2001-09-07 3:50 p.m. Wow. I hadn't thought of the Smooths in years. Mocksie mentioned going to one of their concerts in her entry this morning, and for a few minutes I was flooded with memories of Freshman year. We used to go see them all the time. They played Baltimore alot. Some of them (or all of them) were from b-more so hardly a month would pass without at least one Smooths show to go to. They were a decent group. Nothing ground breaking, but still fun to listen to. I think most of the appeal was the types of venues (and by 'venues' what I really mean is 'shitholes') they played were basically the only places we could get served other than the liquor store with the bullet-proof glass up on York Road. I still remember the first of their shows that I went to. It was a Saturday and they were playing the Bank. We thought we were cool because we snuck past the bouncer. Come to think of it, everyone was sneaking past the bouncer. Beer was served from kegs into plastic cups. It was very dark. Tom and Megan and I did shots of Goldschlager at the bar. By now, we didn't think we were cool - we knew it. The music started. We danced, we sweated. Karen slipped in the bar funk. I met a girl. Well, not so much "met" as "groped". Amazingly, I did not get smacked. Quite the opposite, in fact. We ended up in the basement of the Bank, in a shadowy corner, on top of a seldom used bar. Frat boys were whistling at her and cheering me on. A pipe in the wall burst. The floor covered with water. The crush of people leaving the basement overwhelmed the mass of people upstairs. The sops showed up to kick everyone out. Fire code violations or some such. Everyone had to go. I lost the girl but somehow found my friends. Like idiots, our shortcut back to the harbor took us through every sketchy alley downtown. Gunfire erupted down the street from us. We ran. One of the girls started crying. A cab almost hit us as we ran across Fayette. Tom gave the guy a 20 and told him to drive us home. Bouncing up Charles Street, we all started laughing. Maybe we all realized that we would never forget that night. Maybe we knew that our lives were changing forever. Maybe we were just tired and happy. The Smooths? Yeah, I remember them. Thanks, Shannon. downtown----uptown leave me a note, fool!

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