My thinking was, if it's warm enough to be on the roof, it's warm enough to be by the bay.
So when a certain pink hotel-owning woman made an executive decision and posted it online - 63 degrees in November? That's enough for us to open Q Rooftop for a drink or two and watch a spectacular fall sunset. Bring a coat and scarf and come on up! - I naturally took note and mentioned it to Mac on our sunny walk along the river this morning.
Only then did it occur to me that weather fine enough for rooftop sipping combined with neither of us having to work today was practically a blueprint pointing us in the direction of Merroir. It didn't hurt that we both love a good road trip, either.
By 2:00, we were en route with her Sirius radio set to the '70s station - because Al Wilson's "Show and Tell" guarantees a good time - and by 3:00, easing down winding Locklie's Road, where the absence of leaves on the trees meant we spotted the brilliant, blue water far sooner than a summer visit allows.
We'd missed the lunch crowd, beat the dinner crowd and had our choice of tables, asking only for one in full sunlight.
The moon was already rising in the sky as we ordered a dozen Old Saltes and settled back to watch a sailboat, masts down, glide into the marina next door. Fate was smiling on us because instead of 12, 15 briny oysters arrived on our platter and we slurped them down like we'd just walked four miles. Oh, wait...
Within minutes, we realized how impeccable our timing was as a foursome joined us outside and a busload of people arrived in the parking lot. The latter (oyster tourists, perhaps?) were apparently on some sort of guided tour where they were led to the dockside building were oyster spat are nurtured to learn about aquaculture, but not to the tables to partake of the fruits of that labor. Tragic, really.
Recognizing us for the starving women we were, our server came back to recite the specials and we gave two the immediate nod: brussels sprouts with cherries and honey, and tuna tacos.
When I mentioned that I was tempted by the fish cakes over mesclun on the menu because they hadn't been on the menu last time I was there, our server tells us that the menu had been changed only yesterday and they'd been added. When I ask what kind of fish, she says rockfish and Mac swoons. We'll take them, too.
When the food arrived, we dove right in, so when she returned not too terribly long after to check on us, asking, "You ladies need any...oh, no, you don't," she was laughing as she looked at two empty plates and two more that were down to the last few bites.
No shame in a healthy appetite.
By that point, the tour bus had pulled around and was casting an enormous shadow on the area where the foursome was sitting enjoying their Stingrays (nice, but not nearly salty enough for some of us) and don't you know that one of the women at the table (the one wearing shorts) marched right over to that bus driver and asked him to pull up enough to give us back our sunlight?
On a day as fine as today, nobody wants their mellow harshed and if buses must be moved, so be it.
It was when I was coming back from the bathroom - still located outside, which Mac and I think is one of Merroir's most honest features - that I was spotted by the long-time chef I'd first met on my initial visit back in June 2012 when I'd interviewed him. I rave about the rockfish cakes, he grins, shrugs and says, "Tis the season."
Next thing I know, he's coming out to the porch to meet me for a quick catch-up session and bear hug. Just as I'm letting go, he squeezes me again and jokes, "It's so great to see you. Wanna go neck?" and cracks me up. When I tell Mac about it, she laughs, too, wondering who says "neck" anymore."
Middle-aged chefs?
The sun is dropping below the tree line when we finally pull away from the water, but we're both happier for having spent the time with a view of the moon rising, birds soaring and boat traffic.
Once back in J-Ward, we did the only sensible thing and strolled over to Quirk Hotel to ride the elevator to the Q rooftop bar. After all, Mac had never been, it had been over a year since I had and, frankly, we had nothing better to do. Sure, we'd missed the sunset, but drinks and views awaited us.
The real pleasure was how uncrowded it was. Because I'd only been during peak season in the past, I was unprepared for how spacious it felt with less than 20 people up there. As we were ordering, a guy paying his check pointed out how he'd expected it to feel colder and it wasn't. It was lovely.
Even so, Mac couldn't resist an Irish coffee, saying yes to the bartender when she offered both Jameson's and Bailey's, while I toasted the night sky with a plastic Christmas-decorated party cup two thirds full of Prosecco. I feel certain that's not a standard pour, not that I told her how to do her job.
Taking our libations in hand, we walked the perimeter of the rooftop so Mac could admire the views east, west and south, from whence the breeze was coming.
As it turned out, it was a new experience for me, too, since I'd never been up there in the dark before. The red and green traffic lights of Broad Street looked particularly seasonal and festive, but the most striking vista was the twin up-lit spires of the Mosque against a fading red horizon.
Once we'd finished sipping our drinks on a bench facing south and toward the river, we meandered back to my house and Mac's car, because of course the night wasn't over with Secretly Y'All starting in less than an hour.
Now I'm going to sound like the old-timer talking about how I've been going to Secretly Y'all for storytelling for years except that now it's so crowded that Mac and I couldn't even find seats despite arriving 35 minutes before it began. Insert shaking fist. As my theater critic friend and I discussed, Secretly Y'All has completely outgrown the space at Flora, unless the goal is to worry the fire marshal and make people shed clothing because it's so warm with body heat.
We plastered ourselves against the back wall with one stool between us for stories around tonight's theme, "This Doesn't End Well." As it turned out, that applied to more than the stories.
There was one about an 18-year old and his friends involving their shared love of trespassing and climbing on top of buildings that ended with a drunk girl duct-taped to a table and a friend in intense groin pain from a fall, but, as Mac pointed out, who doesn't have one of those stories?
Another involved a woman who was trying to say yes to life and wound up encouraging a sociopath (yes, I'll go to the park with you, yes, I'll give you my phone number, yes, I'll answer the door at all hours) who lived in the apartment beneath hers and kept a lizard farm in his old TV. So many red flags.
Then there was the guy who retired two weeks ago and couldn't stop talking. There are only three rules at Secretly Y'All: the story must be true, no notes are allowed and you must keep your story to 7 minutes. A bell rings at 6 minutes to give you a heads up and you wind things up quickly when you hear it. This guy showed up with notes (not used, thank heavens) and then proceeded to tell us about what the social climate was like in 1969, what the effects of Hurricane Camille were on Nelson County and a thousand other rambling details while ignoring the bell ringing every minute for about 12 or 13 minutes. Ouch.
We heard from a woman with a drinking problem assuming you think 12 glasses of wine and 9 gin and tonics in one night is problematic. No? How about after imbibing all that, she's outside a bar trying to make herself barf so she can go back in and drink some more? That one ended with, "Hi, I'm Sarah and I'm an alcoholic." Who knew we were going to an AA meeting?
One story involved a guy in traffic with no A/C flipping off another car and the guy following him and putting a pistol to his head. He got out of it by telling the guy that the finger wasn't for him, it was for the world and then spinning a tale about his wife and best friend's infidelity that had the pistol guy feeling sorry for him. If this sounds like it didn't end badly, please know that he still had no A/C after the guy left.
Finally, there was a guy who told a story of trying to avoid a crashed car on Powhite Parkway and then skidding on ice right into it. When another car skidded and headed for them both, he was hit, run over and his head pinned under the car's axle, getting third degree burns on his shoulders. Miraculously, once at the hospital, he was fine except for the burns. The worst part, he said, was seeing his mother's reactions to his situation.
With a theme like tonight's we were bound to hear some awful stories, but that one ended with the storyteller seriously choked up and trying to convey what he'd learned. "Fall in love with your existence," he directed the overflow crowd in a voice thick with emotion.
He even thanked his girlfriend for sticking by him during his difficult recovery, calling her up on stage to show his appreciation. And wouldn't you just know, after hearing an array of stories - awful, overly revealing, trite, uninteresting - he dropped to one knee and proposed to her right in front of all of us.
The question took longer to sink in for her than it did for the crowd who began cheering and applauding for what we'd just witnessed. Organizer Kathleen took control back by going to the mic and saying, "I don't know if that fits tonight's theme, but congratulations!"
Proof positive that sometimes you've got to ignore the theme and show and tell with your heart.
Meanwhile, I love my existence, but I'd heard all the bad endings I needed for one night. And on that note, Mac and I called it a day. A very fine day.
Showing posts with label secretly y'all tell me a story. Show all posts
Showing posts with label secretly y'all tell me a story. Show all posts
Wednesday, November 29, 2017
Thursday, November 2, 2017
If She Drinks Beer, She's a Keeper
Perhaps the problem is that I didn't get the hops gene.
Otherwise, why would I feel the need to observe that while I wouldn't want to say breweries have taken over Richmond, breweries have taken over Richmond.
And it's not just the sheer number of breweries - although that's got be way above the norm - but the fact that so many of Richmond's cultural events now take place at breweries. It's as if the only way to attract people is with beer.
So of my most interesting choices for culture tonight, there was storytelling at one brewery or opera at another. No kidding. I opted for the brewery where I saw Shakespeare most recently, since I've seen Shakespeare at both. Ridiculous, isn't it?
Three Notch'd Brewing Collab House was hosting a special edition of Secretly Y'All, Tell Me a Story, held in conjunction with the Library of Virginia's exhibition "Teetotalers and Moonshiners: Prohibition in Virginia" (which I've not only seen, but attended a panel discussion about).
The theme was "Cheers, Beers and Tears" and tonight they were tapping the bourbon barrel-aged "Last Call," a beer which had been a collaboration between Three Notch'd and the Library. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but do you see what I mean about this town being beer-besotted?
Unlike with the Shakespeare performance, chairs had been set up for those who'd come, not for beer but to hear stories, and mine was near a barrel, on top of which rested an assortment of nerdy Library of Virginia stickers, two of which - "Got books?" and "I like big books and I cannot lie" - came home with me.
Since this was a one-off edition of Secretly Y'All, there were only five storytellers, although they each got a generous ten minutes instead of the usual seven. Initially, some of the hardcore beer geeks kept talking over the first storyteller, but eventually even most of them were sucked in by true tales being shared with strangers.
One woman told of her time working for Redhook Brewery in Seattle and how that went south once Anheuser-Busch bought them and harassment entered the equation. Another told of her moonshiner great-grandfather and the family's Appalachian roots, stressing that it was pronounced with a "ch" sound, not "sh" ("That's like fingernails on a blackboard to us hillbillies") and trying to counter stereotypes ("We have our teeth, we wear shoes and some of us are educated").
The oldest of a large, fundamental Christian family told of her mother earning side money as a mystery shopper, which once involved her having to order an O'Doul's at the bar despite her fear of being kicked out of the church for drinking a fake beer. Instead, she was accused of coming on to a man (incidentally, her brother, so make that incest). The always reliable Mr. King told of his days as a private detective investigating moonshiners, most of whom, he assured us, would give you the shirt off their backs.
Closing out the evening was what amounted to a ringer, an older man from Botetourt County (which he pronounced "BOT-tot"), dressed in jeans and a green checkered shirt with red suspenders, speaking in a distinctive southwestern Virginia drawl.
Not sure about how much we city slickers knew, he first asked who'd heard of Botetourt (most) and who knew what a bender was (all). Alrighty, then, he could go on.
His story had to do with an old drunk known to go on three-week benders and how, as a young man of 20, he'd been asked to "babysit" the drunk, The benefit of this odd job was hearing the old guy's colorful moonshining stories from his younger years.
Tonight he told us one about three 'shiners who set up operation in South Carolina (because there was the least law presence there), buying cans from Continental Company in which to put their moonshine, and then slapping labels on the cans saying they contained tomatoes.
They shipped the cans north on trucks to distributors in Philly, Pittsburgh, NYC and Chicago, and eventually got so bold as to ship on trains, at which point Continental got worried and stopped supplying cans rather than risk a lawsuit.
And don't you know those moonshiners were smart enough to close up shop, take all that money they'd earned, move back to Botetourt and buy farms to live out their lives on?
Kind of gives you a warm and fuzzy feeling, doesn't it, although if you were drinking "Last Call," that feeling could be nothing more than the 8.5% APV.
So another hop-scented cultural evening came to a close without my lips getting anywhere near a beer.
But with the temperature still hovering in the '70s, it only made sense to stop for a bite on the way home and My Noodle & Bar had their front door wide open and the booth closest to the door available.
As if that weren't enough, a guy was folded into the highest perch above the booths, first playing an accordion and then a violin. The way I see it, if you're going to indulge in steamed dumplings and broccoli with chicken while the soft November night air wafts in, how better than with someone bowing a violin for your aural enjoyment?
After a first date a few years back, the guy emailed me about how fascinating he'd found me, but saying point blank, "If you drank beer, you'd be perfect."
But I don't. Got beer? No. I like wine and I cannot lie.
Otherwise, why would I feel the need to observe that while I wouldn't want to say breweries have taken over Richmond, breweries have taken over Richmond.
And it's not just the sheer number of breweries - although that's got be way above the norm - but the fact that so many of Richmond's cultural events now take place at breweries. It's as if the only way to attract people is with beer.
So of my most interesting choices for culture tonight, there was storytelling at one brewery or opera at another. No kidding. I opted for the brewery where I saw Shakespeare most recently, since I've seen Shakespeare at both. Ridiculous, isn't it?
Three Notch'd Brewing Collab House was hosting a special edition of Secretly Y'All, Tell Me a Story, held in conjunction with the Library of Virginia's exhibition "Teetotalers and Moonshiners: Prohibition in Virginia" (which I've not only seen, but attended a panel discussion about).
The theme was "Cheers, Beers and Tears" and tonight they were tapping the bourbon barrel-aged "Last Call," a beer which had been a collaboration between Three Notch'd and the Library. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but do you see what I mean about this town being beer-besotted?
Unlike with the Shakespeare performance, chairs had been set up for those who'd come, not for beer but to hear stories, and mine was near a barrel, on top of which rested an assortment of nerdy Library of Virginia stickers, two of which - "Got books?" and "I like big books and I cannot lie" - came home with me.
Since this was a one-off edition of Secretly Y'All, there were only five storytellers, although they each got a generous ten minutes instead of the usual seven. Initially, some of the hardcore beer geeks kept talking over the first storyteller, but eventually even most of them were sucked in by true tales being shared with strangers.
One woman told of her time working for Redhook Brewery in Seattle and how that went south once Anheuser-Busch bought them and harassment entered the equation. Another told of her moonshiner great-grandfather and the family's Appalachian roots, stressing that it was pronounced with a "ch" sound, not "sh" ("That's like fingernails on a blackboard to us hillbillies") and trying to counter stereotypes ("We have our teeth, we wear shoes and some of us are educated").
The oldest of a large, fundamental Christian family told of her mother earning side money as a mystery shopper, which once involved her having to order an O'Doul's at the bar despite her fear of being kicked out of the church for drinking a fake beer. Instead, she was accused of coming on to a man (incidentally, her brother, so make that incest). The always reliable Mr. King told of his days as a private detective investigating moonshiners, most of whom, he assured us, would give you the shirt off their backs.
Closing out the evening was what amounted to a ringer, an older man from Botetourt County (which he pronounced "BOT-tot"), dressed in jeans and a green checkered shirt with red suspenders, speaking in a distinctive southwestern Virginia drawl.
Not sure about how much we city slickers knew, he first asked who'd heard of Botetourt (most) and who knew what a bender was (all). Alrighty, then, he could go on.
His story had to do with an old drunk known to go on three-week benders and how, as a young man of 20, he'd been asked to "babysit" the drunk, The benefit of this odd job was hearing the old guy's colorful moonshining stories from his younger years.
Tonight he told us one about three 'shiners who set up operation in South Carolina (because there was the least law presence there), buying cans from Continental Company in which to put their moonshine, and then slapping labels on the cans saying they contained tomatoes.
They shipped the cans north on trucks to distributors in Philly, Pittsburgh, NYC and Chicago, and eventually got so bold as to ship on trains, at which point Continental got worried and stopped supplying cans rather than risk a lawsuit.
And don't you know those moonshiners were smart enough to close up shop, take all that money they'd earned, move back to Botetourt and buy farms to live out their lives on?
Kind of gives you a warm and fuzzy feeling, doesn't it, although if you were drinking "Last Call," that feeling could be nothing more than the 8.5% APV.
So another hop-scented cultural evening came to a close without my lips getting anywhere near a beer.
But with the temperature still hovering in the '70s, it only made sense to stop for a bite on the way home and My Noodle & Bar had their front door wide open and the booth closest to the door available.
As if that weren't enough, a guy was folded into the highest perch above the booths, first playing an accordion and then a violin. The way I see it, if you're going to indulge in steamed dumplings and broccoli with chicken while the soft November night air wafts in, how better than with someone bowing a violin for your aural enjoyment?
After a first date a few years back, the guy emailed me about how fascinating he'd found me, but saying point blank, "If you drank beer, you'd be perfect."
But I don't. Got beer? No. I like wine and I cannot lie.
Tuesday, February 7, 2017
Wrapping Up the Stories
Remember when I didn't have to start my day by calling the Senate committee on Homeland Security to leave a message protesting the confirmation of a terrifyingly inappropriate person to the National Security Council?
Sigh, neither do I. But I can't not. It feels like we're in a battle for our lives and it's only the third week.
To deal, I walk.
On a sunny 55-degree morning, Mac and I walk the T Pot, along the floodwall and back on the Pipeline, marveling at how drastically the river has dropped in the past week or so. Where last Saturday I slipped on a muddy bank dodging puddles, today the water had receded and all the paths were completely accessible again.
Because when you're walking the T Pot and the volume on the river kicks up to 11, it's impossible to focus on democracy dying right before your eyes. But then you're two thirds of the way across and it becomes hushed still water and all is calm again.
Am I clutching at straws seeing a metaphor there? This intensity of disturbing change can't possibly be sustained (and we're stronger in numbers resisting it, right?) and all will one day be settled again.
Or, at least I fervently hope.
All I'm saying is that I appreciate how fortunate I am that I can walk a mile and a half to the river and soothe every frazzled fiber of my being for even a little while. Just another of the many reasons to love this city.
Sunday the two of us had walked from the Roosevelt to Evergreen, the city's black cemetery, taking in gravestones with layers of meaning ("For our dear Mammy") along with higher-profile names like Maggie Walker and John Mitchell. Volunteers were clearing a small area in an enormous cemetery, but tramping through overgrown paths to look at statues and markers distracts a person from paying attention to what the leader of the free world is tweeting.
And who couldn't use a bit of a respite from that madness?
That's where Secretly "Y'All, Tell Me a Story" at the Hof came in tonight, offering an evening's diversion on that most relevant of topics: cyberspace.
There was nearly an hour of mingling first which was just what I needed after an afternoon spent alone and while I could've happily chatted with strangers, friends kept showing up.
Flora's new booker was there and we spent a fair amount of time discussing the goals for the new space in terms of what types of music will be booked and what he hopes to accomplish in terms of diversity of music, always a good thing.
After the career barkeep and I talked politics, the dumpling queen (and her roommate, a Georgia exile looking to return) sat down next to me and whispered her upcoming business plans.
He who had moved to Colorado showed up unexpectedly on my other side, admitting that it took moving to the center of the country to realize that he's a water, not a mountain, kind of a guy. Coincidentally, he's moving back at the end of the month.
My question is, who doesn't know which one they are? You could have given me that choice in kindergarten and I'd have known I was a water person.
What's important here is that we'd all come tonight to hear strangers share stories from their lives on the subject of the Internets and the world it has wrought.
P.S. I'm pretty sure I was the sole person there who still exists without a cell phone, though I didn't poll the group.
As someone who's been coming to these events for years, I can tell you I continue to go because I have heard not just compelling stories, but stories of historical note by being in the audience.
It happened yet again tonight and many of the tales came with a lesson.
Michelle learned the hard way that the web allows some so-called spiritual men to use and discard multiple women from opposite coasts, while Tyra's saga of buying a couch on Craig's List (a recurring theme tonight because of the perfect storm that is Craig's List) turned gory when a rug cleaner informed her it had once been covered in blood.
