Tampa Bay Street Team

Creative Loafing’s staff celebrated the weekend early on Wednesday at Gators on Treasure Island. We had just finished our much anticipated Summer Guide issue and the staff had plenty of reasons to party. We munched on vats of hot wings, trays of mini Cubans, and fish spread (whatever that means). I attempted to rally the scattering of patrons and tourists eating on the deck to join us by offering them free Frisbees, but most gave lame excuses like, “I have to work in the morning,” or “I don’t do parties.” Luckily for the CL staff, we were drinking with our boss, which meant the more beers we bought her, the later we could come to work the next day. But even if our publisher wasn’t there, I couldn’t imagine a better way to spend a Wednesday night, eating fried food, drinking beer, watching the sun sink into the water and, if you’re like me, hiding behind giant sunglasses to stare at the legs of the waitstaff who scampered about in short-shorts.

The next night, we were back at Crowbar in Ybor City.

“This is not your normal hip-hop crowd,” Crowbar’s doorman Wolf told a white-collar security guard Thursday. “It’s going to be a nice, relaxed night. These kids came to hear some intelligent shit that flows nice.”

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Preventing waste was a major theme at the Pinellas Living Green Expo, held last Saturday and Sunday at the Harborview Center in downtown Clearwater. Many of the vendors featured home construction materials that reduce energy waste: thicker windows, foam insulation and low-flow toilets. The current dilemma with going green is that one must purchase more products to be green, and in doing so, generate more waste. This is just a consequence of the movement, being relatively new, and one that is still something of a status symbol for those who can afford to buy hybrids or to build new “green” houses. With this said, I was surprised that the majority of expo attendants were regular folks looking for tricks to save money on their energy bills. There were a few hardcore idealists of the dreadlocked and patchouli variety, aging hippies with gray pony tails, and yuppies uniformed in bicycling spandex, helmets, sunglasses and fanny packs, but they were the minority.

  

One major exception to this good natured crowd were the prize-whoring elderly, dead set on loading free garb in their complementary cloth, grocery sacks. Those who were less agile (or couldn’t simply swipe promo items and run) delivered long oratories about how they loved CL (mostly because it is free) as their justification for leaving the booth with five promotional ball point pens. At times I felt like I was in a Charlie Brown comic strip, sitting at a booth labeled, “the doctor is in.” More than a few told me dramatic sob stories before explaining why they needed an entire stack of temporary tattoos. I tried to scare them away with CL’s latest cover, featuring a pair of pink bumper-balls hanging below a license plate that read “Nutz 2 U,” but they were too blinded by the promise of prizes to be swayed by nuts.

“I need four because I have four grandchildren,” a granny in an electric scooter told me as she took four miniature beer mugs from my table.

Did she even have grandchildren? Would she use the mugs to sort her collection of sugar packets from various fast food joints despite the fact that she’s diabetic? I can’t begin to fathom how excited her grandchildren will be next Christmas when they get matching miniature beer mugs from Grandma. What kills me is that these prize-whores horde promo items like treasure, with the intent of passing it on to their relatives. The reality is that when these pack rats keel over, their heirs will just throw away all the coffee cans full of free pencils and drawers full of stress balls. Perhaps some sort of entrance fee, say the price of bus fare or a pint of blood, would discourage these prize hunters. Or perhaps next year I could set up a booth on how to keep your grandparents from collecting promo garb like Halloween candy. Maybe I’ll give away handcuffs or tazers.

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“After the drum circle, everybody head to the back for cupcakes,” Joran yelled from the stage Sunday at Skipper’s Smokehouse. [ed. Joran Oppelt is the marketing and promotions director for Creative Loafing]

He wasn’t joking, nor was he stoned and yelling to a bunch of munchy-hungry hippies. He was addressing the kids and parents at Alchemy Fest 3, an amplified birthday bash for Joran’s daughter, Alchemy. Although the fest was child-friendly, it wasn’t that different from a 21-and-up show. Well, aside from the coloring stations, the diaper changing booth, the mattress for midday naps, the cardboard box built in the shape of a VW van for participants to paint and barefoot girls with black soles chasing bubbles, balloons and boys.

  

So maybe it was very different from an adult concert, but adult shows could learn a thing or two from a kid-themed concert, i.e. complimentary juice boxes and cardboard party hats. And to be honest, kids aren’t that much different from drunks — slurring, slobbering, wearing mischievous grins and ready to laugh or cry at any moment. One little girl stumbled into me as she danced wildly, then pulled me onto the dance floor before even asking my name.

Another babbled to me, “What you doing here? You live up there. The sky.”

To which my only response was, “Yeah, sure, guy.”

One huge benefit of children over drunks is there is no danger of them beating you up for being a smart ass, and you can pick them up and tickle them if they get out of hand.

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Have Gun, Will Travel are not nearly as threatening as their name implies, but they are more than ready to hit the road for little more than the chance to do what they do best.

“We just need enough to pay for gas,” frontman Matt Burke reportedly said when asked to play a fan’s wedding.

