Bar #102 - A great bar.

After that bar, I got my bike and went one more block west to turn and take a route home, when I see this bar tucked away across from the subway terminal, but the bar has no name, just a shitload of neon beer signs in the front window, including one with a rainbow.

So, I walk up, and all these bum-looking guys of all colors (white, black, kind of brownish, Mexican) look up at me, and none look particularly gay.

I sit down, and I can barely take a look around - there's posters of (white) women with big tits wrapped in an American flag, and boxing gloves hanging from shelves behind the bar, and these big wooden knick-knacks up on the shelves, and a giant neon sign of a woman in fishnets and no top, with bright red neon nipples on her big titties hanging out - before the (white) (tough-looking) waitress comes to ask me my drink...

(She had been talking with some derelict, this kindly-looking but sort of vacant 60-year old [white] guy in an "MIA - NEVER FORGET" hat and a flannel shirt who was saying he never came in there, but could he get her number, and she just said, "No, but I'll see you in Heaven," and he said that he was a good guy, that he used to fight in bars but he stopped that, and then when she said, "I'll see you in Heaven," he said, "But I don't believe in Heaven," and then he started saying something about what he believed, and she said, "I'm sorry, but no religious conversations in this bar, you gotta leave," which confused him but made him go.)

They had a special, a $2.25 can of Icehouse, so I got that.

Like right away, she asks me if I had ever been in there before, and I told her no, and how I just came out for a bike ride, etc., and she introduced herself in a tough and no-nonsense but nonetheless friendly way.

"So what's the name of this bar, anyways?", I was like.

"Just Butch's", she was like.

"What?", I was like.

"Just Butch's."

"Oh!", I was like, "I thought you said, 'just bitches'."

"Well," she was like, "Sometimes it's that, too."

I then asked her about the name.

"Well," she was like, "the owner named it that, and then his daughter kept the name."

"Oh," I was like.

"And his daughter just happened to be a lesbian"

"Oh!", I was like. "But his name was Butch?".

"No," she was like, "It wasn't Butch, but he decided to name it Butch. There's some story behind that, but I forgot it."

At that point, I got confused, and asked her if he named it because his daughter was a lesbian.

She was like, "No, he actually hated that."

Then, after a pause, "But when you're a convicted felon, you can't own a bar, so he gave it to her. He had to give it to someone."

Then, after another pause, she was like, "Her sister was pissed. She don't live her, but she was in here today, and she was talking on her cell phone all like 'my bar this' and 'my bar that', but it ain't her bar."

So then, I tried to segue and was like, "So do you get any gay people in here?".

"No," she was like, "That's really the only thing here," and she pointed to the rainbow sign in the window. "She put that up. But it's been a rough crowd, but it's changed a lot over the years."

At that point, I told her about my parents owning a bar, and my dad having to flip the business to get the bikers and coke users out and a better crowd in.

"Oh," she was like, "We used to get a lot of bikers, and Indians, but they've all left.."

"Except me!", this one brownish-color guy from a few seats down said.

"Some of the ho-hos still come in," she continued, "But there's less of them than there used to be."

"What do you mean Indians?", I was like. "Like Native Americans or Indian Indians?".

"Indians!", she was like, "I mean Indians!". Then, when I looked confused, she looked straight at me and was like, loudly, "Indian Indians!"

Then, she stopped, and thought, and was like, "No, Na-tive A-mer-i-cans," and she enunciated it with difficulty, as if she had never said the word before. "Not," and she shook her head, and jabbed her index finger to her forehead like she was making some dot.

Then she shrugged, and she continued talking...

"The Indians were real bad. They used to drink a lot of Jack Daniels, all that firewater, and go bust up the place. They couldn't hold it. And they called it firewater, too, that's not me. This place has cleaned up a lot, and once it's all cleaned up, then I can die. But that won't be anytime soon."

After that, she got busy, and I ended up talking with the Native American guy down the counter. He used to be an artist, and was originally from Oklahoma and had been in Bible College, and was attracted to learning about the Middle East ever since having a dream when he was 10 where there was a great war and both Israeli and Arab soldiers spoke Hebrew and Arabic to him and he understood them perfectly.