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.

Another big surprise about New Orleans.

My one friend with the cat said one of her biggest surprises about New Orleans was how all housing was found through word of mouth. People don't want to rent to people they don't know or who they don't meet through friends, so you just have to talk to random people to find out if they know someone who might have an apartment.

So, after talking to a guy at a coffee shop, she gave him his number and got a call from a friend of his landlord's.

She went to meet this woman, an older (white) woman who had lived in New Orleans for years.

"Darling," she was like, "People here drink. And when I say 'drink", I mean drink."

Then, she was telling her about how she had some new neighbors and had invited them over for a drink, and after a drink they started to take leave because they were going to a movie.

"Darlin," she was like, "I said to them, 'I may have invited you over a drink, but that doesn't mean you stay for just a drink."

During apartment-hunting later, my friend's iPhone died, so she went to some random guy pulling into a driveway in the (nice) neighborhood, and his daughter was home and she came in to use her iPhone charging cord. When asked if she wanted something to drink and my one friend with the cat said she was fine, the doctor was like, "But you haven't even heard what I've got!", and he opened the fridge and showed her iced tea, lemonade, etc., and then he opened the liquor cabinet for her.

Bar #101 - a pizzeria.

The other night was very very warm and I had had a long day of studying and tutoring (I finally have some students), so I decided to take a bikeride over to this poor obscure multiethnic neighborhood that's only 20min. away by bike and at the end of one subway line, but no-one (white) ever really goes to, or lives in (except some artist kids who move in, but then tire of the poor public transportation and quickly move out).

Anyhow, I biked along, and it was nothing but kebab places and Middle Eastern markets and taquerias and Mexican foodstores, and everywhere you looked, there were no bars.

But, then I saw a place called "Pizzeria [---]" with neon beer sign in the window, so I stop through.

When I walk in, it's cool tiles and dance music and 3 unplaceable foreign-looking white kids smoking a hookah, an old dude smoking a hookah at a bar, and an Eastern European-looking waitress manning an espresso machine that's in front of a bunch of liquor bottles and a cooler full of beer - and no pizza or food of any type in sight.

So, I come in and I sit down and I ask her if they have beer.

"Yes," she was like, suspiciously, "But do you have ID?".

I showed it to her, and she asked me what kind of beer I liked.

"Cheap."

So, she told me their lowest price beers, and I got a $3 MGD bottle, and I just sat, and watched.

There was a tennis channel on, and the waitress stood around and watched, then and went and talked to the young kids and picked up a hose and smoked their hookah for a bit and talked some language I couldn't understand. The old guy texted on his phone, and smoked his hookah.

Later, the waitress came up and talked with him (in accented English, though, each of them!), and took a smoke off his hookah.

After like 15min., the old guy went behind the bar (so he was the owner, and she just worked there, but they were from different countries?), and after another 5min. one of the young foreign guys came up to the old guy and they chatted, and the old guy bared his soul about some woman who he was going with who he wanted to help, but she wants a job and wants things that women aren't supposed to want, so he doesn't know how to help her.

"So I tell her," he was like, "do not do that, so I can help you."

Then, after a pause, he was like, "Am I right, or am I wrong?".

After another pause, the young kid responded, "You are right."

Later, a fat (white) guy around my age with tattoos walks in, and he's dragging behind him a suitcase. He talks with the old guy and the waitress a while - they all knew each other; the 3 young kids had left by this point - and then he pulls out his suitcase and shows them a bunch of different phones.

"This one," he was like, "You should take. It's got everything, long-distance, net, all you need is a new SIM card. It's T-Mobile, but don't take it to their store, take it to an independent store, those guys will know what to do" (so it was stolen goods?).

Later, the waitress said she had never seen me before, and asked if I had moved here. I told her no, but I took a bikeride over and decided to stop, and then the conversation stopped.

I started it up again and asked about the nationalities of the store. It turns out that she's Moldovan, and so random Moldovans from the city come to the pizzeria, like the young kids. But, the owner is Bosnian.

Mystery solved.

My barhopping.

I really do love my bar project. Basically, if I'm bored, I just go somewhere - and now that it's summer, I can take a nice long bikeride - and if I see an interesting-looking bar, I just walk in, sit down, order a drink, and see what happens.

I'm surprised at how many people are envious of my plan. It's like everyone wants to go into random bars, but no-one would ever do it on their own.

So interesting about Michigan...

When I was back in my hometown, the local newspaper and the local regional alternative paper were *full* of ads for medical marijuana groups, and people I know were talking about either getting in the business or people they know trying to get in the business.

I guess that industry is really taking off there!

Hmm, my friends' drinking makes me look normal.

I was asking a friend from high school and her husband how much they drank, just to check in if my 12-15 drinks/week was outlandish.

"12 to 15 a week?", my one friend from high school was like. "Hell, if we have a barbecue and you start sipping at noon and stay up till 3am because of a bonfire, I have 12 to 15 that day."

She also said that her husband used to have 3 beers or so when he came hom from work, and then 10-15 on a Friday and Saturday when going out with friends, "So what is that, 40 to 50 a week right there? But he doesn't do that anymore," she was like.

A story of a gay friend.

A (gay) friend of mine was out in the gaybar strip part of town a couple weekends ago at like 11:30pm, and a guy pulled up next to him in a truck and asked him if he was a prositute.

He said he was surprised and just said no, but now he wishes he would have asked how much he thought he was worth.

A story of a hispanic working in Tennessee.

My one friend with the cat has gone out on a couple dates with this one hispanic American guy who used to work in this smaller town in Tennessee a few hours from Nashville. At a concert event the other night, he was saying that when he walked into a bar the 1st time in that town, the (white) place went quiet.

After he sat at the bar, someone told him, "Boy, if you ever are driving, and you start hearin' gravel underneath your tires, you turn right around and go back on the highway, because you are liable to get yourself shot."