Open Mic at Edison’s

Edis­on’s Pub start­ed hav­ing Tues­day open mic nights three weeks ago. I made it to this week’s install­ment of music, poet­ry and stand-up com­e­dy and had a great time. It is a pret­ty relaxed atmos­phere, with no real set sched­ule or pace to the per­for­mances, and Tremon­sters all over the place. I even picked up a self-pub­lished book of poet­ry by one of my neigh­bors and short sto­ries from Leeds, UK for the price of a PBR. It was an evening for mul­ti-task­ing, while lis­ten­ing to peo­ple rock­ing out and watch­ing the Indi­ans game, I had the chance to look over part of a book about the his­to­ry of Brandt Gallery. I also chat­ted with every­one’s favorite pho­tog­ra­ph­er, lis­tened to a Luck­y’s barista do some stand-up, gave Steve a lit­tle good-natured rib­bing and hung out Erin from Inside/Outside.

While eat­ing a pesto and toma­to piz­za from Edis­on’s Next Door Deli, I final­ly met anoth­er Tremont entre­pre­neur, Des Schmitt, who runs South­side Clean­ers and Concierge and is work­ing on open­ing a cha­peaux shop, had the chance to inform myself about cer­tain local trou­ble­mak­ers, and did I men­tion that there was an open mic night going on? Lou said he would go up and do some­thing if I did, but I gave out a good excuse. Any­way, you could­n’t real­ly ask for a bet­ter time on a Tues­day night, or a more crowd­ed bar. The atmos­phere was real­ly spe­cial, what Jack would call an appre­cia­tive one. It seemed like every­one who went up in front of the mic was com­fort­able, even if they weren’t exact­ly con­fi­dent in their per­for­mances. Open mics are good for build­ing con­fi­dence though, and it takes plen­ty of guts to get up there in the first place. I am con­stant­ly remind­ed of the rea­sons why Tremont is so great, and it isn’t the fan­cy restau­rants and art gal­leries, it’s my neigh­bors, hang­ing out, drink­ing beers and sup­port­ing each oth­er in their pas­sions. I think I know where I’ll be on Tues­day nights from now on. Who knows, maybe I’ll even per­form one day.