Odd late night bar scene…

At this one late night bar in the Greek neighborhood way north of me, as I was coming home from hitting up a few new bars after a concert, I decided to stop in for a night cap, and the place was filled with an odd group of people: some who’d drifted in from downtown, others workers at local restaurants, others who lived in the area, others poorer (black) folks who’d drifted in from the poorer areas to the west and south of there, others more well off (black) folks who’d been around in the area having dinner, and, on top of that, a blues band that was playing Otis Redding and Carla Thomas’s “Tramp” as I was locking up my bike and heading through the door.

I was hungry, so I got not only a beer, but also a souvlaki and Cretan meatball sandwich, and so while I waited for the food to come out I drank my beer and watched the band.

After a while when the band had just gone on break, this old shriveled Mediterranean guy comes in, and he’s with this macho, good-looking, very straight (mid-30s) brownhaired bearded (white) guy, a very strange pairing, and I could only think that that the younger guy was a hustler.

The old shriveled Mediterranean guy bought drinks for the 2 of them in a very ostentatious way, and meanwhile the tense (Greek) owner who was crunching numbers at a notepad in the corner was looking at him and his eyes were just shooting daggers.

Then, the old shriveled Mediterranean guy walked over to that table, and they began arguing in Greek, to the point where people were looking.

Then, the old shriveled Mediterranean guy made his way back to the bar, where the young dude had chugged his whiskey, and the old guy bought him another.

The young dude chugged that and then the old shriveled Mediterranean guy wanted to go without even finishing his drink, but the young dude insisted on shots of Metaxa and flung some money down on the counter for that, like *he* was the one paying this time.

People were looking, and they both did the shots, and then the old shriveled Mediterranean guy pushed his half-finished whiskey to the young dude, who chugged it.

Then, they both left in a boisterous hurry.

“What the fuck was that?”, I asked the bartender.

“They work around here,” he was like.  “They’re going to the casino.”

“Oh,” I was like.  “I had pegged them for a prostitute and his client.  But, I guess a casino’s not good either.”

“No it’s not,” he was like, shaking his head.  “Especially when they're in a state like that.  You have no idea.”

After I absorbed it all, I texted my one professor friend who teaches modern Czech literature, and I was saying how I still didn’t understand the situation, and I still wasn’t clear if or how I had misread it –

One was old and buying drinks, the other was young and bro-touchy, both were fired up about something.

- to which she replied –

Sometimes your texts read like dreamscapes.

- which I thought was very true, since so many times, bars *are* like dreamscapes.  That’s part of why I love them.

Conversation: Neighborhood lemonade stand.

The other Sunday before heading to the grocery store I went to go return a book to the local library branch dropbox – the Japanese sci-fi novel the movie “Edge of Tomorrow” was based on, it was so good I couldn’t put it down and I finished it in one day! – and as I was walking up the street there, there was a mom and 2 girls with a lemonade stand.

The mom was (white) and a bit fat and had tats up on one of her shoulders, and one of the kids looked like her but the other didn’t and must have been her daughter’s friend.

It was a super-nice lemonade stand, too, with a table cloth and nice-looking plastic cups like at a wedding reception and multiple signs with printed graphics around each letter of the word “L – E – M – O – N – A – D – E” taped up against the black metal fence behind their table, and another print-out on the table itself, saying “[daughter’s name]’S LEMONADE STAND – 50 CENTS”, with the second girl’s name written in nicely with black magic marker beneath the first so that the business was a joint production of the daughter and her friend.

“Buy some lemonade!”, one of the girls shouted.

“Okay,” I was like.  “Man, this is a nice lemonade stand!  Has business been good?”.

“Oh yeah,” the mom was like.  “We’ve only been out since it stopped raining, but it’s been good.  After church today they kept bugging me to do it and I said we couldn’t because of the rain and then I said we wouldn’t have anyone come, but they were sick of pizza and videos, so here we are!”.

“Very cool,” I was like.  “A lemonade stand’s always fun.  What videos were you guys watching?”.

“Saw,” the one girl was like.

“Saw?!”, I was like.

“Noooooo, Saw Two!”, the second girl butted in to correct the first.

“Wow,” I was like.  “Isn’t that a little gruesome?”

“Yeah, a little,” the first girl was like, sinking back in her seat and kind of smiling mischievously.

…I have no idea what the hell that mom was thinking, letting kids watch that shit…

Patio observation: Candy-making girl.

The other weekend after I was at the beach all day I met up with my one hippie friend from Michigan to do a crossword together, and since we both felt like ice cream, we went to this candy shop near her apartment and grabbed some ice cream (me: 2 scoop waffle cone with cake batter on top and chocolate-peanut butter on the bottom; her: bowl of rum raisin).

