By Working at a record store taught me a tragic truth; no matter how much you love your favorite albums, they’ll never be as popular as they deserve to be. Each month at Merry-Go-Round Magazine, I dust off some long-overlooked records, revisit my pretentious past, and explore how this music forever etched itself into my history. Eventually, all your memories get marked down and thrown into The Bargain Bin.
Our manager, Gina, busted out of The Pageant’s front doors and called for us to huddle up. There were six of us on door staff assigned to patrol the parking lot that night, two to a golf cart, sweating through our red-collared shirts on a balmy spring evening in St. Louis. Officially, our position was called “door staff,” but I usually just told people I was a bouncer. I didn’t have the energy to explain the nuances that made the job more complicated than that: I kicked people out, showed them to their seats, cleaned up trash, and even patrolled the parking lot to prevent theft.
I had been working at The Pageant, a local mid-sized concert venue, for almost a year. It was a job that caused me a constant mix of anxiety, stress, and anger. I learned to hate the color red there. It was synonymous with the rage I felt while trying to make drunk people listen to the rules. It was the color my face would turn when I was overwhelmed. “I See Red” by Split Enz played in my head on a loop when I would spiral out on the clock.
The uniform didn’t help. The collared shirts they made us wear were red—bright, unavoidable, aggressively visible red. It was the color every Sammy Hagar fan wore when he’d come to town, making it impossible to find any of my fellow door staff in an emergency during his set. The same shade I was now seeing everywhere again: On Cardinals baseball hats bobbing through the crowd, the valet uniforms, the red carpet they rolled out for that night’s special event. It was starting to feel personal, like the City of St. Louis had coordinated its color palette specifically to fuck with me.
I liked working outside on the golf carts. It kept me away from crowds and gave me an excuse to burn through a pack of Camels while driving slow laps around the lot. Inside was noise, people, and unpredictability. Outside, the chaos was contained. The cars stayed parked. The lines stayed orderly. That night, the venue was hosting sportscaster Joe Buck’s “Celebrity” charity spelling bee. Former athletes and local C-list celebrities attempted to spell words like N-E-P-O-T-I-S-M and W-A-S-H-E-D-U-P to an audience that paid far too much to be there, for charity. Most nights at The Pageant were chaotic live concerts, which did nothing for my anxiety. This was one of the rare evenings where the odds of something going wrong were slim to none. The biggest threat was rich old white people complaining about not being able to see the stage from their expensive seats, for charity.
And yet, I still preferred the golf cart to all that.
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Gina stood in the middle of our loose circle, mind and body running at speeds over 200% faster than a normal human. She did everything around the place—worked the office during the day, bartended during shows, managed the venue whenever something went sideways 24/7. I don’t know when she slept. I think I saw her sit down twice in the four years I worked there. People had their gripes about her, but she knew exactly what she was doing, ever the professional.
As she explained the plan—something about VIP valet parking, ferrying valets back from the far lot, driving the golf carts faster than usual—I felt my attention drift. That’s when I saw him.
Fredbird, the St. Louis Cardinals’ mascot, was greeting guests at the entrance. He hugged parents, patted kids on the head, posed for photos, and performed the kind of high-energy antics that only make sense when your job is to wear a giant foam head. Seeing him up close—so far away from a T-shirt cannon—made my stomach tighten. His red ball cap and feathers matched the red shirts we wore as uniforms, which made it feel like he was part of the staff—or, worse, management.
Costumed characters have always made me uncomfortable. Even as a child, they inspired more fear than joy. I didn’t have a traumatic mascot incident, nothing clean or explainable. I wasn’t assaulted by a rogue Bugs Bunny at Six Flags or walked in on Goofy without his head in a Disney World bathroom. Still, something about them has always short-circuited my nervous system: The fixed expressions, the silence, the way they exist too close to reality but not quite in it.
I have one especially vivid memory of being at a Chuck E. Cheese’s Pizza when I was a kid. I loved the place—the arcade games, the tickets, the animatronic band playing Fleetwood Mac and Gloria Estefan while we ate garbage pizza. During the band’s intermission, the titular rat began wandering from table to table. I saw him heading toward us, his bowler cap and vest a menacing red. I pressed myself into my grandmother’s side. She was warm and familiar, but it wasn’t enough to calm me. When the rat stopped at our booth, I dove under the table. Grandma, already anxious and deeply opposed to germs, asked me to get off the dirty floor. I rose slowly. The rat loomed over me, massive compared to my tiny frame, its dead plastic eyes locked in a permanent stare.
“Sorry, Chuck, we’re a bit afraid over here,” Grandma said.
Charles Entertainment Cheese—his full, government name—put his fake, fuzzy paws to his fake fuzzy head and shook it slowly in apogee before moving on. That same panic followed me into adulthood, resurfacing whenever something felt too big, too loud, or too close—like a giant red bird in a parking lot full of matching hats and shirts and Cabo Wabo tequila.
Back at The Pageant, Fredbird’s puffy red butt wiggled with joy as he greeted the crowd. I fixated on the fact that his red wings ended in yellow-gloved human hands. It made sense, of course—there was a human person inside—but noticing it made everything worse. My brain latched on, spiraling the way it always did when anxiety needed a target.
“Please don’t notice me, please don’t notice me, please don’t notice me,” I muttered, standing very still in my red shirt, feeling like it was a brightly colored target on my back.
Fredbird’s head rotated slowly. His enormous googly eyes met mine. I froze. He started bounding toward us, arms flailing like one of those inflatable tube men outside of car dealerships. My heart pounded. I felt giddy and on the verge of hysterics, which is how panic usually introduced itself to me—jazz hands first, full breakdown later.
Before he could reach me, my survival instincts kicked in. I pointed directly at Gina, mouthing desperately, “Her! Her! Her!”
Fredbird towered over Gina, his shadow engulfing her. She didn’t notice him behind her as she continued explaining whatever I hadn’t been listening to. Fredbird lowered his head until his wide yellow beak rested gently on her head like a hat.
Gina turned around, smiled, and immediately went back into her pep talk like a true professional. In that moment, she made me feel safe in a way my grandmother never could. If Fredbird had broken even one venue rule, I knew Gina wouldn’t hesitate to throw him out on his ass herself.
For the first time all night, I stopped seeing the color red.
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