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The Gossip in DC

Last night I stayed up waaaaay past my adult bedtime and snuck out to see The Gossip in concert. They played with Men and Apache Beat at the 9:30 Club, an awesome little venue here in town.

I thought Men were pretty cool; I’d never heard them before, so I bought their sampler CD. It was fun dancey music.

But I wasn’t fully prepared for how awesome The Gossip were going to be. Beth Ditto, the band’s zaftig singer with bright orange hair, was both kooky/charming and a beast barely contained. Her voice was perfect in performance, and the rest of the band turned in a really great performance. It’s one of the more fun shows I’ve been to, partly because the audience was into it.

You can hear the show on NPR’s All Songs Considered.

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Running in Heels

Last night was the 23rd Annual High Heel Race in DC. Thousands of people gathered on 17th Street between O Street and R Street to watch about 25 drag queens run two blocks in their high heels.

It looked like this:

The race is really more of an excuse for the pre-race bar specials, the pre-race drag queen parade, and the post-race revelry that erupts once the winning DQ hits the finish line.

It was really cold and windy yesterday! It’s that bone-chilling cold that only comes with fall. I’ll take winter over autumn any day. Fall makes me look like this:

You might be wondering how we got such a great shot of the actual race when there was already a huge crowd with their cameras raised over their heads. Well, that’s when it helps to have your tall person on hand to do this:

You can also approximate the experience of being there by watching this handy YouTube video. Gosh, y’all, what did we do before the internets?