The Roller Derby Bar Crawl
Saturday night I was invited by the roller derby league I had just joined to go on a bar crawl with them at Seaside Heights. However, I had already promised Matthew I would hang with him, being I blew him off that Wednesday. I had thought about going on the bar crawl for an hour or two, dragging my laptop along, but fortunately the dilemma is solved when Matthews rings me on my mobile, telling me not to come down because the owner of the bar he's gigging at is in a bad mood.
So off I go to Seaside Heights, pointing Stephanie down Route 18 in the twilight. A white car zooms past me in the left lane, with some idiot leaning halfway out the passenger side window. Yeah, that's an accident waiting to happen.
I must have been a very good girl this week, for karma rewards me for not only finding a parking space a mere half block away from the boardwalk, but there's also slightly under four hours on the meter.
Since this is a bar crawl, we're starting on the eastern end of the boardwalk, working our way west. It takes me a little under ten minutes to make my way down, the night cool, the game vendors calling out for me to play some water balloon game. No thanks, dude. I dodge into the easternmost bar, looking for my new teammates.
"CYNTHIAAAAA!!!!" a girl with two-layered hair greets me. I have a feeling she's going to be making a lot of appearances in this blog...let's call her Lillian. "Cynthia, you ARE going to be drinking tonight, right?"
"Um, sure, starting at the next bar. I'm driving," I offer meekly. Lillian offers me her place to crash if needed; it's only 30 minutes away, but I point out that it would still involve driving and a DUI is something I really do not need. At this point, another teammate mentions that someone couldn't join us tonight because "she so Paris Hilton." I'll let you figure out what that means.
Meanwhile, after I greet the others, I remember that I didn't have dinner tonight, so I grab a few fliers to attempt to recruit and walk across to the french fry stand. My one and only attempt to get two girls to join the league is answered by a look as if I told them the benefits of joining the Manson Family.
"Yeah, you'll get that a lot," Lillian says. To switch topics, she asks if I'm still planning to move to West Palm Beach. I tell her yes, then that Jimmy was surprised when I told him my interest in roller derby. (More on that in an entry or two.) "Roller derby breaks up a lot of relationships," she says.
"Good," I said, offering her my fries. "Maybe this will speed up the process."
The group taking some kind of shape, it's time to head to Bar #2. This place is a definite dive, but it holds many fond memories for me, as this was the bar where Jimmy and I would often end up at. Because I'm still munching on my fries, I don't feel like getting a beer just yet. I order a diet coke, which tastes powdery.
"Cynthiaaaaa," mock-admonishes Lillian, who is by now nursing a strong buzz. "Why aren't you drinking yet?"
"Next bar I get a beer, I promise."
"You'd better."
The sign outside says "DJ Dance Party", and I hear a clever beatmatching of 311 into Panic! at the Disco, but there's no actual DJ in sight. Maybe he was so ugly they hid him in the basement. Or, more likely, the place is so cheap they're just running an Ipod in the back. Hell, if their diet coke is tasting powdery, I put nothing past them.
Outside, two college-age guys wearing oversize sombreros and fake beards are teasing kids by using the old dollar-on-a-string trick. This gets much admonishment from the team, and demands to give one of the kids a dollar anyway. I don't believe they did.
Off to the next bar we go. Bar #3 is much cleaner than Bar #2. I keep my promise to Lillian and get a Corona, which would turn out to be the only alcohol I consume all night. The DJ--a live one this time--is fairly terrible (Dude, I can hear the beats matching but you're not in the booth), but at least he gives us a shout-out that we're in the house. Lillian and I get into a brief discussion about Playboy and how both of us would kill to be in it. I show her my black and pink Playboy pseudo-Chucks; she's impressed, especially when I tell her I brought them on the boardwalk a few years back.
Nearby, a family of bennies spots one of our team members, an adorable punkette whose bright red and black hair has been shaped into a mohawk. Apparently, none of them have ever seen a Real Live Punk Rocker before, because they ask her if they can take a picture with her. She happily obliges.
I believe everyone except me is on the path to getting wasted at this point. This is pretty much confirmed when I am in the restroom (which is much cleaner than the one at the previous bar), and several girls are shouting "FUCK (previous team they're no longer associated with)!! FUCK THEM!!"
