If you’ve never had a chance to listen to “The Hold Steady”, it’s a must-hear band for people who grew up before the internet in suburban America. Somehow, when you cross the 30 mark and listen to this stuff, it puts the lunacy of childhood in perspective. “Boys and Girls in America” is their latest exploration of wasted youth in suburbia, but “Separation Sunday” is the album I’ve been focusing on. “Separation Sunday” deals with growing up in suburban Minneapolis as a Catholic. One thing about that album has long bothered me, and now I know what it is.
In at least one of the songs, “Your Little Hoodrat Friend”, a “Penetration Park” is mentioned. What bugged be was that a few years back, Jodi and I took a driving vacation through Minnesota and Wisconsin, spending a day in the sculpture garden in Minneapolis. One segment of the sculpture garden was a sequence of stone benches with quirky or disturbing quotes carved into them. This turns out to be an exhibit by Jenny Holzer, entitled “The Living Series”:http://collections.walkerart.org/item/object/962. For instance, one bench reads, “THERE’S NO REASON TO SLEEP CURLED UP AND BENT. IT’S NOT COMFORTABLE, IT’S NOT GOOD FOR YOU, AND IT DOESN’T PROTECT YOU FROM DANGER. IF YOU’RE WORRIED ABOUT AN ATTACK YOU SHOULD STAY AWAKE OR SLEEP LIGHTLY WITH LIMBS UNFURLED FOR ACTION.” Some of them are of a more sexual nature, with slightly disturbing undertones of abuse or rape.
The phrase “Penetration Park” called up these images for me, and I wondered if the song was referring to this sculpture garden. I was wrong, but I was close. In an interview with Matthew Fritch from “Magnet Magazine”:http://www.magnetmagazine.com/interviews/holdsteady2.html, the band’s singer and guitarist Craig Finn said, “I was thinking of Loring Park in Minneapolis, which is a cruising place where you’d go to have anonymous sex. You don’t walk through there at night.” Loring Park is just on the other side of I-94 in Minneapolis, one dangerous game of Red Rover away from the sculpture garden.
Does getting “Penetration Park” wrong by one highway length count as a “Fake Tale of San Francisco”?
