All For Love

On September 12, 2016September 12, 2016 By StevenIn Life At Home16 Comments

I was clicking around today, when I learned that Bell Biv Devoe has released “Run,” their first new song in fifteen years. I watched the video, and then I fell down the Wiki-hole. It started with an idle curiosity about just how old Ricky Bell, Michael Bivens, and Ronnie DeVoe are. I also thought that Bobby Brown was dead, for some reason, but I was mistaken about that.

For me, those names, along with Ralph Tresvant, are still forever-linked with New Edition, the band they all shared throughout most of the 1980s. I used to have their first singles (Cool It Now, Mr. Telephone Man) on 45 rpm vinyl, the cassette singles of my youth. In late 1985, thirteen year old me played the hell out of my All For Love cassette. I still occasionally hum their song about staying in school.

There’s a verse in one of the songs, where the band members are listed off: “Ronnie, Bobbie, Ricky and Mike,” says Ralph Tresvant, and “Hey Ralph!” says one of the others. I’m not actually sure who has the line, but that little back-and-forth has been stuck in my head on and off for thirty years.

Fast forward to April of 1986. I was in the eighth grade, and my father had secured tickets to the two of us to see the “All For Love” tour in the West Palm Beach auditorium! This was my first ever concert, although I’ve seen at least 128 other musical acts since then. I didn’t know it at the time, but Bobby Brown had just left the group, so he wasn’t part of the 1986 tour.

Dad was a very good sport to take me, because this entire event was way outside of his comfort zone. The general admission system wasn’t very well organized for this show, and getting into a seat involved a fair amount of pushing through a crush of people. I was a small kid at that point in my life, so it was extra crazy for me.

I still have the ticket stub for this show. I still have almost all of my ticket stubs. This one is kind of amazing because it was printed by a ticketing company that no longer exists (Bass Ticket Outlets), for a concert venue that no longer exists (the West Palm Beach Auditorium).

What was your first concert? What was your favorite?

A Carefree Life.

On July 31, 2016 By StevenIn Life At Home12 Comments

On Dixie Highway, less than a mile and a half from downtown West Palm Beach, Florida, there is an abandoned movie theater. It’s called the Carefree Theatre, and it was a major part of my life during the 1990s.

The Carefree started in 1936 as the Carefree Center and Bowlaway. The building housed a soda fountain and a ten lane bowling alley with “pin boys” who would set the pins and roll balls back to the bowlers. Automatic pin setters were installed later at great expense.

The movie theater portion began construction in 1946, and opened in 1947. The two front rows of seats were removed to allow the addition of a curved stage in front of the screen, reducing the number of seats from 800 to 772. There were offices and dressing rooms upstairs, and retail space along the northern wall. An outdoor rollerskating rink was tried on the roof, but the idea was dismissed after one season. One of the smaller shop fronts was a barber shop for years. It had been converted to a tiny art gallery when I worked there in the 1990s. I’m still getting to that.

In 1984, a man named Jon Stoll bought the center. He already had a functioning concert promotion business, a company called Fantasma Productions. He set up Fantasma in the offices on the south side of the building. The old derelict bowling alley became the Comedy Corner, one of South Florida’s premiere comedy clubs. People like Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Maher played there. Dan Whitney (known to most people as Larry the Cable Guy) did opening act work there in his early days in comedy. A restaurant opened in the northwest corner of the building, with a bar that was made from the old bowling lane wood.

In 1984, the Carefree was the largest single-screen movie theater in the state of Florida. The theater started to run art and foreign films in 1990, and concerts routinely graced the stage. A regular Saturday night showing of the Rocky Horror Picture Show started up, and ran continuously for fifteen years.

I was in college when I first visited the Carefree Theater. The year was 1991, and I went with a group of people to see the Rocky Horror Picture Show. I was friends with people who were friends with other people who were in the shadow cast of Rocky Horror, and it wasn’t long before I wound up in the cast myself. I mostly played Brad, but I spent time in many of the other parts. There may or may not be photos of me playing Dr. Frank N. Further out in the wild.

In 1993, my job as a cashier for a county pool ran past my limited cap of hours. It was October, so I needed a job to get me through until January came to reset the cap. I got a job at the Carefree as a projectionist and assistant manager, and I worked that job alongside my county job.

