From Dead To Slow
Kevin quoted an old bartender friend of his the other night saying, “A bartender makes his money in the last hour of the night.” Thank God for that last hour, because the first nine pretty much sucked. After ten days of eighty degree weather, rain finally hit Los Angeles. Of course, I had low expectations, since Angelenos tend to shy away from humidity higher than fifteen percent. On the bright side, there weren’t any douche bags, at least on the O’ Brien’s side.
There were six people in the bar when I came on. It wasn’t until six o’ clock that I served a new customer. Luckily, those in the bar were very generous, making happy hour almost average. I need to clarify when I said that there weren’t any douche bags. I don’t consider homeless people to be douche bags, but there was one annoying one. First of all, I hate homeless people. I know it isn’t politically correct to say, but living in Santa Monica I am constantly inundated with these pan handlers. Alas, the homeless problem can only be solved with housing and until that moment comes, I’m not gonna give them cigarettes or spare change. At about seven, one of the unwashed ventured on to the patio asking me for a cigarette, I responded politely, “No.” He kept asking and I kept repeating until I said, “Please leave.” This is when he told me, “Fleetwood Mac is coming to town and Stevie Nicks is my mom, so you’re in trouble.” This dirt bag was straight up crazy. I might change my definition, but I feel that one needs to at least be a couch surfer to be a douche bag.
Kevin and Aoife came on and it was pretty dead. One of our servers was under the weather so that meant more people coming to the bar. Thank God for swollen salivary glands. It’s funny how other people perceive the bar as being busy. I had two different customers say, “It’s a great night.” I had to correct them. It would’ve been a great Thursday, but it was a below average Friday. In fact, I was having a smoke with one of them, when they made the comment. I informed them that I wouldn’t be blackening my lungs at midnight if it were a “great night.” A couple of friends of mine from New York, Fred Gillen and Matt Turk, are on tour and they stopped by the bar. I saw them play Thursday night and they were amazing. If you want to support great independent musicians, click on Gillen and Turk. Speaking of great music, The Automatics played. And, although, they don’t bring much of a crowd, it’s a treat to hear them play the entire album of The Who’s Tommy.
We were finishing up when Gator remarked how after the police showed up last Friday and Saturday at Main, it was a victory that there was no police action tonight. Ten minutes later, I got a text from Gator saying, “I spoke too soon.” I went outside and saw the flashing lights. Turns out one of the bouncers took a drink from a customer while closing up and the customer sucker punched him in the back of the head. He was taken to jail and the bouncer will press charges. I’m thinking of putting up one of those signs that factories have for number of accident free days, except this one will say, “____ Days Since Police Have Shown Up.” We are trying to nip this in the bud before it becomes a problem. As of now, we have security and enforce a dress code, but when you have a hot blonde chick breaking a bottle on another woman’s head, one has to wonder if there isn’t something in the ether that is causing evolution to work in reverse.
I know Saturday will be a far better night. There’s a big rugby party right when I start my shift. There’s supposed to be a hundred people and, as usual, a busy bar feeds on itself. Hopefully, this momentum will carry on through the night, because it can’t be worse than Friday which went from dead to slow.
