Recreational Drug Use

A few months back Skrillex came to town.  This probably means nothing to a lot of you.  Let me explain, Skrillex is a band of the dubstep variety.  Now if this continues to mean nothing to you I’ll just say it’s the type of music that pretty much requires glow sticks, neon and designer club drugs with the price of a ticket; it’s for the cool kids.  Allow me to enlighten you!

Yup, that’s Skrillex.  If you didn’t have the urge to ingest something illegal, you probably had the urge to pierce your ears with something sharp.  Dubstep is somewhat of an acquired taste.

Anyhooters, the night of the Skrillex concert, Hooters was infiltrated by brightly adorned groups of concertgoers.  After all, nothing is a better precursor to a hazed concert experience than fried foods and orange shorts.  It screams America.

A particularly large group of teenage dubsteppers ended up in Ariel’s section.  The girls wore face paint, flashy neon tutus and enough glitter to make a fairy ill – it all screamed wannabes.  They looked more like “lets go clubin’ Barbie” than serious sceners.  Ah to be a teenager again hopelessly trying to fit in to any group you can.

Ariel, being a Portlander and appreciator of all things outside the mainstream, handled the table with ease.  She knows her dubstep and showed those kids a thing or two or twelve.  They were in awe of her awesome musical knowledge.  Ariel is good like that.

As the meal ended, the girls at the table deemed it necessary to photograph their pre-concert meal.  First were pictures with Ariel.  Then pictures of couples.  And finally Ariel offered to take a picture of the whole, boisterous table.  Ariel situated herself at the head of the table and began directing the group into the perfect pose – no faces obscured, hair looking its best.  She snapped the perfect picture and went to hand the camera back.

But something went wrong.  You know how it is when you’re using an unfamiliar piece of camera equipment.  You hit a wrong button and suddenly you end up in some strange menu or turn the flash off or just generally eff things up somehow.  Well Ariel hit something.  Only she didn’t end up changing settings, she ended up scrolling through the camera’s contents only to land on a picture of one of the young girls in front of her snorting what appeared to be a white substance commonly known as cocaine.  Or as Ariel put it, “dude I just saw a photo of one of those girls doing the fattiest fatty line of coke.”

At this point Ariel froze, locking eyes with the sixteen year-old, tutu clad, drug experimenter in question.  It was one of those awkward “I know, that you know, that I know” moments.  She almost threw the camera back as she continued to look at the degeneration of our nation’s youth.

“Well go ahead and add that to the top of the list of ‘awkward Hooters moments,” quipped Ariel.  “I mean I have nothing against that stuff if you’re into it, but she was twelve and her mom probably wouldn’t be too flattered that her allowance is being spent on sweet nose candy.”

I miss you, Ariel.