First Night

Last night was a beautiful night. We went to catch up with some friends at the "Hippie Pub" in the next town. We sat out on the deck and had dinner about ten feet from a massive blooming lilac bush. It smelled like heaven! The Hippie Pub is in the artsy little community of Peterborough. The NH center for eccentric, old money, artistic types. Harlow's has always been a gathering place in town. It started as a little vegetarian cafe, but expanded a bar room upstairs with live music, and they now have a pretty expansive dinner selection to boot. When our friend Steve found out who was playing that night we decided to stick around.
The band was Ivy Levine and the Chums. (Pronounced Ivy Le-Vine not Leveen, of course :) Her name suits her well. She's probably near six feet tall, maybe 110 pounds, and her lean yet long limbs weaved, dove and climbed as she danced around. played a good variety of music. All originals. Among my favorites was a ska sounding "I can run fast- Touchdown!". They played some folksie tunes like "Star Trek Heroine in the Moonlight". My personal favorite was a country/rock song "Yippie-Ey-O" in which Ivy dawned two gloves that had little puppets dressed in ball gowns. Her first two fingers of each hand being the legs. The little puppets were wearing heels and they danced first in the air doing the can-can, then they moved to a cymbal and played a percussion bit with their "dance". Very entertaining.
I like the crowd that gathers at the pub. It isn't the bar of college years where everyone goes to drink beer as fast as they can and party hard. The bar serves primarily beer and it is good quality beer. Beer is not on my list so I stuck with soda. By the time the band started a good part of the crowd had moved on to water or soda as well. Their is always an active group of dancers here as well. They clear out several tables after dinner to make a dance area. There were many couples there. The "first date" couple was fun to watch- stuck to each other in the close slow spin dance. Another couple demonstrated their success in swing dance lessons together as they two stepped around the floor. Another couple dressed to the nines used ballroom dance techniques. Then, being Peterborough, there were of course two middle aged women (I am guessing a couple) who were wearing the beads, and flowing skirts who looked like they had learned to dance at a Dead show back in the seventies.
All in all, a great evening. A great way to spend the first night in June.