Bumpersticker: No Music, No Life

It was pure poetry.

I'd worn my 2006 Pete Yorn "Nightcrawler" t-shirt - the one with holes under the arms from so many sweaty walks, so admittedly worse for the wear after a decade of use, but still the lightest and most breathable shirt I own - walking this morning and when I got in the car to go meet my dinner date, Yorn's "Life on a Chain" came blaring out of the radio.

There are no musical accidents, so I took it as a good sign that after a day tied to my desk writing on deadline, the night would be a fine one.

Because Pete Yorn never lets me down.

The plan was to meet in the atrium of the VMFA, which I always approach by cutting through the Early 20th century European art galleries -  home to French Modern and German Expressionism - an impossibility when I found them closed, the walls bare of art.

Since I'd been under the impression that they were permanent galleries, I made a beeline for the members' desk to get the scoop. "Off-view until September 28th," the knowledgeable staffer informs me, with no further explanation. Hmm...

Pondering what could be going on with the art between now and Wednesday, I almost ran into my evening's companion, only to hear that he'd been killing time waiting for me playing Frisbee outside with a stranger, at least until museum security told them the obvious: to knock it off.

We weren't hurting anything, he protested. Boys will be boys, I suggested.

Since he hadn't been to the VMFA since his Grandmother used to take him (we're talking decades), he put me in charge and I promptly led him to the outstanding "Gordon Parks: Back to Fort Scott" photography exhibit for a shared interest in that era.

Make no mistake, I know how to show a newbie our museum.

From there, I led him to see the glorious American works that make up the new McGlothlin wing and while he had no existing knowledge of the brilliance of John Singer Sargent - or why some of those smaller genre scenes are so atypically Sargent - he strode across the gallery intent on contemplating what I consider a prime jewel of the collection: Julius Leblanc Stewart's "Yachting the Mediterranean."

Part of his attraction was the precariously heeling and enormous sailboat, but he was polite enough to listen to the reasons for my affection for the piece, which had little to do with the boat itself.

Since we still had daylight left, a walkabout seemed in order, and we took off through the sculpture garden, only to hear my name called out repeatedly from the balcony of Amuse.

A friend waved enthusiastically from above as we headed out to stroll around the Museum District where I lived for 13 years and he harbored happy memories of long-ago visits to his great grandparents house on Floyd Avenue.

One story he shared involved his great grandfather, a railroad engineer, and the multi-acre farm he owned a couple miles away, and how once he'd run into cows on the railroad tracks, only to realize they were his own.

Funny, not funny, if you know what I mean.

Ever the devoted tour guide (and, perhaps, over-sharer), I took him to see my hands-down favorite screened porch/side yard combination, explaining that while I'm very much a compact, city townhouse type, I have for 23 years found that this particular yard gives me a zen-like sense of porch perfection.

The house that porch is attached to, though, is large and appeals to me not at all. "What if you didn't have to take care of it?" he asked. I still don't want to occupy that much space on earth, I explained, a philosophy he shares despite living on three acres (but in a renovated house that maintained its original footprint, a fact I find impressive).

Further up Floyd, I randomly glanced at a couple with a baby sitting on their front porch and realized it was the people who'd lived across the street from me for 13 years. Calling out their names, they came over to greet us carrying their first grandchild and bringing me up to date on their six kids offspring.

Of course the youngest has just moved back home while he goes back for his master's degree.  Millennial children: gone but never for good.

A block or two up, I spotted a basket tied to a white picket fence with a sign offering up sage and bay leaves. "Take some, PLEASE!" the sign entreated. Grabbing a glossy branch of bay, I thanked the couple on the wide front porch.

"Take more!" she called with a grin, although a woman known for infrequent dinners at home only needs so many fresh bay leaves, you know?

Can Can was mobbed and noisy, so we moved on, opting for Belmont Food Shop and two stools at the very end of the bar, which was lively with Friday night revelers.

It wasn't long before we met the two next to us and dug into their story.

Together 20 years, used to live in Lynchburg, now live in (formerly groovy) Mount Pleasant (parkside condo purchased in 2001 before the real estate bubble priced such things out of their range) and in town for a wedding, staying at an Air BnB on Colonial. Last time they were here, they'd stayed at an Air BnB directly across from Belmont Food Shop but not eaten here, a faux pas they were correcting tonight.

Delightful dinner companions, in other words.

Our food was out just a few beats ahead of theirs, allowing us to eat and continue the conversation about what a dead town Lynchburg had been when they'd both worked at Randolph Macon Women's College and how wildly improved it had been when they'd gone back a couple of years ago.

Part of that, we all agreed, came about solely because crazy Christian Jerry Falwell finally kicked the bucket, leading to spirited conversation about how his son may be even scarier.

Then the unlikeliest and most amusing of sentences came out of my friend's mouth - "I have several Jerry Falwell stories if you care to hear them" - and we were off and running with his hilarious anecdotes.

Turns out he had a close friend who used to live next door to Falwell, resulting in a couple of engaging stories, one involving stealth painting of pot leaves on the evangelical's car (no repercussions) and another with a pie directed at his face (jail time).

Then food arrived and talk ceased.

Warm gougeres got us started, followed by an amuse bouche of cured salmon with trout row, then I had crab and avocado over an insanely flavorful smoked tomato coulis, followed by wrapped, smoked bluefish with frisee.

Dinner was followed with another walk, this one in darkness, as we chatted about the weekend and his plans to hike to a waterfall and get together with fellow musicians to jam. Me, I'll be trying to make a few more deadlines, so not nearly so enjoyable as his.

"Are you going to write a book?" he'd asked me, early in the evening and apropos of nothing.

Fair question, but who doesn't have a book in them by this age? Unless, of course, you prefer your life to be off-view.

Spasms of Honesty

You know how they say a person knows within the first ten minutes of a date whether or not they're going to like the person?

Hello, "Rapture, Blister, Burn," the latest production by 5th Wall Theatre.

I probably knew in less than ten that this was a play I was going to relish based on an early lively interchange about how women's lives have changed since the '70s. It was terribly satisfying hearing so many references to feminist history and theory (Phyllis Schlafly, Betty Friedan), many of which got metaphoric amens from the mostly female audience tonight.

Oh, yes, bring it on. I have some thoughts on this matter.

Let's see, a play billed as "a witty, unflinching look at gender politics?" Yes, please.

Hmm, a play about a woman's so-called choices of sedate marriage and family or go-getter career woman with attendant swinging social and sexual life? Most definitely.

Because, the truth is, at some point probably everyone wonders about the life not lived.

In this instantly intriguing play, Cathy, a sexy scholar who's written books on pornography and horror film theory and Gwen, a stay-at-home Mom in a less-than-ideal marriage - the two roommates until one left for London and the other married her ex-boyfriend and settled down for a life of penniless domestic tranquility - reunite and decide to try out each other's life.

Because that's an option for most people. Not.

Never mind that this means that the four-year old gets packed off to live with pot-smoking Dad and his hot professor girlfriend while Mom takes the Broadway-loving older son to live in Manhattan so she can go back to school finally.

Plot issues aside, all the discussion of feminism, relationships - "Relationships are an exercise in illusion" - and how women's behavior is perceived is the stuff of dream women's studies classes or consciousness raising groups minus the hand mirrors.

If a woman chooses the career fast track, how much must she compromise to succeed? Is it wrong (or even possible) for family trackers to outsource the homemaking part? What about out-sourcing the child-raising part? Has online porn replaced desire for real sex in middle-aged men?

With a decidedly strong cast, the play covered three generations, making for expansive conversations about how each handled the restrictions (or lack thereof) placed on her at a particular juncture in time.

The millennnial, Avery (of course, because no millennial is ever named Linda or Donna or - gasp - Karen) played by a pitch-perfect Aiden Orr, can't conceive of why 60-something Alice couldn't have gone to a dance when she was young simply because she didn't have a date.

But what if you'd just gone, she presses? Well, that just wasn't done and that's the way it was, she's told and you can tell by Avery's reaction that such a notion is beyond her comprehension because she has no understanding of how differently the world was ordered before she was born.

How people would "talk" about women stepping out of tightly circumscribed roles. Why a woman would not do something she wanted very badly to for fear that it would sully her reputation. That there was a time when "hooking up" meant being called a slut.

In the pet peeves category, the play also touched on millennial Avery's uninformed take on the ongoing struggle. "Yea, I believe in those things but I don't self-identify as a feminist," she says, almost nonchalantly.

Even after years of young women telling me this, I still cringe every time I hear it.

Call me a product of the '70s, but everyone, and I do mean everyone, should self-identify as a feminist, if for no other reason than forward progress of the human race. End of discussion.

My fellow feminist and I used intermission to begin our own discussion group of the topics raised, so of course we stayed after the play ended for the talkback with cast, dramaturg and director.

It was only mildly depressing when a millennial woman asked how it's possible for two empowered people to give enough ground to make a relationship successful.

Tip #1: stop referring to yourself as empowered and decide if this is a person you're willing to occasionally compromise with or not because every successful relationship is going to require it.

Love and alcohol dupe you into thinking average people are great.

A big part of the beauty of "Rapture, Blister, Burn" is how winningly it points out that not everyone has to want a relationship, either.

For those who do, the life-experienced voice of Cathy sums it up best:  My middle-aged observation is that, in a relationship between two equals, you can't both go first.

My middle-aged observation? It's all about exercising that illusion...

Dance the Night Away

You know what this world needs? More female-fronted bands, that's what.

Proof positive presented itself tonight with three bands at Strange Matter representing Richmond, Denver and Athens, Georgia and a wildly enthusiastic, albeit not as large as it should've been, Wednesday crowd.

Do you remember twenty first night of September?
Before you go cold like December
All you saw was a cloudy day...

Greeting me first were a couple of guitarists lamenting Richmond's tardiness to shows, something they said they didn't see when touring other east coast cities. In those magical places, if doors were at 8 and music at 9, people began arriving shortly after 8 and were fully in place when the first band took the stage.

Mind you, they were telling me this at 8:45 when I was among the very few non-band members in the room. But they also mentioned the absence of simple amenities for bands - rooms to stow gear and change, food - basically just good hospitality.

