I would like to include my travels
in this memoir/blog, so for practice, I’ll talk about the overnight trip I just
took to St. Petersburg. No, not the Russian one, the Floridian one. I wish it
were the Russian one. I went with my wife Deborah, and her mother and
step-father. They were going to visit old friends before Christmas, and my wife
and I tagged along, bringing our 11-month-old son. I lived in St. Petersburg
from January 2015 to July of this year. It was a lot longer than I expected to
live there, but sadly California is too expensive for me to return to. During
my time here, a lot happened. I interned in Armenia, got married, had a fun job
at a museum, had to get terrible jobs at call centers, and my son was born. All
things I’ll go into more detail about later. This would be my second time back
to St. Petersburg since I moved at the end of July. It was a little more
surreal returning for the first time, the day after Halloween on November 1st.
Gentrification is changing the city so rapidly I notice changes after only
being gone a couple months. Downtown St. Petersburg followed the same
gentrification process many cities have back in California, such as Oakland for
example. It started as a slum. Then they brought the young artists in and let
people paint murals on all the buildings, and opened trendy bars. Then
gradually, the parking meters spread deeper into the outskirts of downtown. I
see this as a way to ban the poor from downtown. Then rents and leases skyrocketed.
The trendy businesses with young artist patrons either relocated or closed altogether,
to be replaced by expensive vegan restaurants and the like. I came during the
artsy phase, and by the time I left, the rich had taken over downtown, and
what I had tried to escape by leaving the San Francisco Bay Area in California
had followed me to the Tampa Bay area. Time will tell if it’ll happen to the
town I’ve moved to. Rockledge, Florida, on the east coast of Florida, is a bit
boring to be honest, full of wealthy retirees, golf courses, health clinics,
and little else. But I could see it happening in nearby Cocoa, with its trendy
little downtown with its artsy coffee shop, trendy pubs, historic theatre that
shows silent films occasionally, and pirate shop. It sure would be tragic to
see it all replaced by expensive healthy restaurants, with parking meters on
every street. The poor in the United States are going to all end up forced to
move to Oklahoma or somewhere else in the middle of nowhere eventually.
At any rate, we left at around noon
on December the 19th, trying to strategically time the trip during
baby Jareth’s nap. Sadly, he woke up before we even hit Orlando. We had to put
on his CD mix to quiet him down, consisting of Armenian children’s music we got
him hooked on but are now quite sick of hearing.
When
traveling from Brevard County to Pinellas County in Florida, the trip is about
two and a half hours if the traffic isn’t too bad, taking you on what has been
called the most dangerous highway in America, Highway 4 through Orlando. Insane
crashes and pileups are a regular occurrence. Luckily, we went when there wasn’t
much traffic. Rather than pay for overpriced junk food at the rest stops, we
made sandwiches to eat in the car before we left. That’s how you know we’ve
done this trip quite a few times; although before we moved it was going the
other way. When you see the Mickey Pylon outside Disney World (see it here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mickey_pylon), you’re about 1/3 of the way
there; there’s a major truck stop that marks the halfway point, when you see
the outdated dinosaur sculptures outside Dinosaur World in Plant City, you’re 2/3
of the way there. You know you’re getting close to Tampa when the drivers start
cutting you off, speeding past you, break-checking you when they’re really
pissed off. That’s one thing I really don’t miss about the Tampa bay area.
Everyone on the road is an asshole.
As with our previous return to the
area, we stayed in a hotel just down the street from where we used to live. We
got a pretty nice room this time. And a free newspaper. We had to wait until it
was 3pm before we could check in though.
Pretty nice, don't you think?
Ha! Someone wasn't around in the 1860's.
