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Cometbus 49 is now available. Looks good!

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Just after I got home from school today, Emma came into the kitchen and announced that there was a magnificent sunset. A few of us paraded up three flights of stairs to the roof, where we beheld that, indeed, there was a magnificent sunset, a scarlet sky above the Golden Gate, and the lights of the Bay Bridge just becoming visible. But what amused me more than this scene was the observation that on the frat next door to us, the fratboys were too on the roof, gazing westward. And in the house beyond that, too, a handful of residents beheld the tremendous scene before us. And, too, in the house behind us. At roof level we were suddenly, somehow, slightly united, as a community of rooftop sunset gazers.

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»Sometimes I also talked to Jon Barnes, proprietor of the amazing disco cab. Barnes had spent hundreds of hours, and seemingly all his spare cash, turning his Checker into a rolling discotheque. I spotted this piece of impressive seventies kitsch parked at the Beach one night when I was with friends from out of town. ``Cover charge tonight?" I had asked. "Climb in!" he yelled.

Four of us squeezed into the back, ducking so as not to dislodge the revolving mirror-ball hung from the ceiling. Barnes hit the master switch, to the gasps of my friends. There were 160 lights, including the required black light and the laserlike beam that hit the mirrored ball, sending dots of light whirling around like in a planetarium. Next came the music. Turning in his seat to afford a position in front of two keyboards suspended on his right, he pulled a ceiling-mounted microphone to his mouth and launched into a rendition of ``Back in the USSR.'' Drums and bass parts came in as soon as he had time to bring the synthesizer on-line, and a background tape, run through a little mixing board near the floor and thence through at least four speakers, filled out the experience.

We were dancing sitting down. A crowd started gathering outside the quaking cab; and as he launched into the more pensive ``Hey, Jude,'' Barnes threw the lever on the fog machine. Mist wafted up around our legs, onto our laps. Barnes picked up an electronic saxophone, tilted his head back, and improvised.« -- Ted Conover, Whiteout: Lost In Aspen.