Exhibitionists

Last month, I'd rushed downtown for one of the last days of the Beatles exhibit at the Grammy Museum. I hadn't been to the Grammy Museum before, and it was pleasant, and the Beatles show was small but interesting.

Well, this time, I raced down the first weekend the new exhibit was open, because it was the Ramones show—previously at the Queens Museum, where it had been crowded.

Almost no one was at the Grammy Museum the Sunday afternoon I went, which disappointed me, but this is LA, not New York. I'm reminded of this frequently. Every time I miss home, I'm reminded of this, though I know the NYC that spawned the Ramones has vanished. Hell, the NYC that spat out adult Marie on Avenue B is gone. The original Ramones themselves are even gone. Even the bar Joey Ramone's brother tended bar at is gone, and has been for years.

I don't know how many times I saw the Ramones. I only remember the first time, at Washington DC's Wax Museum with...my sister? The other Marie? Someone in spiked heels stepped on my foot, which is how I learned to avoid mosh pits.

Even then, we were too young, too late. We had only the vaguest sense of what might be going on four hours north of us.