Friends, Recessers, Chronicleers: lend me your ears.
But more importantly, lend me your hearts. Because this week, I am sorry, dear readers. I fear that in this, our hallowed fourth volume of Prashanth’s Picks, I cannot in good faith fork over the most eagerly-awaited list of community goings-on in the Triangle.
This weekend is different.
This weekend is, in short, my birthday weekend.
And over it, I intend to do what any respectable birthday boy should in so weird ‘n’ wacky a time. I plan to retreat into the warm and numbing chrysalis of my closest homies’ embrace, from which I will emerge a butterfly of a post-birthday human being. A butterfly that can legally drink.
So forgive me for not wanting to be specious. Forgive me for not curating this weekend’s coolest cultural calendar as I, insulated thus, cannot safely guarantee the coolness of my picks.
You will not, however, have to forgive me for letting you down. For I, Prashanth, principal picker of Prashanth’s Picks, do not let my faithful readers down. Notwithstanding age. Notwithstanding the homies.
In keeping with the spirit of likely non-attendance, I have instead prepared a list of ten places you likely won’t go. This weekend, that is. But somewhere along life’s journey?
Well. Still, probably no. Check it out, though. These are Prashanth’s Picks, Part IV: “The Planetary Picks” (Feb. 28 – March 2).
Centralia, Pennsylvania has been on fire since 1962. Go visit the ten people that still live there!
Spend some time in Mills End Park in Portland, Oregon, the smallest official park in the world at about two feet across. It’s also known as “the only leprechaun colony west of Ireland,” since its founder, the late journalist Dick Fagan, claimed to have been granted the plot by a wily leprechaun named Patrick O’Toole, whom only Fagan could see. Oh, Portland!
Drive through the Gate Tower Building in Osaka, Japan. Because you can visit its fifth, sixth and seventh floors and never leave the highway.
Hang your bra on the Cardrona Bra Fence in New Zealand. There are 7,400 or so on it already.
Antarctica’s got the chillest churches on Earth—seven of them. One of them has hosted Buddhist and Bahai ceremonies as well.
On the subject of strange churches, there’s this chapel in the Czech Republic decorated with 40,000-70,000 human skeletons.
Oof! As a picker-upper, you may want to try driving around Swindon, England’s “Magic Roundabout” a few times—either the big one or the five mini-roundabouts around it, spinning the other way.
There’s fun to be had by the whole family in the smog and overgrown pathways of China’s Wonderland, developed as “the largest amusement park in Asia” then abruptly abandoned.
Do not, at any cost, take your family to Jeju Loveland in Korea, however. Save this trip for your special someone! Peep the massive sculpture garden, which illustrates a spectrum of lovemaking techniques. Gawp at the “large phallus statues, stone labia, and hands-on exhibits such as a ‘masturbation-cycle’.”
And after visiting all these places, you’ll probably need some restful time away. Maybe a long nap, somewhere quiet and dark. Try Coober Pedy, Australia, a mining town where most residents live underground. Appropriate, too, because its name is derived from an aboriginal term that means “white man’s hole.”
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