Posts Tagged transportation
What happens in Vegas…
Posted by belmont yo in B'yo Tales on November 18, 2009
I suppose for this tale, a little bit of context is in order. For a period of time in the late eighties early nineties, I worked for the Grateful Dead in several capacities. Their mail order ticketing program was handled by a group of people named the Hog Farm, who run Camp Winnarainbow in Laytonville CA. After a particularly nasty beat down of deadheads by the police in Los Angeles, the Hog Farm approached my friend and pot source Bobbo (again, all names have been changed) to start a new program for West Coast shows to help grease the wheel so to speak. This involved two phases. One show up to the lot where the show would be the day before and as fans arrived pass out garbage bags, talk about the rules camping or no camping for example, and just sort of be emissaries to promote good will and safety. For this Bobbo and crew would receive free tickets to the shows, and sometimes backstage passes if there were extras. The second aspect was to scoop up folks that had had a little too much of their vice of choice before the police did, and find a place to make them safe. For this we were exquistly suited, as Bobbo drove a 35 foot International Harvester school bus named Laughing Jack. Read the rest of this entry »
Second Date
Posted by belmont yo in B'yo Tales on November 11, 2009
Inspired by Donk’s almost dying story – here’s one of mine:
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After I graduated college, I lingered around for a while. I rented a two car garage in a house known as the “Witch House”, which was a house occupied by five young witches. I guess they would be more accurately described as “wiccans” or “pagans”, but owing to their penchant for performing elaborate rituals involving fire and costumes and whatnot, the house could not have been more descriptively named by the locals. Shortly after moving to the Witch House, I developed a crush on the girl next door. Well, it was actually three houses down, but close enough to stretch for the cliche, eh? As I have said before, I was rather freaky in my daily attire, and this girl could not have been more the opposite. Clearly an athlete, she looked more like a sorority sister than anything else. Also, the house she lived in was nice. Really nice. There was nothing burning in the backyard, and no one lived in the garage. Everyone knows the freaks can often turn the normal chicks, but my crush lay idle. I mean what was I going to do? Invite her back to my cement floor repository of bones, art and laundry?
That all changed one evening when I ran into her at a party and she bummed a cigarette from me. We got to talking, and I had to pretend to be surprised to find out we were neighbors. We walked around and talked and she turned out to only be half of what she appeared. She was from a wealthy-ish LA family, the only daughter with three older brothers. She did dress normal on the outside, but on the inside, there was definite strangeness. That strangeness appealed to me greatly. We ended up kissing a little and setting up what we would consider our second date for later that week. For the sake of the story, I will call her Zulu, in honor of her strange side, as here real name definitely reflects the normality she projected at that time.
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Muni: The Good, the Bad, & the Ugly. Part II
Posted by belmont yo in B'yo Tales on November 3, 2009
The Bad.
Paul was a kindly old bespectacled man who was the proofreader at the newspaper where I worked. He looked the sort of idealized Norman Rockwell grandfather archetype that some how instilled in me the urge to go fly fishing with him at some bucolic cabin, despite my never having had in interest in such activities. So it was to my surprise to find out that he collected weaponry. Collected may be too soft a word actually, I better go with horded. If his claims were true, his home was a depot that housed enough various implements of destruction to arm a small South American militia. After I had recalled to him yet another tale of feeling menaced on my midnight commute cross town, he gave me a small gift. He called it a “CIA LEtter Opener”, and it looked rather like a triangular tent spike with a handle. It was made of black hardened teflon of some kind and was about 8-9 inches long. It was explained to me that I could carry it anywhere as its material would not set off metal detectors, and that its beveled triangular sides were designed to cause “the maximum amount of bleed out from a puncture wound”. Um, thanks? My fly fishing fantasy kinda died that day, but I digress. As I am not accustomed to being “armed” in any sense of the word, I threw it in my messenger bag and kinda forgot about it.
