looking to move to a place more sane and not inhabited by racist assholes (see the sudden uptick in white power marches nationally) or Christian Nationalist maniacs... maybe the only bright spot, other than the will of a certain segment of society, is that Anonymous was come back to help, they've already pointed out the voting anomalies that took place (funny how there was no question about the voting machines this time even thought First Bro Elonia bragged how anything could be hacked and the Orange Shitgibbon stated after this election we'd never have to vote again...) and have stated they will go on the offensive as the Plutocrats and Oligarchs try to run amok... here's hoping it works... 

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(I stumbled upon an interesting talk given by a billionaire, one who recognized the need for "his" class to start understanding the need to share the wealth, treat and pay workers fairly, which he stated means much more than they are getting now, facilitate a move to universal healthcare, he stated that he had been lucky, had been born white and male and affluent and took advantage of those facts to go from millionaire to billionaire... he then stated that he talked to his fellow billionaires about doing these things because if they didn't, if they continued to hoard wealth, at some point the pitchforks come, meaning things take a violent turn and they end up on the guillotine, he stated that this has happened repeatedly throughout history and advised his "class" to avoid such an outcome... yes he said it seems hard to believe but it's coming... and this was before Luigi... and speaking of Luigi, it's a strange development that one barely hears his name mentioned anymore... seems the mainstream media conglomerates, even the left and left leaning ones, who of course are still controlled by the uber-wealthy noticed that the majority of public sentiment was with Luigi, that he had become something of a folk hero, hence stop covering the incident and the man, yes there is a lot to cover these days with those flaming bags of turds flying everywhere but not a whisper or mention of a certain young man who did what the billionaire above said would happen, though he meant more on a macro scale the fact is Luigi planted the first seed and the hegemony knows they need to kill that seed before it grows... ) 

The Wilderness Years- goat's head soup

 And so began the halcyon days (a term tossed about a lot here at the lounge) of the King of North Oakland... i mean what was there not to love about waking up every morning with nothing to do except waiting to go to the bar to make money, interspersed with the occasional member of the weight crew stopping by which meant i'd be clearing a cool $1000 at bare minimum... unless of course said member of the weight crew happened to be the fucking Billy Goat... because the universe can't make things that easy now can it? there always has to be some sort of barb jabbing one in the ass to remind us that we are not invincible and that the world, particularly the world of contraband dealers, is populated by spectacular fuck-ups... granted he was a royal pain in the ass but at the same time i had cash pouring in, women who wanted to sleep with me, an array of other drugs being offered me, i could drink myself silly and not have to worry about getting up to go to work hungover, the bills were paid, the student loans could be nixed with the writing of check, two small lockboxes stuffed with cash... in short i had become what my father and uncle had once dubbed me... the perfect barbarian... 

Of course i was always one to have what might be termed an "addictive personality" and these days my newfound addiction was in the form of a stripper built like the proverbial brick shithouse...  and being the good addict i am i took every opportunity to get my end in, as Henry Miller would say... 

Some days, when not sneaking over to the West End i'd walk up to the swanky street that was the hub of my little neighborhood, by this time i was living in the swanky hood and the Waitress worked on said street so i'd wander up to get myself breakfast and then i'd play a game called Race the Devil on the walk home... for any, what might be called, heavy drinker this is a game that is played on a somewhat regular basis particularly after gobbling down a greasy breakfast of hash browns, bacon, sometimes chorizo, eggs, toast and coffee and to win the game one must get home without shitting their pants, problem is one does not know when the game will start but when it does it's a delicate balance of gritting the teeth and attempting to keep the sphincter clamped shut before the glorious beer shit comes Old Faithful style... i lived roughly four blocks or so from the restaurant and it usually never failed to happen about halfway home... the familiar and foreboding pains and gurgles before the bowels sorta gave the warning that shitting myself was imminent... i can only surmise my fellow boozers driving past would look at this tall man gingerly yet swiftly walking as if trying to hold something in his ass, they'd laugh and think, "that dudes about to shit himself" and continue driving to work... and they would be right, the problem is if i ran i would definitely shit myself and if i walked? well i may or may not get home... and then it was the dash up the steps fumbling with keys, talking to myself the whole time that "you can do it", meaning get home before shit Pompeii erupted and then finally opening the door and racing to the toilet, sweat pouring off the brow, panting and then the relief of making it to the shitter while the body explained in no uncertain terms that the lifestyle i was leading was not the most healthy... 

I settled in to my new routine quickly... really who wouldn't settle into a routine like this... i remember telling the Waitress that one of the benefits of not having a job would be now i would have time to write in the mornings before things got busy... bullshit of course as i didn't write a thing, how could i? i was in the middle of it and didn't know how the story ended but it sounded good... i'd spend the morning fucking about online trying to find books or records before finding a decent porn site to rub one out to before watching some telly and going back to bed for an hour or two... i'd clean up around the place, lounge with the cats, do the books and maybe make some calls, check the inventory, sometimes i'd recount the money i had stashed because it's fun to count bundles of $1000 and see how many were there, then i'd walk to the bank and deposit a bit, never too much usually $80-200 a few times a week, i sold to a lesbian who worked at a bank who tipped me off to what they looked for, by keeping it down to small amounts it looked as if i was nothing more than a waiter or bartender, schemes schemes schemes... 

And then there would be that barb in the ass... Billy Goat would call and come running over, he'd come in and make nice and all the while i knew what was coming, just waiting for it, sometimes i'd sit there staring at him wondering what the fucking lame ass excuse would be this time, i had mental notes of all the previous excuses and i was always keen to hear who he absolutely had to help out this time... see we've had to bail a friend out of the can, pay his girlfriend's and her roommates rent, save the whales and the trees and the puppies and the kittens, free Leonard Peltier, pay some fuckwits electric bill though he's never spoken of the fuckwit before, there was not a cause or bill or wayward stranger that the Billy Goat didn't absolutely have to help out or (insert impending disaster here) would put them in dire straits... it was always at this point that i reminded Billy that it would behoove him to take care of the person who provided the ways and means for him to be such a fucking hero... aka me and the fucking money he owed... 

I began telling him once again that i was getting more than a bit tired of covering his ass when it came time re-up, that in fact it was not really in my job description to cover him but it was in his to get me my fucking money... i dropped in his ear one day about how i had told my partner Stiv about the issues i was dealing with when it came to Billy and that Stiv's response was to cut him off and fucking kneecap him, Billy grinned a bit until i followed that it had actually begun crossing my mind that it might not be a bad idea... Billy Goat didn't understand i had him sorted, that i had eyes and ears all over and that people who knew him and hung out with him actually reported back to me about his activities, about how Billy loved picking up huge tabs at dinner or the bar, bought tickets to go see his favorite jam bands or sporting events, how Billy tossed around money... all very valuable intel, i had aces in my hand, Billy was holding deuces... Billy was in love with the lifestyle and i understood that he never had it so good as he did with the connection i provided... key point, i provided, without access to it he was fucked, nickel diming wasn't gonna pick up the check at some swanky restaurant and he knew as well as i that his buxom little hippie girl would be out the door as soon as he wasn't rolling in it... 

The lounge being the labyrinthine mess it is i may have told this before but here it is again (possibly), it was during one of these meetings when i was lecturing the Billy Goat on prompt payment that he stated that if need be he would give me his car... he had stated i could get like $8-10 thousand for it, an older model Mercedes in relatively good condition, not some classic but a mid 80s style, nice car if one is into that sort of thing but unfortunately for the Billy Goat i was not, though he was a bit taken aback when i told him he could give me the car but i'd only knock $4000 off his tab to which he replied but it's worth eight to ten, to which i replied not to me... i then explained to him that he could sell his fucking car and give me the proceeds, i told Billy that if he "gave" me the car there is still a transfer of title, taxes, it had to look like i bought it and hence would involve much more legal paper trail then i really wanted to be involved in, unemployed ex warehouse worker buys a Mercedes on unemployment bennies? nah man, that shit ain't gonna work, needless to say my rebuttal to his brilliant idea resulted in the Billy Goat sitting there as if i had just taken a giant shit in his mouth... which i somewhat did... all in a days work for the weed kingpin, it was always a delicate line i had to walk but in the end i knew they needed me just as much as i needed them, besides i had the best connection one ask for and if the Billy Goat was booted off the payroll i'm sure another enterprising young derelict would gladly fill the void... 

