Yesterday was epic. Made the three hour drive back from Ocean City in the morning, headed down to the University of Maryland's homecoming football game for tailgating, went to D.C. United's final game of the season ('97 MLS champions), and then hopped over to Adams Morgan for a little social experimentation. Let's start at the beginning:
The homecoming game tailgate was great. I don't have many friends still in the area, but my sister Sarah rolls deep. Her friend Amanda brought a metal cooler from about fifty years ago with a built in bottle opener. We grilled and grubbed, and my friend Tobi and I headed out to check out the campus I called home for four years.
We had such a good time there that we didn't make it to the DC United game until halftime. Tobi has season tickets, great seats, and the excitement of soccer at the fifty yard line is palpable, and I'd hate to admit, greatly enhanced by the result of tailgating for five hours beforehand. Makes me want to go to more Timbers games (and tailgate effectively)... anyone down?
After leaving the game, we headed over to Adams Morgan to check out their healthy bar scene. Tobi has tons of hotel points from business travel, and had booked a Hilton on Connecticut Ave to open up the night's possibilities. We walked to Adams Morgan looking sharp and feeling fine, and wandered into the first bar of the night, The Asylum.
I had forgotten about the great local music scene in DC. We were treated to a good tap selection, accompanied by the energetic hip hop stylings of Rosetta Stoned. Rocking the little bar's dozen patrons, they may have well been playing the 9:30 Club. Jumping off chairs, walking on the booth benches, screaming out into the night. The perfect start to the night, and a great reminder of the coolness of DC localism that I had long forgotten.
The quality of the night steadily declined from that point on, as I was completely unprepared for the competition Tobi and I would face at the bars. Any attempt at conversation or respect was overshadowed by the dozens of alpha males who didn't hesitate to grind and grunt, scaring off all the fish before anyone could get the slightest nibble. The bars steadily became more and more crowded (what happened to fire codes?), harder to talk (how am I supposed to be a good listener if I can't hear her?), harder to think, harder (almost impossible) to even buy a drink ($10 a pop!). As the night wore on, it became clear that bar hopping was not for me, and that no matter how many times I hear Bon Jovi, no matter how loudly the drunk bachelorette party sings along with the chorus of Livin' On A Prayer, it will always... always affect me like a cold shower. No man should have to face such soul strain.
As a DJ, it can be tough to go out. There's little worse than dancing with a great girl to a great song (the planets and your hips aligning, you can almost feel world peace being achieved), then enduring a bad mix into a song so poorly selected that all the ladies in the room stand on the dance floor tossing confused eyebrows at each other... trying desperately to recover and find the beat. Buddy, if you can't make a floor full of women dance, there's something very wrong. Pick a Backstreet Boy's solo album and put it on random play, whatever, just make it happen!
I would be cheating the city I call home if I didn't shout out to Portland night spots immediately. Consistent quality, innovative yet highly danceable tunes, friendly communal atmosphere, and virtually Bon Jovi-free. I've got to leave a little room for the possibility that I simply haven't found the comparable spots in DC, that I could find crap DJs in Portland if I tried a little, that night spots in DC are more plentiful and therefore average a lower quality, but every time I approach things from a new angle, I love PDX more.
...obligatory shout out to Soul Stew at the Goodfoot on Fridays! Now that's what I'm talking about....
It's Not The Heat...
"Party cloudy skies, temperature is currently 75 degrees"
Clad in wool, wind/rain shell, and scarf, I thought I must have heard the pilot wrong as we touched down at BWI. The look on my father's face when he first saw my ensemble told me I hadn't.
It's late October, and my friends are wearing shorts and sandals. I can barely breathe, I'm sweating but no fan can cool me off. It's definitely... the humidity. If you've ever lived near or in the Southeastern United States, you are probably nodding your head right now. Sweating, when sweating cannot cool you down, is a feeling of helplessness that only we can understand. Evaporation is why we sweat, it's what keeps us cool. Without evaporation our natural cooling system simply breaks down.
I'd like to believe that it's the same as when I left, but the temperature of the ocean in October reminds me that it's not a localized phenomenon, it's not the same as it used to be. The Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of Maryland, in late October, is 74 degrees. Whatever change happens to our climate, if any, should not be so dramatic as to be detectable by a human within the span of a decade. It's the kind of thing you can't wrap your mind around without getting sad/nervous/angry/scared, but from this point on in my trip, for everyone's sake...
I'm thinking nothing but happy thoughts :)
Clad in wool, wind/rain shell, and scarf, I thought I must have heard the pilot wrong as we touched down at BWI. The look on my father's face when he first saw my ensemble told me I hadn't.
It's late October, and my friends are wearing shorts and sandals. I can barely breathe, I'm sweating but no fan can cool me off. It's definitely... the humidity. If you've ever lived near or in the Southeastern United States, you are probably nodding your head right now. Sweating, when sweating cannot cool you down, is a feeling of helplessness that only we can understand. Evaporation is why we sweat, it's what keeps us cool. Without evaporation our natural cooling system simply breaks down.
