Dancing Queen
Went to Pittsburgh this weekend for their lindy exchange. The short story is, despite the quality of dancing being pretty low, I had an excellent time!
Friday I called out sick at work so I could get some more sleep (because I actually was sick) and pack and make a million phone calls I've been meaning to make during business hours for awhile. Then I hopped the train to JFK. Once there, of course, my father called me. He has the lovely habit of calling me when I'm in airports/bus stations/etc. He was waiting for Ally in the Marshall band in the Christmas City of the North Parade and was a bit shocked to find out I was waiting for a flight. Oops. The flight was a regional one...as in, a whole bunch of bus-sized planes were parked on the tarmac in rows like buses and they just sort of sent you out onto the tarmac to go walk to your plane. There was a slight incident that delayed our flight. There was a family, possibly two, and they didn't have seat assignments together. I'm not sure if there was a language problem or what, but the dad just wouldn't sit down in his seat and he was delaying the entire flight. A shouting match with the flight attendant ensued, and then an even bigger fight with the pilot. Mind you, the family was Middle Eastern...and I very much think that was related, as the pilot said dimissively to another, completely unrelated Middle Eastern man "Do you speak English? Are you with these people?" Yeah, that wasn't fun. Arrived in Pittsburgh in one piece and was greeted by Isaac and the rental car. We made it to the first dance just in time for the last song...so we met up with Kristl and got directions to the Steak and Shake.
Interlude - the geography of Pittsburgh is pretty crazy! Definitely no grid. And then there's the river, that cuts through the city in like 3 directions. And then there's a million hills that throw you off too. The architecture is interesting because the housing stock is so old. Every neighborhood seemed to have its own main street. Bridges abounded. It was interesting...and I got the exciting (and I'm not being facetious here) job of being navigator. I definitely like that job better than being the driver, so I'm extremely glad that Isaac and I switched those roles since college.
Back to the story - Trekked halfway across the city to a ridiculously hideous box-store mall complex (seriously, name a chain store, it was there) and proceeded to get lost in its various parking lots trying to find Steak & Shake. After a confusing call and more backtracking, we finally found it. Burgers and milkshakes were had. And off we went back to Squirrel Hill for the late night dance. Band was pretty good...trio, good tempos and lengths. The floor was ridiculously slick, but it was nice that way and it was a good size. Made the mistake of doing Caravan as a warmup dance...especially while still recovering from being sick. Quickly discovered that we were probably some of the best dancers in the room (seriously, not saying much) which was probably due to the fact that Austin's exchange was the same weekend and all the good dancers went there.
Aside - Though the overall quality of the dancers was much lower in Pittsburgh than in Austin, I think I still probably had a better time in Pittsburgh than I would have had in Austin. Mainly because I have really big confidence issues when it comes to dancing and I hate asking people to dance. As such, I probably would have spent 75% of the time in Austin lurking in a corner wishing I was dancing with all the good dancers. Instead, I danced nearly every song I wanted to dance to in Pittsburgh and very rarely had to ask anyone to dance.
Anyway, discovered the handful of leads who were good and tried to rotate between them. For awhile, Kristl, Isaac, Kevin (also from Chicago) and I were just sort of dancing on our own. The DJed music once the band finished was awesome, so it was fun. We stayed until the bitter end and then trekked over to Lawrenceville (which, according to Alessandra, is the run down part of town trying to be artsy) to crash at our hosts apartment. He was one of the organizers, so he was extremely hands-off about hosting us, which we really really appreciated. He gave us a futon and an air mattress, sheets (but no blankets), towels and keys and that was that. After a debate over beds (ending with me being exiled for my snoring), we crashed around 7am.
Saturday we got up around 4pm...not enough time to go to the afternoon dance or do anything local. Instead, we reluctantly returned to the Waterfront Mall, grabbed dinner at Panera's and then snuck it into the movie theater to see...Casino Royale.
Sidebar - Go see that movie! I was totally skeptical about it when I saw the trailers, but I definitely think this is my favorite of all the ones I've seen (which includes all the Brosnan ones, one Moore, and several Connerys). The plot actually made sense and was compelling. The Bond girl is amazing (I want to be her). Bond gets his nuts smacked and actually almost dies several times, bad guys die early, Bond girls die, it's awesome. See it.
