There are places I remember

Hi! I'm new to the community but I just love reading all these great posts. Here's a little something I wrote, free-form prose style, about my favorite part of my hometown (Pittsburgh, PA.) It's as yet unfinished, maybe I'll add more when I have time. Please let me know what you think!




The South Side

It's a dirtypretty oasis in this fading dying town, a little bit of cool and artsiness amid the steel and beer and grit (although there's still enough of that there too). No matter how depressed or tired or disilusioned I am, I come down there and I'm magically happy, if only for a little while. It reminds me of the past, of happier times, of cruising down Carson Street with my friends on a summer evening, windows down and radio blasting, of walking the multiple blocks from Zenith in the January cold but not caring because the atmosphere and the company keep me in a happy little bubble, of deep conversations (even with strangers– especially with strangers) and strange adventures, asking waiters for phone numbers, flipping the bird at creepy catcallers, scribbling poetry in notebooks and on bathroom walls, sneaking wine at art openings, swirly sarong skirts and piercings, yummy vegan food and getting so jazzed on coffee you just want to dance on the table.
Driving down the long long street – on which I have tested my mettle by marching up and down it three times in the cold during and after an anti-war protest– you feel like you're on the Sunset Strip, or a river flowing to exotic locales. Parking down there's shit but who cares; it's worth it to drive around for a bit as long as you can hang out there later. It unfolds before you – storefronts, ethnic restaurants, bars (so many bars), cars full of drunken guys speeding down the street like maniacs, punks loitering, theater-goers speed-walking to shows, and so much more– and it goes on and on until you reach the more corporate chain part but even that's still kinda cool, only not as much as the lower parts of Carson Street. And once your feet tread the pavement you know you're there; you can feel it. So much coolness with a little bit of edgy danger thrown in to spice things up a bit, dark with light shining through, an urban jungle with magic lurking around the corners.
Where else but here can you buy awesome punka dunka clothes and multicolored fishnets and Manic Panic hair dye at Slacker and giggle like middle schoolers at the sex toys barely concealed at the back of the store, and try on super-short pleather skirts while trying to ignore the fact that the creepy long-haired punk guy behind the counter's probably ogling you (not to mention some of the customers...). Or Culture Shop, where they have the prettiest Indian embroidered sari skirts and tye-dyed sarongs and bangle bracelets and paper lanterns and tapestries and flowy cotton hippie shirts. Everything smells like the incense they sell there, and you drool over the elaborate dresses that you can't afford, try on the sparkly silver-and-gemstone rings in the counter case, and gaze reverently at the tiny Buddha and Krishna and Kali statues. The people who own it, the bearded guy with glasses and the hippie lady with the pierced nose, are so nice and they remember you if you're a regular and will joke with you about random stuff. And sometimes they'll bring their cute baby girl there and the mom will carry her in a Mayan wrap thing or put her in a cradle behind the counter. You float around there for hours, drunk on the exotic stuff and the music they play over the speakers and the cool ambiance. If you could you'd buy the whole store but that would suck because it'd have to go out of business.
E House Company is calming with the scents of lavender, chamomile, and aloe wrapping around you when you walk in, and warm which is so nice when it's winter and you've been walking down the frigid streets for a long time. Everything old is new again with recycled juice-box purses, CD cases made of license plates, driftwood carvings, jewelry made from soda-can tabs. You can buy pure soap and Burt's Bees cosmetics and organic herbal shampoos for cheap or organic cotton yoga pants or addictive Dagoba chocolate bars by the counter. And the books – so many, on sustainable living and vegetarian cooking and homeopathic remedies. Whenever you pay you always get into good conversations with the counter people, mostly about the products or about environmentalism but the discussions can turn into anything and they're always cool.
Inner Vision, sadly closed now, had all kinds of cool New Age shwag like incense and crystal jewelry and Josephine Wall greeting cards, and the woman who ran it was really awesome and funny. We'd talk to her about why George Bush is an asshole or about the South Side's dirty little secrets – like a guy who will pay you $80 to pee in a cup and give it to him or how there's a tanning salon that's actually a bordello on top and an S&M dungeon in the basement. I remember her standing out in front of the store in the snow during the anti-war protest waving a carboard sign that said "Wiccans For Peace," and how she and some other people and I gathered around the front of the store after the protest to light incense and pray for peace, only to get interrupted by the honking horns of angry asshole drivers who were mad at the protesters for blocking the street. We responded to their middle fingers by giving the peace sign and laughed at their stupidity. At the store, I'd always slip some change into the "Pagan Legal Defense Fund" jar on the counter and she'd smile. Now Inner Vision's been replaced by some kind of gaming store and I hope she and her daughter are doing well, wonder where they are now.
