With a thud the tailgate drops down and I dig my shoulder into a cardboard box and the scent of recycled paper. Thud number two and the dowry of dry ice makes my back tires sink.
It’s not really stealing if someone is throwing it away.
In the driver seat of my ranger, still with Montana license plates, I pull out of the parking lot with about 150 kilos of pressure pelleted CO2. The prospects for the weekend have suddenly gone up; girlfriend out of town, three nights of planned parties, cheap liquor from safeway overstock, cheap wine from the Oakland GO and minimal obligations for the shrinking section of the day when the sun is up.
Decked out in a droog (Clockwork Orange) get up I appear on the steps of the first celebration. Beat stick in hand, cockpiece re-adjusted from the drive, I rap firmly on the door and enter with my 30 kilo payload of dryice.
Expectations are the worst form of hope.
Burning man people are creative, crazy, and motivated, so I imagined that my first party with a burning man constituency would reflect this. Don’t get me wrong, some of the costumes were very well done, but the only subject of conversations centered around weeks spent in Black Rock, NV. I put the dry ice in a kitchen tub, since no one else felt adventurous with it and we put some beer on it. The -78.5C pellets also made their way into spiced cider etc, but no one was really up for any trouble. When prospects for excitement and conversation run dry I begin to feel the weight of time pulling at the back of my head. I took my only free ticket out, which was driving one of the burning man people’s fuck-buddies to a club. After a brief spin around 3rd and Harrison, I returned to Oakland around 1am for a subdued evening of reading.
Saturday and I roll out of Oakland early, make a few additions onto a pergo floor at the house on Andover Street in the city and then make my way over to Luke’s place in North Beach. Forgetting a portion of the droog costume at home, I’m forced into my old fall back: The Dirty Hippy. A fall back costume means that its not far out of normal character; a pit-stained white-t-shirt, a home made Rastafarian hat/wig and a pair of pants that I made in college (fully equipped with extra corduroy pockets, a wine bottle pocket in the front, and flared bell bottoms).
I’m buzzed into the building and after making the mistake of pounding on the right door, but on the wrong floor I find Luke in the hallway of the third floor waiting for me. With my dry ice package of 40 kilos and a bottle of wine conveniently placed in the wine pocket I stroll into his studio that is adorned with his current and past mixed media projects. Luke has become a very productive artist since moving his studio space to North Beach, a mix of the vibrant life, good beer and good food of the area surely helps. Some of his work can be found at: http://www.lukedollar.com/
I’m early. The party was set to start at 7pm and its 8pm. Luke makes me one of a countless number of rum and cokes I would have over the remainder of the evening. Liz (luke’s wife) sits on the couch, dressed as Luke and we chit chat for a while. Before I know it the rum and coke has been filled again and people have shown up. Its lively for a small place and then my partner in crime dressed as #2 from Austin powers comes through the door. Tony already grinning, because he knows about the dry ice, moves straight from the front door to kitchen where we prepare the first diversion.
Out the building we go for a stroll around Washington Square. Finger prints – wipe, lid –seal, remove 2L bottle from dirty hippy jacket, trash can – drop. Walk slowly back to building and remove the Comcast flyer holding the door open. Slip inside upstairs to the stake out point. Lights go off briefly in kitchen so we can watch without glare. The time it takes for a 2L bottle to reach its ripping point rests on a few variable: tensile strength of plastic, ambient temperature, volume of water used to sublime the dry ice in, ambient pressure and of course the grams of dry ice being sublimed. BlaM!!! The bottle reaches the critical point and explodes inside of the garbage can blowing out the side door of the container where the city workers pull the can out of. North Beach in some ways is like the BLM lands of Calaveras…as long as an explosion, gun shot, etc does kill anyone.. no one seems to notice. I’ve seen people fucking each other in the street and everyone simply walks around them, no stopping, just walking. An eerie smoke (CO2) waifs out and life goes on as normal in north beach.
Bloomp, bloomp, the first two pellets drop into a depleted wine bottle and I nestle a cork from Luke’s stock pile onto its top. The pressure builds slowly inside and then releases with a kick, sending a cork a good 30 yards towards an unsuspecting Wonder Woman standing on the corner. The cork drop right at her feet and her head dodges back and forth trying to figure out where it came from. Tony and I shoot off about another dozen corks, before making a set of bubbling drinks for the party. With the last BART train leaving, many of the party members take off and Tony and I make our exit. By this time I’ve moved on from the rum and cokes to just rum and then to the bottle of wine in my pocket.
Tony gets a call from a party in Piedmont, so we grab the dry ice, pick up his car and begin the trip back to the east bay. At some point I’ve managed to spill delightful amount of wine on myself and discovered the sun roof. At various stop lights I pass the bottle of wine to other drivers and use my basic skills in Chinese, Japanese, German and by this time in the night English to convince them that they need a hit from the bottle. Some patrons were even so generous as to share their drinks with me (that Chinese really paid off).
