Life Lesson at The New Pornographers' Concert
The Zen of Not Reacting to the Drunk Woman Who Steals Your Umbrella
The White Eagle Hall in Jersey City is a venue perfect for touring acts whose fans first got their music on CD in the late 90s. Standing room only on the floor by the stage; a wraparound balcony embracing the standers with cushioned bar stools all along the balcony railing’s arms. Showing up at the tail end of Gustaf’s screaming art-rock opening, I found the concert floor was packed and the free seats above were sparse. Somehow, I managed to find my place dead center on the balcony, over the soundboard operators, where I could look down and see the setlist to come for the New Pornographers, a band whose audience demographic I represent in all ways (even if I never really listened to them on CD).
It was a rainy night, so I flopped my bagged umbrella up on the bar in front of my seat and settled in for a 20-song set (including two encores). Yes, I counted the songs on the setlist. I even recognized a couple of them.
Just as the six-member band took their spots on stage, a mysterious hand reached over my right shoulder and swiftly lifted my wrapped umbrella off the bar.
Sometimes things happen in life before we can appropriately react to them.
I looked back to see a middle-aged white woman with long brown hair holding my umbrella in one hand and precariously balancing a vodka beverage in the other.
“Thash my umbrella. I was sitting there,” she said.
I assured her that it was my umbrella and all she had to do was check in the plastic bag for proof. It is not exactly an umbrella anybody would want if it weren’t already theirs. She responded cryptically:
“You’re talking about singular and I’m talking plural.”
The people standing around me joined the struggle to politely convince this woman that she was mistaken.
“It’s his umbrella. He sat down with it,” they said.
She repeated variations of umbrellas being plural not singular and sloshed her drink hand around for emphasis. The umbrella incident was building to some sort of climax. Outside the orbit of the immediate debate were calls of “What just happened?” “She has his umbrella, but she thinks it’s hers,” the witnesses explained.
All this time I did not want to get up from my precious seat because I knew someone would swoop in and take it, probably pretending they didn’t know what was going on. And then I would have two confrontations on my hands at a show for a band that is as non-confrontational as two otters floating in an Instagram reel.
A sidebar conversation emerged, directed toward me:
“If it’s not a family heirloom, I would just let it go,” advised a man with a podcast-worthy voice. “You got the good seat. It’s a fair trade.”
His girlfriend agreed. Others chimed in to let me know that not only should I avoid any altercation with the drunk woman who had mistakenly (or not) taken my umbrella, but that I should be thankful for where I got to sit. The passive aggression was palpable.
I thought about the old me—not too different from the current me, but a little more prone to self-righteous indignation. I could see myself jumping up and snatching my umbrella back from the drunk woman. I could imagine opening the bag up and showing her my shabby rain-catcher, waving it in her face. Is THIS your umbrella, lady?
And then I thought about not only her inevitable reaction (her drink flying in my face), but about the severe disappointment the crowd around me might have. I could make so many people feel so bummed out.
I decided to let it go, remain the good guy, stay the wronged man; enjoy my seat and enjoy the show. The drunk woman meandered off and I got all the empathy.
“She’s crazy, man. You made the right call.” And other such platitudes.
I knew where I stood—or rather, sat. I deserved some kind of punishment for my luck in finding a seat where so many of them had to stand. I had penance to do in order for them to feel okay, and that penance involved me losing my umbrella when it was surely going to be pouring after the concert.
Again, I thought about the old me. I might have let it bother me. I might have let this weird non-incident ruin my night. But I guess I really am the new me now, because I found that I didn’t really care that much. I valued seeing this friendly band in a mellow setting over fighting a crazy middle-aged drunk woman for a broken umbrella.
It was a solid show. The New Pornographers stuck to the setlist religiously. I had prepped the week before and knew their latest album well. “Really Really Light” from Continue as Guest was a concert highlight from that 2023 release, as was “Cat and Mouse with the Light.” I generally enjoyed the other tunes, but the one I looked up on Amazon later was “Adventures in Solitude.” I could feel the crowd locking in when Kathryn Calder sang the line “We thought we lost you.” I locked in, too, thinking about myself feeling lost but maybe not so lost right now, connecting it to the memorial service for a college friend I went to with my son the previous weekend. I am quick to get emotional these days.
Two thirds of the way through the set, I decided to pass my coveted cushioned swivel chair off to someone else and headed downstairs to the standing room concert floor. Maybe I would see the the umbrella thief on my way. No such luck.
In the concert hall proper, I waded into the folding waves of swaying Gen Xers. Frontman A. C. Newman told us all a story about having played recently at Wolf Trap with the Mountain Goats (cue audience approval noises) and how when he played this next song at that massive outdoor venue there was a decided lack of audience participation. This led to some stage banter with Kathryn Calder about having heard the audience participation in their minds. Where has this band been all my life?!
I sang along with the No-No-No’s at the end of “Testament to Youth in Verse” as directed, and I was unashamed.
On my way out of the hall, I asked the security table workers if any umbrellas found their way to them. I described the woman who took it. A nearby (and somewhat younger) concert goer who happened to have seen the whole thing upstairs corrected my at-first-inaccurate description of the perpetrator, adding: “She was a bitch. I would have kicked her in the shins.”
Before I left, I wandered into the adjacent merch alcove and considered buying a t-shirt. I was feeling cash-poor, so I turned to leave. I heard a voice, the same young woman who had suggested how she might have reacted differently to the umbrella thief.
“Is that your umbrella?” she pointed.
Standing up against a structural support beam like a halfling vagabond was a familiar bagged umbrella. The right size, the same black and white stripes. I pulled it out of the bag. The same broken spokes and stripped velcro fastener. This was my umbrella.
Good thing, because it was really raining cats and dogs out there.