I gotta say I’m pretty excited about m trip out west and then north to Portland.
Things are starting to sort themselves out though. I’ll have some sort of plan by the time I get back from PDX.
I think copies of my next book, “Instant Exchange of Recognition”, will be printed and shipped to me by the middle of next week. Just in time to go visit John Ferlinghetti and hopefully get a consignement deal at his store City Lights Books.
Its been a crazy month and a half and honestly i feel live that ever since I’ve gotten back from Canada, things have been heightened quite a bit. The west coast will be a good mellow pill to chill me out. Ocean, Mountains, fresh air, good friends. It’ll be nice. I’ll even get to visit my old friend Ed Forman.
In some ways this is a small parallel with my first visit to the Northwest, getting over a little heartbreak and needing a fresh scene for a spell. That was four years ago, and to commemorate that visit I’m going to include entries from the old Raving and Drooling column from that time period. I’ll be blogging off and on while I’m out that way, not sure how much of it will be interesting to anyone else, but I’ll mention the noteworthy things until then: Here is some old bullshit!!!!!:
March 28, 2005
So when I got on the plane leaving for Portland two Saturdays ago, my main question was how people in the Northwest would treat a black man from Texas, and how I would enjoy my time there. Here is my breakdown of what I saw there:
Seattle: This is probably the best example of what a city built around a penile colony would be like. There aren’t any women in Seattle. The guy to girl ratio is like 5 to 1. For every one girl i saw at the bar, there wer in my friend Craig’s words, “five guys hoola hooped around that one girl.”
My friend Adam and I played a game called count the black people in the Northwest I got up to 30 while I was in Washington. I stopped counting when I got to Portland because there were lots of blacks. Anyway I noticed that I could easily count more blacks that I had seen than cute girls during my whole stay in Washington…. it was funny
Also it sucks to drive up there. The city is fucking crazy confusing, and you can’y find anywhere to park, everything is so expensive and no matter where we went Metallica or some kind of grunge music was playing. It was like I went back in time to 1993.
Final grade: C What keeps this grade from being an F is that it is laid back, they are pretty consientious about the environment and it is smack dab in the middle of Portland and
Vancouver: A super nice town which I fell in love with instantly. The perfect mix of city and country landscape. The minute you drive into Canada there is an instant calm as you drive 99km/hr down the King George highway.
The city is well put together with an enormous downtown area. it does’t pay to drive around because there are so many one way streets and the public transportation is spectacular. I saw buses running at 1:30 in the morning. something you won’t see in Austin.
I hung out at the University of British Colombia with some kids that I met walking down the street. Everyone was very friendly and wanted to help you, and i had some great conversations with the locals. Sushi up there is super cheap and there are lots of beautiful women from all over up there. The coolest thing though was not feeling like an outsider, a weirdo, people don’t give a fuck up there.I was on the beach (five minutes from the UBC campus) high and the most relaxed I’d ever been in my life, looking at Mercury wobble around in the sky, and it occurred to me that here I was an American in another country and I had felt more welcome, at home, and at peace there than I did back in Texas. I wasn’t prepared to fall in love. In fact i’m going back proabably in June just to get my fill.
Another thing to add, 80% of the men in Vancouver are gay, so do you know my odds of scoring up there are??? Pretty high…..
Portland treated me a little better. It reminded me of a crazier, more liberal, and prettier Austin. There is so much to do up there, record stores, and book stores (Powells is this four story used book store right smack in the middle of town), and lots of cute girls. I wasn’t in Portland half an hour before I stopped playing ” how many black people” and “how many cute girls”. I met a lot of inaresting people there but I honestly didn’t spend much time in the city, electing instead to go hiking Multnomah Falls in Troutdale, driving to Cannon Beach on the coast, and spending St. Patrick’s Day in
Eugene: A parallel universe to here, except not nearly as diverse. U of Oregon is the prettiest campus I have seen yet..well… except UBC which had a direct view of the ocean from campus, so I guess its the second prettiest…. but the people there were cool. Somehow I ended up watching Curb Your enthusiasm, and college basketball at this guy’s house (who let me sleep on his couch) while getting high and listening to Jazz.
He played in a band called The Quick and Easy Boys which he played a demo for me, it was very P-funkish but I loved it….. perhaps it was that good ol Eugene bud I was smoking. NAyway he and I went to this club called the Downtown Lounge and he introduced me to hella girls and some other cool people. I even met some people who knew some people who lived in Denton. It was a good time. We watched this funk band that consisted of a sax, keyboardist who was funky as hell, a bass, guitar, drummer, and a Did-yee–ara-doo player, the higlight was this funky cover of “Last of the Mohicans”. It was awesome. I never felt out of place and everyone was nice. One other cool thing about it was that Thursday night is 80’s night up there and apparently that is where one wants to go if they wanna see some skin.
What probably impressed me the most about Eugene besides the lushness of the scenery, the good herb, the hot chicks, and the nice people was the fact that it was finals week, the day before spring break and it really wasn’t that bumping, yet I had a fantastic fucking time…. imagine if Denton was prettier and not in Conservative ass Texas and you have the University of Oregon. My only problem was there weren’t enough international students but whatever.
Oregon is probably the prettiest state I have ever been to, mountains,Douglas Firs, and Ocean, and cute gals.. It was really hard to come back to Texas. If Texas were my girlfriend then we would be at the “I love you but I need to see other people” of the relationship. I can probably say the same thing about AMerica and Canada, now that my international cherry has been popped, I can’t wait to see other places besides the U.S. The only problem is that I lost my birth certificate on the way back from Portland so………. I obviously have some things to work on before I plan that trip to Vancouver.
ALl in all, a great and eye opening experience. I had such a fabulous time and I didn’t even get laid. That shows you how highly I think of Oregon/Vancouver (fuck Washington)… but yeah super chill in the northwest wouldn’t be surprised if I setteld there within the next five years.
(pretty prophetic huh?)
BMick
Tags: City Lights books, Ed Forman, John Ferlinghetti, Portland
Nuclear Polio Vaccination 