counterclockwise

Set Out Runnin

2009-04-21T12:17:00.000-07:00

Please keep Hollis in your thoughts. She's been in a coma for a couple of months now after a terrible motorcycle accident in India. Such a spirit. It shows greater every day she struggles through this.

www.friendsofhollis.com

.................................................

So I left the Bay for a few months and am currently in Texas, headed towards New Orleans and eventually to St. Louis. Then back around. Here's a picture of some of our house in Oakland, The Butter Snatch. See you in July.

Desert Yard Ghosts and Scandinavians

2008-11-05T18:49:00.001-08:00

Tonight I went down to the Oakland Union Pacific train yard - the Desert Yard - to bid a ghost goodbye. Gonzo, my spiritual adviser for a few nights under the stars at Black Butte, passed in his sleep a few nights ago. I heard of the news this morning.

I knew upon getting off the phone with Bruce that whiskey would will the spirit within and outward. And therefore I'm post-train yard, half drunk, with my new Scandinavian freight hopper friends possibly on their way to crash on my couch.

I'd like to post Joey's homage to Gonzo instead of my own drunk ramblings. I think he did a brilliant job of proper tribute....

Homage to the Gonz

Fuck man. Heavy good news and bad news all in one night. Gonzo didn't seem to care about politics anyway.

Anyway, Gonzo died in his sleep, laid up in his hooch at Black Butte a day ago. He went out peacefully in the shadow of Mt. Shasta high up in the volcanic air in his little trailer surrounded by Incense Cedars and Ponderosa Pines. I think dude had cancer, but I don't think that's what killed him. I think he knew he was soon to go anyway. He always talked about all his friends (his "brothers") who had already gone before him.

I'm not going to talk about him "catching the westbound" or any of that cheesy shit because I think it's lame and it should be saved for the douchebags at Britt and cheesy fake hobo novels. This isn't 1932. And Gonzo was fucking better than that.

Gonz was the real thing, old FTRA, and he probably did a lot of sketchy shit in his lifetime but the man I knew in his old age was fucking GOLDEN. He had everything that the majority of the kids riding trains today lack - conviction, wit, street-smarts, a fucking sarcastic and great sense of humor, guts, and a strong talent at using curse words properly.

I'll never forget him telling me about when he was young and lived in Detroit..."Yeah, I used to live with six titty dancers and a monkey, and I got along with the monkey the best.", or his goofy old man laugh that sounded more like a broken chainsaw motor trying to start, or the time I walked into the Black Butte shack in the middle of December and there was Gonz watching Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindoor on the T.V.
, nodding out on pills and slowly singing along to "WHY AM I SUCH A MIS-FIT?!"

Motherfucker could play a mean-ass guitar, too, and not cheesy old-timey shit, but the best blues I ever heard anybody play.

I remember the time I had just gotten off of work when I was on the 12 board and decided to stop by the jungle two years ago, and there was Gonzo and Jimmy and ten other old-ass tramps and one young oogle, and everybody looked at me like "who the fuck is this?" and then Gonzo yelled out "Hey! It's Joey! Joey Alone! Get the fuck over here man!" in his thick, high-pitched midwest polock accent.

Fucking Goddamnit. I'm going to miss that guy. He was a pillar in a sea of douchebags. There's not a hundred goofy-ass youngsters riding around today who together could amount to the level of spine and street smarts that guy had, and there's some good people out there, but nobody like him.

Gonzo, you're fillin up that in-between, and I'll be taking care of the children for you. You had my word. Love Shannon

POST NOTE
...And so down under the bridge at Desert Yard I met a couple of Scandinavian boys trying to catch their first train in the US. I called Joey and heard nothin was heading towards LA, so I shared my whiskey with them, exchanged some words about our cultures, I got to ask them about all those good Scandinavian punk bands (dudes were from Copenhagen, know what I mean?), and I rode my bike home while they went to catch Greyhound instead. Then, after I posted this, I passed out drunk in my clothes on top of my sleeping bag. Woke up feeling like a million bucks. And the sun is shining over the bay....

Why the city.

