Sometime you don’t find the motorcycle, but rather, it finds you. Actually, that’s most of the time. Ive never gone in search of a motorcycle. But Ive owned 5 different ones now. In fact, one of them I owned twice. And three of them were stolen. And of the 5 bikes Ive owned there have only been 3 models. That’s right, Ive owned two models twice each.

The first bike I ever bought was a Kawasaki KLR 650. It was the same bike my best friend St itch had bought when we were living together in Harlem. It made me want a bike, badly. But really what made me want to be a motorcyclist was the primal sense a little boy gets when he sees a motorcyle… Man these things are COOL. It’s impossible to ignore.

But a motorcycle wants to be in my future, or so I thought, and Stitch told me so.  “Man, the way you drink, theres only one way that’s gonna end.” And he was right, if I had bought a bike in 2000 or 2001 it wouldn’t have been long before it killed me.  But then things changed. Slowly. I met a woman I wanted to be with. I stopped drinking for 30 days, which led to 3+ years, and then finally one day I decided I wanted a motorcycle. Back before high speed internet turned everyone in to a blogger, I was a magazine addict, and I used to stoat a magazine shop with a tattoo parlor in the back, at West 3rd Street and 6th avenue a lot of nights on my way home from Tribeca Rock Club… and I used tis see a Red KLR parked outside. I just kept seeing that bike over and over, and I decided that’s the bike I wanted.

As summer turned to autumn, I remembered hearing that autumn was the best time to buy a bike. Conventional wisdom said that people bought bikes in the spring, and then sold them in the fall. The spring was a time of optimism, of sunny days spent riding twisty mountain roads. Of end of year bonuses burning a hole in people’s pockets.  But when fall came, so too did the realties of the impending winter. Of the need to stop the bike., of there being no chance to ride it at all. And to the realty of the fact that there was a very expensive machine that you almost never used, collecting not just dust, but piling up expenses in the form of insurance, parking garage fees, or maybe even tickets. And all that psychic energy got was eating up.  So that’s when I decided I was gonna go and find me a Red KLR 650, just like the one that I kept seeing parked outside the magazine / tattoo shop.

BUT FIRST I WENT AND GOT MYSELF A MOTORCYCLE LICENSE – which is a whole other adventure in itself that will be told at another time.

A few days later I walked into the parking garage on 155th street where me and the lady kept our Toyota Matrix, and what did I see but a red KLR 650 with a for sale sign on it… This was the 2003 model, which had just hit the streets in the spring, with price tag of $5,000. I called the number and asked the guy how much he wanted for it. He said $3,000. I told him Id give him $2,000, but he said his price was firm. No dice, I said, politely, and hung up. A week or so later I called him again and offered him $2,000. He said no way, but that he would sell if for $2,700. Again, no die. A week after that I called again and offered him $2,000. He said, pass, but Ill take $2,500. I figured I had the advantage, because who was gonna buy a used motorcycle in the fall.

The next time I went to the garage, I noticed something else, the bike hadn’t moved and was actually starting to collect some dust. I asked the garage attendants what the deal was, and they said the owner had brought it in and just left it there, hander been riding it. So I went and took a closer look and realized that the right side had a bunch of scratched on it. Tell tale scratches… HOLY SHIT THSI GYU HAD DROPPED THE BIKE, WHILE IN MOTION. Of COURSE he wasn’t riding it anymore, and OF COURSE he was gonna sell it to me for $2,000.

So Called him again and told him I knew he had dropped it and thats why I was offering $2k. He finally relented and agreed to that price tag and so I went and met him at the garage the following day with $2k cash in my pocket.  We made some very brief small talk, and then he agreed to let me take int out for a test ride. I did, and I LOVED it. The KLR is not a fancy bike, but it suited me perfectly. It was an endure bike, which meant it was big enough and stable enough to take out on the highway… but that it was also nimble enough and tough enough to take off road and tackle the dirt trails. A literal DREAM, as I had become quite hooked on watching motocross and the Crusty Demons of Dirt video series… So I couldn’t get a straight up street bike.

