the oddities of odd street

i didn't even know that a place known as "odd street" existed in athens but, i can now assure you, it does and it seems to be appropriately named. it is very odd indeed.

so, how does one end up in the vicinity of odd street? with a little help from your (drunk) friends of course.

it all started out as a regular saturday night out on the town involving such athens staples as large quantities of pbr, shots of whiskey, and some bad music thrown in for good measure. actually, i think the bad music was the night before and i missed the good music on saturday because i was too busy getting drunk. anyway, the entire weekend seems to blur together at this point which is not important and is really not the point of this story. refer to my previous entry "binge drinking in your late twenties" if you are in the mood for a story centered around my exploits with alcoholic beverages.

as is the case on most weekend nights, you can always find a few adventurous (i.e. too drunk to know better) souls willing to continue the party past the requisite 2 a.m. closing time. yes, i was one of them on this evening. nothing unusual there. what was unusual was the arrival of a strange woman with a wooden flute. at first i didn't know who the fuck she was until i recalled her from earlier in the night when i had seen her wandering around the caledonia and playing her weird flute thing. i vaguely remember noting the oddity of such a thing at the caledonia where, in general, the weirdoes usually still manage to fall into the hipster category. clearly, this woman leaned more towards the hippie side. in fact, i think she might not be aware that 1965 is 40 years in the past.

in any case, this woman showing up at a small, after-hours get together was quite unexpected. i'm still not sure who to blame but i have my suspicions. she was nice but i couldn't understand what she said. i mean, i could understand it, but i had no idea what the hell she meant. she was far out, dude. in the stratosphere somewhere. eventually i think we all gave up trying to include her in the conversation which was just as well because the next time i checked she had fallen asleep.

i'll skip through the rest of the evening as it was long and involved many prank calls, some beer and cigarettes, and drinking from an open bottle of wine (i gave up on the wine glass by 5 a.m.). the important thing to note is that the woman drifted from my consciousness. i simply forgot she was there.

now i might have left well before 6 a.m. if i hadn't (wisely) chosen to leave my car downtown. since i couldn't leave and i was tired and getting a little bored with all of the prank calling i busied myself with consuming as much alcohol as i could and even managed to thrown in a few drags on a cigarette for good measure. hence, due to my inebriated and annoying state, i was completely unprepared when flute lady roused herself and started requesting rides home. i can't say for certain but i'm pretty sure that's when all of the caledonia boys high-tailed it out of there in quick succession. thanks a lot kiddos. since the only people left that weren't staying the night were myself (carless), my ride home, and flute lady it seems that we were to be stuck with the wooden flute. and the lady that went along with it.

fine, ok. it's 6 in the morning. at this point time has become surreal and i can stay up long enough to get this woman to her residence before i pass out cold. besides, since i wasn't driving i didn't really have much say in the matter. after all, taking someone home shouldn't take too long unless, of course, they have no idea where the hell they live and they live in some never-never sub-world in athens whose only directions include a hand drawn map and instructions to go to the trestle bridge and look for odd avenue. she had to be kidding right? odd avenue? and a trestle bridge? i've never heard of odd avenue and the name struck me as a little too apt to be coincidence. as for the "trestle bridge", what the hell is a trestle bridge anyway and why would that be the only directional information that this woman is capable of producing!? wtf!!!??

somehow i managed to hold my temper with this vague-talking 1960's throwback, but just barely. who was this odd woman with her wooden flute and crazy speak involving troll bridges and odd streets and maps drawn on little pieces of cardboard with red pen marking her house that, by the way, has a yard full of shrines? yes, shrines. or so she said although when i pressed her for information on what was being worshipped at the shrines she became more vague and looked confused. i told her that for something to be considered a shrine that it had to be built in honor of something or someone. she looked more confused and just kept repeating that they were built by her landlord and that they were his shrines. ok, whatever.

all the while i'm trying to direct j. to odd street which i think neither one of us really believed was real. real in flute lady's imagination perhaps, but not real in the real world.

then we saw it. the little green rectangular sign with the magical words "odd avenue" written on it. i almost cried with joy at the sight. ok, not really, but i was very, very happy. still not sure if it was for real but happy nonetheless. so we turned onto odd avenue, found the house with the enshrined yard (which, in the light of early morning, seemed to involve a red volkswagon camper, some giant flowers, and some metal stuff), and dropped the lady and her flute off at home. finally.

i still can't say for sure where the fuck we were or how exactly we got there, but odd avenue seemed real (or surreal) enough. i think. keep in mind that i was drunk and had been up for close to 24 hours. but whatever, the flute lady had been correct about a number of questionable points. my only remaining point of contention is that i never got to see the famous trestle bridge. looks as though i'll have to save that for another night.