Looking for A Place to Get Surly

Ocean temperature : 58 (but it rose to 74 degrees by 5 p.m.)
Best song heard randomly on the radio: Stay (new!) Bo Deans

Another locals' haunt sucked me in tonight, but this time it was for the sake of music. I'd seen that Cracker was playing at Kelly's Tavern and the draw of live music was too strong to ignore, even though I'd heard dire tales of the Kelly's crowd. I wasn't scared by any stretch; I think I've pretty much seen it all when it comes to live music crowds anyway.

It had been five years since I'd last seen Cracker live and 17 years since I saw them the first time. My first time was memorable because it was at the Flood Zone in the Bottom and, at the time, beer was all they carried and even then I didn't drink beer. But it was one of my earlier shows alone and although I was meeting a guy there later, I decided to fortify with a golden beverage, despite my distaste for same. It was also my last attempt at beer drinking, if that tells you anything.

Luckily Kelly's served more than beer, so imbibing was not a challenge for me (eating, on the other hand...although a girl is always safe with a Hebrew National hot dog, at least this girl is) this Cracker go-round. I'm not sure what it says about the place, but there were a lot of shooters in what looked like urine specimen cups being served at Kelly's during the show. Am I drawing you a mental picture here?

Cracker took the stage like the pros that they are. They were perfectly mic'd and the sound was exactly right for the room. This was a drinking/talking crowd, so the band had to play over them, but they seemed to know that in advance and those of us who were there to hear the music were treated to excellent sound throughout.

Early in their set, they kicked into "Teen Angst" and David Lowery cocked an eyebrow at the crowd as if daring them to pretend like they didn't know the song. Eventually even the loudest talkers were singing or worse, dancing along, proving Lowery's point. I cracked up when, motioning toward the dance floor, Thing 3 observed, "Whole lotta probably shouldn't going on over there."

Bottom line: Cracker played an excellent show with superior sound while Thing 3 and I observed a crowd unlike any we'd ever seen, or really, need to see again. But crowds don't matter, music does and it was great to get my music itch scratched at the beach.

And, yes, we stuck out like the non-locals that we were. But given the seemingly un-musically inclined crowd in this case, I was just fine with that.

Beer for Art Geeks

If I haven't made it clear in my past posts, I don't drink beer.

I don't like the taste, despite years of beer-swilling friends coaxing me to "just taste this one; it's different" and not liking a single one.

But I did drink an entire beer once.

Oh, yes, I did.

It was at a Cracker show at the Flood Zone back in 1993 and if they had had anything, anything at all, to drink other than beer, I'd have swilled it.

But that night I needed some liquid courage and that one beer was the only way to get it.

I share this as a prelude to trying to describe my pleasure at reading an article in today's Washington Post about cask beers.

Why the sudden interest in a beer topic, you wonder?

Ah, well, it was written by Blake Gopnik, the art critic for the Post and a writer of whom I am inordinately fond.

Granted, he's always writing about art, a topic near and dear to my heart, but I'm also a big fan of his writing.

So when I got to today's Post Food section to find a front page article about cask beers and a new place in Logan Circle that will carry five of them, I read it start to finish and was mildly fascinated.

I don't know that I'm any more likely to like cask beer than I like pasteurized, carbonated beer, but I'm not ruling it out either.

Maybe it was Blake's enthusiasm for the subject or maybe it was the allure of an art geek trying to introduce me to something new.

For all I know, Blake is nothing more than a golden beverage fan and not necessarily qualified to write about beer, but I prefer to think that he's sharing his enthusiasm for cask beer in the hopes of reaching other art geeks like me who wouldn't take the word of anyone else.

Now I'm imagining about sharing some cask beer with Blake whilst discussing art for hours.

And if he wants to throw in some additional beer talk, I'll be all ears.

I might even become a cask convert as his urging.