I first encountered Hothead Paisan in a Borders Bookstore when I was fifteen.
At the time, I was a lonely teenager. I’d changed schools twice in two years and drifted away from most of my old friends. I’d lost another handful of friendships to the burgeoning opioid epidemic. Of the local kids I knew, one later died of an overdose, two wound up in prison, and another cycled through rehabs for years.
The early 2000s were a weird, uniquely terrible time, and I have no idea why people are trying to rehabilitate them as cool. Anyway. Borders Books.
