captain_ian

I am now one-sixth owner of a bike shop in Portland. Its called A Better Cycle (ABC) and its worker owned and we open soon(ish). Oh and it 2324 SE Division if you are in Portland and want to stop by.

i got a job. neat huh.

Cyanide & Happiness @ Explosm.net

Can someone please tell me what in the world is better than tacos al pastor, greens, and stevie wonder? I think I found out how to never ever be depressed again.

In the last month or so Ive managed to move into a new and very awesome house with Micah, Mike, Brett, and Kaisa. Its a pretty sweet deal actually, we get practically free reign to do whatever needs to be done to the house (which is a lot) and our landlord pays for supplies and tools and we get paid too. By paid of course I mean we get rent breaks, but its all the same really. So weve spent weeks doing all sorts of fixing our house up type stuff, including me spending a few days with a shovel and leveling the back yard. It started as leveling anyways, it quickly turned into terracing and retaining walls with a nice seating area and a fire pit. The long and short of it is that we have made enough progress that we can officially call it our home and therefore have a party to warm said home. Im not really sure why Im writing about this here though. I dont think I really have a lot of livejournal friends in Portland. Even so, friday night at 4315/4317 N Gantenbein. Oh yeah, its a duplex, but we have the whole house. That means two kitchens, two bathrooms, and two living rooms. So if somehow someone in Portland reads this, you should come to our party. Were really very nice people. All my friends that dont live in portland should come visit me here in my spectacular new house. I guess that means that really, everyone should come to my house. Just bring beer.

Its snowing! A lot!

Whoo! So I'm back in Portland after spending about 2 weeks in Ohio hanging out with friends and family. I was originally only going to stay for 1 week, but decided to push my train ticket back another week so that I could hang out with more people and not feel so rushed. Seemed like a good idea at the time, but an extra week in Dayton, Oh isn't really all its cracked up to be. I had a lot of fun though, its just that by the middle of the second week I was ready to be back home.
I met quite a few very awesome people on the train, both on the way to ohio and on the way home. Its really amazing how many awesome people you find on Amtrak. I think it helps that you can bring your own booze on the train. And that you can get up and walk around. I met one lady whos currently liviing in Montana. We got to hang out all night together, and she is the raddest lady I think Ive ever met (that may be a bit of an exaggeration, I do know some of the raddest folks in the whole world, so its kind of hard to really say who is the "raddest of the rad") Now I have a hugemongus crush on her and am looking for any excuse to go hang out in Montana for a few days. Aside from that, I also met two kids who just got back from wandering around Europe and Northern Africa for 3 months, and they taught me an awesome dice game from Morocco. Then there was Andrew, he's on the way to Alaska to work in a pollock processing plant, and he taught me how to play this card gae called Tonk. Also quite fun. The list sort of goes on and on. If youve never been on an Amtrack train for a multiple day trip, I highly recommend it, just pack a carry on bag with food and booze and youll have a great time. Promise.
I think Ive figured out what Im gonna do for money, if it works. Im thinking Im gonna start up a mobile bicycle repair service. Im working out the details right now. I figure that between that and building up bikes to sell locally, on e-bay, and on craigslist, I should be able to make enough money to pay rent. Overall things here are panning out better than I thought they would. Not that I had low expectations either, thats the best part. I guess my only complaint right now is that I still dont know a whole lot of folks in town, so I find myself hanging out at the bar alone more than Id like. I feel like that will be solved in time as well. All I really need to do is figure out when shows are going on, and go to them. Easy enough.

I have officially moved to PDX. I only say that because its been about 2 weeks, and Im starting to meet people I didnt already know. Not only that, but my depression has disappeared, and oddly my low tolerance for alcohol with it. Probably has something to do with seratonin and various other weird brain chemicals. Ive been spending about 8 hours a day on my bike looking for a place for all of us to live and for a job, and I started climbing with Micah every other day or so. Im also thinking about starting yoga, or maybe tai chi. I cant begin to relay how good I feel lately. I get up at 8 or 9 every morning, no matter how late I stay up, I hop on my bike and I go for a ride. Drink coffee, eat breakfast, talk to random people (Im also suddenly way less shy). Things are good here. Hopefully they stay that way for a while at least, though if this is winter here, then they may only get better come spring. yay. All of you should come visit me if your in the neighborhood, and if you dont have any plans on being in the north west, make some.

