Last weekend was fun. We had a birthday party for one of our regulars on Friday night, which was nice. But I had to fill in for one of our girls because she wanted to party that night, so I ended up leaving at 10, which was right when the party was starting to swing into a whole new crowd of folks.
Working Saturday morning was good for me, though. It was Dad’s birthday. He would’ve been 61. A lot of our regulars came in for recovery drinks. I was busy for the morning, and by the time noon rolled around, the rest of the shift flew by pretty quickly.
Instead of poker, my brother, his girlfriend, and me did a little bar crawl around our area to do a little research on other bars and play a little. I won a couple of 4-of-a-kinds, but between tipping the bartenders and eating, it went through pretty quickly. Then we stopped by the Rum Runner for a small pool tournament, meeting some of our poker regulars up there, and we all proceeded to get shots, and I proceeded to drink more beer, meaning I was dried the eff out the next morning.
Sunday I finally got to meet Jocelyn face to face. She and I became internet friends while I was at Clarion and she was at Clarion West. We’ve both grown up in Vegas and write stories based around this town, so we exchanged stories about our particular Clarion experiences. I wished she still lived here so I could be involved with more real critiquing! We had lunch at Zaba’s and had a great time hanging out. Sorry I was so out of it with the hangover.
Then there was last night. I was part of a mini-feature group for a pre-wedding party, and I was expecting to be there for awhile, because there were a bunch of people scheduled to read and the host said the owners of ReJavaNate were going to be open later to accomodate.
Little did most of the poets know that they’d double booked with 3 touring bands from the Northwest.
And a fist fight almost happened towards the end of the evening.
I could comment on the tension, I could comment on the poets, I could comment on the hipster element of the kids there… fuck, I could even comment about how some of the folks there were out past curfew, and there was one girl there with her mom who had to be at least 12-13. There at 10pm on a school night.
The only thing I’m going to say is that I was very disappointed in management’s lack of action during the situation, and the way the whole thing was handled. First, don’t double book. Second, when shit goes down, say something and don’t stand behind the bar, mouth agape. Throw people out. It’s your business, you can do whatever you want. If something like that happens at my bar, both parties are gone, regardless of the circumstances. You know why? Because there were new patrons there last night, spending money to support your establishment, and they won’t ever come back because you let people act up.
Anyway. It was good to see Andy Kenyon again.
