Dark Dark Dark
Sarah and Leanne at the main library. Opened May 2006.
By the tracks
23 August 2007
22 August 2007
Looking Forward
After a week of rollin round town on bikes with a pack of kids dressed for the apocalypse, Leanne and I are soon to be headed west. We're skipping the Dakotas (if we can help it) and traveling straight through to Montana via the high line.
Last night I biked the greenway to St. Paul, alone at 1am. The greenway is a bike superhighway, two lanes, off the road, and surrounded by street lamps. It goes under overpasses, over ponds and rivers, and throughout the city. It was one of the best nighttime bike rides I have ever been on.
There are many amazing resources in Minneapolis that have room for more folks to benefit from. If you decide to visit, contact me for information on freeness. I'm talking health, food, clothing, bikes, BIKE LOCKS, coffee, etc. It's all available and abundant.
Last night I biked the greenway to St. Paul, alone at 1am. The greenway is a bike superhighway, two lanes, off the road, and surrounded by street lamps. It goes under overpasses, over ponds and rivers, and throughout the city. It was one of the best nighttime bike rides I have ever been on.
There are many amazing resources in Minneapolis that have room for more folks to benefit from. If you decide to visit, contact me for information on freeness. I'm talking health, food, clothing, bikes, BIKE LOCKS, coffee, etc. It's all available and abundant.
18 August 2007
Thinking about what Ralph said
I'm thinking a lot about the distribution of information, and the stigma associated with the use of that information. The people who utilize the barter/trade/"bare necessities" lifestyle are small, few, demographically common, and generally brilliant.
I think about how cool CAMP (stlcamp.org), my main project for the past four years, is with this: though CAMP's five year history is largely white board members from a middle class background, the project is fairly successful in sharing it's eccentricities with a class/race diverse neighborhood. Same with New Roots Urban Farm (STL). Our eccentricities are often only our willingness to use our information of how to live more free and intentionally. So it makes us dirty, ugly, or is sending us to hell, we are healthy, happy, and have community. We are supported. "You can never be homeless so long as there is Bolozone."
Really, being a white city kid with lots of useful information has made being in Minneapolis all too easy to navigate and it's almost a joke.
"You choose how hard your life will be in Minneapolis: how many free yoga classes will you go to today?" It really is that easy when you've got the right knowledge.
I think about how cool CAMP (stlcamp.org), my main project for the past four years, is with this: though CAMP's five year history is largely white board members from a middle class background, the project is fairly successful in sharing it's eccentricities with a class/race diverse neighborhood. Same with New Roots Urban Farm (STL). Our eccentricities are often only our willingness to use our information of how to live more free and intentionally. So it makes us dirty, ugly, or is sending us to hell, we are healthy, happy, and have community. We are supported. "You can never be homeless so long as there is Bolozone."
Really, being a white city kid with lots of useful information has made being in Minneapolis all too easy to navigate and it's almost a joke.
"You choose how hard your life will be in Minneapolis: how many free yoga classes will you go to today?" It really is that easy when you've got the right knowledge.
17 August 2007
Middle of Minneapolis
Ok, I don’t want to make a list of events so I’m just going to talk about one of my favorite thing I’ve encountered in Minneapolis (besides free lunch). This kid I call Pear. He lives in a cave and swims across the Mississippi River every day. He also volunteers at collectives all over town and knows a lot of useful information. Tomorrow we are getting up early to go do free yoga and then I will be painting unicorns on a shed in the back of International House of Mancakes, an awesome collective house. Then more yoga. Then we’re racing an alley cat (street bike race), hopefully on a tandem.
We’re currently staying at a house called Dead Squirrel Beach. It’s to be evicted in a couple of weeks because I think nobody has paid rent in a year…? Whatever, the place is owned by Chase Bank or something. Since the house is going away they let me paint a mural in the living room. I painted Bono’s face, the best I could remember it, because his name was the first word in our morning game of scrabble. Besides, what’s better to paint on a wall that is soon to be painted over? Anything, probably… But all I had was make-up brushes and finger paints.
