the older crowd

friday night we met an old friend of mine for drinks (eric). he brought along two friends (james and brandon) and we found ourselves at the 1029 bar (laura's) in northeast. the activities that followed leave me laughing to myself endlessly and feeling just a little bit guilty about what we did.

the 1029 bar is a little hole in the wall bar that james and brandon had suggested. when we walked in the door, i thought to myself 'oh man, this is not going to be any fun'. boy was i wrong.

we found our seat and ordered some beer from a short petite waitress (who was blown away by our modest tipping, she can't be making much money there). as we waited for the band to get started, we checked out the full house crowd.

one guy with long blond hair in a ponytail and an eyepatch (we were split on whether we thought it was real or not) sat at the bar looking very serious.

one very quiet black couple hid themselves in a corner, looking like they were terrified they would be spotted at any minute.

the rest of the bar seemed to be taken over by tons of older woman, dressed in patterned sweaters, big hair, high heel pumps and gobs of makeup like they were still in the eighties. There seemed to be a hope and almost expectation that if they just kept their eyes open, they would see mister right walk through the door any minute. He would spot them across the bar, in the midst of all the other women, be blown away by their hairdo, ask them to dance, and eventually propose to them. the women in that bar were the most hilarious i've seen in a very long time. seeing them made aaron and i feel like we were back in small town muskegon michigan again. fucking hilarious!

(this may seem just a bit judgemental- but that's where some of my aforementioned guilt comes in)

the band was made up of a lead singer (maybe 50), the keyboardist (knight rider 80's hairdo- though his keyboard was on a stand, you could totally see him having one of those hang-around-the-neck keyboards from the 80's), two singer guitarists and a drummer who all seemed young enough to understand why this was so damn funny.

they got started playing and we realized they were doing all 80's cover songs. in groups of two, the woman dared to go up and dance (the 80's kind of dancing, where you don't move your feet and you swing your arms around), doing their best to look extremely sexy in case mister right walked in right then. james and brandon were hilarious as they mocked the dance style, i'm laughing out loud right now remembering it.

as we drank, laughed like crazy and sang out loud to the songs, our mockery was confused as enthusiasm and the lead singer picked us out as the 'rowdy table'. he played the songs we requested, pointed to us often, and came over to sing from our table. somewhere in there, i even forced aaron to slow dance with me to 'every rose has it's thorn' by poison. the laugher was outrageous and never ending.

it seemed no one in the bar could get a read on our sarcasm, and that just made it all the more palpable. this is where more of that guilt comes in. i'm sure the band members are nice, talented guys, and that the women are great people as well, but that scene was the most comic 80's reproduction i ever thought i would see.

going into the 1029 bar is like stepping back in time (except all the teenagers are adults).