Some weeks later I found myself on the good old 38 Geary line about to embark on yet another adventure to make it home. It was years until I figured out that riding a bicycle was a much more fun, more safe and more healthy way to approach this epic nightly voyage, so here I was, paying my dollar and trying to pick a seat. There are many schools of thought when it comes to picking a seat on a bus late night. Personally I have always been fond of sitting all the way in the back, thus being able to have a visual on everything thats going on. Now the problem with this is that the back of the bus is almost invariably where the brigands, ruffians and highway men gravitate, so one may find oneself in close company with such nefarious characters. I am of the opinion that to keep these folks close is bad, as you may be forced to interact and as such have to utilize “The Crazy Eyes”. For those wondering, The Crazy Eyes is where one allows just a little white to show over the *top* of your iris, cultivating a truly maniacal visage that can be varied by degree – the more white, the more crazy (see ref: Michelle Bachmann, Charles Manson). By practicing in front of the mirror, you too can become a master of The Crazy Eyes, and when accompanied by the hollow demented half smile, pretty much everyone will just want to leave you alone. Now as bad as getting into an interaction with the hive of scum and villainry that congregate in the back row of seats is, I still would rather have them where I can see them. After all,I dont have Crazy Eyes in the back of my head. The very front of the bus is out of the question, as it prematurely ages and feminizes a young man.
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Muni: The Good, the Bad, & the Ugly. Part I
Posted by belmont yo in B'yo Tales on November 3, 2009
I am fairly sure I have spent a rather sizable chunk of my life on public transportation in San Francisco, better known as MUNI. SF is a town where having a car can be way more trouble than its worth. I rode it as a youth, and as a commuter when I lived there last. I have ridden almost every line at all hours of the day and night and been witness to such a cross section of humanity, that I should bee offered a sociology degree. I have seen folks with live chickens, folks trimming mole hairs, folks that smell like pee, yuppies, perverts, homeless… its just too big a list to make. I am also a freak magnet. That portly Armenian dude with the lazy eye and the diaper hinting out from the waist of his pants – oh, yeah – he’s not only going to sit next to me, he’s gonna wanna chat. For a while, I would try to repel the riders of Bellvue by out freaking them. It was an extension of a self defense technique I had adopted to ward off scary characters in scary neighborhoods. If you look scarier, bordering on insane, then folks tend to just leave you alone. This does not work with bus freaks. In fact it may make things worse. I tried everything, from the mundane: muttering under my breath, to the truly inventive: allowing a small section of string to dangle inexplicably from the corner of my mouth. It doesn’t work, though it was fun trying to come up with ideas. I have a lot of bus stories, but I humbly submit these three as a cross section of that wonderful soul vessel known simply as MUNI…
The Good.
It was a rather busy night for the 38 Geary line. I had just gotten off of the swing shift at the newspaper and was facing my regular walk through the tenderloin to Union Square to take this bus cross town all the way from the bay to the ocean. Its about a 45 min ride at midnight as there isn’t much traffic. Still, the busses were usually more empty at this time of night. I had paid my dollar and had just settled in to another long hour of staring absent-mindedly out the window. Something about the drone of those diesel engines an really hypnotize the tired worker bee. But despite the glaze over my eyes and the psychic coccoon I was weaving around myself, it always pays to keep at least half an eye out for the comings, goings and activities of your fellow riders.
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Transportation: To The Next World
Posted by belmont yo in B'yo Tales on October 26, 2009
How I had come to live with Ted Morrow in a storage shed in Isla Vista California is an epic tale that I will save for another time, but suffice it to say, he was one of my closest friends. I mean, you would kind of have to be under the circumstances. He was a big black guy with a mowhawk, an easy smile and a off beat sense of humor. He was an extremely talented musician, playing congas mostly, but also tearing apart a bass from time to time. In fact, it was the band that he was in’s practice space, the shed, which we called home for a good six month stretch.
We had been through quite a bit considering the brief 2-3 years I knew him. The stories of shed life alone could fill some pages, but I will go you one better. Once he and I had been detained on suspicion of murder. I kid you not. Isla Vista is just north of Santa Barbara, adjacent to the UC school there. While I wouldn’t call it a sleepy town, it being the most densely populated square mile west of the Mississippi, I wouldn’t exactly call it crime ridden. The police blotter there reads more like minor in possession, public urination, property crime and maybe the occasional date rape thrown in for spice. So when an older couple were robbed and one was killed up the coast about a mile it was big big news. And what sensation.! The story had built itself in the press like this: Man and woman are sitting on the beach, enjoying the fresh pacific air, when they are approached by two men, one white, one black. White man says “Do you have any marijuana?”. When they said that they did not, black man draws a gun and shoots male in the head – killing him instantly. The suspects then fled the scene. See what I mean? Crazed drug addicts out of control, murder in broad daylight, this story had everything. It almost had us.
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