Chapter 22: Metric Bolts (7/28)
Big City Turn Me Loose and Set Me Free
Being in the largest college town in the United States, we are used to running out of boxes and packing tape and the like, but routinely it comes at the end of May (End of Spring semester) or the beginning of September (start of Fall enrollment)...
Not the end of July.
But this has been more than an anomalous year, it has been one of the most unique in all of human history, in fact.
More and more often, it comes at the hands of dads desperately trying to get their daughters out of the city, but more on that later. As usual I post first-hand accounts of such engagements—people moving to Florida, Colorado, ANYwhere but blue areas, really—and people simply do not believe me. Even major news outlets are reporting on the evacuation of the cities, New York City especially, but urban-dwellers are confused all the same.
In the meantime, there is a restaurant group that dominates nearby city blocks.
They have five (or is it six?) massive restaurants that serve the hopelessly alcohol-dependent Millennial class. As a company they are” based,” as the kids would say. Their owner/operator and upper management are all huge Trump fans (as am I, and as every business owner is—of which there are a dwindling few). More importantly, they are committed to seeing through this fake pandemic and boy does it show.
As restaurants around the city have shuttered for the lack of, well, people, the group has managed to not only strive, but thrive.
For example, across the street is a hipster sushi place (“BLTC Maki,” anyone?). Because of completely illogical and moronic city dictates, restaurants are required to put customers outside, six feet apart.
It doesn’t make sense and never has, but we now live in clown world.
Regardless of clown world, every night, like clockwork, the staff of 20 or so—under the direction of their based management, put up an outdoor dining room in an adjacent vacant lot. Complete with 20 or so tables, heating units, “sanitation stations,” and so forth, these outdoor dining areas quickly fill up and, for the next six hours or so, they are packed with starving Millennials.
All these young people are coders or marketers or “work” online in one capacity or another and as a result they cannot talk about work.
Almost all of them have signed an NDA about their jobs, so they cannot even say where they work. If you pull up a stool and listen in on what they talk about, it’s always about “shows.” That is to say: what “shows” they are watching, what episode they are on, if they like it or not and so forth.
Occasionally they’ll talk about drinking, or comic books, or video games, but it’s almost always about “shows.”
Which is why we are constantly selling out of metric bolts.
The hardware store contains what is called the “Index.” The Index is the rows and rows of stacks of bolts and dowels and nuts and parts and pieces. In most hardware stores, it serves as a resource for mechanics, tinkerers and tailors, but not in Southie.
In South Boston we constantly run out of Metric bolts because bro-bots always need them for TV mounts.
(I jokingly asked one of them what it's like watching 4k porn—which of course they do—on their screens and he responded with some degree of seriousness: “About $60 an hour if you want, bro.” Uh. No thanks.)
8mm x 30mm or 40mm (sometimes 35mm, sometimes 6mm), as they move in and out and assemble and disassemble gigantic TV mounts. Almost always, after they order their TV mounts from Amazon and its global slavemaster Jeff Bezos, it is missing bolts. (That is because it is most likely assembled in Vietnam by 5 year-olds.)
But the Southie index always has bookshelf pegs, and cabinet pieces, and furniture parts (although plenty of bed-frame slates and studs), but is regularly sold out of metric bolts.
Because the only thing these people own is a TV.
Addendum: As these outdoor hipster lots fill up, and there are probably 12 of them around the neighborhood (and quite large), so does the glaring of the brainwashed old people on sidewalks across the street. They have come to be known as “Karens,” but in Southie they are most probably “Marys.”
They stand and stare at the young people having fun, gauging how near or far they are to one another and reporting offenders to the cops (who sometimes come and sometimes do not).
Most likely, though, is that these are lonely older ladies, perhaps abandoned by their more based family or discerning husbands who have moved away from this utter lunacy. They stay in their apartment all day watching CNN (or any television in general, if I am being honest) and then, catatonic with fear, come out at night to patrol the social scene of Southie but anyone and everyone knows that … they are just jealous.
Next week: The masks sell out… again:
Dude this shit is hilarious. This blog is so full of insanely stupid bad takes and I'm so here for it. My fav tho is your "healthcare for all can't happen because everyone will shoot each other knowing that healthcare is free" article. Pure gold. Please never stop.