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Most people I know have probably not been to Nevada City and really, why would they? It's really far from San Francisco and there isn't any skiing or wine at it. But, it is a cute Gold Rush Era mining town that has been well restored instead of being left to decay like so many others. If you're curious, check out the Nevada City gallery I just uploaded for a look-see. As you will hopefully notice, the town does indeed have charm. It also has other things. For instead a grave amount of dirtbags with dreadlocks and a severe lack of showers seem to love to circulate on Commerical Street which is one of two main streets, the other being Broad Street. They do indeed kill a good deal of the charm. But, what really does the place in for me, are the crippies.       As you can read in a previous article, this is a rather annoying group. While on the surface, they at first seem like passive do-gooders, underneath lies a seething person that would condemn you Hell (if they believed in it, since they don't being Buddhists and all) because you don't see things in their conformist, peace-loving ways. Thankfully, they all have a place they can congregate and share tips from the latest issue of Tricycle and this place is Nevada City.       The lovely, old, rustic buildings of the downtown carry a never ending horizon of all the prayer flags, incense, Buddhist quotes on everything, bells, Chinese character encrusted stuff, handmade funky clothes, and whatever else is needed to have all the trappings to appear to be a Buddhist, New Ager, or general Spiritualist. I think the worst one for me is Mountain Song. It pretty much sums up the general aura of this mecca for the anti-corporate people to go and spend, spend, spend.       I gleefully rip in to the general spirit of Nevada City because I've been there many times and I find everything that it's about to be so ridiculously contradictory and faux-lifestyle oriented that the irony is more than a little painful.       But, there are things that I like there however. Besides the cute town, there is the food. Good restaurants have opened up over the years because crippies do love to eat, just like me. There is a Mexican spot on Commercial Street that is really mighty good. Yes, some Mexicans managed to find their way up in to the hills to make Free Trade Burritos. No, they don't call them that, but they'd sell them like crazy if they did. I'm giving that idea free of charge by the way.       I would have to say that my favorite restaurant in the place is the New Moon Cafe. It's generally quite tasty, although quite popular and requires booking for popular weekends. Although, again, the name is just typical of a place where shops can't exist without at least 15% of their merchandise devoted to something dealing with astrology. Had it been the "New Manteca Cafe" it probably would have died off sometime ago and we would have all been the losers in that.

Some might say that it's an incredibly derogatory word for someone who is crippled or handicapped. Oh, but no, no, no. In my book a 'crippie' is a slightly less than incredibly derogatory word for a 'crap hippie'. You know the type. Those with prayer flags at their house, or dreadlocks, or incense always burning, or Marley posters up on the walls, or any variety of things that point to their taking on the trappings of what the hippies were in the sixties without actually taking on the doings of the hippies in the sixties. Crippie meccas include places such as San Francisco [The Mission], Humboldt [all...], Nevada City (which I will be covering shortly), and of course the true nexus, Barcelona [El Raval or any random building with squatters]. Oddly enough, I seem to be surrounded by these folks in all my most favorite spots. Perhaps I'm a crippie myself? Not hardly. I'm much more in to doing things that make this world a better place and not feeling like I need to grow out dreads to show it. That and incense gives me the worst headaches in the world.       We probably all have a crippie in our lives and so now, I give you a name for these folks. Use it if you want. Some of my previous words are better circulated than others, but I'm always out to make the world a place bent around a vocabulary that I've created. Obviously the rest of the world doesn't always think that I'm the bestest sometimes and thusly, praving, kockalocks, and fatcarts are still just part of my own personal vernacular. Someday though, you will hear someone call someone else a crippie and you'll know the source--sarcastic ole me.