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| Gator's Rants Seabreeze News articles BarTalk columns Other Stories Bartalk April 15, 2008 “Suburban” Bars About
once every 3 or 4 months some friend calls me up and says, "Hey,
[mutual friend] is having [some kind of party] tonight at [yuppie bar]."TGIFridays, Bennigan's, Hooters Chili's, Applebee's – aren't they all pretty much the same place? Sure they are. They're all corporate chain restaurants that desperately want you to believe that they're just an old-fashioned neighborhood bar & grill. If somebody blindfolded you and took you into one of them and then took the blindfold off and told you to tell them where you are, you'd probably be clueless. They all have the same random knick-knacks pasted to the wall, they're all staffed by the same college kids who won't be there when you go back in six months and they all serve the same watered-down overpriced drinks to a crowd of amateur drinkers. No real boozehound would be caught dead in there. What’s most wrong is that they make their employees pretend to be cheerful idiots. So you have some psychotic waitress chick repeatedly asking “Is everything awesome?” until you just want to fucking scream. And they make them wear outfits with “flair” and bling on them. Sorry, but I don’t get my balls kicked in all day at work, so I don’t need servers and bartenders to kiss my ass when I’m boozin it up. It doesn’t make me feel like more of a man to have some teenager pretending to be a happy camper when the poor kid would just as soon tell me to go fuck myself. And there, dear readers, is the main difference between a corporate bar and a neighborhood bar. A corporate bar forces their employees to kiss the asses of the customers. A neighborhood bar is more democratic, more American. The bartender at your local bar looks at you as an equal. He or she will not put up with your condescending yuppie attitude. You can’t lord it over them. Corporate bars are the exact opposite. Their greed has prevailed over common sense. Their employees will be fired if they even dare to tell you you’re an arrogant bastard and you need to shut the fuck up. And the yuppie bars have found their niche – people who are so psychologically insecure that they must grind others beneath their feet in order to feel that they are worth something. In a corporate bar, bullshit artists of both genders display their wares. It’s a great place to meet people who do paperwork for a living, and sales people and con artists of every possible description. In fact, people who create things – like mechanics and fabricators – will scarcely be seen there – unless they’re out on a date with some pretentious bitch or attending some lame-ass function they couldn’t get out of. Try spreading your line of BS at the local bar here in Texas, and you’ll likely get a smackdown – verbal or otherwise. We are here to drink, which is a serious thing, and we cannot be distracted by your incessant pandering. Not all of these amateur drinking establishments are corporate chains. Everybody has a “great bar idea”, and sometimes you’ll see a new club open in which the owner is trying to create their own version of a corporate bar. Most of them fail – except when they are located in tourist traps. Tourists are “new in town” and they are going to show up wherever they can find drinks. Once they know their way around, however, they’ll start going to the bars “where the locals hang out”. I cannot count how many people have told me over the years that they planned for their bar to be “Like Cheers on TV, but a little more upscale.” Let me assure you of several things: Cheers on TV was a neighborhood bar. There were no yuppies who hung around there except for one – Diane – and nobody liked that pretentious bitch. There is no such thing as a yuppie Cheers. It’s a contradiction in terms. Like jumbo shrimp or Naval intelligence. The corporate bars try to make it seem like they are the cozy neighborhood bar & grill. The cozy neighborhood bar & grill sometimes tries to impersonate the corporate bars. It’s uncanny and inexplicable. If you’re going out to drink, or to listen to music, or to meet chicks, or to shoot pool, or to sing karaoke, you’ll have much more fun at the local bar that you will at any of the mall-bars. However, the corporate bars are a safe refuge for “metrosexuals” - guys who wear lots of cologne and hair gel, khakis, dress sneakers, and wax away their body hair. And the drinks are weak enough and expensive enough that you probably won’t get buzzed – in fact many of them have a computer program that tells them when to stop serving you! Our honorable, drunken ancestors probably turn over in their graves at the realization that most of us are now all drinking the exact same low-carb beer beneath giant fake boomerangs and stuffed kangaroos or trying to choose from dozens of candy flavored martinis in a bar whose neon lights spell out cute little market-tested New Orleans-flavored slogans, casting their soft false light through the windows to the miles of parking lot outside its convenient shopping mall location. This country is so overrun with faceless, corporate yuppie bars, patronized by soulless pod-people, it can really sap your will to go out, get fucked up and piss away yet another night of your miserable life. A yuppie chick recently messaged me on her Bluetooth from her Hummer: “What have you got against yuppies – at least we have goals and ambition, instead of just drinking and fishing and fighting all the time!” My answer: “The answer is too much and not enough. Too much latte, not enough whiskey. Too much talking, not enough kicking ass; too much watching sports, not enough participating; Too much driving that 4WD on paved roads, not enough muddin’; Too much trying to hook up online, not enough face-to-face flirting; Too much lovemaking, not enough wild kinky sex; Too much relating to your kids, not enough ass-whuppins; Too much polyester, not enough cotton; Too much talking, not enough listening; Too much business, not enough pleasure.” Every now and then, a lost yuppie will accidentally stumble into one of the bars I frequent – places where they pour a righteous drink and wear no uniforms. When this occurs on my watch, I like to buy them a shot of whiskey. Then another. Then one more. (they wouldn’t refuse to drink with a Navy man would they?) Then I wait for them to fall down or to slide gracefully to the floor. I know it’s mean. |
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