Onward we go to Bar #4. This would be the rowdiest bar we go into, and the peak of the night. This is also the only bar we hit with a live band playing; fortunately they aren't too bad. They're doing a decent job playing funked-up 70s disco hits. Somebody wins--or steals, whichever--a Stewie doll. Because I am the most sober member of the group, I have somehow become Stewie's babysitter. I hide with Stewie at a back table, which is a good excuse for not ordering anything. Everyone else orders Bud Light bottles because Bud Light is apparently the sponsor of tonight's band. A guy dressed in a Bud Light promotional shirt (what, no Bud Light girls?) is treating us to lame giveaways. Somehow, I end up with a Bud Light visor.
On to Bar #5 we go. By this time, we had picked up a couple of guys to join our entourage, none hot, but that's fine by me. One of them becomes friendly with me, introduces himself as Andy. His friend keeps mentioning his nipples that he just got pierced today. "Dude, thanks for sharing," I said.
The bouncer checks my birthdate closely. "Good for you," he says. Moment of the night. The DJ is playing the Meat Loaf classic, "Paradise By The Dashboard Light" as we walk in. For some reason, he chooses to cut it off about 2/3 of the way through to segue in to Nirvana. Ugh.
Since everybody else is wasted, I get Andy to buy me a Shirley Temple, so it appears to Lillian I'm drinking something that's not diet coke. The bartenders here not only all look alike--they're all wearing horn-rimmed glasses with their hair in buns--they also provide the worst service. Maybe 10 minutes go by before Andy finally gets noticed. It's got to be the uniforms.
Drinks in hand, I test derby names out on him. I throw him Mandy Morgue--the name I was leaning toward. "Morgue? What's that supposed to mean?" he asks.
"Morgue. As in, the place where you send dead people."
"Yeah, I like that." I test Krystine Sixteen on him. Not so much. I wander over to the DJ booth, peer over to look at his equipment.
"Dude, you have two Pioneer CDJ-1000 turntables and a Numark mixer. What is wrong with this picture?"
He answers, "The Pioneer mixers are expensive."
"You should get a Behringer," I tell him, "That's what I use."
"Nah, I don't like Behringer. The crossfader gets trashed too fast." He turns his attention to selecting his next track. It's time to go to the next bar.
There's a brief argument on where to head for Bar #6. The girls want to skip ahead to the westernmost bar, but Andy insists since it's a bar crawl, we have to go to each and every one, "even the lame ones." And yes, this particular bar is lame. But first, I realise that my time at the meter is almost up, and Seaside Heights cops don't fuck around when it comes to ticketing. Though my meter has a little under an hour left, I throw in enough quarters to bump it to two hours plus.
When I return, I discover, much to my delight, this little lame bar actually has Godiva licquer! I consider treating myself, but then remember my current lactose intolerance problem. I order another Shirley Temple instead.
"You got cherries?" peeks a teammate, a stocky butch-type. "Can I have a cherry?"
"Bug off, no, they're my cherries." The cherries are tasteless.
We're barely at this place--it's dead--for 15 minutes when the girls insist on heading to Bar #7, the westernmost bar on the boardwalk. By this time, trashed doesn't begin to describe them. The butch-type slams into a soda cooler at a pizza place, pissing off the workers there. Another girl tangles herself with the huge stuffed animals at a game booth, causing the worker there to holler to get away, he's looking out for her safety. Someone else orders three girls to do pushups in the middle of the path. Oy. I'm grateful to be sober.
Despite that everyone was clamoring to go to this bar, we're there barely 10 minutes, if that. I nearly lose my Bud Light visor, to which Andy says, "You were complaining about wearing it all night, now you're complaining that you lost it?"
"It was keeping my head warm."
To Bar #8 we go, the last bar, at least for me. This one is about two blocks off the boardwalk. Slayer is blasting on the jukebox. Somehow I manage to sneak in a Ramones tune, but even though the jukebox says $1=2 songs, I discover it cost me an extra 50 cents to bump it up in the queue, which annoys me because I wanted to hear The Clash as well, and I didn't feel like throwing in an extra dollar. The girls somehow get served. I play darts for a moment, then stare at a graphically violent video game--Zombie Revenge or something like that. By this time, I'm really bored. Besides, my meter is running low on time again.
So I bid everyone adieu. Andy tells me we should hang together again, don't be a stranger. Lillian and a few other girls tell me they'll see me at practice Wedesday night. ("And you're gonna be an awesome jammer," somebody says.) Off I go into the by now-chilly night.
During the five blocks or so it takes me to walk to my car, I notice a bar that we didn't hit during the night. On the marquee is a female DJ I haven't met in person, but seen on MySpace. I feel a twinge of regret that I didn't push harder to get into the bars at Seaside Heights, then remember that I would have been playing to hordes of drunk bennies anyway, which is not quite the crowd I find desirable. But it's still a gig. Six of one and a half dozen of the other, I suppose. I find my car--19 minutes to go on the meter--and drive home.