18

 For those of us who revel in working in a dead or dying medium in the post truth era the lounge has managed to survive another year... or more correctly the sole proprietor of said lounge has managed to survive another year and given his rather checkered history it's almost like a second birthday or something, not exactly celebratory but something to be recognized before moving on to more important things like clipping my toe nails or trimming nose hairs or any other number of vastly important tasks needed to be done... looking back to those bygone years of Dubya when the lounge opened, the years when we thought it could get no worse than Cheney and Rumsfeld seems almost quaint these days... going back through the archives can be a bit like looking at old middle school or high school pictures and wondering aloud, what the fuck was i thinking? i believe the first post ever was a few sentences ripped off stating that if you don't believe aliens exist take a look at your co-workers... the early stages of the lounge were much like a toddler taking his first steps and i can honestly say most of it is crap, (and honestly the same argument i'm sure could be made for the current iteration of the lounge as well) but it's baby steps, what creative writing teachers call "finding your voice" or some other such bullshit... i'd wager it took roughly four years before anything remotely resembling quality writing (and really what the fuck does that mean?) began to pop up, sometime around the time Disaster was born... in fact i remember a comment from a certain Australian nurse stating that double fatherhood had done something to the writing due to some of the things churned out in the early aughts, 2010 seemed to be a productive year for a guy with a mild pill habit but let's not get ahead of ourselves as we take a stroll down memory lane while we pull up a seat and order a club soda, put a few coins in the jukebox and ponder the lounge much like i do the graffiti on men's room walls at my favorite dives... 

From a personal standpoint the amount of upheaval, for lack of a better word, is a bit mind blowing to yours truly... or one could call it life... shit doesn't stop and that arbitrary thing known as time keeps rolling right along... i was a young man of 36 when this shit started, trying to figure out how to be a father while simultaneously trying to adjust to a lifestyle predicated on domestic type shit after a lifetime spent running the streets, not to mention trying to kick the remnants of a coke habit that had crept up on me due to circumstances relating back a couple years but as we can see i somehow managed to get through the early stages... granted it didn't take me long to jump from one sinking ship to another and while working at the Big World Bank Machine i decided it would be better to get into those lovely little sweeties known as opiates... yes one could never accuse me of being the brightest bulb on the tree but in those early years of the lounge my favorite pastime would be to pop a sweetie in the evening and then walk down Liberty Ave. to the local coffeeshop where i'd buy myself a steamer, one of those steamed milk concoctions with a little flavoring added, hazelnut being my favorite, then walking back to the place and sitting down and typing away... the blogosphere was a weird place back then with conferences and career type shit happening, every wannabe would be "author" coughing up content on a damn near daily basis and waiting to be discovered... it mainly ended up being a bunch of people fawning over each other and the shit writing in hopes that driving up the numbers on their site would lead to something more lucrative... i'll be honest i didn't know fuck all about any of that and still have only a minimal knowledge of it mainly because i don't fucking care, as previously stated i don't do this shit for money i do so i can make sense of this mortal coil in my own fucked up mind... 

And so for eighteen years, with a bit of ebb and flow, i've signed in to the same place to write out whatever happened to be in that mind... granted the esteemed Gulfboot Johnson set this up so i would stop emailing him stories and i'm sure boring him to tears, now i had an outlet and might even discover that people enjoyed or could relate to the shit i wrote, remember of course this was the late aughts early teens when the blog thing was all the rage... now it's more like a sad haven for the lonely who refuse to walk around with their cell phone creating "content" for Tik Tok and Instagram... as stated a dying medium for a species becoming more incapable by the day of paying attention for more than a few minutes and those few minutes better be taken up with faux outrage over whatever is distracting the populace this week... for the most part this has been nothing more that a shitty diary of an ex-hood turned the world's hairiest soccer mom with hopefully some quality stories tossed in every so often... the truth is the Wilderness Years were always the goal and as we can see it's only taken me 18 fucking years to get around to almost finishing it... slow and steady wins the race huh? 

So what has happened in those 18 years since the lounge opened? back to the beginning... when the first post was put up the I-mac was just over six months old, in the next year after it's inception the BW would lose her mother, we'd lose my sweet girl Sylvia and then the cat of the people Pablo.... i could actually trace out a timeline off the lounge through a history of my cats... Sylvia was a kitten when i got her in March of 1994 and Pablo was roughly four months old when we got him in October of 94... both would move around for the next 13 years until finally passing once we moved to the little house in Bloomfield, they lived at Podunk U.,  Ocean City, four different places in the Burgh, including weekend trips way back when the BW would come down to see me from Podunk, yes she'd bring the cats, they traveled well, no carrier just sitting in the windows of the car watching the world go by... it was during the Kingpin Years that we'd adopt Claudia aka Little Butt, a sweet little girl who would live to be 19, she would live in four of the aforementioned places including the house we live in now, she was not one for moving and would usually spend a few days hiding under a bed until she adjusted... one might get the opinion that i'm a crazy cat lady if one didn't know better... 

It was after the BW's mom passed that Disaster was born, 2009, and subsequently i'd hit a run of posts that might have been the height of the lounge's readership... if the I-mac was the difficult baby (one could say not much has changed in the difficulty department) Disaster was the mellow one, back then the old house was so small that Disaster and i slept downstairs, he in his porta-crib and me on the couch (call it foreshadowing) in order not to wake the I-mac or his mama, it was some of the most enjoyable times of my life, i'd sit in the dark and when my son stirred i'd watch him to see if he was going to wake up, i'd make a bottle and wait and then we'd sit on the couch while he took his bottle, i'd burp him and change him and put him back to bed, sometimes i'd go back to sleep and sometimes i'd just listen to him breathe, the beauty was i could always catch up on sleep at work... call it the charmed life, well sorta... i'd be remiss not to mention that after Pablo passed and Disaster was born Pedro was adopted, another brown and black tabby like the brother he never knew Pedro would also be a cat of the people... friendly and good natured and sweet, in his golden years he liked to lay on the deck in the sun, raising his head now and then to sniff the breeze before going back to relaxing... 

After that the BW lost her grandmother, a brilliant woman to whom i wrote one of my favorite pieces titled Goodnight Rose, a few years later her grandfather would follow but not before recording his first hole in one as a golfer at the age of 92... in the world of cat's we'd welcome Louis Garcia Shinoba Diego Rivera Marquez (i named him) aka Louie... the first cat to choose me as he kept putting his paw out and tapping my shoulder, he was rescue at a pet store back when the pet stores used to let the shelters put cats there... we had actually had our eye on another cat but Louie convinced me that we should adopt him and so we did and he became one of my best friends... it was somewhere around this time i believe the lounge slowed to a crawl to the point i actually thought about canning it all together, sporadic posts of drivel and questioning what the point was but as we can see i and it is still here so i must have thought better of it at some point... or i just didn't have anything else constructive to do and figured what the fuck, might as well keep it going.. 

Let me state that the chronology on this post may not be exactly "correct" in strict timeline terms, the gorgeous thing is though that i can go back through the archives and verify the actual years things happened and it's interesting to see where i was in the world... looking back i discovered i'm coming up on the tenth aniversary of losing Louie, 2015... after which came Little Baby Kitty aka Sydney aka Syd... smitten from day one she would be my Little Baby Kitty for the next seven years, a tiny little ragdoll with big blue eyes, she was my girl, i could call her from anywhere in the house and she'd come scampering in... maybe therein lies the beauty of the lounge... my personal history of cats... the days and years i spent with them, yes the people and places too but seeing as my cats have always been my sweethearts... and before Syd there was Zuko, named by my boy Disaster and adopted from the shelter due to the fact we only had three cats at the time and Disaster thought he needed one too... a pretty easy sell to the BW and so we went down and old Zuko, now the senior member of the clan at 12 years old, a black and white tuxedo cat, another cat of the people whose favorite spot is where anyone might be laying... it was after our girl Claudia passed that we were once again back to the shelter to adopt Maya,  one of those Russian blues as they're called, who swiftly became the BW's cat... 

In fact, to remain on the cat theme, we became a four cat house, then Syd passed unexpectedly, a day that still fucking hurts... i didn't even know if i wanted another cat... and then i found Paco... or more correctly he found me and we've been inseparable ever since, a big old brown and black tabby who still thinks he's a kitten when he plops all 19lbs on my chest... then came Korra, a rescue from Kuwait followed shortly after by Archie, another rescue from Kuwait... which brings the total to five... both are sweet and friendly and gorgeous and Archie and Paco have become best friends, brothers, and Archie has helped Pacito come out of his shell a bit and be more adventurous... 

