Day Twenty: In with the Young and Hip

Mos Def - 30 minutes to an anticlimax

Although I had been looking forward to getting hyped up on Red Bull and watching people eat pavement at the soap box races Saturday, I could not pass up a free Mos Def concert in Golden Gate Park. I found out that the reason I was excited for the concert was not because I cannot resist free things, but because I'm white.

Side Note: I have been putting off going to stuffwhitepeoplelike.com for fear that I would truly like everything on the list. My fear was completely founded ::sigh::

The concert format was as follows: good - good - bad - worse - terrible - bad - great and finally unexpectedly over.

Let's focus on a little positive first. It should also be mentioned that the first 2 acts very good and made both S and myself upset that we did not become expert salsa dancers after DAY SEVEN. The Inner Sunset was also actually sunny and we got front row bench seats next to high schoolers that told us we were pretty.

Our high school bench neighbors were young and hip because, as we would learn though out the day, they followed several cutting edge trends: skinny jeans, grunge lite, trendy tennis shoes or boots and intoxication. Throughout the afternoon the high schoolers held it together well and none of them were falling over, out of their minds. Another sign that they are young and hip - they know their limits because they've been partying since they were 9.

I was most jealous of their carefree intoxication during the "local acts" segment of the concert. The act referenced above as terrible was an women in her mid 40's (automatically not young or hip) who "knows everyone in the bay area music scene". She could not sing or dance, but did both. The dancing consisted of her shaking various appendages, independently of each other, to the "beat". We quickly turned from being amusing to feeling genuinely embarrassed. At least I know how people feel when they go dancing with me.

After this spectacle, there was another act and finally the moment everyone had been waiting for....Mos Def. Mos Def was everything an entertainer should be and did not let a little thing like falling off the stage interrupt his performance.

Performance challenge #2 proved too difficult for Mos Def to overcome. About 4 songs into his set, he started rapping quieter and everyone quieted down in anticipation of a frenzy inducing crescendo. Except that never happened and instead a park ranger came onto the stage and had the mic turned completely off. Mos Def's plea for just one more song didn't elicit a response. To his credit he tried to finish the set without a mic, but being outdoors no one could hear him and the concert was free so everyone gave up and headed for the exits.

S and I were disappointed, but we comforted ourselves at the death anniversary dinner party of our friend with much food and wine.