And while that was the end of her Craig's List purchases, I have to admit (as did several of my seatmates) that I found my lovely apartment there, albeit 8 years ago. Of course, there's no telling how tawdry it's become since because I haven't needed it again.
As a naive young art student, Finula had used Craig's List to solicit nude models, winding up at a nudist colony, hanging out for a day and, yes, eventually disrobing herself ("What have you got to lose?" her willing subject asked) before karaoke began in the dining hall. A year later, she waited on the guy and his parents at Chili's and when the 'rents wanted to know how they knew each other, the answer was, "Internet friends."
Shannon ruminated on the dissolution of human contact due to Tinder, compounded by issues of using it to network and spotting casual acquaintances ("Had I missed something about them before? Could they be my soulmate?") on it and not being sure which way to swipe. He concluded that Tinder is a dire disconnect for humanity because it causes people to objectify each other.
Don't look at me, it's not like Tinder factors into my life.
Kevin's story of Jose, a terrific couch surfing host ("He had beds for us both, made us dinner, gave us 40s and shared a blunt") in Spain, wound up with the compromised guests and host mistakenly setting out on foot at 3 a.m. on the pilgrimage to Santiago.
Trying to find a telephone in the wilderness so his 6-year old daughter could call Mommy while on her first Daddy/daughter camping trip had David telling us about multiple drives to various phone booths and country stores near Otter's Creek, none of which had phones.
Emily's trials and tribulations involved taking a nanny job in Istanbul with little information ("My parents were good liberals, so they just said to have fun and enjoy my independence") with a ridiculously rich couple who promised her travel and a cushy job and delivered servitude and 24/7 working hours. Fortunately, she escaped and met a woman who convinced her to stay with her and then become a teacher, which she's since done.
But there were also several stories that grabbed you by the gut and didn't let up and that's why you show up on a Monday night.
Samantha began by instructing the audience to take a deep breath before she launched into the story of surfing Facebook last fall and spotting a photo of a local venue's promoter in blackface on Halloween. Yes, in 2016.
Suddenly you could hear a pin drop in the room because everyone (even The Globe in the UK) had read about this story that just happened to go down in Richmond.
"This isn't a digital crucifixion," she assured the hushed room, explaining how she'd called the guy up, looking for a way to process why he'd done it and realized that he, like many others, had no knowledge of the complicated history of blackface.
As a result, she began a 3-part series called "Unmasking RVA" to discuss that kind of history with everyone who's interested and turn something ugly into something positive, making for the best possible ending.
That said, we had a positively crazy town and terrifying story, too.
An unnamed guy took the stage sharing that a coworker had emailed suggesting meeting for a drink only to find they had little in common (she: Kardashians, he: Godzilla) but they gave it a second go just in case (her: tanning and nails, him: space models and B movies) before going their separate ways.
Before long, he's getting dozens of delusional texts a day from her - "You should have fought harder for me!" - which escalated to threats, suggestions he kill himself and eventually 2,837 texts in a matter of months.
She'd been to jail and she wasn't afraid to go back, she told him. He doesn't answer her. He's changed his number repeatedly and she always gets it again. She repeatedly contacts him on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
"She's called four times since I got here tonight," he shared. That's why his name hadn't been announced when he was introduced. "Because of her, there's nowhere I'm safe online." He stood there looking a little helpless and hapless, a guy who'd granted a date to a lunatic and was paying a huge price for it.
"There's really no wrapping up of this story," he concluded sadly. "Wish me luck."
The room was stunned and the applause huge, but all the buzz afterward was about how this man's life has been destroyed.
It was the kind of story that exemplifies the secrets you potentially hear from strangers at Secretly Y'All and if that had been the outer reaches for tonight, it would have been a sterling example of such an evening but no, oh, no, it got wilder.
Originally from Brazil, Isabella had moved here 8 years ago without family so she'd made a point of looking up a Peace Corps volunteer, a good man who'd stayed with her parents years ago and whom she'd been hearing about her whole life.
A retired psychologist, he used Craig's List to search out interesting-sounding people and talk to them for research purposes. And ad for a guy looking for someone to show him around Charleston when he visited caught his eye, because it included the caveat, "No Jews, no queers, no n-words."
But when the psychologist contacted him about showing him around and talking, the guy begged off because he was going through a difficult time because he was miserable with no friends "even though I'm cool."
Recognizing what sounded like mental illness and trying to help, the psychologist suggested a peer of his in Columbia where the guy lived, but contact broke off shortly thereafter.
The cool guy with no friends was Dylan Roof who'd gone on to kill nine blacks in a Charleston church. Her friend the psychologist eventually had to turn over his computer to the FBI for evidence in his trial.
There we sat, gob-smacked for the second, maybe third, time tonight after hearing a stranger's secret.
All I could think of was another Secretly Y'All several years ago when I'd been similarly overwhelmed.
Then a woman had shared a story about her college boyfriend's father having had a sex change operation and identity reassignment because as a child he'd heard his uncle admitting to being part of the Birmingham church bombing that killed the four little girls and he worried about retribution (bullets on his window sill didn't help).
Cyberspace turned out to be a hell of a theme for the evening, but was brought into perspective by host Kathleen who reminded us, "Despite the theme, we'e all here in the real world to share stories. That's pretty rad!"
And who couldn't use a great big dose of rad right about now?
Sigh, neither do I. But I can't not. It feels like we're in a battle for our lives and it's only the third week.
To deal, I walk.
On a sunny 55-degree morning, Mac and I walk the T Pot, along the floodwall and back on the Pipeline, marveling at how drastically the river has dropped in the past week or so. Where last Saturday I slipped on a muddy bank dodging puddles, today the water had receded and all the paths were completely accessible again.
Because when you're walking the T Pot and the volume on the river kicks up to 11, it's impossible to focus on democracy dying right before your eyes. But then you're two thirds of the way across and it becomes hushed still water and all is calm again.
Am I clutching at straws seeing a metaphor there? This intensity of disturbing change can't possibly be sustained (and we're stronger in numbers resisting it, right?) and all will one day be settled again.
Or, at least I fervently hope.
All I'm saying is that I appreciate how fortunate I am that I can walk a mile and a half to the river and soothe every frazzled fiber of my being for even a little while. Just another of the many reasons to love this city.
Sunday the two of us had walked from the Roosevelt to Evergreen, the city's black cemetery, taking in gravestones with layers of meaning ("For our dear Mammy") along with higher-profile names like Maggie Walker and John Mitchell. Volunteers were clearing a small area in an enormous cemetery, but tramping through overgrown paths to look at statues and markers distracts a person from paying attention to what the leader of the free world is tweeting.
And who couldn't use a bit of a respite from that madness?
That's where Secretly "Y'All, Tell Me a Story" at the Hof came in tonight, offering an evening's diversion on that most relevant of topics: cyberspace.
There was nearly an hour of mingling first which was just what I needed after an afternoon spent alone and while I could've happily chatted with strangers, friends kept showing up.
Flora's new booker was there and we spent a fair amount of time discussing the goals for the new space in terms of what types of music will be booked and what he hopes to accomplish in terms of diversity of music, always a good thing.
After the career barkeep and I talked politics, the dumpling queen (and her roommate, a Georgia exile looking to return) sat down next to me and whispered her upcoming business plans.
He who had moved to Colorado showed up unexpectedly on my other side, admitting that it took moving to the center of the country to realize that he's a water, not a mountain, kind of a guy. Coincidentally, he's moving back at the end of the month.
My question is, who doesn't know which one they are? You could have given me that choice in kindergarten and I'd have known I was a water person.
What's important here is that we'd all come tonight to hear strangers share stories from their lives on the subject of the Internets and the world it has wrought.
P.S. I'm pretty sure I was the sole person there who still exists without a cell phone, though I didn't poll the group.
As someone who's been coming to these events for years, I can tell you I continue to go because I have heard not just compelling stories, but stories of historical note by being in the audience.
It happened yet again tonight and many of the tales came with a lesson.
Michelle learned the hard way that the web allows some so-called spiritual men to use and discard multiple women from opposite coasts, while Tyra's saga of buying a couch on Craig's List (a recurring theme tonight because of the perfect storm that is Craig's List) turned gory when a rug cleaner informed her it had once been covered in blood.
And while that was the end of her Craig's List purchases, I have to admit (as did several of my seatmates) that I found my lovely apartment there, albeit 8 years ago. Of course, there's no telling how tawdry it's become since because I haven't needed it again.
As a naive young art student, Finula had used Craig's List to solicit nude models, winding up at a nudist colony, hanging out for a day and, yes, eventually disrobing herself ("What have you got to lose?" her willing subject asked) before karaoke began in the dining hall. A year later, she waited on the guy and his parents at Chili's and when the 'rents wanted to know how they knew each other, the answer was, "Internet friends."
Shannon ruminated on the dissolution of human contact due to Tinder, compounded by issues of using it to network and spotting casual acquaintances ("Had I missed something about them before? Could they be my soulmate?") on it and not being sure which way to swipe. He concluded that Tinder is a dire disconnect for humanity because it causes people to objectify each other.
Don't look at me, it's not like Tinder factors into my life.
Kevin's story of Jose, a terrific couch surfing host ("He had beds for us both, made us dinner, gave us 40s and shared a blunt") in Spain, wound up with the compromised guests and host mistakenly setting out on foot at 3 a.m. on the pilgrimage to Santiago.
Trying to find a telephone in the wilderness so his 6-year old daughter could call Mommy while on her first Daddy/daughter camping trip had David telling us about multiple drives to various phone booths and country stores near Otter's Creek, none of which had phones.
Emily's trials and tribulations involved taking a nanny job in Istanbul with little information ("My parents were good liberals, so they just said to have fun and enjoy my independence") with a ridiculously rich couple who promised her travel and a cushy job and delivered servitude and 24/7 working hours. Fortunately, she escaped and met a woman who convinced her to stay with her and then become a teacher, which she's since done.
But there were also several stories that grabbed you by the gut and didn't let up and that's why you show up on a Monday night.
Samantha began by instructing the audience to take a deep breath before she launched into the story of surfing Facebook last fall and spotting a photo of a local venue's promoter in blackface on Halloween. Yes, in 2016.
Suddenly you could hear a pin drop in the room because everyone (even The Globe in the UK) had read about this story that just happened to go down in Richmond.
"This isn't a digital crucifixion," she assured the hushed room, explaining how she'd called the guy up, looking for a way to process why he'd done it and realized that he, like many others, had no knowledge of the complicated history of blackface.
As a result, she began a 3-part series called "Unmasking RVA" to discuss that kind of history with everyone who's interested and turn something ugly into something positive, making for the best possible ending.
That said, we had a positively crazy town and terrifying story, too.
An unnamed guy took the stage sharing that a coworker had emailed suggesting meeting for a drink only to find they had little in common (she: Kardashians, he: Godzilla) but they gave it a second go just in case (her: tanning and nails, him: space models and B movies) before going their separate ways.
Before long, he's getting dozens of delusional texts a day from her - "You should have fought harder for me!" - which escalated to threats, suggestions he kill himself and eventually 2,837 texts in a matter of months.
She'd been to jail and she wasn't afraid to go back, she told him. He doesn't answer her. He's changed his number repeatedly and she always gets it again. She repeatedly contacts him on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
"She's called four times since I got here tonight," he shared. That's why his name hadn't been announced when he was introduced. "Because of her, there's nowhere I'm safe online." He stood there looking a little helpless and hapless, a guy who'd granted a date to a lunatic and was paying a huge price for it.
"There's really no wrapping up of this story," he concluded sadly. "Wish me luck."
The room was stunned and the applause huge, but all the buzz afterward was about how this man's life has been destroyed.
It was the kind of story that exemplifies the secrets you potentially hear from strangers at Secretly Y'All and if that had been the outer reaches for tonight, it would have been a sterling example of such an evening but no, oh, no, it got wilder.
Originally from Brazil, Isabella had moved here 8 years ago without family so she'd made a point of looking up a Peace Corps volunteer, a good man who'd stayed with her parents years ago and whom she'd been hearing about her whole life.
A retired psychologist, he used Craig's List to search out interesting-sounding people and talk to them for research purposes. And ad for a guy looking for someone to show him around Charleston when he visited caught his eye, because it included the caveat, "No Jews, no queers, no n-words."
But when the psychologist contacted him about showing him around and talking, the guy begged off because he was going through a difficult time because he was miserable with no friends "even though I'm cool."
Recognizing what sounded like mental illness and trying to help, the psychologist suggested a peer of his in Columbia where the guy lived, but contact broke off shortly thereafter.
The cool guy with no friends was Dylan Roof who'd gone on to kill nine blacks in a Charleston church. Her friend the psychologist eventually had to turn over his computer to the FBI for evidence in his trial.
There we sat, gob-smacked for the second, maybe third, time tonight after hearing a stranger's secret.
All I could think of was another Secretly Y'All several years ago when I'd been similarly overwhelmed.
Then a woman had shared a story about her college boyfriend's father having had a sex change operation and identity reassignment because as a child he'd heard his uncle admitting to being part of the Birmingham church bombing that killed the four little girls and he worried about retribution (bullets on his window sill didn't help).
Cyberspace turned out to be a hell of a theme for the evening, but was brought into perspective by host Kathleen who reminded us, "Despite the theme, we'e all here in the real world to share stories. That's pretty rad!"
And who couldn't use a great big dose of rad right about now?
Monday, November 21, 2016
Dixie is Dead and Trump is Terrifying
I've been violated.
At least that's how I felt when I was greeted by alarmist messages from my bank alerting me that someone was using my debit card all over New York City yesterday.
Not what I was expecting upon returning home from a pleasant day on the Northern Neck with my parents.
It was all the more abrupt because spending the day with them is akin to stepping through a magic looking glass to a different world. At least all the clocks in the house now read correctly, something that's not the case during the months of daylight saving time when they refuse to change their clocks (on principle, naturally).
Probably because it was a chilly 42 degrees when I drove through Tappahannock, our activities centered around the cozy: Mom wanted to put heavier comforters on some of the beds and Dad wanted help ordering new L.L. Bean flannel sheets (Mariner's blue, queen size) after spying a tiny hole in a sheet on their bed.
It was while I was on the big sleeping porch - especially inviting because of the morning sunlight streaming through the walls of windows - in search of their favorite white blanket that I spotted a stack of my parents' records from the '50s right on up through the '80s and dropped everything to investigate.
Finally having a turntable, receiver and Bose speakers - all used, mind you - changes what gets my attention these days.
Spotting me from the other end of the corridor that leads to the porch, Dad called out to his heathen daughter, chuckling, "What are you doing on your knees, praying?" As if.
Many of the albums I flipped through brought back immediate musical memories - some good, some painful - of hearing them played in the house where I grew up. My parents were deep into Neil Diamond, so there were at least ten of his records, along with a handful of Moody Blues and more late '50s instrumental music than I remembered.
Where I was most surprised was with his array of disco and R & B vinyl: Quincy Jones' 1972 double disco album "Ndeda," Larry Graham's "One in a Million You" from '80 (complete with TMI, as in, "You can write to Larry at P.O. Box 46035, LA, CA 90046) and a really early George Benson record called "Shape of Things to Come" from 1968.
Then there was the piece de resistance.
My father, a man who was nothing if not au courant as Dads went back then (hair past his collar, magnificent mutton chops), had a copy of Van McCoy's "The Hustle," I kid you not. I have no memory of this fact, but I was impressed enough to take the album, along with a dozen others.
When he sees that I've snatched up "The In Crowd" by the Ramsey Lewis Trio, recorded at D.C.'s Bohemian Caverns, he makes sure I know that, "I was into Ramsey Lewis way before they made it big with that album."
You see how cool he was?
By the time I left them mid-afternoon, the mercury had only risen four degrees, making me glad to get back to my more densely populated neighborhood and the attendant shared heat (not that my parents' house isn't kept at hothouse temperatures that have even a cold-blooded person like me shedding layers), even if I was met with the news of fraud and the ensuing inconveniences resulting from it.
Luckily, Mac and Secretly Y'All awaited me a few short blocks away at Gallery 5.
Tonight's theme was "Headlines," ("No, Joe Morrissey is not in the building," our host quipped) so we heard from a slew of local journalists riffing on the subject.
Harry brought props and shared how an article on the infamous Dirtwoman had inspired him to become a journalist, but only after his high school guidance counselor had advised him that, "There's a cheap journalism school up the street." That would be VCU.
The Library of Virginia's Errol brought us up to speed on Richmond's fighting editor and Jackson Ward resident, John Mitchell, with a tangent about a newsman friend working in Danville who got fired for the headline, "Dixie is Dead, Elvis is Dead and Danville is Dying." Hilarious.
Katy's story of investigating an unreported woman's death was positively heartbreaking while Chris' story of Mayor Wilder trying to rearrange City Hall after midnight involved sheriffs, a lot of PBR, illegalVespa Stella parking and, tangentially, the headline that had first inspired him to take up journalism: "Preacher Dies in Flaming Mobile Pulpit."
Where tonight's Secretly Y'All differed from so many of the ones I've attended over the years was that it took place in a post-2016 election world, which, as we're all still trying to grasp, feels like a horrific new world order.
Brad offered up a report on being LGBTQ in Trump's America, a terrifying proposition, to be sure, that included learning about the numbers of LGBTQ people who bought guns, both after Obama's election (talk about misguided) and Trump's so-called election. A pink camo assault weapon and Colonial Shooting Academy both figured prominantly into his story.
But the undisputed highlight of listening to tonight's storytellers was when the RTD's Michael Paul Williams took the stage, intent on making us see that the most important stories are ahead of us.
"We need a lot of anger now," he said passionately. "They're trying to push out information as the new normal and that's not right." Amen, brother.
We listened as he told a tale of two of his stories, one that helped the Armstrong choir raise $20,000 to go to a competition in NYC and another where he wanted to shadow three students - Hispanic, black and white - enrolled in Richmond Public Schools and chronicle their experiences and results, a story that died before it saw light because of lawyers and a necessity for endless releases.
But his real point in being there tonight was to use his self-professed "old guy" status to motivate the crowded room to action.
"Be subversive going forward in this new day. I'm pissed off and terrified. We should all be pissed off and terrified at this. We need to protest! I don't want a white supremacist a few steps from the Oval Office."
His was a very emotional call to arms not to go gently into this terrifying new Trump night and it moved me in a way Secretly Y'All doesn't usually. This wasn't about a person's personal anecdote, this was an entreaty not to stay silent about things that matter.
It's no secret, ya'll, we're being violated. Anger and action must follow.
At least that's how I felt when I was greeted by alarmist messages from my bank alerting me that someone was using my debit card all over New York City yesterday.
Not what I was expecting upon returning home from a pleasant day on the Northern Neck with my parents.
It was all the more abrupt because spending the day with them is akin to stepping through a magic looking glass to a different world. At least all the clocks in the house now read correctly, something that's not the case during the months of daylight saving time when they refuse to change their clocks (on principle, naturally).
Probably because it was a chilly 42 degrees when I drove through Tappahannock, our activities centered around the cozy: Mom wanted to put heavier comforters on some of the beds and Dad wanted help ordering new L.L. Bean flannel sheets (Mariner's blue, queen size) after spying a tiny hole in a sheet on their bed.
It was while I was on the big sleeping porch - especially inviting because of the morning sunlight streaming through the walls of windows - in search of their favorite white blanket that I spotted a stack of my parents' records from the '50s right on up through the '80s and dropped everything to investigate.
Finally having a turntable, receiver and Bose speakers - all used, mind you - changes what gets my attention these days.