2008-08-10T21:48:00.000-07:00

I live in Oakland with some eleven or so kids in a house on 11th street. The kids I live with are great, all busy with their own lives so I can stay busy with mine. I'm at this point where I'm lookin at the future. I'd like to just make a ton of money (cause i want to buy some land) but alas I can not do that until I really actually settle in Oakland, which looks like it's gonna be after September. Travels til then. I'm traveling in an effort to sort of blur the edge between the country/city transition. It's been pretty hard so far. The city...

I got some cool neighbors, a few good hiding spots amidst the chaos of the Bay, and the incentive to work cause there's not the kind of beauty here that's gonna take up much of my time. Anyway, here's some pictures, taken by Heather, a rad lady we picked up in Portland on the way down the coast on our July adventure. Here's a few...

And so most of my family lives here in California, so the effort to get to the midwest is less imperitive, but I miss all my friends there a whole lot, so hopefully I'll be making it out that way soon. The schedule looks really full though. I've got too many plans. Overwhelmed.

quick update

2008-06-27T10:37:00.000-07:00

cuz i live in the middle of nowhere without internet i can't find the time to write about how many amazing fun adventures i've taken in the last month, but it was all in the bay area, forests of oregon, and seattle washington. but the real update is im moving to oakland in a few weeks.
BUT THE REAL UPDATE IS my car sorta broke and so my move to oakland is gonna be a hitchhike, meaning that once-a-motherfuckin-gain im giving up all my worldly possessions minus, oh say, a hammer and some oil paints. im also keeping all these pretty pictures ive ripped outta magazines in the last few years. and im gonna try and ship my elk bone and rock collection.

mixed feelings but it's a wild lifetime. visit me in the bay.

What doesn't kill me will eventually lead me to kill myself

2008-05-11T19:06:00.001-07:00

I need distractions. Oh, how I wish I could stop thinking all the time. It's only bad when it gets dark and it's too cold to leave the trailer and I'm left to my own devices. SO I'm gonna give a shout-out to all the little things that make time pass, especially when a girl's feelin' a little down...

(minus the self-manifesting art/writing which is what I'm trying to distract myself from)

MUSIC (ah-men)
lately it's been:
Faust - IV
Fucked Up - Epics in Minutes
Can - Tago Mago
Oingo Boingo - Good for your soul
Gray Matter - Food for Thought
John Hartford - Steam-Powered Aerotakes
Rites of Spring - End on End
New Model Army - Vengeance
Jawbreaker - Unfun
Neko Case - Fox Confessor Brings the Flood
Zolar X - Timeless
Devo - Pioneers who got Scalped...
2 mixes i made, one lots of social distortion/johnny cash, the other xtc, sonics, hot chocolate, fleetwood mac, etc

Having a car has helped. Yeah, I bought a car. It's a Honda. I drive it to the library and back. I got some good books at the local library. And the librarians are way cool.

A local metalhead named Jordan comes around a lot. He's fun. Equivalent to Jay of Jay and Silent Bob. But uncannily similar is the thing. Probably cause he spilled acid all over himself at 16.

Phone conversations. I used to hate them but not anymore! NO, CALL!

Dinners with the locals.

Working on everyone's bikes. I am lucky enough that everyone's bike is totally busted. In exchange for one repair, I was given a trashed unicycle. I'm gonna fix that one up right away and unicycle to the library.

That about sums up my distractions. Be my pen-pal.

Aside from over-thinkin, I'm having a wonderful time in my isolation. Here's some pictures.

The farm common house, duck cage, and compost "sky pooper"

Jenny and Brandy at the local dive bar

Me and Julia at the bar wearing Jennie's six-year-old daughter's matching dresses

Swamp barbie

In the midst of death we are in life...In the midst of life we are in ...linear detail...

2008-04-11T13:41:00.000-07:00

I’ve been living up on the farm now for over two weeks – after St. Louis I
took a week in SF, and 2 very brief visits to Eugene and Portland.

