vb

Here's another one. Thanks for not caring. xoxo Sherri

I don't go out on saturday nights. "Going out" is more of an occupational hazard than anything else for me. But I'm in a particularly transitional moment of my Career, and as a result the Drink has been calling me loudly. I want to Drink and Be Drunk. I want to D and BD in public places with other people most of whom are not my BF or BM.

So it just happened that last nite, all geared up to go to a THE DEADLY SYNDROME show that apparently I had invented in my imagination and wasn't actually ever happening, I had a need to go out and D and BD with my BF [boyf/riend], BM[ban/d/mate] and, if I got lucky, others as well.

First: where to go. Where can one possibly go on a Saturday night if one A) does not like strangers, B) does not appreciate youthful exuberance, C) does not dance, D) hates people? Saturday night in LA means Bridge and Tunnel. Bridge and Tunnel means extreme misanthropic pangs in my gut. But then again, I only live once, so why not be brave and face my fears. So we picked some place downtown. Basically it came to DOWNTOWN Vs. The Valley (no joke) and in that battle Downtown always wins because A) it's dangerous, unknown, and slightly fucked up, and B) R_______ lives there.

My dream plan as the youthfully exuberant lover of dancing with strangers that I am included starting at 2nd and Main (Edison), traversing to 4th & Main (Bar 107) and zigzagging over to 6th and Hope (Library Bar). I could picture it clearly in my mind: limping along drunkenly on my 4 inch heels, best girlfriends in secure arm lock, devil may care, laughing at the homeless and the criminal, basking in our eternal immortality and girlish charms.

That is not my life. My friends are not girls. They are hardly even friends. One of them I live with and we've both pretty much become accustomed to one another to the extent that neither of us really exists in any specific or particular fashion when we are together. My other friend I sort of want to see dead or out of my life or fundamentally changed. Don't get me wrong: I love my BF, and, to a limited extent, my BM, but bar crawling funbunnies they are not. And I will always hold this against them whenever the occassion permits.

BM says nix to my bar crawl idea. Oh to be young again! EDISON has come highly reccommended by a friend who moved from OC to DT and lives on 9th and something-er-other. So that'll be the one place we explore tonight. We swing by my house, pick up my BF the non-entity, and shoot across 7th into the Land of Blahs. (Okay, that;'s not fair, because DT is not the Land of Blahs. It is actually a source of energy and power and R_____ lives there so it's kind of Mecca, but Land of Blahs sounds like Land of Oz, so, eat me.) The old BF thinks we're going to the Bounty, which he likes due to its proximity to our House of Boredom. I say fuck that, I only live once, get in the goddamn car and shut the fuck up.

After circling 4th and Main twice, BM at the wheel, (lovely) bootleg recordings of Parlour on the iPod (I'm one of the only possibly three people in the world who has these, mwah hah hah, the power!), we find a parking lot. $8-- a steal, if you're comparing it to the Sunset Strip (I'm bombing the Sunset Strip next week, incidentally-- will blog here). And what do you know, Edison Bar is just down the alley! Perf! The line is three people thick and at least 30 yards long. All Bridge and Tunnel. This isembarassing. Bridge and Tunnel women always wear high heels and cleavage and clothing too tight for their commonly zoftig figures. Bridge and Tunnel men wish they were Persian and living in Beverly Hills. Who are these
poeple? Where do they come from? How do they know to come here? Are they municipal workers by day? What do they hope to gain? What do I hope to gain? Oh yeah, D and BD.

We run into uur friend who had orig reccommended this place, which looks pretty swanky inside, in spite of the types of humanity to whom it unwittingly plays host. He says they won't let the old BF in cuz he's wearing goddamn sneakers. Alright. I bet R_______ wears sneakers wherever he goes. But then again, R______ wouldn't be caught dead at a place like this on this The Saturday of Nights. I can only imagine as I have no first hand knowledge of R______. For all I know he's already inside, dancing on a table, several B&Ts grinding him simultaneously.

I look over at my BF and it is as if he has shrunk. He is in the process of suffering extreme trauma at the thought of waiting in line with the B&Ts and he is already leaving his body. He is ceasing to exist, and even as I am introducing him to my friend's friends, he is fading away. The he tells me he's gonna have to find a cab. Buck it up, asshole, i say, definitively. BAR 107's not far from here. Mwah hah hah. Let's go there.

We continue down the alley past the legendary SMELL, and I see the hand scrawled "No Alcohol Inside" sign on the door, which seems to imply "Alcohol Outside." Back when I came to shows here there certainly wasn't a swanky B&T type bar sharing this alley way. That's Progress. The BM becomes afraid due to the presence of lively people of color congregating at the door and wants to turn around and take a different route. Um, right. They can Smell fear, fuckface. Why don't you just ask one of them to beat the shit out of you? As a matter of fact, I'll just do it. Bring your face a little closer to my boot. That's it.

