This last friday I went out to Frankie's with my room mates Asher and Nino. Asher, as you might remember, is the guy with warrants out for his arrest in Alaska, on top of a couple felony counts for destroying a public high school's baseball field in his 4x4 a few years back. Nino, or “Jeremy Motherfucking Ginino” as he calls himself, is another Alaskan born deviant with a look faintly reminiscent of a balding Robert Downey Jr. and a chortle that simply ooses bong resin. I met these guys when I moved in to The Asylum, and though we started hanging out because of our mutual love for playing guitar, I quickly found myself 'too busy' to hang out;they only play Metallica.
Only.
So the three of us had gone down to Frankie's and spent a good four hours tooling around the pool tables and hitting on the bartender when, in a five minute period, both Asher AND Nino got kicked out.
I shit you not, one second Asher is sweet talking the bartender, the next she's screaming at him to leave 'cause he apparently robbed her friend (never happened) after going home and messing around with her, drunk (probably happened) and then went to where her boyfriend worked and bought smokes while laughing at him (definitely happened). Nino was booted shortly after for yelling at the bartender and calling her a string of names I've actually never heard before.
I followed him out, ducking under a barrage of insults and alcohol-veiled threats.
Once outside we tried to think of another bar to go to, at which point I found out that getting kicked out is a nightly occurrence for these two, and the nearest bar that would take our unholy triumvirate was in fucking Gresham. We started home, hoping to pick up a twelve-pack at the Korean market, when the real highlight of the night happened. We were stumbling down the sidewalk, reeling from bush to telephone pole to bench when a scrawny hipster rolled up to the next light on his eco-friendly Schwinn, about a block away.
This kid was the quintessential portland biker; Too-tight, too-short black jeans, moldy chuck-t's, a ratty german army sweater with holes chewed in the elbows and a mop of black hair protruding frantically from his head and face. Clinging desperately to this ensemble was a pair of coke bottle glasses with a thick patch of black electric tape holding the right lens in place. His bare white knuckles shook in the frigid air as he waited for the light to change.
In a blink, Nino took off in a dead run. Towards the hipster.
"Oh fuck," the kid screamed, seeing what looked like Mr. Hyde on a bender tearing down the street towards him. I’m not sure of exactly what ran through his mind at that moment, but I can only assume that he looked at Nino, barreling silently towards him, and assumed that he was getting bike-jacked. On a busy street. At ten thirty. On friday. In south east portland. On the safe side of 82nd.
Apparently a lot of that shit happens in this part of portland.
To chicks.
Bike Kid literally STOOD on his pedals, and in the frigid evening air I was certain I saw smoke rising from the blur of his back tire, but Nino had a good half brewery coursing through his veins and was quickly approaching the sound barrier. Bike Kid screeched away down the street, looking in terror over his shoulder at the Italian juggernaught thundering after him, all the while yelling at the top of his lungs.
"NO MAN, NO! NO! Come on man, NO!"
Three blocks away, Nino was thirty feet behind and giggling like a drunk squirrel.
"NO DUDE, PLEASE, NO! NOOOO!"
Four blocks away, Nino was six feet from Bike Kid but laughing too hard to keep going. He stumbled to a drunken jog as Bike Kid tore off in to the night, and by the time Asher and I got up to him he was collapsed against a scooter shop's front steps, panting and laughing.
"I...I...I...I wasn't gonna," he panted, "I wasn't gonna...d...do anything to him! I just wanted to run, man!"
Two months later Bike Kid moved in to The Asylum. He still hasn't recognized Nino.
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