Slice of Boring Life
I couldn’t find myself anything to do on New Years’ Eve. Honestly, my preference runs to something like watching part of the Twilight Zone marathon run every New Years’ Eve and every July 4th on the Sci-Fi network — alone or with a group of sympaticos — which I have done in the past, and probably will in the future.
I rode from one corner of Portland to another, seeing if such and such a place were open and if such and such another place were open. Neither were. At one point in the Tri-Met ride, I looked around and saw that I really had a strong dislike for everybody in my sight. It was a panoply of hipsters, and a bit of bathroom graffiti struck out at me “Hipster Culture will be shown to be just as vacuuous as Disco was”. There was a group that especially annoyed me — and one person in the group who did so even more. It was a studied and carefully crafted geek chic and a strange “too cool for school” pose from a young lad just slightly than I… I don’t know quite how to describe it, and am at a loss of what disparate cultural cues shoved into a blender brings this person to the point he was at that precise moment.
At a different point in time, and with a completely different crowd — one that I liked better, and one that allowed me to shrug the other crowd off and inwardly figure “Well. Leave them to their fun and I hope they enjoy themselves”–, two slightly high and slightly drunk gay men pointed at about three men in their sight, saying “Hot”. I am happy to say that I am Hot. Two people wearing the typical Fare Inspector uniform, but clearly with other duties this day being a “Fare Free New Years”, walked in. They jotted notes in a notebook, frantically scanning the scene. This again brought me to a state of annoyment. Either you see something or you don’t… there is no notetaking for reference. I am sure they had a mental list of items to take note of. Interestingly enough, one of them said something to one of the gay men — who immediately obeyed by tossing his cigarette (or was it a joint? No. Couldn’t have been.) out the fast-closing door. A seat immediately opened up, which I jumped at to sit in. I saw why it was free… there was three beer cans. I, having had bad experience sitting next to empty beer cans, shoved it out of my seat — contemplating for a second waving at the quasi – authority figures to say “Not Mine!”
I couldn’t figure out what could possibly be happening at Pioneer Square. Sometimes it is cordored off on New Years’ Eve; sometimes it is not. It wasn’t this time. There was a decent sized but not overwhelming number of citizens milling about… I would later learn that one of them was Daniel Lee, all the more reason to have avoided the spot. The next day I saw that a ball of some sort had been broken into pieces, and silver metal specks were all under the large Christmas Tree. More power to that.
The rest of the night was all a blur, and just as well that it was.