Bleeding Fiction

I switched from the hotel to my apartment today and with that switch I wandered around town in an attempt to get accustomed to where I live and get the basics into my pantry. So, here's what I found, all within 3 blocks of my apartment:

Useful stores. Stores like Walgreens and Safeway. This is convenient, because it means I don't have to go far at all to get my food shopping done.

Jack-in-the-Box. Also known as "the worst fast-food restaurant in the world." I'm not a fan of fast-food in general, and certainly less so in recent years. I like Wendy's well enough, but wouldn't eat at a Burger King or (worse) McDonald's unless I had no choice. I would sooner starve to death than eat at Jack-in-the-Box again.

No fewer than 6 New Age shops. Some were book stores, some were massage/meditation centers, some sold crystals, tarot cards and other parephenalia. Have I mentioned lately how entirely uncomfortable I am with New Age/Pagan religion? Maybe it's just the way (and forgive the expression) the followers tend to wear their religion as a cross. Best guess, since I'm ok with the folks that treat it as, you know, a religion.

More tattoo parlors than I can count. The U. District is apparently the place to go to get inked, though I don't know how many people around here actually wear tattoos; people are already too covered up to tell.

Enough barber shops to host a battle-of-the-bands-style competition for quartets of men who sing through waxed mustaches while wearing red and white. Unfortunately, since the barbers are even more punked out than the tattoo artists, I'm unlikely to ever see this dream realized.

A Russian bookstore. It sells books. All of which are in Russian and imported from Russia (presumably - I imagine some may be from the Ukraine or Latvia or something). It's run by a little old man. Who's Russian. I think. To be fair, he may be Georgian or Belarussian. I'm not very good at picking that out. It's sort of a cute store, and the fact that I stood in the store for about fifteen minutes trying to remember how to read cyrllic should tell you where my mind is.

A car that rounded the corner much too fast and squealed to a halt a foot away from me. That's something to get the heart pumping.

A never-ending stream of used CD and book shops. Nothing to say there but "cool." Except possibly "fuck, I'm doomed."

Speaking of doom, there's also a comic/games store less than a block from where I live. A well-stocked and friendly-staffed comic/games store. And a separate "store" next door that rents out space in which people game.

For the record, I've typed all of this on my laptop while sitting at a table overlooking the street in a little coffee shop. I was drinking hot chocolate, rather than coffee, but it amounts to the same image. If I also had a camera-phone, a giant beard and a lot of alcohol in my system, I would be Warren Fucking Ellis.