chinese broccoli

The only thing that could tear me away from a Brooklyn autumn would be a tour of various other autumns of the world, and thus I took a break from my intermittent travels to Iceland and Seattle to travel to, uh, Canada and Seattle. The premise for the boondoggle: in the wake of one of their best albums ever, I wanted to see as many Yo La Tengo shows as fast as I could in one week, all while tricking the band into letting me stow away on the bus. I had meant to simply grab onto the back, of course, but I haven’t really learned to skateboard yet.

In any case, a little tour roundup is in order.

Santa Cruz

I had never been to Santa Cruz. How is that possible, you say? It is very far from Brooklyn, and Chicago, and Canada for that matter, and it is even sort of far from San Francisco if you don’t have a car. I grabbed a couple of city buses and a Caltrain and the Hwy 17 express bus and a few short hours later I was in a weird surfer town. I hung out at the bus station for a minute, which is always a good way to get a measure of local culture, and saw a car drive by with a passenger in an animal mask. I could hear bongos. My friend Chris Baca drove up to collect me and we went to his place to regroup (for him: physical therapy, for me: making sure the internet was still up and running). We went over to Verve Coffee Roasters, a great no-longer-that-new coffee roaster and cafe whose awesome coffees I get to drink all the time at Café Grumpy back in New York. It seemed like everyone I talked to in Santa Cruz was also going to see Yo La Tengo that night. Had a few nice coffees and wandered down to the beach to watch surfers bob on the water like black specks. It was sunset. It was nice. A different world down here.

Yo La’s show was at the Rio Theater, a sort of pastel-art-deco venue with remnants of a more-glorious-than-now past, and no beer. The show was great, and the band popped the Flamin Groovies’ Roy Loney out of a hat at the end for a number or two. (I took pictures, but it looks like my camera lens was broken again after a heroic attempt or two to reglue a, uh, gravity injury it suffered somewhere in Minniborgir, Iceland.)

Watched a little of hometown friends/openers Endless Boogie have a big argument on the street, then it was onto the bus for the night, parked blissfully in quiet, weird Santa Cruz. Baca had told me about a local (goldmine, no doubt) business that delivers milk and fresh baked cookies in Santa Cruz between 8pm and 1:30am. They will also deliver you condoms. And dice. I had to order them to the bus for after the show (how couldn’t I?), but coordination was weird and by the time we connected with the driver…they had forgotten to bring us the milk. Good thing we weren’t counting on any dice deliveries to round out the evening.

San Francisco

I knew the band’s Sunday show in SF was going to be part of the Treasure Island Music Festival (festivals, nooooooo thank yooooou!) but what I didn’t know was that they were also going to be doing an in-store at Aquarius Records. So you’re going to park a giant tour bus with an equipment trailer on Valencia Street on a weekend, are you? Well apparently you are, if you show up around 8am. Imagine waking up on a bus in the center lane of Valencia Street. I couldn’t, until I did.

But boy were we close to coffee! Mark and Joe and I headed, um, outside into the road and across the southbound lane of traffic to Ritual, then wandered off in search of friends, brunch, things to do before we took off to the record store and the island.

I found the friends and the brunch and the things, but I might’ve eaten less brioche if I’d known Aquarius was going to throw a bacchanalian sweets frenzy backstage for the band. Piles and piles of Tartine pastry, and a generous visit from the crème brûlée guy! Man, bands that are really good have it really good sometimes, hot damn. The in-store itself: awesome! Crowded! Quiet! Intimate! Replete with personal drama! And including a rare attempt at whistling on the part of front of house sound engineer Mark Luecke! The twenty minutes I spent squeezed onto the floor of this record store was easily of the high points of my trip.

From thence to a quick burrito run and over to Treasure Island. What could have been less appealing then than being trapped at an indie music festival trapped on an island?

There were some other good acts, and a bizarre backstage Thanksgiving supper, but mostly I was frightened of the crowds. At one point I ventured out to find friends, and stood by the same set of trash cans so long that someone got tired of waiting for me to leave and just did their drug drop underneath my legs. Yo La’s set was short, loud, and made me admit that the frustrating festival environment sometimes brings out an anger that makes shows kind of great. I spent a song or two secreted away from the festival’s humanity, perched alone on oceanside rocks just behind the stage, watching the flickering city skyline while listening to the set. Woulda sat there longer, but then they started in on “Nothing to Hide” and I had to go dance. Actually, maybe that little interlude was the high point of the trip. No, wait, the high point was getting stuck on the island for another two hours after the show while we waited for the bus driver to wake up back in the city. No, fine. It was watching the city lights.

To be continued, with more suspense, lost rucksacks, high-speed chases…and a donut covered in bacon!