Friday, January 19, 2007

January 20, Milwaukee, WI - 1:32AM - central time

Last night (Thursday) i had my official Milwaukee book release at Mecca, a bar on Milwaukee's west side. This bar is owned by Dasha and her husband Kendall and they do a weekly open mic set which often has a featured poet who this time was me.

It was a great time and in what is probably this country's most segregated large city, i was really happy to have done my book release engagement in "the hood" as it were. Folks bought a lot of books and of course it was Dasha's joint so i drank for free all night - not necessarily a good idea but whatever...

Mecca itself is worth the time for a small bar with cheap drinks and a small dance floor enclosed on two sides with mirrors, you know for like... dancing. All sorts of folks bought my book, and when a sister with a weave extension and two gold fronts bought my joint, i knew i had mass appeal.

mecca also has one of those digital juke box thingies that comes up on a TV scren that you can randomize and hear all the eighties R&B you need to hear. it's a good time. add to that, that the bartender, Bowie, a six foot etc dreadlocked dude who is funny as hell is a fly-ass bartender and it's a good time.

Tonight i read at Woodland Pattern bookstore on the east side (more white side of town) and before we read we had dinner at Nessun Dorma - i do not know what this means - but they have about 512 different beers, a very cozy vibe and a waitress who is a roller derby athlete and there is nothing sexier and more violent than roller derby women.

Afterwards we went to Polish Falcons which has Jack Daniels for $3 - what?! - this is actually a Polish fraternal club so that one can also buy 6 packs to go. there is a six lane bowling alley in the basement where leagues are mostly played and there is open bowling night on wednesdays. nothing of particular interest happened there but i haven't been in so man-heavy a dar for a long while, not since andi and kendra took me to an italian fraternal after-hours joint in chicago about 4 years ago and we played pool in what seemed to be a bedroom in another time on the third floor.

tomorrow i head to madison. then i head back to chicago and who knows what'll happen then.

3 Comments:

Blogger The Lettershaper said...

Great stuff, very much enjoyed reading here...as a poet, I found it enlightening and enriching; I spent a pleasant while...thank you...

9:59 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

UPDATE YOUR BLOG, FOOL!!!

Love from Texas,

Mike Henry (who has no business spending time reading blogs cause I got a five month old son, a full time job, and a National Poetry Slam to run.

Update that shit anyway, son!

7:21 AM  
Blogger Natasha C said...

Yeah Roger yuh need to update yuh blog.
Hope all is well.
Funny thing, when I was reading your post I was hearing it in your voice w/ intonations everything. Weird for me since I don't read my other peeps blogs w/ their voice in my head. GET OUT OF MY HEAD!
Just kidding. Much love.

9:08 PM  

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