okay, so chances are you're going to have to take my word that this one is from san francisco since my hands are shaky and i use a telephone for a camera. this penny is the one that officially started my 'collection', since it's the second one i got a hold of. 'what brought me to san francisco in late 2009?' nobody asks. well, i'll tell you. work. and a pretty sweet gig to boot. a carpenter getting paid SF union wages with no obligation to rent can certainly have a pretty badass time here. i was trying desperately to spend all my money and failing at it! anyhow, this began my love affair with californians, the golden gate bridge and fernet branca, the filthy, black poison that puts electricity in your finger tips and poetry in your soul. that is, until you black the fuck out and wake up on a bathroom floor.
anyhow, my buddy ollie and i were asked to work on a courtyard marriott hotel and i struck at the upportunity, since i have never really been anywhere outside of the south, save a trip to gettysburg when i was a little kid. i won't bore you with those details because they are, well, boring. though i did get into it with the site foreman for asking 'what the fuck were YOU guys doing during the civil war?'. 'being cowboys', he said. brilliant.
the aforementioned love of my life and i had been in the sadistic 'on again, off again' cycle for a little while since visiting north carolina, but this time around, 2500 miles away from home, i received a not so pleasant phone call that basically informed me that she was boinking another guy and that i was to butt out forever, please. dirt. however, this left me in an interesting position; single, mildly heartbroken, rich and in a town with more bars than people. it made the situation easier to cope with than you could ever imagine. and i like to think that i coped in grand fashion. we cut a fiery swath through this place, leaving nothing but huge tabs, intimidated san franciscans (fran franshitheads, we were fond of calling them) and angry bartenders in our wake. somewhere in there, ollie invented a nifty little concoction called the 'random act of violence' that consisted of fernet branca, vodka, diet coke and grenadine. now, i have told bartenders about this one and every one of them, to a man, has said that the random act sounded like the awfullest drink ever conceived. ever. but i am here to tell you that like fernet itself, once you had the first one, the second one goes down with a lot less clamor, and the third walks itself right into your liver uninvited. ollie even managed to get 86'ed from a place called 'dirty thieves', which, i have been told is nearly impossible to accomplish unless you are naked and fighting women. he left and i did not, though he exacted his vengeance on me for leaving him locked out of the house by attacking me from behind a bush: a random act of violence of his own which ended up with two bottles of my 'souvenir' fernet being smashed to hell and bleeding into the bay.
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