Sunday, July 8, 2012

Beast Crawl

We had a great time at Beast Crawl. The writers shared a wide diversity of ideas, feelings, opinions, beliefs and humor. I heard slam champions, writers with quiet yet powerful voices, and writers of a wide range of ages and experience(s). I was able to re-connect with old writer friends and scored an invitation to read next month. I'm looking forward to it.

We rolled from a reading sponsored by Pandemonium Press at Spice Monkey, to "Sexy Beasts" at Bench and Bar, and ended the evening at "Hella Soulful" at Cafe Randevu.  The MC at Cafe Randevu even led the crowd in a sing along, asking us to prove that we really were hella soulful. I think we made the cut.

The writers were impressive, Spice Monkey's sangria was sublime and the funniest things that I saw were the expressions on the faces of Bench and Bar patrons who couldn't quite figure out what the hell was going on when they wandered into the room and saw folks standing on a stage holding a mike in one hand and paper in the other. A giant disco ball hung overhead. I had a few 70's disco dancing flashbacks but managed to stop my urge to take a few hustle steps and I eventually found my bearings in 2012 once again. One guy asked me "What is this?" and the look on his face was priceless as he attempted to process my shorthand explanation: "Beast Crawl - a literary pub crawl." He shook his head up and down looked a little confused then sidled back to the bar in the front room. One of the beasts organizers nodded and waved to let me know I'd done a good job with the impromptu promo.

I look forward to next year's crawl of the beast. Given the richness of the experience I think that there will be many more to come.

1 comment:

Glenn Ingersoll said...

It was fun running into you on the Crawl, Joyce!

I hope next year the events spread out across the day. It was great to have so much to choose from, but at quite an opportunity cost.