pierce me

I got my ear repierced this afternoon, going over to the tattoo parlor on the west side that a friend of mine recommended. Looking a little more clean cut than usual, no band shirt, no grotty jeans, I listened to people waiting daring each other to pierce their nipples as I perused the seemingly infinite combinations of tribal tattoos, gothic lettering, dragons, well-endowed women, and various edhardyisms. It felt a little culture-shockish I guess, more of the ghetto neck tattoo crowd than the hipsters with obscure musical references and art nouveau motifs inked on their shoulders. It was short and relatively painless, it's been five years since I took the gauges out and I now have a little hoop in my left ear that goes with nothing in my jewelry box, but I feel like I accomplished something as I hear the guy doing mine say he's not going to pierce that other girl "down there."

but this weekend, I decided to stay home Friday night and drink tea and be all spinster with Armenian comedies from the library and books, woke up early and went to the community garden meeting with my neighbor and hung out with people from other neighborhoods where there's otherwise very little cultural exchange and while I tend to avoid ascribing too much to "community," I felt a sense of what that might be like.

And then I took a couple college radio folks and the Queen of the Bondo on an epic east side jaunt through Slavic Village, the hood, a fabulous bookstore, a nice record store where I came home with two Pentangle records, and Heart and Mott the Hoople for a dollar each. My compadres found more esoteric material and the Queen of the Bondo and I chortled over old copies of Hit Parader explaining how to be punk before heading back west to non-foodie mecca Parmastan for damn good Indian food and sundry tale-telling. Not too shabby, I guess.