Hate, Haight, I've Got New Complaint

So, still running on the thoughts of street fairs, a quick one about the Haight Street Fair a couple of years ago…

As I stated before, I’m not a huge fan of the street fair. I guess that I've always known it, but I'm finally embracing the fact that I do not like crowds. Milling crowds buying nonsense and waiting for bad fried food in your neighborhood seems to be that much more annoying. Yet I continued to walk the 5 or 6 block stretch of the Haight Street Fair a number of times. I'm also embracing the fact that my stubbornness is akin to stupidity.

And as I stated yesterday, the thing that would make the fair palatable for me was plastic cup after plastic cup of Magnolia beer. One year in particular, I dropped into the pub on my home to find my favorite girls working, all of them just as drunk on the Juiblee Ale as I was, lots of hugs and kisses... That was nice.

And there have been some great surprise experiences at the fair that I would like to hold onto. Like the day that I ran into Jeben at the corner of Ashbury. I hadn't seen him in some time, he had moved to Los Banos with his wife and little girl and was apparently back in the city. He had that slow and stony, but charismatic smile. He had a way of making a lot of people angry, but through some fluke in the connection process, I loved the guy. He made me feel warm being around him.

Then further on up the road, not far from the one and only Murio's Trophy Room (a great place to have a ten in the morning shot of whisky after perusing the used section at Amoeba), I was grabbed by someone from the throng towards the side of the road. Hussan's drunken grin emerged from the crowd and he pulled me into a rough embrace. He was happy to be back in the country from the Middle East, and he laughed with his entire being. That goofy, drunken grin still makes me smile years later.

So there's good in all of that annoying bullshit, in that pulsing mob of jerkoffs taking full advantage of being able to drink beer in the streets for a couple of hours. It's an important lesson to remember, important moments to remember...

Confidential to kc!: Thanks for the assist last night.


Rocktober song of the day: Just by Radiohead.