So off I go to Seaside Heights, pointing Stephanie down Route 18 in the twilight. A white car zooms past me in the left lane, with some idiot leaning halfway out the passenger side window. Yeah, that's an accident waiting to happen.
I must have been a very good girl this week, for karma rewards me for not only finding a parking space a mere half block away from the boardwalk, but there's also slightly under four hours on the meter.
Since this is a bar crawl, we're starting on the eastern end of the boardwalk, working our way west. It takes me a little under ten minutes to make my way down, the night cool, the game vendors calling out for me to play some water balloon game. No thanks, dude. I dodge into the easternmost bar, looking for my new teammates.
"CYNTHIAAAAA!!!!" a girl with two-layered hair greets me. I have a feeling she's going to be making a lot of appearances in this blog...let's call her Lillian. "Cynthia, you ARE going to be drinking tonight, right?"
"Um, sure, starting at the next bar. I'm driving," I offer meekly. Lillian offers me her place to crash if needed; it's only 30 minutes away, but I point out that it would still involve driving and a DUI is something I really do not need. At this point, another teammate mentions that someone couldn't join us tonight because "she so Paris Hilton." I'll let you figure out what that means.
Meanwhile, after I greet the others, I remember that I didn't have dinner tonight, so I grab a few fliers to attempt to recruit and walk across to the french fry stand. My one and only attempt to get two girls to join the league is answered by a look as if I told them the benefits of joining the Manson Family.
"Yeah, you'll get that a lot," Lillian says. To switch topics, she asks if I'm still planning to move to West Palm Beach. I tell her yes, then that Jimmy was surprised when I told him my interest in roller derby. (More on that in an entry or two.) "Roller derby breaks up a lot of relationships," she says.
"Good," I said, offering her my fries. "Maybe this will speed up the process."
The group taking some kind of shape, it's time to head to Bar #2. This place is a definite dive, but it holds many fond memories for me, as this was the bar where Jimmy and I would often end up at. Because I'm still munching on my fries, I don't feel like getting a beer just yet. I order a diet coke, which tastes powdery.
"Cynthiaaaaa," mock-admonishes Lillian, who is by now nursing a strong buzz. "Why aren't you drinking yet?"
"Next bar I get a beer, I promise."
"You'd better."
The sign outside says "DJ Dance Party", and I hear a clever beatmatching of 311 into Panic! at the Disco, but there's no actual DJ in sight. Maybe he was so ugly they hid him in the basement. Or, more likely, the place is so cheap they're just running an Ipod in the back. Hell, if their diet coke is tasting powdery, I put nothing past them.
Outside, two college-age guys wearing oversize sombreros and fake beards are teasing kids by using the old dollar-on-a-string trick. This gets much admonishment from the team, and demands to give one of the kids a dollar anyway. I don't believe they did.
Off to the next bar we go. Bar #3 is much cleaner than Bar #2. I keep my promise to Lillian and get a Corona, which would turn out to be the only alcohol I consume all night. The DJ--a live one this time--is fairly terrible (Dude, I can hear the beats matching but you're not in the booth), but at least he gives us a shout-out that we're in the house. Lillian and I get into a brief discussion about Playboy and how both of us would kill to be in it. I show her my black and pink Playboy pseudo-Chucks; she's impressed, especially when I tell her I brought them on the boardwalk a few years back.
Nearby, a family of bennies spots one of our team members, an adorable punkette whose bright red and black hair has been shaped into a mohawk. Apparently, none of them have ever seen a Real Live Punk Rocker before, because they ask her if they can take a picture with her. She happily obliges.
I believe everyone except me is on the path to getting wasted at this point. This is pretty much confirmed when I am in the restroom (which is much cleaner than the one at the previous bar), and several girls are shouting "FUCK (previous team they're no longer associated with)!! FUCK THEM!!"
Onward we go to Bar #4. This would be the rowdiest bar we go into, and the peak of the night. This is also the only bar we hit with a live band playing; fortunately they aren't too bad. They're doing a decent job playing funked-up 70s disco hits. Somebody wins--or steals, whichever--a Stewie doll. Because I am the most sober member of the group, I have somehow become Stewie's babysitter. I hide with Stewie at a back table, which is a good excuse for not ordering anything. Everyone else orders Bud Light bottles because Bud Light is apparently the sponsor of tonight's band. A guy dressed in a Bud Light promotional shirt (what, no Bud Light girls?) is treating us to lame giveaways. Somehow, I end up with a Bud Light visor.
