Thursday, September 24, 2009

COMOSEXUAL - From July 16th, 2009

For the past 6 days, I spent my time in Columbia, Missouri AKA COMO.
Who would have thought this small Missouri town could have so much to offer?
The main downtown area is filled with vegan/vegetarian restaurants, eco-friendly shops, book stores, many coffee shops, and much more.
One of my favorite places to eat in town is Main Squeeze, locally owned vegan foods and smoothies. Also, the Lavender Honey ice cream at Sparky's, yum!
Another place that blew me away was RagTag Cinema, another locally owned place that is a three-in-one gem. The cinema consists of two theaters containing couches, and showing a variety of indie films, and documentaries that you wouldn't find in a big theater.
They allow food and drink from the bakery in front of the theater! Baked goods, full bar, coffee, etc. On the other side of this, is an independent movie store. Filled with all the regular movies, classics, anime, documentaries, foreign films, and quite a VHS collection! All for rent (really cheap!), and some for sale.
BIKE COMMUNITY
There are two main bike shops, Walts, and Klunk (lots of recycled bikes, awesome owner/employees helped us out a lot).

The Como Bike Polo group is astonishing. On a regular night, about 20 people show up. There are about 10 girls that play regularly, and have all-girl games, all night.
They play 3 times a week, from 7 until usually 11. Twice a night on top of a parking garage, and once at a roller hockey court.
Needless to say...these guys are good. They play hard all night, hanging out in-between games, the usually bike talk, and usually all end up going out together later in the night. 
The main thing I admire about this community (besides their sick polo skills), is they truly are a community. They knock on each others door to borrow bike parts, hang out outside of bike related events, organize trips to the polo tournaments even though they have little-to-no money, and get together to make mallets. They even gathered anything they could from their houses to put on a yard sale to raise money for the Rocky Mountain Bike Polo Tournament in Denver.
They all opened up their arms and houses to me and Jared all week. They showed us around town, introduced us to some amazing people outside of the bike polo community, and showed us the best dumpsters.
Some random pictures from the trip:

Riding skatepark in Kirksville. No bikes allowed, but fuck them! A skatepark is meant for people (more importantly kids) to have something to do besides get into trouble, drugs, etc. I guess skateboarders are the chosen ones.

Farm in Memphis, MO.

Yeehawww.

Riding in the combine. I felt like Pauly Shore in Son-In-Law. I really wanted to write my name in the wheat field.

Creepy basement.

This was probably the funniest thing I've seen in a long time. Check out the polo mallet in dudes hand. Yes! Imagine seeing this sex machine rolling by you. Shortest shorts.

Oh hai, bicycle. (You look totally different now.)
Some of my sidewalk chalk art. Don't hate.
Playing in shady places.
Thank you Nick, Drew, Charlie, Megan, Chris, Brian, Aimee, Julia, Liz, Tim, Colleen, T-Bone, Wayman, Maggie, Pete, and anyone else that made this trip memorable! 




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