There was a guy who used to come to the bar on a fairly frequent basis; this coincided with when he lost his job. Some people, when they lose their jobs, gravitate towards the bar. I assume the reasons are pretty self-explanatory. If an explanation is needed, then: alcohol. He said he lost his job because of a woman at his work: she had it in for him. He never quite explained why she had it in for him -- details are often hazy when people don't want to go into detail. The key was she had it in for him: that's where it all started, although it obviously started before that. She complained about him to their company's HR woman. He said it started as a misunderstanding, but that then the woman just began to out-and-out lie about him. Which may indeed be something that someone who has it in for you does; again, details were hazy. He always made a point that his company's HR person was a woman, though:  I assume his reasons are pretty self-explanatory. If an explana...

I have previously mentioned the Guy Who Stares At Women's Asses Too Long, and --  for  a quick recap --  here is his most distinguishing characteristic: He Stares At Women's Asses Too Long. I had said he was creepy, but did not seem particularly threatening. I'm not sure if I fully stand behind that statement anymore. While he doesn't have full Serial Killer Vibe, it seems like a mask is slipping, and that he doesn't really care if it is. The Woman With The Smart Wardrobe caught him staring at her ass a few days ago, and told him to Fuck Off. As I have said before about her, she is not afraid to say such things. He has stared at her ass before, of course, but this time she responded. Maybe the effect had been cumulative; maybe she has had a change of patience about such things. Or maybe she has seen the mask slipping, too, and was firing a warning shot: she is perceptive, along with being a smart dresser. With a nice ass. Sorry, but true is true. Many men live i...

There is a man who comes by the bar infrequently; mid-sixties, keeps to himself. I have spoken with him a few times, but he is not the talkative kind. Polite, short sentences, then back to reading his book. He grew up in the Soviet Union, then came to America after the USSR dissolved back into being Russia. I would love to hear his stories, but, as I said, he doesn't talk much. He listens, though, and it is very interesting to watch him listen. This is Seattle, and Seattle is Proudly Progressive: when people talk politics they often talk about how it really isn't Progressive enough. The Big Ideas are held back. By the Republicans, by Big Business, by the Usual Suspects with the Usual Reasons: Greed, and, well, greed, mostly. Sometimes he listens to these conversations: sometimes he arches an eyebrow slightly, sometimes an almost imperceptible shake of the head. I don't know if such small gestures come from a man who is naturally quiet, or if growing up in the S...

The Girl With The Tattoos And The Streaked Hair From A Bottle hasn't been at the bar lately. I don't think it's because she found a job: we would've heard the good news. She would've come in to celebrate. No, I think it is probably the lack of money that comes from being out of work. Maybe depression, too. A lack of money and depression often are travel partners. And they sleep on your couch. As I had mentioned previously, she quit her last job because her ex-boss was pressuring her to have sex with him. The Woman With The Smart Wardrobe has mentioned before that she has had bosses making coarse invitations to her; she is the type to tell someone firmly to Fuck Off. She does not see a need for candy-coating, which is refreshing: it can't always be candy. Of course, when you work in a job with a Human Resources Department there are options in handling such situations: there is back-up, there is a threat to the assholes. Bars generally don't have HR D...

The City Employee With The Weird Grin sees himself as an elite. Sure, he just has a mid-level job with the City, but he is in the Clubhouse. He has seen Important People at the elevators, he has listened to Important People talk Important Things while waiting in line for coffee beverages. They might have nodded at him once or twice. I have used in reference to him the phrase Cut-and-Paste Nation, and he is Cut-and-Paste smart. He has read about that thing you are talking about, he will send you a link. He might not know much about that other thing you are talking about, but he has memes about it on his phone, so he gets the gist. I would think that he would be frequenting a bar with more status, one Downtown instead of on the Ave, one more in line with his self-regard. Of course, maybe he has tried that already, and found that the Important People that talk Important Things have no need to talk to him. This is just a guess. So he positions himself as an elite at a bar that...

It happens in politics, it happens in families, it happens in the workplace, so -- of course -- it happens at the bar: people who were once close turn on each other. And, like in all of those places, it makes the people close to them uncomfortable. Uncomfortable with easy access to an alcoholic beverage, yes, but still: uncomfortable. Sometimes it is politics, sometimes a sense of betrayal. Sometimes a principle, sometimes unrequited love. Some causes seem rational, some seem silly, but that doesn't really matter. If the people involved are taking it that seriously, then the needle is in the red. And the needle stays in the red, because no mechanic wants to take on that shit. A lot of people think that, somehow, the bartender can fix these things. Because bartenders are Magic. They turn your money into alcohol, which is always a good trick. But unless one of the Red Needle People is a lousy customer, then there is not much he or she can do: the bartender is paid to serve c...

