BETWEEN POSSIBILITIES
MANUAL
get some culture // SOUL NIGHTS AT it's not all about fast food and beer pong. THE TAPROOM
"Does anyone want to take this party back to their house?" the DJ hollers to the crowd of sweaty, drunk dancers.
Photo by Francesca Chambers
Will Weinstein looks at his brother and gives him the "I don't know" face. The next thing Weinstein knows, the DJ is broadcasting his address into the microphone, and people are pouring out of the steamy Taproom basement to head toward his home.
Get down: Chances are you'll hear a variety of funk tracks on weekends at the Eighth St. Taproom.
But that's what Weinstein, Overland Park senior, loves about weekends at the Eighth St. Taproom, 801 New Hampshire St., versus other dance bars in town. He has the opportunity to hang out with like-minded people who just want to get drunk and dance, and he gets to hear funk music he wouldn't be able to hear anywhere else.
Weinstein says he liked retro artists such as Curtis Mayfield and Marvin Gaye before moving to Lawrence. However, he says many people in the Lawrence dance scene are more cultured and know abour lesser-known records that contain some of the best music from that era.
The Taproom is also known for the classic soul music it plays on most weekends. Jerome Favre, a Lawrence resident who has worked at the Taproom for three years and has frequented the bar for more years than he's willing to count, says
the artist schedule is always the same. That means, if you like the music, come back on the same day each month to hear it again.
Walking into the Taproom basement on the weekends is like being transported through a time machine back to the 1970s. You feel the aura of peace, love and happiness immediately, and you suddenly feel the urge to dance. What if you've never shaken your groove thang before, though?
"There's no way to dance to funk. It's just fun and easy." Weinstein says. "And even if it looks silly, it makes you move."
// FRANCESCA CHAMBERS
in the life of ... // A STENOGRAPHER living vicariously through others is ok with us.
Smiling, Debbie Oakleaf quickly types the keys of the odd-looking black machine. It spits out a handful of letters on a purple sheet of receipt paper:
The group of letters wouldn't make sense to the untrained eye, but to Oakleaf, a stenographer — AKA court reporter — for the Douglas County District Court, the phrase is familiar. It says "Rock Chalk Jayhawk."
Although Oakleaf enjoys using her steno machine for fun to type phrases such as this
one, her work is very serious. As the stenographer. it is her job to take down a perfect record of what is said in court and to maintain the exhibits of the court.
Contributed photo
Oakleaf has been a stenographer for 32 years. She's seen the court reporter apparatus change from a typewriter to what reporters use now, the steno machine. The contemporary steno machines use a jump drive to record the coding that is typed on the steno paper, but Oakleaf still uses her floppy disk machine. She's just too busy copy-editing testimony — there's no spell check on the steno — and researching court cases, she says, to learn the new technology.
Typo: Debbie Oakleaf shows a paper from her stone that reads "Rock Chalk Jayhawk."
People interested in becoming stenographers must complete a two-year program online or at a college and be able to type 225 words per minute on the steno to receive state certification. Oakleaf says the most difficult part of her job has nothing to do with typing, listening or technology, though; it's keeping her emotions at bay during trials.
"You have to learn to shut your emotions off, because when you're in a murder or rape trial, you can't get emotional," she says.
// FRANCESCA CHAMBERS