Bar None
After spending nigh unto three decades thinking about it, I have determined that I'm not exactly normal. Firstly... who the fuck says things like "nigh unto"? Secondly... remember the December issue of Rolling Stone? The cover featured a Santa hat-clad Snoop Dogg (the interior featured, well, crap: will someone please smack Jann Wenner across the nose with a rolled-up copy of his own publication?). I discovered a copy on my parents' coffee table a few weeks ago and I... well... kind of "adopted" it. I carried it around with me from room to room. I made ominous statements regarding the Crips. While watching my mother prepare leftovers for lunch, I said things like, "Awwww, damn... gonna have some Papa John's up in this muthafuck. Y'all let me know when the oven's done pre-heating so's I can stick some pizz-izzle up in that bitch. Me an' Snoop are gonna go chill on the sectional... uh... izzle. Word."
So, yes: normalcy, not my strong suit ("Papa John's ain't nothin' but hoes 'n tricks / bite on the crust, suck the Special Garlic dip"). Thus, when Junket invited me to her preferred watering hole, I was hesitant. "Go... to a bar. To... drink. Like typical people do. Not to, say, scrawl heee-larious modified e.e. cummings quotes on the bathroom walls in purple Sharpie?" (Ed. Note: yeah, you WISH I was kidding). "C'mon," said Junket, "It'll be fun! We can sit in the corner and be socially-awkward rejects TOGETHER!" "Sounds peachy," I said, polishing my Sharpie. However, after giving it some thought, I decided to bite the cocktail onion and tag along. "Oh, what the hell," I thought, "Might be fun. And if it's not... well, I can always head to the john and bust out 'how do you like your blue curacao Mr. Death'."
And so it came to pass that me, my coolest t-shirt, my sparkliest eyeliner and my youngest, cutest, tiniest sister Went Out Drinking last week. Why are my siblings so much smaller and more adorable than I? Huh? What's up with that? If I were to split myself in half, the result would be Junket. Well, two Junkets. One of the many reasons I won't be reproducing asexually.
So, yes: normalcy, not my strong suit ("Papa John's ain't nothin' but hoes 'n tricks / bite on the crust, suck the Special Garlic dip"). Thus, when Junket invited me to her preferred watering hole, I was hesitant. "Go... to a bar. To... drink. Like typical people do. Not to, say, scrawl heee-larious modified e.e. cummings quotes on the bathroom walls in purple Sharpie?" (Ed. Note: yeah, you WISH I was kidding). "C'mon," said Junket, "It'll be fun! We can sit in the corner and be socially-awkward rejects TOGETHER!" "Sounds peachy," I said, polishing my Sharpie. However, after giving it some thought, I decided to bite the cocktail onion and tag along. "Oh, what the hell," I thought, "Might be fun. And if it's not... well, I can always head to the john and bust out 'how do you like your blue curacao Mr. Death'."
And so it came to pass that me, my coolest t-shirt, my sparkliest eyeliner and my youngest, cutest, tiniest sister Went Out Drinking last week. Why are my siblings so much smaller and more adorable than I? Huh? What's up with that? If I were to split myself in half, the result would be Junket. Well, two Junkets. One of the many reasons I won't be reproducing asexually.
Ahem.
Monday evening. Supposedly "counterculture" section of Philadelphia which nonetheless features a Blockbuster Video and several Starbucks. Like "Cheers", JunketBar was somewhat dim and grungy (although thankfully not marred by the presence of Ted Danson). And like Cheers, everyone appeared to know Junket's name.
"Hi, Junket!" said the female barkeep, mixing us up a round of Cambodian Cirrhosis-Causers. "Damn, she's... adorable," I whispered to Junket. "Mmmn-hmmmn," she said.
Several minutes later, another drink-flinger strolled up. "Yo, Junket," he said... what's the adjective I'm looking for here?... oh, yeah: delectably. "Brad, this is my sister Jul." "Pleasedtomeetcha," I mumbled, desperately hoping that no Cambodian Cirrhosis-Causer was dribbling from my wide-agape jaw. Brad shook my hand, then wandered off... ostensibly to work; I prefer to think that he was attending an Advanced Pouting seminar or locating a slightly-tighter pair of jeans.
While at the jukebox, deciding whether to play Fiona Apple or just cut to the chase and affix a "TAKE ME OUT BACK AND WHIP MY ASS" sign to my back, yet another barkeep came over to give his regards to Junket. Another hot, hot barkeep. "Jul? Eduardo. Eduardo? Jul," said Junket. "Hi, nice to meet you," said Eduardo. "Uh... well... hrmmn... see, uh... yeah. Yep," I said, disintegrating into Scotch-scented goo and oozing under a nearby pool table.
After Eduardo's departure, I recongealed and proceeded to rip Junket a new one. "Did you not feel the need to mention that your bar was full of smokingly hot people?" "I don't know!" whined Junket, "I didn't know if you'd be into that!"
Yes. Because nothing enhances the "coed liquor consumption" experience like ugly people (well, unless they're interestingly ugly... T.G.I. Not Malignant's? Congenital Deformity's? I'd be all up in that like a laparoscope, yo).
C'mon, now. I'm shy. I can't flirt my way out of a paper bag, even if said bag contains a mostly-empty bottle of hooch. I can't shoot pool. I really shouldn't play darts without making everyone in a ten-foot radius sign an indemnity waiver.