I'd like to believe that it's the same as when I left, but the temperature of the ocean in October reminds me that it's not a localized phenomenon, it's not the same as it used to be. The Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of Maryland, in late October, is 74 degrees. Whatever change happens to our climate, if any, should not be so dramatic as to be detectable by a human within the span of a decade. It's the kind of thing you can't wrap your mind around without getting sad/nervous/angry/scared, but from this point on in my trip, for everyone's sake...
I'm thinking nothing but happy thoughts :)
Return to the OC
It had been three years since I'd been to Ocean City, the beach where I spent every summer of my life. My family had me prepared for the worst: high rises, neon signs, endless development... a veritable Atlantic City.
The city always had a certain charm, a large part of it feeling very undeveloped and quaint. You could still feel the first half of this century in its downtown hotels, storefronts, and shanties, even the video arcades headlined by P.T. Barnum style marquees. Despite containing the latest in video entertainment technology, you could still play a game of skeeball where the score was kept by numbers printed on mechanically-flipped cards.
Thankfully, my parents' opinion had been somewhat skewed by the rapid development around their condo on 64th street. The buildings to their left and right, as well as three small beachfront cottages (over which we still had an ocean view from our back porch until this year) had been demolished and rebuilt as high rises since I'd visited. Most of the other development was either localized to a few city block-sized gaudy expanses, or to the addition of high impact colored outdoor video signage to nearly every restaurant.
I hopped on an old one speed bike that my folks acquired for free two decades ago and tried to see how far I could go. Heading South from 64th street, the rain and wind held off as I darted through the alleyways, until I reached the Northern tip of the boardwalk at 27th street. At that point, it did not feel as though I was meant to go any further. The wind pelted me with rain needles, a few of them blinding me as they crashed into my pupils. After fighting for a few minutes, I realized I had traveled ten blocks, and I'd regret not reaching the Inlet... the liquid border between Maryland and Virginia that was carved out of the coast by a hurricane over a hundred years ago and sat ten blocks South of first street.
The most surprising part of my journey on the boardwalk was the amount of other bikes around me. Four person human powered vehicles, beach cruisers, recumbent trikes, and the occasional mountain bike were also braving the onslaught. I flew past the lot, and the trolley, darting around tourists and through families, patiently racing toward my destination. Before I knew it, I had passed the Lankford, where I spent summers until I was eight, without remembering to look up.
The downtown boardwalk and pier area had hardly changed, and it was comforting to know that the real estate boom hadn't affected the character (or lack thereof) of the city much. I could still relive my childhood summers after all. With the wind at my back, I flew faster Northward on the return journey, blazing the almost forty blocks to the end of the boardwalk in record time.
The day and a half I spent in Ocean City was punctuated by Thrasher's french fries, Dumser's Dairyland handmade ice cream, arcade games, surf shops, and a dip in the ocean that was disturbingly... disturbingly warm (74 degrees!)... but more on the temperature later.
The city always had a certain charm, a large part of it feeling very undeveloped and quaint. You could still feel the first half of this century in its downtown hotels, storefronts, and shanties, even the video arcades headlined by P.T. Barnum style marquees. Despite containing the latest in video entertainment technology, you could still play a game of skeeball where the score was kept by numbers printed on mechanically-flipped cards.
Thankfully, my parents' opinion had been somewhat skewed by the rapid development around their condo on 64th street. The buildings to their left and right, as well as three small beachfront cottages (over which we still had an ocean view from our back porch until this year) had been demolished and rebuilt as high rises since I'd visited. Most of the other development was either localized to a few city block-sized gaudy expanses, or to the addition of high impact colored outdoor video signage to nearly every restaurant.
I hopped on an old one speed bike that my folks acquired for free two decades ago and tried to see how far I could go. Heading South from 64th street, the rain and wind held off as I darted through the alleyways, until I reached the Northern tip of the boardwalk at 27th street. At that point, it did not feel as though I was meant to go any further. The wind pelted me with rain needles, a few of them blinding me as they crashed into my pupils. After fighting for a few minutes, I realized I had traveled ten blocks, and I'd regret not reaching the Inlet... the liquid border between Maryland and Virginia that was carved out of the coast by a hurricane over a hundred years ago and sat ten blocks South of first street.
The most surprising part of my journey on the boardwalk was the amount of other bikes around me. Four person human powered vehicles, beach cruisers, recumbent trikes, and the occasional mountain bike were also braving the onslaught. I flew past the lot, and the trolley, darting around tourists and through families, patiently racing toward my destination. Before I knew it, I had passed the Lankford, where I spent summers until I was eight, without remembering to look up.
The downtown boardwalk and pier area had hardly changed, and it was comforting to know that the real estate boom hadn't affected the character (or lack thereof) of the city much. I could still relive my childhood summers after all. With the wind at my back, I flew faster Northward on the return journey, blazing the almost forty blocks to the end of the boardwalk in record time.
The day and a half I spent in Ocean City was punctuated by Thrasher's french fries, Dumser's Dairyland handmade ice cream, arcade games, surf shops, and a dip in the ocean that was disturbingly... disturbingly warm (74 degrees!)... but more on the temperature later.
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