Soon to be one of the most notorious alt-country bands around, these hired guns deliver clap-along, knee-slapping rhythms layered with Dylan-inspired lyrics that navigate a world of metaphor and meaning. Among the usual weaponry of acoustic guitar, drums and bass, the band’s arsenal also includes viola, harmonicas, lap steel and banjo.

  

HGWT’s release party for their new CD, Casting Shadows Tall as Giants, kicked off Friday night at Crowbar with support from Nessie, The Diviners and Orlando’s Baron Von Bear.

As Baron Von Bear played, couples romantically slow danced to the group’s lite-rock sound — at least as romantically as a couple can dance while still clutching their cans of PBR.

When Nessie took the stage, a fan told me that she’d been watching the band for 10 years.

“Jesus that makes me feel old,” she said, contemplating the second half of her drink.

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Two tapped kegs float in my bathtub, a three-boobed alien blow-up doll slowly deflates on the floor of my efficiency, enough squirt guns to terrorize a soccer team are piled in my dish rack, half of a birthday cake is melting to my stove, a space princess stripped to her silver skirt and furry moonboots is blanketed in my hand-bedazzled flight-suit, and no matter how hard I scrub, I keep finding flecks of glitter on me. These are the spoils one accrues after hosting a party for a hundred astronauts and aquanauts.

  

Secretly, I’ve always wanted a surprise party. I’ve spent most of my birthdays hoping to walk into a room full of lovely women yelling surprise, someone to crown me with a tiara so everyone knows it’s my day and enough beer to sink a ship. I’ve spent just as many years being disappointed. The only time I’ll ever have a surprise party is when I’m old and too senile to remember it’s my birthday. Lesson learned: If you want to have a kick-ass birthday party, you have to throw it yourself.

So that’s what I did. I was overwhelmed by all the prominent space and sea adventurers who showed up: Dr. Spock, Poseidon, Kuato from Total Recall, a crew of pirates, a parrot fish, a clown fish, an intergalactic hitchhiker, a merman with a starfish bra, a space cowboy and more space sluts than you’ll find at an interstellar truck-stop. Those who were too cool to dress up had the option of buying uniforms printed by Blue Lucy which read, “Team Zissou: Unpaid Intern” or being shot with squirt guns the entire night.

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“Let the other side have the churches. We got the bars,” said Curt Johnson, an organizer for the Young Democrats, who were looking for converts Friday night at Crowbar where Orlando’s The Oaks were releasing their new CD, Songs for Waiting.

 

Johnson argued for mixing politics with drinking just as the Right had married politics with religion. It was clever, considering that churches and bars often serve the same function, though for two different sides of life. This is why a town is not a town without at least one church and one bar. Both act as meeting places for the like-minded. Just as many people meet their spouses in bars as in churches. Weddings often begin in churches and end with an open bar. Both serve as sanctuaries where souls go to relieve the stress of a rough work week. Above all, both utilize the cathartic power of song — the meaning of which is often lost in rhetoric while the emotions of the crowd or congregation are whipped up and dictated by a pounding rhythm.

Acho Brother did just this by opening the night with fast-paced, Latin-infused tunes that alternated between English and Spanish. With drums and an acoustic guitar, the duo produced as much sound as a six-piece band.

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I’m not sure how, but I found myself listening to two girls describe how they got kicked out of a strip club for repeatedly making out with each other and trying to climb on stage. I wasn’t used to conversing with classy girls in sun dresses about their first lap dances or how one recently received an expandable stripper pole for her birthday. I thought the only time I’d ever hear talk like this was over the phone for $5 a minute. Far from trashy, these gals were career women who liked to let loose after hours, and they were not alone. Friday night found them at Skipper’s, packed in with other young professionals partying like they were back in college to the grooves of MIGGS and the Chris McCarty Band.

  

The same feisty crowd showed up the next night at the Cuban Club for CL’s Sensory Overload. Walking in, I joined a stream of people who were lost in a literal labyrinth of multisensory art. Performers from Hat Trick Theatre Productions were set up in one alcove tap dancing, juggling, and doing a bit of magic. An installation by Calavera Comics featured two masked Mexican wrestler cutouts in a scaled-down wrestling ring. One of them stood with a hole between his legs where the other wrestler’s head should have been as partygoers took turns inserting their faces and posing for pictures. Marina Williams handed out 3D glasses, further disorienting patrons before they even made it to the bar. 3D glasses or none, Marina stood out like a piece of living art: patent leather red boots with more zippers than a Michael Jackson jacket, horn-rimmed glasses lined with rhinestones, and a sparkly fanny-pack.

Just outside the maze, on the courtyard stage, Tres Bien set things in motion with the swagger and sound of a headlining act. I wanted to stay for the whole set, but duty called, and I was off to cover the Polished Palate International Rum Festival. The fourth floor was a tangle of bodies stumbling and scrambling between tables lined with mini-shots of top-shelf and midrange rum. The promoters all tried to coax me into smelling and swishing their rum like this was a wine tasting. I wasn’t used to rum that didn’t burn like I was swallowing turpentine, but I still didn’t have the self-control to nurse the tiny shot glasses. Read the rest of this entry »

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