Ohio State weekend acts in wild and bizarre ways on people. Crazy shit happens – a lot of it. In a tribute to the excellent Overheard in New York website and to how The Game transcends a simple Saturday afternoon, here’s a “seen and overheard edition post-Michigan/OSU game + pre-Thanksgiving weekend” edition of High Society.
Before the game
Seen on State Street: A guy lit an Ohio State sweatshirt on fire, threw it off his apartment balcony then peed over the balcony to extinguish said sweatshirt. Beautiful.
Seen on Arch Street: Someone in a fake army outfit stopping cute girls from passing because they “looked underage.”
After the game
I love walking down Maynard Street. The closeness of Ambrosia and Scorekeepers makes for some amazing people watching, especially when the worlds of hip-oisie and dude collide.
Overheard in Ambrosia, post-OSU game.
Two guys in Michigan gear walk in. They order espresso, for the first time: “How do you drink it? Do you just chill with it – do you kill it?”
Then they start “flirting” with indie-looking girls by the window. (Such ironic eyewear!) Another patron is offended by their behavior. The girls are irked. The guys are drunk and oblivious. Following are highlights:
Bro 1 (to the girls, in regards to the offended patron): “He’s mad, he’s mad!”
Bro 2: “He’s mad because we’re saying you’re sexy.”
Bro 1: “But your thick glasses are sexy”
Bro 2: “Don’t get fresh, don’t get mad!”
Bro 1 (to the other patron): “I’m saying we’re leaving. I’m just saying these girls are cute – and you’re an angry little person on the couch.”
Bro 2: “Oh, I’m not trying to be like ‘What’s your name? Where do you live?’ … We’re not breaking knee caps!”
Later, a cab driver to one of the baristas: “You’ve got music video written all over you.”
Outside of pre- and post-game interactions, Thanksgiving started early at Arbor Vitae loft at State Street and William Street – with porn. Pornucopia, to be exact.
Reported the Daily’s fine arts editor, Abigail B. Colodner: “On the stairwell going up, above Wazoo, there were very nice line drawings of people having sex with Thanksgiving turkeys, or with each other through turkeys, or masturbating through them.”
For those of you who haven’t been there (I haven’t – yet), Arbor Vitae is a loft with high ceilings and rafters, “like a barn,” Colodner said. People who stay there sleep in nailed-together wood structures Colodner described as “lofted cubicles.”
“When I came in, this undergrad named Ronen was handmaking whipped cream. People were standing around and setting dishes down,” she said. “And in the room next to the kitchen there were people playing (music).
“In the main space there were big tables for food – and there was a huge projector screen next to the tables with 1930s silent porn with like, dance hall-ish music playing over it.”
Porn + Thanksgiving. Brilliant thing to be thankful for, no? But that’s not the best part.
Finished Colodner: “They had, on the table, a pornucopia. It was just a cornucopia-shaped thing covered in pornographic cutouts.”
E-mail highsociety@umich.edu.