Two stories worth telling this week:

A fashion faux pas and a local entry into pop culture history

Dear Readers,

I have two tales to tell you from the week. Thank you for being here and giving me reason/place/impetus to tell them.

Story #1: Shoeless Jo-Ann

Last Thursday night, two of my friends and I had tickets to a rooftop garden viewing of A League of Their Own at The Last Picture House, my beloved hangout in downtown Davenport. Despite being an early champion (and official biggest fan?) of this place, I’d still never been to one of the classic-film showings up there.

We’d had tickets since late June and I couldn’t wait.

But it turns out, I still haven’t seen a show up there.

Let me start the story by saying I’d tried to dress fairly nicely and make my natural curls as controlled as possible. But when we arrived, it was so sticky and humid I was already starting to look like a pulled-apart cotton ball, and I wished I could walk while squeezing a roll of Bounty between my thighs. It was extra steamy after a late-afternoon rain, but the sun had poked through some of the rapidly passing dark gray clouds; it was great to see my friends; and I sipped a glass of chilled wine.

rooftop garden screenshot from the LPH website

I felt certain the sun would stay out for the rest of the evening. But one friend continued to check they sky. “You guys saw the radar, right?”

“Nah,” I said, even though I’m usually an obsessive Weather Underground checker. “We’ll be alright, don’t ya think?”

Around 8:30, a staff member turned on the projector and we settled in. We’d just made it to the point when we first see Madonna and Rosie on the screen, maybe 15 or 20 minutes in, when fat raindrops splashed our arms and foreheads.

Uh-oh.

More worrisome, though, was the lightning.

Within another minute or two, all of us dashed inside. The staff shut down the bar. And then, WHOOSH, it was pouring.

So we headed downstairs. One friend decided to head home, while the other and I stayed in the lounge and had a drink, hoping it would let up soon.

As we caught up and talked for another hour or so, it thundered and poured, and water began to gather at the corner of Second and Iowa. There was no way not to recall—and feel somewhat haunted by—the historic and devastating flooding in that exact spot back in 2019. Not to mention what had just happened in Texas—and the awareness that we’re all now facing increased danger thanks to cuts to those frivolous wastes called “weather science” and “disaster response.” So I’m not joking when I say the night had a slightly apocalyptic feel. Luckily, (very luckily), what happened next was tragic only in a fashion sense.

“Ready to run for it?” my friend finally said.

I was. She’d somehow gotten rockstar parking, as I like to call it, so we planned that I’d get in with her and she’d drive me to my spot a block or two away.

Outside on the sidewalk, she counted to three, peeling off her shoes and socks as she did so. I was wearing a pair of Old Navy flip-flops, nothing fancy I was too worried about protecting, so I just stood there and watched. On “three,” I dashed—and promptly experienced the shock of stepping down into what was mid-calf-level water. “Holy shit,” I cried, “it’s deep!”

As we each scrambled to open our doors and crawl inside her car, foomp: almost like a human hand, something took hold of my right shoe and removed it with a thank you very much.

“Oh my God!” I yelled. “My shoe!”

We were both soaked and laughing as we shut the doors and pulled our seatbelts on.

“Where is it?” my friend cried.

“Out there!” I gestured to the stream running eastward down Motor Row.

“You lost it?! Do you want to try and get it?” she managed to get out, laughing harder than I’ve ever seen her. “Why didn’t you take your shoes off ?”

“I don’t know!” I cried, laughing too. “I didn’t think it was that deep!”

We continued to crack up as she dropped me off at my car, but just as she did, we noticed in the mirrors that a police car a block or so behind us had parked diagonally in an intersection that was getting deep.

Thankfully, I managed to navigate safely down River Drive, which was starting to get dicey in certain spots, and made it home—where I was startled by the voice of my upstairs neighbor, who’d been sitting out on the porch in the dark, taking in the storm. “How was your night?” she called. “Wait—are you only wearing one shoe?”

