Conversation with a Venezuelan.

The other Friday at the student bar I went to go meet a friend and I ran into this one Venezuelan philosophy Ph.D. student I know.

We chit-chatted a bit about how shitty the job market is and how out of touch professors are, and then I started asking him about Bergoglio.

“So what do you think of the new pope?”, I was like.  “Isn’t he from Venezuela?”.

He wasn’t clear that I was joking, so then I clarified that I knew that he was from Venezuela, but the pope was from Argentina.

“Minnesota?”, the philosophy Ph.D. student was like.  “Minnesota?” 

Then, he said that’s what a lot of people ask him, after he says he’s from Venezuela.

He also said that even though he doesn’t practice, he’s happy the new pope is from Latin America, but that Argentinians tend to be pedantic.

After that, I asked him what he thought about Cesar Chavez, and just when he began to correct me, I was like, “I know, I know, it’s Hugo Chavez, just kidding.”

Then, we talked about Venezuelan politics, and he said that it’s complicated because the issues don’t break down into a clear left and clear right like they do here; there, Chavez was correct in his judgment to help the poor, but he was also fascist and suppressed the press, so that made it harder for the left to support him.

The conversation went on for like 20 minutes in this very serious vein, and then my friend who I had planned on meeting arrived and we went to go move into another room of the bar to meet some other people, so me and the philosophy Ph.D. student kind of had to abruptly wrap up the conversation about Venezuelan politics.

“Well,” I was like, “I still think it’s a good thing that California grape workers can go on strike.”

“My friend,” the philosophy Ph.D. student was like, “You know that is not funny, that this is a serious issue that is tearing out my heart and the heart of all the Venezuelan people,” and he held my glance with a very serious and reproachful look without blinking while pursing his lips grimly.

A Silverfish Living Near My Bathroom.

So a few weekends ago I was brushing my teeth in my bathroom, and I see this small shadow come out from behind the back of the bottom of the vanity and move quickly but yet at a subdued rate past the radiator and to the space below where the end of the tub abuts the wall.

I look down, and it’s a very large silverfish, maybe about 3 inches long.

Before I can do anything, it’s in the space behind the end of the bathtub, so I finish brushing my teeth, and then go get my little handbroom that I got from my (Hungarian) grandparents’ basement when I first moved to the city and that I use to sweep up around my place, and I start poking around behind the tub, to see if it scurried out, so I could kill it.

It never came, which made me wonder if there’s a further space all around the bathtub between the bathtub and the wall, where the silverfish live.

A few nights later, though, when I returned from a night of barhopping after teaching at the art school, I flipped on the light in my entryway, only to have a large silverfish start walking out from the door to the restroom and then turn to make a break for underneath the hallway closet door.

I flipped the light off, and in the refracted light from the streetlamps through the windows in my living room, I could see the silverfish pause in disorientation, and so I took my house sandal in hand and quickly flipped on the lights again and whacked it, a huge  1/2-inch chunk of its torso flying over a bit to the left after impact, some of its crumpled legs randomly quivering herky-jerky in the air.

That silverfish was also about 3 inches long, which makes me wonder if it was the same one I had seen before, and it had taken up residence in my bathroom.

I kind of feel bad now, because before silverfish were just silverfish, and now they have personalities and habits, but I still kill them.

Addendum Addendum.

I forgot -

At that one (black) bar from a while ago where the bartender was “Lady Michelle” whose name was written in pink marker all across the mirror behind the bar, at one point, she does a bit of restocking, and she checks to see how much Crown Royal they have and goes and gets another bottle to put behind the one on the shelf, since it’s almost out.

Coda.

After the documentary, I went off to meet a friend at a restaurant with salsa dancing, since she was there with friends and had texted me and I hadn't seen her in a while, and the bar was relatively near my house.

The bar was full and they weren't letting people in, so I texted her and headed to this bar down the street that I hadn't been to, which had been a (Turkish?) restaurant with blue mood lights and blue walls and blue tiles stuck inside the exterior wall, as well as a big evil eye pendant over the bar and its wineracks.

