My Robot Is Pregnant theme song!

We bought granola bars at the Wal Mart in Anchorage. This whole trip makes me believe Alaska doesn’t exist. We toured around with an admitted homosexual studying interior design.

Then we got to Whittier. “Things are shittier in Whittier,” says Will. My old pal Will. That’s the Alaska I imagined. This little town of tin sheds, abandoned box cars and dry docks for a wintering fishing fleet.

Two bars in town and 80% of the population lives in one massive military era building. The ground floor houses a post office, a town hall, and a vending machine room, among other municipal necessities.

There is no bar in the main building so we walked in the constant misting drizzle to the Anchor Inn where I was taught Alaskan leg wrestling and competed against two women, both of whom beat me.

Alaskan leg wrestling involves laying on your back in the middle of the bar room floor. Your competitor does the same, facing the other direction – head to foot in other words. As you count “1 2 3″ you raise the leg that touches your competitor, who in synchronicity raises his or her leg as well.

On three you hook your leg around the challengers leg and attempt to lift their body off the ground.

I fought a native Alaskan woman who appeared to be in her fifties and was not more than 5 feet tall, 100 pounds. She did beat me, more because I didn’t know what I was doing and I had been drinking.

My host Will had recently been punched in the face by a woman at this bar, so I was not trying to prove anything tonite other than I was peaceful and non competitive.

Later, outside, I stood alone looking at the high mountains that came nearly to the water. In the springtime the snow is melting and you hear water rushing all around. The glaciers are calving and the snow is shifting, meltwater tumbles down the mountain side.

Nature was thick and closing in so I walked back to Will’s apartment and turned on the tv. He has cable. My cell phone worked. I watched a marathon of auction shows and wondered what wealth I could strip from nature.

The gold, the timber, the salmon were depleted and the rights bought up or protective legislation enacted -the men who pre-dated my arrival had been thorough.

There must be something in these woods I can take to San Francisco and turn to profit! Or not. What’s a junk man do stuck in nature? There is no garbage to sort, no junk to haul. My girl and I walked the edge of the cove, looking for Japanese tsunami wreckage. Some sense of treasure. She found an interesting rock and I put it in my pocket, unsure why. She held up interesting sticks but nothing that would sell. I waved her offerings away.

If only Whittier had a thrift store. Were it only Saturday and there were a yards or garages to have sales. There was only tidewater glaciers, hemlocks, sea otter and bald eagles. Some of us aren’t meant for Alaska. Not till it’s covered in garbage.

When the comment praises me for the information I provide, or compliments my writing as helpful, then it’s spam. No one clicks on the link. Were a spam comment to say something like, “You sound like a real asshole here. Are you still fucking that cottage cheese container?” Then people will be tricked into clicking on the link.

When are homeless people gonna start using cell phones? I hired a long bearded guy the other day, he looked like Oggy Bleacher and was just walking by the dumpster where I was working.

“Wanna help paint?”

“Yeah, sure.”

It was that easy. He was from Belmont California, just a few miles south and home of MRIPs friend, Papa Sean. Wouldn’t you expect him to be from Philly or Jersey or something? Not a local boy. Anyway, this homeless guy used to clean pools in Woodside, Rusty Sunshine’s territory, then he started smoking meth. Now he’s painting a fence around a dumpster, one built to keep people like him out.

“You know any homeless people with cell phones?”

“Some people find them. You can sell them to the Mexicans for $20.”

“Why do people who have no home collect so much shit in shopping carts?”

“That’s the meth.”

“Who’s a homeless hero?”

“whatta-ya mean?”

“Are there any heroes in the homeless community?”

“Glide feeds us. They’re heroes.”

Glide is a church in the Tenderloin, and I was hoping to hear about a homeless guy who has figured out how to hack into ATM’s and spends the money throwing bbq’s out by the train tracks. But being homeless really isn’t glamorous like that.

Anecdotal evidence suggests eBay is morphing into eNay, as in, “No, I’m not buying it.”

At the dawn of e-commerce you could put a broken pair of Vaurnet’s up for bid with the word VINTAGE and the things would sell.

