The befuddling neofeudalist scrapbook continues
Narration
I had cabin fever at home, pacing around all day, and had to go out somewhere. I packed my camo daypack too full and walked 3 miles south to the trolley station under the pink-orange sunsetting sky. Looking at Google Maps, I decided to visit Lestats in North Park to write on my laptop. At the Morena-Linda Vista trolley station, I met this 63-year-old black lady who looks 40. She asks about my plans.
“I'm going to the hipster neighborhood for the bars.”
She assumes this is to get laid. She's confused at my “no” answer. “So are you gay? That's disgusting!” This otherwise fun conversation lasts another 10 minutes. She liked my jokes.
I hop on the trolley for a minute, deboard at Old Town where it's now dark out, and wait for the 10 bus. I film an unnecessary TikTok on the bus bench. The driver returned from his smoke break and it's ready to go. Inside the lights were turned off, and I'm listening to the bro comedian Jim Norton talking about the struggles of dating a transgender girl for the next 20 minutes. The Google Maps lady misses my stop. I hop off near the Livewire dive bar—I went there once, the red lights, decor, and clientele gave the feel of an 80s punk movie.
I walk down the street filming nonsense and see Serpentine Cider. It's an unfamiliar place I'll try. I have celiac disease, no beer for me, so I drink cider a lot.
This place is much cleaner, brighter, and the tables are all empty. Just one bartender who I assume is also the owner. She hung AI-generated photos of bedrooms and home decor down the 30-foot back wall, listed as $25 a piece. AI slop is now invading the real world. Two office workers beside me discuss using AI for transcribing meeting notes and cutting the Zoom calls into short clips. After my apple pie flavored hard cider, I leave for another place.
The Lafayette Hotel and Bar catches my eye. It has a lavish old-timey interior, packed with an influencer infestation. All gorgeous, size 0, taking too many photos and videos. The circular bar takes 20 minutes to flag a bartender. I eavesdrop on a girl insulting me to her friends—how I push my way around saying “pardon me, excuse me” with my obnoxiously filled backpack that I should've left at home. I wander to a leather couch booth, and I'm sad thinking about my clumsiness and dwell on taking up too much space. I listen to sadder songs on earbuds and snap an unneeded selfie holding up a drink, pretending I'm having a good time.
I'm over it now. I find another door leading to an outdoor smoking area. On the other side: a huge arcade of real games and another bar. I stow my backpack under a high table in a dark alcove, grab another drink, and make small talk with two awkward guys about music. Now I want to play billiards. I partner up with a chill biracial dude. He has friend with the surfer hair. Long and brown but bleached from the sun and sea. He's from Encinitas and we connect on metalcore music. The friend seems like a douche but we follow each other on Instagram—a networking move. He mentions another friend's band is looking to record. I have the microphones and the mixing experience to lend a hand. I follow that band and it never happens. Networking in person always fails. Every freelancing gig I've landed originated online.
We play pool. I sink most of the stripes. The last 8-ball is drawn out. Our frat bro opponents give up: “whatever dude, you win.” They're sore losers. My partner gets mad and storms off.
Next I play the curling game with a bad partner, and win that for us too. Then I shoot hoops alone, introspecting on my inability to make friends here. I have a conversation about the arts with a rich Gen X'er. I show him my artwork on my phone, give him my number which he never texts. At the smoking area, I pop a Zyn and converse with more patrons. I'm a social butterfly in this hypomanic state.
I return to the smoking area to persist in trying my luck with approaching strangers.
I see some guys in their 20s, one smoking, two friends not.
“Do you guys want some Zyn?”
The nonsmoking friends take one each, seem excited.
“You can take a few. This is harder to get.”
“This is Cinnamon? Oh my god yes, you can't buy the flavors anywhere here,” says a slender, tall white guy with cropped brown hair.
I retort, “Yeah it sucks that the gas stations only have chill and smooth. I order this online. I'm kind of a scammer, hacker.”
