Feature photo by llimllib
Well my baby and me went out late Saturday night. I had my hair piled high and my baby just looks so right. Well, pick you up at ten got to have you home by two, Mama don’t know what I’ve got in store for you. Well that’s alright ’cause we’re looking as cool as can be.
Okay, it wasn’t my baby and me. That was Brian Setzer. It was my roommate knocking at my chamber door. But was Saturday, not night, but 8:00 a.m. and I cannot think of a good goddamn reason to wake me at that hour on a weekend outside of a fire. Obviously he could.
“Hey mang, are you awake?” Came from the other side of the door, way too chirpy for me at that hour.
“No! Go away,” I cried, pulling the pillows over my head desperately trying to cling to the sleep that I knew I wouldn’t be getting back to.
“Well come on man, I’ve been up for a few hours and I sick of sitting around by myself,” he called while smacking the door with the back of his hand.
At this point, I wasn’t going to get back to sleep. Thoughts of malice came in and kicked the dancing sugar plums out of my head. I grabbed my pack of cigarettes and opened the door.
After a cup of coffee and a smoke I started to feel less like a wild animal who wanted to rip the throat out of my roommate and more like his close friend and flat mate. I found out the real reason he disturbed my slumber.
“I got this thing at this bar tonight” he started.
The “thing” was a group of friends and a few girls who would be out at some bar in-of all places-Hoffman Estates. First off, I won’t get into the obvious mistake that backing your boy up when meeting some girl with group of friends at a bar is. I won’t get right into the slip shot decision making that going to a bar in the suburbs is. I’m going to just put it plain and simple to get started.
With a last name like Hoffmann, I’ve heard every dumb shit joke every ass in grammar school could come up with.
“Hey…do you like…own Hoffman Estates?”
“Hoffmann…like…Hoffman Estates?”
No, Hoffmann like… it’s German for Smith. Real goddamn common. Look it up, and ask your mama because she’ll tell you the same.
So even if there was something worth seeing I still would stay the hell away from there.
“Never in hell.” I told my roommate.
“Oh come on man, she has a friend.”
That’s never a good start. If your friend tells you “she has a friend”, there is a reason she’s single most of the time. Bad attitude, unattractive, smells foul, 29 kids by 24 fathers, spin the wheel and usually it lands on one of the myriad of reasons her friend asked your friend to bring a friend. Avoid it like the plague, and then avoid Hoffman Estates and usually you’ll do well on Saturday night.
Well my dear readers, as you’ve guessed, against my better judgment, I went with. And that decision is one of the many things that may not drive me to drink, but at least chips in a few buck for gas to get me there.
Well, I put a quarter right into that can, but all it played was disco man. C’mon pretty baby, let’s get outta here right away.
We pulled into a strip mall somewhere off Lake Street and Route 53. That was my first clue that the place was not my kind of gin joint. The techno music blaring so loudly, I could feel my fillings bounce to the bass was what confirmed it.
All right children, it’s about high time we talk about the reason you need a good bar. It’s because you find yourself in one of these places from time to time if you frequent as many watering holes as I do. I won’t go into what this place didn’t have. I can actually talk about what it did have. Almost nothing but well liquor, a dance floor that rivals the size of the dining room in my apartment, tons of girls (all of whom looked underage) and the list goes on and on. I can’t even bring myself to find the name to warn you to stay away. Besides they didn’t have a cover and one foot in the door (if you’re my kind of people) you’ll go running and screaming for your car.
Maybe it’s me, but I don’t want to drink in a place where you can’t even hear yourself think. That’s a club and good clubs are never in strip malls. Jesus, good clubs aren’t in the suburbs either. So I’m still not sure what the hell this place’s excuse was. But the most savage and depressing part of this story is… It was busy. Not just busy but jam packed to the rafters. I was lucky (in a certain sense of the word) to get a crammed seat at the bar where the girl to my right kept spilling her drink on my sleeve with every drunken sip she took as she jostled back and forth in her seat trying to spin in a seat didn’t do that. Suddenly I figured out the faint jabbering coming from this hammered and frankly unattractive broad was directed toward me. Here’s the best part… She was “the friend”.
By the time I saw my roommate again he was getting nowhere. In fact, his girl never showed, and I never even had a second drink. Instead I cursed at him vowing to never ever, ever do him a favor EVER again (but I know I will).
Moral to the story…You want to rock this town, make it scream and shout? Stay in the city. There are too many bars in this town to go out of your way to go to a terrible one. Even if she has a friend.