On being cool

As you have probably gathered thus far, I am extremely uncool. I mean, I wear clothes from Old Navy. I secretly watch USA network shows. I had to google YOLO and SMH because I had no idea what they meant. I do not own a motorcycle jacket. Wait - are those still a thing? Were they ever? You see, I have no idea because I have never, ever been cool. However, because I go to school with a bunch of nerds, I sometimes forget just how uncool I am. I drink obscure craft beer! I listen to Maxïmo Park and Arctic Monkeys! I wear fun glasses! …you know what they say about the land of the blind and the one eyed man.

Well, the guy I am dating is not uncool. He has tattooed friends and a vinyl collection and he used to run an indie music site. He often says things like, "Oh, guess what? The band 'Pangolins Wearing Ascots' are coming to town! Oh, you know them, they used to be called 'Dumpster Underground' and, before that, 'Wild Candle Wax"? Their lead singer is also in 'Burnt Hummus Patrol' but she doesn't sing, she plays the sitar? We should totally go see them." (Note: When this happens, I start nodding slowly while making my thinking face, and then I pretend I know who he's talking about somewhere between Dumpster Underground and Wild Candle Wax, while silently praying that he won't demand any sort of verification that I actually know who they are. It usually works gangbusters.*)

Anyway, a couple of months ago, I went to a show with him and some of his friends. It was at a venue I hadn't heard of before. Turns out I hadn't heard of it because it's an underground club. Uncool people like me are only aware that such places exist when we see a story about the cops shutting one of them down in the local paper. I guess I probably should have known that it wouldn't be the place for an uncool square like me when the initial email confirmation came in. After the cursory "thank you for purchasing tickets" portion, the remainder of the email repeatedly stated that we could not share the location of the venue with anyone and that we were expressly forbidden from posting anything about it on Twitter, Facebook, or other social media sites (whoops). The whole thing read like a ridiculous 1930s speakeasy fantasy, when, in reality, they probably just haven't filed for the proper permits and didn't want to get caught. I actually rolled my eyes at the pure hipster douchiness of the email. I was all alone when I saw it, but I rolled my eyes anyway because someone needed to.

The night of the show, we arrived at the venue (located - obviously unsurprisingly - on a bad street, in a bad neighborhood) and were greeted by two guys standing amidst the cracked plaster and exposed-wires that made up the ground floor entrance. Pointing toward a darkened stairwell, they told us to walk up to the 6th floor. So we trudged up a dimly lit stairwell that was littered with broken glass and cigarette butts, passing groups of hipsters clustered around the shattered stairwell windows as they smoked their self-rolled cigarettes along the way. Inside the venue it was inexplicably about 100 degrees Fahrenheit, despite the fact that it was 20 degrees outside that night. Naturally, they couldn't open the windows because that would attract attention, so everyone was just trying to pretend that the place wasn't turning into a steaming pool of sludgy hipster sweat (Oh but it was. Trust me).

The crowd was mostly a bunch of 20-something art students. Girls with partially shaved asymmetric haircuts wearing homemade t-shirts and no shoes. Boys in skinny jeans and jaunty hats with overgrown beards. I ended up standing next to a guy wearing oversized glasses, cuffed pleated sweatpants (those are a thing?), and a vintage jean jacket. He actually had a perm. The best (read: worst) part? He was drinking whiskey out of a handmade ceramic mug that he'd brought with him. Sigh.

After watching the opening band - a bunch of stoners playing a variety of percussion instruments while a girl hiding behind a pillar moaned incoherently into a microphone - we got to see a second opener, this time a trio fronted by a wild-eyed sociopathic-looking man child who went back and forth in a nightmarish combination of Rat Pack-style singing ("Flyyyy meeee to the moon...") and scream-o. Seriously, one song consisted entirely of him screaming, "PANAMA JACK, WHAT! PANAMA JACK, WHAT! PANAMA JACK, WHAT!" into the microphone. It was actually sort of amazing in a truly terrible way. God I wish I had it on video.

Eventually, the band we'd gone there to see finally came on and they were great. Amazing, weird and wonderful. Sadly, toward the end of their set we were so sweat-soaked and dehydrated from the heat that we decided to sneak out before the encore. As we were heading to the stairs, I caught the 20-somethings at the ticket table looking at me with vague pity, probably at what a poor, sweat-soaked, uncool old person I am.

But you know what? I think I am actually perfectly fine with being uncool.

And honestly, if being cool means wearing pleated sweatpants or - worse - going to shows where the only bathroom in the venue looks like this (below), does anyone actually want to be cool?

After seeing the rest of the (probably technically condemned) building,
I guess I shouldn't have been surprised that the bathroom would look like a scene from a horror movie.

Yeah… I didn't think so.
:)



* Using terms like gangbusters is another way in which I am uncool.