The kind of thing I would never know, being a non-musician.

I heard about opening band Positive No's tradition of pre-show Jagermeisters and when I wondered aloud about the choice of shots, got testimonials.

Matt recalled a night when his stomach was badly upset just before their set and the Jager calmed it (well, it is a digestif) and Kenny told of a night he was flat out beat, yet felt completely energized afterward.

It's hard to argue with the restorative powers of a good shot, no?

Tracy, the queen bee of Positive No, came over looking fabulous, as always, in a brightly colored tunic and make-up that would have done the mod era proud, and the best smile in the room. Her energy glowed.

The good news was she had a friend in town from Seattle, a musicologist she called him, and she wanted to introduce us because she thought we'd hit it off conversationally. Conversation, we agreed, could be bested only by sex and even better when they go hand in hand.

Positive No's set was partly bittersweet because it was bassist Matt's last show with the band, meaning I had to drink in as much of his excellent playing as possible, while appreciating the visual of his curtain of hair obscuring his face when he really got going.

Luckily, I can continue to revel in Kenny's killer guitar playing.

The band's pop strength is catchy hooks, fuzzy guitars, changing dynamics and the pull of Tracy's voice as she dances, bounces and totally inhabits any space not occupied by a bandmate. Tonight we even got a few new songs, a real treat for someone who's seen them as often as I have.

From the stage, she talked about deciding to move to Seattle the year grunge (i.e., Kurt Cobain) died and then introduced her Seattle friend from the stage.

By the time their excellent set ended, the room had finally filled up nicely. Afterward, I saw a guy buy the band's album and shyly take it over to Tracy to sign, looking for all the world like a devoted fan boy.

After a quick trip to the loo (graffiti: It's not always easy to smile but it's easy to drink beer ~ a drunk Mac Mac), I approached the Seattle visitor to let him know that Tracy thought we'd have conversation and music in common, notwithstanding his second concert ever being Van Halen.

Oh, the things we overlook for the sake of conversation.

Without so much as asking my name, he followed Tracy's directive ("But of course!), asking where we should talk and accompanying me to my spot near the sound booth so we could dive into shared musical interests, why he's back in Virginia for the election cycle ( a thing he does every four years) and our shared disdain for arena shows.

Then Denver's Dressy Bessy took the stage to show us how many influences they could channel with singer Tammy's endless energy at the forefront. Well matched with Positive No's boundless energy, I could also see them on a bill with Tacocat.

Mixing the energy of punk with the girliness of pop and a smidge of twee, the band delivered a solid set with Tammy's left leg constantly in motion dancing, pointing, twisting and kicking for emphasis.

"Are you excited about seeing Pylon Reenactment Society?" she asked the crowd. "We are! They're our heroes, too, so we'll be geeking out as much as you guys!"

The visitor and I used the break to expand our conversation, talking about venue histories and our own musicality (mine being none). He admitted that music was not in his purview until punk and hardcore came along and it no longer mattered that he didn't really have the chops to play.

Just as the next band was getting set up, he looked at me and wondered aloud if we'd even introduced ourselves or had just jumped into conversation. Oops. Intros were made.

The headliner was Athens' Pylon Reenactment Society, a band built around the seminal Athens band Pylon that had come out of the same scene that birthed REM and the B52s, both of whom have repeatedly acknowledged their debt to Pylon.

But founding guitarist Randy died a few years ago, so the band no longer considers themselves Pylon, but a reenactment of them, done in the spirit of Pylon with its original lead singer.

Let's put it this way: it was more than enough reason to be at a Wednesday night show.

Singer Vanessa seemed clearly overwhelmed with the rampant love and fandom in the room, saying, "One guy here told me that his first show at the 9:30 Club was Pylon! I guess I shouldn't talk about it, but thanks so much for coming out!"

Years gone by aside, certainly her particular style of singing and phrasing was as unique and compelling as it had always been.

From there, we were treated to punchy vocals, distinctive melodies and, for those of us who recall the Athens scene, reminders of how fresh their sound of jangle pop via Gang of 4 was to our ears back then...and now.

Vanessa still does her arm waving, body bending style of dancing, continuing the evening's trend of non-stop movement both onstage and in the audience. She called up Tracy and a fan onstage for one of the last songs, making for a room full of dancers on and off stage.

They may be reenactors, but Pylon's spirit was as alive and enthralling as ever.

Walking home at nearly 1:00, it was a full-on party on Grace Street with Ipanema's patio full, people cruising the streets, shouting across them to have conversations, cars with windows down and music blasting and a general vibe of fun.

The whole city feels it when estrogen times three is on a Wednesday bill. Girl power must be in the air.

Lost and Found

That moment when the universe deigns to help a sister out.

After driving through pouring rain to Williamsburg, I find my handwritten directions, alas, woefully inadequate, making me quite certain I will never make my lunch date at Cochon on 2nd in a timely manner.

There's just one thing to do and only my lack of twigs and berries allows me to do it: I pull into a 7-11 to ask for assistance in finding the restaurant.

Just as I walk through the door, I hear an incredulous, "Karen?" from behind.

Like a guardian angel from a heaven I don't believe in, there stands one of Richmond's most gifted actresses - as gobsmacked as I am to find a familiar RVA face in a convenience store in the 'Burg - on a lunch break from her gig at Colonial Williamsburg.

When I share my navigational dilemma, she whips out her phone, shows me a map of the 'hood and walks me through the quarter mile jaunt to my destination.

Dazzling me with her stage-worthy smile, she sums up our serendipitous encounter. "It was divine timing!"

As it turned out, it was also divine eating - Asian-inspired Moody sticky ribs followed by a mammoth Wagyu burger with Cochon bacon and extra-sharp Cheddar, neither of which I was able to finish - although probably not for her since I happen to know she's a devout vegetarian.

Not so much me and a couple of hours passed with stellar conversation about shared D.C. roots (his, technically, were Northern Virginia, should I be inclined to judge), the value of waiting until you have some life experience to decide what you want to be when you grow up (again, both of us) and the pleasures of gardening (why do so many of us come to growing roses late?), before finishing out with Sally Sue's buttery lemon poundcake.

Talk, eat, talk, eat, talk some more. Now that's some divine rainy day time spent right there.

For the record, I was able to get home without assistance, thespian or otherwise.

Setting Sail on the Oregon Trail

Conclusion: apparently if I'm drinking Elizabeth Chambers wines, there are cookies involved.

The connection was set in stone last summer after missing the originally scheduled appointment and showing up with locally-baked cookies as a peace offering for tardiness.

As it turned out, baked good were hardly necessary given the laid back attitude of our Oregon come-here pourer, who gushed about mossy rooves, gray skies and a wine scene small enough to be groovy, unlike California, from whence she'd come.

And, of course, the micro-boutique wines had been fabulous, so my hand was in the air when I got an invitation to an Elizabeth Chambers wine dinner at Camden's. Pru and Beau, being devoted fans of the pinot noir grape, were my date.

Tucked into a table amidst cartons of grape juice from various winemaking regions, we happily held court, with both the wine rep and the winery rep stopping by periodically to school us on what had been poured, why it was significant and how it fit into the winery's repertoire.

Beginning the evening with Silvan Ridge 2014 Pinot Gris paired with watermelon and tomato salad with feta and micro-basil felt like a summery rebuke to the damp, gray skies outside, so sunny was the salad and wine combo.

And, really, it only takes one glass of Pinot Gris to get a party started when I'm seated with these two. After a spirited discussion, Beau leaned over to Pru, smiling, saying, "Did I hear you say I was right?'

Without so much as missing a beat, Pru came back with, "You'll never get it in writing!" True as that might be, I've no doubt that just the satisfaction and memory of her words will live on in perpetuity for him.

It was while we sipped Silvan Ridge 2013 Pinot Noir that our wine rep explained the 1979 medallion on the bottle's label, touting the winery as one of the oldest in Oregon. When he spoke of earnest young people moving to the area in the late '70s to work the soil and eventually grow grapes, I felt the vibe.

So these were hippie types who moved up from California looking for fresh, cheap dirt, eh? The wine rep laughed and said I'd nailed it, mentioning that in the early years, the hippies focused on growing, with no clear sense of what.

"Then they'd take a bottle of their finished product to the nearest agriculture school and ask for an analysis. They'd say, tell me what we've got because they had no idea. For them, it was all about the dirt and the growing." Yea, yea, they probably had terrariums, too, and plants growing in the back of their VW Bugs, just like I did.

Far out, man, that's an interesting way to launch a state's wine industry.

We enjoyed the light red wine with grilled asparagus wrapped in housemade ham over local greens and goat cheese creme fraiche, a dish that got high marks all around and a gold star for the ham.

But the wine that Pru and Beau were instantly enamored with was Elizabeth Chambers Cellars 2013 Winemaker's Cuvee, a Wine Enthusiast 93-point selection with notes of French oak and a lingering finish.

"We want this one, don't we?" Pru asked of Beau after she'd finished her first sip. While Beau is known to be among the most agreeable people on the planet, his heartfelt agreement seemed to come more from an appreciation of the elegant and complex Pinot Noir than a slavish desire to please the little woman.

It was served with pan-roasted Pacific salmon over beet carpaccio with poached Black Mission figs, which inevitably led to a fig discussion given the passion Pru and I carry for figs of any stripe. The recent planting of a fig tree at her Church Hill manse has not yet produced fruit, but we continue to be hopeful given her great success raising figs when she lived on Mulberry Street.

Segueing from fruit to body parts, Pru explained the weenus to us, pulling on hers and sharing that  a person's age could be determined by their weenus. Is it dark or red, dry-skinned or pliant, or, god forbid, nothing more than an unappealing stop for a pair of lips kissing up a woman's arm?

You make the call.

Like a pair of prize fighters slugging it out, in the fourth round Elizabeth Chambers 2012 Temperance Hill vineyard Pinot Noir took on roasted Hudson Valley duck breast with fingerling potatoes and mixed roasted olives, the fat and saltiness standing up to the sturdy, tannic and expensive ($52 a bottle) wine for a most-evenly matched round.

