welcome to the neighborhood

So, I saw this YouTube video this morning, which has inspired me to begin a quest to find all the proverbial "flying fish" in DC. And that sentence will make a whole helluva lot more sense after you watch this:


Um. What? Well, thanks for nothing, YouTube. Anyway, basically a dude discovers the wonders of nature via "a fish that f*cking flies!" And he wants one.

I want one, too. And luckily, I've already found a few here in DC -- The Passenger, Proof's lunch special, bike polo (despite the may-or-may-not-be-rampant sexism even), midnight screenings of "The Room," the shooting range, the Rock 'n' Roll Synagogue, area cycling trails, and the list, at least judging from the longish one I've created using the label "reasons to live," goes on and on...

However, yesterday night, I did not find one, which shouldn't surprise me because for every one flying fish there are a couple dozen giant sharks around to say "F*ck you!" to. Case in point, the P Street Whole Foods and some of the people who live around it.

So, I'm moving to that neighborhood (Logan Circle) in about a week and have been spending a lot of time around there lately trying to get a feel for my soon-to-be-new home. And when I'm not paying a million dollars for five spears of asparagus (seriously, $200,000 per spear is a little ridiculous), I've been biking this food over to my hobo headquarters. Now, this should be an incredibly mundane task, however, when you throw one of Whole Foods' sh*tty five-cent paper bags from Sh*ttysacksville into the mix, all yuppie hell breaks loose.

First, the bottom will break out, causing your entire treasure chest of overpriced sundries to scatter across the road. Then, while you scramble to save your $150,000 quart of milk from an untimely death, an Audi driven by what must have been a man losing his sense of spatial relations due to some sort of gluten bender, nearly sideswipes you. Shortly thereafter, a piece of you dies when you reach out only to find $100,000 worth of milk has leaked out of this fully recyclable, yet dubious quality, container. And then, for the finale, as you pick your punctured carton up from the street, you look over to the neighboring sidewalk to find a half-dozen people staring at you and your mini Bundt cakes (they're also staring at your spilled groceries), yet not one of them offers to help. Even as you look desperately over to them, while dodging additional luxury vehicles featuring drivers alternatively high on soy and quinoa, you are shunned. They turn around in unison and walk their tiny dogs away leaving you bruised, scared, and holding your broken jug of milk like the skull of Yorick in your hands.

The only thing that would make this scene more dramatic is if an actual flying fish popped out of one of the 3 trillion manholes in this city and punched you in the eye.

/endscene

Or is it? As someone so kindly just reminded me, this was all compounded because the front brake pads on my bicycle FELL OFF yesterday WHILE I WAS RIDING. My bike's such a dick.