Berlin: Our Friend Shahar

Shahar's from Israel, Tel Aviv to be exact. But he's not one of the ones bent on informing the world about the atrocities and incivilities going on in his country. The land disputes. The Jews. The Palestinians. In all our two days with him, these things were never once brought up. I can't even tell you if he was Jewish or Muslim, or if he even viewed himself through these secular filters. What I can tell you is that he has very long hair that skips and trots, always falling to about his shoulders. His chin's equally long, made only more so by his prominent chin covered by a scruffy puff of goat tee to compliment his mustache. Like his chin, most of his facial features are quite over-emphasized. There's the nose that clearly dominates his face, followed closely by a mouth which, along with his ever present smile stretches ear to ear. This coupled with some massive chompers and a tendency to never wear sleeves and always wear parachute pants makes it hard for your first thought upon meeting to not be some kind of hippy Mr. Tumnus frolicking through some magical Narnian forest. Except that forest is his life, and we were just four unknowing Americans chanced upon The Wardrobe.

We talk. He tells us about all his friends back in Tel Aviv, about how he's a party promoter, and about how he hasn't been in Israel for eleven months. Among other adventures, Shahar had spent seven months traveling around India with two friends and throwing parties. Their mode of transportation? Motorcycles. Yes, motorcycles. The fact that he had smuggled back roughly nine grams of Indian hashish (he coated it all in beeswax and swallowed it before going through security at the New Delhi airport), and for the entirety of the time he's staying here in Berlin we're blitzed and smoked sky high on almost continuous weed/hash king spliffs does not detract at all from the magnitude of Shahar’s dictated journeys through India. If anything, it makes his stories exponentially more incredible and unbelievable.

According to Shahar, he and his two buddies purchased a pair of motorcycles as soon as they were off the tarmac and fashioned together a few racks to carry their party speakers and equipment on said motorcycles. Shahar and company traveled up and down and all across India, taking turns doubling up on one of the motorcycles. In the bigger towns and cities, pretty much anything with a decent-sized bar/club, they would set up shop and proceed to burn the house down with every type of electro/techno/trance you can think of. Naturally, I don't believe half the stock he's selling. But it just so happens  that Shahar's a prolific picture taker and provides photographic documentation of all these hair-brained tales of his.

“See now, this is when we were riding from Jaipur to Mumbai. It was something like 1200 kilometers and it took us just about two days. I loved those bikes…” and he goes on in his thick Israeli accent, emphasizing words and syllables I would never dream emphasizing. All the while, Grant, Max, and I are sitting there stoned out of our gourds looking at photos; some taken from behind the handlebars of a motorcycle on highways, on mountain roads, through dense forests, sometimes behind another motorcycle ladled down with speaker equipment on either side of the back wheel, sometimes with nothing but open road and Shahar’s wonderfully detailed backscapes ahead of them.  He's a hell-man, Shahar, bent on living.

BERLIN

Copenhagen: Anus, Casper, and the Aussie

Walking through Norrebro, we begin to realize that Marie does not really live near the city center. In fact, the place of our first encounter is in the abandoned lot adjacent to her building. She's sitting outside with an Aussie, a fellow couch-surfer, in a pair of rusted fold-up chairs around a tiny woebegone coffee table next to a tiny abandoned building covered in graffiti, beers in hand. The Aussie promptly offers us all Carlsbergs, raving about them and their factory that he'd just visited. After inquiring because of the strange label, Marie tells us her beer's not a beer at all, but in fact canned cider. Classy.