As
you might have read in my previous blog where I ranted about it, our ten-year-old
Playstation 3 bit the dust a couple weeks back. We’ve resolved to replace it
with a Nintendo Switch once we save enough money, which I hope I don’t have to replace again in 2030, but
we’ll see. One reason we went to St. Petersburg was to exchange the Playstation
3 and most of our games at M & M’s, a video game store with several locations
around St. Petersburg that sells basically any video game old or new. I’m still
not certain if I will buy another used Playstation 3 down the road or not,
which is why I kept a few games that I don’t think I can get on the Switch: Red
Dead Redemption, Fallout 3, Fallout: Las Vegas, and Grand Theft Auto V.
If I do decide I’m not getting another Playstation 3, I might as well sell
them. I’ll just need to get an HDMI/RCA adapter to run the Nintendo Switch
through my VCR, and my blank tape recordings are back in business. Until then, my
TV does have an HDMI port.
They even have Atari!
And an arcade!
For
our broken Playstation 3 and about ten games, we got $35 in store credit. Yay,
I guess. We decided that we might as well put it toward a game you really have to
get if you have a Nintendo Switch: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. I
think it was a wise choice. Unlike most games, Zelda games never go down in
price. Twilight Princess for the Gamecube is still $50 after all these years. So,
we took the opportunity to get a $35 discount, at the expense of our
Playstation 3 and games. Yes, it was kind of sad. But I look forward to playing
it. I hope it’ll be worth the sacrifice. Now I just need something to play it on. I’ve been into the Zelda series since
1998’s Ocarina of Time. I went back and played the older games too. That’s
another blog post for another time.
After returning to the hotel long
enough to post a quick blog I already had pre-written and feed the baby, we
went to our favorite old haunt in the area, the Lava Lounge.
The Lava Lounge is one of several kava
and kratom bars in Pinellas County. No alcohol is served at these bars, at
least not usually. They’re few and far between elsewhere, and many
non-Floridians will have never heard of kava or kratom. It’s kind of a local
thing that just blew up in St. Petersburg and Pinellas County in general. There’s
practically one on every block. My wife and I are particularly into kratom.
It’s
an opiate from Indonesia related to coffee, completely legal for the time being
at least (the pharmaceutical industry is working on getting it illegal,
unfortunately). Different strains do different things (mainly there are red,
green, yellow and white strains), but mainly what kratom does is chill you out,
put you in a good mood, dulls any aches and pains, treats depression, gets rid
of cravings for other addictive substances (it’s helped a lot of people get off
heroin and the like in fact, and treats alcoholism as well) and for me at
least, puts me in a creative mood. I’ll normally bring a sketchbook to these
bars and work on my comics. A little harder to do since baby Jareth came along
though. Luckily, the Lava Lounge is okay with us bringing him. Not all of these
bars allow children.
Tonight was bingo night at the Lava
Lounge. It went for eight rounds. Prizes
included free kava, free kratom, some pajama bottoms, a shirt, a jenga set, a
backpack and a tarot deck. And wouldn’t you know it, I didn’t win a damn thing!
Came oh so close numerous times, but even with a card for both Deborah and I,
neither of us won. This one guy won twice, and won the two best prizes they
were giving away too: the tarot card deck and the free kratom. I wanted that
tarot card set, damn it. Or the free kratom. Bah. I rarely win at bingo. If I
do, I win prizes I don’t want. But at least that would have made me feel
better.
Eh, besides being a sore loser, I
had a good time otherwise. Had myself a nice drink, and we got to catch up with
some other friends of ours who we hadn’t seen in a long time. Invited one of
them to come visit us in Rockledge, we’ll see if it happens. One of our good
friends, a single mother, had her going away party the night before because she’s
moving out of state to live with family. We weren’t able to make it for that,
sadly. Perhaps our paths will cross again eventually. It is said she’ll be back
for visits. Whoever the father was is not in the picture apparently. Left her
high and dry with a baby to take care of. What a douchebag, eh? I hate guys
like that. Reminds me of certain other unnamed individuals I loathe that a
certain close relative of mine was involved with. I have to keep my lips zipped
about this kind of gossip because, even though I don’t expect too many people
to read this blog post, it is public. Let’s just say there’s a far more
detailed version of this post that I’m going to keep to myself and not publish,
for the time being. Ahem.