ive decided that i need to do some work on regaining my lost ability to feel. im serious, i was in a relationship about 3 years ago, and its finally starting to hit me how much that really destroyed me. i havent been the same ian since. if anyone has any ideas on how i can so this, let me know. i need good advice on books and music that will awaken my lost emotions. i want to laugh and cry again. and goddammit, i want to be able to sympathize with other people. i dont know how to console my friends when theyre greiving, i have trouble even comprehending that feeling. what the fuck. how can i ever be a good friend and or lover to someone if i cant help them through theyre hard times, and console them. thats what friends are supposed to do. i know that someone has some good advice for this condition. so tell me what makes you happy, and sad, and angry, let me know what your passionate about so that i can be passionate about it too.

mozart's requiem is amazing. im crying. thank you sarah.

so its been about a year and a half since i updated this. a lot has happened as you can imagine. since then ive managed to have three different jobs, live in 4 houses, own two cars, and settle down a lot. the last one wasnt for me really, at least not yet. currently, ive packed all of my possesions into boxes, and moved them into my friends garage. i have also moved into the garage. my relationship with louise has come to an end, and now im not really sure why im still in asheville. that really was the only thing that kept me here. on monday, all of the possesions i mentioned before, including myself, are getting thrown in a VW eurovan, and moved all the way across the country to portland, or. my friend micah has been trying to convince me to move there for nearly two years, and with my life in asheville sort of coming to a close, i figured that now was a good time to take him up on the offer. the only things i really feel like im leaving behind are my job (more about that in a second) and a few amazing friends that i connected with here. ive realized that though it is beautiful here, i dont really have a lot of friends, ive only really felt close to about 5 people here, and thats not enough to keep me going right now. ive been feeling depressed and tired lately, and i think that part of that is my complete lack of social interaction here (though mostly self imposed). my job i pretty awesome though. i work at a shop called "the organic mechanic", its weird, i dont feel like the things we do are out of reach for any other garage, its just that most other garages dont really care. i still ride my bike to work, which is pretty nice, but the hours are long, and the compensation is crappy. im at work about 50 hours a week (usually more), but i get paid flat rate (by the job), so i only bring home between 30 and 35 hours of pay. even at $15 an hour, its not worth it really. im tired all the time. its kind of nice, though, dropping everything and leaving. i feel like ive slowly aquired all sorts of thing i didnt used to really care about, like tvs and computers, and clothes, and cars. having money to spend has made me spend a lot of money. i dont like it, i remember that i used to live a lot more simply with a lot less money. i was happier then too. now im always worried about money, and how much money i make, and how much i need to spend on what. i think its time to simplify again. i miss the days when all i really had was a backpack, a brain, and a bunch of friends. i miss friends. i want all my friends that ive lost track of to call me, or e-mail me, or anything.

so despite the fact that two days ago the cops showed up at our house and kicked us out, the last few days have been great. ive been spending time with louise, who is nothing short of amazing, and ive been eating great food, and watching lord of the rings. i think ive got my living situation about as sorted out as it can get right now, and thats all i can really ask for. but as far as louise goes, what can i say, she does drag shows, organizes for transmissions, loves metal and cheesy fanasy novels. shes great. along other lines, loretta wants to make me the full time baker at mayfel's, which means that i get to make all of the deserts and both sourdough and wheat bread. its a lot of responsibility. now ive gotta start working with loretta to come up with good bread recipes, since we were previously doing proof and bake and now i get to make it all from scratch. asheville is slowly but surely turning into exactly what i want right now, which is a home. im sort of bummed out about getting evicted, but it was gonna happen anyway, and now i knkow whats going on at least. we need to find a new showspace though. tonite there is a meeting at the acrc about what to do about the situation. there is a lot of talk about trying to find one building to house our showspace, the acrc, and the bike recyclery. and i think that IMA (independent music asheville) is going to get non-profit status under either the recyclery or the acrc. then we will be able to look for grants too. i think that may be our only hope, if all of the non-profits that we are trying to have under one roof can get grants, or even if some of them can, then we will be able ot buy a building. i figure that since weve got the acrc, ima, the bike recyclery, books for prisoner, transmission, the agr, food not bombs and possibly a few others im forgetting, we can all apply for grants, and someone is bound to get something. if youve got any ideas, let me know. as for now, im off to work.
-ian

today, we got evicted. pollo diablo is no more, at least will be no more at the end of the month. the good news is that we are still going to try to have all of the shows weve booked this month, and we are going to have one hell of a party. giant burning devil chicken, un-american gladiators giant q-tip fighting, lots of booze, bands, you get the picture. if your in the neighborhood stop by. i beleive weve decided on the 29th as the date.