This is the first time I've had my own space in 8 months, and I'm living in a trailer by myself, surrounded by ferns and blackberries. On the farm there are six other adults and six little girls, ranging from 4 months to thirteen years old. We’ve been doing work on a new cabin that is almost totally complete and the nicest structure on all the property – after one month of hard work and less than $5000 on materials and pay for the resident expert. A LOT of work was done on salvaged materials.
My friend Matt, who owns Feral Farm and is an encyclopedia on wild
edibles, turns out like myself, has a fondness for abandoned structures.
So about a week ago we took a day to venture out to Shannon Lake (fo’real) and pick a salad, which was in the end just violet flowers. Along the shore sat our monolith temple “the Concrete Factory.” It’s quite like other monstrous abandoned factories I’ve explored, but more mossy and “Devil’s Tower,” as the locals refer to the highest indoor point, has a view over Shannon Lake of a line of cascades, humbled my Mt. Baker towering in the middle. We picnicked there on our flowers and bread
and oysters.
Yesterday we traveled back to Shannon Lake to canoe around all day at a pace of like .5 miles per hour... woke up totally sore. We stopped at all the different soil types we came across and I had my first experience with quick sand, I almost lost my boot... Instead i pulled it out and wore it all muddy and uncomfortable. But it was a beautiful and exhausting day.

Life here has been great so far. Last Monday's potluck brought out Matt
and a few regualrs from Feral Farm, the whole Finney Farm group, guitars, banjos, dancing (belly dancing lessons, even), sauna, mead, Franzia, and the Ramen Noodle of
Rural Life: NETTLES. Man I could never eat nettles again.

So I'm happy, settled down for a minute to give all you worriers a break from worrying about me. I'll post pictures soon, you've got to see how ugly my trailer is. Man oh man.

Hometowneostasis

2007-12-14T14:24:00.000-08:00

It's every bit as fun as I'd hoped it to be, coming back to St. Louis for a month. It's just not for the reasons I had anticipated. As I type here, on a PC in the first floor of CAMP, I am shaking, under-slept and over-loved. The familiarity of this town so devastated my new social habits that I've learned new ways of being satisfied with the words I speak to myself and the little things that keep me alive. Like water. Water in St. Louis. And I read the news. And hide in spaces that seem far away because of their abandoned qualities.
Aimless wanderings, cold weather, and no appetite. It feels just right.

When do I leave?

2007-12-01T18:17:00.000-08:00

It's been a minute since I've taken the time at a computer to write about my travels. So I'm all backed up on scattered information.

We left Venutra, heading south to LA on a tip about a manifest train we could catch out of the Van Nueys yard. We must've missed it cause it's apparently a reliable daily train, but we got all caught up in hanging out with meth and crack heads with guns who were camped out right by our catch-out spot. No, no, we didn't actually WANT to hang out with the tweekers, we just were asking for information about passing trains when we realized it was 10:30 am (little too late).

We hung around LA til about 3:30 when we decided to hitch 101 N towards San Francisco. It took us about 2 hours of playing "what celebrity is driving that car?!" when we got picked up in a Mustang convertible by our Armenian Cokehead, Tigran. Everyone in LA is on speed, I think. It's pretty obnoxious. Regardless, Tigran took us to dinner and then left us to camp out in Oxnard, where we found probably our weirdest spot yet, a huge plain of dirt. Construction site. And we didn't make it back to San Francisco the next day, though we did meet more tweekers. No, it took us three days to get to SF but it was worth the effort.

We had our last ride (our best ride ever! Logan, who loved Third Eye Blind) drop us at 5lowershop so that Leanne good say her good-byes before meeting Hannah in the East Bay to hitch to STL.

And so it was..
I spent a bit of time in the East Bay with my friend Geoff. Geoff took me to the Albany landfill, which has been squatted consistently for years now. It's some sort of post-apocalyptic post-dump, where people have taken it upon themselves to build art from the remaining steel and trash.

As for now I'm secretly back in St. Louis until the secret is over. You can find me singing with Celia's Yuletide Express.

Power Squat at the Albany Landfill

Trash Castle at the Landfill

The Vegas Adventure

2007-11-12T13:30:00.000-08:00

We hitched from San Francisco to Ventura in two days. We got a few rides from women, one a mother and one a psychic, and the rest were men of different, casual occupations. Our night on the road was spent in a field about 50 yards off from a truck stop parking lot. We were surrounded by trees and the ground was soft. The late night employee offered us free showers and hot dogs but we opted for coffees to save for the morning.

Once in Ventura, we got all cleaned up. We sat around my sisters house and watched movies and "I Love New York" on VH1 (for which we're having a "new episode" party tonight, nachos and champagne, the whole house). That's about it.

SO WE WENT TO VEGAS!!!!!!!!

