I’ve never made much of a secret that I love a good bar. Not any bar, mind you. For instance, I don’t like an upscale martini kind of bar with all the customers sucking down top shelf martinis. There’s nothing wrong with a place like that. It’s just not me.
Rather, I prefer a good working class bar. It just feels more honest to me. The people there are more varied and a little more real, largely because they represent the lower to middle echelons of our society, not the wealthy and wannabe wealthy.
I visited such a place while I was in Seattle. I was there down Olympia way on some business and was getting a little hungry. On my iPhone, I have an app called Around Me, a great invention by the way. So I toggled to “Bars” and lo and behold, The Office was just about a 1/3 of a mile away. What a coincidence.
Since I’d never been there before, I opted to double check the place on UrbanSpoon to see if the food was good. It was. So off I headed in my little rental car in the midst of a typically cool, drizzly night.
As I pulled up to The Office, I was initially put off by the place. Not because it was too hoity-toity for me, but rather because there were two large limos outside, one black, one white. The State Legislature was in session, so I just assumed it was a few legislators wanting to blow off some steam after a long day in session. Not unusual around here.
The bar was right near a college, so it wasn’t surprising to see a bunch of college students quaffing a beer while doing their assignments on laptops. Man, I wish they had had laptops in my college days – I can’t imagine what my term papers would have scored if I didn’t have to type the damned things, albeit on a then high tech electric with an interchangeable correction cartridge.
I ordered a Red Hook from the barmaid, and then decided to go with the cheeseburger and tater tots. This is the first bar I had ever been in where tater tots were not only a featured menu item, but online reviewers raved about them, with good reason.
As I sipped my beer, I couldn’t help but eavesdrop on the two idiots sitting behind me. I like to play a little game about what these people look like, so I won’t ever turn around until the end to see how close I came.
They were discussing politics, my least favorite bar topic. I guess there was something about the space program on CNN the day before, so the discussion turned to what we need to do in a post space shuttle world.
“I would like to see us double our efforts to land a man on Mars,” said the one. “We could do this by shifting funds away from Social Security by raising the retirement age and privatizing Medicare.”
“Well, I think you’re wrong on that point, as you can imagine. I think Mars is a nice eventual goal, but I think we should go back to the moon.”
The other guy dismissed this outright. “Now you know the Chinese are going to go to the moon before we return. Why do something we’ve already done? Americans want a new direction and that’s what I want for America too. Mars is the obvious choice to accomplish that.”
“You’re simply wrong here,” the second guy said. “We won’t have the technology to do that for years… we don’t have the rockets for it. But we could go to the moon. In fact, I think we should establish a moon base there in the next 20 years.”
“I think we could do it in 10, you know.”
“Six, tops,” the second replied. “In the second term of the next guy to be in the White House we could be on the moon. In fact, I think we should colonize the moon.”
“Colonize it? Really!”
I could tell by now that I either hadn’t had enough beer or they had had too much. By now they were really going at one another and the barroom braggadocio was reaching new heights in B.S.
If you’ve ever spent much time in the bar, you know how this happens. Mix testosterone with alcohol, add in any volatile subject and the level of bragging increases exponentially.
Such was the case here. By now, the chorus behind me had risen to a fevered pitch. The two men were almost yelling at one another, neither listening to the other.
“Oh, yeah? Well, I’m going to make the moon colony the 51st state!”
“As you should! Because I am moving the White House there!”
This crazy train was obviously an express because the banter by now was non-stop. Everyone in the bar had stopped talking by now, no longer being able to resist listening in on these two whackos trying to one up one another.
My burger and game ended at the same time. I had had enough. No need to play my little guessing game any longer. These two simply weren’t worth the time.
I paid my bill, put on my coat and turned to leave.
As I passed the table, I smiled at the two gentlemen, who by now were beet read with anger and still going at one another.
“Good evening you two. Great entertainment by the way.”
Before heading out the door, I stopped and turned.
“But sorry Mitt and Newt, I’m not voting for either of you. The moon base idea isn’t necessary, by the way. You two are already on a different planet!”
Out on the Treasure Coast, building my own rocket in the elevator shaft of the Bryn Mawr condos so I can send these two jokers back to wherever they came from,
– Robb