On the human side i lost the best dude i ever knew, Pops, something well documented here... then his older brother who i developed a great relationship with before he passed... but really... fucking eighteen years... the shit that has happened in that time amazes me, the I-mac went from a baby to a college student, Disaster was born and is now in high school, i went from being Big World Bank Machine grunt to the Big Hairy Carol Brady to Gig Economy Serf... i've been to Costa Rica, Mexico, St. Lucia, Jamaica (my favorite), the Dominican Republic (easily my least favorite place), Aruba, Curacao and Grenada... traveled all over the place for club soccer with the I-mac and AAU basketball with Disaster, spent that glorious month in Cleveland with my dad, took up swimming (twice), survived a pandemic wherein i didn't touch a drop of alcohol for over a year, have moved into a downstairs room to sleep alone, rediscovered my penchant for psychedelics, got my medical cannabis card, developed a smoothie habit and in general tried to be a bit healthier on the back end of this living thing... and in between carved out some time to sit down at the typer and peck away the stories and tales that have popped into my head... not always consistently, not always of the highest quality, but here nonetheless... for anyone who has stumbled upon this i dusty and quiet corner of the interweb i truly appreciate you taking the time to read this shit, my hope is that maybe someone somewhere has gotten something out of this, made them laugh or cry or think... something far more valuable to the writer than monetary gain... i know i've fucking enjoyed it... and really what else have i got to do? 

The Bar is a Beautiful Place

 It's been said here many times on the lounge that i'm a bit of a social misanthrope, i'm not all that fond of people but i tend to find them fascinating all at the same time, like some half-ass cultural anthropologist who specializes in the study of late 20th and early 21st century homo sapiens particularly from the Rust Belt but not limited to said geographical area... there has also been an evolution of sorts when it came to our hero over what is now approaching the 18th anniversary of the lounge (going back and looking at the early days is like looking at those old middle school/high school pictures and wondering, what the fuck was i thinking? but in this, to sound like a pretentious ass, years long art project, i can actually see some progress, dare i say that i've gotten better at this whole thing... or maybe it's more long-winded or maybe it's just understanding and becoming more adept or comfortable with what i'm doing while all the while still trying to remain uncomfortable...) that evolution has involved the using and losing of various substances over the years, one of the main ones being alcohol... when i started this endeavour so many years ago i was still much the drinker, in fact it would be roughly eight years or so into the lounge before i actually booted the serious drinking on the head and sobered up... it took one fine morning of legendary hangover status and coughing up what felt like my liver to finally look in the mirror and say, enough, no more hangovers... and i can say with all honesty that i haven't  had one since, some ten years ago now, and that while every once in a while i might have one beer too many these days that amounts to nothing more than a slight headache, easily remedied, gone are the days of clutching the toilet and wishing for relief that i knew was still hours (or sometimes days) away... 

Of course when one gives up or scales back the boozing one does not frequent the bars as much anymore... which out here in the lily white suburbs wasn't a real difficult thing to do due to the fact that most of the bars out here are shite... there's a halfway decent one up the street that due to the convoluted laws of the commonwealth can only serve beer, but they run the gamut from good beer to cheap swill so it's not bad... a burb over is the little Potomac Ave hub as i call it with a couple of decent joints including one that is a futbol bar on weekend mornings (though i haven't been there for the football) but for the most part if i want to go to a decent bar, one that aligns with my independent rock and roll sensibilities, it's still a ride into the city to my favorite dive... and so it is here that we will pick up the story... 

I'm not sure if i've mentioned it here at the lounge but one of my longest partners in crime is moving to Jersey, he's known as Uncle to the boyos and i've known him for over thirty years and we have raised much hell together in that time... it was in my favorite dive that he told me he was moving, a move to help his wife take care of her aging parents and the truth is i'd expect nothing less from my brother, he's as good as they come, in fact as we sat in the dive that day when he broke the news he admitted that i was the one person he felt the most nervous about telling, i didn't understand why but i also did, he knows me well and knows i don't suffer fools hence i don't really hangout with a ton of people, maybe  he felt guilty as if he was leaving me on my own but that's nonsense, i've always been on my own... he also knew that with him moving away that two of the three friends i consider my brothers were going to be living in different cities... i smiled when he told me and said, c'est la vie, bought another round, then quoted the brilliant Dan Bejar and said, all good things must come to an end, it's the bad ones that go on forever...

And so one day while the I-mac was doing a bit of community service over the holidays for a bit of legal trouble he ran into the first week of his freshman year at university, i dropped him off downtown and wondered what to do when it struck me that the boozer was a scant ten minute or less drive up the road, it was early and it would be mellow and i figured i'd get some of those Old Bay and butter wings that are tantamount to the food of the gods... and so i drove up Liberty Ave then up Herron) parked and wandered in, only to see a woman i knew (i had just recently met her and  her husband) and her friend... i ordered a beer pulled up a seat and stated i had roughly two hours to burn... 

The woman i knew is a stand up bass player with long dreads, her husband plays in a local band that has been around a long time with 13? records to it's credit though i believe he joined a few years back, her friend was a teacher who was trying to figure out how to get her sorta live-in boyfriend to move out of her upstairs apartment so that she could promptly make him her ex-boyfriend... she was explaining how an old (male) friend had been visiting with her and that she finally told him that he should probably think about leaving before she threw him down and fucked him, i was laughing and stated that's exactly what she should have done... she was talking about how she had crawled into bed with him (clothed) one morning and how the thought had crossed her mind to just get down to business... i told her she should have jumped on top and that when her current boyfriend walked in due to all the "sounds of ecstasy" he heard she could have looked over her shoulder and told him to put on some coffee and start making them breakfast... she of course thought this was a brilliant idea to which i replied it was the two birds one stone thing... you (she) gets a quality lay while basically telling the live-in upstairs to get the fuck out, something she apparently has been doing for close to a year, i also stated she should have jokingly said to her friend, "put out or get out", a statement which brought more laughter to our party... she mentioned her therapist and i told her i could do the job for half the cost and stated i was like Winston Wolf, i solved problems... at this point i realized i was scoring points here and pondered offering my services in the realm of getting her boyfriend to leave, ie she could bang me while he made breakfast... 

The guy next to me had said something in the course of this and i looked over and commented back and we had a laugh, it was around this point that  one of the ladies made a comment about shite poetry to which i replied laughingly i was once a shite poet, the guy next to me chimed in that he was a poet though i thought he was taking the piss... turned out he actually was and was thinking about attending and possibly reading later that night... he and i struck up a conversation about writing, as us writing types are known to do, and thus began a swapping of stories, he was probably at least 25 years my junior but i'm not one of those that believes my age gives me any great insight or wisdom into anything other than i've lived a little, i mentioned my previous occupation and told a story or two about the world of slinging back before shit became legal, back before my new friend was likely even born or round thereabout and then we began talking about our fathers... 

It turned out we had both lost our father to cancer... though i did clarify that i actually lost mine to what was most likely a heart attack but that might actually have been a good thing seeing as how bile duct cancer doesn't actually kill one it more less makes them starve to death due to the fact they stop eating, i explained that in a strange way i'm glad my dad didn't suffer through that in the same way that for the first time since he passed i was glad he was gone (that being in relation to the orange shitgibbon being voted back into office by a population of fucking lemmings...) i then told my new friend, Patrick, how one of the last times i actually saw my father we were watching The Departed, i explained how i was going back and forth to Cleveland and getting things in order and helping my dad out, i was sitting with him in his new apartment in the assisted living facility, and how my father and i had had a history of watching great movies together, when i came in and sat down my dad had asked if i had ever seen this flick before and i replied, absolutely, great film and i sat down and began watching with him... it was towards the end of the film when i looked over at my dad and said, this is a pretty bleak flick to watch for a guy with terminal cancer... i grinned as i told Patrick that my father looked back at me, smile creeping across his face and said... isn't though? to which we both started laughing, one of those good belly laughs... (i had always loved when my dad laughed, he was a pretty mellow guy, stoic one might say but when he laughed it was great... i remember one day a year or two ago when Disaster had said something that cracked me up and he looked at me and said, i like when you laugh dad... i knew exactly what he meant... fucking universe is a funny place...) 

Patrick then told me a story... it seemed that while he was in college he was having a bit of a time, probably much like i did as well, we sensitive sorts seem to have to battle a lot of demons and hopefully come out the other side... or at least keep them at bay most of the time... his parents had made him go see a therapist, this was near Philly, and said therapist was late, they were near a six lane highway when Patrick looked at his father and told him he could sense things, his dad asked what he meant and Patrick replied, like i could sprint across that highway and not get hit by a car cuz i know, his father gave him a look and then Patrick took off... he sprinted from one side to the other and on his way back, the last lane, narrowly avoided being hit by a semi-truck, and 18 wheeler as they say, he said it was close enough that he could feel the wind as it roared past... his father fainted.... we both had a laugh and i did say that now having sons of my own i have been both Patrick and his father, and it was interesting being able to see it from both sides... i did add it's much better from the non-father side as the last thing any parent wants to see is something happen to their kid (or most parents at least...) 

