Features, NOV 05

AMERICA - Jimmy Buffet’s Margaritaville
New Orleans, Louisiana
by RYAN JOE, columnist

He said, Damn, I shouldn't've come from Pittsburgh. Now I have to get enough money to make my way back home to Santa Cruz.

So that explained it. I hear Santa Cruz is notorious for drugs. Like you don't have to buy it there so much as pluck the junk ethereally out of the air. I wasn't sure why he told me this, though. I felt as if he wanted me to invite him in, offer him the bathroom as a safe harbor in which he could shoot up and vomit.

I closed the door and kept watch until he left. My roommate told me later, "If I'm sitting outside and I see someone coming down the street with crazy in their eyes, white or black, I just go back in. And if you see them loitering outside, you just have to use profanity. Tell them to get the fuck up and fucking walk. There was a guy who used to go through the trash, but he's gone for now. Man, I really wish we had a balcony."