Tuesday, Oct. 16, 2001 - 10:08 a.m.
I slept all day yesterday, after having been up for over 24 hours on Sunday. I mixed shows in New York and Pittsburgh this weekend, which meant that I had to fly on 4 planes in as many days. I've resolved that I wouldn't worry about flying, especially since it looks like I''ll be doing a lot more of it for work. One of the musicians that I travelled with to the Pittsburgh show concurred. As he put it, air travel is essential to our livelyhood and once we're on the plane, we've given up control of our fates for the duration of the flight. Hence, we should just enjoy the ride.
After almost missing the 6 a.m. van to the airport in Pittsburgh, I flew back to New York on Sunday morning. I headed straight from the airport to another job in Brooklyn. After work I went out with EB, who I was staying with. Several hours and drinks later we found ourselves in a bar in my old neighborhood. We were about to head home when this hipster comes into the bar saying shit about the arabic guys at the deli across the street hating America. This statement seemed based primarily on the fact that they were arabic. This guy then went on to spout a whole bunch of rhetoric about the urban underclass, telling us that he was from the streets, etc. He actually at one point said, "Yeah, I lived in South Central for a week." Then he said that he had been living in the neighborhood we were in for five years, or "back when it was a ghetto", as he put it.
This was a mistake. First of all, said neighborhood hasn't been anything resembling a ghetto for 20 years. Second, He was in the presence of EB and 2 of his friends, who had lived in this neighborhood their entire lives. There was a lot of shouting and we left/got kicked out of the bar. EB's friends stood outside ranting about how badly hipster guy needed to get his ass kicked. EB and I went and got sandwiches at the deli that allegedly hates America. We told the deli guys, who have been in the neighborhood forever, about it. They laughed. We left the deli, and our companions had another confrontation with hipster guy, which got dispelled and we headed home.
A block down the road this homeless fellow came up to us. EB's friends told him that some guy down the street was talking shit about America, and the homeless guy ran off in pursuit. EB's friends followed. It was fucked up.
By the time we got home, I had 2 hours before I had to leave for my flight back to Georgia. I fought sleep by watching shitty cartoons on boomerang.
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