He then told me how he had went home to see his father when he was ill, pancreatic cancer, a fucking horror, a painful a form of cancer as one can get... Patrick had told me how when his dad was young they called him Capt. Trips cuz he liked psychedelics so much to which i laughed and said your dad and i could relate, briefly explained my own love of psychedelics to which he laughed and asked, you still take them? and to which i replied, every chance i get... and so Capt. Trips looked at his son and asked if he would like to go out back and smoke a joint, Patrick said of course, and off they went... out back they burned the joint and Patrick said his dad began talking about all kinds of things, about the trees and the sky and life, Patrick said it was gorgeous, just a father and son having a great conversation... his dad then said they should take a walk... now unbeknownst to Patrick his father was not supposed to leave the yard, apparently he was sicker than he had let on but Patrick didn't know and so they began walking, on a path through a bit of woods that would eventually lead to his older brother's house, talking the whole time... they were almost to the house when his phone started ringing and so Patrick checked and it was his mom, he answered and she frantically asked where the hell they were? that his dad wasn't supposed to leave the yard or do anything to taxing, he had the phone on speaker and his dad grabbed it from his hand and smiling at his son began telling his wife it was all his kid's idea and that he didn't want to go... then he started laughing hysterically and told his wife not to worry... she said she'd be right over to pick him up and drive him home... 

Of course Patrick now looked at his father and asked why didn't he tell him? his old man smiled and said, what's the difference? i wanted to take a walk... they sat on his brother's porch and waited for his mom to arrive to take them back to the house, his brother lived on a main street, somewhat busy and when his mom pulled up they walked towards the car when his dad suddenly stopped and looked at him... he then said, you know what son, i know things... and then began to bolt across the busy street, his dad took two or three strides then stopped, turned to look at his son's pale and horrified face and then laughed out loud and said, gotcha!!! Patrick smiled knowing it was a reference to a few years before and the highway incident... they got in the car and drove home the whole time his mom going on about what the hell were you two doing and the whole time his dad catching his son's eye and grinning... a week later he would be gone... i looked at Patrick and said, damn  dude... can i give you a hug? that was one of the most beautiful stories i've ever heard... and so much like Wayne Coyne gave me i gave my young friend a hug and we toasted to our fathers... 

We sat back down at the bar and i said that's the beauty of this shit innit? your father knew... that was his way of saying goodbye, a joint, a walk, a two hour conversation with his youngest son, how fucking beautiful is that? it was then that he asked if he could read me something... he explained how his brother was nine years older, a bit of an alcoholic, and used to beat the shit out of him when he was younger (until one day Patrick turned the tables, the last time his brother ever tried), i could tell there was some shit in this kid's life, the truth is we all have it it's how well we walk through those fires.. i understand how unnerving it can be to read something to someone, especially someone sitting in a bar, i also understand the "rapport" that can develop between not only writers but kindred spirits, he trusted me to listen... and so i said go ahead... he said it was sorta long but that he'd get to it cuz he knew i had to pick up the boyo, explained it was about his family and growing up... and so he began... 

I sat on my barstool and listened attentively... it was a good poem, it had quality, and i could tell it was deeply personal, that there were demons in there being exorcised, there was one line in particular about the "a household of glorified monsters", it hit home... in ways both past and present, my father wasn't one of those monsters but there were others in my household that were, in fact all these years later i realize now that my father was far more sensitive than he ever let on, but he was a product of his generation and men back then didn't show much emotion, it was considered weakness, i understood that the first time i ever saw it was that day when i wandered into the basement right before the "announcement", it registered but it didn't, but somehow i still remember it, it was pure hurt... but what that line also reminded me was that i did not want to be one of those "glorified monsters"... and sometimes i'm not sure if i can say i've succeeded on that front... and it's a hard fucking pill to swallow... 

When he had finished i looked at my new young friend and said, do me a favor... get your ass to that reading tonight, get up there, and read your stuff... the world will be better off for it, there's nothing wrong with having something to say or stories to tell, it's the most basic of human conditions, we've been telling stories to each other since we developed language, yeah it's nerve wracking but you'll feel good about shit when you're done, and when someone walks up to you and tells you that something you read hit home all those hours spent huddled over a keyboard or notebook make just a little more sense... but now i gotta pick up the boy... i got up and Patrick stood up and gave me another hug, he said thanks man, it was great talking to you, in fact it was more than that... i smiled and said likewise my friend now get to that reading... i said my goodbyes to the women and i knew, to her husband who had since come in, we laughed about the boyo and then i walked out into the cold December night, looked around the old stomping grounds, got in the car and then headed off to pick up the boy... it wasn't even 8pm.... the bar is a beautiful place... 

The Mushroom Diaries - vol. 29

 Sometimes things get dark... metaphorically and cosmically... i mean hell when one needs to write two apocalyptic state of the nation posts one could surmise that the darkness can sometimes drown out the light... or maybe it's something more like those strange short days and long nights way up north, where the sun, the light, makes an appearance for a few hours or less then disappears back into the darkness... it's when this happens that i usually look to carve out that time to sit in a dark room and let the mushroom speak... one might think therapy or some other such plunge into the world of psychoanalysis might help but to be honest i'm not a big believer in such things, at least not in the modern sense cuz it seems there are a lot of, let's just say, sub par professionals in said profession... it doesn't take much to hang out a shingle and declare oneself open for business, to collect a fee (from insurance or otherwise) without every really dispensing any sound advice or action for moving forward, whatever the fuck that means or what is more correctly the work of healing oneself... i guess the question is heal from what but that would most likely come down to the individual, is modern humanity so fucked up that we all need to heal? hell if i'm being honest, yeah probably, it's just i'm not sure how "modern therapy" accomplishes any of that... and so i turn to the mushroom and the mind to see what i can work out in the dim light of stars and moon through half shut shades... 

The interesting thing about the mushroom is not only the way it speaks but the way it listens... i never have a set idea of what's going to happen when i take a dose, i just let whatever happens happen, hence sometimes it's just listening to music and talking to Paco and now Archie... of course there are usually points in the night where that happens anyway, mushrooms or not, but i find it lovely how my two cats will just lay there patiently with their tripping human, will get right in my face as if to make sure i'm okay and then return to their spot purring away, glancing back to check on me while also watching the door as if they are guarding me as well... if there has been any light these days in the world of El Kono it comes from his animals, both wild and domestic, but particularly from his cats and more specifically from these two though all of them seem to make me laugh and smile and remind me of what unconditional love is like... it's a pretty cool thing the relationship that develops between human and feline (or any number of other animals) but i put the good old housecat a rung or two above most, they just seem to have a greater sense of things, at least the ones i've known, yeah they have their quirks, who of us doesn't? but i know that when shit gets bleak they will be the first ones there to give me a head butt and remind me that it's not all bad... 

Which brings me back to the other night, seems i've made it a habit of tripping on certain days and the eve of the winter solstice was no different, the longest night of the year, at times it's like an endless night around here, one shit show after another, which brings me once again to a domestic situation that is nothing more than a business relationship masquerading as some sort of union... it most definitely is not, neither physically or psychologically or emotionally, the BW and i come at things from such different perspectives it's a wonder the "business" still works at all around here... in a way we're play acting, tolerating just enough of each other to make things work and while i could piss and moan about being treated like an indentured servant around here that shit's just old, i do what i have to and though i may get frustrated at times i understand that's just natural, we all get frustrated by situations and we must deal with them in the best way possible... maybe mine is eating boomers and pondering, reading books, scratching Paco on his head, getting lost in a piece of music and daydreaming a few minutes away... that said it was an interesting trip the other night... 

As has been documented here the trials and tribulations of the I-mac have been more than a bit stressful... unfortunately his mother and i come at it from different approaches, hell i can even see some very minute progress being made but for the most part there is still a fucking long way to go... over the last six months or so i'd usually end up thinking about my sons when sitting in that dark room, many times the I-mac would cross my mind as i tried to work out the ways to help him, for lack of a better term, grow up, accept responsibility, often my idea and the BW's idea were not on the same page... sometimes i understood that in those moments of frustration and anger i could get lost in that maze, that instead of trying to find a solution emotion would end up exacerbating the problem, granted this is not an uncommon situation among fathers and sons everywhere but all that Zen shit flew out the window when the shouting started... as for Disaster, i worried about him in different ways, his big brother takes up a lot of time and energy, especially his mother's, and sometimes it's as if Disaster flies below the radar... Disaster is a lot more responsible than his big brother but does exhibit a lot of his father's tendencies when it comes to certain things, both the boyos do but there are different reasons for that, the I-mac and his ADHD has an impulsivity problem, Disaster is more calculated and that might be more worrisome in certain respects... he's a better poker player so to speak and knows how to keep things under wraps... 

