R.I.P., Crocodile Cafe

Warning: In this post, I will be strolling down memory lane. If you are over 45 or under 30, or don't listen to music or don't live in Seattle, you may find no relevance here. Unless you are a younger parent still wondering how not to become culturally pointless. Then you might relate.

Last night I met my friends Sara, Maria and Sharon for drinks at a new restaurant on Pike Street called Quinn. The surrounding blocks have changed considerably over the past few years. In fact, the place that Quinn now occupies used to be a crappy Mexican restaurant, which has always been rumoured to be so bad that I never felt the urge to eat there, no matter how young, drunk or hungry I was. Quinn is a huge improvement. In fact, most of the changes in that area are an improvement.



Sharon and I continued our quest for more whiskey at the Moe Bar down the block. Moe is part of the music club Neumo's, which first opened in 1994 as Moe. (Between now and then it had a run as an electronic-focused gay boy bar, outside of which I met a sweet cross-dresser named Greg who took me to a drag show at another place that no longer exists.) Sharon and I sat in the bar and recounted the shows we had seen in the club when it was Moe: Pavement. Tricky. Mercury Rev. Modest Mouse. Spiritualized. Superchunk. Will Oldham. Silkworm. The Folk Implosion. 5ive Style. Blues Explosion. Mike Watt.



"I must have seen fifty shows here," Sharon said. Or maybe I said. As I mentioned, there was whiskey.



So it was apropos to open the newspaper today and read that the Crocodile Cafe, Seattle music scene institution for fifteen years, abruptly shut down on Monday. No warning, no reasons given, just shut.

As if I didn't already feel a hundred years old. Now the Crocodile is gone. Like the old Moe, it'll be a memory in the minds of oldsters like me.

Here are some memories I have from the Crocodile: The owners of a coffee house where I worked in 1994 had started their business out of the Crocodile when it first opened, with an espresso cart in the little tiki hut by the front entrance. They were insane. I worked under them for a year in their crappy Queen Anne coffee house with commercial carpeting and lawn furniture and some friend's stuffed animal collection as decoration. They had a newborn and while he was cute and all, I did not have the slightest sympathy for the mother and nothing but disdain for the father. (He slept in a van outside the shop. One of my duties was to rap on the van door at 6:30 after I opened the shop up for the day. Then he would climb out, come in, sit at the bar, and wait for me to make his doppio macchiato.)


I also remember taking my dad, step mom, and cousin to the Crocodile. My cousin was in town and wanted to check out the music scene. Where else would I take him? We saw Mavis Piggot and Modest Mouse. Modest Mouse were just starting to get good shows around town then. They were fresh as daisies, cute as buttons. They rocked us hard. At one point I looked over at my dad, who was leaning sideways from the waist, head cocked, beer bottle aloft, trying to stay upright. My boyfriend and I put him and my step mom into a taxi and said goodbye. We stayed for the rest of the show.

One of my first dates with my husband was at the Crocodile. We saw Lois, an old favorite of mine from Olympia, and Beth Orton. We waited for an hour between sets but it was worth it. Beth Orton and her band squeezed themselves and their instruments onto the smallish stage and blew us away with their beauty.

I saw: Low, G Love and Special Sauce, Unrest, The Band that Made Milwaukee Famous, Joel RL Phelps, Laika, Juno, Smog, Sleater-Kinney, Stereolab. I saw terrible shows that I had to wait too long for, standing in a stuffy, smoky room holding a plastic beer cup. Once, I was hit on, in a very nice way, by two men visiting from Scotland. I was introduced to the writer Rebecca Brown there. I talked to the drummer from Juno there. I saw magic happen onstage there.

I never actually liked being there, though. Something about the feng shui, or the vibe, or the confusing Habitrail-like layout, put me off. If I wanted to drink or eat, I'd go somewhere else.

So I don't actually despair at the closing of the Crocodile. Especially now the the Showbox is hosting such great bands, and Moe is reopened as Neumo's. My life is full of other things now besides hanging out and watching bands, but I am glad there are still good places to see non-mainstream music that aren't total dumps. (Anyone remember The Off Ramp? RCKNDY? Enough said.)

