Fun Badge Tour
More convention highlights, here. I just got back from the Fun Badge Tour. Tammy Whynot was our guide. She told our bus more about Lois than you would ever want to know. I suspect that Lois was telling her busload some stories about Tammy, as well.
For those of you who don't know, a Fun Badge Tour is when some crazy queens of the host city load up 300 square dancers on buses and take them to "sights of interest" (emphasis added) in the host city. We saw some interesting crumbling neighborhoods along Euclid Avenue, and several examples of rusted manufacturing faded glory. We also got lost somewhere near the lake (Erie) front. These tours always feature high adventure.
The tour featured four stops. The first stop was the aforementioned lakefront park. The Cleveland crew also fed us breakfast (because we left the hotel at 7 a.m.). Tammy provided a lot of rich humor and commentary, mainly about Lois, her topography, and bodily functions. After the park, we bused over to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Each of the stops had us clambering out of our motor coaches ("Number Blue, color Blue, if this is not your color, or if you do not recognize the people on this bus, you may be on the wrong bus. Please count the empty seats"). The RaRHoF is an I.M. Pei building, not quite the Louvre, but kinda cool in it's own way. We danced out front to the calling of Anne Uebelacker.
After the RaRHof, we headed out to the Cleveland Art Museum, and traveled through some pretty desperate neighborhoods. Parts of Cleveland have not aged well. Loss of manufacturing jobs has meant the decline of neighborhoods, too. The city is slowly recovering. We danced in front of Rodin's The Thinker at the museum. The statue was damaged by a Weathermen bombing in the 70s, but the museum chose to not restore the sculpture, and it serves as a comment on culture and chaos, not to mention ugly political struggle, violence, etc.
Our final destination was Public Square in front of the hotel. It features a statue of General Moses Cleaveland, who after founding the town, skipped town and died in Boston. The square also has an imposing Civil War memorial.
And that was our tour of Cleveland. I got my Fun Badge Tour dangles and my kerchief. Next year, we'll be touring those monuments in DC.
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