地下社會

Graffiti around Taipei's Shimen District and in the bathroom of Underworld (地下社會) music bar.
----------------------------------------

I went to a music cafe again on Thursday, and another one today. I'm so hooked on Taipei's 'live house' scene that I'll probably skip work on Friday to head to the 3-day Hohaiyan Indie Rock Festival by the beach. Best thing about the scene here is that there are no hipsters or swaggeringly grandiloquent indie outfits as you would find at similar venues in other cities; just small 20something post-college bands who love what they do, and that's tremendously inspiring. None of my buddies were available to hang out tonight, so I actually grabbed my sketchbook and went to see the band alone. Of course I didn't get any sketching done at the bar (sketching as in drawing; get your mind out of the gutter), but it felt good having an excuse to set out downtown by yourself at 10pm. This is what I miss about cities. I'm starting to develop really solitary urban habits, but it gives me time to think.

The live-house bar I went to tonight was near Shi-Da Normal (as opposed to Rando?) University, and the streets were steaming and teeming with street food and international students and second-hand bookstores. Quite a bumping neighborhood. The band itself -- TUBE//地下鐵樂團 -- sounded unmistakably British, and their biography confirmed it. The lead singer is British-Taiwanese I think.



Friday was Sonny's birthday, so we celebrated it in high 台客 (Taiwanese ghetto) fashion by buying a bottle of Kinmen Rice Wine at a convenience store and chugging it at a nearby park. As the buzz started to set in, we began to look for some more dignified place to continue our general fucking-around loitering. We eventually walked to the 24-hour Eslite Bookstore on Dunhua and read Pot's Literary Weekly (破報) at the cafe. I'm beginning to turn so local that I'm not sure if I'll be ready for Hanover when September comes around.