K&W in Laguna Beach -- Wednesday, 07Aug2013

We did so well on Tuesday night that I was tempted to go down again right away. Wednesdays are the usual Jim & Warren nights, but Jim is a recent (re)newlywed and likes to go home kind of early, so I showed up to take his place around 8:30.

And it was a great night. Nice weather, lots of tourists out. Four blonde college-aged kids stopped for a while, and I thought they were locals until I asked one of the girls for a request and she replied with her heavy accent that they were from Russia and didn't know any of these songs... (But I played some Beatles, and they really did.)

Later on we had a family from Arizona, and the little girls were unable to believe that I didn't know their favorite song, "Thrift Shop". Do I *look* hip-hop? Maybe it looked to them like my hat and vest must have come from Goodwill...

We had some unpleasantness when one of the local homeless guys, who is usually a nice guy, had gotten quite drunk and was shouting obscenities at us from across the street. Seems he felt like our being there was precluding his ability to make enough money to buy beer. I couldn't help but conclude that he'd had plenty already, so I tried to just ignore him and keep playing. The people on the bench looked uncomfortable, but stayed around, so I guess the music was loud enough to drown him out. Warren finally went over and talked him down a little, and he eventually gave up and went away.

Towards the end, we had some people from Iowa who were out visiting their very gay Laguna Beach friend. He danced around, and actually stood out in front, lip synching me -- never had that before. So I gave him my hat, which he loved, and he danced around some more and tried to get people to put money in the hat -- and managed to get a buck, too.

So we had a pretty fun time, ignoring the unpleasantness with Gus, played until 11:30 (on a work night!), and ended up with $75 in the jar. When it's good, it's great.