When I pulled back into the garage, I was TOTALLY SOLD, and bought the bike right there on there spot. As we started filling out paper, I asked him about the low mileage and asked where he had been riding it to. He said he had taken it to Coney Island a few times, but that he mostly just rode it back and forth to work. I asked where he worked and he said Soho. I said, “Oh yeah, what do you do?” A tattoo artist… Oh yeah, where’s the shop?

Why does California always seem to represent freedom? Is it because the NorthEast was the beginning of America? And has never really been able to shake the puritanical stench?  And that when people grew tired of living under a new version of the old boss, they headed west…? In search of the vaunted American Dream? From what we learned in school, it was the wild mean that headed west. Those who didn’t have anything , so they had nothing left to lose. It was the dreamers, the explorers, the prospectors, the homesteaders. The risk takers. The miners. The 49ers. The wild men. The Lewises and the Clarks. That was the 1800s.

Then who was next. People with automobiles could get out there easily enough. Or it was open to hitchhikers. But it was always someone in search of something new. Or those looking to get as far away as they could from what they knew back east. I used to think it was just those looking for sunshine. And sure, California ostensibly has plenty of that. But where has it gone. This autumn has been one of the worst in recent memory in SoCal when it comes to sunshine and warmth. It’s been a grey and wet and chilly autumn.  Yet here I am. Chasing the freedom that no snow, no literal freezing temps, and no one physical location ca give me. And the freedom I find on two motorized wheels.

It’s been sort of freeing to be in no one single place, and not even really have one single home in this offseason. I have been doing os much traveling whether by two wheels or two wings. And having my stuff always split up into at least two locations. Thank goodness I have so many more than two good friends out here. I think pretty soon Im going to start dedicating a new blog post every day to a great friend. Giving back gratitude and letting my friends know how much, and more importantly WHY I love them. Which is going to be daunting. 

Because, sure, it’s easy enough to write a paragraph about why you love somebody. But 1,000 words. That’s not gonna be easy. Well, here’s a little bit about why I love Rodney so much, for starters. Or at least about why I love how much he loved music. For years, I would open the side door on of Wetlands on Laight Street in Downtown Manhattan and there would be Rodney on the other side of it. His job was to be cleaning the place, but more often than not I would find him in the DJ booth, playing music. Back in the day then we had dual Denon CD decks. The Pro DJ kind, which were equipped with pitch shift, so you could try and match beats, like a DJ would with vinyl. It was damn near impossible to do with the CD players, the way the manufacturer had hoped it would be anyways.

But Rodney had a whole other plan for the pitch shift. He would be playing CDs all day, often times making mix tapes. And he would always do it with the tempo pitched up as high as it could go, which I believe on this decks was 8%. It agave the music a slight Alvin and the Chipmunks feel, but not so much to be bothersome, or to really transform the music into any sort of unrecognizable form. But just enough to notice that it was somehow… off. Just not exactly right. Which was enough to sort of throw you off, especially if it was a song you loved. Because music was all about FEEL, right? You just FELT IT when a perfect song came on.

But with that slight variance in tempo, it always gave the songs juts a little more urgency, and, I figured, helped Rodney get that extra pep in his step and that last extra gear and anergy he needed to clean the whole club by himself. So I never bothered him about it. I always just let him do his thing, and sort of appreciated from afar how he had gamed the electronics system of the club to his energetic advantage.

This went on for years and years until one day IK thought to ask him the story about what made him start doing that. I think maybe somebody else asked about it, and I thought it would be insightful for me to have Rodney explain it in his won words. So one day I wandered into the DJ booth and said “You know, Rodney. Ive always admired how you played the songs sped up a bit, to give yourself a that little extra pep!” I was quite proud of myself for congratulating him on this little life hack.

But his look let me know that I was as far off as could be. He shot me this look, the look only he could deliver, that let me feel foolish and inquisitive at the same time. Dying to know what the real reason was. He quickly shot back “Jake, I play the songs sped up so I can listen to more songs in less time. There’s a whole lot of music in this DJ booth, and Ill never get to hear all of it if I play it at regular speed.