My friends turned me on to the pleasures of the hookah bar down there, and now I'm in love with it. Passing the nozzle around like a peace pipe, watching it bubble in the base when you suck in a puff, floating in a cloud of dreamy velvet rose-or-coconut-or-jasmine-smelling smoke, getting all mellow but not high and tasting the flavor on your lips after you're done. Laughing with friends and blowing smoke in each others' faces, which is even funnier now that Marya told us what it's British slang for. I was so scared to do it at first, but it's inspired some good times and even one of my better poems (the first draft of which was scribbled in my notebook at Tom's Diner directly afterward). One time the guy behind the counter was flirting with Marya and he gave us another hookah on the house; after having smoked two of those things we felt almost puke-dizzy when we left. He invited us to a party later that night but not only did we have to be home by my curfew, we knew he was just trolling for ass. But being at the hookah place makes me feel all Middle Eastern harem girl-esque and like the caterpillar in Alice In Wonderland, puffing out WHO...ARE...YOU?
Zenith...so many memories about Zenith Tea Room. The most scrumbolicious vegan food and desserts, leaving you in a dreamy-happy stupor when you're done.The yummy and cheap Sunday brunches, the one time except art openings when it's crowded, where you get an entree, iced tea, and your pick of the buffet for only $10. Thrifting in the antique store part of the restaurant, finding the most awesome vintage dresses and buying burgundy velour pumps like Dorothy's ruby slippers for really cheap. Seeing all the little trinkets there for sale, plastic Jesus statues and yellowed old cookbooks and teapots that look like watermelons, like you're scrounging through the attic of some cool eccentric old grandmama. The whole place is like what I imagine Grandma Fifi's house was like in Weetzie Bat, and I feel so FLB when I am there. Sipping on hundreds of funky herbal tea blends (even if you went there every day for a year you couldn't try them all). Looking at local artists' work hanging on the walls. The beautiful-souled bohos who work and hang out there, like the nice waitress with Bettie Page hair and dark-rimmed cat glasses or the punky-hippie-artist-dreamers who flock there for art openings. Having some of the best convos of my life with friends, about anything from the meaning of life to the importance of theater as an art form to guy troubles and why Orlando Bloom is the sexiest thing on the planet. Sharing poetry and thoughts and jokes and ideas over tofu-walnut "meatball" subs and vegan chocolate-mint bundt cakes. You have to walk multiple blocks to get there (which sucks when it's cold or you're not wearing proper walking shoes) and it's hidden on a side street but that adds to its charm; a hidden refuge for veg-heads and iconoclasts and anyone who likes the food and the ambiance.
No matter where you go on the South Side there's always pervy guys catcalling you; it's just not a full experience there without them. They come at you in many many forms, from the "drive-by hootings" (drunkenly yelling shit at you as they speed by in their cars), to coming up to you on the street, like when this creepy old guy who looked like Rob Zombie asked Rachel and me if we wanted to be in his horror movie, or when these toothless homeless guys clutching a liquor bottle in a brown paper bag hit on me and Marya while we were eating ice cream bars in a parking lot. Sometimes it's more subtle and happens inside the stores; one time for fun I tried on a pink pleather bustier at a costume shop and the manager waited by the changing room and ogled my boobs when I went out to look in the mirror. The same thing happened at Slacker only it was a store patron and I was trying on a black skirt with fringe that shimmied when I shook my ass just to tease him. If it's summer they'll sit outside at tables in front of the bars and mentally undress you as you walk by; one July evening when Rachel and Megan and I were walking back to the car some guys yelled "Free Blow Jobs!" at us as we passed, then chucked their glowsticks in our direction, hitting the curb below our feet. Usually I flip them the bird or yell back; I suppose it's best to ignore them but dissing them is kind of fun, like when a group of inebriated guys walked past Marya and me singing "I Wanna Sex You Up!" and I yelled "You wish, assholes!" Even though the guys are annoying and sometimes scary it's part of the whole South Side adventure and I accept it as such. And it's always fun to laugh insanely at the drunken guys' stupidity, which, sadly, is constantly a given.
