My First Columbus Gallery Hop

So I’m sitting here eating instant Thai noodles. Sour soup if you must know. It’s gone cold as I now chew the very last spicy sour bite. Small noodle fragments and the undissolved mix makes for a grainy gritty little bitty bits mouthful. It’s like what you would find at the bottom of a dish strainer but this thought doesn’t occur to me until well after I’ve swallowed. The soup was cold because I’d stopped to type up my dreams from last night. Mere fragments not worth sharing… shit dream blog might be really cool… Anyway I dreamed only of people from Columbus last night. Two coworkers and then Badtz who ran diversion on security saving me from getting busted. I will note that having dreams only of Columbus might mark for me a certain level of settling in. I have several drawings on my wall now as well. I’d go as far as to say that things are starting to come along.

It’s been an eventful week and I’m not sure what event I first want to tell you about…

I guess I’ve decided to go backwards in time. I shall start from last night and blog events one by one until I reach wherever I left off before. I used to be able to run backwards as a kid. I still could I bet…

I had been told that gallery hop is like the biggest night a month for all of the Short North on High street so I knew work would be busy. I was scheduled to be hostess. I was looking forward to being able to dress cute and then walk down to the Yakuza Heart Attack show at Kafe Kerouac this night.

So I wore my pink dress with purple and white kinda ziggy horizontal pattern. I wore it with my pale pink fishnets because this is a look that has been complimented on before. I wore blue knit flats and my pink umbrella tucked into my backpack straps. I like to be reminded of carrying a sword. Anyway so I gave myself a good hour before work to wander around and observe what I could of Gallery Hop. Unfortunately most of the people and stuff appears later in the evening. I looked at a few jewelry tables and passed a few classy folks dressed in their finest.

Some guy stopped me and asked for my picture. He said it was for his Fashion blog Hip2bsquare or something like that with the number 2 in it… I just spent about half an hour looking for his blog and failed… fuck the world. Someone find it for me?

Anyway that made me feel cool and happy so I actually went into work with a good mood.

And I talked to coworkers and all was good.

But then we got busy. Particularly the bar.

There was a messed up to go order. The stressed out bartender was yelled at. She in turn blamed me. The owner was screaming from the kitchen. It reminded me of Gordon Ramsey from what I’ve seen of his show in passing.

I’m not easily upset but I’ll say annoyed because this really was not my fault.

Anyway as I stood at the hostess podium I was able to people watch and boy was there an interesting crowd this day.

I saw a group of people with faces painted like animals. They held a sign promoting or protesting something. The guy was painted like a zebra there was a girl cheetah and I’m not sure on the third I feel like she may have just had ears on.

I saw a lot of fancy nice designer clothes. I saw a million well put together outfits. I saw yuppies and yacht owners.  

I saw homeless and stinky.

I saw tourists walking around with wide eyes and cameras at the ready.

I saw families. I saw couples of every possible sort. I saw a million dogs many of them small and so damn cute. Apparently one of the custard shops on High Street was giving out free plain custard with a dog bone to any dog for free this day.

I saw furies. I saw a bunch of full on dog costume people with masks, tails and collars. There were actually a lot of them.

I saw people and children wearing fairy wings.

I saw Drag Queens in beautiful gowns.

I saw organizations which had all their people wearing the same color shirt. Some slogan was printed across I’m sure it said who they were and what they did but I never saw close enough to know what that was. There were at least three different shirts out there a dozen or so being within each pack.

I saw a large group of girls dressed as airline stewardesses. I believe they were handing out flyers for something maybe?

I saw a group of five skate boarders all ride down the street. In unison they kicked off down the road at full speed basically keeping up with the cars who were trapped in the busy High Street stop and go.

And all along the sidewalk you could find tables selling local art, handcrafted jewelry, printed T-shirts, organic goods and more. Many corners featured fantastic musicians playing for money and dressed in their own cool ass style.

When I was off I was off. YHA was set to play at 10:30 at Kafe Kerouac which is on High Street. I walked as fast as I could. I dodged and bobbed in-between the sea of human beings. I squeezed through and I excused. I hurried and scurried. I ran across green light roads. All the while I ignored the pain in my legs and feet.

I kept thinking to myself it should be coming up here soon just after this building maybe. But it didn’t so on I kept going. The road seemed to go on and on, even as the crowd had thinned and I was officially in OSU turf.

On and on my weary feet carried me at forced full speed. I genuinely broke a sweat before I finally reached my destination. I knew it was well after 10:30 so when I saw Kawaii I immediately asked him if I had missed his show. He told me no and stayed a bit to talk to me. He said that he’d talked to Badtz and she said we were both going like nothing was wrong? I was confused by this but she wasn’t there anyway.