But that’s just it, the kratom
community in Pinellas County is full of juicy gossip, because everyone knows
each other, any time there’s any sort of drama, the word spreads around like wildfire.
Reminds me of my MySpace roleplaying days in a way. Only real life instead of
online. Deborah and I keep out of the drama. Maybe because we’re older than
most of the others in the community. I still feel comfortable hanging around
people ten years younger than I am or more. I don’t meet many people my own
age, and hanging around older people still feels weird.
We stayed at the Lava Lounge until
close to midnight before heading to the hotel, and crashing there before long.
I stayed up until 2am watching space documentaries on YouTube, because this is
what I do at night. When I’m not watching an old VHS tape or silent movies set
to mix tapes.
I slept through the complimentary
breakfast (this happens often when you’re partly nocturnal like me), but my
wonderful mother-in-law saved me leftovers. I had to go without coffee until I
got home though, making me perhaps not exactly a ray of sunshine. Our plan was
to take Jareth to this place called Great Explorations, a “museum”, in order to
expel his energy and make sure he slept through the ride home.
This is a place
we previously didn’t know existed. It’s less a museum and more a
corporate-sponsored indoor playground with a gift shop that conveniently serves
as the only way to enter or exit to take advantage of weak-willed parents when
their kid throws a tantrum upon wanting a toy they see in the gift shop.
The
worst section of this indoor playground was “My First Market”, sponsored
by Publix. Complete with a portrait of the founder of Publix and product
placement everywhere. If the sunglasses from the movie They Live were
real, in place of all the signs you’d see “Consume”, “Obey”, “Pledge Your Loyalty
to Publix”, “Other Grocery Stores Do Not Exist”, etc. It’s one thing when they
use subliminal advertising on adults, but it sickens me to see it aimed at
children. And believe me, this wasn’t the only section of the place like this,
but it was probably the worst. The real reason this Great Explorations place
exists is to instill brand loyalty into the minds of toddlers and ensure they
grow into good and obedient little consumers. Pretty insidious in my opinion. But
then again, I’ve begun to think that’s the entire purpose of the U.S.
educational system too, they’re just less upfront about it. My schools were sponsored
by Pepsi and filled with vending machines of their poisonous drinks that are
the main reason my teeth are in such terrible shape today.
My
son had a good time here though, in a section of the place for smaller kids.
Luckily none of the rambunctious, running, screaming children ran over and
harmed my son. Although next door to the baby section was a sand area, and this
little brat was throwing sand over the wall into the baby section. Deborah
found a worker to clean it up. Watch your kids when you take them out, damn it.
I have no idea where the kid’s parents were. After this Jareth was becoming
hungry, but there was really no place for my wife to breastfeed him. A clueless
male worker took a while to get what we were asking him when we wanted to know
if they had a nursing area, and he told us to go by this secluded stage area in
back. But pretty soon a group of kids invaded the area, and after a little girl
came up to ask us what our baby was doing, we decided to leave. It was simultaneously
adorable and humiliating.
We
headed back home after that. Our plan was at least partly successful. Jareth fussed
until we got past Tampa, fighting sleep, but soon enough slept until just
before we hit Orlando.
Before
After
But he was mostly alright after his nap, although I had to
keep him entertained because he gets bored easily. His little baby brain is
just bursting at the seams and he needs to always be examining the world around
him. I always sit in the backseat with him by the way, and take care of him
while Deborah drives. We were glad to get home.
At
any rate, whenever I go somewhere interesting, you can be sure to read about it
in my memoir blog from here on in. Our next travel plan is to try to make it to
Tampa on January 28th, because Mortiis is doing a concert there! I’m
hoping it works out. I’ve had to miss two concerts in recent months (The
Midnight and SYZYGYX. So sad.) due to things not working out either with money
or getting someone to watch Jareth. Here’s hoping.
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