Sunday, January 18, 2009

Wanted: A Good Bar


Wyatt and I sometimes like to play dominoes when we drink in public. This is a tradition we started in New York on our honeymoon. That bar was ideal because there were no TVs in it and there was no cigarette smoke. You could go onto the balcony outside to smoke in the searing cold if you wanted, and the view of Manhattan was worth the frostbite. Now I know we can't have a view of Manhattan in Greensboro but I it would be nice if we could have at least one cool bar where you could play dominoes without having six different TVs strobing at you.

A cool bar, in my opinion, provides people with a comfortable setting for getting out of the house. That's why I don't like a bunch of TVs there: I could fucking watch TV at home. TVs are distracting. They suck you out of conversations. You try to ignore it, but you see movement out of the corner of your eye and your sentence gets derailed, usually by something stupid like the latest Old Spice commercial. I don't like having to fight attention battles like that.

The ideal bar would be a no-smoking venue. I know that's a lot to ask but one smoker takes up a lot of room.

Okay so Saturday we went to a bar for beer and wings and to play dominoes. The bartender saw us with them and told Wyatt that it's illegal to play card, domino, or dice games in bars/restaurants. Holy shit, I didn't know that. The bartender said we could go ahead and do it but that if cops or the owner walked in he'd have to come over and tell us to stop. Which was nice of him - Thanks dude. But then Wyatt proceeded to beat me at the game and I was quite bitter and wished we had left the damn things at home.

Wyatt and I surmised the reason it's illegal to play games like dominoes and so forth in public places is because people might gamble. But whenever I've seen people gambling in this town it was with video poker machines.

If things keep on like this people are going to forget what it was like to sit face to face and talk to each other. They're going to stop living their lives like those lives are important, all because they're so wrapped up in watching other people live on TV, and screens will be the only thing anybody knows what to do with.

Anybody know what kind of birds those are?

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

All the great bars that ever opened in Greensboro were closed by the City just so we'd have nothing but the crap holes we have left.

Captain Smack said...

I am SOOO with you on the TV's in bars thing. And restaurants, too. People need to be constantly brainwashed these days. What's even worse is that half of it is commercials for pharmaceuticals, and not even the good pharmaceuticals.

verona said...

The only time I love a TV is when I've got to babysit kids inside for more than an hour or so. It's awful and I'm so against kids and TV, but when I'm the one in charge of kid supervision a movie on the TV saves my life.