Last weekend was another impromptu weekend travel for me. This time, I convinced a couple friends of mine to join me (Mike, Alison, and Marke). The plan was simple: we meet up at 5:30pm in Chinatown to catch a $10 bus ride to Philadelphia, walk to the tattoo convention, meet friends, sleep, come back. Oh, and to party the entire time =)
That was also the fullest extent of our plans. Who was going to be there, where it was, what was going on, where we were going to sleep, and the how/when we were going to get home was all up in the air. I’m used to this, but I wasn’t sure how well my friends were going to take it. I just kept telling them, “don’t worry, I have it all planned out” Hahahaha!
Mike and I met up ahead of time to hit up J&R (an electronics store) to get some new toys for our cameras. He picked up a lens filter and I grabbed a new speed-flash, lens filter, and a Hi-Fi card. The Hi-Fi card is pretty sweet. It’s an SD RAM card for cameras and the such that has a built in WiFi antenna and firmware, so when you take a photo, it’ll automatically connect to a WiFi network and upload the photo to a computer on the network or the Internet. PIMP! I was pretty eager to try it out, but that’s when it hit me…. FUCK! My point-n-click camera was in my leather jacket that just got stolen! Dammit dammit dammit!
ok… breath…
After hitting up J&R we grabbed some food then headed back to my place. We packed our things then jumped in a cab to Chinatown.
WAIT! I almost forgot the most importat part! FIRST, we filled our flasks with Jager, then did a couple shots to ensure an unsober state, THEN we got in a cab to Chinatown =)
Alison met us at the bus stop about five minutes after we got there. Marke was MIA. I gave him a ring and he said he was running late, so we bought tickets for the 6:30 bus. What an ordeal that was. Two little chinese women were trying to sell us the tickets on the street, both ringing me up for 4 tickets and screaming at me in what I think, THEY thought was english, but sounded more like a cat getting run over slowly. If you ever see two elderly chinese women fight for a sale on the street, it’s quite an entertaining site. Especially when you have absolutly no clue what’s going on.
Somehow, I got the tickets (i think). I got a piece of paper with some letters and numbers on it. She got $40. We’ll find out later if the bus driver likes my piece of paper with letters and numbers! But for now, we have time to kill, so on to the bar! Fontana’s (a kind of rock’n'roll bar) was just down the street. Perfect! We had a couple tasty beverages there until Marke showed up, then headed back to the bus stop and boarded the bus.
I won’t get into all the shenanigans that took place on the bus, but the gist of it is that we now had a gang sign, we video taped most of it (Alison even followed mike to the bathroom at one point), laughed our asses off pretty much the entire way, and irritated probably everyone on the bus…a lot =)
We arrived in Philly sometime around 9ish and then walked a few blocks to the hotel where the convention was being held. We bought our wristbands to get in, and ran almost immediately into a friend of mine running a booth with some third-reich-esqu curtains (inside joke ;). She let us drop our stuff down there while we ran around (read: went to the bar).
Mike and I did take a little bit of time wondering the convention area taking photos, and saw a lot … seriously … a lot of semi-nekkid girls. I’m not sure if it’s a Philly thing or what, but we weren’t complaining.
For me, the best part about the convention were the shows. Enigma was there with his show, Disgraceland was there tearing it up, and even the Rites of Passage crew were there doing some suspension performances. The two best (in my mind), were the single-hook suspension, and the single-knee suspension. The chicks knee looked like a scene out of Hellraiser. You know, a mangled mess of flesh and steel… put in a situation where your body is confused as to whether or not it’s turned on or repulsed. Good times!
When the convention was over, Murphy’s law came put on a show. Surprise! Apparently they attempted to do a flesh-pull WHILE the show was going on. I didn’t see anything though… I was too busy running around the pit like a crazy man. Ton’s of fun!
