'Audience Best Part of Show'

Note: This review of the "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" (1975), which was then playing in its 13th week as a midnight show at Richmond's Biograph Theatre, appeared in the Oct. 5, 1978 issue of the University of Richmond's newspaper -- The Collegian.  

Audience Best Part of Show by Jada Pardew, News Editor

Toast, crackers, rice and water were in the air, on the floor and stuck to clothing they wore. It was not the result of a recent food fight at the University of Richmond. It was, however, part of the aftermath of a midnight movie showing.

The movie is the "The Rocky Horror Picture Show," and the audience's reaction does not stop at throwing food. The air is also filled with playing cards, toilet paper and confetti. Moviegoers dance in the aisles, dress like characters from the film, chant lines and cue actors. With them they bring props: boxes of rice, plant misters, teddy bears, umbrellas and toast. 

The movie begins with a wedding, and the audience begins its act by throwing rice at one another. Later in the movie the actors are lost in a rain storm. The audience also experiences the storm from plant misters and squirt guns that are pulled out. Simultaneously, some members of the audience pulled out umbrellas and newspapers to cover their heads. 

There is little, if any, plot to the movie. Without the bizarre reaction of the audience, the movie would be nothing more than a second rate film about transvestites. 

In its 13th week, the show is usually sold out, according to Terry Rea, the theater's manager. Although nothing has been destroyed during the showings, The cost of a ticket has increased from $2.50 to $2.75 to offset the cost of cleaning, which takes two people three or four hours. 

Rea commented that there was little audience participation during the first two or three weeks that the movie was shown. However, after members of the audience returned again and again, the amount of spontaneous participation skyrocketed to its present level. 

"The Rocky Horror Picture Show" is playing at midnight on Fridays and Saturdays at the Biograph Theatre, 814 W. Grace St.

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Peanut Shells, Fish Bones And Politicos

Note: In 2001 I covered the 53rd annual Shad Planking for Richmond.com. As it happened after this one, it gradually lost its power to attract a big crowds. Here's what I wrote about the scene 23 years ago, back when it was still a bipartisan event that was still going strong. 

Peanut Shells, Fish Bones And Politicos 

by F.T. Rea

According to a 53-year-old tradition, the Shad Planking, sponsored by the Wakefield Ruritan Club, is held on the third Wednesday of April. The event's roots go back to the early '30s, when only a certain breed of cat was invited. Today it's an open-to-the-public outdoor throwdown featuring ample libation and regional taste treats aplenty. But it is politics, undiluted statewide politics, that draws the crowd each year to the Loblolly pines of Wakefield, Va., the self-proclaimed peanut capital of the world.

Although the scheduled speechmakers are always politicians, 2001 marked a Shad Planking first, in that active gubernatorial candidates were at the top of the speaker's card at the Wakefield Sportsman Club.

Thus, when they weren't perched on the flatbed dais provided for honored guests and speakers between 4 p.m. and 5 p.m., Democrat nominee-in-waiting Mark Warner and his two Republican rivals, Lt. Gov. John Hager and Attorney Gen. Mark Earley, worked the rustic soiree with their campaign-sign-holding entourages at their backs every step of the way. Wherever the trio of hopefuls wandered among the many booths and displays, the same strategy was evident: Every potential photographic vignette had to be filled to the edge of the frame with the team colors. An invisible yet pervasive aspect of the occasion was the unprecedented backdrop of the much-reported budget stalemate that has Gov. Jim Gilmore at odds with legislators of his own party, most notably Sen. John Chichester of Stafford. News of the twists and turnings of the day at the General Assembly session rippled through the crowd of 3,000-plus during the seasonally cool, partially cloudy afternoon.

Sustenance and Sauce

With the price of admission, $14 in advance or $16 at the gate, one could eat and drink to his heart's content. Peanuts in bushel baskets, flavored this way and that, were easy to find. Crab cakes were available at one booth; cups of Jack Daniels were poured from a tailgate setup. Dressed with a squirt of Dr. Nettles' Secret Shad Plank Sauce, the same peppery slather that's brushed onto to the Shad as it's smoked on oak planks, deep-fried shad roe whetted the tongue perfectly for a taste of cold beer. Open taps on beer trucks were provided by the campaigns of several candidates. For what it's worth, Forbes offered the Coors line, Kilgore made his statement with Miller brands, and Hager, Warner and Diamondstein chose Bud. In a contrast of styles, the Earley booth offered hot coffee.

Candidate Warner, the Northern Virginia venture capitalist, also provided the party with a portion of its musical fare: the Blue Grass Brothers, featuring on vocals former congressman Ben Jones, who may be best known for his television work as Cooter on "The Dukes of Hazzard."

Between tunes, one of which was a semi-rousing campaign song for Warner, Jones japed that he was an "independent Democrat." Then, with the timing of a seasoned pro, the country crooner claimed former U.S. Sen. Sam Nunn, of Georgia, liked to say "I was as independent as a hog on ice."