BOOM. HEAD = EXPLODED.

That made so much damn sense to me right there in that moment, and to this day still explains Rodney’s passion for Rock N Roll in a way no other story could ever hope to capture. Rodney wanted it all. S important was music to him, that he wanted to get as much of it into him as he possibly could. To be honest it wouldn’t surprise me one bit if you told me that he would often listen to tow different songs on his headphones at the same time, one in each ear, just to also get as much music as possible into his brain. And it also wouldn’t surprise me if you said that his brain was so complex that it could fully process two songs at the same time as well.

God damn I miss him and that big rock n roll brain of his.

#RodSpeed

So I’ve been wintering in LA. It’s the second time I’ve done this. I did it in 2010 as well when I was dating a woman who was living here. That time I stayed in Santa Monica. This time I’ve been splitting my time between Hollywood and Topanga. Two great places. I’ve always had a fondness for LA. Growing up I was so entranced by NYC and LA. The big two. I’ve never really understood why anyone would want to live anywhere else. I guess I just always wanted to be near the action. Any sort of action.

LA and NYC always held special sway with me, i guess because the only way outside of my little world where I grew up were TV and movies. And to a lesser extent magazines and books And all I saw when I looked at those were LA and NY, where they make most of those things. Sure you would see DC, but that always struck me as a huge bore. Politics is just entertainment for boring people. And more and more obviously nowadays full of complete pieces of shit. Though it’s been great seeing the quick and sudden ride of people like Alexandria Ocasio Cortez. I love Bernie too but there needs to a huge of influx of young new blood that was raised on the internet and knows how to communicate and fight. For what’s right. Other than burning the whole hunt down it’s people like that who will actually affect change. But I digress.

Anyways – Los Angeles and NYC. And Vegas and San Francisco and New Orleans. Those were all my bucket list American cities from as far back as I can remember in my childhood. And they still remain the only cities I could conceivably imagine living in to this day. And I can’t even really imagine living in all of those. Only New York and LA, really. And the longer I’m staying in LA this time around, the less I think I could make a full time life for myself here. But I’m wondering if that’s maybe because I’m only here as a visitor, and have been house hopping with various amazing friends. I think I’m beginning to feel a little unsettled, because I’m exactly that. I haven’t been settled anywhere since before Halloween. And even before that I was bouncing back and forth between coast for two months. But that’s another story for another day, and will be during whenever i decide to do my deep dive into my love of motorcycles, as that’s what’s drawn me to LA this time.

After my first and only year of college I had two offers for internships. One was in the accounting department of Don Law Concerts in Boston. The other was i the PR Department at Relativity Records in LA. And I knew a guy who said I could crash on his couch for the summer in LA. So that was a no brainer. I bought a one way plane ticket, packed a bag, and headed west of New York State for the very first time at the ripe old age of 19. When I landed i got it immediately. California. The air just smelled different. The sky was bluer. The trees were greener. California was just… cooler. Still feels that way every time I get off the plane at LAX. That was an amazing extended summer I spent here.  Broke, no car, and a shitty paying job. I gave up on the internship after one day when I realized it was going to be a 5 hour round trip

commute from Hollywood to Torrance on public transport. So i went out looking for work and found a job at a pet store in the Beverly Center. I never even made it back from my lunch break on my first day. But I quickly found a job at the Tower Records on Sunset and I was in heaven. I borrowed $300 from my buddy and used it to buy a 50CC red Honda Scooter that I found i the old “Recycler” newspaper. I had wheels. I was free. I rode tyt thing all over the damn place. Rode it to Santa Monica. Eve. Rode it up over the Hollywood Hills and down to Ventura Boulevard.  I wouldn’t do either of those things today on a 50CC scooter, but back then, there was such ignorant bliss in not knowing what you didn’t know, that you’d totally try to do ANYTHING at all. I guess I still have that tendency in me. As evidenced by sketchy shark cave diving in South Africa, bungee jumping in Zambia, and willing getting into a full

grown Tigers’ cage in Thailand and actually grabbing the tiger by the tail, and laying down on it like it was a big pillow. All of those I’ve done in n the past five years, and all of them I did without even simply googling the relative safety of these things. Had i done that first I probably wouldn’t have done any of those three things. But, ya know, I live my life by one guiding principle, and that’s “What’s The Worst That Could Happen?” Like, even if jose things killer me, they all would have been pretty cool ways to go. Not that I thought that at the time. In fact, I didn’t even consider that there could have been an awful outcome. I just sort of trusted that if these businesses were in business, well then so was I!

