Midwest Girl In A Cali World: LA Meetup Concert Crawl
So what had happened was.....as a woman of a certain age all of my dear friends live on another coast and have lives of their own that does not intersect often with the life of my own. Being an expat of sorts makes the journey a bit more of a lonely one. Furthermore, living in the land of “ oh my God, you’re awesome, we should get together”, but no one ever really gets together can have one feeling a bit isolated.
This past few months have been very tumultuous for me because I have come to realize that I am alone and growing tired of it. Instead of crawling under a rock I decided to take matters into my own hands.One of the first things I decided was that I would make sure that I spent every moment of my boredom concocting a plan to get out of my loner rut.
First, I brushed the dust off of my Meetup.com account that I created last Spring. My first Meetup was in 2016 at a popular club called the Edison. There was no way of identifying who was in your Meetup group and I was turned off imediately. I ended up ditching that event and hanging out with my drinking buddies in DTLA.
The next time I did a Meetup for professionals with graduate degrees - M.Ed. if ya nasty- it was speed dating and it was very fun. It was nice to meet well groomed, well adjusted men -for the most part-. The venue was lovely and I got to meet great people. I was the belle of the ball. However, no one picked my belle a@#. This made me very suspicious. I dug deeper and discerned that this event was somewhat of a racket. Lonely, educated women pay to meet well to do guys who were never meant to go out on dates, facilitator chick cashes in and pays her actors off. Welcome to L.A.!
Anywhoo, this time I decide that I am going to only choose groups that are doing actual activities. So this time around I signed up for the I Always Wanted to Do That But Not Alone Group - swear that’s a real one-, LA Free Concerts, Volunteer LA, and some outdoor group.
This past Saturday, I got dolled up and embarked upon a LA Concert Crawl via the Metro Red Line Train. Our starting point was Union Station where we listened to Bach. Of course I met 2 new friends who were grown ladies that came in from Inland Empire to participate in the festivities. We sat at Bach for a minute and then decided to high tail it to the next place on the crawl to beat the crowd of 200 some odd people that showed up.
However, of course of all weekends Metro’s Red Line train was under construction. We had to take shuttles buses from Sunset and Vermont all of the way to Hollywood and Highland to hop back on the train to Universal Studios. If you are familiar with that trek you know that it is not one to be done any other way than by train. At this point we were committed. After an hour and a half of travel we were back on track and found ourselves at Universal Studios at Howlin’ At the Moon which is a dueling piano bar.
When I tell you that this spot was popping. If you like music of all genres and eras this show is for you. This is how it works. You provide one of the pianists with a tip and a request, they sing it and have the crowd amped with participation. It’s one of those places that only serves alcohol, so you know when you walk in what kind of night it will be. I’m like I see why this Meetup was on the train.
At this point some people from the Meetup were trickling in, but I am sure that the trek sidetracked everyone. By the time we left the piano bar we didn’t even make it to the 80′s dance party at Cabo Wabo. Plus, my new friends from Inland Empire had to get back to the train because the last one for the evening left at 11:30.
The best way to end the night was when we all were piled on the shuttle bus that took us back down. One of my new pals mentioned to the other passengers that they had to catch the Brown train back and no one had ever heard of it before. I mean to see people perplexed about this train was hilarious. Strangers were like “wait a minute, it’s a brown line”? I am an avid train rider and I had no clue either. The ladies and I parted ways and did the keep in touch thing, but like I mentioned before we will see. Where I am from when people say they are gonna catch up, they typically do. But, I guess in the land of plenty there’s ALWAYS other options.