Just a Dream 5/29/1984

I miss the old factory buildings in the inner cities. Most are still there, but they aren’t the same. They’re lifeless now. I mean lifeless in strange terms. They’ve always been that way in some sense, I just find the prior more poetic. I used to sleep in old slop houses if the the risk of getting booted out was minimal. It may seem like a beggars option, and it was. Touring in a bus with three other people is hell enough. Tommy James of the Shondells called it “a sewer on wheels”. That’s exactly what it is. When one has smelled every foul orfice in a space the size of a large bunk bed for months, it can drive anyone crazy. In retrospect, an abandoned bakery or brick mill isn’t that bad.

Even the smallest of establishments have eons more room than van. There’s more people as a plus, new people, bastards you haven’t shared a toothbrush with. It’s a breath of fresh air to not hear stories that have been told to you over a dozen times. One word: rice with shit. Getting it is a rare delicacy in America. The perks of being a musician can pay off here nonetheless. No one had to know who I was, I just had to live that life. The thought of us lights a fire in anyone, even those with less than ourselves. It’s like we have a lottery ticket in our hands, a possible one at least. People just want to know you, it’s that simple. They don’t want you to succeed, they don’t want you to fail either, they just want to hear the hells you’ve withstood making it, trying to make it, or not making it.

Going in one of these places felt like going back two decades in time, a dingy hope of punks, students, outlaws, and homeless all uniting in one humble unit. It was a sanctuary of sorts, even for a man of capitalistic excess as myself. People were living it rough, but they didn’t make it about themselves. These people gave the feel of meeting long lost second cousins, good ones at that. They weren’t there to strip you dry. That was for the streets. This was for the “movement”. I mean it in vague terms as it is more of a lifestyle than any tangible political belief.

There was plenty of cocaine and weed of course. They’d give you anything else under the sun if you just asked. I never understood how these places didn’t devolve into drug dens. Perhaps there was an unspoken code of buy first use later. That would explain why I didn’t see much more than a few punk heads smoking a joint. It also wasn’t uncommon to see a passerby try to snort a remaining coat of snow off of the floor or someones shoe.

I’ll never revisit my old haunts. I remember them when they were good. I have no desire to see a shell of the good times. The smell of cold stone, cigarette walls, and thick dust will always bring a bittersweet nostalgia in me. The only experience equivalent to it was my outdoor escapades as a boy, the building of flimsy lean toos that got destroyed by rival neighboring kids, the secret spaces under cars to find dirty magazines, the backyard camping in puny pup tents, the urban legends I’d hear about the local woods. Squatting was a “mature” variation of all those things.

We were all kids at the end of the day. We had places to go, scene friends to meet, shows to attend, and tours to run. Most importantly, we had tangible goals, things to look forward to. There was always an excited buzzing. Any person with a creative side would post flyers or poetry on the walls. The papers would peel off in the moist air over the beds and roached furniture. It gave a squatters cave their classic grunge look. For the fortunate doomsday photographer, there was no need to look further. The perfect home for the last of humanity was right before their disbelieving eyes. We were proud prowlers of the dungeons. Enter if you dare.

The time I almost got caught in one is a time I’ll never forget. That’s what this is really all about, my story. I had to accentuate the fondness of couch crashing before I began. In reality I was a half mile away. I’d ran one of my first marathons in downtown Jacksonville. I’ve never been much of a runner, but perhaps that was to my benefit. I went through the whole stretch with two guys about half my height. We called them dwarves then, midgets now. I don’t think either term is any less questionable. Randall and Briggs were their names. Their titles matched the two perfectly. Randall was skinny with blond hair and shoes that looked beyond their sell by date. Briggs was the chubby type. He wore a Wichita State jersey and a baseball cap where ever he went.

Our formation looked like the works of a mild prank, me in the middle, the short ones at my sides. We were like this for the whole stretch, a perfect line. Curious eyes followed us where ever a crowd gathered at the curbs to watch. It’s also important to add that I was in stage clothes. Picture a perverse combination of Bowie's striped suit, hair metal spandex, and pink feathered anklets. That’s what I was wearing. By anyone’s guess, the companions were my entourage. To what place of importance, no one had a clue, not even Randall and Briggs, no one but me.