After the movie, we headed over to the main event (which happened to be held next door to the Department of Homeland Security building). Band was good...16+ piece big band that was led by their drummer. The trombone section needed work, but the drummer was just so damn good. And the songs were all a great fast tempo and a wonderfully appropriate length. Quality of dancing was lower, as more local/casual dancers were there. Managed still to get some great dances. This guy I had met at the Ann Arbor exchange a couple years ago was there and remembered me and we had some awesome dances. DJ sets (by Loreto and Jason from CA) were awesome. All around good time. Afterwards, we headed to Eat & Park, a local chain diner. Some other dancers were there, one of them being a really really creepy older guy who clearly just followed the other dancers there (they gave us looks of desperation) and he kept leaning over our booth to ask us dumb creepy questions and kept touching my back and I got really disturbed and creeped out about it. We headed to the late night dance at the same place as the night before.
I need to make this clear - this was THE WORST late night dance I've ever been to. It even beat out the crappy blues/westie rooms at Ann Arbor. The main room was a blues band. Ok. Fine. It was typical Chicago bar blues, fine to listen to, so so to dance to. The problem? No one fucking knows how to blues dance. Especially when you're talking to a group of people from Chicago. It was terrible. All these bad dancers doing even more terrible dancing. They had announced that the second room would be a "Classic Swing" room, so we had pretty much decided we'd be setting up camp in that room. WELL, someone forgot to send the memo to the DJs! All the DJs played crappy blues and westie music only every once in awhile interspersed with swing/lindy music. Argh! It was terrible. Jackson 5's ABC even got played twice!! The dancing over there was even WORSE because of how few people were in that room. After torturing ourselves for a few hours, we decided to hedge our bets and ditch the rest of late night in order to get to bed earlier and wake up for the afternoon dance.
Sunday we woke up around noon. We found the Square Cafe and had a nice overpriced hipster brunch. Then headed over to the afternoon dance. Band was pretty good...four piece band doing Sinatra-style songs. Kind of in the vein of Thomas Gunther...but better. Floor was great (seriously, Pittsburgh has some awesome venues). Had more awesome dances with the handful of guys who were good. Had a generally good time. We killed time by driving around and getting lost a bit. Then we found a cafe/bar/restaurant in the South Side district and got sandwiches. They were playing jazz as background music and it was good danceable stuff. Was very tempted to dance, especially after the fiasco that was late night, but decided to conserve our energy for the spotlight event of the weekend - The Boilermaker Jazz Band, probably my favorite swing band in the country. Got there early, did our streching, had people come up to us and tell us they liked our dancing. Then the dance got way. Music was AMAZING as usual. Dancing was okay at first, but a lot of people (particularly the good ones) had already left town, so by halfway through, there weren't many people to dance with.
Awkward situation - This guy Leo who goes to Princeton but dances in the New York scene, so I knew him from before. Well, he apparently likes my dancing a lot, so he kept asking me to dance all weekend, which was fine because he was good enough to keep me amused. But then, he crossed the line and pulled a Mike Geline. He took it upon himself to invite himself into our car for a ride to the airport, proceeded to make arrangements for it with his host and our host, and then guilted us into doing it. It was terrible. Ultimately, we had to switch houses late at night and leave earlier than planned. And he put a general damper on our evening. After he did that, I stopped talking/dancing with him. I'm a terrible person. At one point, I was talking to Kristl and my contact started bothering me and he asked me to dance and my contact stopped hurting, but I pretended it still did and went and hid in the bathroom for the song. The rest of the dance, I was motivated to ask other people to dance so as not to dance with him.
The last song, I asked Kevin to dance and that was generally fun, but then Isaac got up and was standing on the sideline watching us and then suddenly jumped in and stole me from Kevin. Kevin had been doing some lame bal/syncopation stuff because it was fast, but of course Isaac busted out the fast lindy and charleston, which was pretty awesome. We were tearing it up...enough to cause people to get out of chairs and come watch and a few couples to stop dancing and start watching. It's a sad day when Isaac and I are the best dancers in the room. But, it still rocked and I was exhausted afterwards in that wonderfully satisfactory way. They did another slow song for an encore, but we were too tired to dance that one. After it was all over, we packed up and headed back to our first host's apartment to get our bags and directions. We then started driving to the other host's house...but alas, he gave us bad directions and we ended up very far in the suburbs when we should not have been. We called his phone but other people at the invite only after party answered and couldn't help us. Eventually I used my mad navigation skills to get us there anyway. Our second host lives in a massive house. Massive. We dropped off our stuff and then headed out for our midnight meal...again at Eat & Park because that's all that we knew was open. We had the exact same waitress from the night before and she totally recognized us. Even better, we all had the late night/exhaustion giggles. Set off uncontrollably by Isaac ordering "I'll have the breaded fish...again. With home fries and french fries on the side. No milkshake this time." And then Kristl ordering the Smiley waffle. It was hilarious...in a "you had to be there" sort of way. Eventually we went back to the house and decided sleeping would be a bad idea, so hunkered down in the girls' room at which point Kristl and Isaac made me watch the first episode of Firefly. Ok...I'll admit it. I like it. I didn't think I could or would. But I did. Curses on you who get me hooked onto more tv shows! We took our showers and then got ready to go at 4:45am. We akwardly waited for Leo and then headed out to the airport.
