DaveandkaraUStour2011: Days eighty-one through eighty-seven.
We didn't really do much while in Phoenix, honestly. But we really loved being there and spending time with Tristan and Erin, both of whom were pretty busy most of the time. Their home was comfy and it was nice being able to sit around and do nothing. Phoenix itself was like another world entirely. No other place we've been even begins to compare to the unique landscape, bizarre weather, and weird business practices. Our first day there, we all slept in. It was great finding two more people who actually mean it when they say they'll sleep in the next day. After sitting around and talking a bit, they took us to an outer part of the city called Tempe and bought us dinner at a vegan place called Green. They left NPR on for Quark while we were out and then we left in Erin's tiny, red car with backseats that felt like the inside of an oven. Green was big and packed and had a lot of cool local art on the walls, none of which was being sold for more than $100. They specialized in vegan comfort food and their menu was pretty hard to choose from. Luckily, Tristan and Erin wanted to sit there and hang for a while, as well as eat a decent amount of food. Their mock chicken wings were one of the greatest things to ever go in my mouth. Their shakes were, too. I got some kind of chicken parmesan sandwich for a meal with fries and it blew me away. Everything Erin said was hilarious. The ride back to the house was scalding as the heat poured in through the windows while they were down. The air that hit your face was warm like a radiator. The highways were unlike any others we'd ever seen, with cacti decorating the side of the roads with red-tinted sand and palm trees, which are not indigenous to the state at all but were planted there years ago regardless. Tristan and Erin both had jobs, of course; Erin had school and tons of homework, too. Along with that, Tristan had band practices and other friends to tend to. So Kara and I ended up spending a lot more time alone than we had anticipated. This wasn't that big a deal, though, since we were both still physically and mentally exhausted from the last two and a half months.
Our first day in Phoenix was incredibly hot, but the sky was beautiful and crisp like a desktop background. The neighborhood was laid out in such a weird, unfamiliar way. There was a lot of space and an over-abundance of abandoned houses and businesses with huge empty lots of just dirt or sand at certain corners. The houses were all totally different like they too had been planted here from other states and countries. Most of them lacked second floors, but made up for it in width, a lot of them looking like adobe homes and even more of them painted in festive colors. They had stray dogs, too. Kara and I thought we had seen a stray pitbull one night, but wrote it off. But the next day, we actually saw another one walking with his brown sidekick, both walking in unison, kissing each other, and waiting for the other to catch up at times while Kara and I gave them some attention. Tristan told us there are a lot of strays here, but they are also taken care of by various neighbors like feral neighborhood cats sometimes are in other places. He also told us about a gang of chihuahuas that roams around and waits for you to turn your back to start barking at and chasing you. Like I said, this place was otherworldly. The first day, Erin ended up leaving to babysit and Tristan went to work at a cafe called Jobot. We had plans to meet him later at a legendary local venue called The Trunk Space, which Tristan is a volunteer at and was also playing at that night in his brother's band. Across the street from us was a little convenience store run by a nice foreign man with a strong accent of unknown origins. He was really friendly, though. They had $1 refill sodas that we took advantage of. That night, we walked two miles through the city to The Trunk Space. We stopped in the local DIY business neighborhood to visit Tristan at work on our way there. They have this entire block of businesses that are in what used to be residential homes: coffeehouses, art galleries, a screen printing place. It's so fucking cool. The night was cooler and more calm on our way there, drinking Faygo rootbeers that Tristan insisted we take on the house from Jobot. He also told us to tell the door guy that he had us covered when we got there.
