It was a Graveyard Smash

Saturday night was the night of Halloween parties, the Exotic Erotic Ball, radio station copycat events, people dressing up their inner slutmonster, acres of flesh and fishnet, a little fake blood and lots of alcohol. Good times! But alas we didn’t go do that. We went to our local roadhouse and babysat.

All right, we went a-people-watching. But when the average age in all five bands and the audience is twenty four with a standard deviation of two it didn’t feel entirely complete as a people-watching project. The Boardwalk is not large and it was not packed and after looking around I could not help but conclude there were three kinds of people in attendance:

1. Family and friends of the bands
2. Local weird fuck-ups who needed to get out of the subsidized housing for a few hours and this was the only place they could get to without having to resort to a bicycle
3. Us

About two thirds of this crew were either in costume (e.g. cute little bug antennae, miniskirt, striped hose and high heels) or in “costume” (e.g. Hawaiian shirt, porkpie, and a pair of aviators – alas, no cigarette holder). Given some of the costumes and the ages of the girls in them, you are right to suppose the view was not always objectionable, but mostly I ignored all that because, after all, well. Put it this way. There were five people in the place older than us, and none less than twenty years younger. But I liked the music, and it was for music and to watch the costumed crowdly dynamics that we went.

Generally alt metal hardcore fusion, I suppose, I don’t know. The subgenres escape me but they were actually singing, not screaming, so it was all good. I talked to the lead guitarist for one band – an Asian guy about five feet tall with a goatee and a cowboy hat – and told him his band sounded pretty good, I liked the sound. He said, hey, thanks, and went on about CDs and t-shirts for sale in the back but he was extremely friendly about it, and I asked if they were from around here (“here” potentially meaning any part of Northern California outside the Bay Area) and he said, you kidding, we all live just down the street.

Down the street. Okay, and the main act got started at the local high school five or six years ago. So it turned out we were supporting local music. That helped explain two of the five people who were our age plus: A middle-aged couple looking a little lost and self-conscious, no doubt absorbing what their kid has been doing with his prime college-attending years. They didn't stay very long. (The other three were one of the owners; a bouncer, who to be fair might only have looked old, it’s a rough life doing nothing but hanging out at a rocker / biker bar; and a mysterious first-cohort Boomer with a gray Prince Valiant haircut who carried himself with an intriguing lack of self-confidence.)

What else, I’m trying to wrap this up. Was I in costume? Not if a black Rob Zombie t-shirt isn’t a costume. Some might say it is the costume of a guy who dresses (and acts, or at least thinks) like a teenager, but since Rob Zombie isn’t a whole lot younger than me I’d say no, it was just my scariest black t-shirt. That doesn’t say much for my collection of black t-shirts. I’m going to have to work on that, or come up with a real costume, if we’re going to continue with this new gig of not having small children anymore and thus being free to go out at Halloween.