How gross does a bar have to be before you enter? I love dive bars. I love em I love em I love em. I love the jukebox with a mix of Grease music and Steve Miller Band, I love cheap beer, I love wooden floors, and huggers, and crammer cranes. I love it all. But mostly I love the people that oocupy dive bars.
Which leads me to last Friday's adventure with my 2 lil buddies. It started out innocent enough, some thrifting (important note to remember about thrifting is that we saw a hipster dude in a pea coat at the shop), followed by some drinks and snacks, followed by bringing beer to the movies. Then I decide we should hit up this bar you can see from the freeway..called the Rochester (no relation to Edward btw).
We walked inside and literally the music and talking stops (think that time we went to Hills to eat and it got really quiet when we were ordering...) then the bartendar asks us what we want in Spanish...so 3 beers and it's 4 bucks. SCORE. A quick sweep of the crowd ....which consists of hardened alchoholics, hispanics, a few younger girls, a cool dude, some swayers, and a group of younger dudes. Do you have this picture in your mind?
Right away we are approached by "Sharon" who welcomes us to the family with hugs and kind words. Sharon lives on the other side of town but this is her bar and she has been coming here for years. I am not sure how Sharon comes and goes from the bar cos staying on her bar stool proves to be hard. All in all I like Sharon Lil Buddy says Sharon tried to pick pocket her but I think she was just grabbing for something to steady herself. No harm no foul.
Next up is a big boned (his words not mine) young man named "Sweet Baby James" apparently his mother told him he has a face for radio and this is his handle... Sweet Baby James loves to sing, I mean L-O-V-E. He was the only one in the bar to appreciate my song choices. I mean "Summer Lovin" is a classic people. Anyway, SBJ is attached to us and drags us to the dance floor (a.k.a plywood topping near jukebox) to dance. It's a little weird and a lot of skin is showing..his skin not ours..I like SBJ though and his favorite song is "Spirit in the Sky". I can totally dig that.
2 more honorable mentions. First, "Senor Shits His Pants". Dude was farting all over the place. He was everywhere we went. He didn't talk much, he did mumble a little and got excited when I put my quarter in the crammer but aside from that...nothing..he makes the cut cos of his gas issue. Finally, a man in a sweater from Christmas past. Goes by the name of "Jibbers" I can't make this up..he was named after a merchant marine or a part of a boat, I could never really get that straight. He didn't say much but he could sway with the best of them and he took his coat off and threw it to dance. Now, Jibs was about 200 years old, and missing some teeth but he had a heart of gold...heart of gold.
Ok, that about wraps up the night..I mean it was fun. I hope that comes across in this post. Oh crap, I should mention the cool dude. He was nice and said funny things like.."How did you all end up here is the wine expo over" and "This is like my living room". He even walked us to our car cos he was worried for our safety. Stand up dude and he loved Ben Harper. Friends FOR-EVER!
The moral of the story is to have fun and go on a adventure once in a while.
P.S. We saw hipster dude hours later wandering the streets...we had come full circle..
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