Humphreys Peak
Arizona
June 2013
Up before dawn on the day we plan to hike to the summit of Humphreys Peak, the highest point in Arizona. Lucky us, there is a 24-hour Denny’s Restaurant right across the street from where we lodge. It is four o’clock in the morning and as you might expect, we find a different dining crowd now from those you meet during happy hour, which Denny’s does not have.
As we drive into the parking lot,, it’s still dark. I see a guy sitting on the curb with a backpack on the ground next to him. N’wait, the pack is moving. That’s not a backpack. It’s another person curled into the fetal position.
As we enter, we behold an unconventional cast of characters, humanoids of a strong, gothic stereotype. Every patron is dressed in basic black: one skinny guy wearing a white vest over his black shirt, at the counter an Asian guy with spiky blond/white hair, a corpulent patron sporting a chin beard with straight wisps of hair hanging straight down to his chest, an overweight gentleman with a shaved head and earring, Fu Manchu mustache and tattoos covering each arm. A girl has shaven the left half of her head and marked this bald real estate with tattoos. Another girl sports chains and studs on her clothing, her ears, her cheeks, her wrists and to complete the ensemble, her handbag. Someone is passed out in the booth next to ours, one shoe on, one shoe off.
We overhear this astute comment: “Dude, you can’t put a hip hop band between two punk bands without something going down.” True that.
It’s hard not to stereotype this crowd when they all look poured from the same mold, homogenous. But it was also hard not to stereotype my crowd back when we were hippies, all of us dressing, looking and talking just like one another, rebelling against conformity. Lisa briefly speculates about what a grandmother would say about our goth diners.
The idea of rebelling reminds me of an interview I once heard with Abbie Hoffman’s daughter. Recall Mr Hoffman as the 1960s and 70s political and social activist, co-founder of the Yippies and a paragon of nonconformity. His daughter Ilya, when a youngster, called him and said, “Dad, I got arrested!”
His response was, “Great! What for?”
She told him that she had gone camping in a graveyard. He said, “Well, that’s a good start.”