Well, another Winterfolk is over. That was a very busy weekend. The highlight for me, was, of course, playing with Steve Raiken and The Best of Dr. B’s Acoustic Medicine Show on Saturday at Dora Keogh. The other highlight was seeing and hearing so many excellent musical acts. A lot of whom I knew, although there were many new ones that I didn’t.

Another vivid memory was stopping in at Dora Keogh on Saturday evening to find David McLachlin in a bit of a quandary. STAV was onstage performing. She had forgotten her passport in Montreal. A friend named Mohammed was going to drop it off for her. She had asked David to meet him, driving his red Astrovan in front of the Broadview Subway station, at about 9:20. She had given David $150 in cash to give to him. David seemed to fell a bit suspicious about all this. I agreed to accompany him. We had some nightmare fantasies about drug deals gone wring, cops, even soldiers. We waited at the Broadview Subway Station as nondescript vans drove by. Finally the red Astrovan drove up, right on cue. The driver rolled down the window. He and David exchanged names, then exchanged the cash bills for a cloth wallet. I asked if we needed to check that the passport was in there. Mohammed just smiled and drove off. In the end, it all happened as planned. STAV got her passport, so she could fly the next day. Just another case of white boy paranoia.

The other incident happened on Friday evening. I was putting up the Winterfolk banners outside the three venues, Mambo, Black Swan, and Dora Keogh. As I walked up to Dora, there was a young man standing there leaving a phone message. He immediately humg up and started to move off. He said it was just one of those “Hi. How are you.” calls and was not important. Then he saw that I was putting up a banner and offered to help. I put the corner of the banner against the railing, and as he put his hand out to hold it, I noticed that he had inch long cyan coloured nails on both hands. “Nice nails!” I said, somewhat without thinking. He said, “Thanks. I work at the nail salon over there, and I need to be a good advertisement for it.”