Went to the black neighborhood bar last night.

So, last night I went to the black neighborhood bar, which rumor has, but has never confirmed, also serves as the local gay bar for guys on the "down-low".

I went to grab a seat at the bar and have a drink and read my mafia book, and like the only one open was to the left of these two raucous (black) guys, both in their late 50s or so, and the one sitting next to me touched my arm when I sat down and was like, "Hey man, how you doing?", and then stopped his conversation with his friend to ask me about my book, and I told them about how the Italian mafia takes bribes from factories that produce toxic waste and then mix that shit in with the cement on their construction projects so they can take low bids.

After that, we all talked, and I got to reading, and after the guy next to me got up to go the restroom - he was tall and with a shaved head and an earring in each ear, and had an orange shirt on - the other guy - shorter, fatter, small moustache, and a National Guard baseball hat on - was like, "I didn't even know that guy before I came in and sat down," though he proceeded to tell me the story about how when he came in the guy was like, "I know you from somewhere," and it turns out that they're both from the first graduating class (200+) of some Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., high school around here that was built in the early 70s.

Later, that dude left, and then the original dude left, but not before swigging back each of his cans of PBR on the bar, to make sure nothing was left.

So, I read a little more, and then the dude next to me, this one older (black) guy in a brown suit with a black beret on who kind of looked a little like Al Sharpton with short hair, and scrawny ("Herbert") turns to me and starts talking and saying how this bar is "the best joint in the zip code," for the service, the ambience, the music, etc.

So, we talked a bit about other bars, and I defended the student bar for how they poured the cheap whiskey heavy, and he said that after the black neighborhood bar got the automatic pour-stopper, business has been down like 60%, but it's coming back little by little.

"How long ago was that?", I was like.

"Oh, like four to five years ago," he said.

Then we started talking about the music, and he said it was because they had an online jukebox, but I said that that wasn't it, because I've been in places where there's the same jukebox but people play shit, and that it was the people with good taste doing the selecting that made the difference, and he kind of agreed, and then I compared that to karaoke, and he accused me of being judgmental about karaoke.

"You can't go in being all judgmental about who's singing, you are there to have fun," he was like, and I disagreed and said that some people are drunk assholes, and then he was like, "But no, it's like when you pull into a highway rest-stop and you go on the side that says 'Trucks Only', you don't know what you're going to get, you just have to be open."

I took that in stride and then we talked more about the neighborhood and he started saying it was going so downhill that you couldn't even buy a suit anymore in the neighborhood, or even between there and downtown.

"You can't even buy a suit," he was like.

I then mentioned it was nice to have the president around, and he said that it wasn't, because they close the street for like a mile up and down whenever people are in town.

Then we started talking about the Olympic bid the city has, and how it would dislocate the neighborhood to have that in here, and how anyways they should put it further south in the parts of the city where there's the industrial brownfields, otherwise no one would clean it up.

"And imagine," he was like, "When the World Cup was here and when the Rolling Stones played fans from all over the world were walking across the highways and blocking traffic, and that happens here? Shit."

Then, all of a sudden, he was like, "And Obama would come in the middle of all that, and they'd have to tow all those cars? I'd like to see that."

From there he started talking shit about Michelle Obama and how she was the sole author of this recently-uncovered document shunting poor people from the neighborhood away from the emergency rooms of university hospitals and to the main county hospital way downtown, and from there moved on to peanuts, and gestured with his hand broadly.

Now, I thought he meant the peanuts machine in the back of the room, because last time I had gotten some from that they were kind of stale, but it turns out he meant Republican deregulation, and he started saying how they were gutting everything, and from there he started talking about how every time a plane crashes, it's pilot error, unless the pilot survives, because in that case he can testify that he went to turn the steering wheel and went like that (he gestured turning a steering wheel to the far left), and be like, "That shit don't work! But no, if the motherfucker dies, they be all, 'Pilot error.'"

From there he talked a bit more, then, abruptly, he was like, "Time for me to get off my high horse and go him," and he said by and left, and I read my book a bit more and polished my beer off and went like two blocks home, agog to think that shit like that goes on in that bar every night, and I'm not there.