9:30 Club
Giant black X’s. A big blue stamp. A dark green “temporary” tattoo embossed on my hand. Ruined sweaters. Five showers. An entire load of laundry stained with ink. $80 flushed down the toilet. Three fingers around a plastic cup, two fat ones pointed towards an exit.
Only at the 9:30 Club do fascism and indie rock live together in harmony. I’ve seen some of my favorite shows there: The Dismemberment Plan (October), Jens Lekman (October 2012), Clap Your Hands Say Yeah (September 2011). But I have never once felt welcome within its confines.
My misadventures there began in February, when I went to see Yo La Tengo with a fellow Diamondback staffer. At the time, I was 19 and he was 21. We had just come from Som Records, my friend toting a copy of the Talking Heads’ Remain in Light under his arm. At the door, a woman stamped my hand in dark blue ink, mumbled some inaudible words about an alcohol policy and sent me inside.
My friend left Remain in Light with the bartender and then purchased a beer, mostly for solidarity’s sake. Needing to use the bathroom before Yo La Tengo took the stage, he handed me his drink to hold for him and walked away for a few short moments. My three fingers were wrapped around the container for barely two minutes when a security guard — elbowing his way through the sparse crowd and shining a flashlight left and right, on the prowl for mischief — caught sight of my hand and told me to leave the venue. My friend, not wanting to stay for the show alone, followed suit.
I explained my good deed, yet it was all futile. He refused to let me back in. Posted somewhere in the bowels of the 9:30 Club website is a notice about a no-refund policy, which he wielded over our heads like an ax. My $40, my friend’s $40, gone. $80 lost thanks to three fingers.
That night, and the next night and the subsequent three nights, the blue ink that the mumbling alcohol-policy lady stamped onto my wrists would not come off in the shower. The sweater I wore to the show was stained at the cuffs with the same blue, and other pieces of my clothing sported more stains thanks to a poorly executed washing job. $80, a ruined shirt, other ruined shirts, no set from my favorite band and embarrassment in front of my friend added up to a wasted evening.
Why am I mentioning this now? The 9:30 Club continues to baffle me with its angry commitments to such stringent rules. Yes, it’s the law and yes I made a foolish mistake in touching a container of alcohol while inside the venue, but it’s more about the garishness with which these rules are enforced. Flashlights in the crowd an hour before showtime? Giant ink blots? Getting yelled at for helping out a friend? The story changes every time I see a show there, but the sentiment is the same.
Here’s to keeping the misanthropic undertones in the art and out of the art spaces.