It didn’t really matter what you had, people in cubicles across the country were fascinated with the ability to shop while working. eBay was the only destination on that highway of information.

Then Craigslist came along and there was another round of economic orgy. People loved CL. They bought their kitchen table, found a mechanic and had sex with strangers through the bare bones portal.

Those fun days seem to be over. Craigslist killers and the hustlers casing your house have scared people away from interacting with the whole morass of the community at large. The amount of flakes who string you along or pitch insulting lowballs makes a CL transaction several steps below a flea market experience in terms of destroying your faith in the human race.

People still shop online of course, but the Internet turned into boomtown, a virtual outlet mall, with etsy and the millions of Shopify independents creating a specific look with their HTML and hipstamatic photos that turn on target audiences.

That being said, brick and mortar retail seems to be having a Renaissance. It may be because we at Mixed Nuts are the only people in a twenty five block radius offering people a chance to hold an item in their hand before paying for it.

Is it too far off to say retail can be the only exercise some city folk get?

There is more to that thought, there are more thoughts too, but its time to go to work.

Imagine the building inspector red tagging the remodel on your camper. Is government out of control or ineffectual at that point? Who’s in that Toyota? A gulf war vet with issues in a job market with no jobs?

We can punish the poor, get some money for the city by impounding the vehicles, but studies suggest we’re all getting poorer by and large.

Why can’t we force these people to Afghanistan where there is a lot of work to be done?

If we could loosen restrictions on big business a reality tv show could change this persons life. In exchange for exposure companies would donate materials. A crew would come in and put on some siding, match up all the chrome rims, put a fresh coat of paint on the cab and BLAMMO this person is back in the race. No longer a burden to the community.

Blasphemy protects one from the moral majority within, while still insisting on the need for community.

Pizza Hut has a ten dollar pizza deal right now. Are you in? And for five bucks more you can add pepsi and breadsticks. That’s a lot to eat

How many of us have experienced diahhrea in an effort to save on food costs? Similarly, people won’t spend money on dental floss due to budget constraints. Is it worth it? The inability to snap into a Slim Jim after being fitted with premature dentures is an emotional costs too high to calculate – unless you are a blasphemer. Renounce meat, pro wrestling, and fast
food when you say no to Randy Savage.

There are major religions and minor religions and new kids on the block they call cults. It can take hundreds of years before a cult gets drafted into the minors and it takes a powerful leader’s conversion to a minor religion to call it up into the majors. (Think of Constantine, a Roman emperor, adopting Christianity.)

Today when people gossip about Mitt Romney being a Mormom, we are working out amongst ourselves, in part, if Mormons and polygamy are ready to be big time. The recent arrest and conviction of Warren Jeffs shows that it won’t be an easy transition. (Leader of a branch of the church sentenced on rape charges, also tried for arranging marriages of young women to older men. Accused of incest by niece and nephew.)

A church must manage it’s brand, just like any large corporation. The Catholic Church has for years managed itself by moving problem (ie pedophile) priests to new communities. That strategy is a public relations disaster and the Catholic Church has paid more than 2 billion in settlements. Is a religion too big to fail? Ask a pagan. They’ll tell you they never die, they just fade into obscurity.

The Catholic Church needs a policy change. How about letting priests marry so they have a normal sexual outlet?

“In 1966, psychiatrists Franz Alexander and Sheldon Selesnick described problems involving monasteries: “Centuries of imposed celibacy had not inhibited the erotic drives of monks or nuns, and underground passageways were known to connect some monasteries and nunneries. Townspeople often had to send prostitutes to the monasteries in order to protect the maidens of the village.” 

Teach someone a woman’s sexuality is sinful and maybe they’ll start grabbing little boys. Look at what happens to straight men in prison: there’s only one outlet. Priests found a safe sexual outlet in children who could be manipulated and silenced.

Religion either does this to people or allows it to happen. I’d wager it allows it to happen, because rape and incest can happen without religion at all.