Well, anyway, from an educated standpoint, Minneapolis is ridiculously easy to get by in with no money. The city is filled with people who are into work trades, free food, creative alternatives, etc. I don’t want to leave.
Here's a few pictures. There's a whole lot more at ultimateplunge.stlcamp.org
The Iowa Farm:
Nahant Marsh, Nahant Iowa
MINNEAPOLIS!
Zuchinni gift from Bobby, lunch at Seward Cafe
Ahmed fixing my flat at the Grease Pit
Regulations show, we got in by offering to help clean up after the show. Dropdead also played.
Dead Squirrel Beach
We’re currently staying at a house called Dead Squirrel Beach. It’s to be evicted in a couple of weeks because I think nobody has paid rent in a year…? Whatever, the place is owned by Chase Bank or something. Since the house is going away they let me paint a mural in the living room. I painted Bono’s face, the best I could remember it, because his name was the first word in our morning game of scrabble. Besides, what’s better to paint on a wall that is soon to be painted over? Anything, probably… But all I had was make-up brushes and finger paints.
Well, anyway, from an educated standpoint, Minneapolis is ridiculously easy to get by in with no money. The city is filled with people who are into work trades, free food, creative alternatives, etc. I don’t want to leave.
Here's a few pictures. There's a whole lot more at ultimateplunge.stlcamp.org
The Iowa Farm:
Nahant Marsh, Nahant Iowa
MINNEAPOLIS!
Zuchinni gift from Bobby, lunch at Seward Cafe
Ahmed fixing my flat at the Grease Pit
Regulations show, we got in by offering to help clean up after the show. Dropdead also played.
Dead Squirrel Beach
13 August 2007
The Kindness of Broken Strangers
Five days on the road. Four in Iowa, accidentallyadventurously.
We hopped a train out of St. Louis that was bound for Minneapolis. However, it split in two in Quincy, Missouri, leaving us sleeping in a car bound for… Quincy Missouri. So we woke, walked to the nearest gas station, to find not only had we slept through our engine’s departure, we had also slept through a tornado.
That evening we hung our hats at Ian and Andrew’s farm in Coal City, Iowa. We sat in the barn and drank a few beers, Ian and Andrew played a few songs on their saxophone and ukulele. They put us to work chasing chickens and clipping their wings. Then Leanne milked the goats with Andrew while Ian cooked dinner. I read cookbooks and tried to stay awake enough to eat the farm-fresh frittata he was rhythmically throwing together. It was absolutely delicious, and after eating I immediately fell asleep on a couch in the attic.
Then came 28 hours in Nahant Marsh, in Davenport, Iowa, waiting on a train that was coming, but bearing no cars we could ride. We slept on some picnic tables outside the Nahant Marsh Educational Center and woke covered in thick, warm dew. The sun was rising and I watched it through the trees, from the dock over the nearest pond.
So we had to hitchhike cause the train was apparently getting us nowhere. And we got rides, we did. Fico, a Bosnian man with a son named Elvis, took us to Des Moines, one of the most broken spots of the Midwest I’ve ever spent a minute in. A couple of men who lived in the woods across from our truck stop gave us some beers for the road. It was sweet of them, busted and beaten as they were, they were not defeated at heart.
We shared the ramp with a woman who was escaping her husband. She disappeared off into the woods with our beer-suppliers, however, which seemed like a pretty bad idea. Bad ideas are vices like anything else that’s bad for you, I suppose.
The guy working at the truckstop gave me a large cup of coffee when I strolled through all casually mentioning I’d sweep the floor to feed my caffeine addiction. Turns out I got lucky – it was his birthday! Lucky cause I didn’t have to sweep the floor, and lucky cause I got to make him a birthday card on receipt paper, which he found much more worthy of coffee than 89 cents, thank you.
So we got to Minneapolis via a nu-metal fan named Clay from my most familiar suburb, St. Charles, Missouri. He sorta ditched us in Fairbault, MN, but regardless, we’re in Minneapolis now, eating free lunch at the Seward Café every day and currently staying with our good friend, Smelly Kelley, who lives directly across from my good ol’ bud Andy Peterson. I have cleaned their kitchen to a sparkle, as has Leanne with the bathroom. Tonight I’m going swimming in the Mississippi for the first time ever. It’s cleaner here. We’re happy.
