Stories from a Black Bar: Storm, etc.

The other week I took a bikeride on a late weekday afternoon/early evening to go a few bars in a (poorer) (black) neighborhood on the outskirts of the city, before it got dark out and things got rough(er).

I popped into this one place and was chatting with a (black) (female) teacher who was sitting next to me – “Don’t even get me started talking about the mayor,” she was like, “He’s an asshole” – when a line of severe storms hit, and the sky got gray outside and heavy rain began, and then the rain even went horizontal when the high winds kicked in.

“Holy shit, look at that,” I told the teacher – I could see the windows over her shoulder – and then when we got up to go look, everyone else in the bar went to the windows too.

“I’m calling FEMA!”, one (black) guy shouted out.  “No way in hell I’m passing up that money!”.

Then, the (black) (female) bartender started being like, “Jesus is coming, Jesus is coming!”, laughing all the while, but also in a kind of half-serious way.

Then, she came out from behind the bar to look more, and her and the (black) (female) teacher started clapping their hands and dancing around in a circle and singing “God is trying to tell you something!” from (the musical version of?) “The Color Purple”.

Later, when the rain stopped – the line of storms was severe but very brief – the (black) (female) teacher went outside to take a picture of the temporary flooding on her iPhone – “Look at that!”, she was saying later, showing me pictures of these huge puddles that took up half the sidewalk – and the bartender began telling me to stop on through on Sunday for their White Party, which was also on behalf of a political candidate from the area.

“What are you saying?”, I deadpanned, and then when she looked confused, I was like, “What, do you want me to be the mascot or something?”, and then she just started laughing uproariously.

“Oh shit,” she was like, “I didn’t get you at first!”.

Then, she leaned in and was like, “For you, it’s a ‘come-as-you-are’ party,” and then she threw her head back and began to laugh uproariously some more.

A bit after that, I met the (black) (female) political candidate who was there, and she told me that it was a shame that I hadn’t stopped by earlier, since she had bought chicken wings for everyone in the bar.

When I told her that I also couldn’t go to her White Party because I was marching in the city’s Pride Parade with this radical socialist queer activist group, she told me about when she worked in the city’s water reclamation district and was on their drainage tunnel float for Pride and this very drunk (gay) man came up to her on the float and pulled her sleeve and was like – and here she put on a little breathy, slightly camp-ish, very put-on voice - “Commissioner, commissioner, *I* have a big tunnel too.”

“And you know what I told him?”, she was like, “I said” – and here she also put on a little breathy, slightly camp-ish, very put-on voice – “‘Yes, but does it fill up with water like mine?’”.

Later, the cook was in, and someone said they weren’t going to order chicken wings since they had just had some.

“Which store?”, someone asked, and the (black) guy said the name of some store, and the person replied, “Why the hell would you go to that store and pay an Arab, when you can buy them from blackfolk?”.

“Hey hey hey,” this (black) (male) ex-football player who was sitting next to me called out, “That’s enough of that, you got a point, but that’s a little too much.”

“No, really,” the person was like, “Why would you go buy them from an Arab?  They’re just going to put that money into weapons of mass destruction.”

“Shee-it,” the (black) (male) ex-football player was like, breaking into dialect to get real and settle things down a bit, “That guy don’t know how to make no weapons of mass destruction, he just cook chicken wings.”

When I did eventually leave – the teacher bought me another beer, and I had a burger and fries too, though most everyone else was having chicken wings or fried catfish – I went around the bar to say bye to everyone I had met.

When I said bye to the bartender – she had just gotten off shift, and was down at the end of the bar drinking with friends – she was like, “Are you sure you don’t want to come to that White Party?  You already got your costume on!”, and she laughed uproariously, and told me to seriously, stop by again.

The teacher said that too, and she said she was usually there on Thursdays during the summer.