Of all states, Florida’s architectural landscape is the most disjointed. When walking down the street of any city there’s luxury apartments and old shops that look like crack houses on the other side of the street. Jacksonville’s like that in some ways. The main parts of it are alight until you get to certain pockets. Even in the day time, these areas feel like your entering a failed mecca within a third world country. Within the first lengths we were passing massive yachts in the harbor, crumbling suburban slums in the next. That’s where I intended to go when this was all over. My two friends agreed.

“I wonder what kind of women hang out in these parts,” said Randall as our shoes crunched against the hot pavement.

“Don’t get your hopes up. No one knows I’m coming,” I replied.

“Aww man, don’t bum me out like that, we’re only half way done with this thing.”

“Picture white bearded college guys smoking a joint, they probably think their super cool hanging out in the inner city.”

“Your killing me here! I’d take a bald punk chick over that.”

“Be prepared to talk heavily misguided, but well intentioned racial political theories.”

“Boooo!” panted Randall.

I’m glad we were running in conversational pace, the two might have not made it after this sobering realization. Maybe if the others had known my whereabouts, there’d be more than a few cops hanging in the area. I say this to myself to feel better about the incident. Sometimes I think we cast a curse on that hideaway. We were dressed as we would’ve been at any good backstage party. Anyone who didn’t just see it as a funny gag, got the joke. Randall and Briggs had been my wingmen from the beginning. A picture of them both beside me wearing our respective outfits became a sort of early meme. We were standing backstage after a festival in Cincinnati.

Our manager and aspiring photographer took the photo with a polaroid. It somehow ended up alongside a featured article in Rip magazine: The boyz are back in town. That was the title. Picture and all took up two whole pages. 80s metal mags liked to annunciate Z in everything, even if it made little to no sense. The scoop was that I'd started another tour after a third album release and a two year hiatus. My two buddies had been around before that. It just took one moment for them to come into the limelight. The funny thing about it all is that they usually wore matching lime green jumpsuits to gigs. I would've found that picture funnier, but the latter stuck. That night their clothes would be soaked in booze, mustard, whipped cream, and silly string on all sides. Perhaps that's what those cops pictured when they approached the hangout.

When we came near it on the course, we'd reached a lull within the running crowd. The wheelchairs were far ahead of us and those going slower were a half mile behind. The forces that be wanted us and only us to see the raid as we passed by. Several cop cars had parked outside a half cylindrical brick building. I'd heard the place was used for ammunition during World War 2. There was a set of sleeping quarters and a homemade stage at the back. Kids would use it to recite their political slam poetry or novel on busy nights. In this moment none of us were sure if we should continue running past the cars. There was no one else with us to signify we were runners and not stoners a little too late to the party. We decided to slow our pace and wait for the cops to get inside.

It didn't take them long to make a move. At least ten of them busted though the doors five hundred feet in front of us. Everything that happened after is all here say. A few fans that were there explained to me later that the authorities caught wind of weed dealings. Even in its squatter state, the inside was torn to pieces after the search was finished. In my mind I could picture several dozen yuppies reaching in desperation behind tank ammunition shells, below bunk beds, and between tetanus inducing piles of steel pipes. I doubt the cops found all the weed that day. Half of it made out the back door with the kids. The other quarter is wedged in the infinite heaps of scrap metal. Anyone in Florida who wants free weed should give this place a visit, but its been twenty years now. I'm not sure if pot gets better with age.

Nine people were brought out by the time us three passed the scene. I could see the rest of them making a mad dash out the factories other end. The cops didn't notice us flying by. They were too busy making heads and tales of the escapees. I had to turn my gaze away from it, but it didn't matter. My good vibes were gone. I was in for ten more miles of physical anguish with nothing to look forward to after. I couldn't imagine how hard it was for my shorter counterparts. Somehow we all finished the whole thing without stopping. That was a hard deed to live by in those sobering moments. I wanted to sneak behind the building and lead the runners toward another hideout in the nearby swamp. The authorities around there had a stigma against alligators. I can confirm the caimans don't mind a few people moping around from personal experience.

Before we knew it, it was over; the marathon, the 80's, the 90's, the last tour with my band, the end of a glorious era so bittersweet. The Florida hideout is long abandoned. People don't gather like they used to, not even the youth. Sometimes I wonder if there's still people out there that want to be like me. If they do, there's no sign of commitment. That's how things go I guess, trends of the ideal front man. They fade away, come back, and fade away again. I miss the old times, as many do, that fun chaos, that feeling you could mess up as much as you wanted and still come out okay. Everyone is so afraid now. But perhaps at the end of the day we are all confused souls trying to outrun cops, a pound bag of pot in hand.