First First

9/08/07
For a few years, I've heard rumors of what goes on in downtown Phoenix every first Friday of the month. It's an event called First Friday, which serves as the date for all the new art galleries to open up. Lots of bands and music and art and drunks. As many times as I was invited to check it out, I never got the chance. It was always Poker Night or work or something dumb.
Recently I moved to Flagstaff, Arizona and I am less then a mile from downtown. It's a nice walk. And I went to my first First Friday last night.
I went with my friend Emily and her friend Jasmine. I was pretty caffeine high and the floor was moving when I picked her up. I was excited, but not really prepared. It is apparently appropriate to dress up a little bit. Emily and I both looked as nice as we always do, which got us a few snobbish looks from the art world elite.
Also, you aren't really supposed to take pictures. But I did anyway, until some Indian prick told me to stop.
First Friday was small, because Flag is small. In a way, this made it a little more friendly and fun. The first gallery we stopped at was full of boring abstract art and a half dozen sculptures made out of wood and old brass instruments. The sculptures looked nice, but didn't have their full potential. I think they could have gone much further with the concept.
I checked the prices and groaned.
The next gallery was small and crowded. Miniature was the word that came to mind. A small woman played a small tune on a small piano in the window.
We left and ran into a crowd on the corner surrounding a man who told me his name was Dan Stern. He was juggling lit torches and telling jokes. I taped some of it, and got some really weird pictures from it. It was worth the dollar I donated to him.
Next stop was a Native American gallery, small, crowded and boring, except for a few pictures of naked women clutching bushels of thorns. There was a bluegrass band playing outside, how amusing. We turned a corner and went into a large, shiny gallery.
This one was full of art, from many different artists. Not much stood out, except some silverware sculptures by an old man named Dion Wright. He made a lion with a mane of forks and turtle made of spoons. I talked to the guy a little bit. He had painted a huge painting of evolution, all the one celled creatures growing into worms and then frogs and then dinosaurs. I took a nice picture of Emily beside it, because Dion wasn't a dick about it.
We ran off to another art gallery, this next one filled with blown up photographs of desert landscapes and canyons and horses. I talked to the artist, Shane Knight and he told me about the beautiful places he had been to snap these expensive photos.
On our way to the next gallery, Emily had to take a phone call. While she tried to hear, I stood on the corner and took horrible point-and-shoot photos of the Hotel Monte Vista. A drunk man came up really close to me and asked me for a cigarette. I told him I didn't smoke, and he told me he didn't want to cross the train tracks because people would beat him up. But he could take them, he said. He made me touch his bicep to prove it.
I bit my lip to keep from laughing. He ran off suddenly and yelled something at a few passing hot rods. I protectively grabbed Emily's arm and we crossed the street. She was still on the phone and had no idea what was happening.
We ducked into a tattoo parlor and had a glass of Chardonnay. There were a lot of drunk people here, one who thought I was trying to take his drink from him. He screamed "NO!" in my face and I could smell everything that was killing him.
The tattoos were some of the most surreal and original art we'd seen all night, but it was crowded with angry alcoholics and so we left.
We ran into many more drunk people walking home. We found a small group of people playing banjo and dancing outside an art gallery. It was far from downtown and pretty empty, tho it was larger than most of the ones we had visited. It was full of generic photography, and only one of a waterfall stood out. The gallery owner or the artist was a dick, so we left and went home.
For me, it was a great night, and I hope to do it again and again and again, every month, until I die.

Author's Note:
You can watch the video of Dan Stern eating fire here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3e1W7PpHu-c