His fat Latino friend says, “Yeah me too, I have this one scheme for the free Costco.” I think to myself that he's outplayed me.
I discover a third outside bar, and it's less popular. I sit on a bar stool and meet a black kitchen staff girl who's off the clock. We have more in common than what I assume are the moneyed patrons. We have a long conversation about all the stupid trust fund kids and the influencer plague. We both started working at 16.
My story I didn't share was different. My construction contractor dad drove me around at age 15 to apply for jobs with firm handshakes. As a boomer, he thought this was the right move. In the late 2000s, the applications were moving online. Walking in was a hassle. The Vons manager told me “the stack of applications on my desk is yay high,” gesturing 3 feet with expanding hands. Telling me to fuck off in corporate speak.
Because of such failures, and my dad requiring me to find work, I completed under-the-table Craigslist gigs from 15-18. I once drove out to East County, down a dirt road with hairpin turns in my grandma's Saturn with the broken AC. This was Uber before Uber. I picked up a skinny man in his 50s with graying hair and a sunken face, to drive him around to his job installing sound systems. At one stoplight, I jolted the car stopping too short.
“What the fuck, watch the road! You kids can't even drive these days.”
He was spot on. I was a particularly bad novice. He paid me merely $30. Far below the minimum wage, half my gas cost. At least we stopped at Albertsons for a few days of his groceries. He gave me a bag of chips and a Monster. Back in his driveway, he offered me another gig digging holes but never called.
My first real job was the Arclight movie theater at age 19. I barely passed the interview. They were confused how my resume listed a civil engineering internship in high school. And they criticized how nervous I looked. Finding a first job was probably straightforward for this girl I just met. Part of my trouble was how awkward and socially inept I was in the interviews.
I steer the conversation toward the apps that I'm addicted to. She'd never visited 4chan, but had a cop aunt who prosecuted a case where the criminal disclosed the crime on the imageboard. I fill her in on the internet brainworms that the TikTok hotties have. She said “nice to meet you, this was fun.” I slowly sip the rest of my gin and tonic, still lonely. I close out it was $17 with a low tip.
I return to the main lobby bar, wait another 25 minutes. I'm by a table of gorgeous girls with black hair, I offer to take a group photo of them, they happily accept. They share a basic appreciation. I show them my Canon G7X camera I use for content. They say it's cool but return to their drunk conversation.
This side is impossible to order from. I walk around to a less busy side. A buff Latino guy starts talking to me. He has two beautiful girls from Tijuana with him. He's trying to arrange a threesome later. It seems like they're out of his league, and they only speak limited English. The guy was born in Campo and can't speak Spanish like they'd prefer. I drop a few phrases. My Spanish abilities return when I'm drunk.
His face looks puzzled. He inquires “bro what? Are you Mexican?”
“No dude, I'm white.”
The girls are confused by my awkward phrasing. They teach us a bit of the real Latin American dialect to flirt that we would both forgot the next day.
We finish our drinks and insists on paying for mine. Este hombre is planning the next move. The San Diego bars close at 2am. These girls hoped to party all night like in TJ. He's grateful I acted as the wingman, and halfheartedly invites me to follow them. I decline because I'm starving for a greasy meal. I need to soak up the alcohol.
I spot a McDonald's but the lobby's closed at 1am. I always forget that inconsistency. The walk-up window has two Pakistani Doordash drivers waiting for orders. I try talking to them and they say “no, no English.” I hear banter in their native tongue, and apparently my new language barrier roaming these streets is Urdu. I'm taken aback considering that reality. I recall Colima's taco shop isn't far. I walk another few blocks, and it's packed inside. I order the birria tacos and add on a Tamarind Jarritos to counteract the spice. I wait for my food and read a Substack article on my phone. A group of scantily clad gay bears and twinks walk in preceding their hookup. They look nervous and deliberate for 10 minutes on what to order. These two nearby encounters prove just how multicultural this city is.
