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Philly Fringe Fest
J:
We went for another infamous Geezer ride to Franklin's brew pub on Thursday,
had a great time of course, and
managed to make it to the Looneys' place for game night. We made good
time to Franklin's and back. It takes about 35 to 40 minutes to ride to
Franklin's, so we're guessing it's about eight miles from our house.
G: On
Friday we drove through the rain and traffic to Philly, walking in the
door at
the N3rd restaurant and bar a couple of minutes after Chris Welsh's
improv group, Next
Line Comedy Theater - the Cabal, started their show,
and 2 hours and 50 minutes after we left home. Chris's show was
very funny. Near the end Laurie and Rob found us, then they went home
after the show and we stayed out with Chris. We ordered some food
there, and it was really good. So far it's my favorite restaurant in
Philly. Then we caught a ride to The
Cabaret - the late night hang out for Fringe festival people. There was
an oxygen bar and I decided to try it. I got a bit dizzy, but John
thinks that was from hyperventilation. I couldn't tell if it had any
other effect on me.
On Saturday Chris came over to Rob and Laurie's where we were staying
and we wandered around town while trying to decide what to see. We went
to the Snyderman
gallery where Laurie works, and I really enjoyed a lot of the art
there. They have an amazing ceramic art and pottery selection. We
alternated between checking in there and seeing some free Fringe
events. We saw a quiz show on the street that managed to finish up in
the moments a rain squall hit us. We visited the Clay Studio (there was
some work there by a woman I was friends with at college, Lisa Orr)
before checking out the Lazy activist, which was a monologue delivered
from a lazy-boy chair in an alleyway, again pretty much in the rain. I
could tell this guy was a little nervous, and sometimes I had a hard
time concentrating on what he was saying instead of thinking about his
socks getting completely wet after he took off his shoes as part of the
act and walked around in the street.
We also caught Bampy Joe and his Amazing Monkey show, which was a guy
doing an organ grinder bit but with a couple of girls acting like
monkeys. One of the girls made a really good monkey. She sounded
exactly like one. When Laurie got off of work, the four of us went to
see a show called Opera for Dummies. I don't like opera, but I thought
this was supposed to be really funny. We were all pretty disappointed;
although the drag queen opera singer had a tremendous voice, there was
a lot of opera singing and not much humor. Of what humor there was,
only some of it worked.
After that we went to a bar called Lucy's for dinner. They were having
a drink special. Buy one glass of beer for $5, and refills were a
quarter from 8 - 10pm. Rob joined us after a while, and everyone drank
lots of beer except for me. It was really quiet in there when we got
there, but as the night wore on it became extremely crowded with young
people. We wandered from there to a video installation called George
Bataille's Story of the Eye, and from there we caught an acrobat show (called
The Gate by Brian Sanders' Junk) by
peering through holes in the plastic covering a chain link fence.
Sunday we planned on attending a music festival sponsored by the Kind Cafe, but even though the
weather held up, it had been postponed from threat of rain. John and I
got yummy tofu wraps from their lunch truck, and we went to a picnic
table to eat it. Chris peered into some trash cans nearby, and
amazingly, found cash. There were three manila envelopes, two filled
with rolls of pennies, on filled with loose pennies. I guess there was
at least $30 worth. In the trash. Chris rescued the coins, along with a
nice gunny sack to put them in, and then we went to get John his fix at
a coffeehouse. We lazed around there for a while, then went back to
Laurie's, then drove to Chris's so he could drop off his coins. My main
mission in Philly, besides seeing Chris's show and other Fringe shows,
was to get me a coconut water ice, like the one I had from a street
vendor a few years back. Water Ice is like an Italian ice, or a slushy,
but the coconut one I had was like ice cream and I've been searching
for another one ever since. We didn't have much time before Chris had
to be at the climbing gym to work, but we drove into town to look for
coconut water ice at a place called Rita's.
But they didn't have coconut! I swore I wouldn't leave Philly without
one, but none was to be found in the remaining time we had there. We
went to the Go
Vertical climbing gym,
and while Chris worked, John, Laurie and I climbed. Laurie is pretty
athletic and she put us to shame. She climbs walls like they were
ladders. But we all had fun. My shoulders were sore for two days.
There was a Mexican Independence Festival just finishing up nearby when
we left the gym, so we walked through it in search of food. Laurie
scored a free plate of something when she spotted someone she knew
working at a stand, but there wasn't any vegetarian food left, so we
went to a bar called Standard Tap
for dinner. After that, it was just gathering our things, saying
goodbye, and driving back home.
J:
When it comes to bars, Philadelphia puts most cities to shame. I found
most of their bars to have very unique, eclectic atmospheres. The
Fringe Fest added an eccentric note to our mini-vacation. I'm thinking
between the bars and the fringe, we might visit Philly for a week next
year.
On Monday Gina and I spent the day getting in touch with Blah (the God
of the eternal underworld of Logy), probably because we spent so much
energy worshiping Fun
during the
weekend.
Monday night we attended a city council meeting to discuss developing
ordinances which are meant to keep the city from messing around with
Greenbelt's wooded areas, including our favorite forest near our house.
The meeting lasted over two hours, and we had to leave out of
exhaustion.
Today we're battening down the hatches against the dread squall Isabel, which reminds
me, don't forget that this Friday (the 19th) is Talk Like a Pirate Day.
Yarrr.
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