The Green Door #12

August 1998

One of the most fascinating things about living in a big US city at the close of the 20th Century is range of experiences you can have. You can go see the Philadelphia Orchestra at The Academy of Music and sit with the blue bloods in tuxedos and the next day experience what I guess could be called the yellow bloods at the Quaker City Flea Market.

Maiden Visit #1 - No, You The Man
Courtesy of Mother Cigna, which sponsors an annual MLK concert with the Philadelphia Orchestra, I went to my first concert at The Academy of Music. The concert featured three selections. Before each selection, the young guest conductor made a grand entrance to polite applause. After each selection, he would immediately leave the stage, wait, come back, and then take a prolonged bow. After the bow, he would do a no-you-the-man-I'm- generously-sharing-the-attention point to a member or two of the orchestra. The audience would clap from the moment the piece ended until he finished his prolonged bows and pointing. Then he would leave the stage and wait and repeat the whole performance with another grand entrance. I was getting really sick of politely clapping for this pompous twit.

It should be noted that I wore a tie for the occasion. For those keeping score, I wore a tie once last year in December for a Cigna Xmas party at a fancy restaurant and once so far this year in back February, which could be the start of a bad trend.

Maiden Visit #2 - The Yellow Bloods
At the G-Lodge, we are in the process of removing the walls around the old kitchen and converting it into space for a pool table. It's a pretty big space and I wanted to get some weird shit (wow MS Word recognizes that word) for the walls. Every one knows the place to find weird shit is a flea market. On a very hot Sunday morning I made my first visit to the Quaker City Flea Market. I've been to flea markets before so I was expecting it to be somewhat shabby. What I didn't expect was the largest assortment of reptile people that I had ever seen in one place. Now combine that image with extreme heat and humidity. Reptile people sweating profusely wearing very little, but ugly, clothing, surrounded by society's material cast-offs. Life is often like a movie; sometimes David Lynch is the director. Now I don't put too much stock in physical beauty, but hey people at least make an effort. Good hygiene goes a long way.

I didn't find any weird shit for the bar, but I did buy a couple pairs of sneakers (yes, new and in boxes) from the sneaker stall. Entertainment at the sneaker stall was provided by a junkie who wanted to pay $20 for sneakers from the $25 table. The sneaker guy had told her the price was $25; take it or leave it. He wasn't going to argue with her. She was literally flying around the sneaker area. I saw her get free of the Earth's gravity at least twice. You couldn't say she was high on either level. She didn't get very high off the ground and didn't seem to enjoying herself either. She was flying around, trying to get the guy to take $20, complaining to her friend, threatening to not buy shoes, pointing at price signs and constantly repeating those actions in different patterns. It was like watching a bumble bee in flight. A strange ballet indeed.