Estos tacos de birria estaban deliciosos. At the San Diego taco shops, I always choose the watery salsa verde, but tonight it's the guacamole salsa. I pick up peppers from the salsa bar too—the spice level is overwhelming for my Caucasian taste buds. My nose runs, clearing the sinuses completely. That's what the soda's for.
I sit at a bus bench and open Lyft, hoping for the easy way home. It's $40. Goddamn surge pricing. I have a crazier plan: hike the 6 miles plus the trolley home. I've done this many times before. I call myself a hardcore pedestrian due to the thousands of miles moving on concrete that's bad for my feet.
Shortly into this citywide witching hour hike, I spot a blonde figure inspecting broken furniture in the gutter, with a one speed bike beside her. Anyone else would be nervous passing by. I thought she was a guy from afar. Closer contact shows that she might be transgender. Sometimes I falsely I assume that. Her name is Scarlet. She scraps this litter for money.
She's wearing nice black outdoors clothes with the high-end bike gear and scrapping tools. We compare flashlights, as you do. Hers was $130, mine was $80. We shine them up at buildings, and they're of comparable brightness. When Scarlet flips all the junk, she uses the money to level up in the tools of the trade. She's an expert in many domains of the upper middle class and rich people's litter.
Two of her friends catch up. We walk and push the bikes together. I chat with the older lady Deb. She's short and also has blonde hair. Deb has a master's degree in education, used to teach elementary school. Then she fell ill with cancer, and her husband divorced her over the pressure. The treatment put her in the medical debt with no means to pay, no husband to help with the costs, and she lost her job from the absenteeism.
She's interested in my life story that I yap about. How I went to the High Tech High International, shot a zombie movie in Liberty Station during the summer with my brother. How we went into an abandoned building finding the bird shit, needles, the homeless trash. One boomer lady called the cops because of our airsoft guns that we painted black. All our friends wanted to run. I told them we're doing nothing wrong, and calmly explained the situation to the cops. They told us to stow the fake guns away and drove off to write more traffic tickets. Because of my rapid stories, Deb says I'm a sweet, smart young guy. It's unfair that people like her are discarded like trash when times get tough.
The homeless perpetually struggle to eat and survive til the next night. They wander the cities finding spots to lay their heads during the day. For her and others in Hillcrest, it's in the abandoned, disgusting buildings. Scarlet and Deb chat about finding a dead body in one. Their tone is lighter, more cheery than such tragedy deserves. Being homeless, you don't report the gruesome findings to the cops.
People like Deb rack up 10-20 unpaid tickets. The cops will throw you in jail once they run your record, even if you helped discover a serious crime. I later learned I see and talk to the homeless after midnight because the daytime is safer to snooze. At night, another homeless man could rape you or steal your belongings.
When I slept on the Oxnard streets in August 2023, a goblin in a maroon hoodie stole $150 of items from my bag at 6am. I was half asleep, saw him pedaling off on a bike, unaware until I returned to San Diego. Later that morning, I found his drainage tunnel lair – two bedrooms with a tarp roof, furniture, and a pile of bike tires. I photographed and videotaped graffiti. If I knew the place was his, I would have gotten revenge by stealing some of his electronics or destroying the setup.
On my walk toward the Oxnard train station earlier in the night, I tried and failed to sleep in the dirt in a few spots. A chubby Latino man passed me by and I woke up yelling painfully at him, assuming he was someone else looking for me. I was too alert and paranoid. He was taken aback: “Sorry that's not me, I'm just walking to work.”
At 2am, an emaciated homeless man offered to smoke crack together. He was dumpster diving from the medical facilities in the area, and found an expensive machine he couldn't identify. He flipped it for a fraction of its value. When I said no to the crack, he shoved me onto a bus bench: “Please smoke this shit with me man. I'm so so lonely.” I yelled a nonsensical excuse as I left him behind.