The two men in my company, BM and BF respectively, trail some feet behind me, no longer able to lead the expedition due to a genuine Lack of Fucking Trying. So it's up to me to be brave. We pass some calculatedly idle smokers and enter Bar 107 which is labelled with some super-cool-factor misleading sign that says like "Old Time" or "Old Something-er-other." As terrible 80s and 90s music (Groove is in The Fucking Heart) swallows me at the entrance, I start to feel bad for the poeple who used to drink regularly at the "Old Whatever." They have certainly at this late stage of invasive-quasi-hipster-approriation been disenfrachised. As Part of the Problem, I shrug it off and lead the men to the bar, where it takes a solid 7 minutes to get service. I am trying to defeat my own hostility. Sometimes people look at me, and I hope they're not thinking that I suck because I'm in this bar on The Saturday of Nights. I remind myself they, too, are guilty, and collectively we all turn a (judgemental) blind eye.

Fucking Jameson on rocks in hand, I lead the troops into the dance floor. Did you know that Art is only Really Good when it is Extremely Offensive in a Sexual Nature? Only then can it Reveal Truths and Challenge the Status Quo. The fine mural on the wall of the Bar 107 dance floor is no acception, being a depiction of sodomy performed on a strange blonde female-type figurewith extra limbs and breasts. Fuck yeah! This is my kind of place. Right in line with this controversial revelation of male-female relationshiops is a middle-aged lady with some sort of a crew cut and wire rimmed glasses getting her freak on to Bel Biv Devoe. It's like the kind of Bar Mitzvah I imagine is only thrown in Hell. That's ironic because I don't think Jews believe in Hell. I'm not sure though, which I'm pretty sure is fucked up, considering I am half of one. I should ask the BM. He would totally know, being all educated in Hebrew Day School during the formative years.

Beyond the dance floor is a small room with a place for us to sit! Finally my dream of D and BD with people to whom I am overexposed and who slightly bore me will come true. Of course the music in this little room is even louder. The salvation of the room is two things: the random van back jutting from one wall, and the sealed cooler door a la Jurrassic Park Kitchen or The Shining, which inspires a few moments of moderately engaging conversation.

I try to connect with the history of the room, the vibe oozing from walls against which many backs over many years have leaned. But nothing. The Rico Suave is JUST TOO FUCKING LOUD.

We find a flyer on our table, and now can put a clinical name to what we are going through: "Leisure Suite: A 70s vs. 80s Dance Freak Lounge Event." oh the humanity.

The night is saved by the appearance of Other People: CN and AJ, conjured by frantic texts. I tell AJ all I want is an empty fucking place to get drunk and talk to my friends, and she has the answer. While walking to her car, a crazy dude senses BM's fear and hollers, "BOOH!." BM speeds up. I slow down. Fuck fear. Come and get me world! My daddy can hire good doctors and lawyers. Drawing on a wisdom beyond her years, AJ drives us to HANK'S AMERICAN BAR AND GRILL in the bottom floor of the Stillwater Hotel on Grand between 7th and 8th. Perf. Totally divey for real, as in, I can't pinpoint the style genre of any particualr person because each is lost in his own personal fog of obsurity and alienation.

We make our way to the back, which is empty save one artfully tarted-up mannequin lounging casually at a table for two. The bartender, a young lady with two sleeves- sleeves, as in, you know, full arm tattoos, dummies- asks for our IDs and she and I chat world-weary style about DMV wait lines and the hateful B&T. I know I'm going to be happy here. We fill a few styrofoam plates with toxic days-old popcorn and take seats in our relative privacy. The drinks are cheap, and someone else ends up paying for them, which makes them even cheaper. The BF chats animatedly with AJ. BM talks to his friend who had reccommended the Edison Bar (point-loser). And I am stuck with CN. He is evil. Do not engage him [unless you want to write for his website or want him to sell your merch- CN], or do so at your own risk. Fortunately, I too am evil, and so we simmer in each other's outwardly projected self-hatred and insecurity until I feel good and biased towards and against him and have successfully involved him in an immaterial drama, the specifics of which i cannot even begin to enumerate other than to say, "I am crazy." [chill out]

I got what I wanted, bitches. I always get what I want: 2nd/Main, 4th/Main, 6th/Grand. Next time, though, I hink I'll dispense with the whole Saturday night business. I do fully intend to be blotto when my head hits my pillow tonight. I know they do Happy hour all day Sunday at Library Bar. Hmmm. Better text my best girlfriends!

///sl



Bil Bov Dibov Poisons


People Aaron's Bar Mitzvah Montage


Extras Homeless

Labels: bar 107, edison bar, hank's american bar and grill, the deadly syndrome

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 26, 2007 at 9:15 PM. You can skip to the end and leave a response.