My last memory of the Crocodile: Driving my son's hipster babysitter down there one night after she finished her shift at my house.

"Do you know where it is?" she asked. I shot her a look. "OK," she said as we approached Blanchard on Third. "You can just drop me here."

"It's ok, I don't mind taking you all the way there," I chirped. It was late. She was alone. It was Belltown.

"No, really," she said. "Here is fine."

You embarrassing old person with baby seats in the back of your Saab.

The Purple Lady

As I rode the bus through Capitol Hill to downtown for my jury duty the other day, I felt a sense of joy and calm. I don't know why; maybe it had to do with the divine wisdom of my iPod, which shuffled through fabulous song after fabulous song. Maybe it had to do with the fact that I was getting out of the house and away from regular life for a whole day. Maybe it was because I was bobbing my head to the music and closing my eyes and smiling when a particularly good crash of guitars filled my ears. Whatever. I rode the feeling.


That day people seemed especially irritated to be awake and pushing past other people to find a seat on the crowded, steamy bus. I felt for them. Some of them were probably running late. A few might have been hungover, or wrestling with sadness. You just never know with people. In any case, I turned my attention to my music and folks walking down the street. The bus stopped in front of Seattle Central Community College and I looked across Pine to the loose congregation standing in front of the Egyptian Theater.



People were looking down the hill, toward the bus that may be coming any second. Many wore black. They clutched umbrellas and laptop cases. They looked worried and annoyed. One lady, a middle aged woman with dark brown hair stood out for me. She was wrapped in a big purple sweater/shawl thing, and her expression said that she was glad to be here. She looked peaceful. She looked happy.


She looked so peaceful and happy that I smiled. I continued to look at her, drink her in. Then I beamed her a bunch of love.

Then another good song came on.

It was a good morning.

I told my husband about the Purple Lady over dinner that night and he smirked. To illustrate my feeling further, hoping he might believe these kinds of moments are more than hormonal surges, I recounted a story my teacher has told about such a moment. As she tells it, she drove past a garbage truck one morning and was inexplicably overcome with gratitude. He laughed.

I guess not everyone experiences these moments of unaccounted-for grace.

Try it today. See what happens.

To Keep Your Side of the Deal

In Seattle, a huge music and arts festival called Bumbershoot heralds the end of summer every Labor Day weekend. It takes over the sprawling facility surrounding the Space Needle and draws 40,000 people per day for three days.

When I was childless, whether or not I should go to Bumbershoot was a no-brainer. I took the bus, paid my money, and stayed all day. I'd hear six or seven bands. I'd drop in on some book readings. I'd wander through the galleries. When I felt like resting, I'd sprawl out on the grass somewhere until I felt like getting up again. I'd come back the next day and repeat.

Everything's different now that I have little kids. If a kid is involved at a big event like this, the time is fractured and focused on food and potty issues. If I go without the family, I'm required to negotiate times and chores with my husband, weigh this activity against other upcoming things I might want to cash in my child care chips for, and shoulder some guilt.

This year the timing wasn't right. It was a busy weekend. I was suffering some kind of mental/physical sickness. It all just seemed like too much of a pain. I decided to forget it.

I was okay with this decision, mostly.

I was okay with it until the last night of the festival, when, while I stirred a pot of Thai curry on the stove at home, a Steve Earle song came over the radio. I rushed to the nearest speaker.

"I love Steve Earle," I sighed to my husband. I turned the volume up, went back to the kitchen, and continued to swoon.

"Never heard of him," said Matt.

"He is a great songwriter. In the 80's he - wait, is this LIVE?"

Matt, sitting in the living room with his laptop, offered to look it up on the KEXP website. "Yep, it's live," he said. "Some private KEXP thing at Bumbershoot."

Motherfucker. I sunk down into a chair beside him. My heart had started to bleed a bit. I got up and turned off the pot of rice. I assembled the kid's quesadillas.

It's okay, I told myself.

We all sat down to dinner. Steve Earle continued to play this intimate show where I was not present. My heart started to bleed more. It was no longer okay.

