RIFF MARKET

Hippie Ernie
The Modern Lovers: "I'm Straight" [live]

I had to move an armoir out a used furniture shop downtown, but since delivery prices were too nuts the place offered the help of this really young kid with frosted hair and crazy earrings and a tee that said "I only do what my rice krispies tell me to." Obviously I thought he was on heroin. The exchange with the shop owner went as follows:

-I'm not paying your delivery prices--they're too nuts.
-Well maybe you can ask Ernie to help you. Hey Ernie!
-[Ernie makes a face that looks like the bunny from Donnie Darko]
-How much will Ernie cost?
-I don't know--ask Ernie! Hey Ernie, you do this for twenty?
-[Ernie does the face again]
-...
-Ernie will do it for twenty.

77/100 RIFFS

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Yuca Bar: 7th and A
N/A: "Oye Como Va"

As the rest of 7th Street shops and eats tend to be, this place is pretty awesome despite frequent collar-popping brodowns. Get the plantains and mushroom quesadillas, and order beers because they have what are basically wine glasses for beer, except they're bigger and sturdier than wine glasses and there's stuff written on the glass. As I hinted at, Yuca attracts serious mixed clientele, definitely a citysearch-type destination spot where go-out clothes are the norm and complaints about parking are audible. The music there is, we'll say, Latin, so most guests don't know what's what. Which is to say, nothing can prepare you for the shitstorm of excitement that is "Oye Como Va" coming on, everybody nodding their heads and making game faces and pointing up like "oh shit I know this song, do you hear it? I am pointing up to the ceiling since I hear it from above," and all the wait staff verging on tears because this is the 20th time they've heard "Oye Como Va" that night and make it stop, just make it stop.

65/100 RIFFS

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Hit Me On My Beeper
Fam-Lay [ft. Pharrell]: "Beeper"

My new favorite song right now, there's a line that goes "my shit is bigger than knuckles on midgets." It's pretty awesome that a rapper saw a midget and thought to himself, "Goddamn that midget has big knuckles. That said, my shit is bigger." I dunno, you just don't think those two worlds could collide.



90/100 RIFFS