Oddly, when the restaurant closed and re-opened as a neighborhood lower-class whitebar, they kept most of the decor, and it was just people inside with shabby clothing smoking and chatting and watching sports, with no-one sitting in the lounge furniture and leather couches set off by the front window.

The (older) (female) (white) bartender was very nice and at some point asked me not to tell anyone that people smoked in there, and she pointed out some quirks of the building, like how the blowdryer was on the wall outside the restrooms, for example.

What I found most affecting, though, was that "Storage Wars" was on one TV, and I kept wondering if it was still on at the other (black) bar halfway across the city, and whether people were still watching it there too.

Addendum.

As I later biked to the documentary location, I passed many old buildings that were falling apart.

On one some siding had fallen off, exposing a sun-bleached McGovern presidential campaign sign nailed up underneath.

Black Bars (2 of 2): The Next Bar.

The next bar was an old bar standing alone across from a few houses where (black) children were playing outside, and like half a block away from a high school.  It had one door, and two very small windows that were high up, one with a neon beer sign, and a small pale yellow awning over the door with the bar's name.

I walked in, and to the right was a bunch of small tables built into the wall with stools underneath them, mostly occupied by older (black) folks, a small DJ booth beyond that where someone was spinning old time jazz, and to the left was the bar, behind which was a huge wall-length mirror that had "LADY MICHELLE" written on it in pink magic marker, the "I" in "MICHELLE" dotted with a heart.

The younger (black) lady bartender got up from the stool behind the bar where she was watching "Storage Wars" on TV, and came over to get my drink order.

After I made that, I introduced myself.

"I'm Michelle," she was like.

The bar was very sedate, mostly older (black) people drinking socially on a nice afternoon, and the walls had an old red paintjob over the concrete...  The back hallway where the restrooms where even had a small carpeted staircase that led up behind them to a small storage area with kegs and a door that was ajar and led onto to what was probably a back porch, with sunlight streaming through.

Black Bars (1 of 2): Lazy Saturday Afternoon.

A few weekends ago there was beautiful weather, so after a museum fieldtrip with my students, I took a long bikeride through a (black) neighborhood before going to an evening documentary; I esp. thought I'd see if I'd come across any bars on relatively quiet streets that I could pop into, for my bar project.

After I crossed a bridge over the highway, right there on a corner was a bar, and since things were quiet and the bar looked decent enough - clean windows, modern signage - I locked up my bike, then went through the sidedoor that was open on the street, and emerged into a sedate and underdecorated sportsbar where a young (black) couple was at the bar, and a young (black) woman was bartending, and there was a big yellow posterboard on the side of the cooler giving a list of recent increases in chicken wing prices.

Everyone said hi to me right away, and the woman at the bar ("Manibia") asked me if I went to this one club "Brown Sugar".

"Where is that?", I was like, and when she told me, I said I didn't think I had.

"That must be some other white guy," I was like, and at that everyone laughed.

Then, the younger (black) guy, this lanky guy in his early 40s with long dreads pulled back into a pony tail said that they had just been talking about how "the white man" was buying everything in the area up, and I had walked in "right on cue".

"Serious?", I was like.  "Sounds like a situation comedy.  But I don't have money to buy shit."

"Oh yeah," he was like, "Black folk are stupid, they don't hang on to anything, they just sell it to make a quick buck and then white people develop it and move them out of there."

They also said that I had gone into one of the only good bars in the area, but when I pressed them on what the other bars were, and the bad ones that I should avoid, they couldn't really name anything else, except for a bar like 5-6 blocks away that was "cool" and I could pop into.

"Any bars that I should avoid?", I asked again.

"What the hell?", the young black guy was like, laughing half-suspiciously.  "You from the FBI?".

They also said jokingly to come back that night around midnight, when the bar got lively.

When I left, they said bye warmly, and to stop through again.