Target audience

I probably wasn’t the target audience. Me with my socially-conscious shoes – the last time I was at the Convention Center was for the Greenfest, my Mr. Splashy Pants shirt, my “Reading is Sexy” button. Oh, and the fact that I’d never been on a motorcycle. I hadn’t even touched one. That would generally exclude me from the 27th Annual Cycle World Motorcycle Show, but a friend from college was in town and he invited me.

I baked some squash for book club, emailed a list of library books to my friends, changed out of Splashy Pants and headed across the city.

By the time we connected, however, the group had pretty much run the course of the show and they decided to meet me at the door. I stood and watched as people bought tickets, picked up magazines and made their way into the space as I waited. My friend and his friends trickled out.

“Is that a Kevlar vest?” I asked, pointing at a couple of men down the concourse.

“They’re probably just leather vests.”

“I’m probably more familiar with Kevlar vests than leather ones,” I observed. From the back, though, he was right. They looked like leather vests. The front seemed to include padding and Velcro and a very high neck. My friend explained some of the fashions as we watched people come and go. Or pointed them out anyway.

We walked out into the cooling afternoon and south on 7th for a drink or two.

“Is this a normal weekend crowd?”

“Um... Is it Chinese New Year?”

Lines formed at the doors of every bar and restaurant on the street. People milled. The crowd swelled. We stopped, turned around, walked back to the Convention Center and caught up for a while, my friend from college and I at the motorcycle show.


Tag: Friends