The dirty church in the photo is a place of hope for innocent people looking to do good and find forgiveness and the men who lead them give them words of comfort and accept their money and reverence in return.

This is the project that broke up the band so to speak. Operation Last Straw I’ll call it.

Will’s friend owns a bar called “The Broken Record”. We were asked to remove old trellis work and put up a gate to section off the keg storage area.

Here are the before and after photos. You see Will in the before photo but not in the after. Because he walked off the job.

“7/19/11 9:30 to 11:30 listen to an asshole be an asshole”

So read the invoice he sent me. It bummed me out that I wasn’t able to communicate effectively or be a good boss.

It opened up a lot of self doubt and misgivings inside, recalled my anger with Rusty Sunshine when I worked for him. I heard Will say to me exactly what I said to him.

“Everything is ‘Wrong, No, No, not like that.’ You don’t listen to anything I say or let me work something out my way.”

Let the community help each other out.

Pops called the other day to tell me he broke his leg not his ankle. He hadn’t realized. At least the doctors knew. He’s got a Homeland Security buzzer in the form of a metal plate permanently installed on the fibula. If he comes out to California we’ll have to retro fit him to local earthquake standards. Hope the wheels dont lock on that walker!

Enough with the tough love, let’s talk about money. Like everything, Flea Markets have a hierarchy. Let me give you a brief tour of them. In the Bay area, Ashby Flea market in Berkely is known as a good place to find your stolen bike. Not really kidding, but it’s also home to a crazy drum circle and has the feel of an African market with incense and sound systems playing reggae and food vendors you won’t find in all of Ohio. Jerk, Ginger beer, and goat.

The southern neighbor and border town of Oakland features Laney, named after the college that turns their parking lot over on Sunday to the working class looking for tube socks and kitchen sponges. For the most part not a lot of vintage or antique items unless you walk to the back near the 880 overpass.

Some people get really upset when new items are sold at Flea markets. It usually divides along cultural lines. White Americans want old stuff, the vintage ironic Alf doll, old photos of people sitting on Model A bumpers in a field, door knobs made out of glass that don’t work right. This type of thing. Immigrant communities want new stuff, like the cheap socks and tools made in China. If you have some Dukes of Hazzard sheets the little Fillipina lady will offer you two dollars and not understand why you want $45. If you set out a selection of toilet paper still in the package and bars of unopened soap, no white people will stop at your booth. Strange world.

The Coliseum is a 7 day a week event held near the Oakland Coliseum, home of the Raiders, The A’s and the Warriors. 7 days a week people. The place looks like modern day Oakies escaping the barren fields of Indiana and the amphetamine manufacturing charges against them there pulled off Highway 101 in a giant caravan of dented vans and whatever fell out the door when they stepped out to piss is what we are calling “the shopping experience”. I took my Dad there right from the airport. It’s on the way back to SF.

Speaking of which, San Francisco has a decent little market, no pornography, guns or alcohol allowed. No dogs. No smoking. No bicycles or parts. No car stereos. They ask that at least 60% of your stock be vintage/antique or hand crafted. You must register a sellers permit at city hall and pay the 9.5 sales tax on your profit. It’s like living in Nazi Germany. Or East Germany. Perhaps Austria is still like this today.

At the other end of the Bay Area, San Jose’s flea was made famous in the novel The Kite Runner, the scene of an ex-pat Afghan community gathered to share news and memories and try to make a few extra dollars.

It feels like we covered a lot of ground, circling the old shoe horn shape of San Francisco Bay. But wait, something’s missing. We’ve forgotten the rich uncle of all these black sheep. You see, none of these flea markets I’ve described above can compare to Alameda Point Antiques Faire. The thoroughbred of the folding table crowd, it’s a Macy’s shopping spree vs dumpster diving a homeless shelter. Alameda charges early birds $15 to come in before 7 am. 15 bucks! Most of us wouldn’t pay that much to get in early to two piece Tuesday at Popeyes.

Okay, not a fitting example. Would you pay 15 bucks to get into the mall 30 minutes before it opened to the public? No. Who wants to pay to shop? People going to an Antiques Faire want to pay, that’s who.