About 2:45 p.m., the event's staff, more than 200 volunteers participated in some way, began to dole out plates of smoked shad, fried trout, coleslaw and corn muffins to the long lines of party-goers.

Politics in the Air 

As he autographed a souvenir Shad Planking baseball cap for an admirer, John Hager mentioned he'd missed only two Shad Plankings in the last 22 years. From my vantage point, of the three men seeking to occupy the Governor's Mansion, Hager seemed the most at ease with the opportunity to chat off-the-cuff in a social setting.

Asked for his opinion on the imbroglio over tax-cut percentage points, Mark Warner was eager to offer some advice, "You don't negotiate with press releases. Everybody's got these intractable positions, and nobody can budge."

On the now-familiar 55 percent vs. 70 percent topic, Mark Earley said, "I think a lot of them [Democrats] don't want a budget because they want an issue for this fall."

However, it was U.S. Sen. George Allen who had the most interesting comment on the subject. As he dealt with my question, "How can the eventual GOP gubernatorial candidate turn the negatives of the car tax phase-out problem into a plus for him in the fall campaign?" Allen seemed to open the door to the notion that the time is nigh for Gilmore to find a way to cut a deal.

"I'm not the one negotiating and drawing lines in the sand, and all of that," Allen said, boot-scooting through the minefield carefully.

"In your mind, could there be a number other than 70 percent?" I pressed.

"There are ways it can be finessed, if people will negotiate in good faith with one another," he replied good-naturedly.

As the Shadows Lengthened
 
By 6 p.m., more than half of the attendees had had their fill and made their way to the parking area. Since I bailed out about that time, I can't say when the last of the diehards left the party.

However, it's not every day that one can have one-on-one conversations with so many active candidates, office-holders and operatives of both major parties. Also at the gathering were U.S. Sen. John Warner, former-Gov. Gerald Baliles, former-U.S. Sen. Paul Trible, Richmond Mayor Tim Kaine, and many other current and former elected officials.

I can't help but think it would be a better world if there were more happenings like the Shad Planking, where politicians of all stripes are so accessible. 

Bottom Line: In spite of the considerable difficulty of negotiating one's way around the countless tiny bones in a shad, I have to give the affair itself an enthusiastic two thumbs up. George Allen will be the speaker for the 54th Shad Planking.

 

-- 30 --

It Paid to Advertise

The Bearded Brothers' front windows; panels 
were painted in Dayglo, lit up by black lights. 

When the doorway leading into show business opened for me, in the fall of 1969, I entered gladly. At the time I had a sales job that I was itching to quit. What I longed for was to first be a cartoonist/writer and eventually become a filmmaker. 

So serving sandwiches and beer in a Fan District dive seemed almost like a step in that direction. At least, more so than continuing to sell janitorial supplies.

Thus, when a friend, Fred Awad, offered me work at the restaurant he was operating my coat-and-tie job was history. My coming aboard as a bartender/manager was actually part of a larger plan Fred and I had cooked up to convert what was then a typical blue collar neighborhood beer joint/eatery into the Fan District's most happening night club. It was located on the southeast corner of Allison St. and West Broad St.

The restaurant belonged to Fred's parents. They wanted to retire. Toward that goal, they had turned it over to their sons, Fred and Howard. The brothers changed the name of the place from Marconi's to the Bearded Brothers. 

Growing beards was easy. But as it happened the Awad boys couldn’t agree on how to run the business, so the younger brother, Howard, left planning to pursue the quest of opening a place of his own.

In a series of conversations Fred and I had talked ourselves into believing the fun-loving baby boomers in the Fan District needed a place to enjoy cold beer, hot food, live music and a psychedelic light show. That, together with the edgy spectacle of go-go girls on stage -- dancing topless. At this time, such "dancing" was going on in Roanoke. But it had yet to make its way to Richmond.

And, speaking of booming babies, at this time my wife, Valerie, was six months pregnant. Fred’s wife, Mary Ann, was seven months along. So while Fred and I were brimming over with youthful confidence that the new scheme for the restaurant would pay off, in truth, it was under pressure to do so right away.

With the help of a few friends it took a couple of weeks to paint the walls of the interior flat black, build the stage for the dancers and assemble the light show apparatus. We also painted the front window panes that faced Broad Street in Dayglo colors illuminated by black lights. While I did most of the window painting, a handful of volunteers also painted a few of the panels. 

Fred booked a couple of local rock ‘n’ roll bands. They performed maybe three or four nights a week, and that went over well. As we had imagined, the live music immediately brought in a fresh nighttime crowd. A four-man group calling itself Natural Wildlife became a regular attraction. 

So with everything in place, it came time to hire the go-go dancers. A help-wanted sign went up in the restaurant. A few young women soon came in asking about the dancing job. 