As Richard Branson says “Screw It. Let’s Do It!”

So I did whatever the fuck felt right at the time and Ive continued to do it over and over again and it’s brought me back to California so

Many times over the years that I’ve literally lost count. I probably landed at LAX a dozen times in 2018 alone and and rode my motorcycle hundreds of miles out of the city and back 3 or 4 more times. And it never gets old.

New York May be home, but California, knows how to party!

Sadly I never got to visit Cali with Rodney. I fucked that one up big time. I always thought I had plenty of time left with him. And that’s never a given. Do why you wanna do. When you wanna do it. Every time.

Thankfully done with all that Aussie nonsense I decided it was time for a change of scenery. I had spotted a bar the was just called THE WHO BAR and the sign was their classic old red white and blue logo. I figured they would be playing music by The Who. But I was wrong. Very wrong. I earlier upstairs and Bohemian Rhapsody was blaring at ear splitting volume. And the bar was full of a half dozen young Japanese men, all of whom, including the bartender, were singing along to every word, with surprising accuracy, maybe I’d found the holy grail, a group of locals who spoke English!

Oh, did I mention that they were all shirtless? Including the bartender. For reasons that are now a complete mystery to me, i actually surveyed the scene, took it all in, grabbed a quick video, and headed back down the stairs. As i looked around the alley for another bar, suddenly i was struck by Japanese lightning. WHY ON EARTH WAS I NOT PECS DEEP INSIDE THAT NIPPON NIGHT FEVER RIGHT THIS EVERY SECOND. And then it made sense. I was only a few drinks in. Which sometimes keeps me from doing outrageous things. But not always. Nope.

So I turned around and lept up those stairs in a single bound, shedding my shirt mid-spring and joining the party just in time to scream “MAMAAAAAAA OOOOOOHHHHH OOOOOHHHHHH  OOOOOOOOHHHHHHHHHHHHH” and the party somehow got kicked into yet another higher gear! Pretty soon we all had our arms around each other. This was waaaaay better than Karaoke!

This went on and on through innumerable songs by Led Zeppelin and the Doors. We were all carrying on and on and these guys knew every single word to every single song. I was in heaven with my new friends! But then there was a lull In the music for a bit, so was stoked to get to know these hombres. And that’s when I came to the crash crash sudden realization that these guys didn’t speak English. At all. Like, not a drop. Sure they could sing along to every word of every song that came on. But they had zero idea why it meant. And I totally understood! It’s like – i can’t speak German… but I can sing along with Das Schutzenfest by Faith No More!! And actually that’s a lie. I speak a hunch of German. Like Gezundheit. That means health. Do you think it was Germans who invented blessing someone after sneezing? That would be cool, I’m gonna go with that and add it to the fun facts I have filed away about Germans. Also Danke Shein, do you think a German wrote that song for Wayne Newton? That would make sense to me. Because Germans live visiting Central Park. And one of my favorite lines in the song is “i recall / Central Park in Fall / when you tore your dress / what a mess / I confess”

Do you think that’s the writer confessing to what whatever it is that caused the dress to be torn? Could be an early Me Too situation. But alas, while he confesses… I digresss

Back to the matter at hand. Which is these loopy Japanese fellers. Once I realized I couldn’t communicate with them through words, it was time time to go to the TRUE international language.  And I’m not talking rock n roll… or mine… but maybe something t 

Hat combines the both of those things… PRO WRESTLING! the international

Language of platonic man love.

