I had finished saying goodbye to some friends with whom I’d just had an enjoyable evening at Surface Gallery, Metro Gallery and the baby store next to Metro (some of my friends have a baby). Then we decided to go take a peek inside the Padre lobby. My friends thought looking in through the glass doors was enough, given all the people traffic. But I had to go in for a short walk-through. I’m a curious person, what can I say?

I walked in the doors to the hotel on H Street, and one of the greeters, who had just a second before said, “Good evening, Sir,” tapped me on the arm and asked, “Excuse me, Sir, is that a hoodie you’re wearing?”

Here’s what I had on: a brown hooded sweatshirt underneath a checkered blue, brown and tan light flannel zip-up jacket, jeans, Skecher casual leather shoes, and a Buddha necklace. The hood was behind my shoulders, not over my head like a scary Grim Reaper. Nothing out of the ordinary for a mild California winter evening. I had gone unnoticed at two of Bakersfield’s trendiest galleries, but at the Padre–oh, noooo!

The greeter then asked if the hoodie was part of my jacket. I told him it was a separate piece. He asked if it would be possible for me to go out and leave it in my car. No kidding.

I looked through the glass wall (lots of glass at the Padre) of one of the bars and pointed to a guy in jeans and a tucked out shirt and remarked that he was no less casually dressed than I was. The greeter said it had to do with the hoodie.

When I had left the house that morning, I had consciously put on my Buddha necklace because I had a feeling I needed a reminder that day to stay in tune with my divine nature/conscience, whatever you want to call it. It was now telling me to just be cool.

I told the greeter that I wasn’t going to stay long and just wanted to do a walk-through and would be out in five minutes. That seemed to appease him and he left me alone to wander around.

I did. Here’s what I found: It’s a hotel. It has new, chic bars whose novelty will wear off eventually. Because of the crowd that was there, it just looked like the inside of one of those trendy places on the west side–except it’s downtown.

And then, I stopped dead in my tracks: Two guys IN KILTS and T-shifts were talking to each other just outside the cafe. Two guys in MAN-SKIRTS had been let in, and I was almost kept out because I was wearing a hoodie underneath a tame zip-up flannel jacket?! (Okay, forgive me, but I wondered about the racial variables that might have been at play in all this, so here they are, although I’m not sure they matter: the kilted guys were white, I am Latino, the greeter was black. Like I said, I’m not sure racial variables matter in this situation, but I couldn’t help but wonder if a person not of color would have been asked if they could leave their hoodie in the car. What if one of the kilted guys had been wearing a hoodie? Would he have been told to go and leave it in the car and come back in all his skirted glory?)

I turned on my heel. If I’d been wearing a kilt, it would have fluttered femininely around me. My manly hood stayed put.

I found the greeter, tapped him on the arm, and calmly said: “I’m leaving. You spoiled it for me.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” he said.

I continued: “There are two guys over there in kilts and they were let in, and I was almost kept out because of my hoodie?”

“Look, sorry, let me give you a tour,” he said.

Yeah, now you want to give me a tour, I thought.

“No,” I said. “You spoiled it for me,” and left.

It really was an unfortunate and, from a business standpoint, very unwise end to what had otherwise been a charming evening hanging out downtown in several welcoming venues–except for one–on a First Friday.

Sorry, Padre. You lost me at hello.

– Eversmile