Hot For Hard-Fi (or was it beer?)

Let me preface this with some personal statements. I happen to be a very bad liar. So I will not tell any. In fact I will be totally honest. So here it goes.

I honestly do not remember much about the Hard-Fi show. I remember a frightening cab ride from midtown to Greenpoint, Brooklyn, followed by a couple of nauseous passengers attempting to read a map and locate a cross street while driving around. This was not fun. Also, we arrived über early. Fine, let’s find a bar. Ahhh apparently the Greenpoint area is lacking in bars. There is a liquor store, let’s ask them. Go up the block. And up the block we went.

I believe the bar was called Goodman’s, but it could have been anything as far as I am capable of recalling. It was good, the bartender was a man, so we shall call it Goodman’s since that seems to apply and rings a tiny little bell in my befuddled brain. So off to Goodman’s we go. It is a small, dark, wood-paneled little local bar, which I hope no one else ever hears of, except you lot of course. Anyways, at a going rate of $1.50 a draft, Neil and I were certainly having a grand old time of it, while Kate sipped her D.C. (ok side note: what happened to drunken Kate? I never see her anymore. Either daytime Kate has suppressed this side of her personality—think Cybil—or I always catch her on a non-alcoholic day….please send me the calendar…I need some time with drunken Kate).

So we’re just hanging out, chatting, drinking, killing time, Kate is playing video games, I think I’m on my third beer. We start chatting to the bartender, because we notice he keeps hanging out with these characters at the other end of the bar. OK let me explain. The bartender is this big Brooklyn guy with long metal-head hair. His two companions have similar hairstyles. The sound system is set to all metal all the time, but not like scary death metal craziness (as we have encountered in the local pub near the Carbisdale Castle near Caithness, in Scotland…crazy Scottish teenagers…cute but dumb). It was more like Classic Rock metal, like Led Zeppelin and old Aerosmith, Pink Floyd, and all that jazz. OK, onwards, so we are chatting with him, asking if he can play certain songs, he shuts off the stereo so we can put some Zep tunes on the juke. So we start talking, ask him if he’s in a band, he tells us not for a long time, he asks what brings us to Brooklyn, we tell him about the concert. So basically, we develop a rapport with the cool bartender. Meanwhile, I polish off my third beer (so what if it was in less than an hour). Apparently the bartender has just gotten into the rhythm of serving me another round, so he sets another in front of me, despite my protests. Says it’s on him, and this is where it all starts to go alcoholic.

As I’m sipping ladylike at my beer (gulp/sip toh-may-toe/toh-mah-toe), these two guys come in. So now it’s us, some couple eating pizza at a table in the corner, the bartender and his two cronies, and these two guys. They take up some chairs right next to me. I have put Def Leppard on the juke…what, you got something to say? Def Leppard is sometimes a necessity, especially whilst drinking, in a metal-ish local bar in Brooklyn. The one guy starts asking who put the song on, and since I did, and like it, and tend to get belligerent when drinking and feel attacked, I said “I did, WHY?!?” With as much hard-ass attitude as I could muster, which is a lot since I’m a Jersey girl. Then he backs off a bit, but interrupts our conversation again to say something like, “My friend wants to ask you something.” I’m thinking ok either his friend does not really want to ask something and this kid is a little bitch, or this is the lamest middle school approach to hitting on girls I have encountered in a while. So when no question gets asked, I turn back to Neil and Kate, and the annoyance is evident on my face. Yeah, so I think not only did I down that beer, but we got one more round before leaving for the concert venue, and I guzzled it amidst our promises to return after the show since the bartender dude, hey I just remembered he said his name was John, so since John told us they were open till 4…yeah that’s AM….take that London and your damn curfew.

