Last night was a lit­tle bit bizarro.  Kim and I ended up hook­ing up with vec­torb, which was cool!  She got to meet him for the first time.  As for the rest of the night, Vec­tor was right in describ­ing the place as a speakeasy.

So, basi­cally, Kim's new dance troupe went to per­form at this… place.  I'm not going to call it a bar because no drinks were [legally] avail­able — although there were a few peo­ple with glasses of wine.  The place (at first) seemed SKetchy, with a cap­i­tal SK.  The entrance is an unmarked door next to Tube that opens to a long and nar­row stair­case.  You fol­low that up to the sec­ond floor and around a hall­way, past sev­eral doors.  A cou­ple were opened into what appeared to be shanty-apartments with not-quite-homeless look­ing peo­ple hang­ing out in the door­ways.  You then take a sec­ond equally long and nar­row stair­case up to the third floor, pass through a door­way, and end up in what could only be an apartment-turned-public-space.  The graffiti-covered brick walls had couches pushed up against them.  On one wall, a stove was being used as a table.  The lit­tle kitch­enette was a refresh­ment sta­tion, with a few bowls of potato chips.  At one end of the room was a lit­tle raised stage and at the cen­ter of the room was a wob­bily chrome dance pole on a pedestal.

We got there a bit early.  At the time, the sort of peo­ple milling about were (a) bel­ly­dancers and (b) other.  “Other” included a weath­ered man with big, bushy white beard and pointy mus­tache, who spoke a bit too loud for being indoors.  He also seemed to be miss­ing a few teeth as well as his right arm and insisted on being called Santa Clause.  At ran­dom, he would whip out a har­mon­ica and play a few bars, only to quickly put it away again.

Okay, so that's the setup for the night.  I came into this scene with sig­nif­i­cantly dif­fer­ent expec­ta­tions, hav­ing gone to plenty of bel­ly­dance events in nice bars and dance stu­dios before, so I wasn't quite pre­pared.  Addi­tion­ally, I had just come home from a long day of work and was per­haps not in the best of moods at the start of the night.  I have to admit that the whole thing turned out to be pretty good, as you'll see.

The evening and from what I gather, the per­for­mance space itself, was a sort of open-mic event.  Santa Clause, who was intro­duced as “Lefty,” opened the night.  He had a har­mon­ica holder around his neck and some kind of con­trap­tion attached to his arm-stump with duct tape and saran wrap, which later turned out to be a gui­tar pick holder.  He got up on stage and played, simul­ta­ne­ously, the gui­tar and har­mon­ica.  He actu­ally turned out to be a pretty good blues musi­cian and all-around funny and lik­able guy. 

Kim's group went on next.  They started with a great can­dle dance, although that opin­ion may be a bit biased because I'm a sucker for any per­for­mance involv­ing flames: can­dle dance, fire poi, fire dance, fire eat­ing, fire jug­gling, Sur­vival Research Lab­o­ra­to­ries, etc.  After a few more dances, Kim came out with her giant wings.  Space was a lit­tle tight for the full wingspan, but she pulled it off beau­ti­fully.  Every­one loved her danc­ing and I have to attribute that partly to her excel­lent danc­ing and partly to the fact that she was on the floor, among the audi­ence, and not up on stage like the rest of the per­for­mances.  Her short, but good, dance was fol­lowed by a Bhangra dance–a sort of Indian techno.

After this, the dance troupe left, but we stuck around for the next act — a band with lit­tle Casio key­board, bigass bass, and lit­tle [bongo?] drumkit.  They per­formed improv songs, tak­ing titles from the audi­ence.  Their only rule was that they didn't play exist­ing songs — so no “PLAY FREEBIRD, MAN!”  I'm not sure they made music I'd want to lis­ten to later, again and again, but it was really fun to watch live.  It was enter­tain­ing to have an audi­ence mem­ber yell out “park­ing garages” and for the band mem­bers to hud­dle for a sec­ond, one of them start­ing out with a rhythm they think fits the title, then the rest of them join­ing, and try­ing to fig­ure out lyrics on the fly.  It was even a bit edu­ca­tional to see the song­mak­ing process, live in real­time.  The songs ranged from “snail love” to “hero for hire” to “broc­coli and masturbation.” 

We departed to the Doug Fir just as a standup come­dian took the stage and started talk­ing about Kramer and the N-word.  I'm actu­ally pleas­antly sur­prised by the Doug Fir.  I avoided going to it until now because (1) although I knew they have a restau­rant, it never really reg­is­tered in my brain that they do and (2) hip­ster con­certs: bleh.  As it turns out, they have a decent selec­tion and qual­ity of diner-style food, sev­eral good beers on tap (along­side the hip­ster favorites like Pabst), and they're open until 4am.  Vec­tor, Kim, and I dined and chat­ted and had a great time until it was past time to turn into a pumpkin.

Over­all, it was a great night!

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Tagged as: bars, bellydance, pub, pubs