I dropped my spoon with a clatter. "I really want to go see The Frames and Steve Earle tonight," I blurted.

The bus dumped me at Seattle Center just in time to see The Frames. I nosed my way past casual onlookers into the part of the crowd where people were screaming requests at the band and standing shoulder to shoulder with one another. All I had to carry was my own bag. All I had to listen to was the music. A great tree canopy overhead released a few drying leaves on our heads to memorialize the last day of summer. The sky grew steadily darker.

Glen Hansard, the tall red-headed Irishman capturing our attention onstage, sang about how hard it is to keep your side of the deal. I knew what he meant. I'd been trying all weekend.

Watching Hansard's lanky body jerk and shimmy, hearing him cry "you'll see how hard it can be," gratified about nineteen different desires, and brought to mind the fundemental struggle that is always mine to manage: how do I keep my side of the deal and keep myself at the same time?

Sometimes it can feel as if feeding any need or desire I have will take something away from my babies or husband. It can feel as if wanting to be lost in pure pleasure - like music - is somehow aberrant. This is especially so since my husband and I follow different passions. It feels like if it's purely mine, it can't be good.

I tore myself away to catch Mr. Earle on another stage. He sang of a woman ("Whatsername, wherever the hell she is") who ran wild and disappeared into the sunset on a motorcycle.

I took a cab home, helped with last-minute bedtime water cups and pee-pee trips, and slept beside my domestic husband just like millions of other women were doing that night. I fell asleep thinking about the Whatsername-like woman inside me. She shimmers below the surface most of the time. At times she's so close I think she might take me over. Just noticing her makes me feel aberrant.

Well, I thought, snuggling in for the night, here's one more day she stayed put. Meanwhile, I'm still here keeping my side of the deal.




(Photo by joshc off Frames website. See more here.)

Yoga at Shows

I am a useful person to go to rock shows with. Not only will I drink too much and amuse you, but if you get fatigued by all the standing around, I know Things to make you feel better.

At Silversun Pickups, I did a maneuver on my friend Sara that made her go slack and groan. I stood behind her, bent my knees, grasped the sides of her ribcage, and used my powerful mama arms and legs to lift her spine and decompress her lower back. She did actually groan. Later, when she complained again about her back (because we're getting too old to stand around for hours on end waiting for silly bands to finish whatever they are doing backstage before coming out), I placed my hands on her upper buttocks and squeezed the flesh in toward her sacrum. We've known each other for approximately 57 years, so she didn't mind me touching her butt. Her face brightened. "I feel so much better!" she said.

I learned all this at my prenatal yoga training. I love knowing that I can make someone feel better. Plus, I can make myself feel better.

At The Long Winters, my lower back was killing me. I'd been to the above-mentioned show the night before, and had just done two days of more yoga training. As my great-grandparents used to say, I was tard. I turned to my husband, who is tall and strong and tolerant, and said, "Remember when I was in labor and I hung on you during contractions? Let's do that now." He assumed the position. I faced him, threaded my arms underneath his armpits and up around his shoulders, then let my body hang. I buried my face in his stomach. He stood there and allowed it. Afterwards, a couple about our age snuck sly glances at us. The woman laughed in what appeared to be a knowing way. I bet she was either a mom and knew what I was doing, or she thought I was a tard. I didn't care either way because now I felt much less cranky.

I promise never to do any of this to you unless you ask. You may have to put up with me disappearing into a forward bend every now and then. If I'm there and then suddenly I'm not, just look down. If you are feeling generous, please pull my shirt down over my butt crack. Thanks.

Mexico Diary (Part II)

January 12

There is a relaxed attitude about smoking here, which I, coming from the US, find at first alarming and then incredibly seductive. Wow, I think, noting the clean ashtrays at tables of restaurants and poolside lounges, I could just light up and no one would ask me to leave! I saw a man shepherding his family through an outdoor restaurant with a cigarette in his hand. You just NEVER see anything like this at home anymore. You have this sudden jolt, like, "Hey, he can't…how come no one is…" and then realize no one gives a rip.

