Modest proposal: Triangle Square

Our local failing shopping center in Costa Mesa, Triangle Square (love the name), has been flailing for years. Their rent is high, they put the supermarket in an unattractive basement, and they’ve been shedding tenants including: The North Face, Whole Foods, several restaurants, Virgin Records, and their anchor Nike Store. It’s a ghost mall now with the exception of a couple of remaining stores, a pretty good sushi place, and a beer bar for assholes called The Yard House.

Since the only people who can afford to remain there are selling retail alcohol, they’ve decided to fill the whole damn thing up with bars and restaurants. The place is pretty much a block of concrete between three streets, with layers of retail spaces on top of layers of parking lot. How to set this up?

I have an idea!

Towering above the complex will be a huge water tower-like structure. This will contain tens of thousands of gallons of top-shelf alcoholic beverages, probably setting some type of Guinness record. There will be a permanent rotating light on this structure, and ad logos for the liquor companies. It will be called something whimsical like “The Drunk Tank” or “Well Well”.

On the top floor of the mall there will be some very swank bars, like the horribly named “Sutra” night club that’s there already. High cover charges, velvet ropes, mortgage brokers and their trophy girlfriends. Drinks will be $10 or so.

Each floor below will have a less expensive and less fancy set of places: a TGI Friday’s and a National Sports Grill in the middle, a Red Robin and a Shooterz further down, and at the bottom a shitty beer bar with bad pool tables. On one corner of the bottom level there will be a hipster bar that will be just as bad as the beer bar, but will charge as much as as the top shelf places.

The genius part is this: every level below the top is actually drinking the urine produced one level above. As the rich bro’s and ho’s piss out their Grey Goose and Dom Perignon, it gets filtered and realcoholized and served as Absolut and Sam Adams down below, before finally turning into Jim Beam and Coors Lite at the bottom. The hipster corner of the bottom level will get it as PBR.

I’m off to get venture capital now.

Punk Rock Tom

Punk Rock Tom on the patio

He has MISFIT tattooed on one leg, and MENTOR on the other. “Back in the day” when things were crazier and Tom was drinking, G.G. Allin crashed on his couch. He has a ’33 flathead Ford truck and a variety of impractical motorcycles. He can make metal do whatever he wants it to. Tom rides a dirt bike at night in the desert, and broke his leg doing it. He skateboards when he can, too.

Tom lays tile for a living. He’s not happy when he has to work weekends, because he’s not going to get any retirement. He’ll work until the day he dies. Until then, there’s the weekend and the thrill of speed and danger.

Tom walks stiffly and sits down with a grunt, but he’s quick to smile and loves swapping stories about punk rock, motorcycling, hot rods, and the fuckin’ mess the world’s in.

The Legend of Aquaman

He arrives in an old Suzuki Sidekick,white with pink and blue pinstripes, and strides in resplendent in a mane of dyed and teased Male Pattern Doofus, plucked eyebrows, and one of an assortment of costumes including but not limited to: captain’s hat with corncob pipe and blazer; medieval/druidic tunic and Roman strap sandals; loud blue-green aloha shirt with slacks and espadrilles; or New Age t-shirt covered in Native American imagery and/or crystal faeries.

His life is mysterious. Before Bree snapped and robbed a bank he used to talk to her a lot, but even a freaked-out Crowleyan transgendered blues singer found him too outré and would sink back into her studies of Left Hand Magick with an apologetic smile. A particular exchange I overheard one day became legendary. They were discussing movie actors and their pay, and that female stars were paid less, and he said: “Well, of course, there’s one business where the women get paid more, and that’s… [pause for effect]… [slowly and deliberately licks top teeth] poooornography.”

His nickname comes from the blue-green aloha shirt outfit, which looks like an aquarium just exploded on him.

I present to you a genuine California eccentric:

two 800×533 jpegs

ah, Craigslist.

From the soon-to-be-deleted http://orangecounty.craigslist.org/w4m/89627367.html

As much as I know their customers aren’t very discriminating, any invitation that includes the phrase “I will meet you in the truck at 1:15 a.m.”…

GANG BANG TONIGHT IN BEUNA PARK!!!! – 22
Reply to: anon-89627367@craigslist.org
Date: 2005-08-07, 11:36PM PDT

HOT COUPLE HERE!SHE LOVES CREAM PIES.SO HER IS HOW IT GOES WE ARE IN A HOTEL ROOM AT THE (HOME TOWN INN}OFF OF BEACH BLVD.BETWEEN THE 91 AND LA PALMA. WE ARE MEETING IN THE PARKING LOT WHEN YOU PULL IN GO STRAIGHT BACK YOU WILL SEE A DARK BLUE GMC SEIRRA TRUCK 2004 WITH 20 ” RIMS PARK AND WAIT THE MEETING TIME IS 1:00AM THERE WILL BE A 25 DOLLER DONATION TO GET IN I WILL MEET YOU AT THE TRUCK AT 1:15AM AND BRING YOU UP!DONT BE LATE!WHEN THAT DOOR CLOSES ITS ON!!!