tour march the first, part two

Day two: Fresno

We enter the town in the afternoon. None of us were expecting a
bustling metropolis, but hell, this place had a downtown, and who the
fuck hasn't at least heard of Fresno? Nothing at all was happening.
There was a surplus of parking, and a few people lazily wandering the
streets. Club Fred (the venue) is painted bright green, with a tacky
rock motif, making it look like the jolly green giant threw up all
over it. The club is situated on a block on which (we assume) the
shopkeepers are either completely hilarious guys or have no
imagination at all. (Shop names included 'Drug Fair', 'Food King,'
and 'ok car wash,' the latter of which was my personal favourite.)

It was relatively warm outside, and Jon was parched, so we went into
the Food King store to procure him liquids. Along with the usual fare
of junk food and soda, there are cheap knockoff collectible samurai
swords, and also the sort of 'gift knives' that actually have 'gift
knife' written on the side of the box stacked in cabinets behind the
cashwrap.

Jon pays for his drink and we go for a walk around the block. We pass
a group of teens (and one obese thirtysomething) who are sitting on a
curb, smoking. One of the girls says she likes my hair. I say thank
you.

At some point we realise that, even though we were more or less
indistinguishable from every other hipster collective in town, people
are staring at us like they know we aren't from there. We began
constructing doomsday theories that the townies are all either zombies
or vampires or zombievampires, and they knew that we were fresh meat.
As Shawn said we were 'totally gonna get eated.'

The day passes with little incident (actually we spend the majority of it in a Starbucks, marinating) and eventually we retire to a pizza joint to eat something before the show. The place is lined with prints of paintings depicting two distressingly stereotypical Italian cooks. The man at the bar gives us a bit of a hassle about buying a pitcher of beer, demanding to see all of our I.D's. After we eat, we return to the venue, and go inside. We are nearly immediately asked for identification as soon as we enter, which is only a notable fact as we were honestly the only ones that were approached the entire evening.

We lounge around the venue for a few hours and eventually play our set. We seem to be generally well-received. After the set Shawn and I headed outside and talked. At some point Jon joined us. Nearing the end of our conversation, an old man, who was nearby and fiddling with his bike lock, looked directly at Shawn and shouted;"Shut up and listen to her!"

Shawn, Jon and I were somewhat aghast, and laughed uncomfortably. The man repeated himself several times, and eventually got on his bike and peddled away. When we went back into Club Fred, I sat at the merch table with Kingland. A young guy came up at some point and began asking about the merch. At some point he looked at Kingland and said something to the effect of "You're beautiful." I realised all too late what was going on, and piped up. "He is, isn't he?" I brandished my ring. "Coincidentally he is also my fiancee." The kid said something about "setting us both on fire," and shambled off.

At this point someone either threw down a stinkbomb or several people shit their pants at once. The smell filled the club. It was nauseating and unpleasant, to say the least. I was unenthusiastic about staying in Fresno in general, and the smell wasn't improving my mood, so I took the initiative to become extremely bitchy. Eventually we were allowed to leave, and headed off toward Luke's (from 'A Pageant's End) apartment. Luke and his roomie were terribly accomodating, and I have to admit that I slept rather well.

The next morning we all had terribly cold showers, due to a lack of hot water from the apartment complex in general. Jon proved the only exception in this, as he was somehow able to regulate the hot water. (Damn you, Jon.)