Spotting me from the other end of the corridor that leads to the porch, Dad called out to his heathen daughter, chuckling, "What are you doing on your knees, praying?" As if.
Many of the albums I flipped through brought back immediate musical memories - some good, some painful - of hearing them played in the house where I grew up. My parents were deep into Neil Diamond, so there were at least ten of his records, along with a handful of Moody Blues and more late '50s instrumental music than I remembered.
Where I was most surprised was with his array of disco and R & B vinyl: Quincy Jones' 1972 double disco album "Ndeda," Larry Graham's "One in a Million You" from '80 (complete with TMI, as in, "You can write to Larry at P.O. Box 46035, LA, CA 90046) and a really early George Benson record called "Shape of Things to Come" from 1968.
Then there was the piece de resistance.
My father, a man who was nothing if not au courant as Dads went back then (hair past his collar, magnificent mutton chops), had a copy of Van McCoy's "The Hustle," I kid you not. I have no memory of this fact, but I was impressed enough to take the album, along with a dozen others.
When he sees that I've snatched up "The In Crowd" by the Ramsey Lewis Trio, recorded at D.C.'s Bohemian Caverns, he makes sure I know that, "I was into Ramsey Lewis way before they made it big with that album."
You see how cool he was?
By the time I left them mid-afternoon, the mercury had only risen four degrees, making me glad to get back to my more densely populated neighborhood and the attendant shared heat (not that my parents' house isn't kept at hothouse temperatures that have even a cold-blooded person like me shedding layers), even if I was met with the news of fraud and the ensuing inconveniences resulting from it.
Luckily, Mac and Secretly Y'All awaited me a few short blocks away at Gallery 5.
Tonight's theme was "Headlines," ("No, Joe Morrissey is not in the building," our host quipped) so we heard from a slew of local journalists riffing on the subject.
Harry brought props and shared how an article on the infamous Dirtwoman had inspired him to become a journalist, but only after his high school guidance counselor had advised him that, "There's a cheap journalism school up the street." That would be VCU.
The Library of Virginia's Errol brought us up to speed on Richmond's fighting editor and Jackson Ward resident, John Mitchell, with a tangent about a newsman friend working in Danville who got fired for the headline, "Dixie is Dead, Elvis is Dead and Danville is Dying." Hilarious.
Katy's story of investigating an unreported woman's death was positively heartbreaking while Chris' story of Mayor Wilder trying to rearrange City Hall after midnight involved sheriffs, a lot of PBR, illegal
Where tonight's Secretly Y'All differed from so many of the ones I've attended over the years was that it took place in a post-2016 election world, which, as we're all still trying to grasp, feels like a horrific new world order.
Brad offered up a report on being LGBTQ in Trump's America, a terrifying proposition, to be sure, that included learning about the numbers of LGBTQ people who bought guns, both after Obama's election (talk about misguided) and Trump's so-called election. A pink camo assault weapon and Colonial Shooting Academy both figured prominantly into his story.
But the undisputed highlight of listening to tonight's storytellers was when the RTD's Michael Paul Williams took the stage, intent on making us see that the most important stories are ahead of us.
"We need a lot of anger now," he said passionately. "They're trying to push out information as the new normal and that's not right." Amen, brother.
We listened as he told a tale of two of his stories, one that helped the Armstrong choir raise $20,000 to go to a competition in NYC and another where he wanted to shadow three students - Hispanic, black and white - enrolled in Richmond Public Schools and chronicle their experiences and results, a story that died before it saw light because of lawyers and a necessity for endless releases.
But his real point in being there tonight was to use his self-professed "old guy" status to motivate the crowded room to action.
"Be subversive going forward in this new day. I'm pissed off and terrified. We should all be pissed off and terrified at this. We need to protest! I don't want a white supremacist a few steps from the Oval Office."
His was a very emotional call to arms not to go gently into this terrifying new Trump night and it moved me in a way Secretly Y'All doesn't usually. This wasn't about a person's personal anecdote, this was an entreaty not to stay silent about things that matter.
It's no secret, ya'll, we're being violated. Anger and action must follow.
Tuesday, August 30, 2016
Putting the Wet Stuff on the Red Stuff
The stories begin when you're standing in line waiting for the doors to open.
"Have you seen No BS? Omygod, you've never even been here before? But you've been to RiverRock, right? No? Once you've been here a year, you'll know everyone by two degrees of separation."
Somehow I am fortunate enough to be standing in front of the Oracle of RVA.
The newbie tries to redeem herself by stating that she really like female rappers and name-checking a few. With no irony, he says he likes Beyonce. "Is that all you got?" she asks in disgust.
Welcome to Secretly Y'All at Balliceaux where tonight's storytelling theme is "Starting Fires."
Historian Josh, who works at the Civil War Center at Tredegar, plans to give us some historical context about the burning of Richmond at the end of the Civil War but does it in an entirely entertaining manner.
Like a report from the Bureua of Alcohol, Firearms and Tobacco, he cleverly uses anecdotal evidence about drinking (everyone, including kids, was), pre-set fires setting off munitions factories and tobacco warehouses being set ablaze to deliver what is essentially "The Compleat Story of the Burning of RVA, Abridged."
No exaggeration, his performance was right up there with local historian master, Mike Gorman. When I tell him this after the show, he asks if I'll tell Mike that myself.
Grace tells about setting her first pine cone fire at age 4, notable because her hippie parents don't punish, they use it as a teachable moment by taking her to the firehouse to learn about fire safety. The chief asks her if she wants to ride in the fire engine and the lesson ends abruptly.
Life can't be easy when you join Boy Scouts solely so your Dad will like you, nor when that same Dad signs up his easily-brought-to-tears young son, Richard, to play "Cotton" in the camp skit.
Because it's a role that requires him to be naked in front of the entire camp, he runs away from camp alone to spend the night outdoors. Happy ending: by college, he over-compensates by getting naked in front of others at the drop of a hat (or a party) and eventually surprising strangers by jumping on their beach towel unexpectedly on a dark night (before running away).
Kristin tells a story about an early summer fling when her criteria had been young (because she was 20), hot (because. "I was shallow") and stupid ("Because that's what I was into then").
At the end of August when he reminds her it's over, she bags up the souvenirs of their brief love (compartmentalizing) and later burns them in a bonfire (moving on).
She admitted to a lot of over-sharing.
Local firefighter Charlie had a just-the-facts delivery (pressure levels, hose weights when filled, lots of numbers), even though his story involved a fierce fire and a suicide by immolation.
Explaining his role as pump man, he said, "I'm the guy who gets to put the wet stuff on the red stuff," got a few laughs, looked up sheepishly and smiled when he got more.
I'd say he'd worked on that one.
Ending on a highly philosophical note, he questioned whether the suicide would've happened if the victim had known two nesting birds would die in the process.
For pure heart-wrenching childhood drama, nothing compared to Alhaji's saga of living through Sierra Leone's rebel uprising as a 6-year old, an endeavor that involved being locked in and escaping his school, finding a shelter and escaping that, only to return for others and find the shelter ablaze after the rebels have left.
He and his family members laid on the ground among dead bodies so that when the rebels returned they wouldn't be killed. His two year old sister never made a peep.
When he got to this country, he was placed in a foster home where his parents locked him and another child in a basement room. He escaped that, too, followed by sleeping on the steps of Social Services to plead his case and finally get a good home.
It was a hell of a note to end the first half with, profound, moving and far more real than most people came prepared to hear.
During intermission, I made a beeline for the front bar, only to spot two fire trucks, lights on, parked outside. It was so unexpected that people treated it like a mirage...were they really there after all those fire stories?
Dunno. I ordered a housemade root beer which, for the first time in all the times I've ordered it, arrived with a fat pretzel atop the foam. It was practically an intermission snack and I loved it.
A comedian friend stopped by to tell me that he'd been too busy playing with someone's phone during the first story to pay any attention to it (his loss). All he remembered was that it was about George Washington (close, it was about the end of the Civil War).
Like always, the second half's stories were far looser about sticking to the theme.
We heard about post-traumatic party disorder after a high school party went wrong (he called the cops on his own party to get everyone off his parents' property) and about how Iranian families cultivate tradition by celebrating pagan holidays jumping over fires, a ritual some then miss as an adult ("The horrible becomes normal").
Adding to the atypical additions to tonight's programming - history lesson, firetruck log, refugee story - was a PSA about eschewing burial for cremation so you could become a plant, say a rose or a tree.
We heard about how arson runs in families. First Mom sets Dad's morning newspaper aflame so he'll listen to her at breakfast and next thing you know, Brother is starting a fire with his Pokemon cards.
At hippie camp during an aura-cleansing ritual using sage, counselor Rainbow accidentally sets pretty little Stephanie Smiley's long locks afire (none of the other girls are sad).
Which was an ideal segue to the big finale, Josh's story about catching his own teen mane on fire with a creme brulee torch, thus ending the indoor portion of the storytelling evening.
Walking the six blocks back to my car, I found myself a half block ahead of a guy checking in with Mom and Dad, reeling off his class schedule (he was theater major, hence the excellent projection skills) and impressions.
"And then I have voice and speech and today the teacher used the word "sensual" in class, so I think he's going to be really cool." Apparently this young man has not had enough exposure to advanced vocabulary in his young life.
Pause. "Get this! We won't be able to sit together as a family after all. No, no, it's going to be like a lot of the award shows and all the nominees get to sit in the front row, so that's where I'll be. That's gonna feed my ego," he crowed and disappeared down a side street.
Some nights, the stories don't end 'til you get back in your car and drive away.
"Have you seen No BS? Omygod, you've never even been here before? But you've been to RiverRock, right? No? Once you've been here a year, you'll know everyone by two degrees of separation."
Somehow I am fortunate enough to be standing in front of the Oracle of RVA.
The newbie tries to redeem herself by stating that she really like female rappers and name-checking a few. With no irony, he says he likes Beyonce. "Is that all you got?" she asks in disgust.
Welcome to Secretly Y'All at Balliceaux where tonight's storytelling theme is "Starting Fires."
Historian Josh, who works at the Civil War Center at Tredegar, plans to give us some historical context about the burning of Richmond at the end of the Civil War but does it in an entirely entertaining manner.
Like a report from the Bureua of Alcohol, Firearms and Tobacco, he cleverly uses anecdotal evidence about drinking (everyone, including kids, was), pre-set fires setting off munitions factories and tobacco warehouses being set ablaze to deliver what is essentially "The Compleat Story of the Burning of RVA, Abridged."
No exaggeration, his performance was right up there with local historian master, Mike Gorman. When I tell him this after the show, he asks if I'll tell Mike that myself.
Grace tells about setting her first pine cone fire at age 4, notable because her hippie parents don't punish, they use it as a teachable moment by taking her to the firehouse to learn about fire safety. The chief asks her if she wants to ride in the fire engine and the lesson ends abruptly.
Life can't be easy when you join Boy Scouts solely so your Dad will like you, nor when that same Dad signs up his easily-brought-to-tears young son, Richard, to play "Cotton" in the camp skit.
Because it's a role that requires him to be naked in front of the entire camp, he runs away from camp alone to spend the night outdoors. Happy ending: by college, he over-compensates by getting naked in front of others at the drop of a hat (or a party) and eventually surprising strangers by jumping on their beach towel unexpectedly on a dark night (before running away).
Kristin tells a story about an early summer fling when her criteria had been young (because she was 20), hot (because. "I was shallow") and stupid ("Because that's what I was into then").
At the end of August when he reminds her it's over, she bags up the souvenirs of their brief love (compartmentalizing) and later burns them in a bonfire (moving on).
She admitted to a lot of over-sharing.
Local firefighter Charlie had a just-the-facts delivery (pressure levels, hose weights when filled, lots of numbers), even though his story involved a fierce fire and a suicide by immolation.
Explaining his role as pump man, he said, "I'm the guy who gets to put the wet stuff on the red stuff," got a few laughs, looked up sheepishly and smiled when he got more.
I'd say he'd worked on that one.
Ending on a highly philosophical note, he questioned whether the suicide would've happened if the victim had known two nesting birds would die in the process.
For pure heart-wrenching childhood drama, nothing compared to Alhaji's saga of living through Sierra Leone's rebel uprising as a 6-year old, an endeavor that involved being locked in and escaping his school, finding a shelter and escaping that, only to return for others and find the shelter ablaze after the rebels have left.
He and his family members laid on the ground among dead bodies so that when the rebels returned they wouldn't be killed. His two year old sister never made a peep.
When he got to this country, he was placed in a foster home where his parents locked him and another child in a basement room. He escaped that, too, followed by sleeping on the steps of Social Services to plead his case and finally get a good home.
It was a hell of a note to end the first half with, profound, moving and far more real than most people came prepared to hear.
During intermission, I made a beeline for the front bar, only to spot two fire trucks, lights on, parked outside. It was so unexpected that people treated it like a mirage...were they really there after all those fire stories?
Dunno. I ordered a housemade root beer which, for the first time in all the times I've ordered it, arrived with a fat pretzel atop the foam. It was practically an intermission snack and I loved it.
A comedian friend stopped by to tell me that he'd been too busy playing with someone's phone during the first story to pay any attention to it (his loss). All he remembered was that it was about George Washington (close, it was about the end of the Civil War).
Like always, the second half's stories were far looser about sticking to the theme.
We heard about post-traumatic party disorder after a high school party went wrong (he called the cops on his own party to get everyone off his parents' property) and about how Iranian families cultivate tradition by celebrating pagan holidays jumping over fires, a ritual some then miss as an adult ("The horrible becomes normal").
Adding to the atypical additions to tonight's programming - history lesson, firetruck log, refugee story - was a PSA about eschewing burial for cremation so you could become a plant, say a rose or a tree.
We heard about how arson runs in families. First Mom sets Dad's morning newspaper aflame so he'll listen to her at breakfast and next thing you know, Brother is starting a fire with his Pokemon cards.
At hippie camp during an aura-cleansing ritual using sage, counselor Rainbow accidentally sets pretty little Stephanie Smiley's long locks afire (none of the other girls are sad).
Which was an ideal segue to the big finale, Josh's story about catching his own teen mane on fire with a creme brulee torch, thus ending the indoor portion of the storytelling evening.
Walking the six blocks back to my car, I found myself a half block ahead of a guy checking in with Mom and Dad, reeling off his class schedule (he was theater major, hence the excellent projection skills) and impressions.
"And then I have voice and speech and today the teacher used the word "sensual" in class, so I think he's going to be really cool." Apparently this young man has not had enough exposure to advanced vocabulary in his young life.
Pause. "Get this! We won't be able to sit together as a family after all. No, no, it's going to be like a lot of the award shows and all the nominees get to sit in the front row, so that's where I'll be. That's gonna feed my ego," he crowed and disappeared down a side street.
Some nights, the stories don't end 'til you get back in your car and drive away.
Monday, January 11, 2016
Have It Your Way
Seeking asylum, not something (fortunately) I've needed to do. Seeking asylum, also the theme for tonight's Secretly Y'All, Tell Me a Story at Balliceaux.
Even twenty minutes before the doors opened, the front room was packed with people eager to score a seat and not end up sitting on the floor. Not to sound like a Richmonder (because I don't qualify), but I remember when a good night was 30 people.
Some themes are just inherently more poignant and tonight's was one of those. I'm talking about a fourth grader, dressed to the nines, telling the story of his life as a refugee from India. Or a woman who rescued a filthy, emaciated dog with a hunting number carved in its sides who regretted returning it to its owners.
I'm talking about a striking 6'5" woman who came all the way from Lynchburg to tell how she wound up in a bad relationship because she presumed the combination of being black and that tall meant she was never going to find a man. When her husband became abusive, she snatched her two-year old and escaped, only to be given asylum by an old white couple she didn't know. She tellingly referred to as "the first time I experienced safety."
Or an Iranian daughter who told of how her father, the head missile specialist in Iran before the '70s overthrow of the king, was reduced to selling melons in the Paris subway before taking asylum in the US and becoming a house painter. No one here sees him as the high-level specialist he once was.
The young man who, with his brother, escaped Burma for Malaysia covered in blankets on the bottom of a boat, licking droplets of salt water off his face trying to quench his thirst, and eventually made it to the U.S., about which he said, "That's why America is great, because it takes in people seeking asylum."
Another, the son of a Lithuanian who came to the U.S. in the '40s, told us about visiting Lithuania with his own 10-year old son to pay his respects at the grave site of his grandmother, killed when the train she was on was sabotaged by the Russians. After inadvertently teaching his son to hate Russians all his life, he was given a valuable lesson by relatives on that visit. "It was just war."
The first half of the evening ended with the always-hysterical Ian and his deadpan delivery, who told of using his summer job earnings to rent a hotel room to meet a girl to lose his virginity and "escape my stifling suburban adolescence, our libidos clanging like sleigh bells." They eventually moved in together, worked crappy jobs and made surprisingly good meals that set off the smoke detector.
With the exception of the last story, the others elicited heartfelt applause for the struggles shared in these classic American tales. Ian's inspired near non-stop chortling at his low-key delivery and clever phrasing.
You can count on three things happening during the break: anywhere from a fourth to a third of the crowd will leave, people who think they have an appropriately-themed story will put their name in the hat in hopes of being called, and I will find an interesting person with whom to wile away the time.
Check, check and check. He works for the James River Park System and likes to walk cemeteries so we only had tons of things to compare notes on. I already knew about the deer in Mount Calvary Cemetery, but not the beavers. He's yet to visit Shockoe Hill Cemetery where I regularly tend a grave, so we called it a draw.
Some nights, the stories that come after the break surpass the planned storytelling by a long shot. Not so tonight. Either people were really reaching or else completely ignoring the theme, because while most touched on the immigrant experience, only one really dealt with asylum.
Patty told of a family trip driving to New Orleans and getting off the interstate when the sky started looking strange and they saw a "storm chaser" van go by. At a Burger King in Alabama, they saw a black cloud with furniture flying in it and were told by the manager to drop their meals and take shelter in the freezer. Many cold minutes later, after what sounded like a freight train had passed, 15 people were dead from the storm and they were safe.
"We were very scared, very lucky and I eat at Burger King to this day," Patty concluded. Her son said he remembered looking at his brother eating his Whopper in the freezer and asking what he was doing. Seems he didn't want to die hungry.
I imagine when you're taking asylum, you're not always thinking as rationally as usual. Still, I think I'd have brought my fries, too.
Even twenty minutes before the doors opened, the front room was packed with people eager to score a seat and not end up sitting on the floor. Not to sound like a Richmonder (because I don't qualify), but I remember when a good night was 30 people.
Some themes are just inherently more poignant and tonight's was one of those. I'm talking about a fourth grader, dressed to the nines, telling the story of his life as a refugee from India. Or a woman who rescued a filthy, emaciated dog with a hunting number carved in its sides who regretted returning it to its owners.
I'm talking about a striking 6'5" woman who came all the way from Lynchburg to tell how she wound up in a bad relationship because she presumed the combination of being black and that tall meant she was never going to find a man. When her husband became abusive, she snatched her two-year old and escaped, only to be given asylum by an old white couple she didn't know. She tellingly referred to as "the first time I experienced safety."
Or an Iranian daughter who told of how her father, the head missile specialist in Iran before the '70s overthrow of the king, was reduced to selling melons in the Paris subway before taking asylum in the US and becoming a house painter. No one here sees him as the high-level specialist he once was.
The young man who, with his brother, escaped Burma for Malaysia covered in blankets on the bottom of a boat, licking droplets of salt water off his face trying to quench his thirst, and eventually made it to the U.S., about which he said, "That's why America is great, because it takes in people seeking asylum."