Footnote - Can I just reiterate how much I like not driving? It started to rain that evening and the road was slick. Plus, stop signs, turn lanes and such are a mess in that city. Isaac kept almost running stop signs or otherwise getting us killed. So glad to no longer have that responsibility.
The airport goodbye was another awkward situation. Isaac asked us what airlines we were all flying. Thankfully Continental, Leo's flight, came up first and so we dropped him off and just waved goodbye from the car. We waited until he went inside and then drove the literally 10 feet forward to get to the Delta entrance. At which point, we all got out of the car and said our goodbyes. Kristl and I checked in our luggage and then went through security together. Our flights were in different terminals, so we departed ways and I headed to the water fountain near my gate to fill my water bottle. Suddenly I hear my name. I turn around...it's Leo. He's found me. He proceeds to tell me how much he loves my connection "or really, I just love everything." (Earlier, he had apparently told Isaac that Isaac "inspired" him). Then he inquired as to why I don't go to Frim Fram (because I don't like it or the dancers there) and lamented the fact that he doesn't see me there. Then he made me lindy bomb the airport. It was terrible. I let him have two swing outs and then I was like "Umm...when is your plane boarding?" And he looks at his watch and then across the hall and sees that his flight is starting to board. I'm like "Oh, guess you better go." And off he goes. Whew. Slept through my flight back. Slept through the subway ride back. Arrive at work 10 minutes late...which is exactly the time I always get there. Spent the entire day in a dazed stupor, barely able to do work and fell sleep the minute I got home.
All and all, a great weekend! So happy to see Isaac and Kristl and even Kevin! Also liked being one of the best dancers and getting as many good dances as I did without barely having to ask anyone. MUST figure out a way to go dancing more often in New York!
Friday I called out sick at work so I could get some more sleep (because I actually was sick) and pack and make a million phone calls I've been meaning to make during business hours for awhile. Then I hopped the train to JFK. Once there, of course, my father called me. He has the lovely habit of calling me when I'm in airports/bus stations/etc. He was waiting for Ally in the Marshall band in the Christmas City of the North Parade and was a bit shocked to find out I was waiting for a flight. Oops. The flight was a regional one...as in, a whole bunch of bus-sized planes were parked on the tarmac in rows like buses and they just sort of sent you out onto the tarmac to go walk to your plane. There was a slight incident that delayed our flight. There was a family, possibly two, and they didn't have seat assignments together. I'm not sure if there was a language problem or what, but the dad just wouldn't sit down in his seat and he was delaying the entire flight. A shouting match with the flight attendant ensued, and then an even bigger fight with the pilot. Mind you, the family was Middle Eastern...and I very much think that was related, as the pilot said dimissively to another, completely unrelated Middle Eastern man "Do you speak English? Are you with these people?" Yeah, that wasn't fun. Arrived in Pittsburgh in one piece and was greeted by Isaac and the rental car. We made it to the first dance just in time for the last song...so we met up with Kristl and got directions to the Steak and Shake.
Interlude - the geography of Pittsburgh is pretty crazy! Definitely no grid. And then there's the river, that cuts through the city in like 3 directions. And then there's a million hills that throw you off too. The architecture is interesting because the housing stock is so old. Every neighborhood seemed to have its own main street. Bridges abounded. It was interesting...and I got the exciting (and I'm not being facetious here) job of being navigator. I definitely like that job better than being the driver, so I'm extremely glad that Isaac and I switched those roles since college.
Back to the story - Trekked halfway across the city to a ridiculously hideous box-store mall complex (seriously, name a chain store, it was there) and proceeded to get lost in its various parking lots trying to find Steak & Shake. After a confusing call and more backtracking, we finally found it. Burgers and milkshakes were had. And off we went back to Squirrel Hill for the late night dance. Band was pretty good...trio, good tempos and lengths. The floor was ridiculously slick, but it was nice that way and it was a good size. Made the mistake of doing Caravan as a warmup dance...especially while still recovering from being sick. Quickly discovered that we were probably some of the best dancers in the room (seriously, not saying much) which was probably due to the fact that Austin's exchange was the same weekend and all the good dancers went there.
