You might ask yourself what type of urban mayhem I create. This is a valid question, and I’d like to explain to you what kind of a mischievous dork I am. But first, let me tell you why I do it. It’s pretty simple actually: it makes me feel good. And it makes other people feel good. Imagine walking down the street and you see some randomly hilarious or beautiful thing that wasn’t there the day before? That’s what I live for. New murals, yarn bombings, and other street art help make a city unique and interesting.
Today I was hanging out with my friend Stuart and decided to include him in some of my high jinks. I spent some time designing and printing a bunch of small, paper messages. They were motivational messages meant to make the discoverer smile.
We set out on foot to my local thrift shop, armed with our tools of mischief. I brought a few items with me to donate, so I did that first. Then we walked through the aisles of women’s clothes, shoving messages in pockets. These messages said either “You are beautiful just the way you are” or “You look fabulous.”
When we’d finished that job, we walked to one of my favorite coffee shops for some caffeine before heading for the library. My first stop once we arrived was at the counter because, as it turned out, I had not yet gotten a library card since moving back to the area. Once I had this ticket to enlightenment, we headed back into the bookshelves. I had several messages and wanted to distribute them to certain sections. I put the “Your actions make a difference” messages in gardening and sustainable living books. I chose “Be daring!” for the large-print books. And then we put the “You are loved” messages into young adult books.
I felt satisfied with our work, and we headed downtown to see what was happening. As we were coming up on our destination (The Ale & The Witch), we heard some music playing and recognized it as Pearl Jam. It was coming from Jannus Landing. Surely Pearl Jam was not at Jannus Landing. Surely that was not Eddie Vedder in such close proximity to myself. No, it wasn’t, but it was the next best thing… Pearl Jamz, a Pearl Jam cover band! What luck! The show started at 8:00, so we killed an hour or so getting a bite to eat.
The Pearl Jamz show was free! It was like our instant karma was kicking in. It took them a bit to warm up, but by the end they were really rocking. The lead singer looked amazingly like a young Eddie Vedder, and he had perfected the classic grunge scream.
What an amazing city I live in. Always something new and fresh.