Walking the streets there at night, we noticed that there were a lot more homes and business spaces abandoned than we had originally thought. The city seemed like a squatter's paradise. There was a lot of local business, too, to compensate for the outskirts of what made up the majority of Phoenix: a large sprawl of corporate lots and strips. With that, there was a lot of great artwork decorating just about every establishment there. When we got to the Trunk Space, we sat around and waited for the first act to play. We didn't expect them to be as bad as they turned out to be. We ended up sitting outside against the wall just to escape the sounds they were making. The space was really cool, though. Tristan wasn't scheduled to leave work and meet us there for another two hours, so we decided to walk two miles back to the house instead. We were both still really exhausted, even though we had gotten more than enough sleep. Before we left, a relentless bombardment of strong winds struck and sent sand in our eyes and teeth, forcing us to try and cup our hands over our eyes while walking back to the house. It went from the mid-nineties and sweaty with no breeze to the sixties with a breeze strong enough to move you. Outside of the Circle K, where we got some soda, an inebriated homeless man stood up and walked towards us just to say to me, "She walks better than you!"
Quark!
Phoenix sunset.
Kara being a dork about giant cactus with bulky arms.
The next day was equally as lazy, if not more so, while Erin and Tristan were gone all day. We didn't do much. We walked over to this place in the business-house neighborhood called Conspire who had signs advertising vegan doughnuts. It was all vegan, co-operatively run by its employees, and also served as an art gallery and venue. Overall, it sounded like the perfect place. When we got there, a girl was standing up and painting on the wall, while a guy who seemed half awake or maybe just high on something haphazardly took our orders. Unfortunately for us, there were no doughnuts and no Gardein vegan chicken, which canceled out about half of the menu we found worth trying. We stood around for a bit and then decided to leave. It was pretty disappointing. That afternoon, we were lucky enough to witness a natural phenomenon somewhat exclusive to Phoenix and places like it. This occurrence in the sky is called haboob, a dust storm of sorts, and causes the sky to become completely grey. Later that evening, we went out for pizza with Tristan and Erin, both of whom had decided not too long ago to take the final plunge into veganism. We went to a place called Pizza Heaven. According to Tristan and Erin, they had the best vegan pizza in the city, reigning over the seven zPizzas that were in town. It was pretty fancy, like a real Italian restaurant. They even threw the word "bistro" in their name. It was probably the first time since I was a kid that I had been seated in a booth to order pizza. They didn't use Daiya, which is mind-boggling to me whenever I find out a place doesn't, but they did seemingly know how to successfully utilize Follow Your Heart. The pizza was big, thick, and yummy, though some of our slices were too burnt to enjoy. We complained in hopes of getting our money back or at least a discount. When the waiter came back, he said, "My manager isn't here, so I can't take anything off the bill, but I've got something better!" He then handed me a coupon worth up to $7 for a free pizza upon my next purchase. Um... not better than free pizza, sir. Whatever, though. That night, I started using their air conditioner thing, which isn't actually an air conditioner; it's some other thing with a giant wheel inside of it that makes the warm, dry air outside cool. I loved having it shoot into my face all night long, while I stayed up late and reminded myself how much fun it is to stay up late online, looking at gross images and watching new movies.
"It's haboobin'!" Tristan said.
The next day, we gave a second chance to Conspire. We wanted so badly to love it, since it encapsulated just about everything we adored: vegan food, DIY, art, music, anarchism, co-operative sustainability, community. As we approached the place, we passed a picnic table of fashionable industrial-punks and goths who "worked" there but were sitting around outside. One sighed lazily until another one got up and said, "I'll take care of it." There were still no doughnuts and still no Gardein. The girl was still painting on the wall, and finished it before painting over the entire thing with white to start over again. She was the one who made the doughnuts, but she claimed she, "couldn't afford the oil to make them." We were so hungry that we still ordered. We got an order of nachos, a pita pizza, and Kara got a veggie wrap. The hummus there was disgusting, but the nachos were hands down the best vegan nachos we'd ever had. They used Daiya the way it should be used, rather than just flaking the pieces on top and heating it up. They finely melted the cheese in with the veggies, beans, and tortilla chips. It was just the right amount of spicy and huge. I didn't want it to end. The pita pizza wasn't bad, either. The seats there didn't really give you much room, though, and the Rammstein-esque music blared inside was annoying. The art currently hung up there was incredible. The so-called infoshop was really just random books they'd received for free. The guy didn't tell us how much the food was until I had to ask. Then he made it up off the top of his head. When we left, we were nice and full, but neither of us figured we'd ever go there again. It's one of those places that serves as excellent ammunition to those out there who oppose anarchism and the rebellious youth movements. If I didn't know anything about veganism and anarchy and volunteer-run businesses, I'd say right off the bat that we stood no chance in hell of surviving in such a world. As a popular local place somewhat representing these ideologies, it's a shame they're doing it so sloppily and lazily. We sat around all day. It rained for a little bit, but not for long. The rain drops were large and wet and the sky looked like it was about to materialize a tornado, but never did. We ordered Chinese that night while Tristan and Erin went to a birthday dinner. It was better than any Chinese I'd ever had before, even Taste Of China, my hometown Chinese pride and joy. The last couple of nights we were there, Tristan's younger brother stumbled into the apartment in the middle of the night, usually drunk, and passed out on the couch.
