In the Uber, I went straight to the bison paddock but was fairly let down. I’m not sure what I expected, but from the things I read, I thought it would just be a bunch of bison minding their own business and chilling in the main park. Alas, they were fenced off and that kind of killed it for me. For the next, however many hours, I wandered around the park, took artistic (or not?) photos and just strolled casually. Very relaxing. I even found myself on Hippie Hill, and go figure I was wearing the hippiest clothes I own. I had 2 interesting encounters on the hill:
- A homeless guy called me out from a bench “excuse me miss, you dropped your smile”. After spending a little while checking the ground out and trying to figure out what I dropped, it hit me, and I laughed. He got so excited, he raised his arms in the air and shouted “AAAAIYOOOO”. It was really cute.
- I was sitting on the hill watching various groups of people getting stoned and had an old guy approach me asking to share a bowl. We got into a discussion about other... ways of smoking and his mind was blown. It was pretty funny. Maybe a had-to-be-there kind of funny, but I lol’d quite a bit.
I continued to wander the park, made my way into Japantown where I ordered who knows what, checked out a Japanese arcade shop, and continued on until I ended up in an Antique Vibrator Museum.
That’s right. It was both entertaining and horrifying all at the same time. Also extremely infuriating.
Starting in the days of Hippocrates, women were diagnosed with “Hysteria”. A “legitimate” disease that causes meltdowns, uncontrollable laughter or crying, anger, etc etc. This was a D. I. S. E. A. S. E. And apparently no one wanted to treat it. So doctors, because no one else wanted to have to do this, started using hand held vibrators (which actually looked like a terrifying power tool... a drill?) to “release” women of their hormonal issues as hysteria was actually linked to the sexual organs. Go figure, no one but the doctors wanted to do the job. Over the years, it eventually became more acceptable and of course ads hit magazines in the 1950s and it became a widely used machine to the smaller, more compact, less terrifying ones we know today.
Mind. Blown.
At this point it was 6:30 and Justin was done with the conference. I walked to meet up with the boys at a whiskey bar where everyone was in heaven. You know that scene in Beauty and the Beast where he shows her his library and has to climb a ladder to reach one of the million books on the top shelf? It was like that but with whiskey and gin (ladder included!). We indulged, smacked our lips, exchanged taste notes, and overall pretended we knew wtf we were talking about while also discussing the conference. I was pretty happy I was able to keep up with most conversations about the conference as a fellow Shopifier, so that was pretty cool! Sounds like we’ll all be meeting back in SF next year for the same conference.
It was the last night and the boys still haven’t tried the chowder justin and I roared about from the other night, so we went across the street back to Hog Island Oyster Co and got the same grilled cheese and clam chowder combo. There were 6 of us and we all ordered the exact same thing and it just went silent. The worst thing is when you talk something up and people hate it... but everyone agreed it was by far the best chowder they’ve ever had and we’re super thankful we brought them here, so that was awesome!
We said our goodbyes, grabbed an Uber and called it a night. Our ride home was pretty entertaining and animated as Justin chatted up the driver and got into a huge debate about snow and rain. Yes, Justin can make any debate super animated.
I was so done after wandering almost 13-17km second day in a row, so I fell asleep mid episode of whatever Justin was watching and woke up at 6am the next day as per usual.