A Taste of Soul
February 22, 2009
Fremont East
Last night was a fun surprise. My best friend Gayle and her trusty pilot boyfriend drove down to Las Vegas to move my parrot, Echo the Weather Bird, back into my house. We had made plans to go party on Fremont Street once the bird settled in. When we got there we discovered that it was Taste & Sounds of Soul night.
Fremont Street was packed with people. I’m guessing they were mostly locals. People were everywhere. There were two bandstands going.
The big bandstand had a guy on stage who was doing a lot of talking to the crowd. Unfortunately for me, he introduced one rap guy after another. In my opinion, that rap stuff is just the scourge of the earth and I can’t stand to listen to it. Rarely there is one song I like, but mostly I don’t consider the ‘music’ music at all. I suppose this is how my grandparents felt about Led Zeplin.
When I see “Taste and Sounds of Soul” on a sign, I surely expected something a bit different on the bandstand. Maybe some Motown, something, anything, but that awful crap. Okay, rant over.
The other bandstand was, well, for white people. I don’t quite know what to say about it. There were some guys on the stage. White guys. In afro wigs. Seriously. They were playing a lot of old disco, Rick James, and Earth, Wind and Fire. It was odd, to say the least. On the other hand, most of the white people were dancing around this bandstand and having a wonderful time.
Then I spotted them, the whitest people on earth. These had to be the very people who inspired Richard Pryor to such greatness. They were white. They were very seriously white. These two couples appeared to have just come from a 1940s costume event from some local yacht club or something. (I don’t suppose we have a yacht club in Vegas, but maybe they flew in.) Their clothes were pretty cool, that isn’t what caught my attention. It was they were just so stereotypically Wonder Bread. I don’t mean LDS Wonder Bread, I mean East Coast Blueblood white bread. They kind of creeped me out. They were having quite a good time slumming it with the locals, though. You can tell, because in the video they are almost moving to the music! Rock on, Buffies and Chads the Fifth.
There was a tent version of restaurant row going on that was spectacular. Food was everywhere! The aroma was making me very hungry and I had already had dinner. There were Cajun smells, grilled steak smoke waffing up, shrimps barbequing, oh man, they had everything. The isle was packed with people. It was hard to tell who was stuck in the trek through and who was in line. I wanted to start tasting everything but the lines were too long for the limited time we had. There was also no place to sit to eat. So we moved on.
What a crowd on Fremont Street for this event. People were dancing all around and just as happy as can be, as they usually are downtown. The casinos were packed as well. Gayle even got to get photos of the Las Vegas Club where her step-grandmother worked back in the 1950s. She was thrilled it was still there. Scott was amazed at how downtown had changed since his last visit in 1975.
Of course, I made Gayle go through the usual initiation! I dragged her into Mermaids for a deep fried Oreo. She liked it, but she liked the crumbs of chocolate sprinkles and the powdered sugar in the bottom of her dish better. She even got a spoon to handle it.
Seeing how I had already had my initiation, I opted for the frozen chocolate banana. It was good, but needed a bit more chocolate. I felt so healthy for my choice.
Deep Fried Oreo & Frozen Banana
Written by tully on February 23, 2009 at 2:08 am
Saw a lot of smoke rising from one area during the video—-looks like there was some serious barbeque going on. Now I’m hungry.
Looks like a fun event. And crowded, which is a good thing to see in Las Vegas right now.