Buttrock Suites at Velocity was sold out on Saturday night. PBR was on concession. Bon Jovi, Møtley Crüe, Def Leppard, and Journey were in the offing. A woman with straight, straight hair and pointy, pointy shoes—her husband in tow, carrying the beers—came and sat next to me. I paraphrase:

“Are these taken? They’re not taken? We can sit here. First row! Do you go to dance much? I love dance. He hates dance. Always dragging him along. Yes I do too have to drag you along. He doesn’t like dance. But I know he’ll like this. This is so cool! I saw it in the newspaper and cut it out and said, ‘Well, this he’ll go to with me.’ Plus they have beer! Did you see it in the newspaper too? You must have read the same thing I saw. Ever go to Fifth Avenue Theatre? He won’t go to the Fifth Avenue anymore. I don’t like it either. We had season tickets. You know, we’d go to dinner, we’d be having a great night, really having fun, and then it was time to go to the Fifth Avenue Theatre, the show was about to start, and we’d go, ‘Do we have to go?’ We’d be dreading it—”

“I would just sit there begging for intermission,” her husband interrupted.

“So now he doesn’t go anymore. Refuses. But I said to him, ‘You’re going to like this show.’ He knows all the words to Bon Jovi. Do you? Are you going to sing? So where can we go if we don’t like Fifth Avenue Theatre? We like dance. I like dance. Is there anywhere else you can see dance that’s not at Fifth Avenue Theatre? Like where? I like this theater. Never been here. I like small theaters. This is—what would you call this—cutting edge? So tell me before it starts, where should we go? I love dance.”

I told her she should go to On the Boards. Local dancers, international dancers, cutting edge stuff, beer—everything this lady wants is at On the Boards, I told her. After Buttrock Suites was over—she loved it, as did the rest of the crowd, especially “Pour Some Sugar on Me,” featuring a huge sack of sugar actually being poured on two dancers—she asked me again “the name of the place” and I repeated: “On the Boards.”
“On the—what?”
“On the Boards.”
“Omnivores?”
“On the Boards.”
“Onthemoors?”
“On. The. Boards. On the Boards!”