My Heart is Like a Wheel

Fact: nine out of ten people in Balliceaux had no idea who Patty Hearst was.

I didn't know that when the evening began at Rowland's for happy hour, though.

All I knew was that wine and appetizers were five bucks and that the late afternoon sun was shining directly through the clearstory windows onto us at the bar.

As usual, classic rock was the order of the day with two Elton John songs in the first twenty minutes.

Fortunately that soon morphed to something more 21-st century like.

With me was a Rowland virgin, so after ordering Campi Flegrei Falanghina, I insisted we get their trademark butterbean cake.

It's the one dish the kitchen can never take off the menu because it's so popular and rightly so.

The pan-fried combination of butter beans with a tomato, avocado and cucumber salsa is as unique as it is savory.

We also did the soup, a crimini and shitake mushroom with Chorizo and spinach that had us sopping up the last of the broth with our warm, crusty bread.

For the third time in a week, I had softshelled crab, this one battered and pan-fried to crispy, then served over a mushroom risotto.

It's so easy to get spoiled when softshell season begins; I saw several other diners doing the crabs, too.

There were lots of people there using their Living Social coupons, making for a lively evening of budget-conscious diners.

Nearby was a familiar face, an Aziza server on a date and not wearing the usual predatory jewelry for which she is known.

You just never know who you'll see at happy hour.

We finished up with Iamarca Prosecco and a chocolate hazelnut creme brulee for two while arguing the finer points of art for art's sake.

Yet again, we agreed to disagree.

Stop number two was Balliceaux for an early show (9:30!) and a good-sized crowd was already in place.

Playing tonight was Lake Street Dive, a Boston quartet dropping by RVA on a one-off night from their current tour.

It was the guitar player's first night in his new glasses and he looked quite hipster-hot.

Lead singer Rachael is a jazz vocalist and the band won the John Lennon Songwriting competition in 2006, so they weren't your typical rock band.

Or pop band. Or jazz band, despite the number of local jazz musicians I saw in tonight's crowded audience.

"Is the mayor here?" she asked the audience. "Cause it feels like everyone is here."

A favorite sax player standing next to me for a while eventually said, "I gotta move away from all these people talking behind me."

I knew what he meant; it was an overly social crowd who chatted when they should have been listening.

The band was a lot of fun, even bringing up a local keyboard player for some songs.

"I see y'all aren't up here dancing," Rachael pointed out. "We're not going to be playing these funky tunes all night, you know."

They did cover George Michael's "Faith" as well as Hall and Oates' "Rich Girl."

That was the song which led to the discussion of the 70s rumor that it had been written about Patty Hearst.

I thought it unlikely that most people in the room even knew who Patty Hearst was, but my partner in crime disagreed, insisting that 95% of the crowd would in fact know.

His faith in the cultural history knowledge of the room seemed unrealistic to me.

Moving from stranger to stranger, I asked a dozen guys who she was. Only one had heard the name and everyone else was clueless.

One guy was so interested in why I was asking that he wanted the Cliff's Notes version of who she was and thanked me for bringing him up to speed.

I returned to my corner of the bar to rest my case.

The band had two notable qualities: a female upright bass player (Matt Gold, you would have been in love) and a definite 70s leaning.

By the time they got to Paul McCartney's "Let Me Roll It," the crowd was in full-on groove mode, shoved up against each other and enjoying every second of the band's languorous take on the song.

I figure about 30% of the audience recognized the song, for what that's worth.

Once the show ended, the room became a talkative party scene and I had the chance to chat up several friends I hadn't seen in a while.

We'll just say that "super affectionate girly" girlfriends came up and leave it at that.

"You go down smooth," the band had sung early on in the show.

Actually, the whole evening had gone down smooth, even among a crowd of people with limited cultural history literacy.

It's a bitch, girl, cause you've gone too far and you know it don't matter anymore.

Does anything matter on a Wednesday night when there's butterbeans, funk playing and the mayor isn't present?

I feel certain I could have gotten a consensus on that one, too.

Conclusion: nope.