Last night after blogging ( that last entry was at 18:56 in merkin hours) I dressed up (as what? you ask) and wandered downtown to see just how out-of-date the interweb site was that said there was salsa dancing on state street at 9:30. I decided to give the California Pizza Kitchen the third try this week, and simply wait as long as it took to get a table. That place is POPular. I guess the reason Vishwanadha and I got in OK the first time was because it was 4:30 on a Sunday. First though I thought it wise to check out the venue, see whether there’s dancing there, then if there isn’t I can figure out what to do while munching my pizza. Parked a couple of blocks off state and wandered in. With half a block to go, I came upon “Fascinating Rhythm Dance Centre” which seemed to have a bunch of people salsa-ing in it. I stuck my head in the door and tried to figure out who was in charge around there, and sort of got invited to join in. Suddenly the class was off and running and I was in it. It was fairly elementary stuff (some of the people in the class were new) but it was interesting to see a couple of stylistic differences - one of which answered why a lot of santa barbara girls go scooting off into the sunset when I lead perfectly simple moves on them…

After class the lights were dimmed and the room set up for a party, to which we were all invited for a small cover charge. I had pizza to forage so went to CPK. The waiting line was bigger than ever and my plans had changed vis-a-vis waiting as long as it took, so I headed to chipotle, a great mexican grill, where you can get a lovely fresh burrito for $6 with rice, beans, peppers, onions, choice of chicken, shredded pork, beef, choice of 4 salsas, sour cream… Yum…

Though the meal was smaller than my head, I thought it wise to walk it off before heading back to the venue. Two blocks later and what’s this I hear? A cowbell? A conga? Some timbas? Trumpet? Round the back of the block was some latin bar’s last-weekend goodye party with a live salsa band! Cha-ching… so I got a beer (well, a corona anyway) and danced my dinner down! Gently. Met a nice hispanic girl who didn’t know how to salsa but did a great job of following,

“Do you know how to salsa?”
“Do jou?”
“Yeah”
… we dance …
“Have you done this before?”
“?”
“?”
“No ingl?s”
“Oh…. ah…. hablas espanol?”
“Si, ?y tu?”
“uh… un pocotino”
“Ah… #$%*#($%*@*@%(@#*@(#*%^#*#$($%*#$%”
“Uh… no comprende”
“… No …”
… we dance a bit …
“Es tu primera vez bailar salsa?”
“Si”
“Muy bien, bueno”
“Que tu llamas?”
“No comprende”
“You name?”
“A me llama Steve - ?steban!”
“Est?ban!”
I think that was pretty in-depth considering my 5 words of spanish and her 8 of english.

So when my food had gone down, it was back to the venue for the dancing. It was all a bit odd, a little bit ballroomy: ricky martin showed up a number of times and I think there was even some quickstepping going on in places. But I had a few pleasant conversations, and some fun dances where I could really let rip on the great floor there! Met a woman called Phoenix, which probably takes the prize, beating Tamarind, Skylar, Jordan, Kendra, Erin, and poor old Rebecca who must’ve thought her parents didn’t love her to give her a name so pedestrian.

So there it was, I had about three nights out and I was back home by 11pm!