But the solstice brought the old mind round the the BW and the place we find ourselves in now... and i can't exactly say that it's a good place, in fact i'm not sure it's much of a place at all, maybe placeholder is a better term... an honest assessment of things is that we have only two things in common, the boyos and the cats, after that? nothing... there is not one thing i can think of that we enjoy doing together (or maybe just i) or interest that we share... yeah i know i'm an odd one, i like books and music and mushrooms and cannabis, the odd beer, the BW likes none of those... well not exactly, she's been reading some series of books, mindless fiction as she calls it and granted my reading list is not everyone's cup of tea, i do a lot of heavy reading i guess but i still read a fiction it's just what i read and what she reads are worlds apart... as for music? my interests are vast and varied, i still dig going to see live music though my back and knees aren't as happy about that as they once were, but i usually find a place to sit for a few minutes especially because the bands i dig are all playing little clubs, that said i don't understand how someone could not love music as it's such an important part of my existence... it does so many things for the mind and the soul that on days when i don't hear enough i actively seek out some time to sit down and listen to something... the BW despises the bar and while i'm nowhere near the barfly i once was i still like a trip to my favorite boozer (another boozer post to follow most likely), as i've always said i'm a social misanthrope, i like to hear and tell stories, it's the beauty of that oral tradition and i like to see people look up from their phones and actually have a conversation, to engage with the living instead of the virtual... 

The mushrooms and the solstice had brought about some hard truths, most likely laid out previously... someday i'll get to the post weed king years but to not say too much, there is a large part of me that feels we'd have been better off going our separate ways way back when and we probably would have been much happier, granted i realize i stuck it out through the weed king years because of the sense of stability the relationship provided, i saw the dangers of dealing and being "single", each new relationship would pose a potential threat to the kingdom and while my actions in those years didn't really align with that theory it soothed my paranoia... i was a fucking bastard to say the least, i also understood i was never one for convention, yeah i understood someday i'd have to work a "regular" job but that didn't mean i had to live a normal life so to speak, browsing the halls of commerce and consumption, living in the burbs, (digression- i now realize that moving to the lily white may not have been the best move and that while it seemingly was better for the boyos i feel the amount of bullshit privilege that passes for normalcy out here is horrible, they'd have been better off in the city where while i would have had to put more effort into educating them, not that i haven't, they would have learned more firsthand, indispensable knowledge by seeing and dealing with people of much different circumstances than their own, out here the only difference is does the kid drive a Subaru or a BMW to school, it's frighteningly cookie cutter though the residents would huff and puff and talk diversity, it's bullshit... ) but back to the BW... back then there was a guy who she was obviously interested in but her being risk averse wasn't sure how to handle things or possibly break it off with yours truly because what if it didn't work out? in the end this guy became a CPA and i'm sure she may have finished her master's and been a teacher, something she would have felt more rewarding than the position she has now, though being a successful business owner pays well i'm not sure how satisfying it is... and i get that... granted it wasn't like i hid my views on things and the only job i really ever pursued and worked at was slinging weed (and making french fries at the beach but that's another series of posts)... 

If there is one thing the mushroom is a master at it's the ability to bring out the kindness, the compassion, the empathy... laying in the dark and letting the mind go i felt and overwhelming sadness and empathy for the BW... it's pretty obvious to anyone who has access to this relationship what it is (see above), it's not great and yes while some of that is my doing some of it is hers as well... and i would add the more "successful" she became, see $$$ earned, the less reciprocal the relationship became, which in modern therapy terms, can't shake the smartass can i, is not a good thing... i'd wager to say we both feel relatively alone when it comes to any meaningful relationship type thing, there's the most tenuous bit of a partnership but as stated that comes only when it's the boyos or the cats... throw in the fact her first born son is a right bastard to her on a near daily basis and there are times when she could probably use a hug... problem is that isn't a thing around here anymore for many reasons... the BW does a fucking lot of shit for the I-mac who in turn shits all over her, i've told her that until he learns that treating people like shit is not a recipe for having people do things for you i will not do fuck all for him, yes i do the basics but after that he has to fend for himself, no extra cash, no slack on schoolwork, granted i'll help if he honestly needs it but if it's one of those deals where he's claiming he can't do it cuz it's easier for someone else to do it for him (see his mama and his whole senior year of high school) then fuck no, failure is a great teacher problem is his mama won't let him fall down, which brings us back to the mess that is that relationship... 

Boyo Uno got dumped over Thanksgiving and was/has been a bit torn up about it... why? not sure as watching him and the ex-princess (a girl from a wealthy and snotty neighboring burb) interact i didn't see how anyone was having a good time, it was constant drama, granted maybe i'm just projecting my younger self and how i would have bailed on this shit show (ironic huh?) but it seemed way to stressful for a high school/ first year of college relationship... i could write a dissertation on the reasons and my son but i will spare the reader that... that being said, the I-mac leaned heavily on his mama for emotional support, cried and told her how much he loved her and how he knew he was horrible sometimes yet here we are and no less than Xmas morning his mother is crying because he has acted like a complete shit... i actually showed a huge amount of restraint as i was thinking about tossing his gifts into the backyard, i wanted to remind him that there were many "children" who didn't get fuck all at his age or at least not the amount of shit his mama bought him, in fact if is was up to me he'd have gotten much less or basically only shit he needed or possibly a list of expenses paid out over his last few fuck ups... i will add she can be a bit overbearing at times when it comes to helping him stay organized and get shit done but that's when i chime in that it's fucking grow up time, if he doesn't do what he needs to do he can deal with the consequences, but i'm not his mama and i know how mamas are so while i add my view it's usually met with disdain... in short i can see why she feels sad and lonely... 

What struck me about this last trip though was what a certain train of thought the seemed to sneak into the stream of consciousness... it had to do with where do i go from here? there were mental calculations in my head both financial and familial to work out... i realize i'm not what any company is looking to hire and i'm not even sure i know where to look (though the cannabis industry seems a logical start), a 50-something who hasn't held a meaningful job in over a decade, granted i would come out of this thing with a decent amount of assets and i'd be nowhere near as well off as the BW would be but that's okay, to me it's not a contest to see who can get the most, though i might be making the same mistake my father made, it's just about being fair, i don't need half even though she'd still have her business, i don't need alimony, i just need to be released from my contract so to speak... the unknown aspect is how she would react, i feel she would be shocked or blindsided but then again i could be completely wrong, if she thinks about this situation at all i don't think she would be that surprised, hell she might even be relieved but then again i realize we all have the capability to polish shit to a shiny gold sheen and pretend it's not really shit...  the other option is to bring up the unpleasant facts and decide if since we get along well enough to just turn a blind eye to whatever the other is doing, basically officially become roommates while sharing expenses... somehow i don't think that'll fly since i don't bring in nearly as much cash and one of the things often said around here is how "she's paying for this" or "her money being spent", i'm not even sure she realizes it anymore but it doesn't give me the most comfortable feeling... 

And then there are the boyos and the effect it will have on them... something i know all too well... i could see the I-mac being a bit like his old man and not speaking to me for a time regardless of the circumstances, even if his mother agreed to it and was on the same page as me i think he'd most likely place the blame at my feet, and that would be fine, for as much as they butt heads he is his mother's son and i'll freely admit she understands him better than i do... as for Disaster, i may worry about him the most... in the past year or so i've watched as his relationship with his mother has grown but at heart he's still his father's boy, i still remember the day when he got lost at the high school football game and the first thing he said when we found him was, i was afraid i'd never see my dad again, i also know that he'd worry about both his parents, he's more sensitive than he let's on, a bit like his old man, yet even though a situation like that would be tough i feel he'd understand it and get on with things accordingly, i've talked to both boyos about the fact they are probably not seeing the healthiest of relationships when it came to their parents and yes maybe i was trying to prepare them for the possibility of someday their parents living in different places, maybe even different cities, but the reality is it's not out of the question and i don't want them to feel like they've been sucker punched if it happens... though i'm not sure if that's even a realistic possibility...

The last bit that rolled through the old mind was about the cats... yes how could i not think about them, i dwelled on finding a place to live that accepted pets knowing that i'd most likely be renting an apartment, i also knew there would be a question of which cat goes where, some would be obvious, granted it depends on when/if this happened... there's no question about Paco, he'd come with me, Maya would stay with the BW and most likely Korra, though that might be a debate, same with Archie though i'd probably demand a trade and since Paco and Archie get along i'd have a good case that would appeal to the BW's love of cats, she'd want them to be happy... as for Zuko? it might depend on the boyos and the fact he's starting to get up there, but i'd lobby for him as well but since he tends to sleep upstairs with the BW he might be better off staying... so yes, a lot of shit to work out... but these were all the things the mushroom and i talked about... until the next time... 

