Last Saturday was a night of social multi-tasking. I explored both my sporty and artistic sides while checking out two great reasons to live in DC. My fiance is from Dallas so he bought tickets for us and a friend to see the Dallas Mavericks play the Wizards at the Verizon Center. I am a big basketball fan as well so I was pretty excited. No offense Wizards fans, but I really expected Dallas to blow them away. The game was pretty tight the whole way through and the Wizards nearly pulled it off. Here's the one judgment I will pass. There was over a minute left in the game and the Mavs only had a four point lead and the crowd started pouring out of the arena. Wow. What an insult to the players. I know waiting for the trains sucks, but really? I thought that was pretty lame of the Wizards fans to not stick it out. So I wasn't really shocked when the wind was taken out of their sails and they lost 105-99. The stars of the game were the Mavericks' Tyson Chandler and his beard. Chandler scored 23 points and the beard definitely had an assist or two. Just a side note, coming home from our initial trip to DC to find apartments, my fiance and I walked next to Chandler in the Dallas-Fort Worth airport and he is frigging enormous! 7'1" to be exact.
After the game we took the bus over to H street to check out another one of DC's more well known music venue/bars, The Red Palace. This bar is in an area that apparently used to be pretty rough, so we made sure not to miss our stop. It's pretty isolated save for a bar or two right next to it on the same side of the street. The decor is of course mostly Black and Red and it's a squeeze to get through if it's a busy night. The cool thing was that there were two distinct bar areas and the music took place upstairs so if you just wanted to hang out and not watch the band, you could do so downstairs.
We missed the opening bands but they weren't from DC so not a huge deal, since I want to find some local talent. The headlining band was called Typefighter. They were great. Their style was indie rock, with a tinge of folk. The songs were melodic and very accessible to the average audience. That can often be something bands get criticized for, but I think it shows you're good at what you do, and others happen to agree. The lead singer continued the beard theme for the night, as he was sporting a pretty impressive one that made my fiance pretty jealous. His voice was unique with a non-offensive rasp that brought added emotion to his songs. The whole set I was thinking how fun this guy probably was a at party, just singing songs with his guitar and how cool it'd be to harmonize to. Then, as if reading my mind, the band announced that the last song would be a singalong. They jumped off the stage and brought the crowd in close to them and with only the guitar began to sing and play their last song. I have been to shows where there was crowd involvement and fans singing their favorite songs, but I've never seen it so intimate. We were all left with a warm fuzzy feeling. I made sure to tell the singer Ryan what a great job they did. He said he could give me more insight into the scene here in DC, so we'll see where that takes me next...
No comments:
Post a Comment