Yo No Tengo Amigo

April 22, 2007

Only me because no one I asked was willing. By car because traveling by train would have been insane. There was Land Rover breakdown on M11 just prior to junction 10 and a minor collision on Bow Street for requisite traffic jams. There were other poor drivers on the road - both menacing and inept.

Although it was not as bad as last week, SOS was still rather warm and did not seem to have enough fans. It was fairly quiet too - perhaps SOS is getting bad reputation about the heat problem. Summer could be interesting.

Music volume was way too low at times making it difficult to hear the beats. Some of it might have been song choice - the sole Cha Cha they played confused me to no end because differentiating 2 from 6 was very difficult for a large part of the song. I felt blasé about too many of the songs. Some of the biggest ho-hum songs - Que Buena Baila Usted (sorry Oscar) and Lamento Boliviano. I don’t recall seeing so few people dancing to Bachata at SOS - I think I imagined a collective groan when Lamento Boliviano came on - it was like we've heard this song too many times where we came from.

Natalie was there. Ditto for Rico, Rajiv, Vera. Tracy was back - she's practically ubiquitous. Spotted Julian for the first time in a while. Ditto for Helen - I see Amir more often. Joe was there with an entourage.

My form was interesting. I spotted Miriam for the first time in a while, and it came to my head that maybe I should ask her for a dance - I never got around to it though - maybe another time. A Latvian I danced seemed a little incredulous when I asked her - I wondered if she was a total beginner, but she was pretty good - she didn't dance very much at all though - I don't recall her dancing with anyone else - I wondered if she was a visiting dignitary or such. Her friend was a little unusual - mainly because she was wearing glasses with a skimpy outfit. A really good follower asked me for a dance - nice - I had been thinking about asking her after having seen her around last few times I visited. Hopefully the dance was good enough that she would not mind me asking her another time. Another good follower I like to dance to old-sounding song made a comment, "Perfect ending." I was too slow to make a reply along the lines of "Only because you made it possible." The song this time was a version of Picadillo (Fania All-Stars maybe?). The girl I danced with for the last song asked me where I was from. Hmm. I think I was talking a lot more than usual while dancing tonight with caveat that most of the conversations were not initiated by me.

There was a performance by the Leon Rose Project - three guys - Leon, Inaki and a third guy. The song used was Man's World (Ray Santiago). The sound volume for this song was fabulous compared to most of the songs used for the social.