Last night I had a bike party. Micheal, my boss, called me and asked me if I wanted to
get on bikes with a few of his friends and ride around the city and downtown to see
what kind of fun we could find.
It was a delicious warm night and so of course I said yes, and we cruised to my friend
Hudson's massive house party. My god. I mean seriously, like you could hardly move
during the peak times, and I heard that people were still arriving at 3am. We rushed
into the crush of people and danced and said hi to people we unexpectedly saw for the
first time in years. We smoked and drank a bit until the claustrophobia set in and we
were back on a bike again.
It was colder now and the wind rushed past us as we cruised at maximum speed down
Capitol Hill in Seattle. Micheal said, "The rule is, you don't stop at an intersection
unless you know you're going to get hit by a car." This seemed like a pretty
foolhardy rule to me, but in the warm magic of the Seattle summer evening, it was
somehow completely perfect, and no red light could contain us.
By the time we got downtown it was 2:30am and nowhere was still serving liquor. There
were a couple of bars still open for people to dance at, but none of them looked
attractive. We bought sausages from street vendors near The Bohemian, and wolfed them
down hot. Then we were off again.
We cruised the nearly dead streets, and down one secluded street I saw a group of
people, one of them singing some old Sam Cooke song (cupid, draw back your bow-ow, and
let, your arrow go, straight to my lovers heart for me). They were already past it, and
I started to speak up to say I wanted to go back, when they already started turning
around.
It seems Micheal and Alison knew them. At the heart of the congregation was a penny
taxi...a cart that rides behind a bicycle, and Micheal's first job in Seattle had been
driving one. Alison was a cab driver and knew him as well. We went down to meet them
and it was a merry group.
Some were sitting drunkenly in the penny taxi, and the rest were standing around,
smoking and listening to this guy sing and just generally bullshitting jovially. We
joined them and soon I was making requests (do you know any al green, can you sing any
otis redding?) and we were enjoying a smoke with the penny taxi driver.
We caroused for a little while and then it was back on bikes as we rode to Alison's
apartment, above a local club called The Graceland, to settle in for some tea. From a
nearby apartment I heard the wafting strains of a guitar. Mellow and watery and
beautiful, it sounded a little like Funkadelic's early mellow grooves, or perhaps some
Hendrix a la Castles Made of Sand.
"What are they playing?" I said, "It sounds like Funkadelic but I don't think I've ever
heard that song."
"Oh," they replied, "those are our friends. That's live, they're in the studio playing
right now."
Entranced, I walked down the hallway into, sure enough, a little recording studio,
where they were sitting in dimly lit corners twisting away at their instruments.
"Hey," I said, "That's really beautiful...it sounds like Funkadelic!"
"Thanks," said the man nearest the door, in what I could only discern as a completely
fake british accent.
"Who is it?" said one of the players who was a little deeper into the studio, in an
accent almost as fake.
"It's someone who was listening to us from across the hall and thought it was
groooouvy," and when he said groovy he drew it out, making the accent even more
rediculous.
So I sat and listened for awhile until I decided it was awfully early in the morning,
and decided to ride my way up the hill and return the bike to it's home so I was free
to go wherever I liked. It was a hard ride all the way back up Capitol Hill, but very
satisfying.