Anyone’s who’s watched any amount of pro wrestling knows what chops are. Right? When the guys give each other back handed slaps to the chest. The slaps usually can be heard in th whack rows of the arena. One of the master a of the chop is Ric Flair. In fact, nowadays when you go to match and the guys start chopping each other, the arena fills with Ric Flair’s patented    “WHOOOOOOO” with each chop landed.

So I decided to take he dangerous route to finding out if these shirtless guys in the bar were wrestling fans, by laying a lethal chop onto one of them.  I didn’t think to hard about which guy to pick, so just grabbed the guy next to

Me by the shoulders, put him into position, and without much warning at all just gave him a vicious chop! It landed with a crazy loud THWACK that broke through the already insane volume of the music. People didn’t so much stop what they were doing as they did hush, and the guy looked as if he was confused for about a second and a half… then let out a loud roar that would be familiar to any wrestling fan, and which let me know I was in the clear. And then he grabbed me by the shoulders and positioned my body the same way I had his, and I knew I was about to get it. And get it I did. He let out a roar and reached his arm back and leveled me with a chop that sounded a deep THUD. That’s the things with chops. The higher the pitch of the sound they make, the more impressive they sound and carry through a hall, and the more they sting but the less they HIRT. The ones that thud on the other hand are all pain. Everyone in the bar grained, as if to say they felt my pain.

I wondered if he knew what he was doing and if he had done it on purpose. But it was fucking on, so i grabbed him and returned the favor. But I delivered another loud SNAP!! And everyone in the bar roared!! They got it. They knew the SLAP was the desired result.

Before you knew it the entire bar was in chip fights. Thinking back about it now I can’t believe they didn’t put on the song “Everyone Was King Fu Fighting!”

But I doubt the Japanese fellers would have know the words to that one. but Rodney sure would have. He knew the words to EVERY song. Man I miss him. #RodSpeed

Shinjuku. Specifically Piss Alley. Or, as The Trifecta of our night. And the third night in a row that I had wrecked havoc upon that poor stretch of filth. Piss Alley is a collection of TINY bars and restaurants jammed into a little corner of Shinjuku around the bend from the Robot Restaurant and right by the Red Light District – OPA! They call it that because for years there were no restrooms in any of the bars, so the drinkers had to empty their bladders wherever they could. Rumors persist TO THIS DAY, that I have a video of a drunken Godzilla peeing in the bushes out there from our very night roaming the alleys, but I somehow can’t seem to find it. And what a shame too, because the policeman who happened upon him did NOT seem amused. But this Leopard tells no pee tales. Today.

A quick google search tells me that Piss Alley was formed in the 40s as an illegal drinking area for people who wouldn’t normally have the riches to access such things as alcohol and meat. Int also says that there are “restaurants” among these establishments. But Ive been all over piss alley and never seen anyone eating anything, except for a few flop down drunks who were feasting on a face full of concrete.

But if you’re heading to piss alley with the intention eating, well then you’re not that kind of guy I wanna be doing Sake shots with.  The first night I arrived in Japan I met up with Naughty Nicky and Evil Erin Stern, Badass Jay Belin, MeShuggah Mo Traynor, Juggalo Jeremy Holgerson and a few others too hazy to name for a steak dinner in the Lost in Translation Bar which led to an even hazier off-key romp through a private Karaoke room.  As per contractual restrictions, no pics or videos will be shared from that room. Which is for the best. The next night I hit Piss Alley on my own, which is always when the real trouble happens.

It always starts innocently enough. With a beer. Or two, or three. And then someone starts singing that Lil Jon Nugget SHOTS. Funny thing is, nobody else can ever hear this song. I think it’s just a hallucinatory siren scared up by a mixture of the whistling and my tinnitus. But once you put some gas in the engine, watch out.

I should mention that every bar in Piss Alley has about 6-8 seats packed tightly around a bar and sometimes they cram a few more folks in to cram around them. And now they have bathrooms, because apparently the whole hood compound burned down in the late 90’s and the Japanese Government rebuilt it EXACTLY the way it was, except this time equipped with commodes. Still didn’t stop that dang Godzilla feller though.

