K&W in Laguna Beach -- Saturday, 29Nov2014

I'd had a cold the previous week, and then somehow tweaked my back so I couldn't even get the amp into the van and had had to cancel last Saturday's Laguna trip, so I was determined to get down there somehow this time. Especially since I'm so busy in December that this would be my only chance to sing Christmas music in Laguna this year.

My back is still trashed, but I took a clue from NASA and hooked the amp up to the top of the hatchback with a bunch of bungee cords. At "Moon gravity", it was much easier to lift up and in.

When I drove past the corner, I was surprised to see our summertime nemesis, the Tommies, playing there. I rolled on over to the Fingerhut side anyway, but before I'd hardly started setting up, Tom came over and volunteered to move to the Tunnel. Apparently, he wasn't doing well against the loud ice cream store music and the cold. He and little Tommie would be warmer and louder in the enclosed and echoey tunnel.

Because of my back, I brought a little fold-up stool to lean against. It felt weird not to be standing, but being down a little lower pointed the monitor speaker right toward my head, which really helped me sing.

The now ever present bums were mostly over on the far bench, but the foot traffic was pretty low, so we didn't have too many people. Except for one quiet stretch late in the evening when I had four or five couples captured by "Bridge Over Troubled Water". That's really the best, when some people mean to walk on by but are pulled up short and stop.

One little boy decided that the best way to keep Mom from dragging him away was to just sit down, right there. She got the hint.

We had more than usual police presence, which I now look forward to, since I'm pretty sure they're not going to shut me down. They usually can't do anything about the bums, but just having them come by helps modulate the behavior. A cop came by to talk to Shirtless Josh, apparently called in by a woman who didn't appreciate his critique of her anatomy. Good for her. Maybe we need to call him "Clueless" Josh, since he kept insisting that it was a compliment...

At one point, an older guy for whom the term "stumble bum" was coined tried to walk through the corner. And he almost made it, but as he walked past Warren, he fell over backwards onto Warren's (empty) guitar case and into his equipment tower, tumbling over a carefully-rigged set of effects pedals. Warren and an audience member had to drag him up onto his feet and sit him on the bench to sober up a little while I tried to dispel some of the awkwardness by singing another song. Fortunately, no permanent damage to Warren's stuff.

And we had the little Mexican drunk who likes to chat people up for a while before asking to "borrow" a dollar. He thinks he's our friend, and when he came up to me for the third time to fist-bump, I had to tell him outright to stop chasing away "my customers". "Oh, I don't do that!" Yes, you do. I'm pretty sure the people sat down to listen to the music, not to make a new friend.

And then a little before 10, some of the guys who'd wandered off returned and sat right there on the main bench. One of them took to shouting "Wanna buy some weed?" over and over at the passing people. I suffered through it for a while, but it was the last straw, and I just quit mid-song and packed up.

As much as I like playing down there, I'm kinda looking forward to a month of playing places *without* drunken bums.