proceed to the route
[Alt text: A long iPhone alert message telling me I may have been exposed to Covid]
Monday night, while scrolling through TikTok, my phone sent me the above alert. Go ahead and laugh at my geriatric font size, I don't care. But how did the state of California know anything about me when I no longer live there? It took me a while to figure out what it was telling me: That sometime on Saturday, my phone was near the phone of someone who either had Covid, or had been exposed to Covid.
I have some questions.
First: How does this work, exactly? Not the phone-to-phone communication (everyone knows that's just magic) but the human part? Did someone, weeks or months ago, open their phone to that part of the settings and click something saying "I was exposed" or "I have Covid"? Or, was it like that old commercial (YouTube), where one phone old two phones, and those phones told two phones, "and so on, and so on, and so on" and by the time it got to me, the original cooties were long gone?
And if you had Covid, wouldn't updating your phone's settings be the last thing on your mind? Or maybe, if you're not actually sick, and you have to quarantine, you finally have time to drill down into all those nested menus in your settings.
Second: Why did this alert take two full days to reach me? If I'd been notified on Saturday, would I still have gone to the Jawbreaker reunion show Sunday night, where damn near no one was wearing a mask? And how many people from than almost-sold-out show now have similar alerts on their phones, thanks to me?
About the show: It was at the Fillmore in Silver Spring, MD. Which, if you've never been to the San Francisco Fillmore, probably sounds like a nice place to see a show. It is not. It is garbage. In San Francisco terms, it is a DNA Lounge trying to be a Great American Music Hall. None of the grandeur or history or class of its namesake venue, and whoever runs the lights should be fired because there is no excuse for strobe lighting at a rock show.
The Get Up Kids opened. I loved that band in the 90s. I never would have called myself emo, but this song (YouTube) used to almost make me cry, and I didn't even know what the hell he was making his mind up about.
I used to watch shows from the sound booth at Metro in Chicago (a benefit of being the DJ's girlfriend), which meant I got to watch the sound guys work. They had these long strips of masking tape at the front edge of the board, with the settings for all the levers and knobs for each band. Blah blah "levels" "monitors" etc. When one band finished, they'd rip off that piece of tape, revealing a piece of tape below it with the settings for the next band, and so on until the headliner.
I wondered if Sunday's sound guys had run out of tape. Or if the band had run out of whatever fueled all the angst back then. It seemed much of the crowd was as confused as I was. I feel bad that I was disappointed. I guess that's the risk you take with reunion shows.
But: Jawbreaker sounded perfect, and I assume they were traveling with their own sound person, because the Kerouac samples came though loud and clear during their set, just like on that album.
Back to this Fillmore situation. Wikipedia tells me there is, in fact, a full menu of Fillmores:
Fillmore Auditorium (Denver), Colorado
The Fillmore (Fillmore Auditorium) San Francisco, California promoter Bill Graham's original West Coast concert location
Fillmore East in New York City, New York, Bill Graham's East Coast concert location (1968 to 1971)
Fillmore West in San Francisco, California, Bill Graham's subsequent West Coast concert location (1968 to 1971)
The Fillmore Detroit in Detroit, Michigan
Irving Plaza, known as "The Fillmore New York" in the late 2000s
Theatre of the Living Arts (TLA) in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, briefly known as The Fillmore at TLA and referred to locally as The Fillmore Philadelphia
The Fillmore Philadelphia, a separate venue in the Fishtown neighborhood of Philadelphia opened in late 2015
The Fillmore Silver Spring, a venue in Silver Spring, Maryland
The Fillmore Miami Beach, a venue in Miami Beach, Florida
So I guess it's a chain, like Dunkin or Waffle House, and that's depressing. I get that there's a Live Nation/Goldenvoice/Ticketmaster cabal controlling like 80% of the live music industry, and that the House of Blues model had some success, but it feels wrong to try to turn special, historic places into multi-city brands. I mean, imagine trying to recreate Minneapolis' First Avenue in another city. As Sam Irby would say: GUILLOTINE!!!!!
Anyway, I will start doing at-home tests tomorrow (five days after exposure) and hope like hell I haven't unknowingly given anyone the "Coachella Cough."
The only other excitement this weekend was a "live shooter" a mile north of me. Several hundred police cars showed up, because this is a wealthy and white part of town, and did fuck all to serve or protect. They couldn't manage to find the shooter, even though he was livestreaming his every move on the internet. Friday afternoon would have been a great time to do some crime in other parts of town. The whole thing ended with three or four people in the hospital, the shooter killing himself, and bullet holes in the windows of three businesses in my neighborhood, a full mile south. USA!
OK enough of that.
I'm just starting to do some research on what they call "volunteer vacations." Ideally something with animals. A place where I show up and pay X dollars to stay there, and every day I do manual labor like shoveling hay or horse shit, feeding chickens, getting sunburned, banging on a triangle to call people in for dinner, and maybe even learning to appreciate cowboy boots. So far I see places that want you to commit for a full month (I want to do two weeks) or are only open to men. If you know of a place that hosts city do-gooders, I'd love to hear about it. You can reply directly to this email and anything I share will be anonymous.
Better late than never
Last week I asked about things that took you way too long to figure out. A few responses:
"I feel like I’ve always been a late bloomer with learning life lessons. One thing in particular that I’ve been learning in my 50s (and during the pandemic): desire for sex doesn’t necessarily precipitate satisfying sex….sometimes you have to just go for it with your partner and desire will follow once you get started. If you wait for desire to come, you might wait forever and waste precious opportunities for pleasure and connection."
"I realized two things in my 30s that I wish I had known earlier. One is that the way people treat you is usually more of a reflection of them than of you. I think I understood that in theory but it took a long while to sink in. The second is that it really is okay to ask for help, and people will surprise you by how willingly they offer assistance. You may not want to bother people because they seem busy, but many of your friends and family will actually want to help if you ask for it - and some will astound you with the depths of their kindness."
Links
A profile of José Andrés, and a reminder I need to go eat at Jaleo. (GQ)
Awesome story about a hair-braiding class for dads. (WaPo)
Related to volunteer vacations: Hawaii is offering deals to tourists to help clean up beaches. (Outside)
Also cool: Once your kids outgrow their LEGOs, you can send them back. (LEGO)
I love reading about other people's success with stretching routines. Note to self to try the one where you get your palms flat on the floor. (Lifehacker)
I subscribe to Lauren Zalaznick's weekly email because the links are all about women-related news. 99% of the time, I've already seen the links and/or they are dated. BUT: The story she shares at the top of last week's is pretty great and makes me want to max out my credit card.
Taco Bell has a literary magazine. In marketing speak, the "learn more" or "click here" button is known as a Call to Action, or CTA. "Click to download this fancy bitch" is the best CTA I've ever seen. (Taco Bell Quarterly)