My first stop was supposed to be Death Match In Hell, which was closed, as it seemingly always is every time I try and go int here. Death Match From Hell’s theme isn’t death matches at all, oddly enough, but they show a steady stream of awesome horror flicks and play metal. So good enough for me. But seeing as it was closed, I moseyed on down the hall to the “Not Suspicious Bar” Pretty sure that’s the name, because it’s got multiple signs outside that are scrawled with NOT SUSPICIOUS pointing you upstairs. Like the sign says, not suspicious at all.

Which is what drew me to it last year, and made me bee-line toward it as this year’s first stop. And it was just like I remember it – jammed to the gills, full of drunken tourists wearing plastic tiaras that the barman bestows on the luckiest of lads and lasses, and is also covered inches thick in paper that people write notes and draw dicks onto. Or and onto which they draw dicks, if you wanna be technical about it. But it’s Japan, so Im gonna let a little grammarly transgressions glide by for this gaijin.

That was all well and good for a while. Met tons of Australians and discussed the finer points of the differences between NFL and NRL (Australia’s National Rugby League) and AUSSIE RULES FOOTBALL. And everyone agreed, of course, that Aussie Rules is the best. If you’ve never seen it, here ya go. It’s basically a prison yard version of the old playground game “smear the queer™” Thank me later.

Anyways, why are there so many Australians in Japan you ask? Well, it’s like their New England, or Colorado, or Utah. Namely, the closes place you can go for a is vacation. I was gonna say it’s like their Mexico, but that’s more like Indonesia and Thailand. Which makes me think they have a better Mexico than us., I wonder if Australia is full of amazing Thai and Indonesian food spots. And housekeepers? Who does their gardening over there? And who does their President blame all their problems on? Oh RIGHT! They don’t have any problems, because they don’t have nay guns. Just an infinitesimal amount of critters that will kill you just for THINKING about asking an Aussie where all of the Kangaroos are. Or Koala bears. Turns out they aren’t outside the airport. Or so Ive heard. Ive never even been there. BUT the homie John Joseph told me they have a very progressive vegan scene. A fact that I brought up to one of the Aussies I met which almost got me into a fight. He was SO ANGRY about Vegans, you’d think his tiny wallaby cock was made out of soft Tofu. Which, in retrospect, it probably was, since later int he night when I ran into him again at another bar he kept challenging me to fight, on the basis of me being gay and all. And he really didn’t like it when I pointed out that HE was the one wearing the FINGERLESS PINK GLOVES!! And this was the night BEFORE I was dressed in the  skintight Leopard Print outfit. Oh boy, we didn’t even get into the shirtless part yet. Which didn’t involve that twisted fruit, thank goodness. 

And just like that, we passed the 1,000 words for today. More tomorrow! G’DAY MATE!

The Robot Restaurant. The most amazingly ridiculous place in the world. Not sure why they call it a restaurant. Because Ive bene twice and haven’t heard of or seen anyone eating there. What is IS though is an over the top, intense, phantasmagorical assault on your senses, your being, your take on Tokyo, and overall, an assault on any semblance of good taste. Imagine the costumes and colors of Carnivale, the odd view of the future shown in comic books of the 50s, the floats of the Rose Parade, and the gaudiness and commercialism of Vegas all rolled into one. Now add in pounding music, blinding lights, about 100 costumed performers, and a never ending cavalcade of “Robots” all crammed into a subterranean lair, and you’re beginning to get the picture.

I guess the first thing to understand is that there aren’t really any Robots at all, per se.  Which is what a to of the reviews seem to focus on. But there are a seemingly endless array of moderately animatronic sculptures, some piloted by on board humans, and some being remotely shepherded by assumedly Japanese assumed fellers in ninja costumes manning remote controls looking apparati.

But before we get down into the basement, let’s start with the entrance. The whole operation takes top both sides of a narrow Shuijuku alley. But before you even get there you can’t miss the hundreds of signs around the neighborhood that advertise this theatrical bonanza.