Pictures will come as soon as I get the means to post them.
We hopped a train out of St. Louis that was bound for Minneapolis. However, it split in two in Quincy, Missouri, leaving us sleeping in a car bound for… Quincy Missouri. So we woke, walked to the nearest gas station, to find not only had we slept through our engine’s departure, we had also slept through a tornado.
That evening we hung our hats at Ian and Andrew’s farm in Coal City, Iowa. We sat in the barn and drank a few beers, Ian and Andrew played a few songs on their saxophone and ukulele. They put us to work chasing chickens and clipping their wings. Then Leanne milked the goats with Andrew while Ian cooked dinner. I read cookbooks and tried to stay awake enough to eat the farm-fresh frittata he was rhythmically throwing together. It was absolutely delicious, and after eating I immediately fell asleep on a couch in the attic.
Then came 28 hours in Nahant Marsh, in Davenport, Iowa, waiting on a train that was coming, but bearing no cars we could ride. We slept on some picnic tables outside the Nahant Marsh Educational Center and woke covered in thick, warm dew. The sun was rising and I watched it through the trees, from the dock over the nearest pond.
So we had to hitchhike cause the train was apparently getting us nowhere. And we got rides, we did. Fico, a Bosnian man with a son named Elvis, took us to Des Moines, one of the most broken spots of the Midwest I’ve ever spent a minute in. A couple of men who lived in the woods across from our truck stop gave us some beers for the road. It was sweet of them, busted and beaten as they were, they were not defeated at heart.
We shared the ramp with a woman who was escaping her husband. She disappeared off into the woods with our beer-suppliers, however, which seemed like a pretty bad idea. Bad ideas are vices like anything else that’s bad for you, I suppose.
The guy working at the truckstop gave me a large cup of coffee when I strolled through all casually mentioning I’d sweep the floor to feed my caffeine addiction. Turns out I got lucky – it was his birthday! Lucky cause I didn’t have to sweep the floor, and lucky cause I got to make him a birthday card on receipt paper, which he found much more worthy of coffee than 89 cents, thank you.
So we got to Minneapolis via a nu-metal fan named Clay from my most familiar suburb, St. Charles, Missouri. He sorta ditched us in Fairbault, MN, but regardless, we’re in Minneapolis now, eating free lunch at the Seward Café every day and currently staying with our good friend, Smelly Kelley, who lives directly across from my good ol’ bud Andy Peterson. I have cleaned their kitchen to a sparkle, as has Leanne with the bathroom. Tonight I’m going swimming in the Mississippi for the first time ever. It’s cleaner here. We’re happy.
Pictures will come as soon as I get the means to post them.
07 August 2007
Dog Days keep us humble
We were supposed to have set off already but last night was too much fun. The unstoppable dance party. We danced for five hours between CAMP and the Upstairs Lounge, which was only possible on my end after I puked up my whole eggplant parmesan dinner. Soooo after a day of burritos at the flavor corner, to sitting by the tracks for hours, to four-topping large pizza dinner, I'll say I spent my last day, and dollar, absolutely tastefully. I love you, St. Louis.
05 August 2007
With You - Sunday Never Ends
I am fortysomething hours away from the hugest adventure I have yet concieved. It's Sunday and it's hot in St. Louis. Leanne is finishing packing. She's going with me. And as much as I want to talk about my adventure, I want to talk about Leanne a little bit more.
Leanne is from a working-class town in Massachusettes. We met through a friend who knew we both needed a new living sitch in Chicago. So we shook hands at a punk show and decided we could most likely get along with each other. Then she sent me an email to tell me she found us a place, on Western Avenue, above a Polish bar... which i thought sounded like the best thing in the world, so we did it. And ever since, we're best friends. She loves classic rock, eggs, and the IWW. I really like eggs too. Man, do I like Leanne.
After six months on Cherokee Street in St. Louis, we're going North together with no money, none at all, on what Bubblegum Shitface would call a "conceptual hobo" journey. After North we jog counterclockwise around the US map. No cold weather allowed.
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