Hobo Bike Gang

While we were meeting up for the .83 ride at Westlake Center last night, there was this guy in full Cletus garb—dirty white overalls, no shirt—raging around the fountain flapping his arms, and those of us who saw him remarked that he seemed to be setting the bar for crazed hobo behavior pretty high, but predictably, before the evening was out. that sort of thing would seem pretty tame by comparison to any number of the antics of those assembled to ride, and ride we did, reasonably far south, way past Georgetown, to a brand-new little corner of the universe overlooking the Duwamish, dubbed, IIRC, the “Hidden Hobo Fire Pit” (or HHFP), where much booze was drunk—(and a good portion spit, in flaming blasts into and over the fire)—several pies were eaten, and at least one used condom was scooped up with a stick, waved around threateningly, and then dropped into the flames where, thankfully, it disappeared, never to be seen again.

And although, at first blush, the place seemed hardly a destination nightspot, its charms, once the fire was burning and the bourbon and tequila started flowing, were revealed: with the fast-running Duwamish all silvery in the background and only so much space to maneuver in on the hillside, plus a sweet little bench for the most inebriated to sit on, the HHFP has to be the coziest of all the places we’ve been to around town for burning shit outside at night.

One of my favorite moments was when, as we were gearing up to leave, Miles went all Stinky Pete/Walter Brennan/Walter Huston and called those who were dawdling something like “goddamn douchebag motherfuckers” (now I remember: douchecock sonzabitches! which, in hobo-speak has got to be a term of endearment, but I also liked, at the end of the night, discovering a new taco truck, El Trompo Loco, next to the nightclub El Gallo D’Oro, whose veggie tacos are the new favorite of this douchecock sonzabitch bike hobo, anyway.