We step around the velvet rope under Cafe Du Nord's awning and show our tickets and IDs to the doorman. He looks at my ID and then at me and wraps my wrist with a yellow band indicating that I am over 21. He doesn't notice that it is my birthday. I step to move past him but feel a tap on my shoulder, "Hey babe, wanna show me your wrist?" another man asks as he dangles a stamp in front of my eyes. I hand him my wrist and he stamps it with a D and N intertwined. I step through the doors.
The bar is dark and subterranean and feels like it should be filled with smoke, but it isn't. I'm reminded of nights in London and the faces of people I know intertwined with those I don't. But here this isn't the case despite the fact that I was born and raised in San Francisco. I turn to my friend and she nods to the bar. "It's your birthday," she says, as if indicating that I need a birthday drink.
As we wait for the others to arrive I scan the room without making eye contact. I see the merch table and guys leaning on pillars wearing skinny jeans, white Hane's t-shirts, and waistcoats. A girl trips past me with her drink, spilling some onto the dark carpet she mumbles an apologetic toast to no one. The air feels dense and I'm on the verge of deciding if I'm really there or if I'm not. Waves of sound ripple through the thick air. I don't hear the lyrics. I try to discern the sound as the room fills with more and more people, all trickling down the steep carpeted steps. The room looks nothing like a Cafe.
We push forward towards the stage as the first band's set ends and we watch as the impassive audience. They stand still and ridged, they lack emotion.
With our full group in tow we wait as the second band, Afternoons, sets up the stage. Their eclectic sound could have been cacophonous, but it wasn't. The layered melodies swoon out across the audience and the jaded crowd begins to sway and tap their feet in spite of themselves. The opera singer belts out soulful cries as a trumpet, two drummers, a couple bassists, a keyboardist, and some guitarist play. Two beautiful men, reminiscent of another time, ooze lyrics with their eyes closed. Joy.
We look around and the crowd is happy. This is what they came here for. This is it.
Then a couple sets later, the headliner: Port O'Brien, graces the stage and we all swoon. Their songs read like diary entries. They sound like kaleidoscopes. [Sometimes I wonder why people think that they need drugs to see visions.] They asked us to join them. They asked us to crowd forward. So we stomped our feet. We sang along. Then at the end, we took old pots and pans, we raised them into the air. We looked at one another. We swayed our hips. We clanked the pans. We were alive.
Location: Cafe Du Nord (Feb. 27, 2009), San Francisco, CA, U.S.A.
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