Sigh. For the past couple of months I’ve known that Capital City Cheesecake plans to end my open mic. It makes me sad – but with an end point right at the end of the year, itmade a sort of sense and would make an easy point of division. Now, unfortunately, they decided to end at the end of September instead, which means I’ve got to cancel featured artists and start notifying people relatively soon. At first I was upset, but as I’m looking at the date, looking at how it’ll probably work out, I think I’m okay with it.
Not that it’s my choice. I understand the reasoning that CCC has, even though I don’t agree, it’s not my business – quite literally. I get to start telling people how to run their coffeehouse once I purchase and OWN said coffeehouse – and in the meantime I Live by the grace of others, trying to make my way by other peoples’ rules in other peoples’ houses.
At the end of August we’ll be celebrating our first (and now last) year at Capital City Cheesecake, which makes it kind of an ideal division of time to start looking for a new home. When we moved from Everyday Gourmet I’d renamed the open mic the “Takoma Park Open Mic” and made it clear that that was so the event could change venues freely.
At one point it was visualized as freely traveling betwixt a couple of different venues, but that was deemed (mostly by me) to be too confusing – and it turned out that there weren’t many other venues at all interested in having the TPOM darken their doors.
And so I’m hunting. I’ve got to admit that at the moment I’m not hunting too hard. I’ve seen SO MANY venues come and go – and more importantly been to SO MANY venues that are absolutely GREAT venues that I think I’m heartily aware of what I don’t have here. There truly is no space that’s a good combination of self-sufficient restaurant AND music venue. There are stages that would rely on covers, and there are restaurants that don’t have good spaces. I’ve heard positive things about El Golfo but haven’t been there yet to check it out and have no idea whether the owner would be amenable to paying someone for the entertainment they seem eager to get their hands on.
Sigh. And even though I’ve got this entity called the TPOM and have created a local musical community I must admit I’m NOT very attached to staying in Takoma. For a little while it seemed I was getting to be kind of a face / force in the local arts community, but it seems everything I get involved with kind of has its dark side and every time I seemed to get drawn to something I later find something else to repel me. Face, force… sometimes it feels more like I’m just a farce.
One of the most notable denizens of Urban H2O – Gloria the Common Snapping Turtle.