There is an Ave Casualty that is on her second round on the street. Years ago she would frequent the bar, play pool, socialize. A very pretty young woman, she was outgoing, with a quick smile. Drama did not seem to circle her, like it does some young women. Drama chases some women; some invite it. For her it seemed to keep a respectable distance. Then she stopped coming inside the bar as much, but you would still see her on the street, outside, passing by. She had fallen in love with a Heroin Kid. Maybe she thought she could save him, I don't know. But of course it went the other way, like it usually does: she began to get thin, her eyes became dull, distant. Soon the quickest way to see her was to wander by the Heroin Kids in front of the Sporting Goods store, hoping for spare change from the random pedestrians who hadn't seen all of this before. Then she disappeared. Which often meant an overdose. However, the word was she left to go back home to the Midwest, to fami...

A few years back there was a kid on the Ave that I called the Dylan Kid. He dressed in vintage clothes to wear things that look like Bob Dylan might've worn, back in the day. He had the electric howl of hair, only red. And the sunglasses. And the aloof pose: he obviously studied hard at studied cool. Like Madonna and the British accent she sometimes has. He would play his acoustic guitar a few storefronts down from the bar, and sing his songs, songs that sounded like Dylan songs from back in the day. Back in the day was back again, at least for him. I remember him being pretty good, if not particularly original. But then they said that about Dylan too, early on. For awhile the Music Industry kept trying to find the New Bob Dylan: Bruce Springsteen was one of those so anointed. By the New Dylan they meant pretty much the Young Dylan, or at least up to, then stopping, at That Christian Thing.  Maybe there were a lot of New Dylans that were doing That Christian Thing, and...

At the bar there is a younger guy who fancies himself a poet. Now, he doesn't call himself a poet -- it sounds presumptive and pretentious to describe one's self that way, most likely --but he says he writes poems. I guess not all who plumb are plumbers, I don't know. He sits in a booth with a beer and writes in his notebook, scribbles things out, writes again. Sometimes he appears mildly anguished, which I can imagine poets looking like: there is a word, the perfect word, but it just won't come to mind.  Words can be tricky: they have different associations for different people, and you may be trying to play off of the different associations to achieve a deeper meaning. Or perhaps you're just trying to find the best word that conceivably rhymes. It probably sucks when you start with what you consider the perfect word, but then no other good word rhymes with it. Maybe Cole Porter already used up all of the good rhymes. And he wasn't even a poet. But...

The college girls who come to the bar: they love their social media. Sure, there are regulars who use social media, but Not Like That. Not Like That basically meaning like This: snapshots and film clips and texting, seemingly every action, posted. Video or it doesn't exist. Video or they don't exist. In the evenings the college boys hang around the college girls, and the college girls hang out with each other and their phones. They make faces for one another, they pose, a shimmy here and there; they are no doubt aware that the college boys are watching, but the boys are mostly left as subscribers to the live feed: the girls just want to have fun. And it isn't fun anymore if you're not showing yourself having fun to your friends. So if a college girl is playing pool, one of her friends films it. They take photos of the empty glasses they have amassed on the table. They look at each others' phones, to see what each other is doing. They document their evening,...

Marijuana is now legal in Seattle. Some of the regulars smoked weed before it was legal, of course; the difference now is that no one needs to hide it. Now people come into the bar smelling strongly of the no-longer-illicit weed. They are almost prideful of the smell: they have been smoking the Good Stuff. I said the difference now is that no one needs to hide it. But there is another difference: the legal stuff is stronger. More potent. Growers are working diligently on this, because there is open competition. Now it is like the proliferation of meticulous craft beers: you are aiming for a choosy market. People care about where the hops come from, say: they are discerning. It is no longer Sixties Damage Grass, or Forgotten Seventies pot, or even Eighties Without Hats weed. It is no longer what just happens to be available from shady guys on the Ave. It is like the steroids era in baseball: everyone wants the stuff that lets you hit seventy home runs. Everyone wants to slowly ...

The Beatles are great fodder for conspiracy theories, and conspiracy theories are great fodder for the bar. If it happened in the Sixties, and it was a negative thing, there was probably a conspiracy behind it.  JFK, RFK, MLK: the idea of it being just one crazy loser seems too small for some people to accept. The accepted thing is that the Government is big enough to do conspiracies, especially the CIA. The Military Complex. Big Business. The Mafia are good, too. You would think the Soviet Union was big enough, but no one seems to blame them for anything, even Lee Harvey Oswald, who actually lived there. The Beatles had Paul Is Dead, of course. Which really was kind of a conspiracy, after all: the Beatles planned it, instigated by their manager. McCartney admitted this in an interview a few years back, if you wish to look up the details. The sound engineer Alan Parsons stumbled across the "Turn me on, dead man" phrase that sounded plausibly like "Number Nine, Numbe...