[stop]

We're soon joined by a couple of Danes Marie had met at a music festival the previous week.  Anus pronounced "ahh-noose") and Casper (pronounced like the ghost) are their names.  Looking around, we all look apparently the same age.  Not so apparent is the fact that, unbeknownst to me, the Danes age at an incredibly slower rate than normal human beings.  Casper's actually turning 28 at midnight.  Marie is already 28, and Anus is 27.  The Aussie's only 20 though.  And we're those middle-of-the-road, early-twenties Americans, fresh out of college with a penchant for overindulging in alcohol.  We're going to rage tonight.  The Aussie has a hefty case of Carlsberg left.  We had bought a bottle of whiskey on the ferry duty-free.  And while Marie hurried back up to her place to fetch some vodka and juice and more cigarettes, Anus and Casper hustle around to the corner market and purchased some more beer.  We're raging tonight, Denmark style.  It's still dusk when Casper's watch alarm goes off at midnight. We all stopp talking, confused in the moment.  "It's my birthday!" exclaims Casper in drunken Danish-English.  Whaaa?  But the sun's still out, kind of!  Nutty.  We all cheer and hoot and holler and empty our drinks and pour another.  The Danes teach us how to sing happy birthday in Danish, and after a couple minutes of sloppy, slap-happy practice tries, we belt it proper and at full volume.  It still seems so early.  Oh, how the Nordic countries continue to keep astounding us.  It's a riot. When it finally gets a little nippy, we all stagger up to Marie's place, a lot slower than sober people, and resume right where we left off, trying with all our might to finish the mountain of booze in front of us.  We have to.  It's Casper's birthday.  We introduce them to our American college drinking games, like Fuck The Dealer, and King's Cup.  They love them.  Progress is being made, but my vision had already begun to blur a while back, and I notice that we're all swaying quite drastically in our chairs.  And there's still more to come.

We roll up a monster spliff of Amsterdam weed  and present it to Casper as a birthday present.  We all handily dispense of it, so we roll another.  And pass him another shot of whiskey.  We all take one, and next thing you know, we're taking turns running to the bathroom to hurl.  Max still can't believe Marie's out-chain-smoking him.  Neither can I for that matter.  All these Danes smoke like chimneys.  It's incredible.

COPENHAGEN

Amsterdam: D-Squad

As our ferry arrived at the Hoek van Holland around 7:00, we find ourselves walking out of Amsterdam Central Station not fewer than ten minutes before 9:00. On a Sunday morning. Needless to say (or not?), Amsterdam isn't exactly the picturesque ideal of a bustling Dutch city around 9:00 Sunday. There's foot traffic sure, and more bikes than you can shake a stick at if you were to keep shaking for the rest of your days. That much stick shaking would inevitably drive you crazy, and that's without taking the rest of the city into account. All the coffee shops are open so we decide on some breakfast at a little cafe (not to be confused with coffee shops, which have marijuana for sale) called Soup Kitchen that you can pretty much see from the station.

Before you ask, no, we don't get soup. It's more of a bacon and eggs on toast kind of morning anyways, cloudy, with the sun still low on the horizon.  Sunlight doesn't even reach the road on some of the narrower streets we encounter between the post-breakfast coffee shop we chance into and our destination; just something with grass we can sit on and a canal we can look over, a little out of the way. Not too specific, but then again one tends to shy away from specificity with a 50 lb. pack on his back. So it is in this still tired, not altogether nourished tunnel-vision state that we begin to street guess our way northwest through the city in hopes of finding this mystical park of our dreams.

And it is in this state and around this time that we have our first run in with professional prostitutes in what many refer to as the Red Light District. Except at this time of day there are no red lights illuminating the canals and storefronts. Most of the window curtains on the main street by the canal are pulled close. The only ladies working are on narrow side-streets we venture down half-heartedly in our weed-craving induced trek. And let me say this; they definitely aren't A-squad. A few of them, agewise, could be my mother. The few women not quite at that motherly age more than make up for it in pure grotesqueness; faces, bodies, and teeth more suited to gargoyles. But instead of looking all awe-inspiring and gothic, cast of stone and exquisite craftsmanship, they're very much alive and trying to have sex with us for money. We politely decline their offers, and after the first few times, avoid the tiny side streets of the Red Light District like the fucking plague.

