This is a picture of the original COAT EXCHANGE. While this picture has a lot of folks (members of los ovidados, polar state, and our neighbors from the clisetta household), it doesn't have everyone--bill, my brothers, and many more. But I feel like this picture shows a part of my history that only these people (and a few others) know. We all started something in that place. Chad and I moved up and started the Braille Tapes. Many of those boys in there started jamming together, and would eventually move from So. Cal to B'ham to pursue music. And most of those girls would move on to other things. But we were a weird unit, and we all smoked like motherfuckers. I think I was at a pack a day then--look how skinny I was!--and drank a lot too. We also film a couple movies in that house--that back door/porch room made quite a few appearances on camera. We were supposed to move out that coming fall, but no one got their shit together--I didn't even want to move--and we ended up staying, bring Dave Woods into the mix, though he was regular fixture at the Coat Exchange. I remember listening to dishes rattle in his room, when the rats wanted to clean up his ketchup. I've written poems and stories and essay with this home being a center piece, or even just a passing image, but this is the Bellingham I remember most. The beginning of that town becoming my home, and many of these people becoming my true friends. I miss that place. I miss being that young and stupid. Though, I wasn't a very good writer then, and I thought our bands, films, books, lives would be huge. Boy, was I wrong. Though, I can't complain: I got a great wife and the cutest baby in the world, oh, and a little doggie.
2 comments:
The black and white makes that picture super emo/epic. HAHAHA.
It does--inappropriately epic. Man, I remember having delusions of grandeur for old projects. The novel I wrote when I was fifteen was going to change the world, and a bit later my high school band was going to become world famous. Obviously.
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