Vegas is the toxic shit on the bottom of my shoe.

Let's see. My aunt Laura's wedding to Mr. Ken Aydelott was fun and great. I love ceremonies and rituals that reinforce love. We saw David Spade after the wedding, he was in a golf cart at the country club. Leanne's first celebrity sighting! Ha.......

But really, Vegas is a city that only humans could survive in. There is no sustainable anything on that little island of neon, and you can't get a bight to eat for under $10. Luckily we picked up some beers before we got to the strip to keep us rightfully buzzed (when I was sober in Vegas I wanted to cry constantly). But even so, CASINOS ARE THE WORST POSSIBLE PLACE TO HAVE A HANGOVER, AND EVERY HOTEL IS A GODDAMN CASINO. I almost puked all over my $12 omelett. What is more, Vegas is so densely populated with tourists that I couldn't make it 10 feet without high-fiving some college bro. So I wore my sunglasses and kept my head down so all that I had to deal with was "WHATS THE MATTER? YOURE IN VEGAS!!! WOOOOOOOOOOOOOO" which was just ridiculous enough to be tolerable in it's irony. Thanks to Grandma for providing my entire family with everything, by the way.

We're back in Ventura now, about to head back north.

Le Foto

2007-11-05T20:47:00.001-08:00

My sister, Mz Alison Virginia Knox, came to the bay to document a lil of our day-to-day. She's a photographer, so it goes. Here's a few of my favorite pictures she took, drastically resized, and a few very slightly altered by myself (probably a major offense, but for the sake of resizing I felt it helpful... errrr... uh... ok).

Goodbye burn-outs, surfers, hydrogen punks...

2007-11-05T15:00:00.000-08:00

Well, well, well. I made it into November with my heart still stuck in October. I loved San Francisco.

Anyway, so about a week and a half ago, Leanne and I decided to take a vacation from the industrial waste dump and ride on down to Santa Cruz. Oh, Santa Cruz, you treat us well, so long as we never have to consider paying rent in your general area. We spent our first night in the redwood forest surrounding the UCSC campus, checking out all the little squats built throughout the location and clumsily hopping the ten-foot fence into the dining hall come night time. I actually broke the fence while climbing over it, causing a loud "CRACK," which generated lots of head turns and stares from the college folk. I waved and rolled over and dropped the ten feet, and ran into the dining hall, promptly taking off my sweater and disappearing into a sea of buffet-goers. It was a delicious meal filled with spinach and the now dreaded tofu. My belly is apparently completely over digesting the bean curd.

So we wake and make breakfast in the student lounge. Our friend Konstantin tells us of a train we can hop that will take us to a beach eight miles north. It comes through three days a week around noon, usually rolling at a walking pace. Well it was a running pace on this beautiful Friday afternoon, and I felt it to be a little too fast for my on-the-fly abilities. Four kids caught it and we decided to meet them up the coast via hitching the 1. So we got there in a half-hour, thanks to a woman testing her new power-steering fluid and needing a reason to drive around (like picking up hitch-hikers, you see). The beach was fabulous, some kid played fiddle, I played with my video camera, and the rest tried to swim naked. I thought that was absolutely ridiculous because I dislike swimming in cold water and the Pacific, these days, ain't warm.

Waiting for the train

We hitched back to town only to hitch four miles north again come nightfall for a post-apocalyptic themed guerrilla theater showing down on the beach. They projected Twilight Zones and animations on the cliff while we all shivered in our sleeping bags around the burn-barrells. about 15 of us camped out on the sand, Leanne and I were the last to wake in the morning. It was only 9 am but we were alone. Then, as if we had made it to heaven, two separate people came down to give us coffee and pastries. All fed and caffeinated, we decided to stay on the beach til our skin was about to fry right off our bones. We went back to Santa Cruz proper for one more night in the redwoods and then hitched back to San Francisco in the morning.

