Social Currency

A hostel tends to take on the demeanor of its staff. I use them whenever possible when traveling because of the ease with which one can meet people, because they promote things to see in the area that really appeal to me, and because they are cheap, which makes sense when you’re not going to be staying in your room.

The hostel in Minnesota was the most hostile place I’ve come across. It’s desk man gave me a cursory tour with instructions that came off more as admonishments, and with preemptive admonishments that made me wonder how many people had indeed used the staff fridge without asking.

Later, the only person in the common room commented that it must be great for him to get to live there and get paid for it, and he responded that that was why he drank. He apparently is always getting asked questions when he’s not on the clock, so when his shif is over, he hides and gets blitzed. His words. He was pretty tight with his social currency.

Minnesota and I didn’t get off to the best start. My private room was more like a closet. Not in terms of size, but in terms of location. It was situated so that I had to go through the large common room to get to it. Not that I mind, but I thought the people staying in the room might think it was obnoxious. That they might hold my ostentations display of wealth against me. I was sure they’d decide that I was an elitist, and therefore should not be invited out to drink. I thought I would be spending social currency I hadn’t intended to.

The idea of social currency comes to me from Alex. The hostile worker got me of to a poor start with Minneapolis, but my interaction with Alex made for a strong finish. Fast forward forty hours.

I had returned my bike, packed up and strapped on my bag, and was left with five hours to finish off Minneapolis. I passed several coffee shops before finding the right one in which to caffienate and finish writing my Minnesota blog post. In a seat by the window, I carefully chose words to express how superior the Walker Museum of Modern Art and Target Field are to their New York counterparts. (Yes, I said that.)

My eyes drifted toward the window though I was focused only on the correct word cyhoice to describe the effect of the evergreen trees growing beyond the center field fence when a young man with mutton chops walked--almost skipped---let’s just say flew past the window, either adjusting his jacket or dancing, wearing an expression of pure joy. It was beyond a smile, it it wasn’t a beam, it was a wave energy that was noticed, and commented on, by people in the café sitting further from the window than I was. It was unabated and easily mockable, but I instead thought I wouldn’t mind having some of whatever it was that he was riding on.

Wigh three and a half hours left, I packed up, not having satisfactorily completed the post, leaving it to be edited and finished at some point over the six hour bus trip that lay ahead. Ten blocks closer to the train station, I saw the grinning hipster smoking outside a restaurant I’d admired earlier. I had talked to enough people in Minnesota. I was going to let it go, when he started talking to me.

He explained how he is a lone wolf, how is boss complimented his vision, how he was really from St. Paul. I asked him how he wants to change the world. It’s not the type of question I’d even ask of a close friend, but it proved to be the right one. Alex, a teacher of math and chess, wants to reform education. I told him I was a teacher too. He told me he knew there was a reason he had needed to talk to me. He offered to buy me a drink. I had time to spare, and had I refused, I would have been being too frugal with my own social currency.

The reason he likes baseball is the duel between the pitcher and the hitter. He likes the meeting of minds, each trying to make the other make a mistake (This may be the most chess-like aspect of baseball. My words.) However, his favorite sports are football, MMA, and couples ice skating. He was not being funny or ironic. He explained himself and it makes sense. The place was trendy. It looked like it could have opened in New York a few years prior, but the bartender was lacking social currency. It was clear that she was interested in only one kind of currency.

I asked the bartender to put his next drink on my tab, and he refused to let there be a tab in my name. He was the host, he wanted to treat, and he didn’t think I should take away his opportunity to buy me a meal and some beers.

I told him that he didn’t understand. I had given myself rules for the trip, and that I still had not fulfilled my rule wherein I would do one nice thing for someone I didn’t know. I didn’t tell him at the time, but I was starting to feel like that wasn’t the case. I knew this guy. I know this guy.

At that point I decided to tell him that I had seen him earlier that evening. He just about fell out of his chair. He said he remembered waling by the café, happy about his new jacket, and thinking that he did not care what it looked like, he was going to smile as big as he could, because you know what, a smile is a windfall of social currency, and that he would smile that smile, because it would start a ripple effect that would make more people have as good a time as he was having.

I said he had just tested and proved his own theory. Someone said you don’t find friends, you recognize them. I had been lying all week. I had told everyone I talked to that I didn’t have any friends in Minneapolis, but that I wasn’t going to let that stop me from visiting. The natives all appreciated that comment. I think it just had a lot of the right kind of social currency.