A lot of my random trips begin on irc. St. Louis was no exception. I was minding my own business, and suddenly binary accosted me. "I'm having an incredible birthday party," he told me. "It's in my loft. 10,000 square feet of women and techno!" Binary promised that it would be the party of the year. I was skeptical--after all, it was in St. Louis--but I agreed to go.
I hadn't seen binary in years. The last time I saw him, I had been stranded unexpectedly in St. Louis courtesy of TWA. He was living with his mom, finishing high school, and figuring out whether to go to college or into industry... the normal kinds of decisions that you have to make all at once before you turn 18. Over the years, I graduated from college and started working as a writer, while he got into unix systems administration. Now, he oversees a vast network for an industrial chemicals producer. He doesn't like his job, and when the office moves in a few months, he thinks that he isn't going to go anymore. Maybe he'll find another job downtown, maybe not--binary isn't sure. For now, he works by day, and promotes records by night. More of the latter than the former.
After checking online for airfares, I concluded that it was going to cost at least $350 to go to St. Louis--even after using all of my crafty tricks. It is nearly impossible to get to St. Louis from Seattle without flying TWA, and the fares reflect this reality. Northwest Airlines does fly there, via Minneapolis. I checked their website, and saw that they were offering a redemption special for WorldPerks members: a 1,000 mile redemption discount for booking online. What's more, I managed to find flights exactly when I wanted. Since, with the discount, I would still have enough miles in my frequent flier account for a free peak-season ticket, I used some of my accrued miles. This turns out to have been a good decision--Northwest has substantially worsened their mileage redemption policies as of late (you need to book 2 weeks in advance, stay over a Saturday night, travel during a period that isn't "blacked out," and then find flights for which capacity-controlled award seats are available).
Friday was another hell day of a hell week in the lab at work, and after lunch I was glad to leave early for the airport. Northwest makes a big deal about prompt departures, and we left on time after everyone was on board 15 minutes before departure. Northwest is apparently less concerned, however, with prompt arrivals--once we touched down in Minneapolis, we sat for an hour before arriving at the gate. We'd landed in the midst of a snowstorm, and aircaft were being de-iced just shy of their departure gates, blocking the gates for arriving flights (you would think that an airport in Minneapolis--of all places--would have figured out how to deal with snow, but apparently not). I barely made my (delayed) connection after running the entire length of the airport. Minneapolis has a big airport.
After we pulled away from the gate, the plane had to be de-iced, and with severe weather air traffic patterns, we left about an hour late. Upon landing in St. Louis, binary was nowhere to be found. After cursing the airline and grappling for binary's number, I noticed that there was nobody in the waiting area. Period. When I noticed that nobody was being greeted at the gate, it occurred to me that the security gates were probably closed. This hunch proved correct, and I located him in the waiting area just past the checkpoint.
Some of binary's other friends had also flown in, and they'd come along as the welcoming party. Two of them had wandered off, and we found them comparing drug paraphanelia under a security camera in the baggage claim area. I thought it was a good idea to leave immediately. Mitch, Bill, and Brian accompanied us to binary's Mitsubishi. The ride back was a surprisingly tight fit, considering how much larger the Mitsubishi is than my Echo (which can comfortably seat 3 adults in the back).
Binary's loft is in the heart of downtown St. Louis, near the Washington Avenue club district. Despite the location, the building is all but abandoned and suffered years of neglect before being purchased for renovation. Binary won't tell anyone what his rent is, but he has an entire floor of the building (except for a small part occupied by a media company). It must be obscene, especially considering the panoramic view of the skyscrapers downtown.
I was surprised to learn that, like downtown Little Rock, almost nobody actually lives in downtown St. Louis. The place is practically deserted after 5PM. This means that there are almost none of the normal things that one would expect to find somewhere that people live--such as grocery stores, gas stations, and the like. Just large, anonymous office towers accented by generic corporate services, all of which opens at 8 and closes at 6. On weekends, aside from the clubs, downtown St. Louis is virtually silent.
Not, however, on Mardi Gras weekend. I woke up to a horrible noise, which turned out to be binary's cell phone ringing, and we drove to the Marriott to collect Brian and Bill. While we waited for them to collect their things, we watched the drunks stumbling around. Lots of them. And it was only 10AM. While I'd never associated Mardi Gras with St. Louis, it's proudly the home of the second largest Mardi Gras festival in the US. The closer we got to the parade, the greater the density of drunk rednecks. We parked at binary's office, and walked a few blocks to the head of the parade.