If I'm going to spend my evening sitting in a corner, nursing a Liberian Liver-Ejector, there'd damned well better be hot people present. If you're going to try to lure me out of the fortress of solitude, you'd do well to appeal to the nasty, reptilian sector of my brain. Decent jukebox? A dime a dozen (well, three plays for a dollar). Cheap drinks? Whatevah. The opportunity to push aside my croissant-flaky frontal lobe for a few hours and let the Lizard Brain take over? Now we're talking.
So how about you, comrades? What makes your ideal bar? Dirt-cheap PBR? Metallica's entire back catalogue on the juke? Foosball? Or perhaps an unshaven, sub-literate Adonis slinging drinks? And how are your watering hole preferences influenced by your personality? I'm guessing extroverts don't rate drinking establishments based on "number of architectural features that one can hide behind".
Monday evening. Supposedly "counterculture" section of Philadelphia which nonetheless features a Blockbuster Video and several Starbucks. Like "Cheers", JunketBar was somewhat dim and grungy (although thankfully not marred by the presence of Ted Danson). And like Cheers, everyone appeared to know Junket's name.
"Hi, Junket!" said the female barkeep, mixing us up a round of Cambodian Cirrhosis-Causers. "Damn, she's... adorable," I whispered to Junket. "Mmmn-hmmmn," she said.
Several minutes later, another drink-flinger strolled up. "Yo, Junket," he said... what's the adjective I'm looking for here?... oh, yeah: delectably. "Brad, this is my sister Jul." "Pleasedtomeetcha," I mumbled, desperately hoping that no Cambodian Cirrhosis-Causer was dribbling from my wide-agape jaw. Brad shook my hand, then wandered off... ostensibly to work; I prefer to think that he was attending an Advanced Pouting seminar or locating a slightly-tighter pair of jeans.
While at the jukebox, deciding whether to play Fiona Apple or just cut to the chase and affix a "TAKE ME OUT BACK AND WHIP MY ASS" sign to my back, yet another barkeep came over to give his regards to Junket. Another hot, hot barkeep. "Jul? Eduardo. Eduardo? Jul," said Junket. "Hi, nice to meet you," said Eduardo. "Uh... well... hrmmn... see, uh... yeah. Yep," I said, disintegrating into Scotch-scented goo and oozing under a nearby pool table.
After Eduardo's departure, I recongealed and proceeded to rip Junket a new one. "Did you not feel the need to mention that your bar was full of smokingly hot people?" "I don't know!" whined Junket, "I didn't know if you'd be into that!"
Yes. Because nothing enhances the "coed liquor consumption" experience like ugly people (well, unless they're interestingly ugly... T.G.I. Not Malignant's? Congenital Deformity's? I'd be all up in that like a laparoscope, yo).
C'mon, now. I'm shy. I can't flirt my way out of a paper bag, even if said bag contains a mostly-empty bottle of hooch. I can't shoot pool. I really shouldn't play darts without making everyone in a ten-foot radius sign an indemnity waiver.
If I'm going to spend my evening sitting in a corner, nursing a Liberian Liver-Ejector, there'd damned well better be hot people present. If you're going to try to lure me out of the fortress of solitude, you'd do well to appeal to the nasty, reptilian sector of my brain. Decent jukebox? A dime a dozen (well, three plays for a dollar). Cheap drinks? Whatevah. The opportunity to push aside my croissant-flaky frontal lobe for a few hours and let the Lizard Brain take over? Now we're talking.
So how about you, comrades? What makes your ideal bar? Dirt-cheap PBR? Metallica's entire back catalogue on the juke? Foosball? Or perhaps an unshaven, sub-literate Adonis slinging drinks? And how are your watering hole preferences influenced by your personality? I'm guessing extroverts don't rate drinking establishments based on "number of architectural features that one can hide behind".
Labels: The Compleat Thumbscrew
posted by thumbscre.ws at
2/02/2007
5 Comments:
I am just trying to figure out where the counterculture part of the city is.
I can't offer bar advice as I am old and unhip, even when I was young. I do recall hanging out in a bar with a bunch of PENN music theory and composition grad students and putting on the Door's "This is the End" song on the juke box and then giggling as we ran out leaving everyone in the bar to listen to the 15 minutes of depressing Doors.
It was somewhere on South street, but like I said, ages ago.
Dark, smoky, Guiness on tap. Usually find these at an English or Irish pub. It must have a large jar of pickled eggs on the bar. I don't like to be distracted by sexy bartendresses; give me an old sod from the emerald isle with rheumy eyes and a ruddy complexion. Gotta have a gang of folks that sit around and play on their tin whistles, fiddles, drums, flutes; Irish tunes of course. Finally, a few close friends who know the value of a drunken philosophical exploration of the meaning of life.
Drink? Like normal people? Dude, you have a fucking bar in your living room. And like you haven't already been to more public bars in the past six months than you have in the previous 24-and-something years of your life. You're always at McCrappy's or the Nodding Face or the Good Hound or places like that. And earth to Jul: they invented a way to mix bars and smart people- it's called Quizzo! And you already play it!
Give yourself a little more credit in the social department.
I live in a city where I have my bar pick, but I prefer bars with either a clientele 10-20 yrs older than me, or a local band. We have a lot of local bands, and not all of them are two chicks with acoustic guitars, either. As for the older set, there is nothing like drinking with people in their forties flirting with each other around you...
And the bar CANNOT make weak ass drinks. We are talking pint glasses and many shots...
Good lighting is a must. And I mean good lighting in the sense that it disguises any undesirable physical features and effects a faintly surreal ambience –rather than the good lighting you might need when, say, performing surgery.
Unpretentious and non-lecherous staff also help the evening to bubble along merrily.
And then I suppose it’s all about the company.
Oh and the vino of course!
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