Finland Picnic Area

Finland Picnic Area

Finland, MN

Reviewed May 29th, 2005

The graffiti found in this dilapidated shit shack runs the gamut from alcoholic self-help philosophy to incoherent declarations, silly limericks, blunt confessions and even, hearteningly nice things to say about people. "I often tweek when I drive," 'Bob' informs us via pit toilet wall scrawl. Then he asks, "How can a small town like Finland have all these homicides?" Bob also writes, "time heals all wounds...except the ones that can be disinfected, bandaged and forgot about right away." Roll your eyes please. Another writer states, "Cody & Tavyn kick major ass." More encouragement for Cody: "Cody will get a woman cuz he kicks ass." So Cody and Tavyn aren't together? "Finland is the Shit! True that! (smiley face)." I'll agree to that. It has a great picnic ground, co-op and state forest campground. "If the sea was whiskey and I was a duck I'd swim to the bottom and never come up." I think Jim Morrison gets credit for that one. "If sisa was a man, I'd fuck her!" says an enthusiastic anonymous gender bender. "I (heart) Mike." "I'm not afraid of tomorrow for I have see yesterday & I am still alive today," affirms Bob. "You laugh @ me coz I'm differnt." An attempt is made to explain the thought further: "I laugh @ you we your all the same." "'80' you die! 'Ho' you get high!" That sounds like an up north wannabe pine tree gangsta-ism "Trina want get a man our she sux ars!" Translation: I flunked out of fifth grade and all I got was a pen and this lousy wall to write on. Written just below: "No Trina kicks ass." The moral: Lots of people kick ass, but some do not. Grasshopper, one day Cody will get a woman because it is written.

I confess that I love abandoned places and nothing says abandoned like a smashed in steel door that refuses to close on a one pot shitter in the middle of the woods filled with the scratches and scrawls of adolescent malcontents. Such is the invitation one find in the Finland Picnic Area, located in the heart of "downtown" Finland, Minnesota. Aside from a few, randomly strewn picnic tables, towering pine trees, a dirt loop road, and a few rusted garbage cans what you have in the Finland Picnic Area is a weed and flower choked clearing by the beautiful East Branch Baptism River, a space that is at once wild, trashed and forgotten. Back in the day, had I grown up here this would have been the ideal place to hang out, toke up and write bad poetry about how much everything sucks. One day I was there with my brother in the rain and we saw an unkempt fat man clad in a Hawaiian shirt carrying a metal detector. I came back the next day with my girlfriend and a hippie lady drove by in a beat up mini-van bearing a Grateful Dead sticker on the rear bumper. I breathed a sigh of relief. Nobody from up north is friendly to anyone who isn't so her hippie lady smile revealed that she was hiding something. She was looking for a quiet spot to get high, I think. I felt guilty for getting in the way. Hopefully she came back after we left. Hopefully she was able to feel however she wanted to feel and escape what she needed escape from. I hope she found peace in her one hitter, that her lighter worked, that she wasn't paranoid and did not get busted.

- Justin Teerlinck

RESTROOM RATING: 8
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