My Name in the Snow

It's been a while now since I've seen her. Too long now since I've feigned small talk for a second lost in those playful brown eyes. I can say today with certainty that I do not love her. That's not right. What I mean to say is that I'm not IN love with her, you know the way - to that point of utter infatuation. It's the time and distance between us that deadens these feelings, and not much else. I know it for a fact (mostly from past experience) that when the inevitable time comes when we are face-to-face once again, everything will come flushing back anew and altogether more invigorating, to conquer my thoughts and enslave my emotions. And yet, I look forward to the day with almost, but not quite giddy anticipation. It's her presence. There's a preciousness in the way that she looks at you that's disarmingly beautiful. I do hope she still possesses this because there's a bit of longing for those feelings to return, and a part of me is afraid I may never find them again.

[DRUNK]

And So it Starts

I call Wes around 12:30 pm just about after Grant and Max show up. Now usually 12:30 pm is no time to be calling a friend you haven't spoken to in a year on the sideways mention of his presence in LA earlier that week. But then again, Wes is no usual friend, and it just so happens that Steve had alerted me to his return to the LA area not but three days prior.

Now Steve is a bit of a wild spirit. I'd worked with him at the shop for some time and he was that kind of asshole music guy who you weren't really sure if his brain had acquired more general knowledge than yours, but he definitely had an air about him that led you to believe he did indeed know more than you, especially about the music and movie industries. This was not an uncommon attribute among many of the wayward souls of his condition. He bought turntables and vinyl and prided himself on the number of obscure good bands he listened to. Fucked up girls were attracted to this and the asshole he personified, but for all this, all the LA parties, all the LA girls, all the music, all the shows, Steve was isolated. A life of isolation grows heavy the heart and hardens the soul, and upon meeting Steve the first few times one wouldn't be hard pressed to envision his heart heavy or his soul hardened. He is a character though, and although there is hardly any scientific evidence behind it, I am of the belief that characters attract other characters. It is this reason, in part, that lends to the fact that Steve and Wes being roommates did not in the least bit surprise me.

They'd shared a two bedroom, two bath second story unit just off Lincoln and Venice. Their building was on Penmar, a street with a quaint and not altogether wealthy demographic on which financial stability was more or less dictated by the width of the street between any two given intersections; which in person is as quizzical as it sounds. Steve and Wes lived on the block where Penmar got the skinniest. From their second story balcony at the back of the building they were privileged to a lovely view of the back alley and some of the more disheartening backyards in Mar Vista.

Wes didn't mind it so much. He has his roots up north in the small mountain town of Bishop just outside of Mammoth; he's a man very in touch with Nature, and he's a vagabond. In fact, since the last time I'd seen him Wes had traveled across the country. By car. By himself. For six months, and apparently without a razor.

[to be continued]


Or so his story goes, but you never would've guessed it when he answered the door.  Two knocks on the small red door perfectly centered on the small light blue box house; the house is on a street with lots only on one side, and that side of the block looks particularly squashed together because of it.  Instead of facing a similar row of skinny single story homes, the door looks out across the street and over the intrepid Ballona Creek.  Now for those of you who know it, intrepid is hardly the word one would use to describe the fickle Ballona.  It kind of trudges drearily along from its origins in the LA city basin down it's miles and miles of concrete-coated river valleys until it finally finds its pompous run in the Pacific Ocean via the marina.  At this particular hour, it's illuminated by the orange-tint street lights that throw long shadows and give the whole place somewhat industrial demeanor, to the point that when Wes finally answers the door, Max and Grant and I are only too happy to scuttle inside.

There's a slight instance when Wes seems a bit different than his normal self; a sense of eagerness behind his eyes.  Or maybe it's just the year and a half it had been since I'd seen him. Nevertheless we feel safer.  Part in due to the lovely, cozy, and tastefully not lavish living room we now find ourselves in.  It turns out that Wes is house-sitting for a surfing friend, Chris, that I had met once or twice.  Chris was no older than twenty-seven and a construction site foreman.  Pictures of him and his beautiful wife (he had met her a couple years prior while backpacking through the Nordic countries of Europe) litter the bookshelves and counter-space.