State of the Nation - Apocalyptic Home Edition

 It may come as a surprise that i actually put some time and effort into these little missives ripped off into the ether, granted i'm under no illusions of fame and fortune as was once the want of the blogosphere, i recall many a site where it was all about monetization and the hopes of some "career"... career? fuck that, i write for sheer and simple reasons, it's what i do to make sense of things, i'm not all that into fame and fortune and everything that goes with it (i thank you all, Freddie) but as Vonnegut once said, go into the arts, you don't even have to be good at it, you do it cuz at the end of it you will have created something, and most likely learned a thing or two about this cosmic joke we're all temporarily traipsing through, when i see the madness around me every day and by madness i mean what people pass off as existence or a "meaningful life" i'm utterly and totally confused... the acquisition of "stuff" or to paraphrase Bill Hicks, look at my huge house and big wallet and fancy car, when in the end it means nothing... granted i'm a product of my culture and can be rightly and justly accused of accumulating far too many books and records but in a way that goes back to the whole art thing, even the art of living thing, the point of dancing is the dance as Alan Watts said, there is something about getting lost in a piece of literature or music that provides more value, dare i say wealth, than any fucking designer label or high end automobile will ever provide, call it the substance and not the stuff... 

As usual one could easily be sitting back and saying, what the fuck is he one about this time? as i watch the place i live skip blindly towards a new form of shit show, something akin to an oligarchy of the rich by the rich and for the rich disguised as a fascist theocracy it hit me the other day, or shortly after the orange shitgibbon was thought by the populace to be a viable option to run this place, that for the first time since my father had died i was glad to that he wasn't here to see this shit show, and to a lesser degree my uncle, his older brother as well... this might have done them both in really but as my father so often pointed out to his older brother, people don't give a rat's ass about anyone other than their own self and maybe their immediate family, as long as they go theirs, he said, they didn't give a shit... as usual the old man was spot on... which brings me around the gist of this post... 

It was seven years ago this week that i had suffered the Night of the Living Back Spasm, a night spent in agonizing pain where the first 45 minutes were spent face down on a hardwood floor begging for an ambulance and as one might recall the Breadwinner deemed that wholly unnecessary and expensive... so like most things in this life i gritted my teeth and got through it... (granted i should have known this would happen, i've written about an incident years ago where i had the flu, i had asked the BW to go to the store and get me a few things, namely Gatorade and some meds, she hemmed and hawed and said she would just not yet as i believe she needed her afternoon nap, i couldn't really wait and so exasperated i fucking got dressed and walked to the store myself and got what i needed feeling like i'd been hit by a truck, in truth i should have known how this whole thing would go way back when... or in short i fucked up...) it was that night that i spent my first night on the downstairs couch, due to the fact i couldn't even get up steps, and it has been on the couch where i slept, alone save for various cats, that i have stayed... 

The other day i was in my favorite boozer (see post) when i mentioned the situation and an old acquaintance looked at me in shock, he couldn't believe it, he asked why i don't move back to the bedroom, i didn't feel like explaining to him that the ship of which he spoke had sailed, even the BW doesn't mind anymore and that i quite liked sleeping alone, not to mention the fact i could eat mushrooms whenever i wanted and not have to worry about answering any questions... i didn't cite facts about the roughly 25% of couples who sleep in separate rooms for various reasons and the biggest reason he mentioned was the sexual aspect, i laughed and explained to him that frigid wasn't just a word in the dictionary... i explained that my life was just fine, how there is always a balance between the dark and the light and though i could use with more of certain things in my life i didn't wholly go without... as i explained, happiness is where you find it... 

Though these days happiness... or whatever that feeling is supposed to be, seems fleeting at best, like trying to catch water in my hands, of course i realize there is some psychic baggage that comes with this time of year, i've always been prone to bouts melancholia, why else would my favorite band of all time be The Smiths? and of course i think about my dad, i think about him every day and the truth is i miss those conversations, miss his wisdom and insight, his meticulous way of thinking through things... i also realize that he was the last person in my nuclear family i could speak or relate to as the current political climate has most definitely created a chasm between myself and the rest of my childhood household... 

It began in September when the norm between my lovely mother and i quickly disintegrated... there was a picture posted on a social media site of the BW and the guy from Minnesota, he was in town helping his running mate prepare for her debate, had gone out for a run and then decided to take his daughter to breakfast, no campaign stop just a guy and his kid having some pancakes... now my mother, the once Catholic now evangelical (due to the Catlicks not annulling her marriage on the grounds she didn't like the guy anymore), married to a guy who sports nothing but Jesus t-shirts and Shitgibbon bumper stickers, had seen the photo, we were having a conversation on the phone, i was telling her about her grandsons and avoiding all the topics i always have, politics and religion, i never bring it up because we are on opposite sides, i am most definitely my father's son, always have been, but now and then she'll try to slip something in about it, her biggest worry is for the soul of her grandson, notice i only mentioned one which also drives home a point about her and her husband's hypocrisy... 

--- the background is that when the Imac was a toddler, roughly around 3 years old, he somehow unprovoked drew a picture of Jesus on the cross, complete with gaping wound in his side, a picture that is now framed and hung on their wall in a most prominent place... i had told my mother that it was not her job to teach my sons about religion, that when old enough they could decide for themselves but as we all know in order to indoctrinate one must get them young... add the fact that my mother has often given the vibe that she and her Jesus freak hubby knew how to raise the boyos better than their parents and one gets the drift... let's just say this didn't go down with the BW very well... and it definitely did not fucking fly with yours truly... the line the Imac has heard since he was a small child was that he had Jesus in his heart... the Imac has asked if he could set them straight and i've always told him to be cool but i've now told him feel free to tell them whatever he wants, he's 18, he's more than welcome to espouse his "beliefs"... (one may notice she doesn't say much about her other grandson, probably because he's produced no religious drawings...)

The conversation the ensued that fine September day suddenly went south when my mother caustically spat out , "i saw the picture of the BW and that horrible man..." and while i knew what was coming i played a bit dumb, who? i said, "Tampon Tim!" she shot back... now one may be surprised to discover this but i can be a bit of a handful, there are times when i can go from zero to hundred in a split second, more so in my younger days but the ability is still there and this was one of those times... i unloaded on the daft cow, yes i just called my mother a daft cow because when the shoe fits... honestly there was no reason to bring it up and if she did she could have done it much more tactfully, there was no need for the animosity, the vitriol, she could have stated that was neat or whatever or she could have kept her fucking mouth shut, it's not as if she doesn't know my stance, as i've told her before we can agree to disagree... that being said, she didn't shut up...

The Cliff Notes version is that El Kono went full El Kono and while i didn't exactly tell her to go fuck herself i basically told her to go fuck herself... i unloaded on her hypocrisy, how these bible thumping knuckeldraggers like her and her husband fawned all over a thrice divorced, porn star shagging, racist shitbag and asked her to square that with the one and only book she seems to ever pick up, she then said i should pick up that book and i explained that i wasn't into beating my slaves or my wife but that hey by that books standards my father and i should have been able to throw stones at her... she bleated about wanting things to be "how they used to be" to which i replied that she had made some dumb and horrible statements over the years but that one by far was fucking top of the list and it was the not so veiled racism inherent in it that set me off even more... once i get going the acid tongue does the rest... she was soon crying (crocodile tears- as i told her,, that ex-husband tipped me to all her tricks) and scrambling to get off the phone... that was three months ago... we hadn't spoken since other than an odd text and...

One fine early October day i was watching the afternoon futbol when there was a sudden banging on the door, startled i walked around the corner to find my mother and her husband standing there, all half-smiles, i was very polite and kind towards them and yet i could tell they were nervous, my mother not knowing what to expect from her son... needless to say they came in, Disaster did his best to run away which i found funny, suddenly getting the urge to go outside and shoot baskets, the car plastered with bumper stickers was parked out front, i watched as they walked around my house and surveyed the place, even more disconcerting was their attitude towards the BW, a distant and cold attitude that has not been witnessed before... my theory is my mother often thought the BW would bring Jesus into our sons' lives... really? while she may not be as outspoken as me about the uselessness of Western religions (christianity in particular) she is by no means a follower or fan of it... in what was a totally bizarre visit they were there and gone in maybe 20 minutes? baffling really even more so the fact they were downright rude to the BW... when said info was relayed to her eldest son he about blew a gasket, the Imac may drive his mother nuts and act like a real shit sometimes but no one, absolutely no one better mess with his mama... 

Fast forward to this week... my big sis turned 60 this week and so i called her up to wish her happy birthday... my sister and i are not close, never have been, she's been pissed since the day i came home from the hospital, she has never been that fond of me and has contended her whole life that i was the "favorite", for someone who claims to be so intelligent she has never once sat down and examined her own actions and where those had led her for most of her life but instead chooses to blame everything and anything... though i should add she did buy me a ticket to see David Bowie (1990 Sound and Vision Tour) which to this day was a pivotal event in my development as a human being (a post in itself) she's six years older and has vastly different social and political views than i do, a fact that baffled my father to his last breath, she is a racist and a fascist, married to a guy who owns a full Third Reich uniform as well as a few other "artifacts"... 

