Washblog

John's Alley is a place to go in Moscow, Idaho to see music.  Yesterday, my fiance returned from a ten-day trip to Texas and, happy to be back together, we wanted to go out and celebrate.  She mentioned music and dancing, we checked the schedule of music online and saw that Native Root was playing that night.  Hot Damn!  I had heard about the N Root when they came through town a couple months back and had hit up local station KRFP for an interview before or after their John's Alley show.  I'd listened to some of their funk-da-fried hippie-ass gangsta metal jams on their website and thought them to be an Act Worth Seeing.  Unable to make it to their show back in March or April, I thought to catch them the next time around.

And then I'd completely forgotten about them as the spring churned on and I got a new job which compelled me to drop my involvement with KRFP for the time being.  Indeed, my life generally took a more introverted turn into personal ritual, reading and educating myself about this bizarre lunatic world, writing poems, songs, and half-baked stories, cooking good food, and dancing around the house with the blinds closed, or with other highly-spirited individuals on Tuesday nights during Ecstatic Dance in Moscow.    

So I figured that the stars and our chakras must have aligned with the movements of the band and John's Alley, and we headed out there, arriving a little after ten-thirty.  The band was already into their first set as we paid the cover charge and pushed our way back through the sea of bodies that always seems to clog and congest around the bar.  After paying $6.50 and shoving a soggy dollar bill into the tip jar, the two of us headed towards a table with a Sierra Nevada and an Amaretto Sour.

In the Alley, like any self-respecting low-brow music venue that thrives on smoke, pints of beer, and loud music, there are wooden tables thick with decoupage and under that, vandalized dollar bills.  These are good for some small talk, although remembering what was particularly funny about any of the thickly black-markered dollar bills is difficult to do now in the harsh light of day.  State dependent learning, I suppose.  Put me back in a low-lit room with too much smoke, thousands of shouted conversations, and blaring hybrids of rock and roll, hip-hop, afro-cuban rhythms, jazz, and heavy metal, and I could recall why "Lauryl K eats more Pussy than I do" is particularly funny seen scrawled across  George Washington's face and "This Note is Legal Tender For All Debts, Public and Private," and "Department of the Treasury."  

The music was good, the beer and amaretto were gone, and it was time to dance.  This we did like fools, white people who are trying to shed their skin and culture of squareness.  The smoke was oppressive, though, and we only made it through three songs before feeling as if we were being strangled by what we would imagine the evil smog of L.A. must feel like on a vicious, relentless, god-forsaken summer day.  

Outside then for some fresh air.  We sat on a wall and struck up a conversation with a twenty-something with a belly full of beer and a loose tongue about how paying cover at the Alley was for worms and suckers, which was why he was sitting outside.  "Why should I pay cover?" he mused.  "I have thirty bucks and at least fifteen of that will go towards drink inside.  I don't need to pay eight dollars at the door."  I tried to follow his line of reasoning.  "I thought cover was four bucks.  It was for us."  Still too much, he stuck to his story, and I agreed with him--he had a point.  He was a regular, or a semi-regular--it was hard to determine, he said, who or what really was a regular at John's Alley.  Even the bouncers change irregularly.  What was important though, was that he was a respectable supporter of their establishment, shelling out his hard-earned money for bar-price drinks at least once or twice a week.  Not that the band shouldn't be able to charge cover and make money.  We all knew that life on the road must be an insane venture and oppressive, and the money put towards gas alone would keep John Coltrane starving from now until Christmas.  But we were on very subjective turf here.  This man was a regular, and a drinker, and some exceptions perhaps should have been made.

Well that conversation ended when the reports started rolling in that two sheriffs had been killed.  Shots fired.  The story on the ground was that someone had gone into the courthouse, opened fire, and fled in a red SUV, driving the road out of town like there was no next minute--which, for someone who has just opened fire on the police, their very well may not be.

Dumbfounded, what?  This was extremely odd.  Moscow is a peaceful community.  Just earlier that day I had roamed freely around town with a cup of coffee, striking up conversations with total strangers and enjoying Lanny Messinger's rendetion of Buffalo Springfield's "For What it's Worth."  There had been a vibe in the air, and the Palouse Peace Coaltion was taking donations.  I got two buttons from them, walked around with a new friend who had a camera and was taking candid shots of all the happy people.  Saturday morning is the time of the Farmer's Market in Moscow, Idaho.  Sweet cherub-faced children, all dressed in blue, had been singing and exhorting us all to Put a Little Love in Our Hearts.  I had bought organic plants from various vendors, including Daoists from a hermitage in a sleepy town to the east or south, I don't know, I'm not good with the cardinal directions.