They played shortly after I got there. Three girls walked in and they seemed to be with the Baker boys. This click of girls all had the same long curly hair even the one who had hers up. They all wore cool probably designer clothes. They walked together in a tight little group. I couldn’t help but imagine a doll machine that sends out the same exact toy only available in different colors. These girls gave me a dirty look that was far from friendly. I thought to myself; “well that’s not how you help your boyfriends band gain a fan base.” I could be wrong of course. I’d like to be wrong, however this was my first impression and impression was indeed made.

I stood awkwardly in the back all by myself and listened to the music. I enjoyed it as I genuinely like Yakuza Heart Attack. Midway through the performance I saw Batdz. She waved at me and said hi. I was really quite relieved and happy to see her. I’d been feeling bad and guilty since she texted me. (I honestly still don’t know why she was mad at me.) She had entered with some guy I’ve never met. I assumed he had given her a ride. He seemed nice enough he asked me where I work and stuff.

After the show I realized that I knew one of the guys up front. Kirk had been in the band The Sailing which had been at one point been called Fatum. This is directly where I got the name Fatum from for the fantasy world in my Betty Black series. When I initially wrote those books I had listened to their music and been going to their shows quite regularly. Greencoat gave me permission to use their former name years and years ago. I never directly asked any of the other guys but if they were to read the entire series I like to think they would find it to be a ridiculous epic epic to their liking. (Aw man I wanna go put up the next chapter now…)

Anyway we actually had a really good fairly long conversation. We spoke of what mutual friends are up to and of course the other former band mates. We spoke of music and our own projects. I told him about MEP and he said for me to send him a link. We spoke of clicks which is funny because of my observations on the Baker boys girls. I can understand female territory tension but perhaps you should run some investigation before you run defense like that. The younger of the Bakers waved at me in passing and that is the only acknowledgement I relieved period.

Kawaii and his lady Tinkerbelle came up to join me and Kirk. (I call her Tink because she wears a bun directly on the top of her head. She’s cute and short so she fits Tink quite well to me. She’s a little quiet so I really hope she doesn’t hate me and the nickname. I hope maybe she thinks it’s cool.) He told me that just before I got there the first band had been this big Buddhist statement piece band. One of the dudes was wearing a blue sheet toga style. Apparently the bassist had his long pony tail of hair cut off with kitchen scissors mid show. Kawaii said that really tripped him out. After mingling with those guys for a bit I joined Badtz inside. We found the long black fresh cut hair and we found fresh real flowers all of which was scattered on the floor.

Badtz started talking to the between music DJ guy who seems cool. They have music in common. I saw the guy who got his hair cut walk up to Kawaii and he was talking about how cool it was to have found his music and found his existence. He talked about not being into attachment and he had two children one in each arm. One toddler one infant. He seemed really cool and I admired his existence. I was way too intimidated to attempt to talk Buddhism with him.

I saw a flyer on the table talking about a Buddhist guy who was near enlightenment who would do miracle feats like a 131 day fast and predict numbers things like that. The paper said on the back that if you wanted to follow this guy just give them your email credit card number and social security number. I both hoped this wasn’t the same guy and hoped this wasn’t people messing with this guy. Maybe this guy was a follower of that guy? The corruptions of religions really pissed me off :/

Anyway it turns out that Badtz did not come with that guy. She had ridden up on her bike all by herself. She just happened to have known him. She offered to walk with me all the way back to First Street where I parked my car. I greatly appreciated this as actually. I really wasn’t looking forward to the walk back and I was really happy to have my friend again.

We talked and walked. She got a free gyro from a nice college guy who was in front of the line.

Some drunk boys tried to talk to us one of them even grabbed my shoulders. Badtz yelled at them and said rude things but it worked to lose them quickly. I didn’t really say anything. My reaction tends to be more to slip away quietly or run.

As we crossed the street later on we came across the cool couple from my work. They seemed as though they may be a little buzzed and we took a moment to bitch about the situation that went down today. The girl who was bartending tends to be one to put the blame on others. She may have gotten people fired in the past and that shit aint cool. I must watch out for her.

Badtz and I parted at First Street but on my way to the highway I passed her riding her bike. I waved I don’t think she saw me.

She still has me blocked on facebook. I don’t feel sad or guilty this time because I think she must genuinely do this to people for no reason a lot. That’s ok I guess. Eventually I’ll make some other friends and I can hang with them when she is having an off day or if she doesn’t want to do something. I need to hang with Mel-dog too. We haven’t hung out at all since I’ve moved. We are due for the library… and fuck I forgot free Sunday art museum again!

That band!