Are you ready to rock?!?

Good assimilators that we are, Olivier, Noemie, and I went to a rock bar last night with some French friends from the uni. It was blues night and live music night, and all I can say is that if last night was any indication, Colombians have no soul. I mean, they'll kick my ass at salsa parties or whatever, but blues just wasn't happening. Perhaps it's just my American chauvanism to think that it just can't work in any language but English, preferably American, or maybe these guys weren't representative of the mad Bogota blues scene. In any case, the first band was alright but didn't have much energy.

Then this little old Irish dude missing a few teeth, looking older than his years (thanks 1960s and the hippies!), threw on a badly tuned guitar and belted out some killer standards, with a few crowd pleasers thrown in (or maybe Another Brick in the Wall is actually blues?), and basically had the whole place eating out of his hand.

This tall black cuban dude (ladies you'd have swooned) climbed up on stage and covered Jimi Hendrix to a t. Not very original, but it never hurts to hear Hendrix played competently live.

So yeah, we now have a great rock bar to go to. Getting there is a pain since it's up in the north like everything else, and we're in the center. And last night the main boulevard was kinda slow, so a bunch of taxis just went over to the other side and tempted fate with oncoming traffic. We went like that for probably 10 minutes without problem, passing an ambulance stuck in the traffic on the other side.

Let's see, what else is new ... in the literary cafe Olivier and I like to call home, we randomly met some famous Colombian writer Victor Paz. Olivier says he's pretty well known, all I know is that he's really nice and a total bohemian writer guy, and he invited us to his birthday party tonight. So apparently we'll be schmoozing with the literary elite at some chic restaurant. Good times. More later.