I stopped playing in Rocky Horror in 1997, just before I went back to school at the University of Central Florida to complete my degree, but I still worked at the Carefree sometimes when I was back in town for the weekend. Here’s a few of the things I most remember about my time at the Carefree:

Running many, many well known movies, including Amelie, Shakespeare In Love, and the Engish Patient. We also did a run of Anime films on Friday nights that included Princess Mononoke and The Lensman. The Jewish Film Festival would rent our space for their movies on a yearly basis. So would the local Bollywood community, which marks the first time I’d ever projected a movie so long that it had an intermission.
Accidentally starting a very, very large LARP (live action role-playing for those that aren’t familiar) of Vampire: The Masquerade. The idea started as a lark, and quickly grew to an enormous crowd of people. We got permission from the powers that be to actually open the theater for the game, as long as the concession stand had someone on standby to sell popcorn and drinks to the LARPers.
Wearing many, many fun Halloween costumes. My best-ever costume was during Halloween 1997, when I dressed as Jareth, David Bowie’s character from the movie Labyrinth.
Meeting Weird Al Yankovic, BB King, Howard Jones, Lisa Loeb, and so many more before or after their shows. I bumped into Ben Folds in the bathroom, and had an entire conversation with him without knowing that he was the lead singer in that new band that was playing that night. There were so many amazing concerts at this place that I couldn’t even list them all. Tori Amos played the Carefree when her latest release was Little Earthquakes.
Seeing comedy live from people like Jerry Seinfeld, Bill Hicks, Richard Jeni, Carrot Top, Tommy Chong, and Patton Oswalt. Patton Oswalt and Dana Gould played the Comedy Corner on the same night, and when their show was done they came over to see the last half of Rocky Horror. Dana Gould writes for the Simpsons now, and Patton Oswalt is in absolutely everything else. I sat in Patton Oswalt’s lap during the floor show part of the movie, and he was a really good sport about it. Michael Winslow, the sound effects guy from the Police Academy movies did a few shows there, and I got to meet him offstage in the afternoon. It turns out he makes those sounds all the time.
One night while closing up, I went around the back of the building to trip a power breaker, and I fell into an open manhole. There had been construction recently, and someone left the cover open. It was also dark, and I wasn’t expecting to lose six feet of height in half a second. I got six or seven stitches in my shin from that little adventure. My injuries are frequently cartoonish in nature, and this is a perfect example of that.
Joy, one of my then-coworkers, told me that at one point, some of the staff from the comedy club next door were playing with a Ouija board in the wait-station behind the bar. There was a history of odd events and vaguely supernatural spookiness in the building, and they discovered from their Ouija dabbling that there was an entity named “Steven” who was stuck in the building and couldn’t leave. Joy’s deadpan response still makes me laugh: “Yeah, but he’s still alive.”

I finally turned in my keys in 2001. In 2004, South Florida had a whole bunch of bad hurricanes hit us in a row, causing roof damage. In December of 2005, during the Jewish Film Festival, part of the roof collapsed. There were 600 people in the Carefree Theatre, but the collapse was over an empty storefront. The building was evacuated, but nobody was injured. In March of 2006, the damaged part of the building was demolished.

In 2008, Jon Stoll died of a stroke. The theater has been empty ever since. Here’s what it looks like now, on any night that has epic stormclouds:

So many relationships formed while I was working there. Several marriages still hold from those days. Several funerals, too. And many, many friendships. A hefty chunk of my Facebook friend-list is people who I met during my years working there. One good friend, John Rundell, has been saying for years that he wants us to buy the abandoned theater to reopen it in some way.

It turns out we missed our window of opportunity, though. Lori Stoll, Jon’s widow, sold the entire complex to a developer and film producer named Charles Cohen. He’s planning on razing the building to the ground and rebuilding it with a six-screen stadium-style movie theater, with apartments above the theater.

He still plans on showing art house and foreign films, though. Maybe it will still seem like the place I remember.

South Florida friends, do you have any fond memories of the Carefree Theatre?

Whatcha been up to?

On June 3, 2016 By StevenIn Life At Home6 Comments

It’s been a few weeks since I posted, and it’s been a few months since I’ve posted anything about what I’m actually up to. Here’s some highlights:

