Before leaving for break I was thinking about cool, trendy cities on the East coast that begin with the letter “M.” After eliminating Macon, GA (because it’s about as cool as Providence, RI), I was left with Middletown and Miami. I stopped in sunny south Florida for three days to compare the two metropolises before heading to South America for cultural enrichment (and advantageous exchange rates).
I know some of you idiots went to Mexico to soak up some rays and slay some dragons, while others of you feared for your lives as you sat for six days at a resort with white sandy beaches on a politically tumultuous island in the Caribbean. And some of you went to Europe to visit a significant other who (for some strange reason) wasn’t as nice as he/she/ze usually is because of his/her/ze’s exposure to the splendors of sexualized society. Lastly, too many of you sat on your couches or beanbags (I don’t know how your homes are furnished) and watched Tom Cruise glorify (and demonstrate that social mobility is achievable through) bartending in 1988’s “Cocktail.” Although entertaining, the movie leaves me with a few questions: does spinning the bottles and glasses make the drinks taste better? What’s a redeye? Isn’t Tom Cruise, like, the best poet ever? And where have all the acrobatic, bottle-twirling bartenders gone?
I didn’t see any in Miami, but they could be in Middletown. Unfortunately, we’ll never know because we don’t go to Eli Cannon’s to sample microbrews or Nikita’s to work some middle aged mothers of four. We don’t go to 386 because it was renamed Fudd’s and that sounds lame (“Hey, lets go to Fudd’s”), and we don’t cross the river to go to peasant bars in Portland because they’re for peasants. We don’t go to Hartford for fear of being mistaken for Trinity students and then being held ransom and/or getting verbally, physically, or sexually assaulted. You don’t go to Valentino’s because you don’t know that there’s a strip club on Court St., but I do… and I do. We don’t go to Vinnie’s Jump and Jive because they don’t serve booze and we don’t go to the roller-rink because it’s secretly a meth lab and never open. And we don’t go to Forbidden City or Lucé because your average Wes student isn’t cool with spending that much (cream) cheese on a bottle of Bud heavy.
I can’t stand hearing people obnoxiously shout across the campus center, “Are you going to bar night?” or the New Englanders rhetorically asking, “Bahs Kehd?” (because they know the answer is always “yeah guy, fact”). Shut up! We don’t have a bar night. We don’t go to a huge party school where a large portion of the student body gets wicked pissah on Wednesday nights. It’s just two scenes. Like lemmings, we file into either The Gatekeeper or Hair of the Dog (depending on the snugness of your denim or your general outlook on life).
You don’t go to (pubic) Hair of the Dog or The Gatekeeper (not Rick Moranis in Ghostbusters) because they’re nice, fun bars. You go because Wednesday is just another night to try to get laid…at least that’s why I go. It’s not a free for all of booze either. At the typical DKE party, every one of the 30,000 jello shots and 20 kegs are consumed. However, the shot-maiden at Hair of the Dog has more trouble selling a shot than Johnnie Cochran did getting his neighbors to treat him like a human being. Not one person can honestly say that he/she/ze goes because of the ambiance, the vast beer selection, or the bartender’s ability to make one hell of a cocktail.
The jukeboxes at Hair of the Dog and Gatekeeper sure can play some real zinger—rom Eddie Money and Journey to Madonna and Metallica. Over break, the DJ’s of Miami reintroduced me to hip-hop, informing me that 50 cent has deflated and is now a worthless, good for nothing, lazy, unpunctual, un-buoyant artist. I was also reminded that Big Pimpin’ involves spending cheese, and that Remy Martin, in addition to being a cognac, is one belligerent woman.
Sure I enjoyed dancing with a 5’11¾“ model under the stars at a beachfront bar on South Beach, casually chatting about prime tanning hours and German automobiles, but I would have rather been at the Gatepeeper, sandwiched in between hipsters and getting spit on by hobos while trying to have a civilized conversation about 16mm filmmaking or fifteenth century French literature. Or if I wanted to have a physical workout, I could have gone to Snare of the Dog and walked around the bar for hours in search of someone interesting to talk to, deviating from the typical jargon of ”come here often“ or ”wanna make like your legs and split?“
As R. Kelly suggests, ”after the party it’s the hotel lobby,“ but the Middletown Inn doesn’t permit non-guests to loiter at 1 a.m. and the Wesley Inn is usually full of ”ladies of the evening.“ Unable to obey the statutory rapist of rap, many of you retreat to a crowded wood-frame house and fight for beer with eighty other idiots and subconsciously discuss your monotonous collegiate careers, which sounds just as enthralling as watching a game of hacky sack.
Maybe Middletown can be just as fun as Miami; maybe I’m crazy. But the social scene doesn’t depend on the bars, it’s determined by you losers, the people.
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