What do you do when the world's wrong?

The Grande Ballroom, Detroit, in disrepair in 2012

In July of 2002 I was day-drinking at the Greenpoint Tavern in Brooklyn. The previous week my buddy Steve and I had hit the Siren Music Festival out at Coney Island—a long, fun day drinking at Ruby’s with the Fleshtones’ drummer Bill Milhizer, soaking up the sun and breezes, and catching a hell of a lineup including the Donnas, the Mooney Suzuki, and Yeah Yeah Yeahs. At dusk. Steve and I, drunk and sunburned, took the Q train back to Bedford Aven...