So I'm writing now from Ventura, where I am sun-burnt, bleach blond, and wearing my sisters clothes. Clean and well fed, I'm ready to get dirty again... but that'll have to wait till after my aunt gets married in Vegas this weekend.

bein round

2007-10-24T11:14:00.000-07:00

We've been in the Bay Area for nearly three weeks now. Most of the time here has been spent in San Francisco at 5lowershop. DWe have turned the back yard into a self-sustained coffee/art/music spot, going as far as to build a wood-pallet patio containing a burn barrel and occasional tv/vcr combo on extention cord from the warehouse, upon which last night we watched Bruce Springsteen's video anthology 1978-89. "It's 1985!" He yells, "Blind faith in leaders, or anything, will get you killed..." and then he goes to play "War." It was a good night. We drank dumpstered Powerade and ate beans over the fire.

My sister, Alison, came up the the bay to work on a photo essay about Leanne and my lifestyle. We took up the photo project idea in exchange for riding in her car to dumpsters, especially Trader Joe's in Berkeley, where we got mad sushi and salads. Some of the people at 5lowershop were so happy, they cooked us vegetarian meals (rare).

For a few nights, we stayed in Berkeley with my old roommate and friend Andy Jones, and then we tried staying at this tree sit on campus only to be aggravated by oogles and homebums all night. And rain. Rain with a tarp tooooooo little.

Dave Salad came up to visit us over the weekend, which was wonderful. We went down to Ocean Beach and watched the sun set.

I have a lot to tell and not the time to do it, as we're about to hitch to Santa Cruz for a few days before returning to the bay for Halloween.

Sean and Sharky

New Toothpaste!

Monday is the New Sunday

2007-10-10T21:47:00.000-07:00

(Tuesday is the new Friday)

OK, LINEARLY:

We got a ride out of Portland from some beekeepers, who dropped us in Ashland, Oregon after they took us dumpstering for chocolate and nut butters. We camped on the side of I-5 and woke in the morning to roll down the hill and hitch off the highway, cause in Oregon it is actually legal to hitch right off the side of any size highway... so we got a ride in about five minutes.
The person who picked us up was the front man of the 80's sort-of successful rock band Lotus, who toured with the likes of Bon Jovi and some other total bullshit like Bon Jovi. He thought he was cool for it though, so whatever, Paul Carey, thanks for the ride and keep on believing that you are something else, you schizophrenic racist scumbag (Paul Carey of Lotus hate website coming soon)

And so we arrived in San Francisco and got together with our good friends Johnny Ace and Patrick Ritchey from St. Louis. After misfitting around the Tenderloin and getting two free rounds of drinks by dancing with an old bar queen named Wanda, we spent the night at Johnny's place which is actually a hotel room in a week-by-week hotel up on the edge of North Beach and Chinatown.

Honestly I'm extremely exhausted and mentally worn out so this is a very brief account of my last week of living... and I'm too tired of talking about things to explain much more by phone or otherwise so uh I'll be sure to fill ya'll in when I'm feeling less nuts.

Camp in Ashland

Johnny Ace and Wanda

Leanne, Pat, and Johnny

Rooftop breakfast at an abandoned warehouse

5lowershop yard

Hannah, Leanne, Alyssa, Me

We're in the Brother's Room, in the mansion, with the key, holdin it down, yeah, we're invited...

2007-09-29T13:18:00.000-07:00

Portland has been an unexpected "getaway" spot, and had it been expected, I might have better prepared myself.

What I've gotten used to is the introduction, the hyper-stylized conversation where we meet and angle our way into each other's lives like time is on the loose. Funny MO when you find yourself in a big, empty, climate-controlled house with a hot tub, trampoline, and two sweet pitbulls for a week. Leanne and I have been living off of food-bank garbage and bike rides on our borrowed Peugeot road and BMX bikes. Luckily we've made a few good friends outside of this house, or else we might bore ourselves to death with the internet and scattered Kerouac and motorcycle books about the place. It's a beautiful thing to watch Leanne read "Dharma Bums" and look up every once in a while and cite the parallels to our adventure. Skagit County, gondolas, sharing wine with common folks. Nothing pivotal, it's just the fabric.

We made friends with the 20th and Alberta crowd, this collection of ramblers who sit on the sidewalk and bullshit all day. This man Shorty has me remembering all those old men I've met on the sidewalk in the past who carry their wisdom on their sleeve. Like this man I once met on Venice Beach who had carved a giant sand mermaid with his one-inch pinky nail. His mouth was rotten but his soul was so firmly intact inside that decrepit body, and he spoke of his death as if it were tomorrow, welcoming it with every sip of vodka. I think of Venice Beach, I think of that bohemia it's been depicted as in words and pictures, I think of bohemia and it's appeal versus it's reality. Terminology charmed commodity. It's more of an elated feeling of sinking. Shorty, though, he's hell-bent on his room in the world as an angel, a man, and a philosopher of astrological persuasion. Drunk like a fox.

