My corner of California is marked with guideposts that mislead.
When I describe my route home to my friends from Duke, the delayed flight into Ontario International Airport and the traffic jam in Perris (pronounced “Paris,” to heighten the imitation), it sounds as if I have embarked on a glamorous transcontinental tour of the world’s great cities—but really, it was just a long trek down the 15.
The towns of Riverside County orient themselves to the freeway, putting their best face forward with billboards and half-illuminated neon signs: La-Z-Boy recliners, Indian gaming and model homes, going fast! The hope is that a small fraction of those bound for San Diego to the South or Los Angeles to the Northeast—and clearly in a hurry, barreling down the highway at 90 miles per hour in a 65 zone—will be enticed to pull over and stay awhile.
If you continue down the 15, as the dry wind blows, you will inevitably stumble upon our little piece of history. Ask anyone what there is to do in this town, and they will probably offer The Stampede, the wood-paneled restaurant-by-day, watering hole-by-night that most closely approximates a club. As we are often reminded, it is the world’s largest country and Western music venue located on the West Coast. There is a mechanical bull; but unlike that of Shooters II fame, it is often ridden by people who have tamed the living, breathing creature.
When I finally turned 18, my friends beckoned me to join their ranks lining the edge of the dance floor in worn jeans and carelessly buttoned plaid shirts. The girls pretended to be absorbed in conversation so the inevitable invitation to dance could be received with surprise. But for me, it was more than an act. In the country music world, each song has its own complicated choreography—heel, toe, kick, spin—that everyone knows from the first beat, as if it were inscribed in the notes. I was usually asked to dance only once.
I used to scoff at the extent to which life for those under 30 revolved around The Stampede, but every city I have lived in since has taken similar pride in its dancing establishments. Shooters II is a blip on the radar of Durham itself, but the saloon is a staple of weekend life for a vocal percentage of Duke students and the punch line of most campus culture clichés.
Even across the ocean, in a country where bulls are fought rather than ridden, clubs (or discotecas, as they’re called) loom just as large.
When my Spanish host mom awoke one Saturday morning to the sound of me tiptoeing into the apartment at 6 a.m. with glitter trapped under my fingernails, she rejected my sheepish apology.
“Hija,” she said wistfully, her eyes drifting to a far-off place, “When I was your age it was Thursday, Kapital! Friday, Kapital! Saturday, Kapital! Sunday, for God. And then Monday, Kapital!”
In a city where my request for water has been met with the response, “White or red?”, perhaps I should not have been surprised.
On my first visit to Kapital, a seven-story club that is perhaps Madrid’s best known landmark in the United States, I experienced a sense of wonder I had not felt since riding on Disneyland’s “It’s a Small World” as a little girl. Representatives from all the countries I had hoped to visit before the reality of my travel budget set in had gathered in one cramped, muggy place.
As we looked down on the dance floor from the balcony, a friend who has been studying abroad in Madrid since the Fall showed me how to tell the different cultures apart: the Italians, rotating their arms in smooth geometry; the Spaniards, paired off to the navigate the dance floor in an intricate salsa step; and the Americans, also in pairs, whose dance my friend could only describe with the sound effect “bam, bam, bam!” (No comment.)
Many locals cringe at the sound of an American accent. But Madrid’s largest discotecas welcome study abroad students with open arms, ushering them into a pulsating, blindingly lit space that belongs to no culture.
For study abroad students, Spanish clubs are an indispensable part of the curriculum, attended just as earnestly and oftentimes more frequently than actual classes. But the sense of wonder does fade.
On a recent Friday night, my chatter with a friend was interrupted by a familiar tap on the shoulder.
“Bullfighters only,” I apologized in a language that was neither his nor mine. The look on his face told me he was asking himself the same question I would later: Who exactly do I think I am?
As one of my favorite writers, Joan Didion, observed in a city with taller buildings and brighter lights, there comes a time when you realize it is indeed possible to stay too long at the fair.
In what I can only explain as a symptom of homesickness, I find myself longing for a place where the moves seemed too complicated to ever really master.
Julia Love is a Trinity junior. Her column runs every other Wednesday.
Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Signup for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.