Black Sheep Leads to Riot Grrls

I made tonight a walking night because today was the last warm day until at least Thursday so I wanted to take advantage of it, not being a fan of fall weather (unlike practically everyone else).

Seems like the last four or five times I'd been to the Black Sheep had been for lunch, so I sashayed over there for dinner and it turned out to be the perfect choice. Tes was waiting tables and Nate from Gull was eating with a visiting musician, so we got to discuss the Debashish Bhatacharya slide guitar performance we'd all three been mesmerized by Saturday at the Folk Fest; I was gratified to learn that they were both as awestruck as I'd been.

For dinner, I chose the General Tso's sweetbreads: quick fried sweetbreads in sweet sauce with spicy Sezchuan peppers, broccoli and white rice. For drinking: Les Heretiques 2008 Carignan, a bio-dynamic wine with an earthy taste and long finish (and yes, I know I should have gotten the Reisling given my dinner order, but I was curious about the grape and wanted to do the groovy bio-dynamic thing). For dessert: the chocolate creme brulee since I hadn't had it in ten whole days (no, really).

Stuffed and feeling pretty good about it, I headed over to Gallery 5 for the showing of "Don't Need You: The Herstory of Riot Grrrl" about the feminist movement of the early 90s that created a way for women to be part of the hardcore scene and not just "hangers" (girls who held the guys' jackets while they performed, moshed or just participated in punk shows). The documentary revealed how the mainstream media co-opted the term and misrepresented the movement in order to sell it to the public, causing the disenchantment and eventual dissolution of it.

The audience was much larger than typically comes to these monthly screenings and not completely female, either. The discussion afterwards showed that there is real curiosity among younger women about what they can do in today's climate to re-energize the movement. As well they should be; someone's got to move the banner forward. Bikini Kill, Bratmobile and Heavens to Betsy did their part. It seems likely we will form a collective to address some of these issues in rva; it'll be interesting to see what these young women do to further the cause of feminism.