How weird can Door County get?

After a personal walking tour (nobody else showed up) of historic downtown Fish Creek, led by retired schoolteacher & native local Barb, whose parents ran the Summertime ice-cream parlor/gift shop on Cedar Street for decades, I hurried north along the coast to Sister Bay in time to catch the Newtonburg Brass Band play in period attire at Waterfront Park yesterday. The musicians sat in formal 1910 dress as though the intervening century of progress in more comfortable styles & cooler fabrics had never happened.

Man, I thought, dig that lady pounding the drumkit, garbed in a big black sun hat & ankle-length dress like some proto-punk Lizzie Borden! I sat on the grass, surrounded by the geriatric set, stifling an urge to mock those bandgeeks from Manitowoc County who acted as though Sousa marches remained all the rage in 2010. A sad sunny spectacle indeed. Still, their music may have sounded better than the hip-hop & pop dreck no doubt pouring into the iPod-covered ears of those teenagers barely clad in bikinis on the beach a stone's throw away.

I stopped at the Piggly Wiggly to pick up a few food items & I ran into my former media-crush, Milwaukee TV sportscaster Jessie Garcia for the second time this week. I hightailed it home, ate & read some Norbert Blei essays. Later I got drunk while watching Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas on a DVD courtesy of the Menominee Tribal Library in Keshena (via inter-library loan, godsend to poor intellectuals stuck in the boondocks). The drug consumption habits of Dr. Gonzo & Raoul Duke made me feel like a piker, so I drove off to Husby's to hear The Mullet Hunters. The band was a no-show, though, due to a sick child, the baldheaded bartender told me. Note to self: never trust any group, rock or otherwise, with "mullet" in its name.

I sat & studied the crowd, sobering up by slowly sipping a Guinness stout for an hour and a half. The more energetic drinkers, mostly youths born before I managed to graduate from college (1986), regarded me with suspicion - as small-town folk regard all silent strangers. I was pleased, however, to have found a Northwoods tavern where women outnumbered men. My patience was rewarded in with a song by The Ramones: "I Wanna Be Sedated." And so, it seems, does sedate Door County, Wisconsin, USA.