Fred took charge of auditioning the applicants in the restaurant's office in the basement. Eventually, two were settled upon. One of them had some professional go-go girl experience, the other was a rookie. 

However, only the dancer who was new to the exhibitionism trade could be there for the first night, which we advertised in the two local daily newspapers. The ad art was my work; it featured a pen-and-ink rendered silhouette of a female dancer and the new Bearded Bros. logo I had designed. And, away we went.

By 8 p.m. the place was packed, wall-to-wall. We were selling beer like never before. The only problem was that our featured dancer, with her gaudy new sequined costume -- which included tasseled pasties to hide her nipples (as dictated by the Alcohol Beverage Control Board) -- was late. 

Scary late. She hadn’t called, either.

With the beer-drinking crowd clamoring for the promoted dancing on stage aspect of the show to get underway, a woman with a sculpted hairdo, wearing shades (at night), waved to get my attention. As the joint was noisy, I motioned to her to come around to the end of the bar I was stationed behind. In a what was maybe a Queens accent, she asked something like, “Any chance you need another dancer?”

Trying to hide my pure glee, I called Fred over. She told us she had noticed the Bearded Bros. ad in a discarded newspaper on the counter of the Greyhound bus station’s coffee shop. She claimed she had been dancing in a club in Baltimore. She was chewing gum confidently. 

Fred promptly offered her $50 to alternate sets with the other dancer. Seeing that transaction play out immediately gave me new faith in the power of advertising. 

The Greyhound Girl even had her own costume with her in her suitcase. Fred paid her in advance and suggested that since the other girl was running late, maybe she could go on, like, right away.

It all went over like gangbusters. Up on stage, with the lights and music, she danced like the pro she actually was. Natural Wildlife was cooking and the draft beer taps stayed open.

After the dancer’s first set was over, she put on her robe and found Fred. We were serving beer from behind the bar. She laughed good naturedly, “There ain’t no other girl, is there?”

Fred probably said, “Hey, we don’t know where she is.” If not, then I probably said it. 

“OK, I’ll need another fifty bucks to go back up there,” is approximately what she said. ... with a professional tone.

Fred put the money in her hand without hesitation. She agreed to do two more 20-minute sets. Yes, a hundred bucks was a lot of money for about an hour's worth of work, in those days, but since we were selling beer like crazy there was clearly no use in quibbling.  

After that night we never saw her again. The show went on as other women were hired, easily. None of them lasted long, but a few of them were pretty good dancers; one in particular but her name escapes me. 

It soon became my duty to paint the dancers with Dayglo paint. Don't remember who thought of than. Anyway, I painted vines curling around their arms and legs, stars and stripes on their torsos, etc. Yet, after three or four weeks of that schtick, it became apparent the regular customers didn't much care about the artsy aspects of topless dancing, such as they were. They preferred bare skin. So, the Laugh-In-style body decorating stopped.

Although painting the dancers was a pleasant enough task, hanging out after work was the best perk of the Bearded Bros. job (which wasn't always paying me as much as I needed to make each week). Frequently, friends, some of them musicians, stayed around late, jamming, smoking pot and playing pinball games. 

The most notable of the afterhours musicians who passed through was Bruce Springsteen, whose band occasionally played in Richmond then. He was a skinny, quiet guy who didn’t stand out as much then as he would later. 

When my daughter was born in January the Bearded Bros. scene was lively. Then, as the weather warmed up, the crowds gradually began to thin out. Other clubs opened up offering live music, some of which were closer to VCU. Gradually, the restaurant began to drift back toward being pretty much what it had been before all the black paint.

The restaurant's daytime crowd of regulars from the neighborhood didn't always mix well with the hippies coming in at night for the music. Then the topless angle turned out to be mostly a fad that sort of clashed with both crowds. So it was discontinued. However, I don't remember any sort of incident prompting that decision.

In the late spring I had to look for a real job again. After short runs at a couple of forgettable jobs, I landed a sales position at WRNL AM/FM. Richmond Newspapers still owned the two radio stations then. Once again, I learned it paid to advertise. And, on that job I did my first professional writing, when I began penning commercials and dreaming up promotions for my advertising clients.

Eventually, Fred's mother took the restaurant back over. About a year later Howard Awad opened up Hababa's on the 900 block of W. Grace St., where he had a lot of fun making large money (1971-84) serving cold beer and playing canned music on his popular bar’s state-of-the-art stereo.

In the years to come topless dancing morphed into a rather creepy form of entertainment aimed at an entirely different audience. A narrow audience. Truth be told, since the time of the Bearded Brothers I've never had any interest in the places that feature that form of entertainment.

Although I saved copies of the aforementioned newspaper ad, and the logo I did for the restaurant and Natural Wildlife, for their cards and handbills, etc., I haven't seen any of that stuff in a long time. The only remaining souvenirs from my initial stumble into show biz are a few black and white photographs, like the shot above of the club's distinctly 1969 front windows,.

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