Tao’s 2 Cents

This last weekend was a good one, the one before it was really good too. I better keep doing what it is I’m doing. John came up to Richmond for a conference so I drove down to see him. I don’t think I’d seen him in well over a year. It was only supposed to take me 2 hours and 45 minutes to get there but it ended up taking about 5 with all the traffic. I left way early to beat it up, but not early enough apparently.

Richmond’s a nice town, it kind of reminded me of what Memphis would look like if it were really cleaned up. We went and ate at an Irish pub with his roommate who he had to drive back Saturday. They both gave presentations at the sociology conference they were at and now that it was over they were both happy to go out on the town.

I found a bar with some live music online and it turned out to be right down in the heart of the night scene in Richmond. It was a good thing too because we got there too late for the music, but there was plenty of other stuff going on. We played some pool, drank, and smoked hookah. All in all a pretty good time.

Sunday I spent just hanging out by myself. I was feeling a little down and I think it was withdrawl from not working out for a few days and my body was fiending some endorphines. So I got up a little early and went and worked out and it definitely picked me up. It got me pumped that I went and played disc golf afterwards.

I did pretty good for not having played in awhile. I also ran into some people playing on some holes in the woods I hadn’t seen before. There are actually 9 more holes back in the woods. I didn’t think there were anymore since there were 18 holes, but I guess they’re so cool they’ve got 27. It was really beautiful in the park too, a bunch of cherry? apple? trees were blooming. I took some pictures on my cell phone but I can’t find the cable to get them off. If I find it I’ll put them up here.

It was still early when I got done and I had more energy so I decided to go check out this used bookstore I’d read about in Charles Village. I’d never actually been back up in the neighborhood but it’s extremely cool. In fact, if I were going to stay in Baltimore that’s where I’d want to move. All the houses are painted funky with great color schemes. Everything is clean and everybody has hammocks on their porches and it just seems like a cool place to be.

The store is called Normal’s and it’s one of the hippest little stores I’ve ever been in. It’s not just a wild little maze of books but they also have a nice collection of vinyl records. In fact I was looking at them and I saw Willie Nelson and I thought about how he’s playing at Bonnaroo and then I thought, ooOOOooo I could probably sell that for a lot more than the $4 they’re selling it for here.

I ended up buying about 12 records from a bunch of a different great bands. I got some Rolling Stones, Grateful Dead, Jimi Hendrix, Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, and some B.B. King since he’s playing at Bonnaroo too. I so grabbed a couple books that I was looking for too but I’ll definitely be back.

I really wanted to listen to the records after I bought them so I looked on CraigsList and found an old portable record player with a built-in speaker. I went and picked it up this afternoon and have been rocking out ever since. I understand why people like vinyl now. It really does give it more feeling and character. I can almost imagine the bands playing in the room. The crackling is a nice too, like a warm fire.

One bad thing is that a couple of the records are skipped at their best parts. It’s probably because they got played so much on those parts. Having it skip on ‘Purple Haze’ makes me wanna cry. I’ll get it over it I suppose.

Pushkin, my roommate’s cat, has been pretty fascinated with everything and he’s been coming in every now and then and laying down by the player. I think his favorite so far has been the Dead.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 15th, 2008 at 7:08 pm and is filed under Music, Culture, Community, Uncategorized. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.