Wednesday, October 19, 2005

Day 3 THE CLOWN HOUSE IN CRISIS

I awoke to angry sounds. A giant truck(super clean, no cargo) was in the yard, with an angry man(also clean), who was throwing a bag of leaves and papers into the yard.
I guess last night some of our crew dumped the bag in his dumpster, and now he is pissed off. If we do it again, he is gonna call the Sheriff. I'm glad he didn't call them, and I'm grateful, but I still think of contractors and developers as criminals who get rich by raping the land and displacing the poor, while doing very little actual work ("That's what Mexicans are for"...actual quote from another rapist I worked near).
I just saw the complaint against us, thanks to a savvy hacker Jon, and the whole deal is about the Bone Yard. Just the bikes...I think the word "Junk" is referring to some real junk, but also to props and weird creations that you would have to actually TALK to us to discover what it is, and what it's function is. Last year, they hated our clothes line because they didn't know what it was.
The Bone Yard was a vital part of the house economy.
I think that, every year or so, a house as big as ours should have a dumpster, to get rid of excess stuff left by long gone roommates, and yard debris, but dumpsters are expensive! We can't afford that, our main goal is keeping the lights on and the rent paid. Selling stuff from the bone yard and using the parts to service people's bikes is a job we all do, it's a great way to show the kids we teach bike mechanics to the practical applications of the trade. Those bikes helped to teach 6 people how to weld this summer. Now it's all gone, swept away by the money greased pen of Hurricane Portland.
The final tally of the last ditch sell off....$112 I gave $12 to the crew for beer, under the stipulation that they drink it anywhere but around my house, and gave the hundie to Caffeine who told me it was almost how much money we need to get a sonigram photo of our unborn child.
We don't need a photo of the baby, and the money sure would go to better uses, but if we don't get the sonagram, then O.H.P. won't let her have the baby with a midwife. So the last money made by the wholesale slaughter of my livelihood just went down the drain.
The Bone Yard was not a heap, it was organized: from bare frames in the back, all the way up to almost complete bikes in the front, all in a row. With all the people who use the shop, there is an appearance of chaos, but we do have volunteers who come & organize from time to time, and if the city droog ever bothered to ask, we would have told them what was up.
It was never about the bikes. To them, I think it was pressure from the new high rent shopping and fooderies that pushed them to push us.
I'm trying to get as much done before I have to go to one of my jobs as a dishwasher. It's stressful to go to work not knowing what to expect in the next week. I cant masturbate without feeling like an ape in a zoo, so instead Ive taken to throwing feces at passing gawkers and beating my chest.
Gotta go to work now, more later on the breaking story...CLOWN HOUSE IN CRISIS

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

This should be a movie "Ernest vs. developers" too bad that guy died.

Anonymous said...

whoa! this is such big and exciting news to me -- ernest died!?! i mean, another clown baby! well, you know i am baby-friendly, now that i am a pro.

also what i wanted to say is that sometimes a dumpster is "reasonable" (price) to get, say once a year, if you get a giant one and split it with some nearby folks. we did a 3-neighbor split of this huge one (i dunno, i cant eyeball these things; and dont remember.. 20 yards?) .. i think we chipped in about $15 and got rid of just about every huge, un-give-awayable chunk of debris in our yard. (others paid more of it cuz they were using like half the space.) anyway, just a thought. plus its fun to have friends (and ones you dont know) bringing their junk from blocks away. trash on parade!

Dingo Dizmal said...

How about a short story that takes place in Kittyhawk N.C. during the turn of the century about how the plane was never invented because of a city agent and a few high dollar shopping centers?

Sorry I forgot your birthday song.