We all know what’s next… food! And what do you eat in Philly? Cheesesteaks! We all jumped in a cab and headed to Gino’s cheesesteaks. Marke and I each got two =). I was not so smart in the sense that I thought it would be a good idea to leave my coat back at the convention. So I’m standing around in the snow fall and bitter winds of Philly in a hoodie and sweat. (Somehow, I didn’t get sick either)
We jumped in a cab and headed back to the convention to try and figure out where we were going to sleep. I tried getting ahold of my friends of the freakshow performance, but to no avail. We headed up to my friend Rachel’s room to see who was all there and probably chill with some people. If I know her, she’d probably invited everyone up for after-hours.
And I was right =). Her room was packed with people all lounging around, laughing and having a good time. Looks like we found the place to be! Jimmy from Texas was also there. He saved the evening with some “movies” that seemed to have cleared out the room. Leaving us to crash out. Marke just stayed passed out on the floor, Alison an I passed out in the one bed, Jimmy took the other bed, and mike slept on some cushions on the floor. I don’t think Mike trusted Jimmy too much =)
The next morning, we got up around 11am, and headed downstairs. Marke wanted to get a couple micro-dermals done by Jimmy before we left. The kicker is that none of us wanted to pay the $20 to get back into the convention the next day. So, I did a little smooth-talking / jedi mind tricks to sneak myself past security and meet up with Jimmy at the booth. Turns out, he was out of dermal punches, so he was passing the job off to someone else that could do it with needles. But she wouldn’t be available for a couple hours. Mike, Marke, and Alison all got stopped at the door, so I just told Jimmy that we’d come back later and headed back outside.
To kill time, we all walked to the Mütter Museum. It’s an amazing, one-of-a-kind museum of human medical oddities. I’ve been there before, but I knew that my friends would like it, so we went for a little field trip.
On the way back, we stopped at Jimmy John’s for lunch (mmmmmm….), then continued our walk to the hotel.
When we arrived I though I heard a siren going off. Sure enough, the entire hotel was being evacuated! Perfect timing. We hung around outside with everyone while the firemen cleared out the building and seemed to have determined that it was a false alarm. We all filed back into the building and headed upstairs to the convention area.
This time, I did a little coaching and used some old-school State Theater tricks to sneak everyone (including myself) into the convention =) Boo-yah!
Oh, and there was a huge biker fight. Someone broke a broomstick over another dude. Lots of punching, then what looked like about a hundred cops showed up with batons to end it. Yadda, yadda, yadda…
Back to the booth. Marke got two micro-dermals done (one on his chin, and another on his neck) and I got to see “Penguin” get his wrists / elbows / shoulders scarred. He doesn’t have any arms, so I’m not sure what to technically call that area. The cuts were made to look like stitches, so that he can tell everyone that he was bad as a kid and his parents had his arms cut off and hands reattached to his torso. Hahahaha! Too funny =)
Alison bought a pair of some seriously intricate earrings from Jimmy. Hand-carved skulls with snakes made from wild boar tusk. Check out Demonic Organics. Jimmy makes some of the most amazing jewelry! We then said our goodbyes and our thank-you’s to our friends there and headed back to the bus stop.
We hit up a Wawa (like a 7-11) for some provisions, then boarded the bus.
The trip home was only an hour and a half, so we made it into the city around 6:30pm.
24 hours to the dot, from when we left, we had returned. Alison headed home to get ready to go to work (she bartends at Double Down) and Mike, Marke and I headed the other direction. Down to three.
Mike then jumped in a cab, and headed home. Down to two.
Marke and I then stopped in a bar to visit our friend Ru that was bartending then. We all did a shot (i think about half the bar). Marke wanted to stay and hang out, but I had to head home to pack. I was supposed to be on a flight at 6am out of Newark. Had to get ready… Down to one.
I walked the rest of the way home with a pit-stop at Identity to say wassup to my friend Lawrence, and make sure a certain chick got a message, then walked the rest of the way home.
I dropped my bags and plopped my ass on the couch around 8pm.
The trip was over.
Shizzle.
=)
.: Adam