Aside - Though the overall quality of the dancers was much lower in Pittsburgh than in Austin, I think I still probably had a better time in Pittsburgh than I would have had in Austin. Mainly because I have really big confidence issues when it comes to dancing and I hate asking people to dance. As such, I probably would have spent 75% of the time in Austin lurking in a corner wishing I was dancing with all the good dancers. Instead, I danced nearly every song I wanted to dance to in Pittsburgh and very rarely had to ask anyone to dance.
Anyway, discovered the handful of leads who were good and tried to rotate between them. For awhile, Kristl, Isaac, Kevin (also from Chicago) and I were just sort of dancing on our own. The DJed music once the band finished was awesome, so it was fun. We stayed until the bitter end and then trekked over to Lawrenceville (which, according to Alessandra, is the run down part of town trying to be artsy) to crash at our hosts apartment. He was one of the organizers, so he was extremely hands-off about hosting us, which we really really appreciated. He gave us a futon and an air mattress, sheets (but no blankets), towels and keys and that was that. After a debate over beds (ending with me being exiled for my snoring), we crashed around 7am.
Saturday we got up around 4pm...not enough time to go to the afternoon dance or do anything local. Instead, we reluctantly returned to the Waterfront Mall, grabbed dinner at Panera's and then snuck it into the movie theater to see...Casino Royale.
Sidebar - Go see that movie! I was totally skeptical about it when I saw the trailers, but I definitely think this is my favorite of all the ones I've seen (which includes all the Brosnan ones, one Moore, and several Connerys). The plot actually made sense and was compelling. The Bond girl is amazing (I want to be her). Bond gets his nuts smacked and actually almost dies several times, bad guys die early, Bond girls die, it's awesome. See it.
After the movie, we headed over to the main event (which happened to be held next door to the Department of Homeland Security building). Band was good...16+ piece big band that was led by their drummer. The trombone section needed work, but the drummer was just so damn good. And the songs were all a great fast tempo and a wonderfully appropriate length. Quality of dancing was lower, as more local/casual dancers were there. Managed still to get some great dances. This guy I had met at the Ann Arbor exchange a couple years ago was there and remembered me and we had some awesome dances. DJ sets (by Loreto and Jason from CA) were awesome. All around good time. Afterwards, we headed to Eat & Park, a local chain diner. Some other dancers were there, one of them being a really really creepy older guy who clearly just followed the other dancers there (they gave us looks of desperation) and he kept leaning over our booth to ask us dumb creepy questions and kept touching my back and I got really disturbed and creeped out about it. We headed to the late night dance at the same place as the night before.
I need to make this clear - this was THE WORST late night dance I've ever been to. It even beat out the crappy blues/westie rooms at Ann Arbor. The main room was a blues band. Ok. Fine. It was typical Chicago bar blues, fine to listen to, so so to dance to. The problem? No one fucking knows how to blues dance. Especially when you're talking to a group of people from Chicago. It was terrible. All these bad dancers doing even more terrible dancing. They had announced that the second room would be a "Classic Swing" room, so we had pretty much decided we'd be setting up camp in that room. WELL, someone forgot to send the memo to the DJs! All the DJs played crappy blues and westie music only every once in awhile interspersed with swing/lindy music. Argh! It was terrible. Jackson 5's ABC even got played twice!! The dancing over there was even WORSE because of how few people were in that room. After torturing ourselves for a few hours, we decided to hedge our bets and ditch the rest of late night in order to get to bed earlier and wake up for the afternoon dance.
Sunday we woke up around noon. We found the Square Cafe and had a nice overpriced hipster brunch. Then headed over to the afternoon dance. Band was pretty good...four piece band doing Sinatra-style songs. Kind of in the vein of Thomas Gunther...but better. Floor was great (seriously, Pittsburgh has some awesome venues). Had more awesome dances with the handful of guys who were good. Had a generally good time. We killed time by driving around and getting lost a bit. Then we found a cafe/bar/restaurant in the South Side district and got sandwiches. They were playing jazz as background music and it was good danceable stuff. Was very tempted to dance, especially after the fiasco that was late night, but decided to conserve our energy for the spotlight event of the weekend - The Boilermaker Jazz Band, probably my favorite swing band in the country. Got there early, did our streching, had people come up to us and tell us they liked our dancing. Then the dance got way. Music was AMAZING as usual. Dancing was okay at first, but a lot of people (particularly the good ones) had already left town, so by halfway through, there weren't many people to dance with.