Wherever my friends and I go we always seem to end up at the Beehive coffeehouse because it's open late and we can get coffee to recharge. This ain't your average corporate chain Starbucks (even though there's one across the street trying to usurp the Beehive's business, which it will never do).The lighting's subtle and punctuated with the sparkles of a disco ball on the ceiling, and the colorful murals on the walls and the Formica tables are so cool, the perfect backdrop for writing and thinking and conversation. Most of the people there smoke like chimneys but thankfully they have a non-smoking section, albeit half the size of the smoking one. We get jazzed on coffee and sugary desserts and ramble on for a long long time about anything until we have to leave for home. The bathrooms – yes, the bathrooms– are slinkster-cool; the everyone uses the colorful walls as a scrawl wall to write quotes and poems and philosophies and manifestoes. Usually about God (or the lack thereof) or about politics (especially why the current administration is crap), sometimes about lesbian or bisexual pride, so-and-so loves so-and-so, interesting song lyrics or random quotes. Every now and then you find something profound and cool written there, you just have to look. I wrote my favorite quote, "Love is a Dangerous Angel" on the scrawl wall, and you can still see it there to this day. Thanks to that, a part of me is literally always there even when I'm away or up at school.
Tom's Diner is another favorite after-place, especially for my carnivorous friends who appease my freaky veg ways by accompanying me to Zenith but don't order anything, so they go to Tom's later for grease-burgers and fries. Or as an alternative for the non-smoking people when a few of us want to go to the hookah bar. Or if we all just want a place to act crazy and drink strawberry milkshakes at midnight. It's neon and chrome and Formica, pies twirling in the rotating dessert case, checkerboard flooring and all-night retro comfort. After asking Juan Diego, the sexy Puerto Rican waiter at Taco Loco, for his e-mail addy to give to Marya, Rachel and I ran to Tom's for dessert and doubled over in the chrome-red vinyl booths, giggling our asses off over the fact that we actually did it. Megan would always do crazy shit there, mashing up her pancakes and pouring salt and pepper and ketchup on them, singing really loud, hitting people with her shoes – she does stuff like that everywhere but it's even cooler and funnier when it's in a fifties-style late-night diner after we've spent the evening doing similarly crazy stuff on the South Side. Everything just seems more fun there, especially being loud and stupid with friends – it's one of those places that seems like it's made for doing just that.
Taco Loco, also sadly closed now, replaced by a Thai-Mex fusion place, was another favorite hangout, mostly because of the cheap and authentic food and the aforementioned cute waiter. On Marya’s last night in the states before going to college in England, she took Rachel and Tina and I there for the first time to celebrate and show us firsthand what the infamous Juan Diego looked like. I ordered in Spanish, which the waiters thought was cool, and we laughed and made raunchy jokes whilst drinking banana batidos, watching Telemundo on the TV monitors, and trying to get her to talk to him. When we were done eating we left but convinced her to go back to flirt with Juan Diego, but she got all shy and we just made like one of us forgot her purse. Then we made her go back again and we finally asked him to take a picture with us because we offered the lame-ass explanation "it’s her last night in America and this is her favorite restaurant so could she get a picture to remember it by?" So Juan Diego and the older guy who owned the place posed with us; you could tell they were kinda weirded out but they complied anyway. And we knew that the other waiters would tease him in Spanish about his little "fan club." Especially a few months later when Rachel and I got his e-mail address for Marya. I don’t think she ever e-mailed him though. Lucky us, he never forgot a face, and he’d always remind us of the photo whenever we ate there. Looking back I realize that we acted like such teenyboppers, but it’ll probably be one of those things we’ll still be laughing our asses off about when we’re old ladies in a rest home.
There’s a Scientology center down there that always amuses us when we walk by, leading to discussions about weird cults and Tom Cruise’s insanity. I mean, it’s a religion based on freaking science fiction books! Once for kicks Marya and I stopped in there because they were offering free personality tests – we wanted to see how fucked up we were by their standards. So we took them and got similar results and of course the two guys there subjected us to a preachy sales pitch. Marya got into a good conversation about how your past affects your present life with one of the guys, but the other creepy one was explaining to me about how they believe that stuff said or done when you’re unconcious is what affects you, which I think is bull because unkind words and actions can mar you when you’re fully awake – perhaps even more so. And while I agreed that your past can be a source of problems and anxiety, I got into a debate with him about how chemical imbalances and heredity play a role in mental illness, but he said in this eerie voice "There’s no such thing as a chemical imbalance." Um, yes there is, it’s been scientifically proven. But he wouldn’t hear it. I sat around watching promotional videos while Marya talked to the other guy for an hour– she can get into deep or entertaining talks with anyone (probably on account of her being a Gemini. But I digress). Either way we were both rather weirded out when we left, but it was kind of neat to have a trippy encounter like that.