Alpacas

When visiting a place like Portland ME in early March, and the wind’s whipping down narrow streets and people have entire alpacas draped around their shivering corpuses, it’s tempting to offer a myriad of dismissive utterances and book the next flight to LA. 

But there’s something about a place imbued with preposterousness. Unlike Los Angeles, people are actually from here and fiercely proud, equipped with an edifying, pugnacious lunacy unique to those who voluntarily reside in places where spit freezes before hitting the ground.

I’ve already been offered mushrooms and mistaken for the “new Grateful Dead guitar guy,” both outside of Whole Foods. It’s going to be a good night.