One wouldn't be half as good without the other.

Because Beau was wearing a black t-shirt under a cream-colored button down, Pru called him on it, leading to a discussion of one of the silliest fashion accessories we could think of: dickies.

I'm not gonna lie, I had a couple in middle school, but I can't recall that they lasted much later than when the hippies started growing grapes in Oregon.

"When are the dickies coming back?" Pru mused to no real answers.

Just when we thought dinner was finished, dark chocolate cookies with sea salt arrived and my night was complete with the sweet being the final punctuation to a long, savory sentence. I, alone, had two.

By then, the room was noisy with wine-lubricated conversations, including ours which ranged from '70s decor - green and silver bamboo wallpaper, mirrored walls with distinctive gold filigree designs on the mirror tiles - to misheard conversations.

Referencing her favorite hippie chick's new-found passion for weed brownies and holding up her own chocolate cookie, Pru observed the contrast, noting, "There's no pot in here" and took a bite.

Beau, whose years in the Navy ensure that he only hears half of our conversations and who'd conveniently forgotten his ear trumpet, replied, "Yes, it is warm."

Say goodnight, wine lovers. It's already Wednesday.

Here I Go Again

I'll just be blunt about it: without the food angle, there'd have been no art.

My weekend away was set in motion two days after returning from France, when an email arrived July 12th notifying me of another in the Smithsonian's culinary lecture series (so far the series had rewarded me with evenings listening to Anthony Bordain and Ruth Reichl), this one called "Mid-Atlantic Cuisine on the Rise."

As a life-long resident of the mid-Atlantic (where every grade school child had to study the history and bounty of the Chesapeake Bay), my interest was piqued not only by the topic but by the chefs discussing it: Spike Gjerde of Woodberry Kitchen (where I'd enjoyed a lovely meal a year and a half ago) and Jeremiah Langhorne of the Dabney (where I haven't eaten, but will).

So, with a primary stated purpose of learning - regional focus! culinary history! chef humor! - I could then concoct a well-rounded couple of days in support of my food curiosity and slide in a little art as long as I was in the neighborhood.

Or so I told myself as I set out to fill up 48 hours with all tomorrow's fun.

Stop #1 for lunch was brasserie Le Diplomat, because an outside table on a sunny afternoon is the best kind of welcome back to my hometown, even when spoiled kids and incompetent parents are just on the other side of an open window.

That the meal involved an exquisite warm shrimp salad with lemon buerre blanc and mesclun that I will surely dream about in days to come only added to the welcome back vibe.

Dinner was a dream, set at Kinship, which was clearly styled by a designer with an eye for subtlety and style and lit with hanging pendant lights and recessed lights so as to be completely flattering to my fair sex, no matter her age.

But I'd have eaten a torchon of white mushrooms in the dark, so fabulously conceived was this dish, but then I'd have missed the gorgeous purple tones of huckleberry gastrique on which it sat next to baby beet and wild mushroom salad.

Never - at least in my experience - have mushrooms tasted so much like duck liver.

Green and white striped tzatziki terrine of grilled octopus with dill-lemon vinaigrette was far lighter in flavor and rosy yellowfin tuna tataki felt very regional with spring onion and butter pickle salad with shiso tempura for crunch over a chilled bowl of dashi - a kind of Japanese stock - gelee to tie all the flavors together.

Agreeing with the woman at the table next door who had raved about it, I only managed to score a bite of pan-seared lamb ribeye with crispy eggplant, patty pan squash and green tomato chutney, but it was a mighty fine bite.

Our server scored high points for his relaxed attitude, patience and humor (when asked if he had a spiel about the menu, he said yes, "But I'll give you the colloquial version") as he came and went throughout the night, appearing out of nowhere with exactly what we needed before we even asked for it.

Full or not, I wasn't leaving Kinship without dessert, savoring whipped chocolate nougat with every bite, but probably most impressed with the one-two punch of whipped creme fraiche under a drizzle of espresso caramel, although the incredible smoothness of chocolate sorbet didn't hurt, either.

After a meal like that, there's not much more you can do beyond sleep for ten and a half hours and get up and go see some art in the pouring rain.

At the National Portrait Gallery,"In the Groove: Jazz Portraits by Herman Leonard" delivered stunning black and white photographs from the '40s through the '60s of iconic musicians.

A young Quincy Jones in a sporty striped shirt, pencil in hand, sheet music spread out in front of him, appears to have been caught mid-studio session. A still life of Lester Young includes all the sax player's essentials - his instrument case, his porkpie hat, sheet music and his lit cigarette atop an empty Coke bottle -  suggesting that he's just momentarily stepped away.

At the Smithsonian American Art Museum, "Harlem Heroes: Photographs by Carl van Vechten" provided a sepia-toned history lesson of handmade gravure prints from a series of significant black figures of the Harlem Renaissance such as James Baldwin, Langston Hughes and Richmond's own Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, strikingly shot shirtless.

It's not that art is exhausting or anything, but lunch necessarily followed at breezy, blue and fish-focused Drift on 7th, with a voluble server who admitted that on this soggy afternoon, he wanted nothing more than to be home, curled up with his dog.

Instead, he went out of his way to ensure that we enjoyed our lunch of tuna tartare with avocado and crispy shallots, fish tacos and fish and chips along with the palest of pink Provence Roses to wash it all down, but he was still probably glad when we finally moved on so he and the pup could be reunited for a rainy day nap.

Bar Pillar had barely opened its doors when we stopped by for a pre-lecture glass of bubbly before high-tailing it to the main event, the mid-Atlantic cuisine lecture.

Washington Post food section editor Joe Yonan moderated Spike and Jeremiah's discussion of what mid-Atlantic cuisine is - a combination of what grows here, how the local people have used those ingredients for centuries and, duh, the Chesapeake Bay - so we're talking oysters, crabs, rockfish, country ham, apple butter, sorghum, lima beans and peanuts.

And corn, of course, since we made full use of what the Native Americans taught us about growing and cooking corn after stealing their land.

Both chefs were wildly enthusiastic about their insistence on only using ingredients from the collection of eco-systems located within 150-200 miles of their restaurants.

Unfortunately, that local sourcing didn't extend to the wine glass and both admitted to a huge carbon footprint when it came to their wine lists.

For shame, gentlemen, although Spike did allow as how Virginia wine has made huge strides since his first 1991 restaurant.

On the food front, he laughed about how "older people love their shad roe" but how few today would embrace terrapin or canvasback duck on a menu.

Talking about the over-abundance of eel and snakefish and trying to find uses for it, he said that even commercial fishermen are reluctant. "They'll say, I don't know why you'd want to eat that!" he laughed before Jeremiah called salmon "the bane of my existence. I hate having to have salmon on my menu!"

It's a sentiment I share.

Both showed their testosterone by rhapsodizing about working with fire - Spike uses a wood-fired oven, Jeremiah a wood-fired grill to cook everything - which inevitably brought us back around to the evening's theme: "It all comes back to pizza."

What man doesn't agree with that?

As for the female vote, my favorite quote of the evening came from Spike and was heavily seconded by Jeremiah. "Chefs learn by failing." Can I get an amen on that?

Since we were already on the Mall, we headed up to Barrack's Row and EatBar for dinner, a place where an entire wall is covered with thousands of cassette tapes in boxes and represent the gamut when it comes to music. As in Oingo Boingo to White Snake, with a list of juke box album offerings on the back of the menu.

Music and food, my kind of place.

Argyle Brut paired perfectly with Trinidadian chicken wings, batter-coated and pulling off spicy and sweet at the same time, while the most obscene award went to ham fries, which combined  potatoes, ham, chili paste and balsamic-glazed pearl onions for a rib-sticking indulgence that sent me straight to the tomato, corn and winter savory salad with buttermilk dressing in penance.

A fair amount of my attention went to the juke box (why not, it required no cash outlay?) where I played everything from the Velvet Underground's "All Tomorrow's Parties" to Paul Westerburg's "Dyslexic Heart," with a somewhat protracted tangent about who produced Bowie's "Modern Love" (Nile Rodgers) after I played that song.

And why? Because my food curiosity is matched only by my music curiosity, which is roughly matched by my art curiosity.

Wait, did I mention the Spanish singer/guitarist and drummer/percussionist we randomly caught at Rumba Cafe? It wasn't planned, but there's always time for for some things. I can sleep in Richmond.

Consider that the colloquial version of the story and I'm sticking to it.

Heavy on the Old Bay

GOD, tell me what I am doing wrong! Love, d 
~ note written in black Sharpie on back of Pick 4 lottery card found on 3rd Street

We'll call it a personal best: I saw four films today.

There was the morning walk to Movieland to see "Stir Crazy," party of their ongoing Gene Wilde tribute series. Walking down Leigh Street with Mac, we passed the crab guys I've passed a hundred times, only today I stopped to check crab prices.

When I explained that I'd walked by his crab stand all those times, Mr. Jimmy chuckled and said, "I know that's true. I've seen you in your hat walking by a whole lot of times. When are you coming back for crabs?"

Fair enough. But first we had a 1980 movie to see and while several lines of dialog were still lodged in my brain  - "Carry me back to ole Virginny" for one and "We bad!" for another - I had no memory that Sidney Poitier directed or that the film began with Gene Wilder singing "Crazy" to a jazz combo accompaniment.

And don't even get me started on Gene Wilder's pink Izod shirt and sweater tied over his shoulders or the pink bandana jauntily tied around his neck while he's doing hard labor on a rock pile.

But mostly it was a fabulous Gene Wilder vehicle, his character a trusting, optimistic cornball capable of turning us into laughing fools with his delivery.

Warden: I have good news for you.
Wilder: My wine magazines came?

Needless to say, we left with a renewed appreciation of Wilder's genius and a trip down Memory Lane as I commented on Kiki Dee singing over the closing credits.

Mac: Who's Kiki Dee?
Me: She did a duet with Elton John called "Don't Go Breaking My Heart"
Mac: Ohhhh, Kiki Dee.