Another, the son of a Lithuanian who came to the U.S. in the '40s, told us about visiting Lithuania with his own 10-year old son to pay his respects at the grave site of his grandmother, killed when the train she was on was sabotaged by the Russians. After inadvertently teaching his son to hate Russians all his life, he was given a valuable lesson by relatives on that visit. "It was just war."
The first half of the evening ended with the always-hysterical Ian and his deadpan delivery, who told of using his summer job earnings to rent a hotel room to meet a girl to lose his virginity and "escape my stifling suburban adolescence, our libidos clanging like sleigh bells." They eventually moved in together, worked crappy jobs and made surprisingly good meals that set off the smoke detector.
With the exception of the last story, the others elicited heartfelt applause for the struggles shared in these classic American tales. Ian's inspired near non-stop chortling at his low-key delivery and clever phrasing.
You can count on three things happening during the break: anywhere from a fourth to a third of the crowd will leave, people who think they have an appropriately-themed story will put their name in the hat in hopes of being called, and I will find an interesting person with whom to wile away the time.
Check, check and check. He works for the James River Park System and likes to walk cemeteries so we only had tons of things to compare notes on. I already knew about the deer in Mount Calvary Cemetery, but not the beavers. He's yet to visit Shockoe Hill Cemetery where I regularly tend a grave, so we called it a draw.
Some nights, the stories that come after the break surpass the planned storytelling by a long shot. Not so tonight. Either people were really reaching or else completely ignoring the theme, because while most touched on the immigrant experience, only one really dealt with asylum.
Patty told of a family trip driving to New Orleans and getting off the interstate when the sky started looking strange and they saw a "storm chaser" van go by. At a Burger King in Alabama, they saw a black cloud with furniture flying in it and were told by the manager to drop their meals and take shelter in the freezer. Many cold minutes later, after what sounded like a freight train had passed, 15 people were dead from the storm and they were safe.
"We were very scared, very lucky and I eat at Burger King to this day," Patty concluded. Her son said he remembered looking at his brother eating his Whopper in the freezer and asking what he was doing. Seems he didn't want to die hungry.
I imagine when you're taking asylum, you're not always thinking as rationally as usual. Still, I think I'd have brought my fries, too.
Tuesday, November 24, 2015
Hot Sex and Banana Hammocks
So many stories of where I've been
And how I got to where I am
Oh, but these stories don't mean anything
When you've got no one to tell them to...
Man, when I heard Brandi Carlisle sing that song at Groovin' in the Garden back in May 2009, I was still reeling from having been through the wringer that year. A lifetime later, I heard it on the radio tonight after spending a day hearing stories.
Tanisha Ford had some terrific ones, gleaned while researching her new book, "Liberated Threads: Black Women, Style and the Global Politics of Soul," and shared them at a lecture at the VCU Depot.
Saying she was introduced to the soul generation by her Mom, she began by showing us a picture of her mother in her dorm room in 1972. Everything about the photo screamed '70s soul, from her Mom's gorgeous Afro to the poster of Angela Davis to the beaded curtain to the African print bedspread and pillows.
From there, she cleverly tied together the way black women dressed and the development of the modern Civil Rights movement, using everything from Blue Note jazz album covers to photographs of people such as South African singer Miriam Makeba (the very one I'd seen at the VMFA in the South African photography exhibit "Darkroom" at the VMFA in 2013) and covers of "Drum" and "Ebony" magazines to illustrate her point.
A 1973 article in "Drum," a South African tabloid, warned young women that they'd be fined or even jailed if they were caught in a mini-skirt.
Sorry, but having come of age when I did, I've always felt that mini-skirts were my birthright.
Perhaps most fascinating was how African Americans had first looked to Africa for inspiration, but once the notion of "soul" became a global concept in the '60s and '70s, the rest of the world looked to the U.S. for what was deemed to be modern and soulful.
Being part of that first generation who were offered women's studies classes in college all but guaranteed that I'd have a life-long interest in women's cultural history, so I was totally into Dr. Ford's history lecture with fashion on top.
Less women-centric, but still fine entertainment for this audience member, was tonight's installment of Secretly Y'All, Tell Me a Story, with the theme "through the wringer." Because who among us hasn't been at some time or another?
Waiting to get into the back room at Balliceaux, I chatted with a woman who'd come in from the east end while maintaining my place at the front of the line. Sitting down in a folding chair, I heard my name called by an artist I'd met at Crossroads a few months ago and when I looked to see who was down next to me, it was the vintage queen I'd seen at Mr. Fine Wine the other night.
"Oh, you again?" she joked, as the handsome chef with her handed her a bourbon cocktail.
So, the show. A blind man, a formerly homeless woman and a Senate intern walk into a bar and they're limited to true stories lasting no more than 5-7 minutes. Holy cow, that bar was Balliceaux!
I'm not sure if it was the theme or if the stars were just in alignment, but tonight's stories were stronger than they've been in some time, with some real heart breakers and major life affirmations thrown in for good measure.
Elaine explained how she'd lived in 30 different places, including her Honda Accord over the course of a year during which she continued to assure herself that she wasn't homeless (homeless people have bad teeth, smell funky and have drug habits, or so she thought). She became an expert in doing laundry in any sink she could find.
Henry was a Senate intern during the government shutdown a few years ago, taking complaints and threats from voters back home, experiencing a shooting just outside the senator's office and being rewarded with a pizza party for his effort. He's till trying to dig out of the hole that experience left in him.
Bill shared the tragic story of an abused woman friend who got a restraining order against her abusive husband, who then showed up anyway and beat her to death with a gun in front of her kids and sister, leaving behind "blood mud." His point was that her death sent out a ripple that affected so many others.
Richard called his move to Portland after his divorce a "hail Mary pass," but was grateful to land in the home of his friend Cheryl and her husband Ed, whom he described as the nicest heroin addict he'd ever met. After taking a room with another Cheryl, he was kicked out for putting a non-dishwasher dish in the dishwasher (horrors!), but found a good home with a nice Asian man, but only after pretending to be someone else.
Elizabeth grew up in a strict family, got engaged after three dates, then got married and went to prom. Unfortunately, her young husband robbed a house - "That's a felony" - just as she found out she was pregnant. "He came in shackles to see the birth." She raised her son without him and was very happy with how life had worked out.
Kristin was a career-oriented VP in finance by age 30 and then another skier ran into her at Wintergreen and she wound up with a brain injury where she couldn't remember names, places or much of anything about her life for months. Now back at work part-time, she's regained her sense of humor. "This brain injury thing, it's all in my head." Ba dum bum.
Anya's story was about her brother in Poland who'd been cross country skiing at night when a truck overtook him. Luckily, it was high enough that he could lean back and go under it, although he arrived home bloody and disoriented. At the village hospital circa 1995, the only bed was in the psychiatric ward, where the very old man in the bed next to him decided to stab himself with a fork to the wrist, causing spurting all over her brother. Anya was good enough to bring the fork for proof.
By the time intermission rolled around, I think it's safe to say that we were all gobsmacked with the stories we'd heard. What could possibly top any of those through-the-wringer moments?
Taylor could. He walked onstage, cane in hand, joking that, "The good thing about speaking in front of a crowd is I have no idea how many of you there are."
Seems he'd been coming home from helping his girlfriend assemble a Barbie car on Christmas eve when he feel asleep and hit a house. One TV newscaster pronounced him dead on the air (he wasn't). He woke up from the coma exactly two years almost to the minute that his Mom had died, but everything was dark.
He was told he was blind, "you won't be able to move the left side of your body and it's doubtful you'll ever walk again." Taylor responds by getting out of bed, walking over to the doctor, shaking his hand with his own left hand and thanking the man for saving his life.
He's still blind, but he says he's better at everything else now. Damn.
Donna found Tree Farm Guy on Craig's List, happily dated him for years ("We had hot sex!) but he didn't want her to move in and they broke up. Sniffing around on Craig's List, she creates a profile for herself (DICK4U@gmail.com) and answers Tree Farm Guy's ad looking for men. She's still hopeful about finding a nice guy, but TFG wasn't it.
J. Michael's story was about forsaking good friends for the shallow allure of a social fraternity, only to learn that his friend had died in the interim and he never got to re-connect with him. His advice was to keep good people in your life (TFG was not good people, not to mix stories or anything).
Mark called his saga frivolous after the preceding blockbusters and he was right. It began with a trip to the Chilean desert, a difficult bike ride after a pedal fell off and an ass-numbing four-day jeep ride during which the driver was eating cocoa leaves non-stop and ended with a Frenchman improbably named Jeff coming out in a thermal shirt, a fleece vest and what Mark called a "banana hammock" before disappearing.
Brandi was wrong, these were stories that did mean something, whether you had someone to tell them to or not. And, despite being asked several times, I'm not going to be sharing my "through the wringer" story, either.
But let me assure you, it's how I got to where I am.
And how I got to where I am
Oh, but these stories don't mean anything
When you've got no one to tell them to...
Man, when I heard Brandi Carlisle sing that song at Groovin' in the Garden back in May 2009, I was still reeling from having been through the wringer that year. A lifetime later, I heard it on the radio tonight after spending a day hearing stories.
Tanisha Ford had some terrific ones, gleaned while researching her new book, "Liberated Threads: Black Women, Style and the Global Politics of Soul," and shared them at a lecture at the VCU Depot.
Saying she was introduced to the soul generation by her Mom, she began by showing us a picture of her mother in her dorm room in 1972. Everything about the photo screamed '70s soul, from her Mom's gorgeous Afro to the poster of Angela Davis to the beaded curtain to the African print bedspread and pillows.
From there, she cleverly tied together the way black women dressed and the development of the modern Civil Rights movement, using everything from Blue Note jazz album covers to photographs of people such as South African singer Miriam Makeba (the very one I'd seen at the VMFA in the South African photography exhibit "Darkroom" at the VMFA in 2013) and covers of "Drum" and "Ebony" magazines to illustrate her point.
A 1973 article in "Drum," a South African tabloid, warned young women that they'd be fined or even jailed if they were caught in a mini-skirt.
Sorry, but having come of age when I did, I've always felt that mini-skirts were my birthright.
Perhaps most fascinating was how African Americans had first looked to Africa for inspiration, but once the notion of "soul" became a global concept in the '60s and '70s, the rest of the world looked to the U.S. for what was deemed to be modern and soulful.
Being part of that first generation who were offered women's studies classes in college all but guaranteed that I'd have a life-long interest in women's cultural history, so I was totally into Dr. Ford's history lecture with fashion on top.
Less women-centric, but still fine entertainment for this audience member, was tonight's installment of Secretly Y'All, Tell Me a Story, with the theme "through the wringer." Because who among us hasn't been at some time or another?
Waiting to get into the back room at Balliceaux, I chatted with a woman who'd come in from the east end while maintaining my place at the front of the line. Sitting down in a folding chair, I heard my name called by an artist I'd met at Crossroads a few months ago and when I looked to see who was down next to me, it was the vintage queen I'd seen at Mr. Fine Wine the other night.
"Oh, you again?" she joked, as the handsome chef with her handed her a bourbon cocktail.
So, the show. A blind man, a formerly homeless woman and a Senate intern walk into a bar and they're limited to true stories lasting no more than 5-7 minutes. Holy cow, that bar was Balliceaux!
I'm not sure if it was the theme or if the stars were just in alignment, but tonight's stories were stronger than they've been in some time, with some real heart breakers and major life affirmations thrown in for good measure.
Elaine explained how she'd lived in 30 different places, including her Honda Accord over the course of a year during which she continued to assure herself that she wasn't homeless (homeless people have bad teeth, smell funky and have drug habits, or so she thought). She became an expert in doing laundry in any sink she could find.
Henry was a Senate intern during the government shutdown a few years ago, taking complaints and threats from voters back home, experiencing a shooting just outside the senator's office and being rewarded with a pizza party for his effort. He's till trying to dig out of the hole that experience left in him.
Bill shared the tragic story of an abused woman friend who got a restraining order against her abusive husband, who then showed up anyway and beat her to death with a gun in front of her kids and sister, leaving behind "blood mud." His point was that her death sent out a ripple that affected so many others.
Richard called his move to Portland after his divorce a "hail Mary pass," but was grateful to land in the home of his friend Cheryl and her husband Ed, whom he described as the nicest heroin addict he'd ever met. After taking a room with another Cheryl, he was kicked out for putting a non-dishwasher dish in the dishwasher (horrors!), but found a good home with a nice Asian man, but only after pretending to be someone else.
Elizabeth grew up in a strict family, got engaged after three dates, then got married and went to prom. Unfortunately, her young husband robbed a house - "That's a felony" - just as she found out she was pregnant. "He came in shackles to see the birth." She raised her son without him and was very happy with how life had worked out.
Kristin was a career-oriented VP in finance by age 30 and then another skier ran into her at Wintergreen and she wound up with a brain injury where she couldn't remember names, places or much of anything about her life for months. Now back at work part-time, she's regained her sense of humor. "This brain injury thing, it's all in my head." Ba dum bum.
Anya's story was about her brother in Poland who'd been cross country skiing at night when a truck overtook him. Luckily, it was high enough that he could lean back and go under it, although he arrived home bloody and disoriented. At the village hospital circa 1995, the only bed was in the psychiatric ward, where the very old man in the bed next to him decided to stab himself with a fork to the wrist, causing spurting all over her brother. Anya was good enough to bring the fork for proof.
By the time intermission rolled around, I think it's safe to say that we were all gobsmacked with the stories we'd heard. What could possibly top any of those through-the-wringer moments?
Taylor could. He walked onstage, cane in hand, joking that, "The good thing about speaking in front of a crowd is I have no idea how many of you there are."
Seems he'd been coming home from helping his girlfriend assemble a Barbie car on Christmas eve when he feel asleep and hit a house. One TV newscaster pronounced him dead on the air (he wasn't). He woke up from the coma exactly two years almost to the minute that his Mom had died, but everything was dark.
He was told he was blind, "you won't be able to move the left side of your body and it's doubtful you'll ever walk again." Taylor responds by getting out of bed, walking over to the doctor, shaking his hand with his own left hand and thanking the man for saving his life.
He's still blind, but he says he's better at everything else now. Damn.
Donna found Tree Farm Guy on Craig's List, happily dated him for years ("We had hot sex!) but he didn't want her to move in and they broke up. Sniffing around on Craig's List, she creates a profile for herself (DICK4U@gmail.com) and answers Tree Farm Guy's ad looking for men. She's still hopeful about finding a nice guy, but TFG wasn't it.
J. Michael's story was about forsaking good friends for the shallow allure of a social fraternity, only to learn that his friend had died in the interim and he never got to re-connect with him. His advice was to keep good people in your life (TFG was not good people, not to mix stories or anything).
Mark called his saga frivolous after the preceding blockbusters and he was right. It began with a trip to the Chilean desert, a difficult bike ride after a pedal fell off and an ass-numbing four-day jeep ride during which the driver was eating cocoa leaves non-stop and ended with a Frenchman improbably named Jeff coming out in a thermal shirt, a fleece vest and what Mark called a "banana hammock" before disappearing.
Brandi was wrong, these were stories that did mean something, whether you had someone to tell them to or not. And, despite being asked several times, I'm not going to be sharing my "through the wringer" story, either.
But let me assure you, it's how I got to where I am.
Tuesday, September 29, 2015
Not a Hiking People, Either
I ♥ oceans, but I accept that some people ♥ mountains.
For them, there was Secretly Y'All, Tell Me a Story at Balliceaux tonight. Or, excuse me, Kampot at Balliceaux, as the re-formulated kitchen is now called.
That's right, stories about mountains at what amounts to an entirely new restaurant concept inside a mostly familiar setting.
Decor or art installation? Three small vintage TV (2 black and white, 1 color) sets mounted over the bar showing an endless loop of retro bike footage, interspersed with a fake snake (head rearing back) between TVs and a nearby pastel statue of Mary (with picaresque garland). You make the call.
But what to eat, what to drink at this new spot with the likes of Miguel playing overhead?
When I heard they had housemade root beer, I was thrilled, doubly so when a tall glass of creamy, foam-covered root beer showed up. I've had housemade root beer before - I'm quite fond of Weeping Radish's - but never with a head like this on it.
It was such terrific root beer I'd go back just for that.
But they didn't only score in the libations department because everything we ordered was pretty tasty. Our server began by explaining the tapas concept to us (hopefully that bit of unnecessary speech-giving will cease and desist soon) and we wasted no time making check marks next to ones that sounded promising on the menu.
Fried chicken skins because yes (the drier texture beginning uninterestingly but becoming more appealing after several bites). Caramelized boneless chicken thigh (because we wondered about a connection between those skins and thighs and inquiring minds wanted to know) with a piquant boost from pickled cabbage.
Grilled, marinated pork shoulder (because some judge a kitchen by its pig) with a sassy jaew sauce that, if it got too hot on the tongue, could be cooled down with iced yu choy leaves brought at the same time.
I didn't need it, but some people did.
One of the brightest tastes was the lobster and local greens Siam-wich (clever, sort of) with Kampot lemon vinaigrette. My unintended brilliance was in ordering cabbage 3 ways - Thai basil, chili, and Virginia peanuts - which provided a perfectly balanced plate of crunch and flavor to complement all the protein courses.
As the dance party king commented later when I told him about the meal, "We used to have no great Asian and now it's exploding everywhere." They say it's all about timing and I suppose that applies as much to restaurant trends as to romance.
The crowds began arriving for storytelling, so we moved to the back (on the way a woman stopped me and said, "I love your metal straw." Cue Jackson Browne story), where chairs had been set up in rows all the way to the back wall, the first time I'd seen that. Even so, plenty of people wound up standing or sitting on the floor.
With larger, younger crowds come more younger storytellers and tonight's group proved that in spades. With a theme of "mountains," we heard from more than a few hikers and mountain-huggers.
Taylor had gone to Alaska to find herself, as told in her story "Fire Weed," in which she para- glided (or, as she put it, jumped off mountains with strangers) in the rain. Metaphors followed.
Richard, a semi-regular legend at Secretly Y'All (also, co-organizer Colin's father, but that's not why we enjoy his stories so much), turned out to be a native of West Virginia (hence his story's title, "The Mountain State"), with the funniest bit being about how being a newsboy delivering in the hills gave him strong, muscular calves.
"Still the strongest part of my body," he bragged, lifting his legs. "Wanna feel them?" Awkward on purpose is always funny.
Joe's story, "I Guess I Like Hiking" concerned him being shorter and fatter as a teen. "But what I lacked in height and cool, I made up for in succumbing to peer pressure." He scored points by pooping in the woods on a hike because this is what impresses 15-year old boys. Succumbing naturally led to his first pot-smoking experience, which involved Dads who hiked slowly, a Bic pen and tin foil.
I don't pretend to understand.
Another story involved taking a selfie on Mount Everest after being able to only (only!) climb 18,198 feet. What was dire wasn't that she was oxygen and sleep-deprived - though she was and apparently a girl doesn't look her best when she is - but that her phone was at 4% power when she began her selfie attempts.
For the curious, she was willing to show the photo afterwards. Extra points for show and tell.
Charlie's "Slow Step Saji and the Sermon of the Switchbacks" began on a balcony on Monument Avenue waiting for the sun, moved on to a two-month backpacking trip through Utah and eventually to the end-of-hiking day pleasure of a Snickers bar and stripping off his clothes on top of a mountain.
Can I have the same kind of Snickers bar he's having?
We got a Hiking 101 lecture from Kylie who impressed us with her knowledge of hiking hunger, as in the sheer amount of calories she consumed on the trail (9,000 per day) and the heightened senses that come with being in that state.
