Tonight I rode my bike down to Alive after five, mainly because I was hungry and I did not feel like making anything at home. The tickets were five dollars, and although no one place has great heaping of food, you can make a meal out of it if you had patience with the lines and sample everything. Egads, I could be a retired person. Anyways for my five dollars I managed little serving trays of wings, sandwiches, nachos, cookies, cakes, 3 beers and two of the new pre-bottled mojito-flavored malt liquor that was actually not bad. It was enough to fill my belly. Below are a few pictures of this month's event.
Waiting in line for my 1 chicken wing. Jealouse of the old man's hat in front of me.
It's nice to see snake oil is alive and well in this day and age.
They had belly dancers! Rockin'. Apparently there is a belly dancing school somewhere in town.
Teaching white girls how to get funky.
The sand-van. It was awesome.
I need one of these on the front of my car.
Shuttle-mobile
A vw bug that was entirely covered in cigarette butts. I mean, can you imagine the time what went into this? I wonder if the guy smoked them all himself.
Fruit-lady I happened to like.
The garden of earthly...something..
2026 Update
Dialing back to 2007, where five dollars buys you three beers, a mojito malt, and eternal questions about that cigarette-butt Bug.
Ah, 2007. A five-dollar ticket got you samples, three beers, and a malt beverage that tasted of mint and conceit. World has changed. That pre-bottled mojito malt liquor used to be an adventure; now the shelves groan with hard seltzers with catchy names and the entire concept has been replaced by 'functional beverages' that cost as much as a haircut. Belly dancers at a public street fair? Today you'd need to sign waivers, maybe livestream it. And the VW bug covered in cigarette butts—sweet Satan, you could not do that now without either a museum grant or a hazmat team. Smoking's mostly gone the way of the dodo, and any whiff of secondhand smoke gets you shunned to the parking lot. We used to photograph paper plates and post them to a blog; now every meal must be documented for a grid, and the 'lines' Ed waited in are all virtual, behind paywalls. And that snake oil? It's rebranded as wellness.
“2007 Ed, that VW Bug covered in cigarette butts—did you stand there doing the math on how long that must have taken, and did the mojito malt liquor make you want one for your own car?” — Beelzebubba the Third
2007 Ed: Well, Beelzebubba, you hit it right on the head. I stood there for a good five minutes doing that math, and it came out somewhere between "a really long damn time" and "someone has way too much free time on their hands." Honestly, the thought of smoking all those butts myself made me feel a little queasy, kinda like after the third beer. And yeah, the mojito malt liquor might've made that VW look a whole lot better than it should've. I mean, I already drive a beater car, so slapping a bunch of cigarette butts on the front would just be an upgrade, right? Egads. I probably shouldn't make life decisions after two of those things. Still, it was a heck of a sight. Makes my dumpster-diving projects look almost respectable.