Big Sis seems to take much joy when my mom and i are on the outs and it was during the birthday call that i could hear the excitement in her voice when she stated i heard you're not talking to mom... i stated i have no problem talking to anyone but that i'm at an age where i don't feel the need to suffer fools... it was then that she said, "mom tells me you're into the communism and the socialism"... the way she said it made me chuckle, the socialism?... for most of my life all i've ever heard is how brilliant my sister is, i once told Pops i'd put my intelligence up against hers any day (not in some egomaniacal way) to which he replied that's a bold statement, i then elaborated on the fact intelligence is like a muscle and must be kept in shape and i often wonder how well she's doing with that especially with her slide towards the far right, though she's one of those clever enough to cloak her racist tendencies in veiled language, the kind i hear from white guys when no one of color is around... my sister has never lived more than three miles from the house we grew up in, i've lived all over, the backwoods of Wyoming and Pennsyltucky, the shit part of Ocean City, various hoods in the Burgh the type she would be aghast to to go, it's not as if we talk very often, in fact i really don't remember the last time we did, it's been a couple years at least but as i said we don't have much common ground other than our parents, one of whom is gone and was sad that his daughter had become what she had... i remember my father telling me he felt bad because he avoided talking to my sister because of her politics.. (it should be noted that my sister refused to go to my dad's apartment because of the "neighborhood"... i stayed in his place for a month, would walk to the restaurant down the street, was it the best hood? no... but it was better than some of the ones i had lived in so i didn't take much notice...)

As my sister and i began our "debate" about "the socialism and the communism", i wanted to laugh, i could hear the snark in her voice, i almost started to tell her a story, that her little brother was one of the biggest weed dealers in his city for a time (a capitalist wet dream if ever there was one) and that he had honed his people skills to a fine point, that it behooved me to understand when i was being bullshitted or lied to which led me to sniff out quite quickly that her whole line of questioning was nonsense... she wanted me to explain what communism and socialism were and i told her that she could study that on her own, that i called to say happy birthday and didn't feel the need to explain things that could be easily looked up, she pretended that she wanted to know and i reiterated my statement, of course my sister is of the belief that all the "welfare kings and queens" are non-white while making racist statements cloaked in her white privilege... at one point she mentioned that if you don't work you don't eat... odd coming from a stay at home parent living in America, even stranger still seeing that someone who is not religious was quoting the bible, Paul, and somewhat spouting a principle of "the communism" under certain regimes... 

The most telling aspect of the whole conversation though arose when it came to Tim Walz's son... my nephew is on the spectrum, for a long time my sister was an ant-vaxxer (still is actually) due to a study that linked vaccines to autism... an old study that was found to be complete bullshit, a doctor/researcher who was paid to come up with that very result and somehow passed off a study that was done on a handful of patients into people actually believing it... when it finally came out that he was paid to lie about it, his own admission (subsequently losing his medical license), i asked my sis what she thought about vaccines now, her answer was as vague as when i asked my mother if dinosaurs lived 6000 years ago, nuff said... 

My question to my sister was how does she support a party that openly mocked a kid, who while not exactly like her son, suffered from (for lack of a better word) a disability... (not to mention the orange shitgibbon and his mocking of a journalist, the good christian that he is)... her response told me all i really needed to know, not that i didn't know it anyway... she launched into a diatribe about how kids like that forced her kid to sit in the back of the bus (how she didn't say), how he wasn't non-verbal (proving that she didn't understand a thing about this kid's condition) and how someone should have told the kid to sit down... hmm, i wonder how my sister would have responded if someone had said that to her son, i remember her getting upset when people would stare at her son when he flapped (something kids on the spectrum do when stressed) but now it was perfectly okay to tell a kid who was excited for his father to sit down and shut up... funny how this shit works... and while i won't discount any of the work my sister has put in to help her son i'd also wager to say that most of his anxiety issues come from being under her thumb his whole life... 

At this point i was just trying to get off the phone mind you as i really only wanted so say happy birthday, i didn't want to have some political or philosophical debate particularly with someone who, just like her mother, wasn't concerned so much about facts as she was about her opinions, which she perceived as her facts, the root cause of my big sis's issues were not much different than a lot of people currently, in the simplest terms possible... she's a selfish cunt... and the truth is she has been for most of her life, growing up most of her issues/problems whatever stemmed from the wrongs the she perceived were done to her, very rarely if ever did i hear take any responsibility for shit, it was always someone else's fault that she was in the situation she was in... from not going off to school (the university had restrictions because she was only 17 but still accepted her, she also could have started in the spring term but threw a fit about it), from not moving out of her parents house until she was 27, from not getting a "wedding" because of our parents impending divorce, things have always been about her and what she didn't get and she gave little regard to anyone else... it's why it's why she's had practically no friends for the last forty-five years... 

(What my big sis doesn't know is that i'm under no illusions how she feels about me, yes there is no bond really, the closest there has ever been was when my father was sick but that was more working as a team to take care of him, but here's an interesting fact... for years my sis threw an Xmas party and for years i was never invited, in fact i didn't know about it until my dad told me one day, her reason was she didn't want my young children to upset her child, which of course was a steaming pile of bullshit seeing as there were other kids there... it's really i all i needed to know, and honestly it's cool, our gap in age made us both a bit like only children and as stated we were never close, she was pretty shit to me most of my childhood but it didn't have an effect on me other than to honestly feel sorry for her, even as a kid, she never seemed all that happy and still doesn't, there is a victim complex that gets old and at some point one either deals with shit and fixes things or wallows in their own self pity... she seems to enjoy the latter...)   

And so once again i look around and see what i've always known... i'm on my own in this universe, of course the fact is we are all on our own but we can try our best to love and help those around us to navigate this mortal coil cuz the fact is it will go by quicker than any of us care to admit... i also know i'm a bit of a special case, my dad always used to marvel at his son's ability to get through things, i'm a hard bastard but i'm working on it, particularly when it comes to my sons and especially the I-mac, i tend to go about these days smiling at strangers and being polite and kind, even though at times i want to clock a motherfucker in the mouth i remember the wu-wei, and in practicing said mindset sometimes the best way to be kind is to not be there at all... if that makes sense... sometimes inaction is the best action... so it goes... 

 

Last of the Great Boozers

 

There are not many of them left... the last of the proper bars, pubs, boozers, dives, whatever one wishes to call them and i can count myself lucky as having been a regular and not so regular patron at one of the greatest bars known to humankind, lately i've made it a point to get back to it even though i live a bit further away than i once did... at one time i lived a short drive from the joint, with a secret knowledge of backroads that let me basically get to and from the place while never having to worry about the police, yes i understand this was not the most responsible of things but back then (and maybe even now) i wasn't the most responsible of sorts.... but this place is like an old and comfortable shirt that one can put on, it always feels great and never seems to go out of style... 

It was on one of my recent trips to the place (i won't give the name but if one really wants to know i'll email it) that the bartender and i, an absolute fucking legend when it came to the art of bartending, were discussing when he started working there and when i started wandering in, the year was 1996... i sat there for a second and said, fucking hell, i've been coming here for more than half my life, over 28 years... i first became aware of the place when i was on the payroll of one Hippie Jack... Hippie Jack lived right up the hill from the place on a main boulevard, the no man's land as i called it, the perfect place for a guy slinging weed and acid (and later coke), the place where the truly down and out lived, the hood is one Polish Hill and the street Hippie Jack lived on separated Polish Hill from the Hill District, both hoods when i started patronizing the bar had seen better days, like most of the neighborhoods i hung in back then (i've often wanted to print up shirts about another hood in the Burgh reading I Hung Out in Lawrenceville When it was Dangerous... seeing as now it's been fully gentrified)... it was Hippie Jack who told how great the place was which was funny because he was a card carrying hippie, a Deadhead and Zappa freak while this place was squarely in the world of punk and post-punk and whatever else the cool kids were listening to... and yes i counted myself among those cool kids though we'd never cop to that cuz that wouldn't be cool, dig? 

Oddly enough i never went to the place with Hippie Jack or ever actually saw him there, in fact by the time i really started hanging there Hippie Jack was dead, my friend a well documented casualty of the first wave of pure and cheap heroin... his wake was held at this bar... it was around this time that i had become a well known face to both my favorite bartender and the owner, the owner not much older than me who may or may not have been in the same game as i was (sort of) and who was wise enough to sink his money into real estate, buying this bar and several other properties in the neighborhood while shit was still cheap, these days it ain't so cheap anymore and one can probably guess where this is going... 

