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...

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...

Once in great while a song from the Forgotten Seventies will get played on the jukebox at the bar. But that is not typical: there is a reason those songs are from the Forgotten Seventies. The songs of the Forgotten Seventies are perhaps best exemplified by Fleetwood Mac. If Fleetwood Mac had been forgotten. Which it hasn't. On Classic Rock radio you can still hear "The Chain," "Go Your Own Way," "Gold Dust Woman," etc etc. But the music of the Forgotten Seventies is all of the music that led to Fleetwood Mac.  The shell-shock of the crash of the Hippie Dream put a lot of Sixties musicians in disarray. We know this because they now made bad albums. Or they died. So sensitive new singers tried to take their place. Pretty harmonies, like the sixties, but please: No Big Hippie Dreams. A few became big: the Eagles, the aforementioned Fleetwood Mac. But then there were the others. England Dan & John Ford Coley. Seals and Crofts. Capt...

The jukebox at the bar: sometimes it plays music, sometimes it functions as a nostalgia machine. These overlap, of course: but sometimes music is played for the ear, and sometimes it is played for the memory. Different ages play different nostalgia. Some of the younger kids will completely ignore the jukebox when some late fifties song comes on, maybe put on their headphones; others will shake their heads when Jim Morrison croons. Because Jim Morrison croons on the jukebox a lot: I have mentioned before the Jim Morrison fan who dreams of Père Lachaise but usually goes to Hawaii. The Sixties is obvious Nostalgia; there is not as much love for The Forgotten Seventies, although Seals & Crofts' "Summer Breeze" does get played once in awhile. A hazy song for hazy memories, with those harmonies that change at the end to the new chords and become something that feels a little disquieting, a little foreboding. Something that feels a little disquieting, a little foreb...

"Go big, go arty, go comical, go hardcore." For some reason this makes me think of the Eighties. Being at a friend's house, in the living room of which his parents had a framed Pat Nagel print over the magenta couch. Just a year before they had a Seventies couch. Earth Tones. They now had an Eighties couch. Time Magazine's Man of the Year for 1982 was "The Computer." That could've been on the glass coffee table. As for hardcore: Wild boys fallen far from glory Reckless and so hungered On the razors edge you trail Because there's murder by the roadside In a sore afraid new world They tried to break us  Looks like they'll try again Wild boys (wild boys) never lose it Wild boys (wild boys) never chose this way Wild boys (wild boys) never close your eyes Wild boys always shine Go big, go arty, go comical, go hardcore: sometimes Duran Duran went four-for-four. -jj