bar hopping for bottom-feeders

it was a long-anticipated weekend... and now i don't think n. will ever be seen with me in public ever again. ever.

it's not that i had high expectations for the bars on southport. in fact, when offering up our watering hole options i did, in fact, describe them as "small non-descript irish bar" and "big non-desccript irish bar." killing time in a smoky, crowded, aging frat boy bar woulnd't be so bad if the aging frat boys weren't still so obviously younger than us... and the musical mantra of this kind of establishment wasn't the non-descript folky irsh late 90s cover band. when it comes to lofty music taste i am, obviously, all talk. i may appreciate indie rock, but i'm not exactly a believer. and i just don't that sad bastard music is ever the right answer (for that you can listen to the fray or coldplay or U2- not nearly as painful). so it was frankly awful, but at least it was funny and we could sing along - or at least m and i thought so. n. was too busy trying to teleport himself back to wicker park, and the clientele was just to young to find any nostalgic value in "closer to fine."

then it was on to the buffy sing-a-long. in the back of my head, i always knew it would be a geek infested circus, and had the presence of mind to buy tickets ahead - a move without which i wouldn't even have been able to stand in the line that wrapped all the way around the block. i'd envisioned a small throng of goth kids, some sci fi dweebs, and handful of out-of-place stragglers like us - not the hoards of people, who honestly looked pretty normal... until we got inside. standing outside with their coats and confirmation numbers i really thought these people looked like garden-variety yuppies, but once we were all settled inside and the show started i realized that they were exactly the kind of vampire-obsessed weirdos i'd dreaded, masquerading as normal people.

i spent saturday recovering from my late-night outing. later i went to an unusually crowded avenue tavern to watch the saints win their first ever playoff game, and then found myself back on southport, at a medium-sized nondescript irish bar (its black facade with gold lettering not being at all helpful in distinguishing it from every other bar on the block). there were, of course, aging frat boys, and there was, of course, a non-descript folky irish late 90s cover band. and that's where i drew the line - let 'em bastardize dave matthews, i don't care, but "don't you forget about me" is off limits.