I’m having the hardest time being a hippie lately. I had no problems last year– never brushed my hair or wore makeup, carried my life in a sack, lived wherever I felt like it. Life couldn’t have been better.
But now I’m in Los Angeles.
Chihuahuas wear designer clothes and you’re an oddity if you don’t have a German-engineered car. Plus, my adult acne requires I wear some fancy foundation for anyone to take me seriously, and I was forced to buy some decent jeans due to my exhibitionist butt crack. So, I’m now feeling like ‘one of them.’ I’m a paradox– surrounded by creative directors in Diesel jeans by day and meditating in lotus at night. It couldn’t feel more weird. I know a guy who just paid $50,000 for a couch (‘It is the focal point,’ he rationalized). Some of my friends are struggling to raise $400 to send a year’s supply of water to a village in Africa. Where the hell do I fit in the mix? If I could, I’d sell that couch, pay off my student loans, and go to Africa to deliver the water myself. Does that make me a hippie or just some chick who says she’s a hippie but is just lazy and wants to use travel as an excuse for never having to work?
I don’t know. But the best part is that I don’t have to know. Because I live in Venice Beach! You could wake up in Venice Beach stuffed in a cannon. You could crawl out of that cannon and find an eyeless homeless man, a guy selling cotton balls and taser guns, and a yuppie jogger pushing twins in a five-thousand-dollar stroller. And none of this would seem weird. And you’d say to a man playing bongos, ‘Excuse me, do you know why I woke up in a cannon?’ And instead of looking at you as if you had five noses, he’d tap his friends on their leathery shoulders and they’d all help you find out why you awoke in this cannon. And all together you’d find a guy sleeping in the sand who remembered that you were at the local freak show (the one that features an assortment of 2-headed animals) and that you volunteered to shoot yourself from the cannon after downing a magnum bottle of Opus One (bought for you by this Hollywood big shot at a bar down the street for $749 plus tax). And then you’d hear that the freak show owner stuffed you in the cannon but ran from the cops right afterward because he’s also the owner of the medical marijuana joint across the street that was getting raided. You know the one, next to American Apparel. And so you fell asleep in the canon until now when you just awoke to the aforementioned plus a dude frying up worms on a pocket kerosene grill, not because he’s homeless but because he’s a shaman and these particular worms are from Tibet and will help him with his Tantric sexcapades, about which you don’t want know– trust me.
It’s a strange place, this Venice area. On the beach, it looks like a scene out of Rishikesh, India– free yoga, dirty dreadlocks, street sleepers, seedy taverns, and marijuana. Lots of marijuana.
Four blocks over is where the hippies become pseudo. Here the marijuana is legit, the bars have bouncers, and the coffee shop baristas draw hearts in the latte foam. The dreadlocks on this side of Venice were professionally installed by a guy with thick plastic glasses and expensive skinny jeans. The yoga classes run upwards of twenty bucks.
It’s strange, this paradox of lifestyles. But I love it. Because I’m neither nor. I’m not one but both. I am a daily contradiction. I like chocolate and bread pudding. I want it all. I’m every woman. It’s all in me. And there’s no point in choosing now. So, I’m gonna ride my 400-dollar bike down to the free yoga and meditate the day away with the drum circle. And then maybe wash it all down with a plate of foie gras in truffle oil. (Ok, I would never eat foie gras, but the vegetarian shit I would like doesn’t sound fancy enough to make this dichotomy sound so astounding. So just imagine something really awesome & pricey on a plate served by a super cool hipster with funky pants and Converse.)
Venice is it.