Around Phoenix.
What we thought was going to be our last night in town, we still didn't get to hang out with Tristan and Erin as much as we would have liked to. We had a few great sessions of hanging out with them over the last couple of days whenever they weren't too busy working, Erin doing homework, or Tristan spending time with one of his many friends. Tristan is one of my favorite people to talk to in the world and I cherished every moment we had to do so. We all watched Good Will Hunting one night together. Another night, we all went to the Trader Joe's and got some food. I ate nuggets and we stayed up late, just talking to Tristan and hearing his life story, which is extremely odd to say the least. I love hearing how people came to be who they are. We stayed up late that night. Even though I hadn't given it the attention I gave previous stops on this trip, I already adored Phoenix. The people, the attitude, the inconsistent weather, the ready availability of things I enjoy; it was all great. But we knew we had to get going the next day. We were going to really miss Quark. He had spent more time with us than Tristan or Erin combined while we were there. He is by far one of the greatest dogs we'd ever met.
Our first attempt at hitchhiking out of Phoenix, we woke up later than we should have. My body would just not let me get us. I think it had gotten way too drunk on the comforts of a bed to myself with cool air blowing on me. We didn't even leave the house to head to the on-ramp until 3:30. It was really hot that day and we ended up walking over two miles to the bus stop just so we could get off at what was the nearest on-ramp. On the way, we were lucky enough to spot the "psychic pig" that Tristan had told us about, a pet pig who lives at the Palmistry psychic place around the block. He was very talkative and bristly. While waiting for the bus and sweating away in high-ninety degree weather, a guy walked by us and asked how we were doing. I shrugged, never wanting to lie but also never wanting to engage in a conversation about how unwell we were actually doing, and he just responded with, "He will." What? "Have faith." It made no sense, but most things that end with the words, "have faith," do. We entered a mostly industrial area with a lot of auto-centered business, always a bad omen for hitchhikers. The shoulder was non-existent at both corners we could stand at, but traffic was decent for a while. We tried one spot where hardly anyone was going north, then decided to stand on the side of the road in the shade since we had read online that the Arizona laws define "roadway" as only the part of the road that cars are actually driving in, thus legalizing standing on the sides and in the shoulders, or so we assumed based on our loose understanding of the vague laws that always surround hitchhiking. A little before 5, after no more than twenty minutes of standing there, a cop told us we had to leave. He didn't ask for our IDs, for our story, or even explained why we had to go, and when I asked him what he suggested we do to get out, he of course offered impractical, empty advice, such as telling us to try the truck stop that was four miles up the interstate (and therefore out of our reach if we couldn't hitchhike), or suggesting we try to get out over at the nearby QT gas station (which is obviously private property and therefore even more illegal than what we were already doing). Instead, we crossed the street and tried over there again, before deciding to disregard the cop altogether and return to back the way we came, which at that point had somehow lost all its traffic. At 7, we gave up and walked to an AM/PM gas station to sit outside and drink lots of cold soda. We leaned the sign by us just in case, but we knew it wouldn't amount to much. Some guy handed us a giant handful of change, but that was it for the duration of our loitering there.
