“What did the sailor say to the…” I overhear as I walk past the Lotus Street Poet on South Congress in Austin, TX. He’s selling jokes for a quarter and poetry for more.
I’m getting a bit impatient, as I’m eagerly awaiting a trip out to the Hill Country to drink spontaneous offerings from Jester King. I pop into a shop for a moment only to find that my friends are still sorting through souvenirs for family back home, so I step back out, hand the gentleman a dollar, and await the results.
“Do you want obscene, clean, inappropriate, or what?”
“All of the above.”
I get six jokes for my dollar—a deal! Some of them barely count as jokes, to be honest, but his exuberance really sells it. My friends arrive just in time to catch the tail end of it, and then we hop in the car and head for the hills. Long live the Lotus Street Poet.
