(I typed this last night after a few drinks while I was feeling nostalgic, but I guess I didn’t hit the submit button. Seems kind of rambling now, but what the hell.)
I was surfing youtube going through old music videos and ran across this:
I was immediately time warped back to 1991. I was a bus boy hanging out in the kitchen of The Hilltop Club in Orange Park Florida waiting for the last few customers to leave. One of the cooks stuck in a Cure tape while they were cleaning, and there was this toy soda can with big headphones on it that juked side to side in time to the music (like this). For a few minutes I remembered exactly what I felt like back then, wondering if the waves would be good tomorrow and if I had enough gas to get to the beach, and when passing German II was the most stressful thing I could conceive of.
I don’t remember what passed for trendy fashion on a man in his late thirties in 1991, but this guy at the end of the bar was rocking it whatever it was. There may have been linen slacks and sockless loafers involved (this was ’91, just 3 or 4 years earlier Miami Vice was at its height of popularity). Somehow everyone knew he was an architect, I guess he dropped it into conversation pretty often.
This guy held court all night talking about his Porche, his projects, doing a few bar tricks, pointing out the technical terms for various architectural features around the bar (a Palladian window stands out in my memory) and getting completely hammered. Women (I would later recognize these ladies as cougars) were drawn to this guy like moths to a flame. In hindsight he was a total douche, but to an impressionable 17 year old with no concrete career plans this guy was living the life. I was intrigued.
Within six months I was taking drafting classes and working in an architect’s office picking up redlines. It wasn’t until I got into college that I really found out what architecture was about. Turns out I liked the design process, the long hours, the fact other majors thought we were crazy for spending so much time in studio. After college I found out I also liked detailing CD’s, figuring out RFI questions and walking around job sites in a hardhat. I wound up stumbling into a profession that I really enjoy, despite the soul-crushing grind of the last few years.
All because same jackass with no socks wandered into one bar instead of another twenty years ago.
Cool story. The architect in your story sounds extemely caddish and charming. The kinda guy who keeps an 1/8th of a tank of gas in his (leased) Porche, has enough debt over his head to bankrupt a small country, has been through about five or six wives, and the only clothes he still owns are on his back or in the trunk of his car as he bounces between classy hotels with bad checks 'cause his wives took all his money and whatever houses he may have been paying to mortgage on... not that he made that much money as an architect to begin with.
All I can think of is Adam Sandler in the Wedding Singer talking about how he wanted to be like his friend, the cool party guy who was still single....
Apr 1, 11 8:23 pm ·
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How I accidently became an architect
(I typed this last night after a few drinks while I was feeling nostalgic, but I guess I didn’t hit the submit button. Seems kind of rambling now, but what the hell.)
I was surfing youtube going through old music videos and ran across this:
A Forest (Live)
I was immediately time warped back to 1991. I was a bus boy hanging out in the kitchen of The Hilltop Club in Orange Park Florida waiting for the last few customers to leave. One of the cooks stuck in a Cure tape while they were cleaning, and there was this toy soda can with big headphones on it that juked side to side in time to the music (like this). For a few minutes I remembered exactly what I felt like back then, wondering if the waves would be good tomorrow and if I had enough gas to get to the beach, and when passing German II was the most stressful thing I could conceive of.
I don’t remember what passed for trendy fashion on a man in his late thirties in 1991, but this guy at the end of the bar was rocking it whatever it was. There may have been linen slacks and sockless loafers involved (this was ’91, just 3 or 4 years earlier Miami Vice was at its height of popularity). Somehow everyone knew he was an architect, I guess he dropped it into conversation pretty often.
This guy held court all night talking about his Porche, his projects, doing a few bar tricks, pointing out the technical terms for various architectural features around the bar (a Palladian window stands out in my memory) and getting completely hammered. Women (I would later recognize these ladies as cougars) were drawn to this guy like moths to a flame. In hindsight he was a total douche, but to an impressionable 17 year old with no concrete career plans this guy was living the life. I was intrigued.
Within six months I was taking drafting classes and working in an architect’s office picking up redlines. It wasn’t until I got into college that I really found out what architecture was about. Turns out I liked the design process, the long hours, the fact other majors thought we were crazy for spending so much time in studio. After college I found out I also liked detailing CD’s, figuring out RFI questions and walking around job sites in a hardhat. I wound up stumbling into a profession that I really enjoy, despite the soul-crushing grind of the last few years.
All because same jackass with no socks wandered into one bar instead of another twenty years ago.
That architect was probably a bus boy at another bar who had heard the same story from another architect, er bus boy whom he saw picking up chicks.
Cool story. The architect in your story sounds extemely caddish and charming. The kinda guy who keeps an 1/8th of a tank of gas in his (leased) Porche, has enough debt over his head to bankrupt a small country, has been through about five or six wives, and the only clothes he still owns are on his back or in the trunk of his car as he bounces between classy hotels with bad checks 'cause his wives took all his money and whatever houses he may have been paying to mortgage on... not that he made that much money as an architect to begin with.
Yep, sounds like the life to me.
sounds a LOT like a few architects i have known, too. i liked the work as well, but stories like this remind me of why i left the profession....
All I can think of is Adam Sandler in the Wedding Singer talking about how he wanted to be like his friend, the cool party guy who was still single....
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