This weekend, we had two friends from SF stop by as they were driving to their new home in New England. We spend the afternoon hanging out at my parent’s house (they live by a lake and have a pool) and having a cookout.
[Now, those of you who are not from the midwest might not know what I mean by a cookout, maybe you call it a barbeque. I don't call it a barbeque because we were having burgers not barbeque. We were cooking outside, thus a cookout.]
We left Miss M with my Mom and Dad (Nanna! BaBa! cried Miss M) for the evening. Then, when we got back to our apartment in the Short North and realized we had the good fortune of stumbling into Gallery Hop. The weather was about as good as it gets here in the summer. It wasn’t very humid and it was warm but not too hot.
We had a lovely grown-up dinner with Mojitos at Tapatio, went home to drink some free beer and then went to Gallery Hop.
When we were trying to get into my building, signs were posted saying the elevator was broken and not to use it. The elevator of death in our building is ALWAYS a little broken. When you stick your arm in the door to keep it open, it doesn’t stop closing. Sometimes the doors don’t open when it arrives at the correct floor either. If you are not savvy to the fact that you have to continuously press the door open button, you may ride up and down and never be able to escape. In general, the elevator is a tad scary, but we have been desensitized over the last year.
So despite gigantic signs saying DO NOT RIDE THE ELEVATOR IT IS BROKEN blocking the button, we decide to ride the elevator. We push the button, the door opens and we get in. Everything seems Normal. The elevator protested a little when we selected our floor, but it seemed resigned to taking us there.
When the doors open, I walk out and our friends start to follow me. It was only then that we realized the elevator had not really stopped moving. It continued to rise, albeit somewhat slowly, a foot or so above the level of the floor. Our friends (dragging a giant full beer cooler) leapt out, but A was not so lucky. The door slammed shut before he managed to get out. He had to ride to some other floor where the door did not open before he made it back to our floor where I was frantically pressing the up and down buttons. The door opened just a crack and he managed to escape.
Crisis averted, we drank our beer and went to gallery hop. It was pretty crowed. To me, gallery hop has nothing to do with going to galleries. It is more about making fun of the old people who come down from the suburbs and the freaks who congregate to convert you to their cause (this week it was the Vegans and the John Kerry people).
I don’t think I have ever mentioned here that I hate art. I do, I really hate it. I know it isn’t a popular sentiment, and people think I am joking, but it is true. I have tried to like art, but I don’t. The only think I like is photography, but not weird artsy photography. I prefer Life Magazine or National Geographic type photos. I sincerely believe my hatred of art comes from growing up in an area woefully deprived of museums or people who may have known anything about art. But it is too late for me now, and despited my best efforts, I have resigned myself to the fact that I will never like art.
Art is point of bitter contention between A and myself. He loves it. The weirder the better. He took the opportunity to use peer pressure from himself and our artsy friends to force me into a gallery or two. Nothing makes me crankier than art galleries. Especially when the artist is hanging out there so you can’t make fun of how stupid their art is. T
The two galleries we went to were full of ridicule potential. One had a piles of magnets stuck to canvasses. The other had a giant pile of clay spewing out of a broken bathroom sink. A started talking about how the "piece" was about the struggle between man and nature and technology and no technology or some bullshit like that. I wanted to scream and run away. I was so annoyed I actually had to wait outside.
We decided to go home and hang out for a while. We watched an episode of Worlds Apart that we had on Tivo. Usually, on Worlds Apart, they send a family to some third-world country to rough it for two weeks with the locals. In this episode, the sent two whiny NYC couples to Namibia to get their asses kicked by the Himba people. It was truly hilarious. I highly reccommend it.
Then, we heard a REALLY loud trumpet playing outside. Our neighborhood gets really loud during Gallery Hop, but it was getting close to 11. If Miss M had been home I would have called the police to shut them up.
A went to the window to see what was going on. There was a man in a giant sumo wrestler suit playing a trumpet, a drummer with a plastic mullet and a tuba player. It was so bizarre we had to go see.
The band was the Shaft Monkeys and they were hilarious. The played a lot of different songs, including some by Gloria Estavan. A man from the neighborhood with crazy gheri curls jumped in and started dancing with them too. The people walking by didn’t know whether to be freaked out or impressed.
Our friends, who are of the Burning Man persuasion, were duly impressed with our neighborhood. Even in San Francisco, it isn’t every day that you see a giant sumo wrestler playing a trumpet.