Almost immediately, Brian began two-fisting hurricanes and Budweiser. Meanwhile, binary was wearing a pair of "old man" sunglasses (the kind that cover up the top half of your face and block out practically any form of radiation) while walking around with the hood of his sweatshirt up. He looked like a character out of Star Wars. I tried to catch beads that were being thrown from the floats (most of them representing companies like diesel engine repair shops and porta-potty vendors), and managed to snag a set.
The further we walked, and the drunker Brian got, the more obnoxious he became. He was intently interested in breasts. "Show me your tits," he yelled to everyone he passed--including policemen, bike gangsters, shady-looking teens, and worse. Eventually, binary tried to stop the insanity by buying a bead necklace with battery-operated flashing tits. Brian later traded it for 144 cheap Chinese bead necklaces. He wanted real tits, and nothing was going to satisfy him until he saw some.
Considering it was Mardi Gras, you would think something crazy would happen--but compared to an Evergreen party, any sort of public event (especially in the Midwest) seems remarkably sedate. I guess I've been forever jaded by the evenings consisting of two 40oz bottles of Green Death, an almost equal amount of, er, other green things, and all the furniture ending up out the window. Mardi Gras in St. Louis was a microcosm of America--overfed, corporate, nonconformist conformity. It was actually kind of depressing.
At Mardi Gras, we met some more of binary's friends, and went back to his loft to get ready for the party. Make that "art exhibition." The St. Louis police have decided that large dance parties, sometimes called "raves," are deserving of harassment, and the St. Louis city council has readily agreed; this has driven all such events underground. Binary got around this by hosting the event in a commercial space, and bringing in professional art--it was an art exhibition, but with music and dancing. Additionally, police are most paranoid about drugs, so the event was sober. Rather than booze and MDMA (known as ecstasy), as is common at such events, this event had free coffee. Binary said "If the cops come up here, they won't know what to do! They'll never have seen a rave with art and coffee!" I have to agree that his plan was mischeviously ingenious.
Fortunately, there were no problems with the police. The kids who showed up early looking for drugs left disappointed, leaving only cool older people who were there for the music. Art exhibition, party, or whatever you want to call it, binary had some of the midwest's best techno talent on hand. The only hang-ups were that he'd forgotten to clear the event with the landlord (which was smoothed over quickly), and he'd forgotten to find someone to keep the coffee perking (which I gladly did). Another hang-up was Brian. Depressants amplify the effects of alcohol, and he'd consumed a lot of both. This rendered him both amazingly obnoxious and completely useless for the balance of the evening, until he (thankfully) passed out.
Techno, cool party people, and caffeine kept a packed house jumping until 4am. The DJs stayed and played until 6am, when the sun came up. I think that music from the midwest may be the next big thing. It's largely ignored, but there is (if what I heard is any indication) some real up-and-coming talent in Missouri and Illinois. These guys don't focus on escoteric beats (although there were some really cool jungle rhythms). This is dance music, and midwest DJs know how to whip the crowd into a frenzy, slow it down to let people catch their breath, and break into a new rhythm at just the right time. Too often, DJs forget these kind of details, and I was really glad to see such unity with the crowd.
I woke up about 1pm, and binary was thoroughly trashed. Two days without sleep had taken their toll, and he needed to sleep. My flight was fairly late, so I took the Metrolink train to the airport and successfully stood by for an earlier flight to Minneapolis. My idea was to visit the Mall of America until my 10:15 flight. What I didn't realize was that the Mall of America closes at 7pm on Sundays. D'oh! I got a pretty decent fajita dinner, bought a newspaper, and checked out the movie schedule. There was nothing interesting, so I headed back to the airport.
On the bus ride back to the airport, a very inquisitive teenage girl asked me a bunch of questions about Seattle. I gathered that Minneapolis is a much better place to be a kid than Seattle; they have a good music scene and selection of 16+ clubs (there are no under-21 clubs in Seattle). I tried to stand by for the 8:30 flight, but no dice. There were 35 people on the standby list due to an earlier flight that got in late. I called Northwest Airlines reservations and learned that the flight I was on was overbooked, but the 7:15am flight was clear, so I volunteered to be bumped; however, they ended up not needing my seat (much to the surprise of the gate agent... "A lot of people didn't show up for this flight," he said). Oddly enough, it turned out I was sitting in the gate area next to the boyfriend of one of my co-workers, who was returning from a cross-country skiing race.
When my flight arrived in Seattle, I said hello to my co-worker (who was picking up her boyfriend), and got some much-needed rest. As I expected, Monday was another long day in the lab.
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