Alameda is a small flat island thirty feet away from downtown Oakland, reached by a bridge or a tunnel, depending which end you access. Due to the heavy influence of the Navy, life on Alameda is much like it was in the conformist years of 1955. You leave the Chinese food and delirious beggars, the glitzy benzes of drug lords and the empty buildings of Oakland and pop up in a Happy Day’s scene with signs that point to an Antique’s Faire. First time I went, I didn’t put the two together. I was driving around looking for flea market signs.

But time flies and now I can say I have sold at Alameda. Yes, I paid 130 bucks for the privilege, I spent over 12 hours there, and I pee’d in a porta let and had no way to wash my hands, but I did it the same as thousands of others did before me. And I’m glad to be in their company.

There’s a lot of people looking for work these days. Ever heard of Craigslist? Lots of work there. Sometimes you just need money, not a bunch of forms to fill out and a drug test to pass. When the kid needs diapers and Daddy needs a drink safety training and a second interview aren’t gonna work out.

Simple Pleasures, or “The Rough Brew” as Nick calls it, is home to a different class of worker than a street corner, although there are many similarities.

These dudes sit out front at a bistro table on plastic garden chairs and smoke cigarettes and drink coffee and tell stories, talk about bands, ask about girls, and try to hustle a little work. Guys on corners stand around, smoke cigarettes and nip off Vodka pints. They talk to themselves and tell everyone, “God Bless”. It’s kinda the same thing.

Simple Pleasures has become the Outer Richmond Labor Hall to me. I can roll up there at any point during working hours and find someone to help on a move, or load garbage, or get some gardening done.

This lot is what you call underemployed. They may pick up shifts at a movie theater or this same coffee shop, so they get 20 or so hours a week and don’t spend any money on coffee or movies. Whole networks spring up to aid the underemployed where you hook up and get hooked up.

Making the leap into an office job can be scary since you don’t know how you’ll be able to afford anything if you have to pay for it every step of the way. If you aren’t hanging out all day Tuesday telling jokes and letting friends in at the theater, why would you keep getting free shots at the bar across the street? You wouldn’t be there when the bagel shop worker brings leftovers after closing. You’ve unplugged yourself from the swapping community. Ask about the Peoples Temple, it’s hard to quit a community, even if it isn’t perfect.

So we have shitty jobs and play in bands and smoke weed.

doodle jumping
This online gaming community turned out to be a cult and doodle jumping is all I care about. Cell phones, the steam engine across America of it’s day. How many baffled Indians saw that thing chugging across the plains, rifle barrels poked out passenger car windows dropping buffalo with Winchester’s, and said, “I want one.”

1829: Peter Cooper of New York in 6 weeks time builds the Tom Thumb, a vertical boiler 1.4 HP locomotive, for the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad. It hauled 36 passengers at 18 mph in August 1830. It had a revolving fan for draught, used gun barrels for boiler tubes, and weighed less than one ton.

But it was the progeny of the Pacific Railway Act of 1862 that old stub bearded Lincoln signed into Law that the Natives saw puffing smoke across the prairie. And those rifle barrels, harking back to 1829 steam engines?

Benjamin Henry continued to work with Smith’s cartridge concept, and perfected the much larger, more powerful .44 Henry rimfire. Henry also supervised the redesign of the rifle to use the new ammunition, retaining only the general form of the breech mechanism and the tubular magazine. This became the Henry rifle of 1860, which was manufactured by the New Haven Arms Company, and used in considerable numbers by certain Union army units in the American Civil War. Confederates called the Henry “that damned Yankee rifle that they load on Sunday and shoot all week!”

note to reader: I took a few paragraphs from the internet and refuse to cite my sources. Just know that whatever doesn’t sound like me, isn’t.

Ever try to sell something? Most of us are much better at buying something. But we buy new. We go to a store that sells what we want. Maybe a shirt. We wear it to work and people say, “Nice shirt.”.

Ever try selling something people might not want? Like a tandem bicycle? Where do you begin? I put a “For Sale” sign on mine and rode it to the coffee shop, locked it up, and hoped a couple would pass by.

