Tuesday, February 01, 2005
No Line. No Cover.
That was the rule. We were headed East down the ‘Red Mile’, a section of Calgary’s 17th Avenue that became popular during the Calgary Flames run to the 2004 Stanley Cup Playoffs.
We started at
First bar: Morgans. No good… there was a lineup..
Second bar: Shaken – A nice martini bar. Classy, not to expensive, a good place to take a date or some close friends. You’d feel a little awkward there without a table. We had some Coronas and talked of one day owning / running our own bars. After the coronas, we moved on to:
Watchmen Pub – A good quality bar/pub. There were 3 seats waiting for us at the bar. We sauntered up to them, sat down and ordered a pitcher of beer.
“Do you want me to run a tab for you?” the bartender asked.
“Nope.” I replied. “Just here for one, then we have to keep moving”
“On a pub crawl?” He asked.
I explained the nature of our plan; we were going to head East, hit every bar on
Classic Jacks – the waitress brought us a pitcher of beer. We invited her to join us on the adventure. She encouraged us to stay, and, as cute as she was, we were on a mission. She would have to join us or be left behind. She decided to keep her job. I offered to swing by at
“No thanks, I need my sleep.” She rejected my advances.
“Are you sure?” I offered. “Cause by the time you get off work I’ll probably be just outside humping a parked car.”
She laughed as she handed us our bill.
Mercury – In and out in 11 minutes and one double gin and Tonic each.
The Bungalow – 6 dollars for a gin and tonic? Then Anthony bought a drink for himself, another for Justin, and one for a random girl at the bar. His total? No, not a mortgage, only 8 dollars. Apparently if you buy the girl a drink at this bar, your price goes down. If you do that at most clubs, you pay substantially more.
Ming – the martini lounge where I got an even better tasting gin and tonic for only 4 dollars.
Lucky – I ordered a round of Shooters and hit on the girl behind the bar. ‘Amber’ was going back to school in the fall. I assumed she was taking her breasts with her as she proudly thrust them out at us as she spoke. She invited us to drop by for the super bowl party at the night club… Not likely. But she didn’t seem to mind that I spent the entire time staring at her breasts, Neither did I.
We stepped back onto the street and realized that whatever bar we went to next, would probably be where we finished the night. We headed back west to:
Morgans – The Focal point of the Red Mile. Jagermeister shots and we were on our way to the:
Metropolitan – Our last stop. This place is a well known pick-up joint. So I had to play a few hands of pick up. I was drunk enough to talk to anybody without fear.
I approached a couple of girls, and introduced myself.
“Sorry, I’m engaged” one of the girls answered back, waving her ring at me.
“Why are you apologizing?” I asked..
“Because you’re probably hoping to pick me up.” She said.
Well, possibly, I was, but if I wasn’t going to get shot down that quickly. “Oh, you have a ring. I'm sorry. I saw your friends’ first, it’s much bigger.”
“No it’s not! Mine’s bigger!” She exclaimed!
“Or her hands are smaller. Whatever. I’ll leave you two to talk about it.” I said as I re-joined my friends and ordered a couple more beer to stuff into my pockets. At last call those beer came in handy as we sat on the park bench outside and I offered random girls a ride home.
“You’re not actually driving, are you?” One girl asked.
“No, that would be crazy. We’ll take my boat.” I confidently assured her.
“Boat?” She exclaimed.
“Actually, it’s an ocean liner. But I don’t like to brag.” I answered as she walked back to join her friends.
At one point the two girls I had approached earlier walked out. They were having what appeared to be the start of a catfight….
My remaining conversations continued along those lines with the volume increasing a little each time until Rob showed up.
“HEY Everybody!! It’s Rob!! We’re Having After-hours DRINKS at his place!!”
“Dude, I have, like 3 beers in my fridge.” Rob said, not wanting to end up with a house full of random people and nothing to serve them.
“OK People. We can only take one” I announced to another random group of ladies. “I’m sorry, You’ll have to mud-wrestle for it.”
Anthony and Justin reminded me that there were already four of us and still only 3 beers in Rob’s fridge. And that they were on their way towards those beers, and about to leave me behind.
And that’s how the night ended, no ocean liners or mud wrestling.
But it wasn’t for lack of trying…. Next week, I’ll just have to start earlier and pay the cover charge.
