#40 - Blame Me For The Fanny Pack

I remember you could slice the humidity with a butter knife that mid-summer day, and the name of the music festival only hinted at the relentless southern heat that deep fried the New Orleans air like a beignet at Café Du Monde in the French Quarter. There I was, a carefree young adult borrowing any available shade in the vendor’s kiosks when my eye accidentally caught sight of a black cotton, woven looking satchel with a strap and a clip, kinda like a bite-sized gender-neutral backpack. It was the only one and quite unique. “I’ll take it,” I said to the dreaded woman adorned in Rastafarian colors with a thick Jamaican accent.

Looking back now, I wonder if there wasn’t some strange voodoo brewing.

This event was called Sunsplash in the late 1980’s, an unlikely setting for a shift in global culture that, ironically, had absolutely nothing to do with the reggae that drew us there.

After, back home down the coast on Pensacola Beach while slinging fruity bar drinks for the pink-nosed tourists, this diminutive, multi-purpose waist watcher garnered an unusually high degree of compliments.

Then to my dismay, the next summer, the vacationers returned with a pastel, polyester version of their own. Where mine was purposefully hung low on the hip, theirs was worn high and tight on their waste. Oh No! The souvenir store was carrying them now, they were popping up on television, everywhere!

These ultra-ordinary, grocery getting, Midwest soccer moms had adopted the utilitarian concept as a lifestyle, sentencing this treasure of mine to the black hole of outcasts in the back corner of my closet.

In a hundred lifetimes I never could’ve imagined it would turn into this.

I just wanted somewhere to stash my weed.