On to Bar #5 we go. By this time, we had picked up a couple of guys to join our entourage, none hot, but that's fine by me. One of them becomes friendly with me, introduces himself as Andy. His friend keeps mentioning his nipples that he just got pierced today. "Dude, thanks for sharing," I said.
The bouncer checks my birthdate closely. "Good for you," he says. Moment of the night. The DJ is playing the Meat Loaf classic, "Paradise By The Dashboard Light" as we walk in. For some reason, he chooses to cut it off about 2/3 of the way through to segue in to Nirvana. Ugh.
Since everybody else is wasted, I get Andy to buy me a Shirley Temple, so it appears to Lillian I'm drinking something that's not diet coke. The bartenders here not only all look alike--they're all wearing horn-rimmed glasses with their hair in buns--they also provide the worst service. Maybe 10 minutes go by before Andy finally gets noticed. It's got to be the uniforms.
Drinks in hand, I test derby names out on him. I throw him Mandy Morgue--the name I was leaning toward. "Morgue? What's that supposed to mean?" he asks.
"Morgue. As in, the place where you send dead people."
"Yeah, I like that." I test Krystine Sixteen on him. Not so much. I wander over to the DJ booth, peer over to look at his equipment.
"Dude, you have two Pioneer CDJ-1000 turntables and a Numark mixer. What is wrong with this picture?"
He answers, "The Pioneer mixers are expensive."
"You should get a Behringer," I tell him, "That's what I use."
"Nah, I don't like Behringer. The crossfader gets trashed too fast." He turns his attention to selecting his next track. It's time to go to the next bar.
There's a brief argument on where to head for Bar #6. The girls want to skip ahead to the westernmost bar, but Andy insists since it's a bar crawl, we have to go to each and every one, "even the lame ones." And yes, this particular bar is lame. But first, I realise that my time at the meter is almost up, and Seaside Heights cops don't fuck around when it comes to ticketing. Though my meter has a little under an hour left, I throw in enough quarters to bump it to two hours plus.
When I return, I discover, much to my delight, this little lame bar actually has Godiva licquer! I consider treating myself, but then remember my current lactose intolerance problem. I order another Shirley Temple instead.
"You got cherries?" peeks a teammate, a stocky butch-type. "Can I have a cherry?"
"Bug off, no, they're my cherries." The cherries are tasteless.
We're barely at this place--it's dead--for 15 minutes when the girls insist on heading to Bar #7, the westernmost bar on the boardwalk. By this time, trashed doesn't begin to describe them. The butch-type slams into a soda cooler at a pizza place, pissing off the workers there. Another girl tangles herself with the huge stuffed animals at a game booth, causing the worker there to holler to get away, he's looking out for her safety. Someone else orders three girls to do pushups in the middle of the path. Oy. I'm grateful to be sober.
Despite that everyone was clamoring to go to this bar, we're there barely 10 minutes, if that. I nearly lose my Bud Light visor, to which Andy says, "You were complaining about wearing it all night, now you're complaining that you lost it?"
"It was keeping my head warm."
To Bar #8 we go, the last bar, at least for me. This one is about two blocks off the boardwalk. Slayer is blasting on the jukebox. Somehow I manage to sneak in a Ramones tune, but even though the jukebox says $1=2 songs, I discover it cost me an extra 50 cents to bump it up in the queue, which annoys me because I wanted to hear The Clash as well, and I didn't feel like throwing in an extra dollar. The girls somehow get served. I play darts for a moment, then stare at a graphically violent video game--Zombie Revenge or something like that. By this time, I'm really bored. Besides, my meter is running low on time again.
So I bid everyone adieu. Andy tells me we should hang together again, don't be a stranger. Lillian and a few other girls tell me they'll see me at practice Wedesday night. ("And you're gonna be an awesome jammer," somebody says.) Off I go into the by now-chilly night.
During the five blocks or so it takes me to walk to my car, I notice a bar that we didn't hit during the night. On the marquee is a female DJ I haven't met in person, but seen on MySpace. I feel a twinge of regret that I didn't push harder to get into the bars at Seaside Heights, then remember that I would have been playing to hordes of drunk bennies anyway, which is not quite the crowd I find desirable. But it's still a gig. Six of one and a half dozen of the other, I suppose. I find my car--19 minutes to go on the meter--and drive home.