| Maximo Park Diary Entries |
| These are diary entries by Maximo Park members from the Official Maximo Park Website. |
From a San Fransisco Taco Bell |
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| 28 Aug, 2007 |
They call out your name behind the counter.
It seems so informal.
Outside, a man slumps against the kerb. His hair is spreading silver at the sides, around his ears, with the blackness of his skin creating the effect of a fire that has recently died out.
Inside, surrounded by smooth plastic surfaces, a lady swings her little ghetto blaster like it's a handbag.
"It's been a long night," she says.
A purple Christmassybauble hangs from her blouse.
I could stay in this fast food restaurant all day listening to the true stories, the embellishments, the all-out lies, and the long-time-no-sees.
On the street, away from the mist that obscures buildings only a few blocks away, a guy makes chuffing noises, his hair stuffed beneath his baseball cap, which seems like a standard look for hustlers in San Francisco. A lot of casualties inhabit the neighbourhood around the Phoenix hotel, with its pastel blue paint that stands incongruous alongside the crooked and the crippled, as if to hint at the city's breezy West Coast reputation; some kind of faded, baby-blue souvenir of a counter-cultural heyday.
Along the way.
Gold teeth flash. Kids deal out bundles of dollars into little piles as if they were trading cards.
I stride along the middle of the sidewalk so as not to look interested in the deals being struck or the goods on offer. I'm assaulted by different smells and coded talk, both betraying illegal activities that symbolise a vague power in defiance of the parked police car behind this group of men.
A shop window shows multiple childish renditions of the American flag. In their infant hands the stars become sequins and the stripes look like the irregular flicker of a broken television.
In a bar that plays punk rock music, I can get a cola for a dollar, but the bartender keeps asking if I want another so I leave.
A nearby cinema is showing Harold and Maude, but it's getting late and I've seen it. Over the road, two shadowy figures try repeatedly, and unsuccessfully, to throw a tied up pair of shoes over the telephone wires that traverse the road. The weight of each shoe acts against the other as they see-saw upwards and, knocking together, they tumble down in a limp freefall, as if dangling in miniature from a rear view mirror in one of the shaky taxi cabs that bump across this hilly city.
But it's dark now and all this shady activity is like a faded chalk equation on a dusty blackboard: it just wears out my eyes.
Paul And The Park
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