After a shared lunch in service of my hired mouth, Mac abandoned me for men and dogs while I made my way to the Bijou for my next dose of Afrikana Film Fest, this time the documentary "Hip Hop Fellow" about, that's right, DJ/producer/professor 9th Wonder, aka the Hip Hop Fellow at Harvard.

As far as I was concerned, this was the most compelling film being shown because it had never occurred to met that Harvard would have such a thing. Turns out they've got an actual hip hop archive and I don't even know which to be more impressed by.

Walking up 3rd Street, I saw Afrikana's photographer appear from around the corner and immediately train her camera in my direction, snapping and laughing as she went. We're both in on the joke.

It was a full house for "Hip Hop Fellow" and why not when the film did such a fine job of explaining how his research shows hip hop bridging gaps between generations while developing a greater appreciation for sampling?

9th referred to what he does as "hip hop archaeology," an apt descriptor considering the way he'd dig deep into a classic hip hop album to identify every single sample used, whether it was 10 or 30 because he sees samples as a way of introducing younger audiences to older music  they either missed or dismissed.

Scholar and literary critic Kenneth Gates explains in the film, "Sampling is what Western literature is all about. Look at T.S. Elliott, Melville or James Joyce's "Ulysses" which is stolen from "The Odyssey. We call it the art of literary license."

Ahem, aka sampling.

9th Wonder talked and took questions afterward, deflecting one about how slow Richmond is to embrace its own musical talent. "That's every city," he said. "They didn't like Jesus in Jerusalem."

So how could I not return for the afterparty later, knowing he was going to DJ it? Film, talk, hit play...a practically perfect trifecta.

First, there were crabs scored from my Leigh Street boys and eaten on the wrought iron table in the backyard with Mac, then back to the Bijou for the equivalent of French New Wave 101, first with "The Red Balloon" and followed by Truffaut's "The 400 Blows."

I know it probably sounds like I was cheating on the Afrikana Film Fest, but I'd already seen "Miles Ahead," tonight's main feature, and, frankly, my film history could use some basic French classics like these two.

Bijou co-founder James explained that the Bijou planned to "show some dog films to show you how a director got to a certain point," asked for a show of hands of who hadn't seen tonight's (me and quite a few others) and let the films speak for themselves.

"Just remember," James said after the first film. "The Bijou is a place where you can come see balloons die." It's also where a friend complained about all the distraction of people rattling their popcorn bags during the film.

It's a lot of things, so remember that instead.

Filmmaking aside, both were intriguing looks back at the landscape of Paris and France in the late '50s and given my trip there a couple months ago, I was wide-eyed, looking for familiar buildings and street signs.

Aching glutes aside, it had been a pretty wonderful day.

But the night wouldn't have been complete without that afterparty and I managed to arrive shortly before 9th Wonder took over DJ duties and proceeded to absolutely kill it for the next three hours.

When he took the stage, he looked out and said, "Let's move these tables outta the way to get things going. We're gonna be dancing."

The man was not lying.

A favorite couple came in, danced a bit and headed home, waving as they threaded their way through the crowd. I stayed put near the back where it was slightly cooler plus I could dance in place and survey the room.

From the stage, the MC suggested we meet our neighbors and find out what their favorite film had been this weekend, but my neighbor hadn't made it to anything except the afterparty. But my next neighbor over had also seen the documentary, making for lively conversation about how it had impressed us and how thrilled we were for the rare DJ experience to follow.

Then there was the music, most of it unfamiliar to me while the rest of the room knew every word to the samples and full songs he played.

But the room went electric when the first few strains of Luther Vandross' "Never Too Much" came on, soon to be followed by MJ and Prince and eventually, even the Eurythmics, before returning to what I didn't know but could dance endlessly to.

Eventually, my fellow documentary dork came over and asked how I could go to the film, hear 9th speak and not be in the center of the dance floor where he was.

It was like he thought I was doing something wrong. Like d in his message to GOD.

The Afrikana Afterparty is where you come to dance wherever you want to.

Kissing Like a Bandit

Because ultimately, don't we all gotta have it?

But  first of all, we gotta have that indefinable "thing."

Sitting in the Grace Street Theater waiting for the second installment of the inaugural Afrikana Independent Film Festival, the three of us - full as ticks after fish tacos at Asado - were seriously grooving to Afrikana's usual excellent pre-show mix (see 1985's "Oh Sheila") when "Wishing Well" came on and all our faces lit up.

"Terrance Trent D'Arby," my photographer friend announced authoritatively and his girlfriend immediately leaned over close, rubbing up against him, saying, "I love this man" because he'd known the artist's name.

Of course, in my perfect world, all men would recognize the sound of Terrance Trent D'Arby. It would be a fine way to separate the men from the boys.

We agreed that everyone needs their person to know certain things and he'd just scored big by knowing that one. But there's no way to know what your potential person needs you to know and therein lies the rub.

Seeing Spike Lee's first film, "She's Gotta Have It" on this, the 30th anniversary of the film, delivered a fascinating look at the '80s (white socks almost up to the knees, jumpsuits, Jane Fonda-era workout gear and men in gym shorts), female sexuality (I recall from seeing it in the theater what a huge deal the depiction of a black woman's sexuality was) and the very beginnings of the indie movie genre.

I can't recall how the black and whiteness of the film registered in '86, but tonight it felt right for the time, meaning that the interlude in color with singing and dancing amounted to an unpleasant reminder of bad '80s cliches.

For that matter, the audience cracked up at many of the cheesy '80s details throughout, but then, it had already been established that few in the audience had ever seen the film on a big screen, being far too young.

Which means that for them, the film's message of societal acceptance of female choice when it comes to number of partners must seem ridiculously obvious since they've never known any other reality.

For those of us seeing it 30 years later, it was a poignant reminder of the long arc of the double standard.

Because whether they're concurrent or consecutive, we shes of the world do gotta have it. Fact.

Bidding goodbye to the "sleepy" (perhaps a euphemism for "needing to have it") couple, I did a fast walk to Comedy Coalition for "Live from the Pacement," a variety show staged by trombonist/percussionist extraordinaire, Reggie Pace.

He and co-host Aaron sat in chairs with a revolving colored lamp on the floor casting patterns on the wall and welcomed an odd assortment of guests, to great hilarity.

Josh told online dating and Tinder ("The shallowest dating app ever") stories, asking for a show of hands on who's used Tinder, only to find a model couple there who'd met on the shallow app. In his own experience, he'd learned that nerd girls date for life because ~ spoiler alert, he said ~ to them, they don't see any difference in one guy from another.

From my vantage point of seniority, I could challenge that but I won't.

We got music from jazz guitarist Scott Burton, keyboard player Larry Branch and Reggie playing his smorgasbord of percussion, after which he pocketed his triangle. That led to a discussion of how John Popper wears a bandoleer to hold all his harmonicas and a side story about a man who carries his pacemaker in a similar vest.

It was real variety with potato jokes courtesy of comedian Katie as Mrs. Potatohead (What's the difference in mashed potatoes and pea soup? Anyone can mash potatoes), interpretive dancing (Josh: "That was proof that the girls in "Napoleon Dynamite' do grow up") and, in a more serious vein, a gorgeous flute rendition of "Winter Spirits" by Lauren Serpa.

"That was beautiful and now we're gonna ruin it," Aaron said, introducing Jim as Eleanor Gasm, who had the ability to read people's sexual histories by touching their foreheads.

Touching a couple's foreheads, she announced, "They don't love each other." To a guy with a peculiar high-pitched laugh, "You're going to die alone." To a guy about his date: "She likes the goatee, but lose the mustache." Her: "No, it's the reverse, lose the goatee."

To the crowd, "Who's willing to go home with someone here tonight?" No hands raised.

When he got to me, he touched, asked how I was doing tonight and announced that I was looking for two men. No one said Eleanor was always right.

The two guys next to me got highly uncomfortable when he asked how long they'd been dating (a month) and then if they'd done it yet ("We're not going to talk about that," the more uptight one said).

Man of the evening Reggie expressed amazement that Eleanor was polling the audience on their sex lives, noting that things had taken a turn for the worse. That was actually one of the best parts of the evening: watching Reggie as audience member onstage (when he wasn't performing), squirming and laughing along with the rest of us

Before the night was over, there was a hot dog break with three costumed hot dogs and a riff on "Rapper's Delight" done by Reggie's "father" in a bad fake mustache and high voice ("My boy is so talented!").

The collection of hosts and performers on the stage eventually came up with a takeaway for the evening: Things can always get worse.

Now there's a mantra for a Friday night.

To prove it, the show closed with "Barb" in a glitter vest and wearing rollerblades, entreating people to join her in karaoke, including a Dido tune which evolved into a rousing group singalong.

Because sometimes you gotta make do when you gotta have it and can't.

Mr. Big Stuff, Who Do You Think You Are?

I still have the remnants of last Monday's skinned knee and other tales from middle aged bohemia.

Walking over to Rappahannock to meet a friend for quality time, a car rolled around the corner at First and Grace, blaring "Mr. Big Stuff" like it was 1971. Crossing the street at Third, I heard church bells begin to ring, my signal that I was going to be just a tad late.

Inside, my friend awaited me, a mixed drink and Prosecco in front of her, but it was orgeat lemonade I wanted with our two dozen Old Saltes and marathon storytelling session requiring that we trade the spotlight to get it all in.

We swapped beach memories (hers trumped mine with an evacuation) and testosterone tales (sometimes there's nothing to do but explain women to a man) while slurping bivalves, rolling our eyes and kvetching.

A couple sat down not far from us and when the woman asked about a particular beer, the barkeep was good enough to pour her a taste. She wasted no time in finishing every drop.

Do you like that beer?
Yes, can I have one of those but in a bigger glass?
Well, yes, that glass was just for you to sample. 
Yea, yea, I know.

Well, if you knew, you should have known that when you order one, it arrives in a full-sized glass without having to stipulate that.

Yes, we mocked her mercilessly.

After a couple of hours that included our gloating over having seen the William Merritt Chase exhibit before it goes to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts (her New England chums are pea green with envy), ticking off the myriad pleasures of retired life (hers, not mine) and listening to one of the bartenders as he did a show and tell lecture of the ink on his right arm (planets and geometry, oh, my), we parted ways.

