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[Odler]

At the Palladium, the queue was longer than a line of Afghani at a U.N relief booth in Kandahar. Waiting time to access the premier club in the capital city of the Union, after 11:00 p.m., on a Saturday night: about three days. So we moved our impatient steps toward Polly Esther, located, let?s say, six-minute drive away.

Polly Esther plays tunes of the 70s, 80s, 90s, and 00s: one decade per floor. While having a ball, trying mainly to distinguish the music of the 90s from the one of the 00s, I kept wondering about what will happen in eight years. Will they drop the 70s, or will they add a new floor for the 10s?

At Polly Ester (I was about to write Polyester), you can very quickly assess your past and future life: your past, by recording the energy of the gyrating patrons, your future, by charting how long you can keep up. However rich or pitiful the evaluation turns out to be, you are guaranteed a huge, and cheap ($10 at the door) time at Polly Esther.

Don?t miss the place if you are in Washington, DC, unless you bear distaste for multi-ethnic 25 year-olds wearing short skirts, dancing to all kinds of loud music.

Two days earlier, in the middle of the workweek, we spent the late evening at Black Cat, a bar located on the other side of town. The peculiarity with Black Cat is that it is a club of ALTERNATIVE music. Question: What is alternative music? Alternative to what? To disco, salsa, hip-hop, or all of the above?

How did we end up at the Black Cat? No idea. We were sent, I guess, by our concierge, who wanted to punish us for not staying in bed, a Thursday night.

Just figure four physician musketeers lost in the alternative world. Lina: a petite, very pretty americanized continental Indian, who can?t stop using her cell phone. Jeff, a tall, huge authentic Utah Mormon. Muhammad, a Syrian with an accent so thick that he drove from Maine to DC because he thinks he would probably be strip-searched too many times before he could board a plane. And a Caribbean American guy who grows suspicious of any music saloon located in the back of a bar, isolated by a solid padded black door.

Speaking of black, everything in that alternative music room was black except the people. The patrons wore black, so did the musicians. The walls (I think) were painted in black. The music was a psychedelic marriage of electric sounds produced by guitar, keyboard players, who look weird, and would keep their eyes close.

The audience remained stiff, almost stoned, during the performance. Then, everyone would clap, somberly. Like at a funeral, but obviously, they enjoyed it.

To tell you the truth, I just did not like the place. I mean the alternative place in Washington, DC.