The weekend's white-out

It's not what you might think.

Sure, we got some snow and ice over the weekend - maybe enough but at the wrong time to cancel school, dagnabit - but I'm thinking more about the whiteness inherent in my cultural excursion on Saturday night.

We started off picking up another couple and heading down to Bistro JeanRo - a place that I've mentioned before and that continued to impress the crap out of me (steak frites for the main and dessert of creme carmel, both excellent - though the taste of the pots de creme was awfully tempting).

From there we headed over to Music Hall for the Cincinnati Pops Christmas extravaganza.

They had the Cincinnati Pops orchestra, the School for Creative and Performing Arts sernior and kids choirs, the Cincinnati Studio Cloggers, and Manhattan Transfer. The show was entertaining enough if a bit slow at point for my tastes. The cloggers clogged their hearts out - particularly one tiny clogger on the end. And the Manhattan Transfer folks were decent enough singers - though I didn't know any of their songs. I do remember one that they had a hit with in the 80s, but the group's mostly a blank to me.

What struck me, however, was the absolute whiteness of the crowd. At intermission, I scanned around our balcony - the top level of Music Hall - and saw an Asian family, an Indian family, and - at first glance - no black people. Turned out that they black couple had headed to the restroon and returned a couple of minutes later.

I was amazed to feel like I was attending some kind of white-folks-only cultural event. I know vocal jazz and clogging and caroling aren't exactly things held up as being really street right now, but I live in frickin' Cincinnati, a city that - within its official limits - is dominantly black, and we couldn't manage more than two black people in the place?

It was kinda creepy, honestly. I've gotten used to having African Americans around at school, and it was just creepy to be almost totally without any in the hall.

I don't know that I've ever felt so white.

Countdown to 1000: 9 more to go...they're like ladies dancing...