Woman claims she smelled detergent in the middle of the wild, only to run into a pack of day hikers in (ah ha!) freshly-laundered clothes 20 minutes away. That's some nose.
Alicia said she was a writer but before we could romanticize that notion, she informed us she works for Capital One, about the least romantic job imaginable.
Her saga involved escaping Giles County and the lifestyle that has sucked her mother and sister back in to its mountainous clutches.
Ain't nothin' romantic abut that.
There was a story about a six month road trip that involved three weeks without a shower, seeing an eagle flying overhead after outdoor sex and a 12-year old being obnoxious on a Sea-Doo (or maybe that's redundant).
They decided to end the trip the day after the high school musical theater group stayed up all night practicing next to their campsite.
Remind me again why people think hiking and camping are fun?
Margaret was very nervous, but not so nervous she couldn't tell us her trail name ("Murder Worm") and that she found family in other hikers.
I liked John's style - he carried his PBR in his shirt's breast pocket for easy access - and gumption. Speaking of his relationship, he said he'd reached the point where it was time to shit or get off the pot.
"This was a shit I wanted to take," he said to explain his decision to propose to his girlfriend. The mystery was why he decided to do it near a mountain (as his GF put it, "We're not a hiking people" Indeed. They moved here from Brooklyn).
Among the highlights of his story: he planned the proposal with his parents (no comment), he did it on Black Friday (a high holy day in his cheapskate family) and after proposing, she grabbed the ring from him, effectively stealing his thunder.
You had to feel for John and his Mickey Rourke sausage fingers.
I didn't have the ♥ to tell him that real romance is David proposing to his girlfriend Maggie on the dance floor after a cheesy '80s cover band plays Journey's "Faithfully" in Urbanna Saturday night.
Oh, yes, that did, too, happen. I saw it on Facebook. But there are no mountains in the northern neck, so they couldn't share that story tonight. Pity.
With three beers in her already, Kathleen attempted to interweave two stories of why she and her girlfriends now qualify as mountain women.
A year after their first camping experience, they decided to re-wild. You heard right, re-wild.
Despite using Air BnB to score a sketchy RV and relying on a case of Coors Light and a bottle of Jack Daniels to sustain them, she believed that the one-time camping trip in Colorado during a hail storm was preparation for anything.
Two things came out of re-wilding: coffee brewed using a sports bra and an empty Coors can and the satisfaction that all the mountain women involved had "worked some shit out," probably about relationships, she guessed.
Unlike past Secretly Y'Alls, I really didn't have a theme-appropriate story to share tonight, even if I were brave enough to try, which I'm not.
My lone pseudo-mountain story involved a date suggesting we hike Humpback Rock. I remember two things from that day: we listened to the new John Mayer record "Heavier Things" on the drive there and that my Witty Fuchsia lipstick melted in the car while we were hiking.
Needless to say, after that kind of trauma, I knew it was time for me to get off the mountain pot. Mercifully, I've never felt the need to re-wild.
Oh, and did I mention I ♥ oceans?
For them, there was Secretly Y'All, Tell Me a Story at Balliceaux tonight. Or, excuse me, Kampot at Balliceaux, as the re-formulated kitchen is now called.
That's right, stories about mountains at what amounts to an entirely new restaurant concept inside a mostly familiar setting.
Decor or art installation? Three small vintage TV (2 black and white, 1 color) sets mounted over the bar showing an endless loop of retro bike footage, interspersed with a fake snake (head rearing back) between TVs and a nearby pastel statue of Mary (with picaresque garland). You make the call.
But what to eat, what to drink at this new spot with the likes of Miguel playing overhead?
When I heard they had housemade root beer, I was thrilled, doubly so when a tall glass of creamy, foam-covered root beer showed up. I've had housemade root beer before - I'm quite fond of Weeping Radish's - but never with a head like this on it.
It was such terrific root beer I'd go back just for that.
But they didn't only score in the libations department because everything we ordered was pretty tasty. Our server began by explaining the tapas concept to us (hopefully that bit of unnecessary speech-giving will cease and desist soon) and we wasted no time making check marks next to ones that sounded promising on the menu.
Fried chicken skins because yes (the drier texture beginning uninterestingly but becoming more appealing after several bites). Caramelized boneless chicken thigh (because we wondered about a connection between those skins and thighs and inquiring minds wanted to know) with a piquant boost from pickled cabbage.
Grilled, marinated pork shoulder (because some judge a kitchen by its pig) with a sassy jaew sauce that, if it got too hot on the tongue, could be cooled down with iced yu choy leaves brought at the same time.
I didn't need it, but some people did.
One of the brightest tastes was the lobster and local greens Siam-wich (clever, sort of) with Kampot lemon vinaigrette. My unintended brilliance was in ordering cabbage 3 ways - Thai basil, chili, and Virginia peanuts - which provided a perfectly balanced plate of crunch and flavor to complement all the protein courses.
As the dance party king commented later when I told him about the meal, "We used to have no great Asian and now it's exploding everywhere." They say it's all about timing and I suppose that applies as much to restaurant trends as to romance.
The crowds began arriving for storytelling, so we moved to the back (on the way a woman stopped me and said, "I love your metal straw." Cue Jackson Browne story), where chairs had been set up in rows all the way to the back wall, the first time I'd seen that. Even so, plenty of people wound up standing or sitting on the floor.
With larger, younger crowds come more younger storytellers and tonight's group proved that in spades. With a theme of "mountains," we heard from more than a few hikers and mountain-huggers.
Taylor had gone to Alaska to find herself, as told in her story "Fire Weed," in which she para- glided (or, as she put it, jumped off mountains with strangers) in the rain. Metaphors followed.
Richard, a semi-regular legend at Secretly Y'All (also, co-organizer Colin's father, but that's not why we enjoy his stories so much), turned out to be a native of West Virginia (hence his story's title, "The Mountain State"), with the funniest bit being about how being a newsboy delivering in the hills gave him strong, muscular calves.
"Still the strongest part of my body," he bragged, lifting his legs. "Wanna feel them?" Awkward on purpose is always funny.
Joe's story, "I Guess I Like Hiking" concerned him being shorter and fatter as a teen. "But what I lacked in height and cool, I made up for in succumbing to peer pressure." He scored points by pooping in the woods on a hike because this is what impresses 15-year old boys. Succumbing naturally led to his first pot-smoking experience, which involved Dads who hiked slowly, a Bic pen and tin foil.
I don't pretend to understand.
Another story involved taking a selfie on Mount Everest after being able to only (only!) climb 18,198 feet. What was dire wasn't that she was oxygen and sleep-deprived - though she was and apparently a girl doesn't look her best when she is - but that her phone was at 4% power when she began her selfie attempts.
For the curious, she was willing to show the photo afterwards. Extra points for show and tell.
Charlie's "Slow Step Saji and the Sermon of the Switchbacks" began on a balcony on Monument Avenue waiting for the sun, moved on to a two-month backpacking trip through Utah and eventually to the end-of-hiking day pleasure of a Snickers bar and stripping off his clothes on top of a mountain.
Can I have the same kind of Snickers bar he's having?
We got a Hiking 101 lecture from Kylie who impressed us with her knowledge of hiking hunger, as in the sheer amount of calories she consumed on the trail (9,000 per day) and the heightened senses that come with being in that state.
Woman claims she smelled detergent in the middle of the wild, only to run into a pack of day hikers in (ah ha!) freshly-laundered clothes 20 minutes away. That's some nose.
Alicia said she was a writer but before we could romanticize that notion, she informed us she works for Capital One, about the least romantic job imaginable.
Her saga involved escaping Giles County and the lifestyle that has sucked her mother and sister back in to its mountainous clutches.
Ain't nothin' romantic abut that.
There was a story about a six month road trip that involved three weeks without a shower, seeing an eagle flying overhead after outdoor sex and a 12-year old being obnoxious on a Sea-Doo (or maybe that's redundant).
They decided to end the trip the day after the high school musical theater group stayed up all night practicing next to their campsite.
Remind me again why people think hiking and camping are fun?
Margaret was very nervous, but not so nervous she couldn't tell us her trail name ("Murder Worm") and that she found family in other hikers.
I liked John's style - he carried his PBR in his shirt's breast pocket for easy access - and gumption. Speaking of his relationship, he said he'd reached the point where it was time to shit or get off the pot.
"This was a shit I wanted to take," he said to explain his decision to propose to his girlfriend. The mystery was why he decided to do it near a mountain (as his GF put it, "We're not a hiking people" Indeed. They moved here from Brooklyn).
Among the highlights of his story: he planned the proposal with his parents (no comment), he did it on Black Friday (a high holy day in his cheapskate family) and after proposing, she grabbed the ring from him, effectively stealing his thunder.
You had to feel for John and his Mickey Rourke sausage fingers.
I didn't have the ♥ to tell him that real romance is David proposing to his girlfriend Maggie on the dance floor after a cheesy '80s cover band plays Journey's "Faithfully" in Urbanna Saturday night.
Oh, yes, that did, too, happen. I saw it on Facebook. But there are no mountains in the northern neck, so they couldn't share that story tonight. Pity.
With three beers in her already, Kathleen attempted to interweave two stories of why she and her girlfriends now qualify as mountain women.
A year after their first camping experience, they decided to re-wild. You heard right, re-wild.
Despite using Air BnB to score a sketchy RV and relying on a case of Coors Light and a bottle of Jack Daniels to sustain them, she believed that the one-time camping trip in Colorado during a hail storm was preparation for anything.
Two things came out of re-wilding: coffee brewed using a sports bra and an empty Coors can and the satisfaction that all the mountain women involved had "worked some shit out," probably about relationships, she guessed.
Unlike past Secretly Y'Alls, I really didn't have a theme-appropriate story to share tonight, even if I were brave enough to try, which I'm not.
My lone pseudo-mountain story involved a date suggesting we hike Humpback Rock. I remember two things from that day: we listened to the new John Mayer record "Heavier Things" on the drive there and that my Witty Fuchsia lipstick melted in the car while we were hiking.
Needless to say, after that kind of trauma, I knew it was time for me to get off the mountain pot. Mercifully, I've never felt the need to re-wild.
Oh, and did I mention I ♥ oceans?
Tuesday, July 21, 2015
Up the Waterzooi
Best way to celebrate Belgian independence day (as told by an Irish-American woman):
1. Follow the Belgian flag and a gnome (?) hovering on the roof to Cask for a pop-up by chef Xavier Meers of Brux'l Cafe.
With Broadbent Vino Verde warming up at an alarming rate in this heat wave, we dove into cheese croquettes, garlic scampi, waterzooi of chicken (a traditional Belgian stew), mussels Provencal and a superb veggie salad that included among other things, tomatoes, cantaloupe, watermelon and olives. Basically, we ate everything on the pop-up menu.
When the chef put in an appearance, we agreed he resembled a Dutch masters painting: curly haired, red cheeked and sturdy of form. Frans Hals or Rembrandt would have painted him.
2. Proceed to Ardent Brewery for Secretly Y'all, Tell Me a Story with tonight's theme "I quit!"
Standing in the back challenged the ears (too far from the storytellers) and patience (too many talkers) but the handsome bartender was complimentary ("Love your hair") and during intermission, we scored seats up front.
Stories ranged from a guy who learned to quit violence after choking a guy into unconsciousness to quitting the church and heroin at the same time to trying to quit life on the Lee bridge after a party in Oregon Hill to an ESL teacher in Henrico who chucked it all to make soap to an ESL teacher in Thailand who inadvertently taught kindergartners to say "sandwich" to a job as building inspector that included finding men having sex in the showers to a Ziplock bag of human poop that required quitting a job to save face to a man who refused to beat up on inmates.
Let's just say there are many ways - and things - to quit. Still deciding what it is I need to let go. I have an idea.
Friends ranged from a gallerist needing an open door to a bartender who gave me crap about quoting her to a wine guru trying to read a book to a yoga teacher questioning my location.
3. Final stop? GWARbar for metal night, the DJ spinning such classic pre-metal gems as Iron Butterfly and April Wine. Tattoos, dreadlocks and piercings abounded, but the Espolon was flowing and the conversation amiable.
Here's to 84 years of independence, Belgium! May I have just as many.
1. Follow the Belgian flag and a gnome (?) hovering on the roof to Cask for a pop-up by chef Xavier Meers of Brux'l Cafe.
With Broadbent Vino Verde warming up at an alarming rate in this heat wave, we dove into cheese croquettes, garlic scampi, waterzooi of chicken (a traditional Belgian stew), mussels Provencal and a superb veggie salad that included among other things, tomatoes, cantaloupe, watermelon and olives. Basically, we ate everything on the pop-up menu.
When the chef put in an appearance, we agreed he resembled a Dutch masters painting: curly haired, red cheeked and sturdy of form. Frans Hals or Rembrandt would have painted him.
2. Proceed to Ardent Brewery for Secretly Y'all, Tell Me a Story with tonight's theme "I quit!"
Standing in the back challenged the ears (too far from the storytellers) and patience (too many talkers) but the handsome bartender was complimentary ("Love your hair") and during intermission, we scored seats up front.
Stories ranged from a guy who learned to quit violence after choking a guy into unconsciousness to quitting the church and heroin at the same time to trying to quit life on the Lee bridge after a party in Oregon Hill to an ESL teacher in Henrico who chucked it all to make soap to an ESL teacher in Thailand who inadvertently taught kindergartners to say "sandwich" to a job as building inspector that included finding men having sex in the showers to a Ziplock bag of human poop that required quitting a job to save face to a man who refused to beat up on inmates.
Let's just say there are many ways - and things - to quit. Still deciding what it is I need to let go. I have an idea.
Friends ranged from a gallerist needing an open door to a bartender who gave me crap about quoting her to a wine guru trying to read a book to a yoga teacher questioning my location.
3. Final stop? GWARbar for metal night, the DJ spinning such classic pre-metal gems as Iron Butterfly and April Wine. Tattoos, dreadlocks and piercings abounded, but the Espolon was flowing and the conversation amiable.
Here's to 84 years of independence, Belgium! May I have just as many.
Monday, January 12, 2015
Better Than Fiction
Tonight was all over the map - from northern England to lower Alabama, Smithfield to Charlottesville. Best of all, I lucked into a front row seat for it all.
In the multiple years I've been going to Secretly Y'All, Tell Me a Story, I've never before encountered a line of people winding from the back room stairs all the way to the front door. Until tonight, that is. It's like, to quote the guy who facilitates the many events at Balliceaux said to me, "Be careful what you wish for."
While my place near the end of the line meant that most of the seats in the back room were already taken, I spotted two empty in the front row. It seemed unlikely they weren't spoken for, but the woman sitting next to them confirmed they were available. Luck was being a lady tonight.
Depositing my bag to hold my place, I made my way through the throngs at the bar to talk to some familiar faces and procure some liquid refreshment. When I finally returned to my chair, I was surprised to see the one next to me still vacant.
It wasn't long before a guy slid into it, observing that it's always easiest to find a seat when you're alone. I told him he was preaching to the choir. Many is the time I've scored a seat while duos and trios stood. Tonight, people were wedged in like sardines, even standing on the stairs, while others sat cross-legged on the floor.
Not a good room for a claustrophobic.
Tonight's theme was "Gotcha: Hi-jinks, Hijacks and Hoodwinks," a mouthful of a theme if ever there was one. As with all their themes, it left a lot of room for interpretation.
Mark kicked off the evening with the suggestively-titled (or is that just me?), "Want Me to Sign Your Balls?" His first surprise was his announcement that he's the third place world champion of four square, the playground game not the app.
Jeez Louise, who knew anyone still played four square? I mean, it was big when I was a kid but that was back in the dark ages. Who knew it had endured?
His amusing tale chronicled how he'd called a sporting goods store in Miami (where he was headed for work) and offered to come autograph playground balls the following Saturday. Needless to say, no one showed up, although he did sign two balls - one for the store's ball collection - before the afternoon was over.
I had to admire the guy's moxie.
Heather worked at one of VCU's cubic farm offices and labeled herself a prankster. You know, the kind of child who wraps the toilet seat in Saran Wrap before her younger sister goes in to use the toilet.
Her story involved back and forth pranking with a cubicle-mate. A full desk drawer of candy corn was answered with aluminum foil wrapped around every object in his cube. Orange jello in her water bottle resulted in sticky notes on every square inch of his office.
She now lives in fear of his next move.
William was a fine storyteller, the kind of guy you pay attention to at a party because he shares with the class so well. His saga, "I Know Who Chicken Man Is" concerned the student who had moved into his dorm room after he left it.
But one of his funniest quips was about how dumb and oblivious he and his college friends were. Apparently Ben Folds lived in their dorm and was always practicing piano, something they never bothered to listen to. "Lame," he proclaimed, explaining that drinking and taunting the new guy in his room were more fun.
First they dug up a boat, then they placed it in the guy's dorm room. When the police came to investigate, blame was spread around among all the guys on the floor, but no one copped to it.
Only after they paid $85 to have the boat removed (a price that seems perfectly reasonable to me), they sent the chief of police a picture of all of them in the boat. As if he didn't already know who the culprits were.
When Brent's name was called, it was the guy sitting next to me, and he opened his mouth to reveal the honey-dripping tones of someone from lower Alabama telling his story, "Me, Myself and Irene and a Hot Glue Gun."
After being surprised by Hurricane Isabel, he was determined to be fully prepped for Irene, laying out supplies on his ping-pong table. The problem was that his daughter didn't care about the impending storm; she wanted to decorate a bulletin board for her friend, so she needed the hot glue gun.
Unable to locate it among the plethora of batteries, flashlights and emergency camping equipment, he set out for Walmart at 2 a.m. to procure a glue gun for her. He talked about the beleaguered Walmart greeter who preemptively told everyone they were out of batteries, flashlights and lanterns.
Told in his distinctive southern accent, it was hilarious.
The funny business came in when he asked the location of glue guns, only to have the crowd behind him follow him to the arts and crafts department (speeding up and slowing down as he did), assuming he knew something they didn't.
Nothing like sheep in hurricane mode.
Taylor's story involved an older brother who delighted in tormenting her with the unseen, scaring her with the unknown and, once a soldier on a visit back from Iraq, surprising her at school by having her called to the office, only to scoop her up for a reunion hug.
Ian got major points for his delivery of "Disabusing Fantasy Land," a tale of attending an anime convention with his then-girlfriend.
I don't think he ever once looked at the audience (or even opened his eyes), but his almost monotone voice delivered pithy, sarcastic commentary about everyone and everything.
He skewered the kind of people who dress up in costumes ("No, Super Mario Brothers is not anime"), the way costumes give men the nerve to fondle strange women's breasts and why an anime rave is a terrible place to buy weed (as opposed to everywhere else on earth being a great place to buy it).
His humor was nihilistic, uncomfortable and hysterical. After the disaster of the convention and rave experiences, he put his arms around his girlfriend, trying to comfort her in her disappointment. "Life isn't that good," he deadpanned.
It is when you're listening to strangers telling stories.
During the break, we learned that Secretly Y'All has raised over $10K for non-profits and that tonight's admission fee haul was going to...(drum roll, please) Secretly Y'All. The goal is to create a story bike, although the specifics of that haven't exactly been worked out.
Why not? This is a bike town, why not a story bike?
Although a few people left during the break, the record-sized crowd remained strong throughout and the second half of the evening began with pulling names from the hat for the chance to over share.
Dustin King, whom I've seen tell stories before, got things rolling with easily one of the best gotcha stories all night.
After a night of getting his drink on in Charlottesville, he'd passed out on the front porch in just a t-shirt, his manly bits discreetly tucked away. Naturally, a friend took a picture of the absence of his genitalia and sent it out to all their friends.
