homeless adventures, part 2.
i’m listening to… brandtson, “celebrity fit club” on vh1.
3:13 am - a couple days ago me, lenny, and liz hit the streets of downtown seattle with a sign saying, “TALK TO US about anything and everything. we’re here to listen.”
it was fun times. it’s always fun times. i didn’t take a racial tally this time around because people were much more engaged than they were in san francisco… but i will give an idea about what kind of thing went on… as best i can remember, anyways.
we started off on the pier downtown waterfront area but couldn’t really find anyone interesting to talk to, and blahblahblehbleh. so we moved, and walked up to pike place. up lots of stairs. :X
as soon as we were setting up on some streetcorner, some guy came to talk to us right away. his name was randall w. stack. he showed me his veteran’s card. he was a veteran from the vietnam war. looked homeless, but was loaded. told lenny to buy him a beer, and then told him to buy us drinks also. we said we didn’t want any, and he said, “you know women. they always say no when they mean yes.” how true! just kidding. anyway, he kept telling me to take notes, even though he could barely finish a sentence, lmao. anyway, right before he told lenny to go buy drinks, he was telling us that he wanted to tell us a story. but right when lenny left, some ther guy name timothy showed up. he kind of looked like indian, with really long curlyish black hair and just normal clothes. he was from the UK, on his way to dinner. when he heard that randall was going to tell a story about the vietnam war, he stuck around, because he grew up in a military family and his dad died in that war, but they never really got the chance to talk about it, so basically, he was pretty repressed his whole life… when timothy first came, we started asking him questions, and randall was just like all freaking out, saying, “oh, you ask him questions but you didn’t ask me any!” like he was jealous that he wasn’t the center of attention anymore, lol.
but lenny took too long to come back with the beer, and randall wouldn’t start telling the story without him there. another guy showed up. his name was shawn. white dude with headphones, just a regular shirt… just a typical working guy. he was working at a law firm, and he didn’t really want to do that for a living, but it was just a job. he had just read a thing on MPR??? about a lady in france who sat in a park with a sign saying “talk to me” in french and english, and she just talked to people. her point was that it’d be hard for young ladies to do the same thing, because people wouldn’t be comfortable talking to young ladies. he found it interesting that this didn’t seem to be true. meanwhile, timothy from the UK had to leave because he had to go to dinner and didn’t have time to hear the story.
fast-forward. shawn left also. lenny came back without a beer, and so randall left to go buy one on his own. he really needed that beer! a guy named rod, a clean-cut african-american dude stopped by. he had a bunch of bags of stuff from pottery barn and some winnie the pooh towels and kid stuff… he was from bellevue. he was like, “i’m bored, so i came down here to buy some stuff.” he had a son that was 12, born in canada. dropped out of tech school that his parents were paying for to join the navy, and they were quite pissed. his son had dual citizenship, and i asked if he got free health care, and he’s like, “hell yeah, that’s part of the reason for having him be born in canada.” ruckyyyy. he was a cool guy. enjoyed his laugh. he’d been in jail for marijuana posession. lame.
randall came back halfway through and gave rod some weird-ass looks. rod left, and randall was about to tell us the story when a security guard lady came and said we couldn’t be in pike’s place market because all the stores were closed. we were going to walk to westlake, but randall told us to go to the park with him. he told us there would be people we could talk to there. didn’t know there was a park in pike’s place for one, but we got there and no one talked to us. he did try to tell us a story, though. haha TRY.
he told us about how when he was young, he was greedy and self-serving, and didn’t believe in religions. he had an apartment on the beach, sold drugs, and knew a lot of girls. he was listening to a ted nugent song which said, “i got news - you never got to go,” and when he was listening, a voice said in his head, “i am the alpha, and i am the omega,” and he thought it was god… uhh so i asked him, “are you christian now?” and he just gave up telling the story altogether, and was just like, “you’re way ahead of me,” but never finished anything. you have to realize that this guy had the absolutely most fascinating teeth. he was missing most of his front teeth except for two on the right side of his mouth, and they were like, yellowed and double the length of my teeth. it was… fascinating. he was like the dirty mad hatter or something.
anyway, we decided to leave because he wasn’t entertaining us, and decided to walk to westlake. the whole way, we held the sign up, and it was probably like a three-block walk. on the way there, this lady was like, “talk to us about anything and everything? get those crackheads off our streets! you see that street right there? a famous musician died there because of crack! get the crackheads off our streets before your kids have to deal with it!” and that was all.
another lady just saw the sign and asked what it was for. she said, “our social experiment is going out ith a group of ladies for this lady’s 39th birthday. just to celebrate that we’re still alive.” lol., like 39 is that old WTF.
then we sat down on these stairs outside of westlake center… and we couldn’t find a place that was that great, but one dude stopped by to talk, and another guy was like, “hey, talk to me,” and we were like, “come over here,” but he said, “i only talk to people here,” so we went to sit by him. his name was savalas. it is greek for “leader of leaders.” smart dude man. but… he sits there everyday talking to people. he told us how he knows everyone and talks to all sorts of people, and people come talk to him… and he told us all about the different kinds of solicitors in the area… people for women’s rights, money for africa, etc. he was a theology major. he really thought the name of my magazine, redefine, was sooo awesome because it is challenging pre-made definitions that were put in place by people of power, etc. etc. blahblahblah. he asked us a lot about what we were studying. i asked him what he was doing with his life, what his dreams and aspirations were. know his responses? he says, “that’s a very personal thing. do you have kids? do you have sex?” and i was answered those questions, but he was like, “see? it’s very personal.” i don’t really think that dreams and aspirations are nearly as personal, but to each his own, i guess.
a large black lady passed by and was like, “i’m so glad you’re talking to them,” to savalas.
a couple more people i don’t remember. this one guy stopped by and he kind of looked crazy to begin with. we asked him where he was going, and he said, “i’m going to canada. i’m from los angeles.” wtf? he said it took him 28 hours to get from seattle to the canadian border, and when he got there, they wouldn’t let him in because he didn’t know where he was going. he said that he needed to get there before his girlfriend stopped being his girlfriend. LMAO. wtf? he’s crazy.
another guy was a musician named nick. he had a guitar and was on his way to a coffee shop. he was from the bay area, as were many people… like rod, and some other people. yeah, i didn’t really talk to him because at the time i was talking to savalas about redefine.
at some point a group of skaters walked by, and savalas told them to talk to us. savalas asked one of them if he could do tricks, and he’s like, “of course. i’m a professional.” savalas was like, “bullshit.” and the guy was like, “yeah okay, i can’t do anything. professional people would probably say, ‘i’m alright.’” and i was like, “dude, you’re wearing sandals,” and another guy who was with him was like, “yeah, that totally gives it away.”
savalas left us with a couple of quotes:
“i freed a thousand slaves. i could have freed a thousand more, if only they knew they were slaves.” - harriet tubman.
&
“we can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” - albert einstein.
werd.