I’ve finally uploaded the photos and gotten the keys to LineOut to expand on this week’s Party Crasher, a marching hootenanny that sprawled across Capitol Hill. The group behind the event, Orkestar Zirkonium, is a klezmer-influenced Balkan Marching Band that is partially composed of members of the Infernal Noise Brigade.
Photos and stories after the jump, under the fold, and hither the yon…

At nine o'clock sharpish, members of the Orkestar amassed at the fountain at Cal Anderson Park, tuning their instruments and discussing the most bare bones of plans: organizers had called a bunch of different Capitol Hill bars and described their march. Only two bars bothered to return the Orkestar's calls with a "come on in": the Six Arms and the Crescent. It was decided that the band, twelve instruments including a French horn, a few large drums and, of course, the tuba, would first head up the hill, to the Elysian, before making our way downhill to the bars that approved of our intrusion. Everyone started playing a simple march and we headed east, uphill.

The first bar we came across, though, was the Satellite Lounge. There were nervous smiles between members of the Orkestar: it was to be their first real show of their career, and there was no telling what the response from the crowd would be. They filed in one by one, and then began playing full-blast. The thing about klezmer music is that it makes you feel as though you're living inside a cartoon, and the Satellite was wildly receptive to the music:

There was dancing on tables, there was much communal, rhythmic clapping, there were shouts of "Opa!" and there was laughter.

The band played two songs, announced their name, and invited the drinkers to march along with us, up to the Elysian, where the same scenario played out. The crowd surrounding the band was starting to swell--we started at about thirty and had grown to fifty.

The next bar we hit was The Comet, a considerably more snug venue. The bouncers were nice enough to let us in without paying the cover, and the Orkestar played a few more songs, and then, for the first real time in the evening, the music stopped for a quick beer break. Someone from The Comet got on the house microphone and shouted "Damn you, Infernal Noise Brigade!" which prompted someone from the Orkestar to point out that there was no connection between the INB and the OZ. Outside the Comet, the march began again, down Pike street.

The crowd was growing exponentially: by now there were 75 people. It was officially a throng. There were murmurs through the marchers that we should march through the QFC, and again people were nervous: would there be some sort of retaliation? Did the security guards at QFC get paid enough to care? The Majoratrix, leading the parade with a pirate flag, didn't seem to think so:

Despite some nervous-looking grocery clerks, the march through the QFC went pretty smoothly, and it was around that point that the march grew to its full size, roughly a hundred and twenty to a hundred and thirty marchers. We marched to Pike Street and down: the bouncer at Linda's turned us down flat, citing overcrowding, and then the Kincora welcomed us in, but then blasted AC/DC until we retreated in fear. Regrouping, the Orkestar played a few songs on Pine, directly in front of the Bus Stop and the Cha Cha. Dancing in the street followed.

It was here that, in my opinion, things started to lose their charm, strictly because the crowd had gotten too big. On the march to the Six Arms, we debated entering The Eagle, and someone asked whether a group this size would be welcome. From out of nowhere, a very muppet-like hobo jumped out, waving his fists, and shouted, "Let 'em try! Nobody can stop us!" Needless to say, no one knew who the hobo belonged to. Several of the revellers were also incredibly drunk, to the point where they were drunkenly quoting from Borat: "Sexytime! Niiiiice! High five!" The bloom was off the rose, as they say. The Six Arms proved to be worth the fratty trend-quoters, though, as the Orkestar mounted the mezzanine:

and played to the adoring, clapping crowd below:

It was the emotional climax of the evening, too--the music sounded just loose and jazzy enough, the hobo started doing that bolshevik dance where you cross your arms and kick out your feet, and everyone was lightly toasted. The affair moved northward, to the Chapel, which tossed us the minute we entered, and then upward, back toward Cal Anderson Park. A cashier at the Metropolitan Market, in a first for our march, actually excitedly waved us inside the mid-sized convenience store, and was treated to a miniconcert, and then we ascended the hill to The Crescent, where only the brass and drums could fit inside and play the final set of the night. The Crescent's large, nearly windowless street-facing wall acted as a kind of huge pink bass drum--I could swear I saw it vibrating in time with the music. A muscular frattish man with a wedge-shaped haircut came over and said into his cel phone, "Dude you've gotta get down here...it's like a band of gypsies or something."
The Orkestar marched, this time wearily, the horn players pouting their lips to get blood circulating again, up the hill to just under Finn McCool's, where, from above, someone with a baseball hat was mooning us for fifteen minutes straight as the band played its encore and thanked everyone for marching with them.

It was an exciting night, full of frivolity and ridiculously grandiose gestures. It was by no means a, you know, important or life-changing event, but, God, what a good time. It was like all the fun I'd forgotten to have during the summer of 2006 bubbled up to the surface in one amazing evening. Orkestar Zirkonium plays next at Jules Mae's on February 3rd with The Bad Things, and I just cannot recommend it enough: I can't begin to imagine what they'll be able to do when they're standing still.