To The Albany Historical Society

We were supposed to spend the day riding the trolley around downtown Albany. The Historical Society had refurbished an old street car adding air conditioning and bike racks. We, 6 college students needing summer jobs, would ride the trolley, handing out maps of downtown with coupons for restaurants and tidbits of information about historical buildings.

And then they found the bird costume.

A lark.

Source: http://www.albany.com/hotspot_lark-street.cfm

Lark Street is funky. Before Ben and Jerry's was ubiquitous, they had a few shops in hippie neighborhoods in the northeast. We'd eat cones of cookie dough ice cream with 10,000 Maniacs playing in the background. Tie dye t-shirts and patchouli. All the leftover cliches.

As part of historic downtown Albany, Lark Street was on the new trolley route and my boss at the Historical Society thought someone should wear the bird suit and pass out coupon maps with potato chips to all the hippies. She thought this seemed a good idea. Hippies appreciate history, right? They like trolleys and coupons, yes?

We all tried it on and as luck would have it, I was the best fit. So I donned the felt suit and with my friend Rho as my guide because the eye holes were weird and I could barely see, we rode the trolley to Lark Street with bags or coupons and potato chips to pass out.

Hippies are often high. I'm not saying all of them, nor all the time, but it's not a shock to come across one and realize there's a faint smell of weed, and they are taking a long minute to think about what you're saying. This was also a street that had its share of homeless people, who were also often not sober.

And so you can imagine the looks when they saw a huge bird, a lark nonetheless, walking towards them wearing a shoulder bag and handing them potato chips. This is a tough one because birds aren't THAT big, but the chips, the chips would be so tasty.

It's 94 degrees and humid in downtown Albany. I'm a felt bird being led around the street to hand out chips to stoned people. Despite everything I have been raised to believe about what I can do with my life, this was not considered as an option. A guy with a grey beard takes the chips and says, "Thanks." 

 Tomorrow, when he sees me again, we will both believe this is real.