I was at the bar recently, and had a conversation regarding Star Trek with the Retired Black Curmudgeon. Star Trek is one of the things he likes to talk about: he will take off his earphones for a conversation with that one. Sometimes order another glass of wine to settle in. I enjoyed the original Star Trek; despised The Next Generation, never watched the others. I understand what they did with The Next Generation: they switched the main two characters. Kirk, the Man of Action, was the Leader; Spock, the Man of Reason, was the second-in command. So they switched it around: the Spock character -- Picard -- became the Leader, and the Man of Action became the Second Guy. To further the difference between the two shows they got a guy for the Next Generation's Man of Action who had no charisma. The original Star Trek also had Bones, Scotty, Sulu, Chekov: Next Generation had a kid, a robot and a blind guy. Bones, Scotty, Sulu, Chekov: they had names because they were characters...

At the bar there are several guys of a type: we will call them the Nice Enough Guy Who Won't Stop Talking. He is pleasant; maybe a little ragged, maybe nicely dressed: there isn't a specific type for this type. Other than the fact that, if you engage him in a pleasantry he will now begin talking with you. And he won't stop talking. Like I said, he is a Nice Enough Guy: he is not like some of the Ragged Crazies outside who don't stop talking because the Voices In Their Head don't stop talking. And they are not pretending it is conversation: it is decidedly a monologue, if not a particularly coherent one. The Nice Enough Guy Who Won't Stop Talking, though: he thinks you are now having a conversation. Of which your part is to nod in agreement and occasionally say 'Yeah' or 'That sucks.' Depending on what he is going on about. It could be a particular sports player he is talking about -- a guy who isn't as good as everyone thinks he ...

Sometimes a line comes to me, and I don't even know if I actually agree with it or not. But the thought came. So. Some people view the Sixties like some communists view Communism: the Real Sixties haven't even been tried yet. -james james

At the bar there was a regular who fought in Vietnam. Long black hair, even at his age, worn in a ponytail; his girlfriend would occasionally braid it, before she went batshit crazy and disappeared. Rumors: there were rumors. He worked as a chef at a nearby mission, and was fighting a long battle with leukemia, which he lost two years ago, after having moved to Florida to be near family. He blamed Agent Orange for his disease. I have no idea if that was true or not, but it was his story, and he was entitled to tell it his way. He had a dry sense of humor, and would often shake his head at the foibles of the other regulars. Of course he had his own seat at the bar, at the corner. There are several older regulars at the bar who have strong opinions on Vietnam, and Richard Nixon. They didn't fight in the war -- they were children at the time. But the legacy of that period was ingrained in them: they knew they would have protested Nixon and the War if only they were old enough...

One of the nice things about the Ave during the Holidays: it doesn't change all that much. It's cold, so the Heroin Kids aren't out as much, which is nice. Still, if you are on the street having a cigarette you will still be asked for spare cigarettes or paper money, just like always. The Ragged Crazies are still there; their mumbled spiels and shouted non sequitirs usually don't involve anything about Christmas -- the voices in their heads are on their own calendar, which might have a thousand days, or maybe only one. One of the things that doesn't change much: shoppers. Not a lot of people go Christmas shopping on the Ave. The malls and downtown and University Village are jammed like a Tokyo subway train, but the Ave is not really a shopping destination. Unless you buy your Christmas gifts at the drug store. Or Seven-Eleven. Or the Retro Gaming shop. The University Bookstore gets crowded -- books and UW sweatshirts are easy gifts -- but otherwise, well: t...

On the bar there are the regular bar accoutrements: clear plastic paper napkin holder, black plastic holder of straws, stacks of coasters, a few rubber mats for the bartender to set down drinks. Maybe the clear and black plastic holders are different in the fancier bars; maybe they are ceramic, or glass, or just plastic with a marble pattern. I don't know: I don't often frequent fancy bars. I don't like my drinks to have what amounts to an eight-dollar ambiance charge. Down at one end of the bar is a black plastic holder of straws, but instead of straws it holds a collection of cheap grey plastic ballpoint pens. Sometimes one is used for a crossword puzzle; a surprising number of people at the bar do crossword puzzles on a regular basis. But the main purpose of the cheap grey plastic ballpoint pens is to write down a name and phone number. Sure, it is the era of the cell phone, but still people write down numbers, often on a paper cocktail napkin. You could enter t...