Story 2: Sierra’s streetside singalong

On Monday night, a friend and I (the same one who’d wisely checked the radar and escaped before the flash flood) got to enjoy a fantastic concert by bluegrass/ country/Americana singer-songwriter Sierra Ferrell at the Capitol Theatre. Readers may remember that I’ve previously written about Ferrell, an honest-to-goodness train hopper who worked her way up to where she is today thanks in part to years of busking from New Orleans to Seattle and in between. (She in fact made a mention of busking at the Pike Place Market during the show—which, btw, I am delighted to see coverage of in the Quad City Times!, including a mention of the fantastic opener from Oklahoma, Kaitlin Butts).

Despite, or in addition to, Ferrell’s old-timey sound, her stage set and persona could be described as ethereal, or maybe Gone with the Wind meets fairie queen:

image via Capital Theatre on Facebook.

(See more delightful, lovely photos from her team—whose photographer I got to meet before the show when she noticed me snapping a pic of a fan in the merch line donning an interesting headpiece. You’ll see it below.)

Near the end of the show, Ferrell had launched into some enthusiastic call-and-response, and vigorous fiddling, during “Fox Hunt.”

We were two or three rounds of responding when I noticed the “call” seemed to have weirdly trailed off—and I could visually see her fiddling but couldn’t hear it.

“Does it seem like her mic got cut?” I said to my friend, just as the houselights fully came on.

We looked at each other. What the hell?

Ferrell said something like, “I think there’s a fire alarm going off, can y’all hear that? People are leaving…let’s all get outside.”

So, a bit dumfounded, we did—hundreds of us streaming down the stairs and out into the night on Third Street, guys in blue security shirts stationed here and there seemingly just watching, not saying anything.

“Do you even hear an alarm?” I said. My friend shook her head no.

So we stood around for awhile, hovering near the west end of the entrance, trying to decide whether we should give up or stay, while dodging the cigarette and weed smoke. We watched as a fire truck pulled up, then (in what seemed like a minute later), drove away. Large groups walked in the direction of the parking garages. I was expecting my friend to say she was ready to call it a night, when all of a sudden we heard a cheer go up a little ways down the street, on the more eastern end of the crowd. So we made our way over to see what was going on.

The “TL; DR" version?

Sierra and her band had come outside and finished the concert, right there on the sidewalk.

As readers may remember, one of my struggles as a lifelong live-music enthusiast is that I’m only 5’3. So I never actually got to “see” what was going on, but here’s a video I shot of that exact moment in which I figured out what was going on:

Or, you can cut straight to

a video in which you can actually SEE and hear, right up close.

You simply gotta see this. Someone (…apparently a chiro for animals? But okay!) happened to be exactly in the right spot at the right second, damn them, (I’m so jealous! But grateful for the video!)

screenshot from the close-up

Turns out that Ferrell’s busking experience has paid off for her in more ways than one.

I was totally charmed, both during the real show onstage, and especially out there as they embodied “the show must go on.”

(More close-up fan footage here, courtesy Shanea Kaye.)

Also, here are some shots I took of people I approached and chatted with in the lobby and/or the bathroom before the show:

So now, let me hear from you!

• Were you at the show—either the one onstage, or the one on the street?

• And/or: what’s the weirdest, or most unexpected thing (along the lines of a silent(?) fire alarm) you’ve experienced at a show?

• And finally: has anyone found my shoe?

  

Let me know in the comments!

Or send me a private message:

Reader response is what helps me keep my head out of my bellybutton (and/or ass). So please keep it coming, and thank you for being here!

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…but a few other things before I go!

RSVP alert for Winterset!

It’s not too late to sign up for the July 26th Winteset Bash, being held exclusively for paid subscribers (to any Substacker in the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative, including me!) Check out all the details and find the RSVP form here.

Survey results:

Thank you to those who took time to send feedback! If you haven’t yet, here’s one more chance. I’ll work on sharing some highlights in a future post.

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Thank you to the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative for including me and supporting my work.