alright, so its been quite awhile since i updated this, at least a lot has happened since then. we hosted plan-it-x fest, it was really fucking great, and all of the kids involve were really great. it was almost a disaster though, the morning of the show, we still didnt have the larger space that we needed to do the show. we were already forming a plan that involved extension cords and outside areas, when i finally got in touch with rigel (my landlord, and the guy who also runs the larger space across the hall, the very space i spoke of a moment ago) and what he had so say was not the bright sunny spot i needed at that moment. he had apparently decided that the he himself was moving into the space across the hall, and he was keeping my $200 deposit and applying it toward the $400 that was still owed on our other space. to help with that, as i was on the phone with him, it started to rain. wow, so now we have no space, and we cant do it outside. alright, its all cool still, this show will happen. we decided that we would use the common area in front of the bathrooms (i live in a warehouse that has been rather badly converted into studio spaces, the building shares about 3 bathrooms) now things are ok again. the show will go on as planned. at about 5:30 the bus shows up and equipment starts to get brought in, and the vendors start to get set up and things are looking as if they may actually go smashingly. then one of the ladies that runs the dog training school (that has been in the builing for about ten years) asks me what is going on. i say, as casually as possible that we are having a few bands play tonight. she informs me that they are getting ready to start a class, and that her clients need to go through the common area to get to the dog school. i, still trying to be calm and collected on the outside, ask her about what time the classes are over. she says that they go til about 8:30. fuck. the bands cant start at 8:30, there are eleven of them, theyd be playing until 6am. fuck fuck fuck. ok, so what well do is start with the acoustic stuff, and well have that in our space, and that should go til 9ish, then we can move the show out into the hall for the louder bands. sweet. things are still under control. at some point during all of this rigel came in and asked us what we were doing. we said, "were having plan-it-x fest. is that a problem? cause if it is... well..." i also threw in a few other passive aggressive comments like " yeah, we were gonna have it in the larger space across the hall, but, well... then we were gonna do it outside, but its raining, so now its in front of the bathrooms" after all of the stress of most of that day, things did go well. really well. the show rocked, the kids rocked, everyon seemed to be having more that a sufficiently good time. i woke up the next morning on the floor of our space (no i didnt get hammered thank you, i gave my bed to one of the kids who had been sleeping on a bus or a floor for weeks) so i woke up to about 15 or so kids in sleeping bags taking up most of the floor space, he couch, a random mattress, etc. it was great, i love it when a bunch of people sleep at my house.
then comes the cover band show, me, trey, patrick, and elise played in a they might be giants cover band. depite the fact that we had only practiced twice (plus the 15 minute or so run through we did the day of the show) we did ok. devo played too, and the kissfits, gang of four, the wipers, the list is pretty long, bands played until 5am, everyone got wasted. it was a fabulous time. things got broken, really random stuff disappeared. i got drunk enough to get over this whole timid thing ive been going through (and really am always going through, most of the friends i have i either met through other people, or after a drink or two) and met louise, who i had talked to on the phone a few times. she is organizing a drag/metal show at our house on the 16th. we talked for hours that night.
the very next night, my lethargy not even remotely gone from the night before, seein red played. at our house. them and two other bands, kreigstance and sakara. that show was awesome too.
the next morning, at about 10:30, i get woken up to a knpock on our door, im still a little drunk, but luckily, had passed out on the couch fully clothed and with shoes nearby. i open the door and whos standing there? no less than the ladies that own the building, i step into the hall and shut the door behind me. they tell me that there was a complaint that someone was living here. i said that that was ridiculous (meanwhile my housemates are asleep less than 10 feet away) they asked if they could come in and look around. i told them that the place was awful messy, being that we'd had a show the night before. as a matter of fact, i said, that was precisely the reason i was here this morning, to clean, and if they could come back in about an hour, the place would be presentable and less embarassing. (you see, though drunk and not awake, i did have a few neurons still firing) unfortunately this ploy did not fool them for a moment and they proceeded to inform me that it was there right to come in and all that crap.(if id been a fully functioning brain, i would have realized that, though this may be true, i really had no proof of who they were. i could have asked them to prove that they owned to building or come back with rigel, who we actually rent from. oh well) so in they came, they looked in nadia's room, found a mattress, looked in trey's room, didnt see anything(that being the room that trey and nadia were both in at the moment, im not really sure how that happened)
they told me that we couldnt have a mattress in here and that we couldnt have a kitchen either. then, instead of telling us that we were kicked out, which is what they do when they find that someone is living in the building, they said they were gonna talk to rigel. that was a week ago now, and we havent really heard anything, so we keep having shows and hoping for the best.
after "one day off", we had another double dose of shows. they too were good, but nothing really noteworthy happened. by that time i was so tired i didnt really even pay attention to the bands. oh yeah, and shawn and lindsey and the kids are moving to town soon. and micah sort of lives here now too. we're working on getting a giant house that a bunch of my friends are getting evicted from to live in together. i wanna keep our studio as a showspace and (gasp) a studio too though.

