friends of convenience

Well let me preface this with I am back in Los Angeles. In Barcelona I avoided Starbucks at all costs, it is basically the American embassy of the city. And here I find myself having lunch in Culver City with a friend and she has no Internet at home and needed to do a sexual harassment online training course for work. So, here we are at Starbucks. First, I take issue with lunch costing almost 20 dollars these days in LA, with tip included, something I have gotten un-used to in Spain, it not being the culture. Second, I know Starbucks has (now let me pick the perfect word here… poor, bad, horrible, shitty, unfortunate coffee) sub par quality coffee considering they are a coffee shop, not a restaurant with fabulous food but not the best coffee, which is annoying but not ridiculous. I’ve gotten spoiled with delicious Spanish coffee even at the old man bars on the corner, nothing fancy just a good roast, hot when you order it not served in a paper cup, small, powerful and rich. So, I thought an espresso would be a safe bet here at Starbucks. I ordered it “for here”… what a concept. They guy comes back with my drink in a bowl made for a double latte like a good 16oz mug. And there at the bottom is my single shot of espresso. Like the sad left overs of a larger American sized coffee. The cold mug turned my sad shot into a luke warm mess. (This is besides the fact that the espresso just was not tasty. So I get it iced, he fills the bowl up to the brim with ice,

Maybe all this is silly and trivial

In fact it most definitely is, but I just find it absurd that they have become the most recognized coffee mark in the entire world and their coffee sucks. Yet it’s full in here and we had to wait for a table.

It’s just like people there are those people who are just not good friends, or just overall low quality, yet they dress up, are in the right clubs, offer to let you use their wifi and are always around so they are convenient friends and you hang out with them, even though you don’t really like them.

Brilliant marketing but it scares me because what if in our lives we settle for convenient friends, or just add enough sugar to our coffee so you cant even taste what it really is like. How do we really know what we are getting ourselves into?

Everything I'm stoked I did in spain.com and that which remains on my list.

My new website idea. Everyone does crazy ass shit in Spain, I mean this is the home of San Fermines, the running of the bulls where people dress up and volunteer to be chased by bulls down a confined corridor that has a dead curve and people get trampled and then look forward to it again the next year. Shit. When I got sick this year and had to give up my bus ticket to Pamplona, I was bummed, I was ready for the calimoxo madness. Ps calimoxo is a typical Spanish drink, mostly drank by young people which is a mix of cheap red wine and coca cola. Aka sugar. Kind of like cherry coke with a kick… the kick is in the morning when you kick your self in the ass for your raging hangover from all the sugar. And generally speaking you can only drink it on the street or corner.

1. Ride on the back of a motorcycle, like a real one, with the bartender from Nasty Mondays.
2. Get a Spanish boyfriend
3. Go on vacation with said boyfriend
4. Climb a giant light post by Canaletas at the top of La Rambla after Barca won champions league, this included wearing a mini black dress and yelling in Catalan all night…. Ps I don’t speak Catalan
5. Play Capoeira on the walkway leading up to Arc de Triomf
6. Ride bikes all over the city
7. 2 six hour bike rides, first down to El Prat with a recently unemployed stranger and second up to Costa Brava with jace, my homeboy who is way hardcore in outdoor activities.
8. Disco bowling in Costa Brava on a Saturday night
9. bleaching my precious brown locks blonde as sunshine and dressing up as Pamela Anderson for Carnival then chasing Andre Aggasi and Rafa Nadal down the street in a red Speedo and Uggs in the middle of European winter outside one of the only bars in Granollers (a small city just north of BCN) trying to save them, because I was Pam in her Baywatch days.
10. Meeting Theirry Henry at the movies (Yes I was that girl.... I have a picture)
11. getting kicked out of OttoZutz…. Who doesn’t get kicked out of Ottozutz?… and subsequentially permanently banned (when I was blond, perhaps they wont recognize me as a brunette
12. Dominate karaoke at George Payne Irish Pub every Sunday including a Freddy Mercury performance of “Under Pressure” where I climbed the stairs took the cordless microphone and sang with one leg over the railing in a back bend
13. Win a date with a Spanish guy on a new international dating show called Loose Screws BCN.
14. Discover the one and only frozen yogurt place in the city.
15. Drink hella leche merengada during the summer
16. Meet the only Catalans in Granada
17. Get invited by Steve Aoki and the bloody beetroots to their show at Apolo and pre-game backstage with them and then onstage during their show… which has inspired me to not only buy acid washed jeans like Steve Aoki's but also like electro music. It was my first and only electro concert and I didn’t know how to dance to that type of music so I went with your basic Tae-bo moves like the punch it out and spastic up and down. Trust me, it worked.
18. 2 calcotadas (calcots are a vegetable that is a hybrid of a leek and an onion that you cook on the bbq, it is this huge bbq party and the sauce you dip them in is actually the best part.
19. Drink wine out of a porron without spilling all over my face (it’s a Spanish jar with a pointed tip to pour from and you pour from a long distance and it streams into your mouth, the closets mental image I can give unfortunately is like a pee stream.
20. Take a pool raft out into the ocean to do a buoy swim with Mallory and race back for unspoken fear of sharks
21. Get paid to be at both the Formula 1 and Moto Grand Prix in the Montmelo Circuit right outside Barcelona working for the Renault Alonso and then Yamaha Rossi teams (when Valentino Rossi won that race in the last seconds of the race and went on to win the title of World Champion for his winning season bt-dub)
22. Watched more sunrises than sunsets this year.


My only two unaccomplished goals were getting to ride or party on someone's boat (which I was invited so I got close), and riding on the back of a police motorcycle but not being in trouble with the law as the reason for being on it... a lofty goal.


WHAT RANDOMLY SATISFYING ADVENTURES HAVE YOU ALL DONE?... spare no details