No luck. So I put it on Craigslist.

The Nigerians contacted me. I didn’t want to help them. I got emails from a few locals who apparently realized what a dumb idea a tandem bike is shortly after replying, because I never got a follow up. I waited a week. Then I reposted.

A man called who wanted to teach his girlfriend how to ride a bike. A woman called who wanted to get around with her autistic son. Another man called who wanted it as a gift for his friends wedding.

None of them did more than tell me their dreams into the phone. They never showed up.

I still have this damn thing. I ride it around and look lonely. But I’m not. There’s a great online community I belong to.

Oggy sent me a letter of reference to submit at my hearing in front of the Police. June 6th the public can speak for or against the city issuing me a junk gatherer’s permit. In classic junk man fashion, I am sending him a few pairs of used slacks as a thank you. Tell me if I should really present them with this endorsement.

“To whom it may concern:

I want to express my support for Jon Rolston’s application to become a licensed junk gatherer in San Francisco. He is a valuable and noble addition to the city’s pool of independent business owners and he represents everything that is great and beautiful about our country. I have known Jon Rolston for 20 years and I have worked with him and seen him in many different modes of relaxation and industry and he has always exhibited a character that is dynamic and original. Never a mindless follower of convention or an obedient drone, Jon walks to the beat of a different drummer and is a leader and revolutionary in his chose trade of junk merchandising. Here are the top reasons to approve Mr. Rolston’s application:

1. Jon Rolston is respectful. He may park illegally from time to time but he always says he’s sorry to the motorists who honk at him and he also occasionally overpays at parking meters so that balances it out.
2. Jon Rolston never saw a piece of trash that didn’t have some use. When he goes to the dump he says he “feels like he’s at an animal shelter” and sees the pieces of rusting and rotting trash that are destined for a pit in the ground as cute, precious, fuzzy bunnies on the brink of extermination. How many people can say that?
3. You know when you get those annoying envelopes on your windshield saying you need to send money to a “parking enforcement” office? Well, instead of throwing them away like a normal person, Jon actually sends the money. This alone is evidence of his amazingly humanistic worldview.
4. Jon doesn’t leave trash behind him. He’s not like those disgusting hobos who multiply like vermin and dig through recycling bins to get cans and bottles to fund their heroin addiction. No, Jon cleans garages and fixes fans and washes behind the ears of mankind. He is the pied piper of junk.
5. Jon is an equal opportunity employer. Sometimes he can’t do the work alone. He might be almost seven feet tall with a size 13 shoe but he’s only one man and when he needs an extra pair of hands to move a furnace or break some concrete or throw bags of excrement into his truck, Jon will hire anyone regardless of sexual orientation or nationality or physical deformities. He wants to help and he does not discriminate. When you approve Mr. Rolston’s application everyone wins!

Please approve his application and rest assured that Jon Rolston will conduct himself by the letter of the law and fulfill his obligation to the license board and his community.

Sincerely,

Oggy Bleacher”

photo posted from my iPhone

There’s an undeveloped strip of crumbling docks with abandoned sheds built right on the edge of the bay. The new
biotech community has built it’s glass boxes just across the street.

Soviet flights to communist health care. Yes, he really wants this.

Driving home in an epic wind storm I see the old yellow paper I love so much tumbling down the sidewalk form an overstuffed recycling bin on the curb. I pull over and look in. A jackpot. Denken mail order catolgues from 1967, 1972, gun catalogues, old magazines about sportfishing from the 1950′s, and lots of ephemera. Like this piece I’ve never seen before: the luggage tag from a Soviet flight.
I was only a quarter deep into the garbage can, taking my time, when a motorcycle cop pulled up, nearly falling off his bike.
“That isn’t your’s is it?” he asked.
“No.”
“Then get out of there,” he said.
Kicked out of a garbage can. Luckily I learned a long time ago, as soon as you get something you like, put it in the truck, then come back. So I drove off with some good stuff. Remember that. You never know when they’re gonna shoe you off. Hide it away.