On graff, hippies, and becoming a grump

So this afternoon Ben and I decided to step out and run some errands. As we backed out of the driveway and turned onto the street, we noticed a group of hippies (also known as trustafarians) sitting out in front of our building with blankets spread out and homemade arts and crafts and other crap on display.

Hippies, ah. That explains why I kept hearing bad recorder music earlier-- someone, I thought it might be our neighbor, kept playing "Hot Cross Buns" on the recorder, badly, over and over again. The tree in front of our building, we also saw, was festooned with what appeared to be another blanket or sheet that the hippies hung up for some reason.

We didn't say anything to them and continued on our way as we were already in the car, but agreed that on our way back we would ask them to please pick up their stuff and leave the space how they found it.




We have some problems with the space in front of our building, as it's a stop on a bus route and people are usually hanging out and sitting on the fence.

That's an annoyance, but the thing that really bugs us is when the skateboarders come and use our fence as their own personal skate park. It's SO NOISY. Especially when I'm sitting in my office trying to read or do work and all I can hear is the racket of wood slamming and scarping against metal and wheels hitting the pavement.

Ben once even took it in his own hands to throw an egg at the guys after he asked them to leave and they continued skating. Kids these days got no respect for their elders.



This I saw today for the first time. Someone graffito-tagged an obscenity on the trashcan on our corner, the same trashcan I leave food on top of for hungry people, so they don't have to go through the cans for food. I friggin hate these taggers, seriously.

I appreciate good graffiti and I definitely consider it an art form, but there are so many idiots out there making a mockery out of a legitimate medium by vandalizing property with their stupid scribbles. This is good graffiti. Most of these clowns with their corny tags don't EVEN KNOW about the history of graff and don't even aspire to master the technique. Lazy ass art school dropouts.

By the way, when we got back from running our errands (we picked up some books from the library that I had reserved, picked up some fresh bread from La Boulange and got some new kitty litter from the pet store) we noticed that the sheet thing in the tree was still there, just flapping in the wind like a very sad-looking flag. Thanks a lot, hippies.



The two books I picked up, Stephen King's On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft (thanks to pensees' recommendation at Love Stories) and Fred Thompson's Teaching the Pig to Dance.