Love thy neighbor

Like any good district resident, I spend a lot of time hating on the suburbs.

It's pretty easy. People from "out there" come "in here" and mess everything up. Traffic. Standing to the left on metro escalators. Crowding the sidewalks yelling "woooooooo!" coming out of the bars that would make me rather take my twenty dollar bill and swallow it, rather than enter. The suburbs are these ominous glistening towers of Harris Teeters and Targets where people live who want to afford home ownership.

I venture out into the suburbs sometimes, though. As a lady without a car, if you have a friend with a car who is going to Virginia to buy things, it's urban law that you MUST accompany them and MUST buy as much as you can such that getting to your ground floor apartment is a challenge. It's nature's will. If someone is going to Target, I must travel to the great unknown with them. Who doesn't ALWAYS need something at Target?

This past weekend, I was in Virginia both days, and as much as I hate to admit it, both were for good things.

Good thing the first:

The Cat Empire concert. At the State Theater. Man oh MAN was that a good show. Take 6 Aussies (5 regular band Aussies and one PAR-TIC-U-LAR-LY hot singer Aussie) and have them beach-jam-band-slash-Cuban-jazz their way into your heart and see if you don't tap those hipster-flats you're wearing. Dueling trumpets are something that I had not properly prepared myself for. Listen on myspace, it's worth it. Close your eyes and revel in the 5 + 1 who are awesome and surprisingly do not have a guitar amongst them.

The prize of the evening was the keyboard player. He was an amazing musician for sure, but was one of those band members who takes himself a bit seriously and John-Mayer-grimaces in some sort of painful orgasm of his own musical brilliance.

That aside, the State Theater is kind of an odd venue for this show. And there was an odd crowd. The crowd was like, 50-year-olds. But for every 50-year-old, there were two 16-year-olds. And then we twenty-somethings filled in the gap. Lots of people sitting down at tables, eating hamburgers like civilized people. And the 16-year-olds were crowd surfing. It did not compute.

Nor did the angry table-sitter who shoved the guy standing behind me to get out of his way, and the guy behind me managed to spill half his beer on me and my friend. I expect beer poured on me other places, not ones with table service. Apparently, standing and dancing was not allowed. At a concert. How Virginian of him!

Good thing the second:

The Italian store. Sweet Jeebus it's like going home! Everyone messed around with sandwiches of thinly sliced cold meats. That's delicious and all-- but child's play. Sausage and pepper sandwiches are where it's at. We waited a while for our lunches, but it was well worth it.

We ate in about 6 minutes outside in the balmy 38 degree weather before driving off to the Harris Teeter where we and all of Arlington fought for the last yellow onions in the behemoth store. I know Sundays are rough, but EVERYONE was at this store, and everyone was being pushy. I stopped saying "excuse me" when I was playing supermarket cart chicken, and instead just did what I had to do. My poor man-friend's deli meat took TWENTY FIVE minutes to arrive. TWENTY FIVE.

But I would say for the most part that I've had enough Virginia for a while, thankyouverymuch. You people have a lovely state with delicious sandwiches and tall buildings, but a girl cannot exist on sandwich or building alone.