So we stroll off to Warsaw (yeah we were in the Polish section of Brooklyn, its pretty cool, you should check it out, my people make good pierogi). We get in line, and two seconds later who pulls up behind us, but Austin and Will, hi hi how ya doin’? And that’s also the last we saw of them (or at least that I remember). We trot off to meet Neil’s friends. (OK fine, I was late, so we didn’t meet up with them for dinner…we all know I’m always late…let’s just move on). So they were hanging at the bar….ahh my favorite location. Introductions all ‘round. OK well for me, since I’d never met these people before. And I almost made it all the way through before one of them (some punk-ass British guy….aren’t they all?) is all “Oh you’re the friend who lives in bumble-f*** Jersey Shore and missed your train?” Yeah that’s me, but I’m not from the Jo Sho. “The Jo what?” Bennies and foreigners!!! Exasperation and drunken-ness drive me to point out the grammatical inaccuracies on his “trying to look cool” t-shirt. (Mind you, I’ve already been handed another drink…there’s no stopping me now—in fact I believe this is the point where I lose count, but Kate doesn’t….geez mom, let up). OK, so somewhere around this time, t-shirt punk-ass guy tells Kate he feels bad that she is going to have to look after me because I am über drunk. Squeeze me?? Baking powder?? I have several points here:
1. Who the funk is this guy who knows nil about me but feels free to comment on my soberness or lack thereof?
2. I believe I hold several “I owe you” night of drunkenness without shame from Kate
3. I wasn’t even that drunk yet…WTF?

OK among the group are some Brit chicks who seem cool and are willing to barrel to the front of the venue with me, as we all share a love of and a desire to mother the children of Richard Archer, front man for Hard-Fi. MMMMmmmmmm, Richard Archer.

So the music was much like off the album. I don’t think we heard anything new. I had already been informed by Jen, our supposed Boston contributor (ahem ahem...still waiting on a contribution), that the bassist was unable to get a visa due to some drug-related offense. HAHAHA, but anyways, they had a sub, who seemed alright, but to tell the truth, I don't think I would have noticed a difference even if I was sober. I don’t remember much about the performance. I was mesmerized by my love, Richard. I have about a bazillion pics on my camera-phone, which are useless, since I can’t get them off my damn camera-phone and onto anything else, namely this blog article. But there are some lovely ones since I convinced these crazy Yorkshire boys to get me to the front, where I stood directly beneath Richard all night, trying to ignore the Yorkshire chanting, which was lame and consisted mostly of the repetition of the word Yorkshire (which, using my stunning Sherlock Holmes-ian powers of deduction, helped me to determine that they were not just crazy boys, but crazy Yorkshire boys). I lost the Brit chicks somewhere in here. Which sucks because apparently they got to meet the band, while I got the brush off from not only Richard, but his publicist as well. LAME!!

During this time, I have had several more drinks (while I was still hanging with the Brit chicks, they got us some delivery service, probably from t-shirt punk-ass guy, which helped to soften my feelings toward him, and may explain my later behavior…cough cough). After the show, we retire to the bar, yes, back again. A few more drinks are consumed. We lost the two Brit chicks (they are prob off working on that mother of Richard’s children goal, but I’m not bitter). Then we opt to move back to the first (and might I add BEST) bar. It is at this point I determine Goodman’s (as it shall henceforth be known, regardless of its real name) to be the BEST bar in Brooklyn, yes it’s the only bar I’ve been to in Brooklyn, but it is the BEST. Mind you, I have had countless drinks, and am about to consume countless more. Nevertheless, BEST.

So, Goodman’s has wayyyyyyy more patrons than when we were first there. They mostly seem to be old drunk Brooklyn guys. Literally. They seem to take a fancy to the fact that we are hanging out with foreigners, and are apparently trying to change this fact. Umm, I think I will pass on going home with you Mr. Missing-a-tooth Original-Trucker-cap (as in I wear it because I actually am a trucker) wearing Bud-drinking Older-than-dirt drunk dude. So I take a seat next to t-shirt punk-ass guy. And pretty much stay there chatting to him for the rest of the evening. Apparently, regardless of how punk-ass you are, if you buy me drinks, I will pretty much throw myself at you. I don’t think I can control this impulse, and I’m not proud of it. During the several hours we remain at the BEST bar in Brooklyn, more beers were consumed, but among them were also random shots of Schnapps. Ummm, Schnapps?!?! Ahhh British boys and their girly drink choices. Yes yes, why don’t you just order yourself the damn Smirnoff Ice and be done with it. You know you want to. Anyways, by the time we left, I was well into my cups, and feeling fine. So fine in fact, I was not ready to go home. But home we must go. In the door, 3-2-1, pass out. OK, maybe I was ready for home.

Woke up early the next morning, feeling just as well as if I had not consumed the better part of a keg by myself and some portions of girly Schnapps to wash it down. So thhhbbbbppppp :-P to all my doubters. I’m a good drunk. Except for the belligerent, sarcastic bitchiness thing, and the problematic throw myself at randoms for drinks impulse. But other than that….

So when are we going to Brooklyn again?!?!