Last night, once again, I saw signs of evolved night life in Dayton. Last time was a few weeks ago when I stopped in at “The Sideshow”- a one night art rave in the Cannery- last night- as I was riding my motorcycle through the Oregon District (and no, I don’t break the noise ordinance by revving my engine) and heard jazz in the street and saw a crowd on the sidewalk.
I pulled into a spot right away (a self made one- since motorcycles can do that- a reason to encourage instead of discourage motorcycle and scooter parking downtown) and went to listen to a 6 piece jazz band doing a brand of impromptu jamming- somewhat like the Rebirth Brass band- only without a tuba (can’t have it all). They were passing out flyers for an upcoming show at Jazz Central [1]– Mario Abne [2]y was the leader of this show.
Street musicians are what makes a city cool- and a suburb not. I heard the American Idol runner-up, Bo Brice, invited the street sax guy into the Schuster last week to play for his show. If you haven’t caught this guy- he’s almost always outside the Dragon’s ballpark on game days- on the 1st street side across from Mendelson’s Liquidation Outlet.
I’m going to have to start carrying a camera with me all the time- so I can share these moments of cool with you. In the meantime- if you run into any- please feel free to add mention of them in the comments.
I was down there also on Saturday night and caught the act. That was a pretty cool scene. They picked a perfect spot too—directly in front of a vacant building! Even if there wasn’t a band inside at least there was one outside. There’s always something going on down there but it seems that lately things are picking up a particularly quick pace. I can’t wait for that energy to start bubbling over to surrounding areas. I thought I read news of something called the Fire Block or Fire District. I can’t remember the exact name. Is anything happening with this?