Colony Room Distilled

The week before Emily's reading, she and I attended the Colony Room to scope out the scene. After a delicious dinner of Sushi and something not quite yet tofu at a delightful hole in the wall Sushi place in the Castro we slid down 18th to Folsom and other to New Langton. Baffled at first by the space (I thought we were in the same New Langton I knew but that it had received some kind of extraordinary renovation stripping out the bare fittings it had had) until the director explained it was new and the old space was adjacent and accessed through a barely finished hole in the wall I was none the less enchanted by the corrugated walls and vertigo inducing ceiling.

Despite the huge volume of space, the scene felt warm and intimate. A trick of the red glowing light perhaps but a welcome feeling none the less.

On the back wall a video projection, universally ignored. Scattered through the room, a spare crowd. On the left a bar light by hanging barrels turned lamps (my mother with her passion for electrifying everything would appreciate the work) on the right the Alice in Wonderland passage to Langton past, behind a red Toyota pick up truck with a white camper roof housing a portable still, the source of that evening's special cocktail. A kind of anti-moonshine (or anti-freeze), it was Makers Mark bourbon run through the still until it lost all color but retained that sickly sweet bourbon flavor. Vaguely reminiscent of holiday sweet, it would turn out to be a drink that stayed with me well into the next day.

More social than performative, the evening turned into an unexpected delight. Perhaps it was the smallness of the group or the moonshine but somehow the we're all in this together feeling led to an easing of some of the usual art/social anxiety and awkwardness. After admiring her from afar I had a wonderful chat with Ann Colvin..