Either due to the horrendously hot weather that day or because we made sandwiches with old bread earlier, we both felt really sick to our stomachs, me worse than Kara. A Hispanic woman in rolled-up black sweat pants and a white tank top walked up to us with a thick collection of folded-up paper and said that she was collecting people's information to try and get alcohol legalized in some town outside of Flagstaff whose name I could not decipher no matter how many times I asked her to repeat it. She said we would get $5 right then and there if we just gave her our information. So we said, "Sure." But then she handed us the folded-up papers and a pen and said, "All I need are your birth dates and Social Security numbers." We looked at each other and immediately told her no. No crumpled $5 bill is going to get us to give some shady Hispanic woman our Social Security numbers. Jeez. Another guy asked us if we were going to Flagstaff. We said yes and he responded with laughter. And that was that. We called Tristan and him and Erin picked us up an hour or so later. They had both had bad days, so we made sure to cheer each other up that night. Kara and I watched The Lion King that night and sat online, trying to devise a better plan to get out of Phoenix.
Psychic pig!
145 miles.
We woke up the next day, again, way later than we probably should have. We decided the night before that we should get as far out of Phoenix as we could via their local buses, which would get us about fourteen miles north of where we already were. So we walked a mile and a half through the college part of town and waited for the first of two buses we'd have to take. We saw two elder scumfucks and their dog in the distance and avoided eye contact accordingly. But our big packs called them near anyway and they found it necessary to walk up and ask, "Where are you kids goin'?" and then spout advice as if they were more informed than we were. We snubbed them pretty hard and they eventually disappeared. We caught the first bus three miles away to a really grimy part of town where we waited for our next bus next to two incoherent, sketchy men, one of whom was holding the biggest piece of fried chicken I'd ever seen in one hand and a hypodermic needle in the other. It was somewhat terrifying. We rode the bus for nearly an hour before getting off at our stop, at the furthest northern point of the Phoenix city limits. Where we stood was hot and the only shade lay up against the wall we were near, next to the must-turn-right lane onto the ramp we were trying to get on. There was a lot of traffic across three lanes. It was almost 4:30 when we started. An hour later, we were still there. But staring at the road for so long, we noticed something crumpled up in between two cars waiting for the green light: a $5 bill! That was pretty cool. I rushed into traffic and grabbed it. Then an old woman gave us $5 from her car and said, "Good luck!" Right after that, a young Latina girl gave us $5. It was so cool to make $15 in fifteen seconds. A nice guy had parked his car around the corner and walked down the block just to come talk to us. His name was Dale and he was one of those ridiculously kind people who seemed genuinely disappointed that he couldn't help us any more than he physically could. He said he couldn't give us a ride and sounded honestly disappointed about it. He gave us $4 and a handful of change and then walked away. A hundred feet away, he turned around, and walked back up to us at the same exact time that a cop car on the other side of the street stopped dead in traffic, since cops live in a world where the only cars in the road are theirs, and started yelling at us through ongoing cars in our lane. We wanted to pay attention to Dale, so we used him as an excuse to ignore the cops. I kept looking at them and saying, "What?" and pretending I couldn't hear them. Their last words were, "LEAVE! Or we'll take all your money and write you a ticket!" Dale was offering us a ride to the next exit, anyway. So we went with him to his white pick-up truck and took it. He was really friendly.