What else could poor Dustin do but send out a retaliatory picture of his erection to the same group. One of his buddies, responded, saying, "Game, set, match: King." The crowd roared.
When he arrived at his birthday party a few weeks later, it was to find that everyone there was wearing a t-shirt with the picture of his erection on it. Even better, a projection of the sleeping Dustin photo on the wall was used to play "pin the erection on Dustin" with small pictures of it.
A man is only poor if he does not have friends.
Paul's story explained how he got a reputation as a bad ass when he transferred to private school in Minnesota.
On senior skip day, his class organized a bus trip to one kid's family lake house in Wisconsin. Paul was one of the kids doing gin shots on the way there. "A lot of bad decisions were made that day," he cracked.
When he finally woke up after passing out, it took two friends to prop him up, but only one to warn him that a cop had just arrived. He said he did his best to stay cool. When the cop asked him for ID, Paul said, "Nope," and planted face-first on the ground in front of the cop.
Needless to say, his reputation was sealed and the respect of his high school peers ensured.
Phil was particularly proud of his story because it had happened right where we were: in the back room of Balliceaux. Undoubtedly, scores of over-the-top stories have happened there.
His involved friends from Smithfield where he grew up, arriving for a New Year's eve bash at Balliceaux with Black Girls (whom he first called Black Ladies) playing.
A very drunk girl approached his friend and slurred, "I wanna get with you," meaning that they left immediately.
After a while, their friend returned to share his tale of woe: once in her car, she'd begun delivering oral pleasure before vomiting. All over the dashboard, in the cup holder, everywhere. He'd left her passed out to return to the party.
When Balliceaux closed and the Smithfield gang left, it was to wander the streets of the Fan, confused and lost. Imagine their surprise when they happened on a running car with vomit all over the dashboard. Being gentlemen as only Smithfield men can be, they gingerly moved the passed out woman to the back seat and drove themselves to their hotel.
They raise 'em right in ham country.
Our final storyteller turned out to be a Brit from Salford, or as Owen put it, "You know that band Joy Division? They were from Salford. It looks like how they sound. Very depressing."
But his story was hilarious, albeit a sad commentary about the options open to children in northern England. With a choice of R.A.F. or gangs, Owen partook of both, shooting near friends, dropping fish off bridges to hit cars, writing their name in lighter fluid and then setting fire to it. Even at 11, there seemed to be a whole lot of drinking and drugging going on between him and his two best buds.
Because there was no police presence, they had no compunction about breaking windows at school. From there it was skylights giving them a portal into the school and then smashing equipment. "We were going nuts on this school. When we found extra large bricks, we carried them as a team."
Only problem was that cops did show up and they were chased (right through an active funeral) and caught. "I served six hours in a jail cell," he said. "I got fed a baked potato." His friend Ben already had a record, so he insisted on taking full credit for everything, even serving time for it.
When he got out, he visited Owen, whose Mum had something to say to him.
"If you did all that, stay away from my son!" she warned Ben with all the ferocity of a mother tiger. "If he did it, you're a good f*cking friend."
"Ben was a good f*cking friend," Owen said to clamorous applause.
I've said it before, but it bears repeating. It's become a cliche at Secretly Y'All, but somehow that last story is always killer. Maybe it was the glimpse into another world, maybe it was Owen's accent - sometimes very British, other moments all American - or maybe just hearing a mother lay it out so baldly. Helluva great story.
But honestly, pin the erection on the birthday boy? Ignoring Ben Folds' piano playing? Four square championships? Glue gun shopping at 2 a.am.?
I'm just thankful that the first rule at Secretly Y'All is that you have to tell the truth. Not that anyone could make this kind of stuff up.
Life is that good. Or at least that funny.
In the multiple years I've been going to Secretly Y'All, Tell Me a Story, I've never before encountered a line of people winding from the back room stairs all the way to the front door. Until tonight, that is. It's like, to quote the guy who facilitates the many events at Balliceaux said to me, "Be careful what you wish for."
While my place near the end of the line meant that most of the seats in the back room were already taken, I spotted two empty in the front row. It seemed unlikely they weren't spoken for, but the woman sitting next to them confirmed they were available. Luck was being a lady tonight.
Depositing my bag to hold my place, I made my way through the throngs at the bar to talk to some familiar faces and procure some liquid refreshment. When I finally returned to my chair, I was surprised to see the one next to me still vacant.
It wasn't long before a guy slid into it, observing that it's always easiest to find a seat when you're alone. I told him he was preaching to the choir. Many is the time I've scored a seat while duos and trios stood. Tonight, people were wedged in like sardines, even standing on the stairs, while others sat cross-legged on the floor.
Not a good room for a claustrophobic.
Tonight's theme was "Gotcha: Hi-jinks, Hijacks and Hoodwinks," a mouthful of a theme if ever there was one. As with all their themes, it left a lot of room for interpretation.
Mark kicked off the evening with the suggestively-titled (or is that just me?), "Want Me to Sign Your Balls?" His first surprise was his announcement that he's the third place world champion of four square, the playground game not the app.
Jeez Louise, who knew anyone still played four square? I mean, it was big when I was a kid but that was back in the dark ages. Who knew it had endured?
His amusing tale chronicled how he'd called a sporting goods store in Miami (where he was headed for work) and offered to come autograph playground balls the following Saturday. Needless to say, no one showed up, although he did sign two balls - one for the store's ball collection - before the afternoon was over.
I had to admire the guy's moxie.
Heather worked at one of VCU's cubic farm offices and labeled herself a prankster. You know, the kind of child who wraps the toilet seat in Saran Wrap before her younger sister goes in to use the toilet.
Her story involved back and forth pranking with a cubicle-mate. A full desk drawer of candy corn was answered with aluminum foil wrapped around every object in his cube. Orange jello in her water bottle resulted in sticky notes on every square inch of his office.
She now lives in fear of his next move.
William was a fine storyteller, the kind of guy you pay attention to at a party because he shares with the class so well. His saga, "I Know Who Chicken Man Is" concerned the student who had moved into his dorm room after he left it.
But one of his funniest quips was about how dumb and oblivious he and his college friends were. Apparently Ben Folds lived in their dorm and was always practicing piano, something they never bothered to listen to. "Lame," he proclaimed, explaining that drinking and taunting the new guy in his room were more fun.
First they dug up a boat, then they placed it in the guy's dorm room. When the police came to investigate, blame was spread around among all the guys on the floor, but no one copped to it.
Only after they paid $85 to have the boat removed (a price that seems perfectly reasonable to me), they sent the chief of police a picture of all of them in the boat. As if he didn't already know who the culprits were.
When Brent's name was called, it was the guy sitting next to me, and he opened his mouth to reveal the honey-dripping tones of someone from lower Alabama telling his story, "Me, Myself and Irene and a Hot Glue Gun."
After being surprised by Hurricane Isabel, he was determined to be fully prepped for Irene, laying out supplies on his ping-pong table. The problem was that his daughter didn't care about the impending storm; she wanted to decorate a bulletin board for her friend, so she needed the hot glue gun.
Unable to locate it among the plethora of batteries, flashlights and emergency camping equipment, he set out for Walmart at 2 a.m. to procure a glue gun for her. He talked about the beleaguered Walmart greeter who preemptively told everyone they were out of batteries, flashlights and lanterns.
Told in his distinctive southern accent, it was hilarious.
The funny business came in when he asked the location of glue guns, only to have the crowd behind him follow him to the arts and crafts department (speeding up and slowing down as he did), assuming he knew something they didn't.
Nothing like sheep in hurricane mode.
Taylor's story involved an older brother who delighted in tormenting her with the unseen, scaring her with the unknown and, once a soldier on a visit back from Iraq, surprising her at school by having her called to the office, only to scoop her up for a reunion hug.
Ian got major points for his delivery of "Disabusing Fantasy Land," a tale of attending an anime convention with his then-girlfriend.
I don't think he ever once looked at the audience (or even opened his eyes), but his almost monotone voice delivered pithy, sarcastic commentary about everyone and everything.
He skewered the kind of people who dress up in costumes ("No, Super Mario Brothers is not anime"), the way costumes give men the nerve to fondle strange women's breasts and why an anime rave is a terrible place to buy weed (as opposed to everywhere else on earth being a great place to buy it).
His humor was nihilistic, uncomfortable and hysterical. After the disaster of the convention and rave experiences, he put his arms around his girlfriend, trying to comfort her in her disappointment. "Life isn't that good," he deadpanned.
It is when you're listening to strangers telling stories.
During the break, we learned that Secretly Y'All has raised over $10K for non-profits and that tonight's admission fee haul was going to...(drum roll, please) Secretly Y'All. The goal is to create a story bike, although the specifics of that haven't exactly been worked out.
Why not? This is a bike town, why not a story bike?
Although a few people left during the break, the record-sized crowd remained strong throughout and the second half of the evening began with pulling names from the hat for the chance to over share.
Dustin King, whom I've seen tell stories before, got things rolling with easily one of the best gotcha stories all night.
After a night of getting his drink on in Charlottesville, he'd passed out on the front porch in just a t-shirt, his manly bits discreetly tucked away. Naturally, a friend took a picture of the absence of his genitalia and sent it out to all their friends.
What else could poor Dustin do but send out a retaliatory picture of his erection to the same group. One of his buddies, responded, saying, "Game, set, match: King." The crowd roared.
When he arrived at his birthday party a few weeks later, it was to find that everyone there was wearing a t-shirt with the picture of his erection on it. Even better, a projection of the sleeping Dustin photo on the wall was used to play "pin the erection on Dustin" with small pictures of it.
A man is only poor if he does not have friends.
Paul's story explained how he got a reputation as a bad ass when he transferred to private school in Minnesota.
On senior skip day, his class organized a bus trip to one kid's family lake house in Wisconsin. Paul was one of the kids doing gin shots on the way there. "A lot of bad decisions were made that day," he cracked.
When he finally woke up after passing out, it took two friends to prop him up, but only one to warn him that a cop had just arrived. He said he did his best to stay cool. When the cop asked him for ID, Paul said, "Nope," and planted face-first on the ground in front of the cop.
Needless to say, his reputation was sealed and the respect of his high school peers ensured.
Phil was particularly proud of his story because it had happened right where we were: in the back room of Balliceaux. Undoubtedly, scores of over-the-top stories have happened there.
His involved friends from Smithfield where he grew up, arriving for a New Year's eve bash at Balliceaux with Black Girls (whom he first called Black Ladies) playing.
A very drunk girl approached his friend and slurred, "I wanna get with you," meaning that they left immediately.
After a while, their friend returned to share his tale of woe: once in her car, she'd begun delivering oral pleasure before vomiting. All over the dashboard, in the cup holder, everywhere. He'd left her passed out to return to the party.
When Balliceaux closed and the Smithfield gang left, it was to wander the streets of the Fan, confused and lost. Imagine their surprise when they happened on a running car with vomit all over the dashboard. Being gentlemen as only Smithfield men can be, they gingerly moved the passed out woman to the back seat and drove themselves to their hotel.
They raise 'em right in ham country.
Our final storyteller turned out to be a Brit from Salford, or as Owen put it, "You know that band Joy Division? They were from Salford. It looks like how they sound. Very depressing."
But his story was hilarious, albeit a sad commentary about the options open to children in northern England. With a choice of R.A.F. or gangs, Owen partook of both, shooting near friends, dropping fish off bridges to hit cars, writing their name in lighter fluid and then setting fire to it. Even at 11, there seemed to be a whole lot of drinking and drugging going on between him and his two best buds.
Because there was no police presence, they had no compunction about breaking windows at school. From there it was skylights giving them a portal into the school and then smashing equipment. "We were going nuts on this school. When we found extra large bricks, we carried them as a team."
Only problem was that cops did show up and they were chased (right through an active funeral) and caught. "I served six hours in a jail cell," he said. "I got fed a baked potato." His friend Ben already had a record, so he insisted on taking full credit for everything, even serving time for it.
When he got out, he visited Owen, whose Mum had something to say to him.
"If you did all that, stay away from my son!" she warned Ben with all the ferocity of a mother tiger. "If he did it, you're a good f*cking friend."
"Ben was a good f*cking friend," Owen said to clamorous applause.
I've said it before, but it bears repeating. It's become a cliche at Secretly Y'All, but somehow that last story is always killer. Maybe it was the glimpse into another world, maybe it was Owen's accent - sometimes very British, other moments all American - or maybe just hearing a mother lay it out so baldly. Helluva great story.
But honestly, pin the erection on the birthday boy? Ignoring Ben Folds' piano playing? Four square championships? Glue gun shopping at 2 a.am.?
I'm just thankful that the first rule at Secretly Y'All is that you have to tell the truth. Not that anyone could make this kind of stuff up.
Life is that good. Or at least that funny.
Tuesday, December 2, 2014
Building a Dynasty
You think you know how things will go, but you never really do.
I thought I'd sleep in like I always do, but I awoke at 7:44 and never got back to sleep. Might as well get up.
My reward for not getting up at my usual time was a day already so gorgeous that I opened all the windows before I even made breakfast.
I got dressed for my walk as if it were December 1st, got as far as the front door and came back upstairs to change into shorts and a t-shirt. With the sun already making me warm, I headed over to Oregon Hill to pick up the North Bank trail to Texas Beach.
For a change, I came back not along the river but on South Lombardy Street, a stretch I'd never been on. Of note was a street where every street light had a solar collector, a pile of fragrant new wood-smelling roof trusses in front of a house being built and the elaborate Petronius Jones Park which I'd never laid eyes on.
Walking back toward J Ward, I was plotting how to best use this gorgeous day. A drive to Merroir for lunch? A book in the park? Some gardening? How to make the most of 71 degrees in December?
It didn't matter. I got home to e-mails from three editors and spent most of the afternoon addressing their needs. "Stamping on ants," as a former boss used to call it. By the time they'd been satisfied, it was time to shower and go do an interview.
But when that was finished, I was free. My first stop was 8 1/2 for dinner - roasted red peppers and Mozzarella followed by a white pizza - which I did get to eat outside to enjoy the last of today's warmth.
With serious garlic breath, I headed to Balliceaux, parking five blocks away (parking restrictions until 9) but enjoying every step of the walk to get there, even if I did pass far too many houses already decorated for Christmas. The sidewalks were alive with dog walkers and joggers sweating almost as much as I had this morning.
Inside, I joined the line to pay my five bucks (to be donated to Richmond Conexiones) to hear strangers and friends over-share at Secretly Y'All, Tell Me a Story, with tonight's theme being "Plot Twist."
You have to understand, I go to this event because I am fascinated to hear strangers (and occasionally friends) share stories I have no business hearing. Simply put, I am nosy.
The crowd was huge although I saw very few people I knew. Okay, less socializing than usual. But as a long-time regular, I know enough to arrive before 7 so at least I'm assured of a seat. Let the first-timers sit on the floor.
And then we began with the plot twists, so many plots twists.
The first storyteller was Mack, a tattooed hairdresser whose true love was Shakespeare, sharing "I Owe You a Bullet." His saga involved taking his Dad's gun apart in 7th grade and putting it back together incorrectly.
This only became an issue after his Dad took in Steve, a recovering heroin addict, who isolated his Dad once he began dying and then stole and pawned many of his dad's possessions after the funeral, causing Mack to hate him. Back on heroin, Steve decided to end his life using the malfunctioning gun. See the plot twist there?
"The one person I'd most like to kill and I saved his life," Mack concluded. It was a fierce start to the evening.
Next came Sylvia telling "Steering Wheels and Circles" about her belligerent Dad and how he was always yelling at her, whether she was driving the boat and he was trying to water ski behind it or when he was teaching her to drive (and wasting 36 cents of rubber) and she hit pot holes.
After her Dad died and was cremated, she picked up his ashes to drive them home and had to brake suddenly, sending the box with Dad inside careening around the back seat. "He didn't say a word," she said to laughter. After that, she swerved on purpose just because she knew he couldn't yell at her anymore.
Katelyn's "How Did I Get Here?" was about her bad ass stepmom Anne whom she worshiped as a 14 year old when she saw her take a handful of pills with no water ("Why do you think men like me so much?" she asked the traumatized teen. Awkward).
She recalled how much fun she saw her Dad have with Anne, who called him the great love of her life. Ah, but Anne strayed and had an affair with Glen after he presented her with a 72-page PowerPoint presentation. End of marriage.
Then Anne got sick and sicker with ALS and died and Katelyn was asked to speak at the funeral. "Glen showed his 72 page PowerPoint and I wanted to scream at him that this was about Anne, not how big his penis was. That's what the PowerPoint was about," she shared.
Wow.
Host Colin got up to introduce the next storyteller, saying drolly, "I wooed my girlfriend with a PowerPoint presentation but it was only two pages." Ba dum bum.
Shannon told "Cop Land on Repeat," about getting the call that his dad was dead while he'd been watching Cop Land on the IFC channel. FedEx delivered the ashes which Shannon managed to spill on the kitchen counter, a fact he wasn't eager to share with his roommates.
What helped him deal with the pain of losing his Dad was telling stories - at Richmond Comedy Coalition, at a pocket park -like the one he told tonight. He called 2014 the best and worst year of his life because although he'd lost a parent, he'd found beauty in life.
"It's so easy to be cynical," he said sagely. "There's no such thing as guilty pleasures, just missed opportunities and regrets."
Now there's a twist.
Austin's "The Awesome Story" happened after a night of cocaine and drinking Tuaca when he and a friend got home and found a possum in the dog's mouth. Managing to remove it, they saw it was half dead and decided to finish it off with a ceramic boot planter.
"We didn't realize it was playing possum. Apparently that's a real thing," he said to much hooting and hollering. After beating it with the sharp end of a tiki torch, he tried throwing it over the fence but twice it hit his brother's girlfriend's window.
His conclusion was, "Don't do drugs, guys."
Richard's story, "The Rose City" involved a low point in his life with an aborted move to Portland ("Before "Portlandia." It was a northwest backwater"), marrying a girl because they challenged each other to and winding up in a mental institution ("Westbrook, it's not there anymore") because he needed sleep.
Fortunately, at 47, he has since met his current wife and is not crazy. "Don't let people tell you that you can't run away from your problems. You can for a while."
During the intermission, hosts Kathleen and Colin told us that tonight was the fourth anniversary of Secretly Y'All and that in that time, they'd raised nearly $10,000 for various charities and non-profits. I like to think my regular attendance and all those $5 contributions helped that a little.
A friend came over to chat, asking why I didn't get up and share a story. "You blog every night," he reminded me. Not the same, I reminded him. "Just cover your face while you talk." Nope.
The two people sitting next to me were considering leaving during the break, but I warned them that often the best stories come from the hat when anyone can put their name in for a shot at being called. They stayed.
First up was Herschel with one of his distinctive rambling and tangent-heavy memories. This one involved running into a friend at Balliceaux ("Men come here because the women are attractive") before he was headed to an afterparty at Tavares' house.
On their way to the car, a man asked to use his phone and stole it. Over the next two days, he went through six cell phones trying to find a replacement for his stolen one. Apparently, Craig's List and soldiers shipping out the next day to Afghanistan aren't the best sources of replacement phones.
"I Will Survive" was Jessie's title and she began by telling us she was a confident woman who loves life and singing karaoke, even when sober.
Problems arose, however, when her boyfriend cheated on her and she found out from a woman at the bar he was cheating with. Sure, she threw a glass of water in his face but she also sought karaoke therapy.
At her favorite karaoke bar ("I'd built a dynasty of five years at this bar and he'd lived in this town for six moths"), she sees him come in and responds by singing "I Will Survive," pointing at him the whole while. She even sang part of it tonight.
"It was cathartic," she concluded. "He moved after that. Left the city." Damn, girl, well done.
