a surreal monday-night downtown

surreal is the right word.

on my way into downtown i passed the bus station on walker. i was going the speedlimit, but as i looked by, everything seemed like stillframe images, slowly passing by. A muslim lady (what me and all my arab cousins would call a "ninja" b/c she was completely covered except for her eyes) was sitting, covered in white at the bus stop. a man, one of the 5 oklahoma city downtown professional bums to be precise walked in front of her, and gave her this accusing stare that seemed to me incredible. Here was this bum-guy, who is judged by all of society, spit-upon by onlookers with the words "get a job", and he is looking at this muslim lady as if she is lower than him and as if she were the cause of his troubles, he was judging her. that was just a weird slow-motion picture, as i was looking in making my observations on both of them from my car.

so i continued down the street, made my left on couch dr. and there i was: the civic center. the steps and courtyard in the front were scattered with aging rock-n-rollers. 107.7 KRXY was blasting tunes that everyone was singing along to. the mullets were as aflow as champagne on new years... and there i was in the middle of all of it, taking in all these people that were remembering their first george thorogood concert 30 years ago.
mental pictures:
1. the 60 year old outside holding up a giant sign saying "free america or drug free america, can't be both" on one side and "stop the gangs, legalize the drugs" on the other
2. the guitarist reaching over and picking up some underwear thrown on the stage as if it were a skunk and throwing it to the back of the stage carefully.
3. countless grilled-tan 50-somethings in cowboy hats and tight-tight-tight jeans dancing around the stairs and isles doing a jig like nothing i've ever witnessed in my life.
4. every woman over 40 that thought she was hot, was being followed directly by her best friend, that obviously knew that she herself was not. (the "hot" woman usually wearing non-fitting strappy shirts letting something or another hang out with tight jeans dyed and torn in all the wrong places, burned out hair, and makeup you couldn't see through, the "not" woman, was usually 2 feet shorter, often midget-size even, rotund, and wearing nothing that matched, but happy and feeling cool b/c she was with the "hot" one)

these people may not know how to dress in 2005, and may be a little odd... but shit do they choose good music. George Thorogood and the Destroyers, now THEY know how to rock. 30 years later and its still incredible. still bad-to-the-bone.
maybe an osteoporotic bone in some of the onlookers cases... but still crazy-bad-to-the-bone.

great experience.