[to be continued]


Wes feels obliged to give us all a tour of the humble little abode he's inhabiting while Chris and Mrs. Chris Nordic were off traipsing through central america on vacation.  It's small.  But for being so small, the place is a beautiful home.  A beautiful one bedroom, one bath home looking out over the concrete Ballona Creek valley.  Wes informs us that Chris had actually built a lot of the furnishings throughout the house; a couple bookshelves, a chair, a padded wood bench that looked sort of like a futon, and a tall desk that I'm particularly fond of.  The writing surface is maybe 4' x 2' and comes up to about my chest (roughly 5 feet).  It is made of a heavy wood and stained a dark mahogany brown, and I want it, most probably because of my unexplainable attraction to all things mahogany.  Or it could been the fact that I've just never seen a desk like that before.  It looks sort of like a movie prop.  I imagine it's the type of desk Ebenezer Scrooge would slave away at, sitting atop a high chair, bottles of ink, quills and parchment, all strewn across it and the ground in the surrounding vicinity.  The desk is truly a work of art.

Another sight to behold of awaits us in the backyard, which isn't so much a backyard as it is a patch of grass next to a high-gated driveway no one used that opened out onto a back alley.  But on that petite patch of grass Chris had erected a rather conservatively sized wood deck, just big enough for one of the lovelier daybeds I've ever seen.  Lovelier still, on a kind of high shelf next to the daybed, are a number of potted plants one could compare to a beautiful batch of budding roses.  Metaphorically speaking of course, because the rose buds are actually fuzzy bulbous marijuana nugs, and the thorns are actually pretty little marijuana leaves, or just more nugs.   And instead of breathing in and smelling the familiar rich aromatic perfume that makes girls weak in the knees and tempts passers-by to stop and appreciate, we breath in perhaps a more familiar scent that evokes giggles and giddiness and eventually grumbles from my stomach.  It's about time for a spliff.


[to be continued]


We'd rolled two in my room at my parent's house, and they're at this time procured from the chest pocket of my favorite flannel.  And in sets the welcoming rotation... Wes proceeds to captivate us with all the crazy mind-boggling details of his journey, highly animated as only Wes can.  He draws you in, and as he's telling us stories of the two weeks he'd spent sleeping in the back of his car in the pouring rain, of the fourteen hundred dollars he spent on gas,  of the incredible flatness of the Midwest, the flight to Puetro Rico, all of it, piling one on top of the other, he begins to take in the gravity of what he'd done as if he were experiencing it anew.  Looking into our awe-shocked stoned faces, his eyebrows would periodically raise, face rapt in astonishment at his own statements, only emphasizing the point further.

Weston Kinney had moved back home to Bishop, California for four months and saved up approximately four thousand dollars working restaurant jobs.  Then, at the prime age of twenty-two, he put the back seats of  his Ford Explorer down and slapped down a twin-size mattress on top of it.  Heading east, he'd pushed foot to pedal with a small bag of supplies and didn't look back, and somewhere along the way a beard had sprung up on his face.  It's not there now though.  He's shaven and clean-cut, but he shows us pictures of when he'd returned and lived in San Diego for a spell, working at the Wave House in PB.  He looked like a mountain man in the photos, his hair grown out long too.  But wait, I digress.  This ain't about Wes.  This is about us, Max and Grant and I, and this fucker of a field trip we're about to embark on.  Leave it to a spliff to get me ramblin' though.  And what's wrong with rambling?  That's right, nothing.  So we ramble and pretty soon our mouths taste like cotton balls so we head on over to La Cabana on Lincoln and Rose.  It's late, but that place don't close 'til two and the tacos are dank and cheap and the chips and salsa are free.  And the beers ain't too expensive either.  But at two they close up shop and kick us out.  We drop Wes off and head home for some shut-eye before our flight in the morning.  LAX > CLT >LGW.  It's hard to sleep when one's so excited; thank God for beer and spliffs.