In this state of mind I had the messianic delusions—that I was saving the world through blowing my savings, walking 4-8 miles daily aimlessly, and writing the Substack posts hardly anyone read. I filmed 20 insane Instagram Stories a day and tons of TikToks that hurt my reputation.
After I rejected the homeless man's crack, I went to a sandy spot behind the road barriers. I called Gio, who I met at a folk punk house show in 2019. Gio kept pushing me to take this manic psychosis further for his entertainment—ruining my life for the lulz. I asked him for $200 to get out of this mess. He said he couldn't afford it. I later found out he's unemployed, lives with the rich parents who give him allowance to gamble on the crypto shitcoins.
My desperation reeked from my voice and posts alone. I still considered him a good friend. Gio later hired me to program an AI voicebot girlfriend. He wanted to clone the voice of Anna Khachiyan from the communist-turned-fascist Red Scare podcast. I thought it was unethical, but I accepted his $350 in Ethereum while holding it until finishing the project. I never did. I alienated him in a 3 hour phone call until he hung up and blocked me online.
My stint at pretending to be homeless was unnecessary. It was the mental illness. Upon my family finding me at a gas station McDonalds, my brother said I really should have called him for a ride back to the tourist sailboat he worked on, where I originally stayed. I got too bored sitting on deck and stupidly wanted excitement in a boring town. Some like being homeless for the freedom. Others like Deb wouldn't have chosen it. A series of misfortune can land anyone on the streets.
I depart from these Hillcrest homeless acquaintances. They ask where I'm staying.
“Oh I found a place in Clairemont.”
“Right on, that's a good area to lie low,” Scarlet says.
It's a white lie to keep their trust, or the inverse embarrassment about having a stabler life.
On my journey home from North Park, I'm filming more videos to process what happened. I pass through Mission Hills, check a Little Free Library with the good books. I snatch a paperback copy of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick—the book that inspired Blade Runner.
I reach Presidio Park, spooky as hell at night. There's a mission museum further down. In the California schools, you learn about the Spanish conquerors who enslaved the Indians at the missions. A Spanish friar is still the San Diego Padres mascot. Every California schoolkid had to construct a mission diorama.
A Mormon battalion is buried there. Their ghosts haunt the park. I could've sworn I've seen one at night. What's also ominous is the raised Witches' platform with a pentagram laid in the brick floor.
I walk downhill beside Old Town San Diego, a Mexican-themed tourist trap. I've frequented the busy transit station since I was a kid. It's dirty and sometimes sketchy. In high school, taking the 105 bus home, I once saw a young Latina woman stabbed by an assailant from the window. Somehow this didn't phase 16-year-old me.
I arrive at Old Town before 5am. The tweakers there have me nervous. One scrawny white guy with brown hair fiddles with his skateboard, speaking in tongues. The other is bald with the demonic face tattoos and freaky body mods. I'm dictating what happened that night to my phone keyboard when the horror movie character confronts me, insinuating I'm calling the cops on him.
“No I'm schizophrenic. I just talk to myself a lot.”
He says I should hit the pookie with them. I decline, saying I won't fuck with that shit because it would worsen the schizophrenia.
This demon says, “No man that's exactly why you should do this with us right now!”
I stand my ground, and let the conversation trickle off. My heart races as any heart would. My train comes 5 minutes later and I jump on as fast as I can. I've since decided to converse with the homeless less. They tend to be unreliable narrators telling half-truths. A professor who's studying this societal problem, or a volunteer at an aid organization, would share better insight than the tweakers and dropouts themselves. I've felt an overwhelming empathy for them, and have to dull that sense to take transit and be a pedestrian with the same detachment as everyone else. It'll still piss me off when people feign to care about them while never handing them an extra water bottle at a stop light. I must stay vigilant about my mental health to prevent a real stint on the streets.