Say, man...

A couple of months ago, a colleague of mine from the right coast was sent out here to help me and another colleague out on a little project. Basically, he was underworked and we were overworked, so they sent us a slave for a couple of weeks. He was an excellent slave, and he knocked out a huge chunk of our more tedious work before he flew back out. Shortly thereafter, his immediate employers went belly-up in rather spectacular fashion and he disappeared off the radar. Much luck to you, C, if you're out there.

In those two weeks he was in Seattle, though, he had some odd little run-ins with the local strangeness. One of which was on Capital Hill, when he went there to do his laundry on a weekend. For those of you not in the know, parts of Capital Hill are Seattle's high-freakuency strangeness zone. He obviously walked into one of those areas.

C is a fellow who has traveled all over the world and likes everyone to know it. Ergo, he covers his luggage with crazy stickers from crazy places all over the world. As he exited a taxi with his suitcase full of dirty clothes, a crack-skinny gentleman carrying a plastic grocery bag stopped to chat with him.

"Where you been, man?" he asked.

"Oh, all over the place," answered C with a smile.

"Say, man," said the grocery bag man, "I got a hundred dollars worth a meat in this bag... You want some?"

C declined and, much to his discredit in my eyes, did not even look in the bag. How could you not look in the bag? Or ask what kind of meat? But C was in a strange city, so I guess I can't blame him too much.

Another friend of mine, who is a former Capital Hill resident and fellow conoisseur of the absurd, says that he is pretty sure he's seen this guy--we'll call him the Capital Hill Butcher--and that this is his usual, daily gig. So it wasn't just a one-time thing.

Which I think is good because, you know, some people like meat, but don't like supermarkets. Voila! The Capital Hill Butcher's niche market is born.

While I am aware that the sale of stolen meat is quite a regular occurrence, I am also aware that such sale usually takes place in bars and such, and the meat is usually sold in its original packaging. This is especially common in parts of New England with serious heroin problems, I've been told. I've even talked with a young man who sold shoplifted steaks in bars in Maine to pay for his drug habit. And then, after he kicked drugs (yea for him!) he continued his meat resale business to pay for his four-wheel-drive vehicle habit (boo for him!).

But I can't shake the image of the Capital Hill Butcher sitting at home with a drug habit, a roommate, and a meat grinder, thinking:

"I know I'm sitting on a gold mine here."