She admitted to having lost her mojo for a cultural evening and mine was non-negotiable: the kickoff of the first Afrikanna Independent Film Fest, tonight at the Valentine, a short eight block walk away.

The party was just getting going in the garden, although before I even made it that far, I waited in the brick corridor to use the bathroom, only to find myself in the lens of the festival photographer.

Reminding her that they've already got far too many shots of me from past events ("Oh, look, honey, it's the same middle-aged woman we saw in that earlier slide"), she was quick with a retort.

"Because you've been a supporter since the beginning," she claims, snapping the shutter a couple more times for good measure.

The Valentine's charming brick garden space was made cozier tonight with a canopy overhead, plenty of tiny lights and a band warming up to entertain us.

Meanwhile, the singer, clad in a red turban with matching shoes, black tank top, a yellow skirt lively with purple, red and green zigzags (such a '70s pattern!) and armfuls of silver bangles that provided accompaniment when she danced, stole the spotlight.

But it wasn't just her ensemble because her fabulous voice was what really mattered, as she bade farewell to our mutual favorite season with Gershwin's "Summertime," even pulling a willing young man in a back-zippered t-shirt from the front table to execute a sinuous pas de deux with her.

During a bass solo in "All of Me," she said it made her want to do "the old missionary church walk," which she then demonstrated, followed by a Caribbean-infused cover of "At Last."

One of her own songs had been inspired, she said, by a two-month relationship that hadn't worked. "But we're friends now because grown folks can do grown folks stuff and still be friends afterwards and go to the movies and hang out," she explained for the record.

The evening moved indoors for the first screening of the festival, which was preceded by creative director Enjoli entreating us, "It's our first year, y'all, so don't go killin' us on Twitter. We're learning as we go."

In truth, from my vantage point, everything had gone off without a hitch tonight.

One of the most exciting things she shared was that the city of Richmond's tourism department had come on board as a new sponsor, a fact that speaks volumes about how far this city has come.

Tonight's film was actually a series of shorts by director A. V. Rockwell strung together under the title "Open City Mix Tape," and represented both documentaries and narratives based on black life in NYC, covering such topics as kids, women being objectified and, one of the most powerful called "B.L.B.," as in bad little boy.

Except of course, he wasn't bad, merely dealing with life as he knew it, even at a tender age. Many audience members reacted out loud to the ending of the film, feeling for the kid.

Shot in black and white to echo the bleakness and other-worldliness of these parts of the city, some of the shorts staged and others simply capturing real life, the vignettes were extraordinary glimpses into other lives.

As each would end, the audience was left to gasp or take a deep breath to restore equilibrium.

Afterwards, the petite Rockwell was introduced - with Enjoli saying that she looked like she was 12 - and took the director's chair for a Q & A, sharing that the film was her first after she finished her undergraduate film studies.

It had been the rapid gentrification of the city that had inspired her need to express what she saw happening and changing around her and the snippets felt like the equivalent of a visual mix tape. Pointing out that her favorite albums had an arc, she said she'd been going for the same thing in her films.

Confidentially, I strive for the same in my life.

After assorted questions about film-making and particularly film-making as a young black woman, Enjoli asked her how old she was, a question that caused her to demur ("You don't ask a woman her age") but not half as much as when a guy asked, "Do you have a man...or a woman?"

Now, my mother taught us that you never ask a woman her age or weight, but she said nothing about nosing into somebody's relationship status. Still, I would think there are subtler ways to discern a woman's status than in front of a roomful of people.

After all, grown folks should be able to ask other grown folks what they want to know. In theory, anyway.

Gear and Spikes

Handsome C-ville prof
Takes photographs of Pompeii
Shows slide of girlfriend

You know, just in case any of the women in the over-packed room and hall at UR had designs on him by the time he finished discussing his new exhibit, "Unseen Pompeii: The Photographs of William Wylie."

I kid you not, it was standing room only and UR worker bees had to bring in additional chairs at the last second, something I appreciated since I had been roosting on the air conditioning vents along with several female students, all of whom were freezing right along with me until we sat on our bags and blocked the direct air flow.

Pompeii as seen through the eyes of a UVA professor turned out to be a real draw. Who knew?

If I look beyond his well-sculpted professorial looks and ignore his self-deprecating humor, he'd still win points for admitting how thrilled he'd been to be in the amphitheater, the very same one where Pink Floyd had played a show to, well, no one, a show which was filmed in '72 and made into a documentary.

"I was thrilled that they'd had their gear there," he chuckled. Music nerds represent.

He was also a talker (not that I'd ever complain about such a desirable trait), but the end result was that he'd been so busy showing us images of the work of his photographic idols that he barely started showing us images of his work 45 minutes into the hour-long talk.

The screen, such as it was, fluttered in the crowded room, causing him to dryly observe, "I'm usually a still photographer."

Ordinarily, I'd be disappointed to be rushed through slides of art and deprived of information, except that with his exhibit opening, it's be far preferable to see the photographs in real life rather than digitally anyway.

Walking to Balliceaux along Hanover, I witnessed the business of life around me. A Dad arrived home only to have his two kids come running from the house, informing him that Mom isn't home yet.

"She's not?' he replies, his voice sinking.

A bit further down, a young woman sat comfortably in a rocking chair on her porch, talking work into her phone, with her face lit by the glow of her laptop.

On a slab of a concrete porch sprinkled with leaves, a shirtless guy sat on a plastic folding chair taking in the night air, looking very mellow indeed.

Like me, they all know that nights like this, nights that still feel warm and summery, are numbered. Fall and temperatures in the '80s have moved in to stay around here despite my pleas to the weather gods.

Dateless meal at bar
"Karen, sit here," calls prof friend
All "isms" fair game

Like me, she was there for Hand to Hand Haiku, but unlike me, she'd had to put her 17-year old cat down today while I've had five years to adjust to putting my 15-year old beagle down. Still, she was there to end the day on a better note than it had begun. Props.

Because food is forgotten when we lose loved ones, this was her first meal of the day, which she enjoyed while I had my third: caramelized chicken thigh with pickled cabbage, a killer complementary flavor duo that has yet to disappoint.

Naturally she, the vegetarian, fell in love with my cabbage.

We nattered on for a while about eating healthier, her new part time job and our fears about the development of the old Village before scooting to the back for poetry.

Among the many familiar haiku faces was a young couple at the table next to me, the woman explaining how excited she will be to become a second grade teacher. "I can already see how my classroom will look," she gushes. "I know how my bulletin boards will look!"

Youthful exuberance aside, I flashed back to dinner at the bar with my friend, who'd pointedly said, "I wouldn't go back to being 21 for anything, although I would take back my body then."

Hand to Hand Haiku got started with host Raven Mack riffing on his subject du jour, namely cleaning up the rubble of your life because everyone has it.

Oh, he likened the process to a myth and drove home the point that life is about cleaning up enough of your own personal rubble to create a small space where you could actually breathe a little, but the message was clear.

That's exactly why he's such a great MC - he can do it all. He sets the tone with a revelatory monologue, keeps score and plays cheerleaders to the haiku readers and writes haikus prolifically, honestly and cleverly.

Tonight we got a bonus rant because he'd chosen two flags to identify contestants: Uruguay's with a sun and Angola's with a machete, sending him off on a spirited tangent about the glories of owning machetes and their myriad uses.

Pulling the funny card, he was insistent that if we heard any haikus we'd heard before, we should boo. "Now, here's Ryan," he said to great effect.

Everyone's favorite anarchist was there with her four week old baby happily nursing at her breast (Raven says, "If anyone has a problem with a woman breastfeeding here, you can go outside." I'd already given her my thumbs up) even when she took the stage to read her haikus.

Her first, read in a clear, strong voice, set the tone:

Dude, if you are selling 
moonshine legally
Then it's not moonshine. Duh.

Let me just say that hers was far from the only anti-hipster haiku. And Raven's so talented he managed to write haikus about everything from low fat desserts to burning bridges to entering silver crescents.

Only Benjamin, with his haiku about whips, being dominated and his mistress ("It's a good day") topped our host on that subject ("He seems all quiet, but now we know what he's really about..." Raven observed after he read it).

And the young couple next to me surprised us all by getting onstage and facing off, each having written exactly one haiku while they were there.

The judges picked hers over his, but he shrugged happily and said, "At least we did it!" Apply that to most things in life and you'll go far, kids.

There was a loser buy back round allowing those who'd lost in the preliminary rounds to come back for a second shot.

"One of them's going to fail a second time," Raven told the crowd before an older brother beat his younger brother while their Mom filmed the whole thing. The losers brought some fine writing to the buy back round.

Let us be powered
by the twin engines of
peace and tranquility

The powers that be 
do a great job of keeping
us in our places

Raven read us a handful from his latest "American" series and they were outstanding and more than a little depressingly honest about things, such as being as American as high fructose corn syrup. Truth.

As American 
as demolition of hoods
being called progress

Paul won the whole enchilada, earning himself a haiku-inscribed railroad spike, undoubtedly the most brilliant combination of words and hardware imaginable.

He closed out with a saga of going cross country via train from Charlottesville to Chicago, then bus from there to Seattle, then train to L.A. ("It was cheaper") then bus to New Orleans ("That was rough") before a final train back to C-ville.

His point? That he'd not been disappointed in the goodness of America or its people, in fact, quite the contrary.

His take-home was that we could all benefit from talking to each other more often and that doing so helps each of us deal with our personal rubble clean-up. My take?

We're as happy as
the space we clear out, Rubble 
gone means new chances

I'd go so far as to say it's a good day even without the whips.

Movin' On Up

Home is where the what is? Discuss.

I've been here for three decades, which, as any native Richmonder will tell you, doesn't make me anything more than an extended come-here. A long-term transplant at best.

More than a few times, someone has been talking to me, only to pause and ask quizzically, "You're not from here, are you?" My lack of a drawl gives me away every time.

But my Dad was born and raised here and that combined with my Mom's Washington D.C. upbringing ensured that I eventually felt comfortable living a southern life. At this point, I've got long-time friends and extensive job histories here.

