The happiest place on earth

“Fuck Disneyland! This is the happiest place on earth!”
That was the first thing I heard when I arrived at the 16th and Mission open mic night for the second time last Thursday. My first time there, I was mainly trying to get a grasp on the situation, so this was a significantly better time.
The whole thing is just crazy. It’s crazy that it’s allowed to go on; the people that perform are crazy; it’s a spectacle to behold.
No two performers were alike. Although most of them were poets, no two had the same style of poetry or read the same. Aside from poets, there were also a couple people who just got up in front of everyone and spoke their mind, as well as some dancers and two people with didgeridoos who walked around in circles blowing them in everyone’s faces.
There were two different guys who played guitar and sang. One was playing indie love song type stuff about some girl who broke his heart. The other was this rockabilly fool who started his song by saying that he was from Eureka, where there is really good pot. His song had the same topic, but he took a rockabilly approach to it and added that it was about, “this bitch who broke my heart.” I’m fairly certain the guy was mildly retarded, but that’s beside the point.
Later on, the other guy with a guitar played a song with two girls, one of whom played bongos, and it was probably the coolest thing I saw or heard all night.
The poems were so, so, so good. My favorite was the tribute to Charles Bronson’s face that was read shortly after I arrived. It had some memorable lines, such as, “They say Clint Eastwood had two expressions: the one with the hat and the one without the hat. Well Charles Bronson didn’t wear a hat!”
That wasn’t the only sort of stuff being read though. There were lots and lots of somber poems, the majority of which were related to sexual identity.
I met a lot of good sources including a guy by the name of the Grandmaster Barakanoel Mumbles Gross who belongs to an improv poetry group that has been on tour internationally. He was pretty off the wall, but said some great stuff. I’m excited about having been able to talk to him.
Being there made me want to write my story about the event that much more. I feel like it’s a great story waiting to be told, and I’d like to be the one to tell it.
Everything about the corner is interesting to me. I found out the cops came and broke it up sometime within the last few weeks. I need to dive into that a little deeper for my story.
All school stuff aside, I’m glad I found out about the corner so I can go every Thursday and enjoy it.