I went with Amelie to Megacon, a geekery convention that happens each year in Orlando. If you search this blog for Megacon, you’ll see my photos from several previous years. Yes, I took hundreds of pictures this year as well, but I haven’t had a chance to sort them yet. We saw Shatner and George Takei, Kevin Smith and Jason Mewes, Ming Na Wen and John Barrowman, Kevin Conroy and a whole bunch of Harry Potter actors. Almost all of these people were hilarious.
I attended some meetings in Zurich for my job, which meant I got to have a brief visit back to Regensburg. I took many photos of basically all the same things I took pictures of while I lived there, out of a sense of nostalgia.
On that same trip, I convinced my colleagues to stop for lunch in Vaduz, Liechtenstein on the way to Zurich. This is my 28th country visited.
I had minor surgery on my left shoulder two and a half weeks ago, to remove a fatty tumor called a lipoma. Lipomas are generally soft, benign, and painless, and doctors usually leave them alone unless they’re impeding your mobility or causing discomfort. My lipoma had grown to a rather large size, and was located in a place that did actually cause me some discomfort. It was also growing- the surgeon who removed it said that it was about the size of a grapefruit, but not entirely round. Amelie and I named it Lumpy. The surgery was very fast, but it prevented me from working out or lifting anything heavy for a while.
We’ve been to quite a few good movies and concerts in the last few months, including Bernadette Peters and Florence & The Machine. I enjoyed Captain America: Civil War and the Jungle Book, and I was extremely annoyed with Batman vs. Superman.
The doctor told me today that I can do normal workouts again, which is great, because I just purchased a new Fitbit. I had a Fitbit One throughout my time living in Europe, and I rather enjoyed seeing how much walking I was doing. The one I purchased now is the Charge HR model, which does everything the One did, plus it monitors my heart rate and has a nifty wrist-band. Also, Fitbit users can friend each other to compete or encourage each other to be active. The “taunt” function is kind of fun. If you have a Fitbit and you want to add me, use stevenglassman42 at gmail.
I finally got around to putting this little fellow on my car. He’s been on my desk for something like two months:

What have you been up to?

Throwback Thursday: Repatriation day plus one year.

On October 1, 2015October 1, 2015 By StevenIn Life At Home6 Comments

A lot of my friends do this thing on Facebook called Throwback Thursday, where you post a really old photograph of yourself, but I realized a few days ago that this Thursday would be the first of October. It’s been precisely one year since I left Germany to start my life over here in South Florida.

In that time:

I spent just over four months living in my brother’s spare bedroom which was also his office after my return. I’m still very grateful for his hospitality- by staying there, I was able to find an apartment on my own terms. When I moved to Germany, I had to live in a hotel for three weeks while I searched for my apartment. This was significantly more relaxed.
Soon after my arrival, I inexplicably won a Bose SoundLink Mini in a contest from my web hosting provider. Thanks, DreamHost!
On my first weekend back, I attended the wedding of a man I’ve known for more than twenty years now.

I brought Amelie as my date. I first met Amelie a few years ago, and we officially became a couple during my last year in Germany. This was the first time we went to a wedding together. Amelie wore a Valentino dress, and she looked awesome.
I reacquainted myself with Tijuana Flats. Amelie introduced me to Shake Shack.
I relearned the convenience of grocery shopping whenever the heck I feel like it instead of having to do it before 8pm on weekdays.
About a month after my return, I purchased a car. My previous car was sold when I moved to Germany, so I was starting from scratch. After much deliberation, I decided on a Mazda 3 hatchback. This decision proved beneficial later, when Amelie and I bought all new furniture for my apartment at Ikea. The storage in this hatchback is insane.
Amelie and I have gone to many, many concerts since my return, including some long time favorites of mine (Information Society, Kraftwerk, Weird Al Yankovic) and some favorites of hers (My Morning Jacket, Barenaked Ladies, Paramore, Pixies) as well.
During the late January trip to California to see Information Society, Amelie and I briefly visited with my old friend Miri in the Sacramento area. Less than six months later, Miri took her own life. That sucks.
Back to fun stuff! Amelie and I have also been to six theme parks in South Florida since my return- all four Florida Disney parks, and both of the Universal Studios parks. We are now Disney annual pass holders, because it’s so close!
On the fifth month, I moved into my own apartment, a one bedroom affair boasting 617 square feet of space. It’s 150% the size of my apartment in Regensburg, yet somehow feels smaller. This can probably be accounted for by the actual kitchen, which does eat up a bit of space. Totally worth it, though.
I spent five weeks in Japan for work, and I’m only about a quarter of the way through posting those photographs. This was the 27th country outside of the US that I have visited.
Work also sent me to Utah for a week. It’s not as fascinating as Japan, but it’s still pretty darn scenic.
Edit: I didn’t realize this until I hit publish, but this is the 350th post on this blog. I thought that was momentous enough to warrant a post-publish edit!

So the running total for this last twelve months: One wedding, one funeral, one new country, three out of state trips, and lots of concerts and shows. I wanted to write a great deal more, but one thing that I’ve noticed in the last year is that time goes much, much faster here. I often feel like I don’t have enough time to write everything that I want to write. In Germany, it felt like I had a great deal more time to write and so forth.

This doesn’t mean I’m not having fun, though. While I was scrolling through my phone’s camera roll for this post, I noticed two things: First, that I’ve taken better than five thousand photos in the past year, just on my phone. That’s not even including the ones on the big camera that I take traveling. I take a LOT of photographs. I think I may have an addiction. Second: In a huge percentage of the pictures, I’m with this girl, and I’m smiling like a fiend:

That’s because I have a great time with her. She’s the Bonnie to my Clyde, and I love her to bits. I don’t usually talk about her much here in great detail, but anyone who’s been reading this blog for a while has seen her name and her picture lots of times.

