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Couch-Surfing Across America

Mother Jones reporter Tim Murphy gives a very funny retelling of his trip across the country staying with hosts he met on CouchSurf.com:

In anticipation of our arrival, he’s sorted through a dumpster for an extra set of couch cushions, bedbugs be damned. But, he warns, “I’m gonna have a rager tonight, kind of. Like it’ll be pretty wild, so if you guys just want to stay with someone else, that’s cool.”

The rager ultimately consists of seven people, clustered in a kitchen. There’s a strobe light in the living room, but no dancing. The whole thing, Bill concludes, would have been better if he could have scored some dry ice. Still, he shows us the side of the city you’ll never find in a guide book: a Brazilian Laundromat with live parakeets; an abandoned ski jump with a panoramic view of the harbor; and the “graffiti graveyard,” an I-35 overpass that’s home to the city’s finest underground art.

Read the full article here.