The Road (or a A Kafkaesque Shopping Experience)

I don’t think I’ll ever want to shop Bed, Bath and Beyond ever again. What a horrible experience it is to spend a weekend there driving around, looking for parking, shopping…it’s pretty bad. There are only so many parking spaces in San Francisco and they’re all reserved for three or five different hybrid hatchback SUVs. I’m spending gift money and rushing through the store buying cheaply made products. Salesclerks are watching me throw rugs on the ground, watching me picture it on my floor. They’re laughing at how serious I’m considering this decision, like it’s really going to say a lot about who I am.

It’s embarrassing to picture myself like this. Bad postured, badly dressed, and yellow, bucked teeth. Stalking throughout the store’s corners, in the clearance sections where people discreetly travel to when they feel their stomachs wanting to fart. I’m gross like the odors floating in the air, stinking up the place when I arrive. Faces cringe and lips pucker to the sour taste that I am. There should be a poison you can buy in a can to rid the world of me. A carbonated spray that kills through a slow infection. An over the counter product that will do away with me by intoxicating my skin at first, and then the chemicals will oxidize underneath my epidermos, close to my veins, and then they will pinch my bones. The infected area will begin to swell and eventually burst, my eyes would slowly burn. I would feel such pain, while you would go back to your normal life after you put away the can you brought out to kill me. I would be a flea being flicked from your bed. You would kick me when I’m down, and I finally disappear.

Roads, parking, and traffic have never meant that much to me. I’m usually in it with my skateboard, taking the side streets and trying to stay stealth. But when you’re in it, behind the wheel, waiting behind trucks and yuppies yelling at each other over a parking space, you never want to relive the situation. The SOMA B.B.B. parking garage is hell. All that is corporate capitalism evil is there on a Saturday afternoon. I hope to never get another gift card from there (but thank you to whoever gave it to me). Even sooner, I hope to never have to drive again, I have some bad experiences.

Take for example my recent trip to the East Coast. I was in New York on a Saturday night trying to cross the George Washington Bridge to get to New Jersey. I probably left NY around 11pm. On the freeway the traffic was gridlocked because there was a nasty storm that was flooding the streets and causing accidents. It was so bad that when we were crawling alongside off ramps and bridges, water would spill over the sides and engulf whichever car was underneath. Not like a thin spray mist, but a full avalanche of water, like a tidal wave splashing all over.

So everyone’s in this traffic (traffic, the great equalizer), and people are looking into each other’s cars. This proves to be an interesting way to pass the time. Other drivers are smoking, making out, talking on cell phones. Now remember, this is a Saturday night in NYC where I’m assuming people are trying to get somewhere to party – if not all of them, I would guesstimate about 60% of them. Is that too conservative, or is that too liberal?

People are getting out of their cars, standing up, stretching, it’s like that REM video for “Everybody Hurts”, but there’s no Michael Stipe crooning on top of cars and everyone is inspired by his “oh so sensitive” hat. No, it’s more like a bunch of angry new yorkers yelling at each other and honking their horns. In my car, people are puking and scratching their privates. And as the smell from the back seat started to fester, I literally had to hold my breath for some parts of the ride.

I’m Lost on the interstate, waiting for the rain to stop, and blaming it on Bed, Bath and Beyond. Well…maybe not all of it, it’s kind of a stretch…but my point is that that store needs to stop selling poorly made, overpriced goods to the city of San Francisco. I think I know who the chain is trying to market to (and I’m playing nice here by not singling out this specific population in writing), but if that is in fact the case, do we really want these kinds of people clogging up our city? Is this why SF is so unaffordable? I left So Cal for a reason, and I’m not going to let consumerism once again dictate where I reside.