On Four Lokos
I used to drink a lot of Four Lokos. Not like an alcoholic amount, but it was a fairly regular party staple for me for awhile. Most of this was after the “classic” formula was outlawed; I only had the caffeinated kind a few times.
The first time, I made something called a “Sidewalk Slammer”, in which you drink a Colt 45 or other 40oz down to the label, and fill the rest up with 'loko. I used a blue raspberry one, and something about the color combination made the drink turn neon green - I called it a "Slimer" because it was the same color as the ghost on Ghostbusters. That same night, I stepped on a nail at a party in someone's basement chasing a beer pong ball - perhaps a sign from the universe to not do dumbass shit anymore. Of course I didn’t listen. The nail went right through my shoe into my foot.
The original Four Lokos, for those who don't know, were 23.5 oz cans of fruit flavored malt liquor, with 12 percent alcohol as well as at least an energy drink's worth of caffeine, guarana, and taurine. You could get them for about 4 bucks at a convenience store. They were a big hit on the college party scene circa 2010, until they were essentially outlawed because too many teenagers were hospitalized after drinking them. I remember a kid at some college party I went to said they made him feel like he was rolling on MDMA.
Clearly such a substance is too powerful to let into the hands of ordinary citizens, but they kept selling them even after they took all the energy drink shit out, so I kept right on buying them. I liked the ones that were flavored like a fake margarita. Some of this was probably a semi-ironic performance on my part, the same way I would sometimes listen to trashy 2000s nu metal, or bad white rappers, or watch old episodes of Full House or whatever.
But I think now there was something more to this as well. The trappings of low-class trash, were a form of exotica to me as a middle class white boy. Gas station booze, Maverick cigarettes, phony head shop weed. They had a sort of power, the ability to transport me from my somewhat bland suburban upbringing, and take me to a place that promised adventure and danger (mild danger anyway, or so I believed). Ritualistic totems (though the ritual might have worked a little too well, as I now find myself grasping to crawl my way back into that once taken-for granted economic station.)
Most of these years I was living in NE Portland. I’ve always thought of Portland as a grimy place. Maybe all cities are if you really know them, but at the time its reputation was as a sort of hipster mecca - all fixed gear bikes and ironic mustaches and small batch IPAs. However, I could still see the griminess poking out from underneath the "Portlandia" veneer. Ultimately, it seems like this side of Portland might have held the more lasting power. There are more homeless people every time I go back, and the downtown seems to have become a notorious shooting gallery and fentanyl market (I say this as someone who is born and raised; I’m happy to box any conservative who talks about how it’s “been destroyed” around the ears).
NE Portland has its own notoriety - in the 70s and 80s, it was supposedly a place the police were scared to go; you couldn’t order a pizza or get a cab to come out. According to the old timers, it was also a place of churches and black owned businesses. When I lived there in the early 2010s, it was undergoing the classic phases of gentrification; the punks and artists moved in due to the cheap houses, with me catching one of the last waves of that; then the gourmet pizza places and the boutique ice cream parlors, until the original gentrifiers could no longer afford it either. Last I heard, everyone had headed off across the river to Vancouver.
Anyway, at night the old Portland came out.
Me and my friend Scott would sometimes drink in front of the Chevron station on NE MLK Blvd. One night, after hitting a few bars, we bought a sixer of Pabst and some peach flavored Four Lokos, and started hanging out on the bench in front. An older black woman came up to us, probably in her 40s or 50s.
"Hey, you want your dick sucked? I can get you pussy. I'm a pimp," she explained. We declined her offer, but gave her one of our beers. A yard or so down the street, a pair of young black men kept eyeing us up; we figured they were her body guards. "I got this pill," she said. "It's supposed to be OxyContin. Probably fucking Advil." She washed the pill down with the beer, and started walking back down the street.
We decided to keep wandering up the road, and ran into another guy who was trying to sell us a bike. He said it was a real nice one, like a Cannondale. "I just picked it up today," he said. We pressed him a little bit, and he admitted that he had stolen it, something he did on the regular. "I feel bad about doing it," he said. "But... I gotta pay my phone bill." We gave him some swigs of one of the peach Four Lokos.
An older man came up to the three of us. "That's a real nice bike," he said. "Mind if I take it for a spin?" The bike thief hesitated for a moment. "Well..." he said. He looked pained. "Alright," he finally relented.
The old guy got on the bike. He looked positively gleeful. He started riding around in little circles, just to try it out. Satisfied, he started riding on down the road. Me and Scott and the bike thief watched him as he rode away from us. Eventually he disappeared out of sight. "Shit," said the bike thief. He didn't come back.