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 ...