A long night in the D

This morning, erm, afternoon, I mean, I look back on the ten-hour mini-odyssey just completed that took me to the heart of darkness I've come to know as downtown Detroit and back. It all started when I saw a craigslist posting on Thursday for two tickets to the Flaming Lips concert in Detroit on Friday. With the dare of "make me an offer" made in the posting, I e-mailed the lister who agreed to sell me one or both tickets. I'd wanted to see this show, but the face of $35 seemed a tad high. But with the serpentine temptation of a deeply discounted ticket, the stage was set for me to see the Lips and Detroit up close.

I met the lister at his place of work midday Friday, and despite my protestations he wanted me to take both tickets so that neither would go to waste. I reluctantly agreed. That afternoon I sent out a fusillade of e-mails and phone calls, but most who might attend were already in Chicago for Lollapalooza. The quality of the show could not be doubted -- the Flaming Lips were renowned for their high-energy, audience-involving live shows, and the openers Go! Team and Sonic Youth were of a quality too high to be considered by the typical euphemism "special guests". But such is Ann Arbor in August -- like Rome, vacated. I was having trouble giving the extra ticket away, and I began picturing myself holding a ticket above my head outside of the theater.

Sweetening the pot for me was the coincident scheduling of a regularly scheduled event in Detroit I'd wanted to see for a long time: the once-monthly Ghostly DJ sessions at sushi restaurant cum techno lounge Oslo. Only a start time was listed on the Ghostly website, but I'd gathered from the Detroit techno message boards that these sessions regularly went until 4 am. When I finally had the tickets in hand Friday afternoon, I began to piece together the schedule for the coming night: the Lips concert between 7:30 and perhaps 11 followed by a quick refuelling in my car (and perhaps a change of clothes) and then the Ghostly session from 11:30 until God-knows.

By 6 pm I'd made what I considered the necessary preparations: packed a freezer bag full of snacks, filled a one-liter bottle with water, put gum, contact lens solution, and an extra shirt in my backpack, and fuelled my car (with gas) and cell phone (with charge). With directions and sunglasses in hand, I checked my apartment over once more, got in my car, and hit the road.

Five minutes into the trip came a hitch -- my friend JMW called me back, on the fence about going. I turned off the freeway and started circling aimlessly through Ypsilanti while negotiating with her on my cell phone. By a factor of ten I'd rather have given the ticket to a friend than sold it at the door. She was driving me nuts, but I wasn't about to kidnap her. I finally gave up -- assuming her wanting to do work on Friday night belied true feelings -- and got back on the freeway.

Traffic was light and everything seemed to go as planned until I reached downtown. On Woodward Avenue, the streets were clogged as the hour of 7 came. A Tigers game was scheduled to start at the same time as the concert, and the virtual abutment of the theater to Comerica Park created a massive jam. After 30 minutes of driving which included my passing up a spot on the street -- fool that I am -- I capitulated to a professional lot and gave up $10.

Selling the ticket proved to be easy -- a young couple stood near the box office, and though they didn't need an extra ticket, they pointed me to a fellow who did. I turned to him, offered my extra at face, and we turned to conceal ourselves from the security guard who had apparently given him some problems. I soon found myself with crisp $20, $10, and $5 bills in my wallet. If I did nothing else that evening, I would end up $5 over stevens, not counting the cost of gas.

Inside the theater, people milled in the lobby, waiting around in groups or buying shirts and beer. Like a ghost I floated between them. My ticket was marked "general admission balcony" and I was directed up the stairs. The balcony proved to be half-empty, as I'd somehow missed the openers Go! Team, yet aisle seats proved to be saved when I asked about their vacancy. Finally I came to one next to a tall white guy with a mustache who my gut was telling me was by himself. In fact the seat on the other side was saved, but the aisle seat was indeed open. His friend soon returned, sort of a stouter version of himself without the mustache, and I did my best to be pleasant. I soon realized I was sitting next to virtual fonts of knowledge about the Flaming Lips -- geeks, you might call them -- but as had happened so many times before, they proved to be the best of temporary companions, true to their core and without pretense. I'd already been feeling a bit the outcast anyway, and it was better to hear them talk about Lips minutiae than to hear from noone at all. As the lights dimmed, an Asian boy in the seat in front of me started the first of many text messages on the gray-on-green screen of an ancient Nokia cell phone.

Four figures took the stage -- three men and one woman -- and each picked up a variant of the guitar. Behind them a drummer sat at the ready. Sonic Youth was about to begin. [Continued in the next post...]