...seriously, earlier this evening I was refused entrance to a prominent Philadelphia hotel, apparently because my yoga mat made me look like an undesirable radical trouble maker...
...there I was, having biked downtown earlier for yoga class, mat strapped neatly beneath my knapsack, heading to meet friends at a bar with what they told me was a surprisingly affordable Happy Hour ensconced inside a venerable hotel bordering Philadelphia’s lovely Rittenhouse Square...(where I was apparently stalked by a psychopath as a young child in the late 60’s, but that’s another story)...
...got there to find the place surrounded by cops, with a crowd of Occupy Philly people protesting the presence, apparently at some auditorium within, of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney...carrying signs reading Greed Is Good: Romney/Gekko 2012 (which, for what it’s worth, with no offense intended to any readers' well thought-out social and political sensibilities, I thought was clever) and repeatedly yelling REVOLUTION!!! (which, for what it’s worth, with no offense intended to any reader’s well thought-out social and political sensibilities, I thought was stupid)...
...so, I head for the front door, only to find a member of the hotel’s security personnel moving over to bar my way....he asked if I was a hotel guest, I explained that I was going to meet some friends in the bar, and he let me know it was restricted, and maybe I could come back in an hour...
...so, figuring that meant nobody was allowed in, apart from registered guests, and the location for our meet-up would have to be changed, if it hadn’t been already, I called one of my friends, Marge, who, as it turned out, was just around the corner, only to see another friend, approaching through the park...
...Marge said that she’d talked to yet another friend who was already in the bar...said maybe it was your yoga mat...a possibility she found amusing...so decided to go try her luck at the door...where the same guy who’d physically prevented me from entering, mere minutes earlier, ushered both her and our other friend in, without asking if they were guests, only to turn angrily to remind me that I'd already been denied entrance....I said I’m with them...and, apparently not wanting to offend my respectable non-yoga-mat-carrying companions, he let me in...
...notably, a bit later, after I’d told this story to people at the bar, a nicely dressed older woman walked up and said that she, actually, was one of the protesters, and had no problem getting in....then, she didn’t have a yoga mat...
10 comments:
hah- that is hilarious. and sad. you trouble causing hippies you.
That's funny!
…and the word verification is:
manza!
That may be just the best yoga mat story I've ever heard. Were you by chance returning from a Kundalini class???
How remarkable! I swear, Jay, you always seem to find the rare twist in even the rarest of circumstances (or the rare twist finds you....now what is the name of that pose?)
damn...
walkin' while yogi.
what is this world comin' to!?
Hmmm. Awhile back I posted some OWS photos from NY and got a comment referencing (what the commenter perceived as) "some very scary signs out there," whereas photos from a small-town occupancy, complete with a waver of the American flag, garnered nary a peep...
Damn yoga hippies!
It's just sad when people judge others by their physical appearance. :(
- online yoga community
Love it, that is crazy. I have a friend that was denied entrance the other night for wearing a camo jacket
(Which I admit is not the best fashion option) but hey, come ON!
How funny... If I go shopping after class with my yoga mat still on my back, I often get weird looks but never denied entrance. A study should be done on people and their yoga mats :)
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