Story of a popcorn machine.

For several months now, the popcorn machine at the local music bar has been broken, and everyone misses it.

Like, everyone used to eat free popcorn when they went there.

One night I was talking with the one bartender, a (hipster-ish) (brown-haired) (bearded) (white) guy with a bowl haircut, and he said that they got it fixed once but then it broke down again and now it's in the basement, and he doesn't know if it's ever coming back.

Like, the heating mechanism went and it was taking like 45 minutes to pop just one popper of popcorn, whereas before it would take 5 minutes, and you'd keep dumping it in and do other stuff and then dumping it in again, making multiple batches until the popcorn maker was finally full.

"But isn't a little popcorn better than no popcorn?", I was like.

"I'm not so sure about that," he was like, and he said that some days they'd fill it up at 2pm, and by 5pm it'd be gone, the popcorn went so fast.

He also said that some days people would come in and just get a plastic cup of water from the cooler they have set out and they'd pick up a basket of popcorn, too, and then they'd go out to the music tent to listen to music there without buying anything to drink at all.

"That's some bullshit," I was like, and I said that they should at least say something about how they're not drinking that day to the bartender and slip a tip, and he didn't disagree, but he also said that the bar at that point was losing money on that, and it just wasn't cool.

He also said that he had heard that some (older) patron who always comes in for jazz music was telling people that he was sad, because that popcorn was his dinner at least three nights a week.

"And I'm not sure that's the healthiest thing," he was like. "I mean, at that point, man, if that's what you're really doing, just let me know, I'll buy you a sandwich."