Keith at CALB in Shoreline Village -- Saturday, 14Feb2015

I deliberately asked for Valentine's Day for my return engagement at the CALB gallery, thinking that there would be lots of people there. But it rather backfired. More so because my wife came along, so it wasn't just me suffering...

First off, the parking lot was full, so we had to park in the city lot. At three dollars an hour. And I mis-remembered the space number and bought somebody else nine bucks worth of time. Daleen had to go back when our initial time expired, but moving the car to the Village lot was still hopeless, so we ended up paying $21 for parking, instead of getting validated parking for free. Not to mention the long walk with the equipment, which was not on rollers 'cuz I was going to use the "house system" and not my own amp that's on a cart.

When we got there, there was a Really Loud band playing in the patio area of Shenanigans, directly below the windows of the gallery. When I got set up and ready to play, I had to close most of the windows, just to hear myself play. Fortunately, they quit after a few songs, but I was really worried for a while there.

But the worst part was that almost nobody came upstairs to listen. Maybe 7 people all night, plus the "owner" Tom and his friend who arrived late and had to leave early. My theory slash rationalization is that although there were lots of people there, they all Had Plans. Valentine's parties or dinner reservations to get to. So where, on a normal Saturday, people are just wandering around to see what there was to see (and hear), these people didn't have time to come up and listen a while.

Anyway, that's my theory and I'm sticking with it -- until it's disproven when I go back in a few weeks on a "normal Saturday".

And then, to really ruin the evening, my hopes of walking around Shoreline Village after the gig (at 8:00) with my wife as our own Valentine's date were dashed because our parking time was expired, and we had all this equipment to drag to the car. I can only describe the whole thing as a Spectacular Failure -- though the few people who came by were *amazingly* good tippers and I made about as much as I could have expected if I'd'a gone to Laguna instead, so I guess it coulda been worse...