We're taking a ride on Monday to Northern California, on which we'll be stopping in Ashland, Oregon on the tip of free chocolate and nut butters. It's getting cold in Portland and I'm ready to go South.

Dog Walkin'

Leanne with Shorty

Food-bank instant mashed potatoes

Train Photos

To all you who thought I would die within a month of leaving St Louis,

No one was born in Portland

2007-09-26T13:17:00.000-07:00

Harvesting hops for our friend Paul in Portland

I am really happy to see that my extended family has been reading this blog, especially those of you who I have not seen in many years. I'm hoping to put you all on my map so please email me your address at shanana at riseup.net so that I can propose the month in which I'll be stopping by. Friends, this goes for you as well.

.........words

His mother died of stomach cancer nine years ago
and he still recalls
when she said "thank you,"
"thank you" cause he loved her after
all the shit he put her through.
and today he speaks of right and wrong and how to live with love ----
He speaks it drunk and cackles
and falls over in his lawn chair.

Heaven IS a Place on Earth

2007-09-23T13:49:00.000-07:00

Brad at Finney Farm

It turns out, it's very difficult for me to write about my time spent in Skagit County, Washington. I have to ask myself why, and here's the deduction.

I have not seen that many stars in my entire life.
I have not been in such a beautiful place in all my life.
I have never eaten better food.
I have never met so many kids-on-the-level in one place.
Off-the-grid living has never been so directly illustrated to me, and I am overwhelmed with new knowledge.
Honestly educated children is a relatively new concept for me, and meeting kids who are so vastly developed for their age blew me away.
Second-storey greenhouse on bus.
Small town gossip!

We were able to stay on Finney Farm for a week and a half by an agreement to a work exchange, where we worked on projects for and with the farm/ers for at least four hours a day in exchange for food and housing. During our time spent there, work included berry killing and picking, raking, demolishing an old cabin frame, socializing at knitting circles :), and then a day trip to Feral Farm, where we helped out with the construction of a cord-wood sauna. Cord-wood is a pretty beautiful example of unconventional construction, and Matt of Feral Farm mentioned that he likes to explore projects that can not be commodified. The wood used in the project had to be dried for three years before installed into the wall.

While Finney Farm utilizes a lot of sustainable rural practices such as outhouses and wood-stove heating, Feral Farm is completely off the grid, running power off of a solar generator and collecting water by way of a well. Alongside the sauna being built there will be a laundry room supplied by a rain water catchment system.

The community of Skagit County was pretty wonderful to meet up with. Everyone we met was an absolute sweetheart and total freaks and dorks about their lifestyles. Loved it.
So now we're in Portland, we've been here for a day and ALREADY we've made it to a dance party with a fun DJ and walked ourselves into serious leg pains.

Izzy by the Sauna

Leanne's Birthday at a swing in the middle of the forest

Violet and Myself

Birthday cake for breakfast with Demeter

Demolishing a cabin for materials

Leanne

Jennie calls it "rural dumpster diving," picking fruit and mint at an abandoned homestead

Skagit River on Feral Farm

Cordwood building

Gettin out of town

The Hour of Questionalble Descent

2007-09-13T16:52:00.000-07:00

We are at Finney Farm in Skagit County, Washington. The stretch of highway that Finney falls on is about 25 percent anarchist rural community, with Feral Farm, River Farm, and many stragglers singlin' out by the creek. Here at Finney, we've been doing half a days work for stay in the community house and food. We have the whole community house to ourselves, minus dinner time, when all the households on the land come and cook up basically the best food Leanne or I have ever eaten, every night. Oh my god.

Soooo we've been picking blueberries and blackberries, and separating the blackberry growth from the blueberry growth to prevent takeover. I'd say I've eaten about 1000 berries these past three days.

Now that we're up to speed, let me brief you on our last few days in Seattle. We moved into the backyard of Firebreathing Kangaroo for the time of it, and from day one at the place began a bender not soon to be forgotten, but certainly to be censored, considering my family and the kids at CAMP all read this blog... But to structure your imaginations, I'll share a bit of it.

