The Adventures of Jimmy NoShoes: Dangar Island

A friend mentioned, what seems a lifetime ago, this little island an hour away where a bunch of artist live. They have a jam night the first Friday of each month. Over the last few months we've tried to make it up there but its never happened, too busy with school.

Right now a few of us are waiting to hear if our script ideas will be selected to be made into short films by the school, so we have some down time. (My script is not being considered at the moment, because, obviously, the people that run the school are not only incredibly stupid, but they have no sense of humour).

I got a text the other day, "Platform 9, 6:45" I headed down around 6:30 and ran into my friends heading the other way through the tunnel at central station. There was an accident somewhere up the track, and after some confusion (we sent our talled swede to figure it all out) we eventually got on the right train. We arrived at our stop, Brooklyn. Deserted. No people, no ferry, just a place to sit. We found a phone number for a water taxi and booked a trip across, for about 3 times the cost of the ferry. Supply and demand.

We arrive on Dangar island around 9...ish. We wandered a short distance to the lawn bowling club, thats where jam night is. There are no cars on the island, it's quiet, you can see all the stars, dogs run free. It was pretty cool. We ran into a lady who's friends with my buddy Dan. She took care of our bags and stuff for us and we enjoyed some music. The talent was pretty amazing. One girl got up and played some dixie chicks songs and was incredible. Then they broke out the digereedoo for some weird experirmental jazzy kind of stuff.

When they closed the place down they let us get some to beer to go and we were invited to go hang at Jimmy No Shoes place. Jimmy's an artist, and an former sound engineer. I'm not sure if there was electricity there, but he did have goon, which is a nasty boxed wine they have here. We sat and chatted and about life, and sound and the little island we were on.  Eventually someone came and brought us to a new party.

At the second party we sat around a fire and drank beer, while someone played the guitar (it wasn't me but it was still good). Later, the digereedoo guy from the bar started playing. It was a really cool relaxing evening. Eventually we moved down to the beach to watch the sun come up.

We left a note at our host's place at about 730 am and headed down to the dock to catch the ferry. We had to take a couple of buses home because the trains weren't running.  We stopped at a great breakfast place on the way home and got bacon n' egg rolls.

Pretty good weekend.