Where to begin. Mr. Scott Hartbeck is in town on his "Wild On Ohio" road trip, and the kid wants to enjoy the sights and scenes of the downtown Cleveland nightlife. Comer and I are a little weary on what to expect, seeing that it is a rainy Wednesday evening in September.
Around 10:30ish we head down to Fat Fish Blue down near Jacob's Field and Gund Arena, and as we're enjoying our late dinner and some great live blues music we notice not only an outflow of Tribe fans, but also a bunch of teeny boppers flowing out. Now, while running errands today I heard traffic reports on the radio say that get downtown early if you're going because of the Tribe game and a concert at the Gund, but I never heard what it was. Sure enough, after a while I made the connection that Backstreet was in town because they were just starting up their rescheduled shows and I remembered my cousin was going tonight. We then saw a few Backstreet t-shirts, which confirmed our speculation. We have a laugh over it and then head down to see what's going on at the other bars.
Howie D, Nick, Kyle, Tim and Scott pose for the fans Photo by Pat Cruble
So we do a drive by past the Flats and Warehouse/W.6th district to show Scotty where stuff is at, and the only place that has any life to it is the Velvet Dog, which has no less than 50 people outside of it, not all in line, just mingling outside. Scott suggests going there since it appears to be "hopping."
Well, we walk up there and notice that there are several teenage girls there, and then we start to speculate that Backstreet is already inside. A news camera comes and starts interviewing the teeny-boppers and whatnot. We pay our $5 to get in and all eyes are on us, or whoever walks in the door, as quite a bit of females, ranging from age 18-45, are just sitting right inside the door awaiting their arrival.
Someone makes the call to head upstairs so we can get some space to chill out somewhat and get away from this insanity, so we go upstairs and just sit in the back of the room by the back bar.
After a good 45 minutes up there, sure enough, who comes in the 2nd floor back door but the Backdoor, errr, Backstreet Boys. Nick Carter and Howie D with an entourage. The thing was, since they slipped in the back door no one really saw them besides us and a few other people because everyone was concentrated on the front stairs.
Everyone who knows me knows I suffer from Brandon Walsh Syndrome (the refusal to dance, period), but after a few seconds of staring at these Backstreet Boys, Scott and Kyle get back to their usual antics, dancing around doing dumb dances, parading around this kid who was falling into me he was so drunk, and they start doing the "bob and weave" with this shorter black guy, thinking nothing of it. Well sure enough, that guy follows the Backstreet guys up on to the DJ booth. Little did Comer and Scotty realize, but they were "bobbing and weaving" with Sisqo, who apparently was one of the opening acts. Dude had braids and a bandana on, apparently he's ditched the silver hair thing.
So they are up on this DJ booth thing for a while signing autographs and whatnot, and head back to the back stairwell, presumably to head up to the 3rd, VIP level of this place. On their train out I feel the need to high five these guys, and so Howie D gives me the cold shoulder but I still pat him on the back, but my boy Nick Carter gave me a high five on his way out to get some tail. I then got the hell out of there so I wouldn’t be stampeded by the onslaught of blondes running to the back door. We've had our fun for the night, and as we're trying to head out we almost cant because of the mess of people with their special VIP stickers trying to rush upstairs.
So long story short, we all touched “greatness” tonight, and Kyle and Scotty can forever say they “busted a move” with Mr. Thong Song.