I kid you not, a friend once described me as being "part of the fabric of RVA." He exaggerates, but still.

Hell, I make my living based on knowing what goes on here. You might even say I'm a common law Richmonder after all these years.

So why in less than a week have two different people tried to convince me to leave Richmond?

You should be in Washington again, one insists, a bigger city more suited to the breadth of your interests with a greater variety of people. Have you ever considered Charlottesville, the other probes, for an overdue change of scenery and a wholly different vibe that might suit you better than you know?

Um, let's see, between the four road trips in eleven days and two more in the offing, no, I can't say I've had the time to consider whether a more permanent change of scenery is in order.

Here's the problem with that. I get home from one of these trips and I fall effortlessly back into Richmond.

Like tonight, I unpack, answer a few emails, change clothes and head out. Nothing fancy, just a mile-long walk over to My Noodle right around sunset, weaving and bobbing between the scores of VCU students clotting the sidewalk.

Taking up residence at the bar, I pull out my Washington Post, order a Cool Hand Lucas (a spicy libation of aged Thai rum, pineapple, tangerine chile, cilantro and egg white), my favorite broccoli and chicken entree and lose myself to a soundtrack that starts with Sly and the Family Stone, moves through Al Green and is belting Stevie Wonder when I finally leave.

Walking home along Grace Street in the dark, I see a sign in front of the Grace Street theater advertising "Free movie tonight 7 p.m.," a reminder that the VCU Cinematheque series has started up again screening the kind of well-crafted films that all good film students are required to see.

I knew it was happening, but I'd gotten home too late to make the start.

Further down the street, I spy a large room inside one of the new dorms full of couples - hands clasped, arms around each other, standing inches apart - listening intently as a teacher explains the finer points of salsa dancing.

Everyone in the room looks sincerely interested, eager even, in what comes next.

A couple of students walk by, see the dancers and one begins singing, "I salsaaaaa, you salsaaaa, let's salsaaaa..." at the top of her lungs as they make their way up the block.

You're just so damn charming, Richmond. That's how you suck people in.

Girls Just Wanna Drink

Remember when bars were bastions of male dominance? Yea, neither do I.

But the fact is, fern bars were created in the happenin' sexual revolutionary days of the '70s as a means to attract young, single women to drink in public, something many had been reluctant to do (or explicitly forbidden to do by their mothers) in seedy, smokey dives full of men.

As in, we weren't going to drink at Rocky's, but we might at the Regal Beagle (look it up, kids).

The ones I remember from the '80s were indeed full of ferns, along with Tiffany lamps, plenty of brass railings and as many women as men, so it never occurred to me that bars hadn't always been crowded by both sexes.

Fast forward to the 21st century and, wouldn't you just know, we've got ourselves a spankin' new fern bar that combines the best of what originally set those bars apart with a more contemporary sensibility. Here, the fern bar's requisite Harvey Wallbanger has become The Girl from Ipanema, making for an inside joke.

Welcome to Laura Lee's.

When it was the White Horse Tavern, the place was ferociously noisy and had the look of a southside rec room - dark, low-ceilinged, awkwardly chopped up - as decorated by a man, while the new iteration screams estrogen with yellow walls and ceilings, a blue-stenciled floor, plants and flowers throughout and sound-absorbing art panels.

Along the dividing wall separating the bar area from the dining room sat a linear lounge boasting studded club chairs and small tables, all but inviting people to relax with a drink. I didn't take my drink, but I did spend some quality time testing out the chairs for comfort (they passed with flying colors).

The absolutely stellar soundtrack was a mix of vintage soul music created late at night by a time-starved (female) restaurant owner who agrees with me that just the right music is essential to any memorable experience. Any.

Honestly, we're so much wiser and more clear-headed that I'll never understand why my sex hasn't been been running the world since the beginning of time.

I ran into no less than nine people from the neighborhood, all of them thrilled to have a legit place to sip and sup within stumbling distance of home. Given how spoiled I am in my 'hood (although nary a fern bar), I could appreciate their elation.

Keeping to the theme, the menu offered some interesting plates with a leaning toward lighter (dare I say slightly healthier?) fare and, mercifully not another neo-southern wannabe or multiple cuisine mashup.

My first choice was beef-braised local carrots with horseradish and rosemary, the carrots satisfyingly toothsome and surrounded by bits of beef. Next came toasted quinoa studded with edamame and thinly sliced radishes over sesame oil, a deliciously nutty-tasting dish that was instantly filling and savory.

Not content to stop because I was full, I moved on to pressed, marinated fennel with roasted figs, buttermilk blue cheese and prosciutto, notable for the unique note the fennel added to the classic trio of flavors.

Meanwhile, the happy guy just down the bar from me admitted to downing two large plates, first blue crab and corncakes and then sausage, corn and okra, making me feel a whole lot better about my three small plates.

Because it's a neighborhood spot, some people felt comfortable bringing their kids with them, but the beauty of Laura Lee's configuration was that once they were on the dining room side, the perfectly-calibrated music on the bar side completely obliterated any crying, squawking or otherwise potentially annoying sounds from young guests.

Everybody wins.

And everybody was there, it seemed, from half the Roosevelt crew to Amuse staffers to the scooter queen and entourage ("Have you gotten your ticket?" she queried me about an upcoming secret show) to the baker to the woodworker.

For all I know, the candlestick maker was there, too, and I just didn't lay eyes on him.

I didn't ask for the dessert menu but when presented with it, I caved and ordered a warm dark chocolate flourless cake with white mint mousse, essentially an upscale take on a classic ice cream roll. I stopped just short of licking the plate.

Perhaps most striking of everything about this latter day fern bar with the epic soundtrack was just how lived in it already felt. Laura Lee's doesn't even open to the public until Tuesday, but everything about the feel of the place was comfortable, inviting and yet stylish.

Just the way a single woman likes to be described when she's drinking in public.

Learning the Hard Way

It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood because the Bijou has opened.

If you want to get technical, it opened last weekend but I was out of town for Chaplin's "Modern Times," the inaugural offering. So after a friend's dimly-lit birthday party in the Gypsy Room at Vagabond, I walked down a few blocks to the Bijou.

But not before convincing doubters to eat torchon (without sharing that it's made from pig head), hearing vacation tales of the wonder of U.S. territory Puerto Rico (no currency exchange! no language barrier! a rain forest!), ingesting more rockfish rillettes than I care to admit and listening to the Denver transplant mock-whine about the local Broncos obsession and the abundance of pot shops and over-priced apartments out there.

Headed up Broad, I was looking forward to checking out the Bijou's new digs, which turned out to be the perfect starter space: small, simple and complete with bar and popcorn (two bags, no judging, please).

When I walked in, vinyl was playing on the turntable, there were two men clad in seersucker blazers despite Labor Day already being in the rear view mirror, and a growing crowd was filing in with a few familiar faces thrown in for good measure.

Even better, I was told that the earlier screening of "Miss Sharon Jones!" had sold out. See, Richmond, there's your proof we really did want a small arthouse theater showing repertory as well as new films. I, for one, am tired of reading reviews of wonderful but obscure or small films in the Washington Post, knowing full well they'll never play Richmond.

Happily, the Bijou is changing all that.

The film center's founders spoke briefly, including a mention about how film is truly meant to be experienced on a  big screen with strangers, a sentiment I support wholeheartedly and am mocked for regularly.

The documentary covered the period after Miss Jones found out she had stage two pancreatic cancer, underwent surgery and chemo and was nursed back to health so she could go back to singing, but it also included plenty of impressive live footage from before and after her illness.

I only saw Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings once, back in May 2010 at Maymont, and it was a helluva show given the towering musical talent of the band and the force of nature personality of Miss Jones. Even six plus years later, I can clearly recall the way she worked the crowd up into a dancing frenzy, never letting up herself...and she was also singing the whole time.

Of course, even without the cancer angle, her story was film-worthy. How does a singer who's been told by a record executive that she's too old, too black and too short (side note: how many men get told that by record execs, hmmm?) for success manage to have her first hit at age 40?

Major talent and sheer determination. A band that's as close as family. Divine luck.

After the film, I strolled down Broad Street chatting with a couple headed to their car. Like me, they'd really enjoyed the documentary, but unlike me, they'd never seen her live and wanted to hear every detail about my experience.

A block or so later, they asked if I was walking home and when I said yes, if I would like a ride for safety. I assured them I was barely six blocks from home, so I'd be just fine.

Besides, they're missing the point. With the opening of the Bijou, there's one more reason to attract people to the neighborhood, more to do once you're here and yet another formerly vacant storefront is knit into the fabric of Jackson Ward. Score!

So, yes, Bijou Film Center, I will happily be your neighbor.

What's the Rumpus?

My Friday night immersion was immediate.

Make no mistake, I could have happily stayed on in my oceanfront room, serenaded by the sound of the waves and listening to stories of growing up on the Outer Banks from the '50s.

How else would I have heard about the "Toot & Tell It," a shabby building just after the right turn off the bridge into Manteo? Let's just say that whatever they were toting to you after you tooted may or may not have been legal.

I'd have loved a few more six-mile beach walks (nearly to the Nags Head Pier from the 15 mile post) with a man who also enjoys an enthusiastic excursion and a few more days of air-drying my bathing suits on the fat wooden dowel over the sliding door to the deck beach bum-style.

It would be greedy to wish for another Chablis-fueled dinner at Steamers, a meal that began with a course requiring an oyster fork, was followed by one necessitating a lobster fork and closed out the evening with a dessert fork.

Goodness knows I'm all about staying up 'till 1 a.m. chatting on the middle deck to candlelight about the connection between "Star Trek" and military service, about how I'll eventually fall into an art installation and not be able to get up and other nonsensical topics.

But eventually life calls, so late in the afternoon, I took one last outdoor shower, packed up and hit the road, determined to make it back for a screening of "Miller's Crossing" at Hardywood, a worthy goal, but one that got temporarily side-tracked when I stopped at Frog Island Seafood for dinner.

