Sunday, July 17, 2005

Keeping Austin Weird at BookPeople

Yesterday we went to BookPeople, a really cool, hip, independent book store that epitomizes Austin. It's the kind of place where in the parking lot you will find pink pickup trucks with goat horns attached to the hood, parked next to a Lexus. Yuppies buy bestsellers from tatooed and pierced employees, while the latest new-age author signs books for customers who just spent $7 on a latte.

Doug was looking for a couple of specific books. When I noticed that they had someone there doing chair massages, I decided to head upstairs for a massage to see if she could work out the knot in my should that's been giving a problem for several days. This lady was definitely an Austin character. In between telling me about how grape seed and other holistic remedies would help my viral infection better than the meds the doctor gave me, she started telling me about a book she was reading (picked it off the shelf, hadn't actually bought it yet -- I wanted to remind her this was a store, not a library, but oh well). This book was all about hiding your assets and disappearing. The massage therapist was throwing around the idea of heading to central America and really liked the idea of Belize. She actually was giving me tips about how to get a fake birth certificate and how to get a legal passport from some small European country. I'm not sure that the massage was all that great, but now I know where I can go on Saturday afternoons if I need some advice on how to disappear.

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