Another National Night Out

Tonight was National Night Out, my second since moving to downtown. I had an awful time last year at the nearest celebration and determined that I wouldn’t go there again this year.

Someone last year told me about a great celebration downtown and mentioned the street. I was excited to think that I would find a better celebration. But I didn’t find it this year. I rode my bike all around.

Finally I spied a police car and an officer and rode my bike in that direction, right between the Guthrie Theater and the Mill City Museum, near the Mississippi River and the Stone Arch Bridge.

They had three guys playing music, one with a fiddle, which was pretty good, and I enjoyed that.Unfortunately they took a break soon after I got there.

There was a  little free food. It looked like brats and cole slaw were still being served, but I didn’t see anything else, though I saw some people with plates with hamburgers on them, though nothing vegetarian looking. I had two brats and two bottles of water. That was really all that looked gluten free. There were some chocolate cake pops, but I wouldn’t even go near that table, too tempting to have to look at.

They had free beer and free wine, in bags, so I guess you can guess how good the wine must have been. But yeah it was free and for those who drank it, they didn’t look unhappy about it.

A guy who was about fifty or so got in my way at the food table, standing there doing nothing, with his wife and a younger couple, holding up the line, doing nothing but talking about their lives downtown, moving there, and living in lofts; old yuppies and a young yuppie couple with a baby in a body sling.The old guy was holding a beer, moving slow, acting drunk, and slurring his words.

The younger guy started commenting to me about how I wasn’t managing my bike very well and I looked like I needed help. It seemed as though he was criticizing me. I wasn’t doing anything wrong and it is none of his business what I do with myself.

I said, no I’m fine and I would be through the line already if you all were moving, instead of standing here talking, and the old man got belligerent with me and he raised his voice and slurred his words, yelling at me. I had a cane with me in my carryall, attached to my bike handle, and was leaning heavily on my bike and I wonder at a man who can be so rude to a woman, well he was drunk, that much was obvious. But on National Night Out, a disabled woman, at a come-out-and-meet your neighbors event. No thanks, not so much. I don’t want to meet you. I don’t want to know you. I don’t want to see you, ever again.

So I ate the food and then went for a lovely bike ride across the Stone Arch Bridge and then to a favorite little candy store downtown, Candyland, a store that I have been going to for over forty years; to get popcorn, a small caramel bar, and a drink. I rode my bike and found a place to sit outside, one not too close to the really bad trumpet player and not too close to the yelling “Jesus” guy, standing on a ridiculous little box, who’s grasp of the tenets of Christianity I really have to question the accuracy of. But unfortunately too close to Orchestra Hall, where this godawful cover band was singing and playing, for some company’s party on the outside plaza.

The popcorn was good. The Dr. Pepper was good. The caramel bar was excellent. Yum.

I still feel as though I missed a really great celebration. Maybe next year.