Culture Kings: memorial day weeekend

Memorial Day Weekend is also known as "Urban Beach Weekend" on Miami Beach. It was cool in the late 90s and early 2000s but for the last 5 or 6 years it has been a shit show. So, I get the fuck up out of dodge this time every year. This year I took a trip to Orlando to meet up with a couple of my business partners one of which was managing a band that was playing at the Electric Daisy Carnival. My partner Mike was able to hook it up with some all access passes the night we arrived.

There is nothing like 40,000 kids on drugs to make you feel like an old fart. The average age must have been 16 for that event and everyone looked like they were rollin' rollin' rollin'.... But we still managed to have a good time and I did get to feed on the souls of some of the youth. Eventually, I gave in and got on their level. Don't judge me.

So after the EDC we went to BBQ Bar and I-Spy to grab a drink before calling it kind of early. Yes, we are old and we were tired, plus we planned on painting freights the next morning so we called it a night after only one drink at the bars.

The next morning we woke up and did one of my favorite things in the world, paint trains. We hit this day time spot and knocked out a couple of quickies. While walking down the tracks I saw this old Crook freight that had to be at least 6 or 7 years old.

After a quick freight session, we went to do some BBQin' over at our homie Dolla's place. I mean what's Memorial Day Weekend without at least a little bit of grilling?! Dolla hooked up some of his not so world famous but incredibly awesome chicken. It was so good that I wanted to smack my Mama but she wasn't around so I smacked some random old lady I seen on the street cause I figured she was someones Mama.

After painting freights, BBQing and drinking beer all day we were pooped so we went back to the house and chilled for the rest of the night...

The next morning I linked up with my buddy Bryan and we decided to go on a kayaking adventure in the St. John's River.

The weather said there was only a 10% chance of rain, but what the fuck do the weather reporters know cause we got caught in 5 different storms. We kind of seen them coming but by then it was too late to turn around.

What we didn't know then and what we know now, is that the stretch of river we were kayaking was one of the most alligator infested waters in the world!

There were literally 13-14ft gators everywhere! It was pretty intense cause my kayak was only 6ft in length. And the whole notion that the gators were more scared of us them we were of them was complete bullshit! These dudes did not seem please that we were in their territory.

On the river, the only other vessels was charter airboats who took loads of tourists to see alligators in their habitat. They almost capsized us every time they passed by us. I heard one of the airboat operators tell his passengers to look at the crazy kayakers, and how insane we were for kayaking these waters...but I think he was just trying to give them more content to bring home to what ever craphole in the midwest they came from.

So after weathering 5 rainstorms with torrential downpour, navigating 10 miles through giant alligator infested waters, and almost getting capsized (in giant alligator infested waters), we got back to shore and was immediately harassed by these assholes who issued us $90 tickets for not having life vests on our kayaks.... The water never got more than 4ft deep by-the-way.