So between my late start, my need to feed and my refusal to speed, it turned out that I had not allowed quite enough time to make the Coen Brothers classic without going straight to Hardywood.

This is the point at which you consider that you're dressed more for leaving the beach and a road trip than for going to a screening, but it's too late to do anything but try to root through the used clothing and multiple wet bathing suits in your beach/overnight bag in an attempt to look less like you just stepped off the beach.

The good news is it was dark when I arrived, just as author Tom Dehaven began his scholarly and occasionally rambling introduction to the film and the guy at the front table checked me in, informing me I'd won one of the raffle prizes before even arriving.

My beach casual flew under the radar as I slid into a back seat, eager to take in Dehaven's wealth of film knowledge. Not so everyone. I watched as millennials some people in the audience began squirming or focusing their attention on their phones, completely uninterested in learning anything about the film before seeing it.

Or after, probably, either.

For me, the intro was fascinating because I'd never seen "Miller's Crossing" and, to tell the truth, 1990 was a good while ago and I didn't have a lot of memories of it, so when he began going over source material, scene-by-scene rip-offs, homage explanations and the like, I felt like I'd hit the nerd jackpot.

Like a good film professor, he talked about what the Coens had "swiped" from whom (the plot from one novel, the characters from another), how the entire film paid tribute to gangster films and admonished us to pay attention to sound design, as if we could have missed it when every drip or door closing sounded like it happened directly next to us.

He explained that curtains blowing in the breeze referenced earlier films and signified sex had taken place. Fittingly, when the curtains onscreen began blowing gently, so did the breeze in the Hardywood parking lot.

Following in the grand tradition of Smell-o-vision, this was Wind-o-vision, twice with train whistles to boot.

Even without his protracted explanation, it would've been tough to miss how deeply indebted to classic Hollywood it was with such telling details as a fight poster with the name "Lars Thorwald" from "Rear Window" on it, no doubt a genuflection at the foot of Hitchcock.

Sitting outdoors watching the 26-year old movie in beach clothes felt a little surreal - but hello, it's also the Coen brothers - given that I'd left the ocean and wound up at the brewery only to find myself a winner in absentia of two books from Chop Suey.

As I was just saying the other night, why shouldn't I be happy all the time? Life is good.

Set Free for the Wild

In June, it was Kitty  Hawk, in July, Kill Devil Hills and today it was Nags Head.

At this rate I'll be in Ocracoke by Thanksgiving.

What was markedly different was the state of the beach road as I made the trek south for 15 miles, far beyond where I usually land when I'm here.

How far, you say? The closest ABC store is in Manteo.

But cruising along the Kitty Hawk stretch this afternoon (accompanied by the plaintive sound of Wilco's "If I Ever Was a Child"), hemmed in by turbulent-looking gray clouds on all sides (after a mostly soggy drive down) was far from business as usual because of all the sand and standing water on the road.

Even the 35 mph speed limit was unattainable because of all the dodging and weaving required to navigate the sorry state of the beach road. Honestly, it felt mighty adventurous, especially along that terrifyingly narrow section of beach around mile post 5 where Black Pelican sits.

That was some deep sand on the road.

But once I made it to Kill Devil Hills and the Cure's "Friday I'm in Love" began playing, the roads were mostly dry and clear, although more than a few houses had missing swaths of siding.

Down at the 13 mile post, giant puddles reappeared, a fact that hit home square in the face when a car headed north splashed through a puddle the size of a pond, sending water into my car's open windows and leaving me wet-faced with water dripping off my sunglasses.

Welcome to the beach on a variably cloudy day.

My eventual destination was the sky-blue Sand Pebble, an 8-bedroom, 10 bath behemoth situated on the oceanfront, for this week headquarters for Pru and Co., all of whom were well established in their various rooms when I rolled up to find every door locked and no one answering the bell.

Or repeated knocking.

Ever the sleuth a la Nancy Drew, I investigated possible entry points, winding up in the sandy lot next door gazing through pool fencing only to spot some toes reclining on the mid-level deck.

Peering through the fencing, I called out hello. Without even disturbing her oceanfront reverie, Pru half-opened an eye and called out, "Who is it?" not that she was expecting any other guest besides me today.

Inside, I was lucky enough to be assigned an oceanfront room (added bonus: it was conveniently located not far from the outdoor shower), which I immediately customized by opening the sliding door to the deck, closing the door to the hallway and covering both a/c vents with beach towels.

Volia! A seaside room warmed by outside air and serenaded by surf tucked into a larger, much cooler house with no inconvenience to others. Can't we all just get along?

Despite the volatile weather that had dogged me down and left souvenirs along the road, by the time Pru and I had done an abbreviated catch-up session on my bed, the clouds were breaking up into a burgeoning gorgeously sunny afternoon.

Adjourning to the beach, we were met with a sand fly contingent that insisted we position ourselves in the surf or they were going to bite us incessantly. No choice there.

The combination of the tide coming in and residual roughness from yesterday's storm ensured that I was eventually knocked down and under, thus providing the ritual beach baptism that rightfully inaugurates every good ocean visit.

Just as appropriate was a rainbow that made an appearance just under the crest of a good-sized wave before disappearing into foam.

I got in a walk that spanned north and south and netted me several conversations with fellow beachcombers, including a young woman who asked if she might find sharks' teeth on this beach. No clue, I said.

"Well my Mom has found hundreds, but I've only found four in my whole life," she shared. Um, okay, then I guess you can find sharks' teeth on this beach, honey.

Over near the Spur (the western connection at the beach eludes me) where a series of small guest houses were lined up like kids at an ice cream truck, I asked a guy with two surf lines in the water what he was catching.

"Nothin' yet, prob'ly cause of that storm yesterday. But thanks for asking!" I like it, gratitude for nosiness.

When I made it to the pier, I found two guys leaning against it ("We're holding up the world," one joked invoking major corn), and since my hosts hadn't known what pier it was, I asked these guys. Turned out to be Jeanette's Pier, complete with windmills.

"Thanks for stopping by!" one called out nonsensically as I waved goodbye.

Are you kidding? Monday, you can hold your head, Tuesday even stay in bed. But it's Wednesday and I'm at the ocean.

Setting the Example

We decided we're like Sumatran tigers: near extinction but with a colorful past.

"We" are two oldest children, he the first of five spanning 13 years and me the first of six in 8 years. That kind of oldest child pressure changes a person in dozens of unseen ways that only reveal themselves with time and the proper situation.

Yet a fellow oldest can spot you at fifty paces and we'd done just that.

In order to compare first born notes, we settled in for dinner on the patio at Acacia, where it was warm, yes, but with enough of a dry breeze to hint at September's intent to hang around. We had the patio to ourselves until a threesome appeared and were seated right next to us.

The young couple of the trio sounded like recent come-heres, with all kinds of recently-acquired insider information for the older visiting relative based on the five months they've lived here.

"Around here, restaurants better be good or poof! in six months, they're gone. This is a foodie town and Richmond takes their restaurants seriously," she told the visitor with all the authority of a newcomer.

She turned out to be a bit less adept with the wine list, giving the table over to their more-than-capable server with explicit instructions: "We don't want sweet." It took some convincing for her to believe that the server understood the preference.

It was a different story once they'd been served their first Gruner Veltliner, as they crowed and exclaimed over how she'd served them the best wine of their lives.

Meanwhile over at our table, we were comparing notes on similar childhoods, at least as remembered by two put-upon oldest children.

He recalled his parents' parties where overflowing ashtrays and martinis were the norm while my (slightly younger) parents hosted mint julep parties (the mint grown in our side yard) where everyone played the Newlywed Game and gave dirty answers.

Both of us remembered parents who constantly encouraged us to read, but we were less sure whether they still did so with younger siblings, given that discipline definitely got slacker with the passage of time. My parents used to explain it away by saying they were just tired by the time they got around to raising the little ones, but his folks had given him the same line.

No fair, the child in me still thinks. Get over it and eat, the hungry adult insists.

As pointed out by nearly everyone who walked by, it was a gorgeous night to eat outside.

Because it read like a shopping list of things I love, I began with a salad of arugula, cantaloupe, skin-on peaches (sliced thinly enough that I could enjoy four slices without my mouth itching), barley (my current grain obsession), cashew and lots of red onion with a honey anise vinaigrette.

The lovely salad was just my justification to tear into a large pan-roasted rockfish collar with fried corn arepas and mounds of avocado salsa for richness (not that the collar meat itself wasn't plenty obscene), but what the dish also provided was a stepping off point for discussion of all the Friday nights of our childhoods where both our over-sized families ate fish for dinner because our Dads shared a love of fishing regularly.

I gotta be honest, it isn't often you talk to someone who recalls a family freezer full of their father's catches of the day and admits to the deep-seated fear of disappointing the parents that only an oldest child knows from birth.

Friendships have been started with far less.

Canoe, Stuck Between Two Shores

There are surprises and then there are surprises.

Walking down a road in Tanner's Ridge (that's right, yours truly spent three days in the mountains), our objective was a thorough investigation of what appeared to be a church-turned-Air BnB, but we were waylaid by a weathered-looking guy in the house next door.

From him we learned that the church was indeed now a rental property ("A guy from London staying there all week or I'd show it to you," he informs us) and that the property had originally belonged to his father, the Washington D.C. artist Robert Kuhn.

It got better. Directing us behind the church, he explained that there was an entire sculpture garden of his father's work, so naturally we made a bee-line for what turned out to be a series of "garden rooms" of various elevations located on the extensive land back there.

Some influences were obvious - there were several figures that looked a hair's breath away from a Giacometti - but overall, there was definitely a sense of mid to late 20th-century interpretations of the changing nature of American sculpture.

Scattered among the pieces were chairs of all types and colors, agreeably situated to face almost all the art should a more leisurely assessment appeal.

Nature had taken its toll on a few of the pieces with rust or softened edges or, in one case, a piece no longer attached to the larger whole but instead laying on the ground nearby, no doubt a testament to the prohibitive cost of maintaining so much outdoor art.

Of all the things I expected to experience on a mountain getaway weekend, art had not been among them, so time spent wandering the sculpture garden of the churchyard felt like a gift.

