July 20th, 2009 Posted in Tour | No Comments »
Sorry for the delay in posting, folks. Here’s the updates from the “From Cascadia With Love” tour last Midwest stop, Minneapolis, MN. By the way, Minneapolis, we love your light rail system and your extensive bicycle highways! Several folks proudly boasted to us “We’re the number two bicycling city in the US, just behind Portland!”
Once again, Daniel wowed us with his driving prowess, carrying us across another state line and another time change into MN. We arrived to warm greetings from Nate, Jake, and Tommy who had recently returned home from their month-long Minneapolis to Portland round trip bicycle tour. We crashed on the front steps, looked fruitlessly for the elusive Minneapolis mascots, Corrina and Rudi the cats, and then hit the Hard Times Cafe for some veggie dinner. Next stop was down the road at Medusa for their regular drag night dance party. The Sprockettes have long been proud of our face glitter at performances, but these Minneapolis folks brought us to our knees with their glittering skills. The dance/performance party was in a tightly packed little space, the night’s theme was sci-fi, and we were the opening act of the night. Due to some space constraints inside, we ended up dishing out just a little teaser performance instead of our full set sometime near midnight. Dancing with a fog machine, bubble machine, and strobe light was really fun if not slightly blinding.
The next day was Tour de Fat, and it was chilly. (I hesitate to say it was full on cold, as Minnesota residents would laugh at us for thinkin 60 degrees is cold. But Ok, we felt cold.) Some of us spotted these bizarrely puffy gray and black things hovering still in the sky. We don’t know what they were, but they were somehow blocking the sunlight. Fortunately, the day stayed dry, but it was rather autumnal. An amazing crowd showed up, given the cool, windy weather. This was a pretty heavily costumed crowd, which made it a lot of fun. We met a few MDCs (I’m not spelling out the name, just to be a little family friendly, y’all) who talked about using street performance as activism. While the Sprockettes are not as overt as MDC in using dance for political activism, if you’ve seen this summer’s set, you know that we have a public transportation agenda in addition to some song lyrics such as “Let’s go out for a bike ride,” and “Do you wanna ride my bike?”
After a fabulous Tour de Fat afternoon, we taught Daniel some acro-balance moves and headed back to our homebase, the incredible, old house where Jake and Brie live. That night, there was a fundraising benefit for Bedlam Theatre, which is conveniently located right next door to Medusa, the performance space from the evening before. That place looks like the love child of Imago Theatre in Portland with a rooftop bar. Gorgeous. We were lured there by our dearest friends, Mucca Pazza, who performed at the Chicago and Minneapolis Tour de Fat shows. They brought the house down and coaxed the last little bits of energy out of our bodies on the dance floor.
Right around waking up time (7:30 am on Sunday!), Corrina the cat finally forgot she was terribly shy and let a few of us pet her. Much like her and Rudi, we felt the bittersweet tug of sticking around for more love and attention and burrowing away for a moment of stillness and the comfort of home. The fact that we had plane tickets for Portland already paid for might have been the only real thing that ended up pulling us out of that fine Minneapolis house and our friends’ loving arms.
Tour de Fat goes on into October, and we have five more stops with them. But we did bid farewell to the absolutely gorgeous Midwest, and we bid a hearty “see you later” (not good-bye) to the folks who housed us, fed us, cared for us, cheered for us, danced with us, and showed us a miraculous time. Agent Curse, Agent Trouble, and Daniel were thrilled to meet up with family and friends from back home. The rest of us were so grateful to finally have made it to that part of the country to see the natural beauty and soak in all the love. We have undoubtedly returned to Cascadia with much more love than we started with. Please stay tuned for more updates in a couple weeks; right now we’re shifting back into our routines, and we’ll pick back up with Sunday Parkways and Tour de Fat soon!
“From Cascadia with Love.”