So what in fact makes this a great bar? the greatest bar i've ever had the privilege of frequenting... well it obviously starts with the world's greatest bartender but there is more... like a fucking absolutely stellar jukebox, in fact even to this day there is no "internet jukebox" in the place, there was one for a month or two but when the new kids started playing shit music it was quickly axed and the old one reinstalled... the music on it is fucking brilliant, it's the old flip type juke where you press the button and the CDs flip past, all of them curated by employees or patrons, there are almost no full albums but there are too many brilliant songs to count, in fact just the other night i walked in to Joy Division playing, when the juke stopped i walked over and put some money in and played songs by Can, the Misfits, Motley Crue (the owner's favorite band), Velvet Underground, Jesus and Mary Chain, The Stooges, The Replacements and the Buzzcocks, just to name a few, it's eclectic in the best sense of the word, one would be hard pressed to find a shit tune on it, the CDs all have hysterical names like Fuck Your Feelings or Communism Sucks designed to piss off or crack up whoever may be pouring money into it... it's fucking fantastic... 

What else? well let's start with the fact it's one of the last boozers anywhere that one can still smoke in, not that i have touched a cigarette in ages but i am of a certain age... back in the day one could almost retrace their steps, identify the bars they were in, by the aroma on their clothes... back in the day this place would be so smoky on weekend nights you could barely see, it's not like that anymore but the fact is you can still light up (and it makes it much easier to hit the weed pen which i do rather regularly when i'm there), i'm not even sure if it's actually legal to let people smoke, when the law was finally passed there were the usual battles, somehow one could still smoke in the casino and many of the bar owners protested saying it gave said casino and unfair advantage, i'm not sure one can smoke in the casino anymore but there are still a few bars that allow it and they just so happen to be my favorite ones, there is one in Lawrenceville that still allows it, another legendary hangout though not quite on par with this place though it definitely tried to be (it's not coincidence the guy who bought the place once worked at the bar i'm writing about)... so while most of the Millennials and Gen Z set will never have the pleasure of breathing massive amounts of second hand smoke or waking up smelling like an ashtray in the morning they can still get a taste of it if they know where to look... 

The beauty of this place is the fact that it's now been there for multiple generations, the old heads like me can rub elbows and converse with the kids and it's always interesting to watch the kids be cool and act like no one had ever done this before, luckily i can say i was pretty much in from the beginning at this place, started frequenting it shortly after the owner took it over and turned it into the beautiful dive it has become, as an old head i'm afforded a certain amount of respect by the kids, a funny thing cuz i think i'm still one, but they see how the bartender and some of the long time staff and patrons treat me, sometimes they hear stories about what a fucking maniac i used to be, how the old bouncer was scared to death of having to deal with me on my drug and booze fueled nights but the reality is it's a beautiful thing to watch the generations shoot the shit, trade stories, talk music or drugs or any number of things... 

There is the graffiti of the bathroom (above photo) and backroom walls, like a history of hipsters wrought out in magic marker on walls that no one bothers to repaint anymore, i believe they were repainted once, roughly twenty odd years ago but now have been dutifully marked up... the back room has been host to many a local and even national bands (recently a killer crew from Cincy called the Drins, i caught a great and i believe no defunct band called Merchandise there, The Eddy Current Suppression Ring from Australia played there one night, as well as many of the "rock stars and actors" who hear about the place and stop by thinking they'll get the rock star treatment... they don't, which is hysterical, one would think by now the word would be out and they'd know better but they don't, see the night Russell Crowe showed up only to be constantly referred to as Mel Gibson or Mad Max... even better is the fact the back room, on weeknights or non-band weekend nights, has a pool table and ping pong table and a pinball machine, all of which have been there since i started drinking there, i've played more than a few epic games of ping pong, (it's surprising how competitive the cool kids can get when it comes to shit like ping pong) as well as many an hour drinking and playing pinball, it's the type of place i can walk in by myself and speak to no one or end up in deep or meaningless conversations...

Most importantly it was a place with a "lock-in", if one was in the know, when last call came around one didn't have to leave, the regular folks were shuffled out the door but there would always be 20 or so of us who were allowed to stay, black shades were drawn to cover the windows, the door was locked and jukebox turned down, we couldn't "buy" drinks but could tip heftily and one could stay until the birds were singing their morning tunes, i've stood behind the bar towards 5am pouring people beers and sweeping up, it's a glorious fucking existence let me tell you, the barfly night owls of the world all hanging out and laughing, sharing the drugs that were left, having that last drink, then heading off into the early morning to get breakfast or go to bed... 

It's also one of those places with a sneaky good kitchen, a kitchen that has long served the fare of the hoods namesake, Polish Hill, where the pierogies are local and excellent, the kielbasa made locally and an assortment of wings that are fucking stellar (the Old Bay and butter being my favorite), yes one can get almost any fried app and the fact is one doesn't come here for dinner but when the munchies, booze or otherwise, kick in there is always something to satisfy... and it won't set you back a ton either..

Which brings us to the next bit... or what i call the "whitening" aka gentrification... i've written about this before, years ago actually when the dreaded little disease had come to Lawrenceville and began gobbling up that neighborhood, what was once a working class neighborhood in the shadows or more correctly ghost, of a shuttered steel mill was then becoming the new hip spot to live, one could still get cheap houses, there were still dive bars and local restaurants and one could argue there still are it's just  now many of the houses have been bought up and remodeled, a house that once went for $70,000 now runs roughly $350,000 or more, granted this has taken 15 years or so but one gets the idea... part of it was the new Children's Hospital that went along with a huge cancer center up the road in Bloomfield/Shadyside, my old hoods, which brought in a ton of professionals looking to move closer to their work, in fact when i put my little old house in Bloomfield up for sale it took exactly one day for it to sell, i had multiple offers, over a dozen people look at it, and that was all within 24 hours of hitting the market, one could walk to the either one of these hospitals and that didn't even include the other one (where the boyos were both born) up the street from me... and while Lawrenceville is still a great neighborhood it's insane how much it's changed, high end condos in every available old warehouse or building that was once used for industry, others razed and built with "luxury apartments" and while i understand it's supposedly good for the city and all it's not good for everyone... see those displaced by increased taxes and land value and made offers on houses they have lived in for years... at this point the gentrification is complete and there's not many (if any) affordable houses left... 

LoLa, as it's called, just about touches the one end of Polish Hill, a tiny hood (Lawrenceville being the biggest in the city) but one that has always been a haven for cheap living, hipsters and hoods all sharing the same space... that is until recently... now it's being gobbled up and changing, part of the beauty of Polish Hill were the three local boozers and a few locally owned shops, it was a cool little hood tucked away in a hillside and easily accessible to the everything, honestly i'm surprised it's taken this long... one is a short drive/bicycle ride away from downtown, Oakland (see University of Pittsburgh) and the Shadyside/Bloomfield/LoLa medical industrial complex, in short a brilliant location... but things have begun to change and not necessarily for the better... 

The aforementioned bars and businesses are what made this neighborhood, it's a gem, (not to mention the famous Polish church the pope once visited) but now the money is moving in... on returning to my all-time favorite boozer on a somewhat regular basis (which means once or twice a month for the old geezer) i was floored by all the remodeled row houses, all gutted and refurbished, the new apartments, the fact one of the bars at the one end of the neighborhood has gone full sports bar/yuppy enclave... of course my bar and one up the street haven't changed but the bar up the street has one advantage, it's on a corner and not smack dab in the middle of a residential street, now it appears the asshole who bought the house next to the bar has become the biggest proponent of getting my favorite boozer shut down.. the place is the reason a lot of people loved this hood, had kept this neighborhood viable when no one wanted to come here and yet some rich asshole moves in and suddenly it's got to go... granted the bar owner had built up a cache of goodwill and a large number of supporters but the resident dickhead is just waiting for a fuck-up so he can scream nuisance bar and shutter the place... fuck him in no uncertain terms... 

Of course on the lot to the left of the bar the old building has been demolished and of course a new house/apartments will be built which i'm sure will bring more pressure on my beloved boozer, none of the new residents would be the type to frequent this type of establishment i'm guessing, which is probably good, the cigarette smoke, the occasional patron in the bathroom stall doing blow (which warms this old wastoid's heart as in my youth, well let's just say i'm not unfamiliar with car keys in a bathroom stall) would i'm sure disgust the fucking yuppie scum who have infiltrated the neighborhood... and yes that's what i call them, hell i'd love to have a bar like this anywhere in my lily white suburb but alas i do not, not even close, it ain't that cool out here... but at least i know that i can get into the city and get back to my roots and i'll be damned if i'm gonna let some wanker try to shutter my favorite boozer... but for now it's steady as she goes, i'll pull up a seat at the bar, drink my Red Stripe and hit the weed pen, play my tunes, maybe have some of those delicious wings and enjoy this lovely island of misfit toys that i have patronized for close to 30 years... (fuck i'm old)