Crystal Wiebe reports:
If you think you’re a hipster, try to find your way some night to a party at the Pointless Forest. You can figure out for yourself where that is and when the next rager/rock show is supposed to happen. If you're hip enough. (Just kidding. I’ll make it easy for you. Follow this link.)
Having heard through the grapevine (by way of Omaha) about a Cinco de Mayo party at the Forest, my boyfriend and I embarked on a journey there last Saturday night. As soon as we arrived, I understood why the residents don’t like to advertise their goings-on: The Forest isn’t really a forest but a house on a hill in a residential neighborhood. The green porchlight and the young people trickling off the front porch made the party pretty obvious, although the band could barely be heard from the street.
Members of Omaha bands the Stay Awake and the Bombardment Society get sweaty at the Pointless Forest.
Inside, some garage-y punks were just finishing a deafening set at one end of the downstairs living area. The band played in one mostly unfurnished room; the audience watched from an adjacent room, which did have furniture – including a ratty couch and a dog kennel. Skinny dudes flailed their appendages about for about 60 more seconds before the band quit. Our Omaha friend Kevin informed us that his band, the Bombardment Society and another O-town crew, the Stay Awake, were on next. They were going to alternate songs. I’m not sure if it was an effort to be different and cool or just to get through the sets faster. Either way, I’ve never seen that happen at a concert before.
The Bombardment Society bombards society.
And I still really haven’t. It was difficult to see over all scenester girls in high heels and the tall guys with big hair. And all the mosh action made venturing closer to the band rather unappealing. I wasn’t interested in (a) having my ears blown out (b) getting body-slammed on the hardwood floor or (c) having to smell the obviously unwashed folks at the front of the crowd. At one point, a scrawny dude wearing nothing but briefs grabbed the microphone to tell everyone how his friend had been beaten and lost a bike to some hooligans four blocks away. “Don’t ever buy a bike off the street!” tighty whitey yelled.
We took this disturbing bit of information outside, where we’d seen tighty whitey roll up on a giant bike earlier, flanked by other crazy-haired kids on regular-sized bikes. It was almost possible to see the bands from the porch, but watching the people around me was more interesting. I was struck by the thought that I somehow felt older here, at this artsy college party, than I had a week before at a high school barn party near Lawrence. Maybe that’s because teens are typically more inhibited than college age art freaks, who are seriously capable of anything. (Like riding giant bikes around town in their underwear.)
The Stay Awake stays awake.
Later, I met one of the guys who lives at the Pointless Forest. He was collecting donations in a plastic bag and urging people to either go inside (where it was so hot your face might melt off) or go into the backyard. We also literally rubbed shoulders with the singer for the Rich Boys (he didn’t notice) and saw the dude who’d been beaten up. His eyes seemed rather swollen. Another guy regaled us with multiple stories of being robbed of his bike, sometimes while on it. He also told us how a girl, who seemed eager to do it again, had recently paid to let her pee on him.
Now, tell me you hear stories that good at the Record Bar.
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