Flowers

Last night, at a bar where I've gone to serve celebratory ice cream and root beer floats, a woman interrupts me as I'm laying out the plastic cups, plastic spoons and plastic straws.
'Um,' she says, 'have we, like, met before?'
'I don't think so, I've just gotten back from England,' I tell her, standing there with my hands full of plastic, 'and I don't know many people in the area,'
'Oh, wow,' she says, 'you look, like, so totally familiar,'
'Well,' I say, 'sometimes I am in the ice cream shop on the corner, and I have a little shop there where I sell my art, but...apart from that...'
Then I ask her if she is the owner of the bar.
'Nooooo,' she says, 'I'm here with Onions and Orchids,'
'Oh,' I say, 'what exactly is that?'
She tells me Onions and Orchids is an organisation that informs people of what is ugly and what is beautiful, architecturally, in the neighbourhood.
'See,' she says, showing me a brochure and pointing out different buildings and roadside features, 'these are the Orchids and these are the Onions,'
I look at the brochure and everything on it looks the same to me-modern buildings with glassy facades, an inoffensive parking sign that Warhol might have liked to silk screen, some other buildings with wood stuck to them, a park bench, a black and white tiled mural.
All of them unremarkable.
'So,' the woman tells me, 'we have our booth here and what you can do is, like, vote for an Onion, or an Orchid.
I turn to see they have what look like polling stations set up, with iPads in them, so party-goers can record their onion or orchid verdict on the work of architects or civil engineers or street sign designers or artists.
Standing there with my hands full of plastic feeding implements, I want to say to the woman that someone probably went into debt to go to art or architecture school and they've graduated and designed these things so that people like her, people they've never met, from the suburbs of San Diego, are now going to pass judgement on.
But I don't.
Instead I look out over the tables of people in front of me.
And feeling slightly uncomprehending, as if I have just come-to from an MDMA blackout, I watch them push and pour burgers and fries and beer and Coke into their mouths while I passively listen to the woman from Onions and Orchids as she continues to tell me what, according to her, is worthy.
And what is not.

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