Awkward situation - This guy Leo who goes to Princeton but dances in the New York scene, so I knew him from before. Well, he apparently likes my dancing a lot, so he kept asking me to dance all weekend, which was fine because he was good enough to keep me amused. But then, he crossed the line and pulled a Mike Geline. He took it upon himself to invite himself into our car for a ride to the airport, proceeded to make arrangements for it with his host and our host, and then guilted us into doing it. It was terrible. Ultimately, we had to switch houses late at night and leave earlier than planned. And he put a general damper on our evening. After he did that, I stopped talking/dancing with him. I'm a terrible person. At one point, I was talking to Kristl and my contact started bothering me and he asked me to dance and my contact stopped hurting, but I pretended it still did and went and hid in the bathroom for the song. The rest of the dance, I was motivated to ask other people to dance so as not to dance with him.
The last song, I asked Kevin to dance and that was generally fun, but then Isaac got up and was standing on the sideline watching us and then suddenly jumped in and stole me from Kevin. Kevin had been doing some lame bal/syncopation stuff because it was fast, but of course Isaac busted out the fast lindy and charleston, which was pretty awesome. We were tearing it up...enough to cause people to get out of chairs and come watch and a few couples to stop dancing and start watching. It's a sad day when Isaac and I are the best dancers in the room. But, it still rocked and I was exhausted afterwards in that wonderfully satisfactory way. They did another slow song for an encore, but we were too tired to dance that one. After it was all over, we packed up and headed back to our first host's apartment to get our bags and directions. We then started driving to the other host's house...but alas, he gave us bad directions and we ended up very far in the suburbs when we should not have been. We called his phone but other people at the invite only after party answered and couldn't help us. Eventually I used my mad navigation skills to get us there anyway. Our second host lives in a massive house. Massive. We dropped off our stuff and then headed out for our midnight meal...again at Eat & Park because that's all that we knew was open. We had the exact same waitress from the night before and she totally recognized us. Even better, we all had the late night/exhaustion giggles. Set off uncontrollably by Isaac ordering "I'll have the breaded fish...again. With home fries and french fries on the side. No milkshake this time." And then Kristl ordering the Smiley waffle. It was hilarious...in a "you had to be there" sort of way. Eventually we went back to the house and decided sleeping would be a bad idea, so hunkered down in the girls' room at which point Kristl and Isaac made me watch the first episode of Firefly. Ok...I'll admit it. I like it. I didn't think I could or would. But I did. Curses on you who get me hooked onto more tv shows! We took our showers and then got ready to go at 4:45am. We akwardly waited for Leo and then headed out to the airport.
Footnote - Can I just reiterate how much I like not driving? It started to rain that evening and the road was slick. Plus, stop signs, turn lanes and such are a mess in that city. Isaac kept almost running stop signs or otherwise getting us killed. So glad to no longer have that responsibility.
The airport goodbye was another awkward situation. Isaac asked us what airlines we were all flying. Thankfully Continental, Leo's flight, came up first and so we dropped him off and just waved goodbye from the car. We waited until he went inside and then drove the literally 10 feet forward to get to the Delta entrance. At which point, we all got out of the car and said our goodbyes. Kristl and I checked in our luggage and then went through security together. Our flights were in different terminals, so we departed ways and I headed to the water fountain near my gate to fill my water bottle. Suddenly I hear my name. I turn around...it's Leo. He's found me. He proceeds to tell me how much he loves my connection "or really, I just love everything." (Earlier, he had apparently told Isaac that Isaac "inspired" him). Then he inquired as to why I don't go to Frim Fram (because I don't like it or the dancers there) and lamented the fact that he doesn't see me there. Then he made me lindy bomb the airport. It was terrible. I let him have two swing outs and then I was like "Umm...when is your plane boarding?" And he looks at his watch and then across the hall and sees that his flight is starting to board. I'm like "Oh, guess you better go." And off he goes. Whew. Slept through my flight back. Slept through the subway ride back. Arrive at work 10 minutes late...which is exactly the time I always get there. Spent the entire day in a dazed stupor, barely able to do work and fell sleep the minute I got home.
All and all, a great weekend! So happy to see Isaac and Kristl and even Kevin! Also liked being one of the best dancers and getting as many good dances as I did without barely having to ask anyone. MUST figure out a way to go dancing more often in New York!