Denise's story involved her last night at home before leaving for college, cough syrup loopiness and going dancing. Seems she ended up sleepwalking to her parents' bed, waking up with Mom and Dad beside her. "Honey, we're going to miss you, too," Mom says. She's since given up cough syrup entirely.
Somehow, and there's no good explanation for why this happens given the randomness of a drawing, the best story was saved for last. Rocky was a first timer and had assumed that the stories after intermission were somehow lesser storytellers than those in the first half. He'd already seen that that wasn't the case so he was a tad nervous.
Raised in a small (population 170 then, 140 now) town between Missouri (he pronounced it "Missoura") and Iowa where, according to him, gender roles were set in stone.
While he knew that it was traditional for 7 year old boys to get a gun for their birthday, he wanted roller skates. "I was the kid who wanted to sing the Snow White song to get birds to land on my fingers," he said sincerely. "F*ckers never did."
When a neighbor gave him a ride from school, he was asked how many quail he'd shot so far. None. "What kind of boy don't hunt?" the man had asked him. "I don't know, you tell me, " the young Rocky said, honestly curious. "I asked for roller skates."
But when his birthday rolled around, he saw a long box and hoped it was roller skates that needed to be assembled. When it was a gun, his disappointment showed and his Dad's face fell so he pretended to love it. Ricky's voice broke as he told this part of the story.
While his Dad plowed, the 7 year old pretended to hunt, telling his Dad he'd shot four birds but when asked to produce them, he couldn't and his Dad understood. "You don't want to kill anything?" he asked. No, he didn't. "What do you want?" Roller skates.
Three days later, red, white and blue roller skates arrived at the farm.
The applause was thunderous for Rocky's story. Between the telling and the tale, it had hit everyone in the room right between the eyes, which is the whole point of a Secretly Y'All evening.
Plot twists, we've all got them.
Walking to the front room to use the loo before I left, I ran into the photographer just back from the beach and enjoyed catching up with him. He wants to start a movement to add some lighter food to the Thanksgiving menu. I'd started with a big salad this year for the first time and loved the addition.
Waiting to use the facilities, a man asked if I was the end of the line and joined me. It took him no time to start quizzing me so I answered.
Do you know that the bathroom door opens in? Cause I once stood here for five minutes thinking it was occupied. I do. But I saw two women go in.
Did you see "Pulp Fiction"? I did.
Then you know what two girls do in the bathroom? I do.
Where do you live? Jackson Ward.
Where do you live? The Warsaw.
What do you do? I'm a freelance writer.
What do you do? I'm an architect.
You know, you're gorgeous. Even better, I'm fast in the bathroom.
On my way out, I stopped to say hello to tonight's DJ, the multi-talented "Can't Stop, Won't Stop" Reggie Pace, whom I've known for at least six years now. In no time at all, we got into how welcoming Richmond's music scene is, how many free shows there are and where No BS is playing New Year's Eve.
When he brought up a recent article I'd written, I explained that I try to write about people and events that I think are worth knowing, trying to stir up interest. "Tastemaker," he proclaimed. Just sharing what I enjoy. "Tastemaker," he confirmed.
When I went to say goodnight, he extended his hand, changed his mind and said he wanted a hug. First a compliment from a stranger, then a hug from a friend. I was liking the twists my plot was taking tonight.
There's no such thing as guilty pleasures, just missed opportunities and regrets. I want neither.
I thought I'd sleep in like I always do, but I awoke at 7:44 and never got back to sleep. Might as well get up.
My reward for not getting up at my usual time was a day already so gorgeous that I opened all the windows before I even made breakfast.
I got dressed for my walk as if it were December 1st, got as far as the front door and came back upstairs to change into shorts and a t-shirt. With the sun already making me warm, I headed over to Oregon Hill to pick up the North Bank trail to Texas Beach.
For a change, I came back not along the river but on South Lombardy Street, a stretch I'd never been on. Of note was a street where every street light had a solar collector, a pile of fragrant new wood-smelling roof trusses in front of a house being built and the elaborate Petronius Jones Park which I'd never laid eyes on.
Walking back toward J Ward, I was plotting how to best use this gorgeous day. A drive to Merroir for lunch? A book in the park? Some gardening? How to make the most of 71 degrees in December?
It didn't matter. I got home to e-mails from three editors and spent most of the afternoon addressing their needs. "Stamping on ants," as a former boss used to call it. By the time they'd been satisfied, it was time to shower and go do an interview.
But when that was finished, I was free. My first stop was 8 1/2 for dinner - roasted red peppers and Mozzarella followed by a white pizza - which I did get to eat outside to enjoy the last of today's warmth.
With serious garlic breath, I headed to Balliceaux, parking five blocks away (parking restrictions until 9) but enjoying every step of the walk to get there, even if I did pass far too many houses already decorated for Christmas. The sidewalks were alive with dog walkers and joggers sweating almost as much as I had this morning.
Inside, I joined the line to pay my five bucks (to be donated to Richmond Conexiones) to hear strangers and friends over-share at Secretly Y'All, Tell Me a Story, with tonight's theme being "Plot Twist."
You have to understand, I go to this event because I am fascinated to hear strangers (and occasionally friends) share stories I have no business hearing. Simply put, I am nosy.
The crowd was huge although I saw very few people I knew. Okay, less socializing than usual. But as a long-time regular, I know enough to arrive before 7 so at least I'm assured of a seat. Let the first-timers sit on the floor.
And then we began with the plot twists, so many plots twists.
The first storyteller was Mack, a tattooed hairdresser whose true love was Shakespeare, sharing "I Owe You a Bullet." His saga involved taking his Dad's gun apart in 7th grade and putting it back together incorrectly.
This only became an issue after his Dad took in Steve, a recovering heroin addict, who isolated his Dad once he began dying and then stole and pawned many of his dad's possessions after the funeral, causing Mack to hate him. Back on heroin, Steve decided to end his life using the malfunctioning gun. See the plot twist there?
"The one person I'd most like to kill and I saved his life," Mack concluded. It was a fierce start to the evening.
Next came Sylvia telling "Steering Wheels and Circles" about her belligerent Dad and how he was always yelling at her, whether she was driving the boat and he was trying to water ski behind it or when he was teaching her to drive (and wasting 36 cents of rubber) and she hit pot holes.
After her Dad died and was cremated, she picked up his ashes to drive them home and had to brake suddenly, sending the box with Dad inside careening around the back seat. "He didn't say a word," she said to laughter. After that, she swerved on purpose just because she knew he couldn't yell at her anymore.
Katelyn's "How Did I Get Here?" was about her bad ass stepmom Anne whom she worshiped as a 14 year old when she saw her take a handful of pills with no water ("Why do you think men like me so much?" she asked the traumatized teen. Awkward).
She recalled how much fun she saw her Dad have with Anne, who called him the great love of her life. Ah, but Anne strayed and had an affair with Glen after he presented her with a 72-page PowerPoint presentation. End of marriage.
Then Anne got sick and sicker with ALS and died and Katelyn was asked to speak at the funeral. "Glen showed his 72 page PowerPoint and I wanted to scream at him that this was about Anne, not how big his penis was. That's what the PowerPoint was about," she shared.
Wow.
Host Colin got up to introduce the next storyteller, saying drolly, "I wooed my girlfriend with a PowerPoint presentation but it was only two pages." Ba dum bum.
Shannon told "Cop Land on Repeat," about getting the call that his dad was dead while he'd been watching Cop Land on the IFC channel. FedEx delivered the ashes which Shannon managed to spill on the kitchen counter, a fact he wasn't eager to share with his roommates.
What helped him deal with the pain of losing his Dad was telling stories - at Richmond Comedy Coalition, at a pocket park -like the one he told tonight. He called 2014 the best and worst year of his life because although he'd lost a parent, he'd found beauty in life.
"It's so easy to be cynical," he said sagely. "There's no such thing as guilty pleasures, just missed opportunities and regrets."
Now there's a twist.
Austin's "The Awesome Story" happened after a night of cocaine and drinking Tuaca when he and a friend got home and found a possum in the dog's mouth. Managing to remove it, they saw it was half dead and decided to finish it off with a ceramic boot planter.
"We didn't realize it was playing possum. Apparently that's a real thing," he said to much hooting and hollering. After beating it with the sharp end of a tiki torch, he tried throwing it over the fence but twice it hit his brother's girlfriend's window.
His conclusion was, "Don't do drugs, guys."
Richard's story, "The Rose City" involved a low point in his life with an aborted move to Portland ("Before "Portlandia." It was a northwest backwater"), marrying a girl because they challenged each other to and winding up in a mental institution ("Westbrook, it's not there anymore") because he needed sleep.
Fortunately, at 47, he has since met his current wife and is not crazy. "Don't let people tell you that you can't run away from your problems. You can for a while."
During the intermission, hosts Kathleen and Colin told us that tonight was the fourth anniversary of Secretly Y'All and that in that time, they'd raised nearly $10,000 for various charities and non-profits. I like to think my regular attendance and all those $5 contributions helped that a little.
A friend came over to chat, asking why I didn't get up and share a story. "You blog every night," he reminded me. Not the same, I reminded him. "Just cover your face while you talk." Nope.
The two people sitting next to me were considering leaving during the break, but I warned them that often the best stories come from the hat when anyone can put their name in for a shot at being called. They stayed.
First up was Herschel with one of his distinctive rambling and tangent-heavy memories. This one involved running into a friend at Balliceaux ("Men come here because the women are attractive") before he was headed to an afterparty at Tavares' house.
On their way to the car, a man asked to use his phone and stole it. Over the next two days, he went through six cell phones trying to find a replacement for his stolen one. Apparently, Craig's List and soldiers shipping out the next day to Afghanistan aren't the best sources of replacement phones.
"I Will Survive" was Jessie's title and she began by telling us she was a confident woman who loves life and singing karaoke, even when sober.
Problems arose, however, when her boyfriend cheated on her and she found out from a woman at the bar he was cheating with. Sure, she threw a glass of water in his face but she also sought karaoke therapy.
At her favorite karaoke bar ("I'd built a dynasty of five years at this bar and he'd lived in this town for six moths"), she sees him come in and responds by singing "I Will Survive," pointing at him the whole while. She even sang part of it tonight.
"It was cathartic," she concluded. "He moved after that. Left the city." Damn, girl, well done.
Denise's story involved her last night at home before leaving for college, cough syrup loopiness and going dancing. Seems she ended up sleepwalking to her parents' bed, waking up with Mom and Dad beside her. "Honey, we're going to miss you, too," Mom says. She's since given up cough syrup entirely.
Somehow, and there's no good explanation for why this happens given the randomness of a drawing, the best story was saved for last. Rocky was a first timer and had assumed that the stories after intermission were somehow lesser storytellers than those in the first half. He'd already seen that that wasn't the case so he was a tad nervous.
Raised in a small (population 170 then, 140 now) town between Missouri (he pronounced it "Missoura") and Iowa where, according to him, gender roles were set in stone.
While he knew that it was traditional for 7 year old boys to get a gun for their birthday, he wanted roller skates. "I was the kid who wanted to sing the Snow White song to get birds to land on my fingers," he said sincerely. "F*ckers never did."
When a neighbor gave him a ride from school, he was asked how many quail he'd shot so far. None. "What kind of boy don't hunt?" the man had asked him. "I don't know, you tell me, " the young Rocky said, honestly curious. "I asked for roller skates."
But when his birthday rolled around, he saw a long box and hoped it was roller skates that needed to be assembled. When it was a gun, his disappointment showed and his Dad's face fell so he pretended to love it. Ricky's voice broke as he told this part of the story.
While his Dad plowed, the 7 year old pretended to hunt, telling his Dad he'd shot four birds but when asked to produce them, he couldn't and his Dad understood. "You don't want to kill anything?" he asked. No, he didn't. "What do you want?" Roller skates.
Three days later, red, white and blue roller skates arrived at the farm.
The applause was thunderous for Rocky's story. Between the telling and the tale, it had hit everyone in the room right between the eyes, which is the whole point of a Secretly Y'All evening.
Plot twists, we've all got them.
Walking to the front room to use the loo before I left, I ran into the photographer just back from the beach and enjoyed catching up with him. He wants to start a movement to add some lighter food to the Thanksgiving menu. I'd started with a big salad this year for the first time and loved the addition.
Waiting to use the facilities, a man asked if I was the end of the line and joined me. It took him no time to start quizzing me so I answered.
Do you know that the bathroom door opens in? Cause I once stood here for five minutes thinking it was occupied. I do. But I saw two women go in.
Did you see "Pulp Fiction"? I did.
Then you know what two girls do in the bathroom? I do.
Where do you live? Jackson Ward.
Where do you live? The Warsaw.
What do you do? I'm a freelance writer.
What do you do? I'm an architect.
You know, you're gorgeous. Even better, I'm fast in the bathroom.
On my way out, I stopped to say hello to tonight's DJ, the multi-talented "Can't Stop, Won't Stop" Reggie Pace, whom I've known for at least six years now. In no time at all, we got into how welcoming Richmond's music scene is, how many free shows there are and where No BS is playing New Year's Eve.
When he brought up a recent article I'd written, I explained that I try to write about people and events that I think are worth knowing, trying to stir up interest. "Tastemaker," he proclaimed. Just sharing what I enjoy. "Tastemaker," he confirmed.
When I went to say goodnight, he extended his hand, changed his mind and said he wanted a hug. First a compliment from a stranger, then a hug from a friend. I was liking the twists my plot was taking tonight.
There's no such thing as guilty pleasures, just missed opportunities and regrets. I want neither.
Tuesday, September 16, 2014
Coming Ashore
It may be time to bring out the hook.
I've been going to Secretly Y'All, Tell Me a Story at Balliceaux for nearly four years now and I have heard some stories that have blown my mind.
There have been some duds, sure, but all and all, it's been fascinating to hear people unload snippets from their pasts.
But where storytellers once respected the warning bell, they frequently ignore it now. And when the final bell rings, meaning they are through, they continue to talk.
Some even needed a third bell and that still didn't shut them up.
As if all that rule-breaking wasn't enough to warrant the hook, tonight for the first time, a guy got up to tell a story, admitting it had nothing to do with tonight's theme.
Alright, kids, you've finally gone too far.
Tonight's theme was "the river" and the door proceeds were going to benefit the James River Association, the worthiest of causes and we heard some good tales in its honor.
Toting a paddle, David's was called "Buzzards Watching" and involved a canoe trip in which the canoe wound up wrapped around a rock, a problem only until they stood on it and popped it back into shape like a Tupperware bowl.
"Island Refuge" told Kyle's story of falling in love with the water, making it his life's work and then having an awful experience that scared him off it before his eventual return to it. He'd brought a broken paddle, part of the story.
Before introducing the next storyteller, co-host Colin quipped, "Apparently it's a prerequisite to bring your paddle tonight."
The most life-affirming story came from Mike with "The Romance of a Broken Compass," the saga of him and his wife taking a 30-year old canoe down the inter-coastal waterway over 81 days.
He said they did it because it was "absurd fun," despite her grandmother worrying that they'd have to poop in a Cool Whip container along the way.
Wanna hear the most romantic part? They talked non-stop the entire way.
For sheer emotion, Amanda's "Mushy Sand" took the heartfelt prize and was the same story she'd used for her personal essay when she applied to the University of Richmond.
P.S. - It got her a full scholarship.
It was about being at the river with her Mom, brother, his friend and his mother when she was in third grade and realizing that her mother was in love with the woman and the journey she took to work through that.
Daniel from southside got the most laughs with "Destiny Comes When She Pleases" about being at the 42nd Street island and seeing a woman straddling a log between two rocks, presumably to ride it down the river, something they apparently do on southside.
At least that's what he thought until her boyfriend started calling Destiny back. She finished grinding into the tree, convulsed and returned to her boyfriend.
"Let's all stay on the north side of the river," host Colin instructed.
The first day of Fall and a tubing trip as the sun set were the setting for Fieval's story, "Between the Nickel Bridge and Belle Isle," about her ex trying to shore her up as she got tired and scared on the river and why this was a really bad idea.
For the sheer visuals, Charles" "Inappropriate Raft Guide" story, which involved a 500-pound woman,her young son and a raft that flipped as they went over a break in the dam, took the cake.
When they surfaced, Charles saw the kid moving downstream in the raft and the guide straddling the woman, paddling her as if she were a raft.
If you saw that in a movie, you wouldn't believe it could happen.
During intermission, a friend asked if I was going to share a story and I responded with an adamant no.
"You wouldn't?" he asked incredulously. "But you tell stories all the time."
Like this, sure, out into the blogosphere, but certainly not in front of 110 people.
During the second half, names of eager storytellers were put in the hat and drawn for a chance to share their river tale.
A regular at almost every event with a story for any theme ("I almost didn't put my name in the hat because I feel like I'm an addict for this"), Wendy's involved the role of the river in childhood and contemplation.
Nurse Lilly was the first to invoke the Amazon River and her trips coordinating Patch Adams clown trips there, one of which involved a 70-year old woman who went swimming in the Amazon, got swept away and wound up with splinters in her legs when men dragged her into their canoe to save her.
"I'm really a great swimmer," the 70-year old insisted. "It was the current."
It's always something, isn't it?
The next story was called, "The First Time I Went to a Strip Club" and was being told by a Secretly Y'all virgin who claimed not to know that the stories after intermission had to follow the evening's theme.
His didn't and we had to listen to the saga of his stint with VCU's security detail and a planned trip to a strip club, which he didn't attend because he split his pants at the seam "wide enough to birth a baby."
You can imagine how awkward this segment of the evening was. And no hook in sight.
Fortunately, redemption came courtesy of Andrew, a recent addition to the James River Park System's staff who began by commenting on how much Richmond drinks when we're at the river
The park saw 600,000 visitors this season and the staff goes through and sorts recycling from every one of those trash and recycling cans, not a pleasant job.
"Don't bring glass," he said in his sternest voice. "Don't do that!"
He readily admitted his story ended up less what he intended to share and more of a public service announcement to be mindful about taking out whatever you bring to the river.
I thought the same thing when I was at Texas Beach yesterday and saw four glass Mickey beer bottles and a 40-ounce bottle sitting in the sand.
Some people were apparently raised by wolves.
The evening's storytelling closed with Chris, as perennial a storyteller as anyone, with the cautionary tale of an ex-friend he referred to as "Professor Gross" and "Mr. Know It All."
The ex tried to repay Chris' generosity in letting him stay over by making a meal out of seafood from the manager's special section of Community Pride ("the worst grocery store ever"). Because nothing says thanks like two-day old seafood.
By the story's end, the ex friend was serenely swimming away after leaving Chris and a friend trying to recover from an overturned canoe in the river.
He even told us the friend's real name so we could all avoid him, too.
So as usual, we heard some great stories, poignant and funny, cautionary and romantic.
We also heard the bell ring repeatedly on far too many of the storytellers. Time to start playing by the rules, guys.
Don't make me turn this car around.
I've been going to Secretly Y'All, Tell Me a Story at Balliceaux for nearly four years now and I have heard some stories that have blown my mind.
There have been some duds, sure, but all and all, it's been fascinating to hear people unload snippets from their pasts.
But where storytellers once respected the warning bell, they frequently ignore it now. And when the final bell rings, meaning they are through, they continue to talk.
Some even needed a third bell and that still didn't shut them up.
As if all that rule-breaking wasn't enough to warrant the hook, tonight for the first time, a guy got up to tell a story, admitting it had nothing to do with tonight's theme.
Alright, kids, you've finally gone too far.
Tonight's theme was "the river" and the door proceeds were going to benefit the James River Association, the worthiest of causes and we heard some good tales in its honor.
