Uijongbu Street Scene

I mentioned a couple of days ago that rereading William Gibson's books made me want to write something possibly taking place in Korea. Mainly, it was Idoru which put this idea in my head, since Idoru mostly takes place in Japan. There's a scene in Idoru where the main character, Laney, goes to a Kafka theme bar, and it reminded me of this:

This was a street in Uijongbu, where I was stationed. Some guys in my unit formed a little band called "Morning Wood." Since they weren't allowed to play on post with a name like that, they got a gig at a little club in town called the R&B Club. That row of windows on the second floor? That's the club. But take a closer look...

Here's a close-up of the R&B sign. Yes, that's a triceratops head sticking out of the wall. There were more in the stairwell and in the club itself. No, I don't know what ceratopsians and R&B have in common, other than the fact that some might argue they're both dinosaurs. Ha. Oh, yeah, and farther back in the picture, look at this...


Yup, that's right, good old American KFC, only this one has a life-size fiberglass statue of the Colonel out front. I've stopped eating at KFC since the last menu reshuffle, which jacked up all the prices while simultaneously dumping some of my favorite menu items, plus the staff at the closest one are just seriously incompetent. But you know what? I'll bet I'd be more likely to give 'em another chance if they had a life-size fiberglass statue of the Colonel out front.

Of course the problem is that if they did that here, it might, might, last a week before it got stolen or vandalized. Damn criminals, vandals, and gang members. They're the reason we can't have cool stuff.

I wanna go back to Korea sometimes.