A Weird Night

Well first of all, I feel like I need to explain the photo of me and the condom filled with beer. Last night, I went out to dinner and to the Trampled by Turtles concert with Laura and Sam. The show was at this venue I hadn't been to yet, the Hub. I've never been anywhere like the Hub -- it's sort of a complex with several themed restaurant/bars, and a cavernous concert space. After going in sort of the wrong way and picking up my ticket at Will Call (where, I should mention, a man complimented my shoes, and I fulfilled my greatest calling in life -- teaching people about DSW), we went to get drinks at the country-music themed bar. Things got off to a great start when the bartender informed us that drinks until 9 were free. FREE. And that wasn't like, somebody rich is picking up the whole tab, or some guys over there want to buy you drinks. Everybody drinks (every night?) for free. That doesn't seem like a great business strategy to me, but I'll take it. We took our free drinks and sat down at a table facing the dance floor area. Some girls from a bachelorette party came in a few minutes later with some... I don't have a better way to say it than a lot of things shaped like penises. They did some enthusiastic dancing with a group of guys who had been sitting at a table by the wall. After a few minutes of this, one of the guys from the group came over to our table, presumably to get away from the bachelorette party. He introduced himself and told us he was one of the managers of the ABC Bookstore, but did not elaborate (after he left we looked up the ABC Bookstore, and found out that it's part of Romantix, the adult boutique that put up Thanksgiving decorations in November and almost single-handedly changed how I feel about Fargo). One of the bachelorette party girls came over while we were chatting and threw down some safe-sex themed keychains (I know), a bunch of condoms, and then demanded that the guy we were talking to pay for them. At this point, it became clear that they knew each other, and one of this guy's coworkers came over to demonstrate how to use a condom. At this point, I'd like to point out that we were basically passive observers to all of this. Amused observers, but still passive. Ok, anyway, so this new guy takes one of the condoms and puts it over his bottle of beer, and proceeds to shake the bottle and then flip it over until it fills with beer. He pulled the condom off and tied it up, and we took a photo that's on Facebook and in the files of my potential future employers forever. So that's that.

For the concert itself, we pursued our usual strategy of get-as-close-to-the-stage-as-possible, and that worked out pretty well at first. It soon became clear, however, that in spite of the fact that Trampled by Turtles is a band which includes both a ukulele and a banjo, the crowd was very aggressive, and had possibly never been to another concert. Now, my experience, almost everywhere other than at the Aquarium, has been that there are going to be some people who want to be in the front row more than you do, and they're going to push you out of the way to get there. You've got two options. You can either push back, or you can shrug and let them through. These people were not content with either option. Instead, a group of people in front of us, wearing matching t-shirts (always a good sign) called over security when a bunch of guys tried to push through to the stage. That seemed like a pretty dramatic over-reaction to me, especially, again, in light of the banjo. Eventually, due to the pushy people around us and the presence of some freakishly tall people in front of us, we decided to head up to the balcony, where we felt justified in having an amusing conversation about the amount of plaid and the nature of the audience. It was a good time, but I'm hoping the folks at the Bone Thugs N Harmony concert this week are a little bit less intense.