Toting a paddle, David's was called "Buzzards Watching" and involved a canoe trip in which the canoe wound up wrapped around a rock, a problem only until they stood on it and popped it back into shape like a Tupperware bowl.
"Island Refuge" told Kyle's story of falling in love with the water, making it his life's work and then having an awful experience that scared him off it before his eventual return to it. He'd brought a broken paddle, part of the story.
Before introducing the next storyteller, co-host Colin quipped, "Apparently it's a prerequisite to bring your paddle tonight."
The most life-affirming story came from Mike with "The Romance of a Broken Compass," the saga of him and his wife taking a 30-year old canoe down the inter-coastal waterway over 81 days.
He said they did it because it was "absurd fun," despite her grandmother worrying that they'd have to poop in a Cool Whip container along the way.
Wanna hear the most romantic part? They talked non-stop the entire way.
For sheer emotion, Amanda's "Mushy Sand" took the heartfelt prize and was the same story she'd used for her personal essay when she applied to the University of Richmond.
P.S. - It got her a full scholarship.
It was about being at the river with her Mom, brother, his friend and his mother when she was in third grade and realizing that her mother was in love with the woman and the journey she took to work through that.
Daniel from southside got the most laughs with "Destiny Comes When She Pleases" about being at the 42nd Street island and seeing a woman straddling a log between two rocks, presumably to ride it down the river, something they apparently do on southside.
At least that's what he thought until her boyfriend started calling Destiny back. She finished grinding into the tree, convulsed and returned to her boyfriend.
"Let's all stay on the north side of the river," host Colin instructed.
The first day of Fall and a tubing trip as the sun set were the setting for Fieval's story, "Between the Nickel Bridge and Belle Isle," about her ex trying to shore her up as she got tired and scared on the river and why this was a really bad idea.
For the sheer visuals, Charles" "Inappropriate Raft Guide" story, which involved a 500-pound woman,her young son and a raft that flipped as they went over a break in the dam, took the cake.
When they surfaced, Charles saw the kid moving downstream in the raft and the guide straddling the woman, paddling her as if she were a raft.
If you saw that in a movie, you wouldn't believe it could happen.
During intermission, a friend asked if I was going to share a story and I responded with an adamant no.
"You wouldn't?" he asked incredulously. "But you tell stories all the time."
Like this, sure, out into the blogosphere, but certainly not in front of 110 people.
During the second half, names of eager storytellers were put in the hat and drawn for a chance to share their river tale.
A regular at almost every event with a story for any theme ("I almost didn't put my name in the hat because I feel like I'm an addict for this"), Wendy's involved the role of the river in childhood and contemplation.
Nurse Lilly was the first to invoke the Amazon River and her trips coordinating Patch Adams clown trips there, one of which involved a 70-year old woman who went swimming in the Amazon, got swept away and wound up with splinters in her legs when men dragged her into their canoe to save her.
"I'm really a great swimmer," the 70-year old insisted. "It was the current."
It's always something, isn't it?
The next story was called, "The First Time I Went to a Strip Club" and was being told by a Secretly Y'all virgin who claimed not to know that the stories after intermission had to follow the evening's theme.
His didn't and we had to listen to the saga of his stint with VCU's security detail and a planned trip to a strip club, which he didn't attend because he split his pants at the seam "wide enough to birth a baby."
You can imagine how awkward this segment of the evening was. And no hook in sight.
Fortunately, redemption came courtesy of Andrew, a recent addition to the James River Park System's staff who began by commenting on how much Richmond drinks when we're at the river
The park saw 600,000 visitors this season and the staff goes through and sorts recycling from every one of those trash and recycling cans, not a pleasant job.
"Don't bring glass," he said in his sternest voice. "Don't do that!"
He readily admitted his story ended up less what he intended to share and more of a public service announcement to be mindful about taking out whatever you bring to the river.
I thought the same thing when I was at Texas Beach yesterday and saw four glass Mickey beer bottles and a 40-ounce bottle sitting in the sand.
Some people were apparently raised by wolves.
The evening's storytelling closed with Chris, as perennial a storyteller as anyone, with the cautionary tale of an ex-friend he referred to as "Professor Gross" and "Mr. Know It All."
The ex tried to repay Chris' generosity in letting him stay over by making a meal out of seafood from the manager's special section of Community Pride ("the worst grocery store ever"). Because nothing says thanks like two-day old seafood.
By the story's end, the ex friend was serenely swimming away after leaving Chris and a friend trying to recover from an overturned canoe in the river.
He even told us the friend's real name so we could all avoid him, too.
So as usual, we heard some great stories, poignant and funny, cautionary and romantic.
We also heard the bell ring repeatedly on far too many of the storytellers. Time to start playing by the rules, guys.
Don't make me turn this car around.
Monday, May 12, 2014
When Kickball was King
You could say this blog is many things, but a sports diary it is not.
A cultural diary maybe, a going out diary, even a restaurant diary since I so often share where I've gone to eat.
Although I now do so much eating out as a hired mouth that much of my restaurant-going never makes it onto the blog.
But tonight with plans to go hear storytellers at Secretly Y'All, Tell Me a Story and a limited time before that started, I made a dash for food.
As in, that's a corny way of saying I went to Dash Kitchen & Carry again. It's hard to beat a place that proclaims both its speed and fresh ingredients.
Like the last time I was there, it's fair to say there were more employees than customers, perhaps a function of it being the end of VCU's school year.
But also like last time, the staff was extremely attentive, friendly and accommodating, right down to when I was handed a number to take to my table so my order could be delivered.
When I saw it was 24, I commented that my favorite number is 23. "Ooh, so close!" my server enthused, as if it mattered.
This time I went for the Costa Rican chicken salad made with roasted chicken, cashews for crunch, lizano sauce for a slightly sweet note with a touch of spicy kick and a blanket of micro-greens on a split roll.
I chose apple slaw for my side because it had been unavailable on my last visit and was rewarded with a surprisingly large bowl of red and green apple matchsticks dressed lightly.
Part of me wanted a milkshake for dessert, but I was quickly running out of time, so I headed over to Balliceaux for tonight's theme: sports diaries.
The saxophone player was there for the first time and we chatted about upcoming music, noisy school children and some of the stories I'd heard at past events.
Let's just say he was impressed with some of the tall tales I'd heard. He was curious if I'd ever shared a story ("I know you have some good ones") but I don't do that.
It was another big crowd, diverse in every respect, which I have to think is just the new standard for storytelling nights.
Joey, who was in the business, was first with "Inside Looking Out" and he came onstage saying in a booming voice, "I'm Joey and I'm a sports announcer. I'm going to talk like this the whole time. No, I'm not."
He told a funny story of trying to do hard news - three victims of a shooting but no deaths -for six days before returning to the more genial world of sports production.
Apparently having press credentials ruins you for sitting anywhere else at a game.
As Les came up to tell his story, "The Mitt," I found myself admiring the chimneys I could see against the pale blue sky through the window behind the stage. These longer days are a thing of beauty.
Starting with, "There was a time in America when baseball was king," he proceeded to talk about sports-minded kids during WW II and what they did for equipment.
"We burned the fuzz off tennis balls," he said. "How many people today know how to do this?" One obviously older man raised his hand.
But Les' story was about stealing another guy's catcher's mitt, a sin for which he clearly still carried some guilt.
Phil was introduced as having an MFA in creative writing but also as needing employment, so he began with, "You can't find a job spending all day at Texas Beach."
I could relate to his day spent at the river since for my morning walk today, I'd made my way down to the river, too, only to find masses of sporty-looking people preparing for this weekend's Dominion River Rock, erecting signs and walls.
On the plus side, a long line of Port-a-Potties had already taken up residence on Brown's Island.
But I digress.
Phil's story, "Sports Psychologist," was about how badly his over-zealous father wanted him to succeed at baseball, a sport about which he was indifferent.
One of the highlights of his story was when he demonstrated the long-winded ritual he used to perform when he got up to bat - tapping his bat on the plate, his shoes, wiggling his hips and whatever else he could do to delay having to attempt hitting the ball.
Daniel told us his soccer obsession story, which, sadly enough, concerned injuring his knee 25 times by age 17.
He thought his life was over when he had to have surgery on it, only to get a lesson in humility when he found himself in a pre-op ward with people going through chemo, on dialysis and one who'd had both legs busted in a car accident and was facing 17 months of rehab.
It was a reality check that brought him up short.
Finally we got a female storyteller when Jennifer told us of growing up unpopular because of her two deadly sins: being fat and being poor.
Even worse, it was the '70s and her mother made her clothes. "I looked like the fat Laura Ingalls Wilder," she cracked.
Attempting to vault to the popular clique, she tried out for the cheer squad in a homemade romper, but wasn't chosen.
The best part was when she did the "Be aggressive!" cheer she'd done at that long-ago tryout. Apologizing afterwards, she said, "I only had to do it once in my life, but it's burned in my brain."
I give her major points for trying. I was unpopular and I would never have had the nerve to try out for anything, much less anything as popular as cheer squad.
Richard's story "Rugby Tales, Not Scars" concerned the travel he did with the rugby teams he played on.
At a post-game party in Bermuda, he met an Australian rugby player named Paul "who looked like a young Tom Selleck," he claimed.
I wondered how many people in the crowd even knew who Tom Selleck was.
During a match, Richard managed to knock Paul's nose halfway across his face and black both his eyes. Unintentionally, of course.
At another match in Wales, he got knocked by a Welsh player with no teeth and lots of scars on his forehead but refrained from retaliating because the coach had warned them to back off.
Instead, he named one of his sons after the Welsh player, Colin. Since Colin was there (he's one of the organizers of Secretly Y'All) it was clear he had not only all his teeth, but an unscarred forehead. For now anyway.
During intermission, some of the audience left, a shame as I told the sax player since usually the best stories are the wild card ones that we hear after the break.
The stories beforehand are vetted but not the ones pulled from the hat.
Tavares' name was pulled first and he told a story of growing up black in Varina and being expected to play sports.
He was funny recalling his first sports memory of his Mom cussing out his P.E. teacher because her son was getting hit too much in dodge ball.
"From there, it goes downhill," he laughed.
When his Dad tried to teach him basketball, it didn't go well and he ended up in the sandlot while his Dad played with other kids.
He was on the wrestling team for two years before being put in a match with a "white, corn-fed kid my weight but all muscle."
At the end of that year, he joined the drama club and that was the end of sports for him.
Wendy, a mother, told a story that would have made her son cringe about him playing baseball because his father wanted him too (a recurring theme tonight).
After the poor kid took a ball to his privates, his Dad went out and bought him what she called a jock cup, except it was an adult size and the poor kid could barely run in it.
If he ever finds out she told that story in public, he will probably disown her.
Kylen's story was of growing up with parents who were both P.E. teachers while she had not a sporty bone in her body.
I know her pain.
She played soccer for the Capri Sun and orange slices. In middle school, she swam and skated for the outfits. She took up track in high school for the runner's high.
Since she was adopted, she was convinced that her birth mother had been a sensitive, artistic type like she was.
But when she got access to information about her, she discovered she'd been a business major with a part time job in sales, a fact that destroyed the birth mother illusion she'd concocted.
At least until she learned that her birth mother's mother had been an art teacher and felt closure that her Mom had been as out of sorts with her parents and she'd been with hers.
It was one of those touching moments at Secretly Y'All.
Kate closed out the night with a story of running track and doing some competitive eating mid-match.
After 13 brownies, she was forced to fill in on the 400 because another runner had gotten ill.
"When I got to the 300 mark, I started to throw up in my mouth, but didn't," she recalled.
"I didn't win the race, but I didn't throw up in my mouth, so the way I saw it, I won," she said with pride.
She's absolutely right. We non-sporty types know you take your wins where you can.
When I was a kid, I was dying to play kickball in the street with other neighborhood kids. My father refused so I sat out while I was teased about being a baby who couldn't even play in the street.
Finally, one summer Sunday night, he said I could play with them.
When it was my turn to kick the ball, I lost my footing and face-planted on the street, scraping off the skin from one side of my face.
After the humiliation of returning to the house to get my bloody face treated, of course I had to listen to my father tell me he'd told me so.
That was okay. I not only had street play under my belt now, but the scabs to prove it.
I only did it once, but it's still burned in my brain. And you know what?
It was a win in my book.
A cultural diary maybe, a going out diary, even a restaurant diary since I so often share where I've gone to eat.
Although I now do so much eating out as a hired mouth that much of my restaurant-going never makes it onto the blog.
But tonight with plans to go hear storytellers at Secretly Y'All, Tell Me a Story and a limited time before that started, I made a dash for food.
As in, that's a corny way of saying I went to Dash Kitchen & Carry again. It's hard to beat a place that proclaims both its speed and fresh ingredients.
Like the last time I was there, it's fair to say there were more employees than customers, perhaps a function of it being the end of VCU's school year.
But also like last time, the staff was extremely attentive, friendly and accommodating, right down to when I was handed a number to take to my table so my order could be delivered.
When I saw it was 24, I commented that my favorite number is 23. "Ooh, so close!" my server enthused, as if it mattered.
This time I went for the Costa Rican chicken salad made with roasted chicken, cashews for crunch, lizano sauce for a slightly sweet note with a touch of spicy kick and a blanket of micro-greens on a split roll.
I chose apple slaw for my side because it had been unavailable on my last visit and was rewarded with a surprisingly large bowl of red and green apple matchsticks dressed lightly.
Part of me wanted a milkshake for dessert, but I was quickly running out of time, so I headed over to Balliceaux for tonight's theme: sports diaries.
The saxophone player was there for the first time and we chatted about upcoming music, noisy school children and some of the stories I'd heard at past events.
Let's just say he was impressed with some of the tall tales I'd heard. He was curious if I'd ever shared a story ("I know you have some good ones") but I don't do that.
It was another big crowd, diverse in every respect, which I have to think is just the new standard for storytelling nights.
Joey, who was in the business, was first with "Inside Looking Out" and he came onstage saying in a booming voice, "I'm Joey and I'm a sports announcer. I'm going to talk like this the whole time. No, I'm not."
He told a funny story of trying to do hard news - three victims of a shooting but no deaths -for six days before returning to the more genial world of sports production.
Apparently having press credentials ruins you for sitting anywhere else at a game.
As Les came up to tell his story, "The Mitt," I found myself admiring the chimneys I could see against the pale blue sky through the window behind the stage. These longer days are a thing of beauty.
Starting with, "There was a time in America when baseball was king," he proceeded to talk about sports-minded kids during WW II and what they did for equipment.
"We burned the fuzz off tennis balls," he said. "How many people today know how to do this?" One obviously older man raised his hand.
But Les' story was about stealing another guy's catcher's mitt, a sin for which he clearly still carried some guilt.
Phil was introduced as having an MFA in creative writing but also as needing employment, so he began with, "You can't find a job spending all day at Texas Beach."
I could relate to his day spent at the river since for my morning walk today, I'd made my way down to the river, too, only to find masses of sporty-looking people preparing for this weekend's Dominion River Rock, erecting signs and walls.
On the plus side, a long line of Port-a-Potties had already taken up residence on Brown's Island.
But I digress.
Phil's story, "Sports Psychologist," was about how badly his over-zealous father wanted him to succeed at baseball, a sport about which he was indifferent.
One of the highlights of his story was when he demonstrated the long-winded ritual he used to perform when he got up to bat - tapping his bat on the plate, his shoes, wiggling his hips and whatever else he could do to delay having to attempt hitting the ball.
Daniel told us his soccer obsession story, which, sadly enough, concerned injuring his knee 25 times by age 17.
He thought his life was over when he had to have surgery on it, only to get a lesson in humility when he found himself in a pre-op ward with people going through chemo, on dialysis and one who'd had both legs busted in a car accident and was facing 17 months of rehab.
It was a reality check that brought him up short.
Finally we got a female storyteller when Jennifer told us of growing up unpopular because of her two deadly sins: being fat and being poor.
Even worse, it was the '70s and her mother made her clothes. "I looked like the fat Laura Ingalls Wilder," she cracked.
Attempting to vault to the popular clique, she tried out for the cheer squad in a homemade romper, but wasn't chosen.
The best part was when she did the "Be aggressive!" cheer she'd done at that long-ago tryout. Apologizing afterwards, she said, "I only had to do it once in my life, but it's burned in my brain."
I give her major points for trying. I was unpopular and I would never have had the nerve to try out for anything, much less anything as popular as cheer squad.
Richard's story "Rugby Tales, Not Scars" concerned the travel he did with the rugby teams he played on.
At a post-game party in Bermuda, he met an Australian rugby player named Paul "who looked like a young Tom Selleck," he claimed.
I wondered how many people in the crowd even knew who Tom Selleck was.
During a match, Richard managed to knock Paul's nose halfway across his face and black both his eyes. Unintentionally, of course.
At another match in Wales, he got knocked by a Welsh player with no teeth and lots of scars on his forehead but refrained from retaliating because the coach had warned them to back off.
Instead, he named one of his sons after the Welsh player, Colin. Since Colin was there (he's one of the organizers of Secretly Y'All) it was clear he had not only all his teeth, but an unscarred forehead. For now anyway.
During intermission, some of the audience left, a shame as I told the sax player since usually the best stories are the wild card ones that we hear after the break.
The stories beforehand are vetted but not the ones pulled from the hat.
Tavares' name was pulled first and he told a story of growing up black in Varina and being expected to play sports.
He was funny recalling his first sports memory of his Mom cussing out his P.E. teacher because her son was getting hit too much in dodge ball.
"From there, it goes downhill," he laughed.
When his Dad tried to teach him basketball, it didn't go well and he ended up in the sandlot while his Dad played with other kids.
He was on the wrestling team for two years before being put in a match with a "white, corn-fed kid my weight but all muscle."
At the end of that year, he joined the drama club and that was the end of sports for him.
Wendy, a mother, told a story that would have made her son cringe about him playing baseball because his father wanted him too (a recurring theme tonight).
After the poor kid took a ball to his privates, his Dad went out and bought him what she called a jock cup, except it was an adult size and the poor kid could barely run in it.
If he ever finds out she told that story in public, he will probably disown her.
Kylen's story was of growing up with parents who were both P.E. teachers while she had not a sporty bone in her body.
I know her pain.
She played soccer for the Capri Sun and orange slices. In middle school, she swam and skated for the outfits. She took up track in high school for the runner's high.
Since she was adopted, she was convinced that her birth mother had been a sensitive, artistic type like she was.
But when she got access to information about her, she discovered she'd been a business major with a part time job in sales, a fact that destroyed the birth mother illusion she'd concocted.
At least until she learned that her birth mother's mother had been an art teacher and felt closure that her Mom had been as out of sorts with her parents and she'd been with hers.
It was one of those touching moments at Secretly Y'All.
Kate closed out the night with a story of running track and doing some competitive eating mid-match.
After 13 brownies, she was forced to fill in on the 400 because another runner had gotten ill.
"When I got to the 300 mark, I started to throw up in my mouth, but didn't," she recalled.
"I didn't win the race, but I didn't throw up in my mouth, so the way I saw it, I won," she said with pride.
She's absolutely right. We non-sporty types know you take your wins where you can.
When I was a kid, I was dying to play kickball in the street with other neighborhood kids. My father refused so I sat out while I was teased about being a baby who couldn't even play in the street.
Finally, one summer Sunday night, he said I could play with them.
When it was my turn to kick the ball, I lost my footing and face-planted on the street, scraping off the skin from one side of my face.
After the humiliation of returning to the house to get my bloody face treated, of course I had to listen to my father tell me he'd told me so.
That was okay. I not only had street play under my belt now, but the scabs to prove it.
I only did it once, but it's still burned in my brain. And you know what?
It was a win in my book.
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