Once you arrive you have to navigate the ticketing hall to make your booking, and then go diagonally across the alley and stop in front of a couple of amazon sculptures upon whose laps you can lay in for a pic or two.  Then you can shepherd up a few flights of stars into the “Lounge” Last time I was there the homie Rich jones commented that it appeared to have been furnished in the style of a Turkish bodega. Im. Not sure that they even have bodegas in Turkey. Or that Jones has ever been there. I certainly haven’t, as of yet. But I still knew exactly what he meant. It was literally the tackiest collection of over the top furniture and lights you could imagine. Every color of the rainbow, plus a bunch that have never been seen with human eyes, all blended under about 13,000 brighter than they need to be light bulbs. At the far end of this long room was a stage that had a woman playing piano and a backing band dressed as robots. There was also a bar, because nobody should try to negotiate thins place sober.

It really says something when me in a skin tight leopard suit is the least interesting thing in a room. But it happened here.

Next apartment I move into I might have to sire someone from this wonderland as my decorator. Or just got to Canal Plastics and Canal Street Lighting in NYC and tell them I want 420 of EVERYTHING in their warehouses.

After spending god knows how many thousands of Yen on drinks, it was time to make the pilgrimage downstairs. A couple hundred of us made a single file line and descended through a seemingly never ending maze of staircases, with each level getting freaking that the last. Gold, silver, lamé, strobes, LED’s, neon, and freakier and friskier pics were passing by in a whirlwind… Was that a Japanese schoolgirl dominatrix riding a dolphin?!?! Why yes it was, and it looks like I’ve also found my next tattoo.

Down I to the main showroom we went. It was a long rectangular room with a set of or 3 tiered bleachers running down each long side.  There were “tables” at each seat, ostensibly to hold the food people might order, but what it really did was to give plenty of room for drinks, in addition to the TWO cup-holders that were included with each seat. Burp.

After a quick round of selling us all MORE drinks from carts they wheeled out onto the performance space, they announced that it was time for the show.

And what a show it was. That doesn’t even do it justice. Spectacle started to cover it. GOD DAMN MONSTROSITY OF AWESOMENESS comes even closer. From the opening bell, it was a non stop cavalcade of kookiness coming through the curtains. The only thing that kept this thing from being non-stop was the fact that they stopped the show three times in the middle to sell us more drinks and let us in to the bathroom. Or at least that’s the convention wisdom. And certainly makes capitalistic sense.

But Im betting more it’s because they knew that if they gave us 60 straight minutes of their “show” that our collective heads would have melted, and then congealed, melted again and EXPLODED. It is literally impossible to overstate how weird this whole thing is. The first time I experienced it I likened it to an acid-trip. The second time, more like DMT.

Almost every contraption is topped by a human, or multiple humans, in incredulous costumes made from feathers and leather and spandex and foam and future minded fashionry. Every one wilder than what came before, and none of them anything close to pedestrian. This made a Tragedy show feel like solo acoustic subway busker in the middle of a transit strike. 

There was also some sort of a “story” they tried to introduce. Something about people from the future trying to enslave humans, and then take the earth from them. Which somehow ended with a woman being eaten by and then carted off in the mouth of a T-Rex. And then some explosions.  But then back to the REAL SHNOW, which was the parade of absurdity.

It’s well documented that Tokyo is a city squeezed for space, where everyone lives tiny capsule sized lives inside of literal capsule sized spaces. But that only begs the question of WHERE do all these Robots come from. There is seemingly no end to the number of the devices. thee must be a multi story garage behind the scenes, plus a mammoth worksop to maintain them all. But come they did, as the finale was just a loop of one after another after another after another until we were all, quite literally, breathless.

Once it was all said it done. We took a few moments to catch our breath, headed back upstairs to the “Turkish Bodgea” to grab a few more drinks, and then led a crowd a revelers to Shinjuku’s “Piss Alley” and byzantine labyrinth of tiny bars… That report will be filed tomorrow.

But if there’s one thing you should take away about the Robot Restaurant, it’s that if you go to Tokyo and don’t make it an absolute must visit on your travel, then Im not sure that you are I are gonna be friends.

Rodney would have gone. And he never would have shut up about it. Be more like Rodney.