I was on the phone when we took down the stripper pole. No, actually, someone else was on my phone when that happened. I'd had a few beers by then and destruction was the theme. Memory is more maleable when things are coming apart than it is when they are coming together.
Carly was sitting at the rickety card table, left by the owners of “Ruff House Private Club” when they vacated in an unwilling but probably timely fashion. The space was still cluttered with their left-overs in the same way that the foreclosed houses I normally work on are. Sometimes in business the ventures overlap in funny ways. She was reading a Christopher Moore book, drinking Jim Beam and Coke, and smoking a Kool cigarette. It was a sort of destruction aftermath. Had I been younger there would have been as many beer bottles and cigarette butts as there were piles of drywall and felt flooring. Strewn about. Discarded. Demolished in the moment. At this point, the place still looked like something was being accomplished amid the rubble.
I haphazardly tossed the stripper pole in with the 2X4s, drywall, and chipboard. Ben was fiddling with the remnants of what was once a cramped kitchen's wall. Joe was using a circular saw in some fashion or another. We were winding down for the evening. It was close to midnight. 1,100 square feet of raw retail space was covered with the evidence of man on building violence. We were happy and exhausted.
Under the felt there was black and white checkered tile. Behind the walls there was nothing. Most of the interest in destruction stems from curiosity. But, the journey is the reward. Anything of interest found is cream on the cake. We had it rich.
A loud black family- husband and wife and two kids- walked past the 10 windows facing the street. The fat mom made sure to elevate her voice as she walked by our door, which was propped open with a 5 gallon bucket of the slate grey paint that covered the poorly graffitied walls. This let out the dust we'd kicked up and the smoke we we'd blown out. We ignored both the family and the walls for the most part, though it was impossible to avoid wondering about the kids running wildly about at this time of night. Joe had earlier made the comment, “All those mutherfuckers and not one knows how to use a Sharpie.” It was true. Nothing of interest in black on grey beyond names and scribblings. Loud, but otherwise juvenile, ineffectual... kinda sad.
The Buzz Cocks buzzed from a CD alarm clock plugged in next to the 18V battery charger. Loud crashes interrupted it as we tore down bits and pieces of the building. There was a certain chemistry between us that ensured no one got hurt. Not because we were safe by any practical standards. No helmets. No masks. No knee pads, gloves, first aid kits, nor permits. It was guerilla and we all knew it. So, we just made sure it all stayed strait.
Ben took the sledge hammer to the framing of a wall. Carly looked up and said, “Swing it again. I just want to see you do it.” He obliged and piece of drywall sailed smoothly into the piled detritus. “Nice,” I said. Joe decided he'd had enough. We shook hands and he left on his Harley. Things were winding down.
A few more beers were drank. A few more things were destroyed. But, there is a moment following destruction that simply exists whether you clean things up or not. We didn't even bother. That'd happen tomorrow. It was late and we were talking. Talking about old times. New times. The future of this space. What might have happened at this space before. Ben picked up the stripper pole for a moment, then dropped it back into the rubble. I lit a cigarette and and sat down on a rickety folding chair.
“This is it,” I said. “This is it.”
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