We hung out at a gas station while one Hindu employee fixed a security camera and the other stumbled around drunkenly. We drank a soda and then set ourselves up under the setting sun by a lamppost. Neither of us could believe that we were still basically in Phoenix. But at 7:30, we were picked up by a guy in a white pick-up that was filled with stuff. His name was Clint and he started out normal enough by talking about Flagstaff and mentioning Supai, the densely populated village by the Grand Canyon that I had read about the day before that is so detached from the rest of the world that mail is delivered to and from them by mule. It got a little bit weirder, but at least was still somewhat interesting, when he started talking about these petroglyphs found in the Grand Canyon along with mummies who he claimed were twelve feet tall, citing some obscure Phoenix Gazette article from the early 1900s that was never followed up on after being publicized. Sounded intriguing, since I'm into historical mysteries and all that. But then he started talking about the pyramids and how they were obviously constructed with the help of another species, according to him likely aliens, and that these twelve-foot tall "giants" were the ones who helped. From there, he went on this long tirade about how there is a huge cover-up by the government in regards to extraterrestrial life and these ancient giants. He then brought up Genesis and said that, in the Bible, they mention these giants, and said that, according to what he's read in the Bible, these giants were demons who came to Earth and impregnated Egyptian women, creating these hybrids that eventually would build the pyramids and other giant Egyptian structures using their advanced, divine strength and sizes. He said this despite the fact that it has already been explained how average human beings built the pyramids and that the size of these giants (and, hence, their anatomy) would have physically prevented intercourse. It just got crazier from there. He told us that the Great Flood that Noah built an ark during was what killed the dinosaurs. "The thing about demons... they're real!" He continued on this, telling us that he had seen one while exploring caves somewhere nearby. He claimed the demon was three feet tall with a pointy head.
He dropped us off in the middle of nowhere, in a town called Black Canyon City. Not a city in the slightest. He pulled over and wrote down a bunch of information and names to Google so I could learn more about all the crazy shit he had mentioned. Before we got out of the truck, he suggested we stand on the interstate, underneath the lamppost. Then he prayed for us, asking God to make sure we get all the way to Flagstaff that night. He also gave us his flashlight, just in case we had to camp there for the night. He told us we could set up our tent over the little hill we were near, then warned us about rattlesnakes, scorpions, and tarantulas like they were only a slightly big deal. There were bats ominously flying around the two dim lampposts at the corner of the exit where he left us. The area was mostly desert, with clay-colored dirt walls standing up around us and mostly black roads that were more like trails. There was a steakhouse nearby and nothing else. We decided to take his advice and stand on the interstate. Cars zoomed by at seventy-five miles an hour as we stood there uncomfortably with our tiny sign under a single light. There were dry plants around us and flesh-colored sand everywhere. I had never seen or felt this type of surface before. I stood on it and it crumbled softly like a bag of flour. It spilled between your fingers gently. Twenty minutes later, a pick-up pulled over for us. We rode for the first sixty miles in the back of the pick-up, staring up at the night sky, which was filled with sparkling stars. We drove between desert mountains and the temperature dropped dramatically as he sped through them, inclining up in elevation as we got closer to Flagstaff, which sits atop an elevation of 7,000. He pulled off an exit to fill up on gas and we used the opportunity to get inside his truck since it was way too cold to stay in the back. His name was Brian Towne and he was a college student. He asked a bunch of questions about our travels and then we talked briefly about books we'd read on the subject of traveling. He brought up Kerouac, I brought up Into the Wild. He told us he'd always wanted to do what we were doing and we told him to do it before it was too late.
Then he showed us the badges that were hanging from his rear-view mirror: they were passes from his participation and volunteering in various national slam poetry events. He told us he did spoken word. He even had met Jared Paul while at an event in Massachusetts! We talked about that a bit and he put on Buddy Wakefield for the rest of the forty-mile ride into town. He told us a slam poetry thing was happening at a cafe right in town at 10 and offered to drop us off at it. When we got there, we walked into the cafe, a place called Sundara, and brisked past some yuppie hipsters outside and some expensive clothing inside. We took seats in the other room by the stage on the wooden floor. The place and tables were packed with youths that were all talking loudly at once. It reminded me of being in a high school cafeteria and made me anxious immediately. But I wanted to give this a try on the off-chance that it was actually any good. The host was an afroed black kid who was wearing a shitty Misfits hoodie but spit a really articulate and passionate spoken word poem just to give an example of, "what it is." The judges were randoms in the crowd and were told to give scores between one and ten with one decimal place maximum. Of course, this provoked idiots to add five to ten decimals in their scores. The first speaker was just some whiteboy trying to rap who obviously had no understanding of what spoken word poetry was. I hated him the moment he referred to women as "bitches". We stayed for a handful of performers, some were terrible and others pretty good, and ended up walking out when some douchebag got on stage and started dramatically reciting the lyrics to "Party In the USA" by Miley Cyrus as his friend in the crowd sat there with a shit-eating grin. We went outside and asked some girls where a good place to eat would be. They pointed us around the corner to a Greek food place open until 2 called, simply, Greek Islands. We each ordered a falafel pita with fries. We, of course, asked questions about the ingredients, but it came out with some white stuff on it anyway that contained dairy. When we told them we couldn't eat it, they were very apologetic and brought us out a free plate of warm, soft pita bread and hummus. It was heavenly tasting. Our fixed orders were delicious and filling; neither of us finished our plates.