Then, we sat out on the patio and ate our ice cream and did a really tough variety cryptic.

After we finished it and had basked in our glory and she was smoking and I was packing up to go, I noticed that the windowfront candymaker was this (thin) (black) (high school age) girl in an orange t-shirt tucked into supertight jean shorts cut off way high, like after her leg ended and where her butt was already beginning.

There must have been music in the store or something, since she was dancing kind of obliviously and swinging her butt from side to side and bobbing her head and doing something with the toffee out on the table.

And, just as I caught sight of this, this large group of (black) adults walked by, and one guy saw her and was like, “That girl needs to go home and change those short shorts.”

“Hey,” I was like, “I just saw that too.  I mean, what’s up, is this a Hooter’s?”

They all broke out laughing as they continued walking by, and as they were walking up the street, I could hear a (black) woman say, “He say, ‘What’s up, is this a Hooter’s?’” in that intonation where I’ve heard (black) people repeat a joke with the formula “he/she say…”, and after she had repeated what I had said, she started laughing uproariously again.

Conversation with my mom: What she was cooking that day.

The other day when I called my parents my mom answered the phone, and she was cooking.

“What are you cooking?”, I was like.

“I’m baking some chicken,” she was like, “And I’m making some corn to go with it.   Corn was really good this week.  It must be in season, or they shipped it in from somewhere.”

Observed conversation downtown:

(Black) (male) traffic director (seeing 2 white girls ducking out into traffic that he had just flagged forward):

“WHOA WHOA WHOA!”

1 of the (white) girls (clutching her head and ducking and sprinting out of fear of the fast cars coming at her): 

“CROSS-ing the street, CROSS-ing the street, CROSS-ing the street!”

. . .

The 1 white girl didn’t say it snotty or anything, so it came off pretty funny, as she ran for her life.

Observations on Wealth Inequality: An Italian grad student.

Me and this one Italian grad student I know who studies Italian lit went out for a drink the other week.

He graduated recently and is piecing together jobs and having a really tough go of it; his 2 main job prospects for the year are on way opposite sides of the city, and for one of them he’d have to travel 45 min. one-way by car four times a week to hold a one hour class, all for like $4000 for a 16 week semester.

He also was frustrated since pretty much all of the open positions in his field this year were taken by people who already had professorships somewhere else.

He still thinks, though, that the U.S. is still better for job prospects for professors than in Europe, but “not by much”.

He was also reflecting on the greater economy and said that way back when when he came to the U.S. when he started his doctoral program, degree escalation was going on in Italy – positions that once needed a bachelors needed a masters, positions that once needed a masters needed a doctorate, and so on.

“And the people who got the jobs were already connected or well off,” he was like.

“Then, the same thing started here, five years later,” he said.  ‘Everything in the U.S. has become Italianized, five years later.”

At a restaurant-bar in the wealthy part of town.

On Monday I was at a restaurant-bar in a wealthy part of town.

The place is a high-end chain with several locations (NYC, a few in LA, here), and was filled with lots of people, many of whom seemed to be younger (white) women in tight black dresses.

The space was odd since it was on the 2nd floor with a 3rd floor rooftop patio and you had to walk into a foyer area and take an elevator up, and after I finished my drink and went downstairs, I discovered it was heavily raining outside, and me and a (hispanic) guy in a patterned wifebeater waited in the vestibule looking out for a break in the rain.

We started chit-chatting, and it turns out that he was a just off-shift worker at the restaurant and originally from Guatamala and lived out by the one regional airport.

"Like by [name of major street]?", I was like.

"Yes," he was like.

"Like by [names of 2 bars]?", I was like.

"Yes!", he was like, surprised that I knew the bars.

We then started talking about bars and clubs, and it turns out that he likes a lot of the swankier clubs downtown, including one that I've been meaning to go to that has a $20 cover except on Mondays.

"But don't they have a $20 cover?", I was like.

"Yes", he was like, "But if you know a person, they put you on a list."

"What is the crowd like, anyway?", I said.

He didn't understand the word 'crowd', so I then rephrased the question till it was something like "What type of people go there?".

"Mostly white," he said, amicably.

Later, some other workers were getting off shift and waited in the entryway, and one, a short, kind of husky, older (Mexican) guy with a bit of a fauxhawk, went out and stood underneath the big umbrella set up by the unmanned valet stand.

Then, 2 couples came down, including a (middle-aged) overtanned (white) guy in white pants and with a little bit of a paunch, and he strode out through the rain to the valet stand.

"You work here?", he asked the (Mexican) guy.

"I am not working now," the (Mexican) guy was like, and at that the (middle aged) overtanned (white) guy turned around to walk back to the door, throwing him a middle finger behind his back.

I wonder if the Guatamalan guy saw that; I'm pretty sure he did.