And now, some twelve hours later, with the funk being kicked live from inside the Alley, there were wild reports of senseless carnage.  The vibe had changed.  Evil things were afoot, but no one was sure what was happening.  What to do?  Go back inside and enjoy the music?  Why not?  After all, the SUV had shot out of town, taking the long, dark lonely road to hell.

Back inside, we sat slack-jawed and dumb, in no mood to dance or drink, our minds filled with numbness, disbelief, panic.  What was happening?  Was this story real?  Or had somebody started a vicious rumor that had gotten out of hand, a sick game of telephone being passed around town that actually boiled down to a teenager with a cap gun pulling a red wagon down Main Street?

No no.  This was real.  Actual senseless violence would soon be confirmed.  We had decided that our music buzz had been successfully killed, as much as we hated to admit it.  We bought a CD to support the band and headed for the door.

"You can't leave," was the word at the door.  "There are snipers loose with AK-47s."  Danger on all sides.  To leave now would be to invite death--that was the feeling in the air.  And yet it was frightening to stay in this cavernous music room, our minds filled with images of school shootings and terrorist scenarios, feeling full-bore the surreal reality that might ensue now at any moment: deranged individuals with automatic weapons and hearts full of hate targeting drunks and hippies at the local tavern.  This was a very real possibility.  We sat back down, even more numb, even more stupid, our minds blazing with rage, fear, and disbelief.

It wasn't long before the proprietor took the stage and ran down the situation for everyone who wasn't yet in the know.  It's hard to hush a crowd of hard-drinking punks, professionals, hippies, and college kids who've stayed on for the summer, and when you get up on stage to deliver the news that there are snipers outside with deadly automatic weapons, you just don't know how people will react.

The next four hours or more were touch and go, to say the least.  All of us in a way felt trapped like rats, running foreboding exit scenarios, dastardly escape plans, heroic gestures, and last rites through our skewed imaginations, just in case the worst did come blazing through the front door.  At the same time, we became comrades, compatriots, family, a dysfunctional yet beautiful community temporarily consigned to a bizarre fate of drink, rock and roll, and thick pheromones of fear.  Strangers struck up conversations with strangers and Native Root played bravely on, an admirable rhythm section soundtrack of joy and defiance in the face of ultimate horror.  After a while, people began to dance again.  Everyone was on their cell phones, speaking and text-messaging friends and family for updates and exchanges.  Smoke still filled the air, indomitable as independence and the drive towards life.  Video games were played.  People kissed.  The ping-pong table saw lots of action.

Fierce individuals and shadowy figures, doubting youth and Question Authority men and women all greatly appreciated the police presence outside the door--from the armed man at the door to the armored men and women with shotguns and riot gear who were facing very possible death from above and darkness and all sides--an unknown, seemingly unprovoked, and utterly terrifying violence personified.  The story was garbled and fluctuating.  There were two snipers, they had caught one, one was driving wildly around town, firing everywhere.  No one was safe.  This was the one thing that was certain at that point of time.  Safety as we had known it had definitely degenerated into a thousand questions of where and when and why.  

Our car was only parked 500 yards away.  We could make a break for it, pile in, and speed out of town towards Pullman, but the scenario was just too chaotic.  No, better to stay inside where there were people and lots of them, where the management were responsible people with great human traits, generous and compassionate enough to keep us all in some kind of profane rock & roll and alcohol sanctuary.  That's right, everyone agreed that the most sensible thing we could do was to give thanks and count our blessings among the puddles of beer and the grim determination of the music to go on.  Live free or die takes on weird dimensions of meaning at three in the morning behind a locked and barricaded door in a small progressive town under siege.  

And yet for all of that, there was heavy sadness and fear in the air.  Four, five people had been killed--those were the reports we were getting.  At that time it sounded like they were all sheriffs or police, those sworn to protect and serve.  As the story comes out now, the day after, the reality seems somewhat different and still indeterminate.  We know that three people are dead, one a law enforcement agent and two of them in a Presbyterian Church.  One of the dead in the church is presumed to be the shooter, the other, from what I can gather, a poor peaceful groundskeeper, in service to community and the Good Lord.  

Sadness, heavy sadness.  Vast appreciation for those who contained the rampage, risking their lives and their families' well being, as they do every day.  Profound respect for the sanctity of life, the virtues of humanity and courage in the face of overwhelming uncertainty and fear.  Wishes of peace, half-baked plans to orchestrate a theater of appreciation, a thousand beds of flowers and candles laid down in respect and grief for the lives lost, wasted in a night of guns and hate turned against life and love.

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Unedited press conference detailing the spirit of community response to this situation:
http://www.krem.com/video/localnews-index.html?nvid=145655&shu;=1