Nappy’s in town, ostensibly to help me out while recuperating from the now-postponed surgery that was schedule to take place on Thursday. When one door closes, another opens… I get to spend a week out in the world with an old friend instead of trapped in my dark studio recovering. One unexpected pleasure was scoring last minute tickets to see World Saxophone Quartet (WSQ) play Hendrix at the Great American Music Hall, San Francisco’s “oldest and grandest nightclub.”
I think I may have known about the show, but the date slipped my mind since I should have been in the hospital that night. By the time we had all our ducks in a row, even the tickets that were still available on the web despite “sold out” status for the 7:30pm show were gone. I didn’t relish the idea of a 10pm show, but I would have gone for it if all else failed.
Fortunately, the night was nothing but success-laden. Nappy came down to the Embarcadero and we caught the 38 to the ‘loin, hopping out right in front of the infamous Mitchell Brothers, where Behind the Green Door was made. We had a good laugh about my ridiculous evening there with Shan’s hubby, when he came to town last year—but that’s another story. Nappy and I headed to the box office to be told that we should try back later. This was an hour short of show time on what was a blustery sort of day, too cold to wait long in any sort of line. We decided to pop into the martini bar Olive for a spell.
While there, we reminisced about our first visit to San Francisco, back in the day. We stayed at the youth hostel in the Tenderloin, one of the city’s more notorious neighborhoods. The thing is, we didn’t realize it was supposed to be a bad neighborhood and coming from Detroit, it was a bit of a walk in the park. We thought the front staff were joking when they warned us to be careful going out our first night there. “This is a bad neighborhood? This?” We instantly fell in love with the city. Later we were serenaded at 4a.m. by a drunkard in the alley outside our window, two or three stories down. It seemed to be an Irish drinking song with a repetitive chorus punctuated by angry neighbors yelling “shut up” every time the song began again. It was about the fifth or sixth time that we realized that the Irish drinking song was actually Roberta Flack’s Killing Me Softly, slurred in a thick ale-laden brogue.
Article comments
1 - bstani
Sounds like it was a great show. I love how, as you described, the music brought to gether old and new friends.