It all started around 2pm on friday when I met some young busking punks outside of Left Bank Books, the oldest anarchist bookstore in the northern hemisphere, so this kid Bubbles tells me. They got 5 bucks and bought some tall cans and shared. We were eventually given 24 pbrs (no kidding?), I drank some, and promptly got a little tipsy and decided to find my way back to FBK. There, I meet Dave Salad, who became Leanne and my best friend in Seattle. He was, in fact, our essential "sugar daddy," making the agreement that so long as we would stay up and hang out with him, he'd make sure we were in food and beer. Friday night, about 15 of us sat around a bonfire listening to the Endurance Voyage on audio tape until we all passed out in our respective places. Saturday, five of us woke at 9am (some of us unwillingly, to Dave Salad in a Davey Crockett hat blasting Born in the USA and dancing around the geodesic dome). I learned that I had slept through a dude coming into the tent and strangling one of it's inhabitants, only to be bit on the face an hour and a half later, and successively get his lights punched out. It was over a girl. We all stumbled to the bar for pitchers, discovering that morning is cold and that we were all in need of naps to cure our hangovers. So some of us napped, I didn't, and thus, Saturday was a blur. It was pretty much a porch and gas station day, and I know that it ended in the dome listening to Born in the USA. Apparently, we all made it pretty far that day. Suuuuunnnndddaaaayyyy was a hangover. I woke up and went into the house for water and found one of the regular "can guys" (can collectors, you know, for money) in the living room, which had been completely turned upside-down the night before and was covered in beer-dirt. For the day, I resolutely hid up high in a tree and thought about the last 40 hours of my life. Pieced em together. Waited for the day to end. Monday I listened to Dan's records the whole day in his bedroom, which had such old favorites as The Wipers, Rites of Spring, and The Sonics. And then the today's goods of Under Pressure and Brain Handle. I stayed there the whole day. And I slept there. I quit the dome two nights in cause of Dave Salad's tendency for waking up early.

SO we got up to Concrete, Washington, here we are, calmed down and eating berries.

I have to break it down here and tell ya'll who are out there and able - these are the best days of my life. I want you to be a part of it. Join me some how. Call me, write me, hop a train and meet me in in fucking San Francisco already. Who needs money when you have guidance and each other to work with instead of work for.
I realized the other day that every turn I make feels like a quote out of a Jawbreaker song. So I'm gonna post the lyrics here of one I was singing today while brushing off spiders in the blueberries... ("Save Your Generation" from Dear You)

I have a present: it is the present. You have to
learn to find it within you. If you can learn to love
it, you just might like it. You can't live without
it. There's a million open windows. I'm passing these
open windows. There is plenty to criticize. It gets
so easy to narrow these eyes. But these eyes will
stay wide. I will stay young. Young and dumb inside.
I have just begun to forget my lines. If you could
save yourself, you could save us all. Go on living,
prove us wrong. Your leap of faith could be a
well-timed smile. Survival never goes out of style. I
have a message: save your generation. We're killing
each other by sleeping in. Finnegan, begin again.
This one can be won. One can become two. Two can pick
and choose. You could be the first. You have to learn
to learn from your mistakes. You can afford to lose a
little face. The things you break, some can't be
replaced. A simple rule: every day be sure you wake.

0n a last note, love to the loves of St. Louis who I've been living off this week - Mama, Bub, Jake, Patrice, Lyndsey, Rose, Peat, Patrick, Ralph, and Joe of the Steins. I trust you all in what we're doing in life.

And Dave Salad, we's gonna be friends for a long time to come. See ya in Santa Cruz.

Going Academic

2007-09-06T09:38:00.000-07:00

First off, we're still in Seattle. It's good here.

Second, I have some problems that I need answers to, and I'm looking towards anyone who's academically-minded to just talk to me about these subjects:

The comparative history of service value in light of economic environment
The storage and distribution of information (macro-perspectively)
The function of inflated currency, in our society and in global society

See, my brain won't stop thinking these days, and it's because I'm too involved in my trip to be able to process the experiences I have in a way that is useful. I almost had a breakdown in Capitol Hill, trying to think through these things, until these two delightful homeless folks, Jim and Rebecca, shared their whiskey with Leanne and me, which calmed my brain right down. I have been writing professors at the University of Washington to try to get some conversation... So, if you know some economics professor or someone interested in these things, send 'em my way.