On the other hand, I had expected to celebrate Labor Day by spending a lazy afternoon in a canoe on the Shenandoah River. The weather was perfect, the sun was behind us and we were fully stocked with provisions to sustain us.

Even though it had been years since either of us had manned a canoe (and the maiden voyage for the dog), as our guide pointed out, it's like riding a bike and it'll all come back to you.

And it did, as we pulled under arching tree branches to enjoy a little lunch in the shade or as we took a sharp left to investigate a shallow, southern Gothic-looking tributary.

Our limited experience was more than sufficient when we hit the first of ten rapids, although they were class one rapids which don't amount to much more than burbling. Once the James River has gotten you used to class four rapids, anything else looks a little ineffectual, dare I say flaccid?

Let's put it this way: we were three quarters of the way into the trip when I finally took my life jacket off because it was just too hot with it on and the river was so low it seemed unnecessary.

This is when life mocks you.

No, the surprise of the day happened when we were less than a quarter mile from where we were to dismount and leave the boat and the dog suddenly leaned to one side just as a power boat went by sending along a wake in our direction and our holiday mindsets were jarringly forced to re-engage after having fully relaxed and all three of us ended up in the river.

You know that sunny moment when you're gliding along, at peace with the world and not thinking much at all, only to find yourself underwater, then above water, gasping for breath and grasping for oars and supplies?

Yea, neither did I.

The good news is we managed to clamber out (with the only casualty being a couple of rock-induced contusions on my knee), empty our vessel of river water and temporarily go our separate ways, me on foot with the dog and the stuff (singing Small Black's "Canoe" in my head), he in the canoe to return it as originally intended.

Don't get too complacent, life reminds us. Sometimes a good shaking up is just what a person needs.

Go West, Young Lass

I think we're okay here in central Virginia, but don't plan any trips to Virginia Beach or the Outer Banks this weekend.~

The voice on the radio throws this out nonchalant warning as I'm walking room to room collecting things. This affects several people I know and love.

There's the one friend who was desperately trying to leave the Outer Banks yesterday, another due to start her beach week tomorrow, a third, the coolest of all, living near Virginia Beach.

The former posted a photograph of a convincingly menacing sky yesterday, with a note that they were bailing, wanting to be across the bridge before the real wind cranked up, a decision more easily made because they were due to leave today anyway.

The friend who heads for surf and sand tomorrow afternoon (because she likes to begin her vacations in a leisurely manner; very civilized, I think) will have missed (hopefully) the worst of it and while the sky may still be a little bruised looking, we all know how a good storm scrubs the air clean and is followed by gloriously gorgeous weather.

Contrary to the holiday weekend mindset, summer is not over yet. Praise the lord and pass the summer fun.

Doing the Right Thing

There is no pleasure for me in turning the calendar to September.

Oh, I did it today, rearranging my perpetual calendar to reflect the change, but it's pulling out the four-month block - September, October, November, December - knowing that that's what I have to look forward to that signals the beginning of the end for summer fans like me.

And just as the month changes, so does the tone of local culture. We're more serious, more earnest, it seems, immediately.

I don't have to look any further than the opening of "Stump," the new photography show at Candela Gallery, for proof. I recently mentioned to a friend that never in all my years as a registered voter have I felt as appalled as at this election cycle.

Apparently on the exact same page as me is Candela Gallery's owner, who deals with it creatively by mounting a show of work addressing big issues, the scarred political landscape and what a general mess we now have on our hands.

Women's concerns, the Black Lives Matter Movement, the Presidential election, consumerism, Guantanamo Bay, immigration, environmentalism, it's all laid out in an array of photographic processes for Richmond to consider.

Best of all, they also have voter registration (and changes to your status) going on every single day the gallery is open. It's a brilliant way of starting a dialog and engaging the community in a bigger conversation after being motivated by the artistic reminders on the wall of all that still needs addressing.

It is most definitely not a show you'd see during the lazy days of a goof-off summer. Nope, it's serious September all right.

The same could be said for the Virginia Historical Society's Created Equal Film series, which started tonight with a crowd that pulled from their noontime Banner lectures as well as attracting those specifically interested in the film "Rosenwald" about the Jewish Sears & Roebuck exec who'd established challenge grants to build 5,000 schools for black children across the south (you know, just a little hobby of a white man during the Jim Crow era).

That diversity meant there were maxi dresses, hearing aids, hippie types, grand dames and everyone in between. So much to see and eavesdrop on.

Sit anywhere. This is one place where anywhere you sit, the sound is great.

I can't help but notice a woman in her thirties passing the time reading a magazine, not a device.

Susan! How's retirement treating you?

A 20-something reads a hardback book, at least until her man arrives and then they both take out phones and address their attention to the outer world, not each other.

Do you have a good sight line?
Doesn't matter. Cataracts.
Are you any closer to addressing that?
I have to wait for Charlie to get better first.

Amazingly, the auditorium is filling completely up for a documentary about a rich Jewish man who gave away his fortune in the form of building YMCAs and schools for blacks, and then issuing grants and fellowships.

She's so busy with herself, she probably didn't even notice her husband wasn't there. That's my catty comment for the night.

The seats next to me were taken by a couple of history buffs who'd driven down from Stafford because of the subject matter.

Talking about race, his wife nudged him to share some of his memories, things like not being able to try on clothes at J.C. Penney, or always having to sit upstairs at movie theaters and not being allowed to eat at lunch counters.

She recalled being shocked at the difference in how history was taught when she moved from Ohio to Virginia in 1968. "In Ohio, the history books said the Civil War ended, but here..." she shrugged.

Let's just say it was the kind of audience who got excited and started murmuring when it was announced that at the next film in the series, Mary Sue Terry would be speaking.

Actually, when the speaker said that the Rosenwald schools were still in use all the way up until the Brown decision in 1960, many of them were just as vocal and a chorus of knowing "mmm-hmms" ran through the room.

My meager knowledge of Julius Rosenwald came from a book talk in this very same room a few years back, so about all I was sure of was that he'd been a terrific businessman and an early Civil Rights activist.

What came across loud and clear in the film was how much his Jewish faith shaped how he used his Sears fortune for good, mainly due to the Jewish commitment to philanthropy and charity as well as his fascination with Booker T. Washington's "Up from Slavery" and his revulsion over the pogroms going on in Russia at the time.

Early on in his success, his goal was to have $15,000: $5K to save, $5K to spend and $5K to give away. But he didn't just hand over cash; instead he expected the black community to come up with a third of the cost of a school, the white populace another third and he'd do the final third.

Fair is fair.

Needless to say, the communities raised the money and helped build the modern, light-filled schools, always built to be south-facing with high windows, probably familiar to the dozens of Rosenwald Schools graduates in the room tonight

Since most of the audience was of an age, they got a big laugh out of the film explaining the cultural significance of the Sears catalog with its endless, exotic and myriad choices.

"It was like what Amazon is today," some obviously millennial writer had penned. Thanks for the clarification, kid.

We learned that the Sears catalog was made specifically to be smaller than the Montgomery Ward catalog so it would always rest on top in a stack. How's that for marketing genius?

One woman summed up her allegiance to the catalog by saying, "You wished on it, then you could recycle it." Um, sure could.

But it was even more than YMCAs, schools and grants, though everyone from the "busboy poet" Langston Hughes to Ralph Ellison to James Baldwin to Gordon Parks benefited from those grants.

He'd also built an enormous apartment complex in Chicago, the Michigan Boulevard Garden Building so middle class blacks had a safe and handsome place to raise a family. People in the film spoke glowingly of the "village" that covered an entire city block, offering stores, apartments and a huge enclosed garden where children spent entire days and summers safely.

The film made a case for Rosenwald's philanthropy being based on a shared sense with blacks of being part of a "despised race." Someone called him a man of righteous action, a label I think he'd have been fine with.

No man of righteous action would be able to accept our current state of racial progress, meaning if old Julius were still here, he'd be trying to do something about it. Seriously.

Especially now that it's September.

That's the End

There is a smell - a sense, really - of wet summer nights that is quite unlike anything else.

It wasn't present when I walked home from Dinamo after a fine dinner with a birthday celebrant set to - wait for it: Christopher Cross' so-called masterpiece "Ride Like the Wind" not once but twice consecutively - nor was it in sight when I headed to Saison by myself for tonight's late night brunch with chef Mike Braune.

But, man, by the time I killed my cocktail and bade farewell to the familiar faces at Saison, cars were wet, streets were slick and the air was heavy with dampness. It was enough to make me wish I was at the beach.

As if I don't often wish that.

I slid into one of the few open bar stools, conveniently near a familiar musician and his date, to see what was going on with tonight's late night brunch, ordering Another Sunrise to keep me occupied. The cocktail of vida, Espolon Blanco, orange juice, lime, Grenadine and (I kid you not) Hellfire bitters fit the bill nicely for jumping into the lively room.

I chatted with the J-Ward restaurant owners out for a post-shift meal (but of course he wanted a shot and a beer) about their impending closing and renovation plans, with the blond bartender who thought I looked vaguely familiar but mostly admired my sass, with another bartender reveling in her new gig and with the wine rep I've known for ages.

He's become my go-to for where to eat in Norfolk/Virginia Beach now that it's one of my regular destinations.

Off the chain food-wise was the fat foie gras and chocolate chip deep dish pancake, especially after a slather of vanilla butter and a dunk in smoked maple syrup (which, I won't lie, tasted a lot like licking the interior of a chimney) before landing in my mouth.

Almost as good was lamb and avocado Benedict with za'atar Hollandaise, an obscenely rich offering considering it was midnight.

Helping the cause was great conversation about the development of the scene, beer versus door prices at shows and why some of us prefer to be renters rather than homeowners given our lifestyles. We might have even touched on my questionable introduction to tequila.

Somehow, by the time I emerged several hours later, rain drops covered windshields, streets emanated steam and there was the satisfying smell of wet pavement in the air. Late summer, ahhhh....

I was only sorry I'd been so busy blathering with friends that I hadn't seen it happen.

Hellfire, those were some powerful pancakes.