When we walked out, the streets were somewhat populated with college kids of all sorts, but all equally as obnoxious, boisterous, and annoying, some under the influence of something and others just naturally stupid. We walked in both directions, aimlessly, hoping to find somewhere to sleep. There was nothing but cafes and bars and kids trying to talk to us that we wanted nothing to do with. It smelled like Halloween there. A sketchy older guy with various twitches asked us if we were looking for a place to camp and warned us of the cops' normal reaction to vagrants. He asked us if we had any weed and when we said we didn't, he referred to us as, "just normal people," as if you're either a norm who is traveling or a hippie pothead who is traveling. He told us about where he was staying and kept insisting that we, "had to come with him." It was creepy and we got away from him as soon as possible and returned to looking on our own. We thought we'd sleep outside the American Legion under some tents by their outdoor seating, but they were still dripping from a prior rain. So we considered a damp church floor, even though they had a service the next morning around 9. I went on a hunt for a bathroom through over-populated streets of bars with flat-screen playing sports and radio bullshit pulsating through the streets beneath my feet as drunk twenty-somethings stumbled everywhere. I got so overwhelmed with hatred that I felt light-headed. I asked someone in a billiards place if I could use the bathroom and was rejected because I didn't have my ID on me, which was weird. I went in some bar and stole a whole roll of toilet paper while I was there. Kara and I walked around for a long time, through another part of the town mostly populated with hotels, of course, before we finally settled on sleeping behind a giant dumpster sitting outside of a closed auto glass place that had recently relocated. Cops were everywhere, speeding by in car or SUV form literally every minute. We slept there anyway and disregarded how visible we were to anyone driving or walking by.
A cool painting of an Ewok playing a bass guitar at Green.
Quark, sitting with Kara without any shame of his tiny balls.
More pictures from Phoenix.
Quark and me.♥
Phoenix had these awesome skinny trees that were entirely green, from the branches to the leaves coming from them.
An anti-graffiti ad on the bus.
During all of this, I exchanged a few texts with Jessica Knapp, who had just returned to Facebook from one of her frequent, but always short-lived, breaks from Internet places. I found out that she had enrolled in college, despite being against it and, even more importantly, financially incapable of surviving it, under the pretense of, "getting a better job," even though we had talked in depth about how college diplomas do not equate to guaranteed employment with decent pay (in fact, nowadays, it almost always equates to the opposite). Even worse, she returned to drinking alcohol, despite promising me and herself she was sticking to straightedge the second time around. I immediately deleted her from Facebook upon finding this out. Not because I'm straightedge and she isn't anymore, but because she has been the most perpetually disappointing and inconsistent friend I've had in years. When you have perfect friends like Kara, Tia, Bianca, Grace, and Carl, it's hard to put up with anything less. I had given her more than one chance because I saw beyond her past and knew she was more than she allowed herself to be. I tried to be there for her and let her confide in me, struggling to help her push through the waves of regret that constantly pulled her back in to old habits that had lead her to become a self-fulfilling prophecy. I really cared about her, but I care about myself more, and I simply cannot justify investing so much of myself, my concern, and my time with someone who changes every other week. So, yeah, we're no longer friends and she, very predictably, sent me a text that night trying to tell me off, claiming I wasn't as amazing a person as she made me out to be and that I, "never respected her as a person," when, ironically, it was my immense respect for her that lead me to invest so much into her and our friendship. Oh, well.