Pawn shops and poisonous snacks

I don't know what the conversation was about up to this point, but I overheard a woman at Slice of Life say to her table-mate:  "He was wearing a sweatshirt with an om on it, what do you expect?"

A worker at Rite-Aid told me a guy came in asking her if there was a pawn shop in Sebastopol.  She told him she really didn't think there was one around here, maybe in Santa Rosa.  "I kid you not, he pulled out a big bag of crystals.  He was trying to pawn crystals.  I thought, if you're trying to do that, this would be the right downtown to be looking for a pawn shop."

I pulled up behind a truck with a large picture of a vodka bottle, noting it was gluten-free.  In all fairness, the truck was probably not from Sebastopol.  But I was relieved to know I could buy gluten-free hard alcohol.  (A number of years ago I saw an ad for vodka, stating that it was "low carb."  The vodka advertisers stay on top of the current trends.  Maybe next week I will discover vodka with chia seeds.)

At a small gathering I ended up talking with a friend of a friend who mentioned she had read several of my blog posts.  "I thought you must be exaggerating some of these stories until I took my five year-old to a group play date at the park, and couldn't believe how the kids gave him horrified looks when we pulled out 'real' gummy bears.  Not organic, fruit-sweetened Whole Foods type of gummies, like the other kiddos had, along with their edamame and kale chips.  These were the real deals.  One of the kids pointed to them and told my son these were 'very bad for you,' and he wasn't allowed to eat poison." 

"How was the workshop?"
"SNAGs galore."
Another friend also told me about S-SNAGs, which means "sexual-spiritual new age guy."  A term she and her roommate came up with after attending a tantra retreat.

Sitting in downtown Santa Rosa with a former neighbor, we watched a few strange interactions of passers-by (several drug addicts, two smokers who stopped right in front of our table and a very hostile guy on a bike) after which she observed, "I don't think we are in Sebastopol any more."

Friend #1:  "I didn't really know what chakras were til I moved to west county."
Friend #2:  "I didn't know what chakras were til I started reading Cami's blog!"


And the license plates continue:
GO HIKIN
RAIN DNC
COZMO JO
RAW MAMA