Last October, I came back to Florida. It wasn’t until I was with Amelie again that I was truly home.

So what have you been up to for the last twelve months?

Minneapolis is not Japan.

On August 17, 2015January 26, 2020 By StevenIn Domestic Travel3 Comments

I know y’all are waiting for my Japan posts, and I promise they’re coming. I have some other stuff that needs to be posted, though, so I’m going to alternate between Japan and not-Japan for a bit.

About four months ago, I spent a few days in Minneapolis, Minnesota. My primary reason for going to Minneapolis was an Information Society concert. InSoc started out in Minneapolis, so this was a hometown show for the band. They had family members, former group members, and old, old friends in the audience. It was an amazing show.

The gentleman front and center in red is Kurt Harland, who does most of the lead vocals for the band. The gentleman in the white coat on the left side of this photo is James Cassidy, and the man in white on the right side is Paul Robb. Those three have been with the band since the band’s formation in the early 1980s. The two in back are more recent additions.

I gave myself an entire extra day before the concert, though, because I hadn’t ever spent more than 24 hours in the city, and I wanted to look around. From the airport, I took the light rail into the city center, and I walked the three short blocks from the train station to my hotel. On the way to the hotel, I passed Mary Tyler Moore. I do love random statue sightings.

One of my favorite things about Minneapolis is the ingenious way that the city has responded to being insanely fricking cold during the winter- the downtown area is threaded with these Habitrail-looking tubes that connect the buildings. The places where the tubes intersect the buildings often contain shops or restaurants. The network of tubes is so large that there are entire mapping apps you can put on your phone to help you route around them without having to go outside. They’re great fun, and walking through them feels a little bit like you’re on a space station. They are the last, best hope for warmth.

Given my love of tall buildings, it should come as a surprise to absolutely nobody that I tried to go up the Foshay building. The elevator was out of service, however, and I wasn’t able to finagle another way to the top.

The doors to the elevator were certainly snazzy, though. This totally looks like something out of Ghostbusters.

Minneapolis has dedicated candy stores… nifty!

There’s also a lot of street art. Many of the utility boxes were painted in pretty or interesting ways.

Many cities I’ve visited have had rental bikes. This is the one place I’ve ever tried them. The rental rate was very reasonable, and I was able to cover several miles without burning too much time by using the rental bikes. I only dropped the bike on my foot once during the entire trip!

This is a picture of the Minneapolis skyline from the Walker Art Center, which I’ll talk about in another post. The Walker has a bunch of really great things to see, and I took many photographs there.

On my trip back from the Walker, I noticed the marquee on this theater. Alas, the Neil deGrasse Tyson show was two days after I left Minnesota.

They’re building a new stadium. It looks nifty. And so, so huge.

I read somewhere before my trip that Big Brain Comics was a great classic comic store, so I wandered in while I was in town. Nice store, decent selection, friendly staff.

Next door to Big Brain Comics is the Day Block Brewing Company, a very nice place to stop for lunch and a cold refreshing drink. (It was really hot outside. This drink was super refreshing!)

Next up on my day wandering around the city, a stop at the city’s Stone Arch Bridge, overlooking the old mill ruins. The bridge was completed in 1883, but the construction isn’t all that different from the one in Regensburg. I guess an arch is an arch.

Speaking of things that reminded me of Germany…

The famous First Avenue has been serving up fantastic live music to Minneapolis since the 1970s. This isn’t where Information Society was playing- First Avenue instead had a sold out They Might Be Giants show going on at the same time as my show.

I’m so jealous of anyone who lives in a city with a concert hotspot like this. The outer wall was just covered in amazing band names from previous shows.

I didn’t know who this fellow was when I snapped the photograph, but my love of random statues pushed me to learn about Sid Hartman. He’s a local sports journalist who’s been covering Minnesota sports since 1945. He’s 95 years old, and he hasn’t retired.

Speaking of statues, I saw this one on my way over to the comics store mentioned earlier. I forgot to write down where it was, however, so I haven’t the foggiest idea who sculpted this or what it’s called. It’s nice, though.

Edit: My genius art-loving girlfriend informs me that this is a Botero sculpture called “The Dancers.” This is good to know!

My hotel room was one of the strangest hotel rooms I’ve ever seen- when I looked behind the curtain to see what kind of window view I had from my room, I discovered that it was a separate lockable door going into a small ballroom type space. There was a bunch of stacked up chairs, a covered bar, and an upright piano in there. On another weekend, I might well have had a wedding reception just through that hotel room door. Weird, huh?