Next thing I remember we are on a dirt road approaching the bay bridge. There aren’t suppose to be dirt roads that put you on the bay bridge, but none the less there we were in a car sitting on a dirt road with a break in a large barrier wall that spilled out onto the bridge. Tony’s initial approach was perpendicular, we sat there for what felt like a little slice of eternity. Like a bad game of Frogger- ready to jump head first into five lanes of 60mph traffic we crept forward toward the pavement of the bridge. Flash back of Atari 4-bit games shot through my mis-firing neurons and I made a suggestion that was equivalent to a first mate on a sinking ship telling the captain that maybe they should learn how to swim with the few moments they have left. “Ah, Maybe we should try a better approach, I mean not 90 degrees?” I blurted out. Luckily Tony thinks well in ethanol and he interpreted the statement as lets find a better way to get on the bridge then this crappy ass dirt road. Warp speed….suddenly we are shooting through the lower decks of the bridge and are in Oakland in the winding hills of snobby, pocketed Piedmont.
We stumble into the party and things get a little blurry from here on out…at some point I had climbed into a tree and recovered figs, figs that I then proceeded to grill and toss at people while mumbling out “hot roasted testicle.” Funny, the figs weren’t much of a hit. However, the party being limited on food and Tony and I limited on barriers got back in the vehicle and headed up to the Broadway Safeway. 4 pizzas, 2 bags of tatat-tots, 3 cases of beer and one snickers bar accompanied us to the checkout stand. The clock read 2:45am and the clerk refused to sell us the beer. In my best lawyer voice I tried to drunk reason with the man that daylight savings time was actually tonight and taking this into consideration he was actually selling us beer at 1:45am, which in California is legal according to Section 25632. The rhetoric was good, but my presentation probably blew the deal. I probably wouldn’t even sell alcohol to a guy with dreads, that smells like he’s been working on a farm, has pants that are obviously a few pairs patched together and is wearing about a third of a bottle of red wine on his shirt and pants.
On the way back Tony makes the mistake of calling some girl from seattle and letting me talk to her. She of course thinks its Tony, because its his cell phone. I ask her a few chit chat questions and somehow we start talking about cooking and then innuendos start. At first they are possibly just puns, but then………….Tony took the phone away and tried to recapture his reputation.
We return to the party long enough to harass some more of the guests, make them food and decide that an evening watching re-runs of the State with a bunch of people dressed up like French maids and pimps…really really blows. Back to the batmobile we return with a few crystal geyser bottles. With the dry ice in the trunk I have in no time four bottles expanding in my hand. Before they blow the wrappers always split off and two of them had already done this. I chuck two of them and Tony rolls the rest of them down the street. We slowly get into the car and drive away to the sound of pressure liberation in the distance.
Around Lake Merrit Tony stops the car, while I use Marc’s cell phone that he some how left in the vehicle to light the inside of trash can in search of more plastic bottles. Unfortunately after the fifth stop it becomes obvious that the can must have been cleaned that day, so we make our way towards my place. In my recycle bin we fish out a few containers. I go to dump the bottles in the back of Tony’s vehicle, but I realize that Tony has just stuffed a few pellets into one of the bottles and before I can muster up the capacity to ask what is going on the bottle is already sailing through the dead morning air of Alice street. It hits the ground with a crinkle, bounce and slide and within an instant I can hear the wrapper ripping off. T-minus 10 and I’m fumbling for my keys to get into the apartment before she blows. Before she awakens the neighborhood to two boys in their mid-twenties standing in the street with crystal geyser water bottles and a subliming box of dry ice. Tony’s wheels give a little extra grind against the road as he speeds off. A sealed maple syrup jug with a payload of one fist effortlessly slides off, as if friction suddenly stopped for a second to let it tumble down, to let it bounce upon the street, to let it rat-tat-tat–tattle to the neighborhood that trouble was brewing in the dark sleep of the night. From my street lit window I hear the final expansion of the first bottle, the unmistakable crinkle of medium hard plastic coming into full expansion. I’m so nervous I can feel the anxiety in my shoes, toes curled up, as if protecting themselves from the blast and then. Then it happens, then the night breaks, the silent winds stop their dance through the streets and through the trees. A blast? Oh no! A blast would have been quick, forgettable in a night’s sleep, as a figment of the imagination, something to wonder about as you and a hundred others fell back to unconscious realms and warmed pillows. No, no such blast would be my comfort tonight, explode my anxiety in an instant, leaving behind a wake of calm as no one stirred or cared for more than a sleepy fraction of time. But misdeeds have their own karma, their own Dantian logic. A scream reeled out from the street, as if a rabbit was being murdered, a scream so loud that not a single soul could pass it off as dreamy deliriums. With my heart upon my tongue I realized in our haste we had made a grave mistake. The crystal geyser bottles, were not like those we had used in previous exploits, no, no, these had nipples on them, sports tops if you will. When expansion reached near capacity the nipple had popped its self up, letting the pressurized CO2 hiss out of the top instead of the anticipated nice sharp release of pressure caused by the plastic shearing open.
I lay down beneath the window, upon the futon stained with my life. A second nipple bleated out into the night and my chest pounded me into sleep, not having the strength to wait for the cops that would not come, for the neighbors whose windows were surely now open, eyes darting up and down the street. In the morning I woke to the bounced sun form the apartment across the street that simultaneously had awakened the maple syrup container farther down the street. With a large deep blaAAAAHOOoom, Sunday was officially here.
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