PureCirkus

I am standing in a massive, open garage in the guts of Seattle's industrial district witnessing what must surely be the coolest thing happening in the world at this very moment. Backed by a live band of a saxophone, drums, a guitar, a clarinet, and a screamer, who are blaring out a non-stop stream of hardcore, two girls dressed in skimpy black rags covered with metal plates are taking turns blasting out streams of sparks on themselves and each other with a pair of power grinders. I'm drinking the free keg beer and finishing the freshly baked brick oven pizza. It turns out that when lost, looking for the highway, we drove past a belated wedding party that caught our attention with the two goth clowns standing out front of the party which was spewing hardcore out into the streets. Needless to say, Eric and I felt the need to stop and check it out. "Should we go in?" "Yes." "Are you sure?" "Yes." We only found out exactly what it was, and that we were also in the garage of a local motorcycle gang, when I asked a group of girls that incidentally included the bride. Fortunately her and her eight foot motorcycle gang member husband were really cool and encouraged us to stay and enjoy ourselves which we did without having to be asked twice.
The Pure Cirkus, as this show is called, has a full line up, everyone done up in the same goth clown style. The rope acrobat has knee-high black and white stockings and a half-white face. One of the girls looks like Elvira and the other has a a white heart over her face. The screamer has a tutu on below a pair of shoulder pads and a forearm length spiked leather gauntlet. There is a kazoo player/opera singer, a unicyclist, a juggler, and every other circus skill one could imagine. After an hour and a half of each member doing their thing, they all begin to perform at once for the grand finale. It is the most incredible spectacle I have ever seen, enhanced a thousand times by our sheer ignorance of what was happening and our incredible fortune to be driving by at the right place at the right time. Eric and I leave just before they finished the finale, wanting to leave on the highest note possible, and congratulating and thanking the bride and groom. It's about time we went into town to meet up with his friends whom we had ditched for most of the night to watch this thing go down. No regrets there.
We saw some other awesome things this weekend in this city: Jeffrey Lewis playing a tiny show, one of the most unique shows I have ever seen, complete with self-illustrated "movies" in his comic style, a face-melting solo by the Animal Liberation Orchestra at the end of their set which we got into for free, two hours of hard, electric rock at Seafair by The Blakes and Mudhoney, a day-long trick-plane show at the same event, including a blazing plane that dropped fireworks during its corkscrews and loops once the sun went down. Not to belittle any of those other great times, which would have made a good weekend in themselves, but walking away, we both are completely sure that we just saw the coolest thing any people in the world could possibly see at that particular time.