Day #4: SLC Punk

Woke up on day 4 at my sister's house in Boise. I got a shower and did my laundry in perpetration for standing out on the on ramp for a few hours. But hitching is illegal in Idaho so I was pretty worried about getting hassled by the cops. Craigslist had worked great so far so I checked there forever. Nothing came up so I posted an ad and in like an hour a couple called me. They asked if I could drive a stick; I said yes. They said they'd pick me up, and just like that I was off to Salt Lake City!

The couple who picked me up were also from Portland, that makes 4 rides from people living in Portland. One of them is a photo journalist who has had her work published in National Geographic! 

A couple people mentioned this anarchist house called Boing while I was traveling (Craigslist etc...) And since my favorite movie in life is SLC Punk, I absolutely had to check them out. My ride offered to let me stay at their house, but I figured I'd get some adventure in and find the Boing house. I had them drop my off in the middle of downtown at the huge Mormon temple (which was built by masons!) 

I did my sightseeing down town and roamed for a bit. I jammed for a couple songs with a street musician. I kept walking and stopped outside a bar to bullshit with some guys and they started singing while I played. It was a military guy, a male fashion design major, and an old local guy without teeth. SLC was turning pretty punk. I had an intersection for the Boing house, so I started walking. 

When I finally found it, it was two girls sitting on the porch and playing with a cat. I thought to myself, "these are my kind of people." Another roommate let me borrow his bike for the night while we went to an anarchist movie showing in a park. 

Afterward one of the girls bought some beer and wanted to go on a bike ride. So we saddled up and biked to another park to drink a beer on a bench. You have to drink two tallies to feel anything in Utah because all the beer at grocery stores is only 3.2%.

We biked back to downtown and checked out the temple at night. It's lit up really cool. 

We kept biking and stopped at this dumpster to drink another beer. When this guy comes out of the restaurant we were behind. I'm thinking, "Shit. Busted." We say hi and he asks us if we want a drink! Obviously! So he made us a blackberry whiskey sour (half mixed drink, half shot), poured us a beer, AND gave us a bottle of wine! Then his taxi showed up so we had to get out of there, but left much more intoxicated than when we arrived. 

Then Julia (my anarchist girl) surprised me by taking me to the church where the last, and best, scene of SLC Punk was shot. It was the best thing ever. It was absolutely surreal, because I'm living a life I've been dreaming about since I saw that movie in high school. I suggest everyone watches it. 

And the debauchery doesn't even end there. We then climbed the fence into this park built by a mason with all kinds of super weird sculptures such as:

And:

We climbed out and sat on the ground in the parking lot for a bit since someone who won't be named (but who also wasn't me.) Couldn't manage to ride her bike. 

We were cool after a few minutes, and biked back to Boing to call it a night. Salt Lake was the coolest shit ever. It's so punk. Thanks to everyone at Boing for having me!