I really like dumb graffiti. My favorite two tags of the last year are a mail truck where somebody sprayed “Oh shit it’s the mail!” and a sticker someone put on the wall of the laundry room at the Myour House labeled “I’m you from the future — SORRY”.

So a scrawled tag of a dick spurting cum is pretty juvenile, we can all agree on that, but it’s juvenile in a good way, right? Like how silly, how pointless, how cute, right? And then when you’ve got that same dick and balls and cumspurt, outlined in profile, with the inscription “Hey look, it’s a dick!” then it’s transformed, right? Then it’s some other level shit, right? I think so.

We borrowed my parent’s GPS for this trip. It’s a few years old, and I don’t think they’ve updated the maps, so sometimes, when we’re driving down a new highway, the screen shows us above the map, floating high over the city. It reminds me of a scene from Waking Life, that I only half remember, because I only ever seem to watch that movie in the throes of insomnia or psychedelic haze.

The GPS is old, so we can’t play around with the avatar, and see ourselves as a pirate ship or cthulu tearing ass across Route 66. The voice is tinny, and slightly less than human, which sometimes makes us freak out and cave a little too quickly, turning down streets that don’t seem quite right, which bring us here, through a tight corner to a dark underpass, underneath the train tracks, staring at a big cartoon penis. It’s a secluded spot and it’s absolutely covered in graf. There’s some really good drop-offs and tags, and some anime-style caricatures, and all sorts of whimsical shit that makes me smile.

This is a cool spot to find, on our own and by accident. It’s kind of magical, in that it seems like the perfect place for teenage escape, to sneak off for forties and blunts and heart-to-hearts and debauchery, to meet beautiful like-minded hooligans. And it’s also kind of scary, in that it seems like the perfect place for violence, for someone to get away with rape or a mugging or murder, and really get away with it. But these our just my impressions of the place. Right now, it’s empty, so we call “no rapesies” and rub the medallion of St. Christopher, and the car that follows us in, trapping us between itself and the world’s longest Union Pacific train, backs away and we set out unharmed.

So our first impression of the trip is a good one, and our first impressions of KC are pretty great.