Naked people and fire

Goo and I had a great time in Richmond yesterday. We arrived at Grace's in the afternoon and walked to Carytown. We visited the always amusing World of Mirth where Goo got some wind-up chinese food. We also stopped by the very hip yarn store, The Yarn Lounge. I loved that their knitted samples are wee little sweaters. And of course, we went to the bead store, Bangles and Beads. Oh My Goodness, what a fantastic store. They had lots of great stuff at really good prices and it was just awesome in there. I have a lot of beautiful projects to work on, which I'll post once they're made into something!

We met up with Andrew and Grace's friend Erin and Erin's friend Jennifer for dinner at the New York Deli. It's a fancy deli and I had a delicious plate of vegetable ravioli with a creamy walnut sauce. The desserts were good, too. Goo had a very dainty creme brulee that he ate as manly as he could.

After dinner we went to our main event for the day: NAKED PEOPLE! It was the Disrobed 2 event at Gallery 5. There were roughly 25 people painted and on display. There were a few performers? (they were just standing there) "dressed" in work clothes. They looked like they were wearing clothes so they didnt' seem naked to me. Actually all of the people fully painted gave the impression that they weren't really naked. Most of the performers were part of this huge living mural with industry represented on one side and nature on the other (I don't know why industry is always represented as evil; that sort of annoys me). It was strange to me that as soon as a performer wanted to take a break, they would immediately wrap a towel around themselves and scurry off stage. I suppose it is all relative to where you are. Like, you can wear a bikini at the beach, but not in the office. There was one woman who was completely painted, except for her left breast and that seemed very naked. One display that I found really interesting was where three women on a stage were also being projected live on a tv screen above them. It felt very taboo to watch them on T.V. but I was comfortable seeing them live in front of me. In real life it's art. On video, it's porn.

Either way, it was a really neat experience, I had a good time, and very glad I went. It was really nice to go to an art event and discuss it.

Outside the gallery fire dancers performed. The line to get inside Disrobed was somewhat long so it was nice to have entertainment. The coolest fire dancer was the girl with the flaming hula hoop.


While that was cool and all....

Today Goo and I went to the Southern Maryland Pow Wow in Waldorf, MD. We got there just in time to see the Samoan dancers. I was surprised but delighted to see that there weren't just area Native Americans performing. The Mosquito dance where the men slap themselves all over was pretty funny. But the BEST was the fire dancer. He had a 4ish foot stick lighted at one end and lit the other end WITH HIS HAND. He brought one end to his mouth and HIS TONGUE WAS ON FIRE!!!! He twirled that flaming stick so fast and threw it soooo high up in the air, it was unbelievable.

There were also other plenty of dancers in fantastic Native garb with feathers and bells and it was so fun to watch. There were also lots of vendors and I bought a hand painted sarong from the Samoans. I even helped make it! We ate fry bread tacos that are basically incredibly good Chalupas :)

So I had a great weekend. I think next weekend will be a lot quieter since Goo is going back to Cleveland tomorrow. Anyways, I have so much jewelry to work on...