The quality of your average sidewalk winitos has been slipping. Nowadays they’re more likely to be covered in filth, angry that you don’t give them spare change, possibly fighting with other winos for drink, money, food, or some other unknown reason, and basically they just tend to be miserable drunks. The kind of people that give drinking a bad name.
But before you think I’m just being annoyingly nostalgic with this “back in my day” and “they just don’t make ’em like they used to” bullshit business, let me introduce you to some new winito that is making the rounds in LH and putting those other pinche borrachos to shame.
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Look at him go! With the two steps forward, two steps back, singing ‘n swaying. Plus he has his 40 oz bottle on full display because fuck what you think. Oh, you don’t think these pictures are that good? Check out this video clip.
Yes, drinking and singing early on a workday. This is the second time I see this guy living it up via the bottle.
In LH we have lots of street drunks, most of them of the grouchy variety. Like that guy with the mangled and infected leg on a wheelchair that raises his pant legs so you can see the damage and maybe have some sympathy. Or the man by the freeway exit on Ave 26 that looks like a Toltec with a punched in nose and is usually too piss drunk to make actual words but mutters something about dinero while he shakes his little cup at you. None of them seem to be enjoying their existence, no doubt for good reason. When I decide to say fuck it all and abandon all my responsibilities I hope I end up as one of these singing drunks instead of those surly types, and never as one of those regular boring SUV driving, Raider Nation meathead drunks that should really be sipping tea.
Sometime later as his energy wavers and he takes a seat, the guy from the t-shirt store asks him to lift his legs because he is washing the sidewalk. The winito happily obliges.
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I appreciate that his song is on theme.
How sad. He was probably born in Mexico. Here he is in America, a place he thought his parents were taking him to for a better life when he was a kid, an aging, dying man, all alone and drinking on the street. Underneath that crooning and playful harassment of passerby, I’ll bet you he’s just lost, missing his family and childhood friends, all of whom have either gone their separate ways or died off. Almost brings a tear. And with these economic conditions this could be the future for a lot of us. On the day of Martin Luther King Jr.’s observance, I’ll quote: “We may have all come in different ships, but we’re in the same boat now”.
He’s prob. drunk because of a cheating woman as the song he’s singing says… Can’t blame the guy, I’ve needed a few drinks after a bad breakup…
hahaha thats amazing, i remember these pair of borrachos that would hang out right by soto and 1st. It was just two of them and they would sit on the floor and sing jose jose songs and then they would stop and argue bout how one of them didnt know the lyrics to the song.
i love the way he drinks, its like a big “fk you” to the world.
as my older brother says- “some people drink to forget, while others forget to drink.”
To me the saddest thing really and quite tragic is seeing a female alcoholic.
Oh and me i’m a high functioning alcoholic, reminds me i need to get back going to AA mtgs.
But we do know how to party!