Nadia got out of prison at 6am yesterday morning. turns out she got nabbed for hopping the turnstiles. now shes just hanging out in nyc waiting for her court case. with any luck shell just get time served or something. other than that, plan-it-x fest is tomorrow, at my house, and i cant find rigel so that we can get the bigger space across the hall. hopefully that will all work out fine at the last minute or something. im not really all that worried though. worst case scenario, we get a big ass extension cord and have the show on the giant cement slab out back.

lets see. nadia is in prison on rikers. we have to assume that she got picked up on the warrants she had in ny, but we dont really know anything about whats going on. really, nothing. we dont even know if anyone was with her when she got picked up, or what burrough she was in, much less what precinct. that being said, we are doing what we can and are having an emergency benefit show to try to raise some money for her. (although like i said, i dont know how we'll get it to her yet). if any of you new york kids know anything about what happened, some info would be much appreciated. all we know is that we think she was staying at the more gardens house, and that she saw jacques at tomkins for about an hour. so really, any info would be sweet. thanks abunch kids.

im sitting in the libray at UNCA biding my time while nadia makes flyer for the show on thursday. yea, i know its a lot late to be making flyers, but better late than never right. i just found out that my friend jenn is coming down from ohio at the end of the month, micah might be coming too. skye is due here any day now, and griffin is coming at some point within the month. im really excited that so many people are going to come stay with us. things are going really well with our space, and im looking forward to our first show, which is on the 9th. not only that, but after being so weirded out about working for the first time in years, things have turned out good. i think i actually like my job, which is fairly unexpected. my boss has a great attitude about waste and recycling, which is really rare (at least in my experience). we save everything, the skins and the ends of the onions, the bits of celery, the carrot nubs, all of these get boiled down forever to make veggie boullion. the bread heals get saved and later ground into breadcrumbs for the meatloaf and the chicken salad. the ends of the blocks of cheese get saved to throw into the macaroni and cheese. not only that but i have a pretty flexible schedule. i can come in and leave basically whenever i want on the days i work. as long as i get the shit done that needs to get done shes happy. all in all im fairly happy with it. best of all its only 3 days a week. besides the work and the space, ive been in a fairly ok mood lately. its kinda weird, sometimes i really just want to lay in bed and sleep, but its not really from some form of depression, but mostly because ive been having really good dreams. nothing special, but dreams about me and all of my friends riding bikes and going to shows and breaking into buildings, and causing trouble and going swimming, and fishing and digging through dumpsters, finding the most amazing stuff. i hope that soon my waking life is more like my dreams. and it is summer time finally. all of my friends are coming from all over the country to see me, and maybe things will be like that.

we're gonna host plan it x fest at our house. just found out today. pretty excited.

weve decided that the space we live in is going to be a dedicated show space. we spent a bunch of time digging through the scrapyard behind our building and using the amazing pieces of "scrap" we found to build the walls and ceilings and floors of little shanty town loft-rooms. we tore out a wall that was in the middle of our space and effectively doubled the amount of space we have for bands and dancing. we sat around for hours saying everthing that came to our head in the search for a name for our now beautiful space. after about a week, we decided to call it Pollo Diablo (yes, that does mean devil chicken). once we did all that, the bands started calling us. its odd that the easiest part about this whole thing has been getting bands. we've got shows through august already. we've got Seeing Red from Amsterdam, and Iron Lung, and a bunch of other bands from all over the country and the world. im really excited. im also excited that part of our giant construction endevour was me building my room. i have a room now. for the first time in a long time i have my own room. now im searching for a mattress. and a pillow. come see me if your coming anywhere near asheville.

so i guess i live in asheville now. not completely on purpose, and not for ever, but in a week ill have a house. sort of. me and trey and ikki and nadia are going to build houseboats and live on the river. i still have plans to be in nyc some this summer, but i cant resist living on a homemade boat with a bunch of really cool people. if anyone has any good reasons not to stay here (as in good reasons to be somewhere else) you should give them to me. i think im just lazy here, maybe if someone convinces me to move on i will. i guess im just slightly burnt out on traveling for the moment, and i feel like a break is necessary. its been to long since i had a space that was mine. like i said though, i totally open to suggestions. this town might getting boring again after all of new orleans leaves.