Here's some pictures of the way we are in Seattle.

Johnny

Flower diving with the local ladies

On the "we love you kurt" bench outside of kurt cobain's house

Kiwi Tree

Asher

Modeling our new pants we found on a trash can

Can't Stop, Won't Stop

2007-09-01T13:54:00.000-07:00

My last few adventures in Minneaplis were... watching trains with Train Doc, and hopping a fence into the state fair and observing the horrifyingly consumptive crowd eating their cheese curds and ice cream, all the while disgusting them by eating their leftover cheese curds and ice cream. It was a greasy day and a lot of it was spent in the shade of trees.

We left Minneapolis Tuesday night, after spending about thirty hours in the Midway yard. We caught the high line with the intention of getting off in Whitefish, Montana for some camping and fresh air. However, plan changed when I woke in North Dakota after an 8-hour sleep to find that our food bag had been sucked under the train, leaving behind a tin of black currants and a jar of peanut butter. We opted to go to a city to find some food (though I am now informed that there is a food bank right near the Whitefish crew change). Hauser, Idaho is the closest stop to Spokane, our closest city option, so we got off there and hitched into town.

Spokane seemed extremely clean, happy, and healthy from the vantage point at "pig-out in the park" at Riverview Park downtown. That was an experience not far from the Minneapolis State Fair. It turns out Spokane is not that well off. We wound up staying in a women's homeless shelter after being informed that staying outside was a notoriously unsafe option for women in that town. We went to Hope House, juxtaposed most casually across the street from the plasma center, and right down from the men's shelter, Catholic Charities. Waiting for the shelter to open, you can imagine we made plenty of passer-by friends. We made sure there would be enough room for everyone before we decided to stay at Hope House, and were happy to hear that it is funded almost completely by private catholic sources. We took showers, put on our fresh nightgowns and robes, given a pair of clean socks and fed dinner. Lights out at eleven and I fell right to sleep. In the morning we were given breakfast and coffee. My favorite person at the shelter, Sharon, was this rough, large-framed woman who stared down the obnoxiously loud morning supervisor and somewhere along the morning I remember her saying "whoever messes with coffee in it's natural state should be shot." She said this to the supervisor who may have served us decaf. Loved her.

We decided to take our best non-sketch ride out of Spokane, towards Seattle, which wound up taking five hours. We got a ride from a mother and daughter, Trish and Nicole, whose music taste included The Replacements, Depeche Mode, Devo, Morrissey, and Adolescents. Most of our four-hour drive was spent listening to the Cure. They showed us the Columbia River Gorge, Snoqualmie Falls (where there are lots of antique rail cars that are amazing to see), and a spot where part of Twin Peaks was filmed. We liked them so much, honestly it couldn't have been a more enjoyable ride.

So, now we've been in Seattle, Washington for nineteen hours, and since arriving I have enjoyed food and beverages at the Haphazard House, as well as a serenade from a brass band practicing in the back yard and an hours long pass-the-instrument style living room performance. Tin Tree Factory (Johnny & co) played last and played his song about Adhamh Roland, which got my sentimentality rolling and I teared up.

Minnesota State Fair

Back Alley Bike Circle Pit/Keg Party (Minneapolis)

North Dakota along the high line

Waiting on a ride out of Spokane

Fruit Stop along 90

Leanne, Nichole, Me, Trish

Awesome Detour

MPG on the LCD

2007-08-23T17:44:00.000-07:00

Dark Dark Dark

Sarah and Leanne at the main library. Opened May 2006.

By the tracks

Looking Forward

2007-08-22T14:46:00.000-07:00

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.

Thinking about what Ralph said

2007-08-18T10:54:00.000-07:00

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.

Middle of Minneapolis

2007-08-17T20:51:00.001-07:00

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

The Kindness of Broken Strangers

2007-08-13T17:17:00.000-07:00

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.

Dog Days keep us humble

2007-08-07T18:54:00.000-07:00

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.

With You - Sunday Never Ends

2007-08-05T12:42:00.000-07:00

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.