This combined with all the drinking we've been doing (yet staying sober, I swear), has been making me desperate for a cigarette. I think about it all the time. I pass a super deli (Cabo's equivalent of a corner store) and think, I could just nip in there and get one.

Finally, this evening after the 24/7 family time came to be a bit much and I saw an opportunity to slough the children for a few minutes, I offered brightly to go in search of swim diapers for Audrey.

Matt was instantly suspicious. "Where are you going?"

"I want to check out the super deli off the lobby," I said. "Get us some limes. We need limes. It'll be great! I’ll get some swim diapers so you can stop worrying about poop in the pool, and we can have proper margaritas tonight. OK? Can I go?"

"Wait," he said, raising himself up on an elbow from his spot on the suite sofa. The kids were enjoying a post-dinner movie on the laptop. "You're going over there just to get limes?"

Exasperated, I said, "Look, I just want to go out for a minute, Ok?" I cupped my hands around my mouth and mouthed, "I want to smoke."

I have hidden my intermittent smoking life from the children thus far, which is good because they do know what smoking is. They've seen my parents do it a hundred times and asked me why people do it, is it okay, etc. We take a firm stand that it is dirty, unhealthy, and not okay.

"You want to smoke?" Matt yelped. The kids looked up from "Cinderella."

AAAAAAAAAARGH!

"Mommy why do you want to smoke?" asked Jonah.

"I don't! I think you misunderstood me, Matt," I said, glaring at him hard. "Anyway, off I go in search of diapers and limes. Good bye!"

When I came back later with limes and cigarettes (alas, no diapers), I helped Matt put the kids to bed and then poured us some really terrible homemade margaritas. Out on the balcony I sat with my drink and stubbornly lit a cigarette. I closed the glass door behind me. I took a wonderful burning drag.

The glass door slid open. Dang. One whole second for my nicotine-alcohol-solitude buzz.

"Can I join you?" Matt said, pulling out a chair.

"Are you sure you want to?" I asked. "I'm smoking."

"I don't understand your attitude," he said.

"I know." Pause. "I made you a drink."

We sat on the white deck chairs and watched the scene on the darkened beach: a few straggling couples, some lit torches near the steps to the resort. A smattering of boats rocked in the bay, barely visible but for the lights on their masts.

And it was nice for awhile.


January 13

The music here is categorically bad, except for a great, truly professional band we heard last night at dinner. As we waited for our food in a dim, catacomb-like room replete with walls of candles, two men set up chairs in a corner near the kitchen and began working on a samba. One patted some bongos between his thighs and the other strummed his guitar and crooned sweetly like Joao Gilberto. They leaned toward each other, watching the other's eyes and hands. Every now and then they'd stop abruptly and discuss something, then pick up again.

During dinner, they were joined by a stand-up bass player and another guitarist. A rollicking Latin blast ensued. To me, it felt like sweet relief. The kids clapped. I snapped. Audrey high-chair danced. I swayed a bit while nibbling my explosively hot seafood-stuffed, bacon-wrapped jalapenos. Pretty soon the kids and I drifted over to be in the presence of the strings and bongos and passionate male voices. Jonah allowed me to take him into my arms and spin him around a few times. Audrey bounced and smiled hugely. For their part, the men seemed delighted to have an audience (the rest of the diners were ignoring them completely). They all turned and directed their voices right to us. The bass player, a heavy mustachioed man with a scarred face (and one of the few locals I've seen with long enough limbs to manage a stand-up bass) laughed at Audrey's antics and made crazy faces at her.

Later I sent Jonah with a bunch of pesos over to their tip jar. I was quite happy to pay for being in their light for while. Because in the morning, the piano man who performs (badly) on the breakfast patio will bore us all to death with "Moon River."

This morning, by the pool, I watched a silver-haired woman glide past the pool's waterfall, limbs elegantly performing the inelegant breast stroke. From the patio came the troubled strains of "Bridge Over Troubled Water." The pianist missed a note. The lady swimmer kept swimming. I turned over on my chaise longue.

After a life of travel anxiety, I think I am getting the hang of vacation.