10 Observations on the Salt Lake Bar Scene

I'm baaaaaaaack.  Here's something I wrote for a local magazine, but for one reason or another, didn't get the chance to publish it.  Since it's seasonally themed, I figured I better drop this knowledge on you all now.  Ten reasons why I always look sad at bars things I've noticed about the drinkers in downtown Salt Lake:

1.  Let’s just get this out of the way first:  Most bar bathrooms make me resent using my long-ignored thigh muscles just to take a piss.  I doubly resent the ladies that choose to hover like I do, but don’t wipe off the toilet seat afterwards.  You bitches.

2.  Onto something a little less gross (sorry).  I know it’s been said many times, but it needs saying again:  Downtown Salt Lake needs more fucking bars.  Forget our city’s need for more battered-women’s shelters, substance abuse clinics and late night public transportation for a second…because our bars are too packed!  The children – God bless them – are all starting to grow up and take over drinking space that was already sparse to begin with.  Last year, I got turned away from a pub because it was at full capacity.  When I peered in the doorway before walking off, I saw a scene that looked similar to a birthday party I threw in grade school.  My eyes burned with hatred.

3.  Aside from the limited amount of room, bars in this town are crawling with people you wish would have forgotten about you already.  By the time you’re my age, every place you go is an open venue for attack!  Not too long ago, I was quietly sifting through my bad life decisions, when a dude saddled up into the barstool next to me and asked, “HEY.  Di’n’t you puke arll orver my buddy’s hallway, like…*hiccup*…ten years ergo, or som’in?”  I took a sip from my stein, and stared wearily at myself through the bar mirror before croaking, “I don’t discuss those days much anymore.”  Damn the wine of youth, and the regretful one-night stands that come with it.

4.  Speaking of hooking up, I wonder what goes through a straight guy’s mind when he sees a pretty girl encased in a full-body unitard with sequins and leather popping out all over.  Well…he’s probably thinking about buying her a drink and humping her later, but maybe he also realizes what dark adventure awaits him when he tries to get all that shit off her body when they get back to his place.  I know, I know – fuck what guys think (and fuck what I think for that matter) – but my point is that lately, I’ve bumped into so many girls at the bars that look so pinched, and stuffed, and crimped, and hooved, that I’ve found myself beginning to miss the old Dress Barn ‘style’ everybody was rocking during the early nineties. Sure, we all looked like ill-fitted extras from Fargo back then, but at least we weren’t uncomfortably standing around in robot outfits, basically advertising the fact that we’re all swimming in debt, right?  Strange times we live in. Blame Instagram for our insistence to WERQ it all the time, I don’t know.  Everybody go donate to charity or something.

5.  While we’re on the topic of Instagram, do you have any friends that forcefully take phone pics with people they barely know, just so the next day, they can prove to the world how much fun they had at Twilite last night, and wow, look how many people they know and get down with?  FEEL THEIR POPULARITY.

6.  Million dollar idea:  separate lines for people ordering fancy drinks and people that just want beer.  Bar X, The Red Door, and The Beerhive are all great, swanky establishments, but most of those bartenders can just tell by my rosacea that I didn’t come there to appreciate the ancient art of drink-shaking.  Whenever I get stuck behind a guy that orders five Gin Fizzes for his friends, I have this neurotic conversation with the bartender in my head:  “I know he was ahead of me, but can you not just get my beer first?  It’s madness!  Please just change around your routine to serve my convenience.  The only reason I came in here in the first place was to write cryptic messages with my finger in your fancy bar ice rink!  I don’t need this.” (Throws up hands, and clumsily stomps off to nearby dive bar.)

7.  Oh, dive bars, and the sad suckers from out of state that stumble into them.  It took me a long time to fully appreciate the highfalutin business men visiting town for a convention that barge into an otherwise quiet bar, hollering, “Five shots of Patron, bro!”  But now…I’m okay with you guys.  Keep coming to Salt Lake, please.  Just mosey on in, unaware of our strange and sorrowful liquor laws, and rock out with your cock out to the six Night Ranger songs you put on the jukebox.  For mysterious reasons, I decidedly like you.

8.  Cheers to You has a pretty strange little karaoke setup on Friday nights, don’t you think?  Since the mic is set up right in the middle of the narrow bar, there’s no way you can witness the pool sharks silently judging you from behind.  For instance, one time I forced a guy I was dating to sing "Springtime for Hitler" from The Producers musical, and some WWII-era old timer furrowed his brow deeply, and gripped his pool cue so hard that I seriously wondered if he was going to beat the singer to death with it.  My boyfriend could have died from karaoke, you guys.  Not cool.  Anyways, every time I go in there on Fridays, I daydream that when my turn comes, I will DESTROY the Talking Heads’ "Girlfriend is Better" so hard, that some record producer will emerge from the shadows and offer me a six-album deal. However, by the time my song begins, reality sets in, and every word is sung painfully off-key (Ma me ma moooh / Ma moo ma maaay).  A few blocks up – in the dank dungeons of the Alta Club – Mr. Burns malevolently instructs Smithers to release the hounds. 

9.  Salt Lake is such a fun town to bar hop in, but let’s be honest:  wintertime can be a total bitch.  You know one thing that can ease at least some of the pain during the mind-numbingly cold winter months?  Coat checks!  WE NEED MORE.  Do you know how difficult it is to try to get laid when I look like a bundled up refrigerator box?  Wearing pounds of makeup doesn’t work – I require hangers so my ta-tas can represent themselves properly.

10.  Finally, have you ever noticed that everyone’s breath starts to reek at around 11:30pm?  Standing in the middle of a crowd at a Bar Deluxe or Urban Lounge show can seriously feel like you’re stuck in the Pit of Eternal Stench as the night wears on.  Ten years ago, we’d still be fine milking the old scapegoats of beer burps and cigarette stank, but nowadays, I think we can add one more power player to the roster:  Adderall breath.

That’s it.  I’m out.  See you around!