Dive Bars
Dive bars are funny. They are full of the people you never want to be and full of the people who look for them. That’s how I felt when I walked into Molotov’s late Friday evening. It was past midnight when we showed up.
We began the night at 7pm on the edge of the great Pacific. Rob and I drank beer and whiskey waiting for the group to show up. Our fire was blazing and it felt nice on this cold San Francisco night. It could’ve been the middle of winter, the mist was hitting our faces and the cold wind from the coast chilled us to the bone. We drank whiskey from a plastic jug and ate jalapeno flavored snacks until the ride showed up, lead by one of the members of the Sunset Gang. The sky was grey and there was no sun to watch go down the horizon. No sunset in the Sunset, but I suppose we’re use to it by now. People forget how foggy this city can be. Constantly waking up to grey skies, it’s been a week since I have even seen a glimpse of the sun. But suddenly we heard the rumble of bikes through the wind and that didn’t matter anymore. There was about 20+ of us now, all dressed in our leathers, cold as the night, but we warmed ourselves by the fire. The whiskey slowly disappeared into the crowd and somehow I found myself pointing a stick with a marshmallow at the end of it into the roaring fire. I didn’t know where it came from, but I knew where it was going. Directly into my mouth. Something about campfires and marshmallows makes it feel like summer, even though it was roughly 30 degrees on the beach.
From there half of us went across the way to Beach chalet, where they were showing a movie and carried a very respectable happy hour. 9-12. One of the fun things about living in the outer sunset, is that bars really give you a great incentive to hang out there, since no one ever wants to venture that far. So mostly at night, it’s just locals, drinking cheap beer and eating delicious sweet potato fries from the bar. We had our micro brews and we left to the other end of the city, where we had been invited to participate in a welcome home / good bye party for our fellow members.
Welcome home to Clare who has been gone for a year teaching English somewhere in the Eastern Block, it felt like just yesterday I was singing Lady GaGa at her going away party at JP’s club. Goodbye to Elliot who was off on an adventure to the Eastern block with Romanian Monica. Goodbye also to Lee and his girlfriend on some motorcycle trek they were about to embark on across the states. So we had a members salute to wave them off. Dance central was played on the xbox, which has become customary. By now I was done drinking, I felt tired and just full of all sorts of awful so I laid back and listened to them tell stories about Reno and other moped misadventures.
We decided to leave around midnight to drive some of the Sunset gang out to the lower Haight. We arrived at one of their friend’s houses where we drank more beer and somehow we met this girl who had a slug in her hair all night. That was kind of weird. I think one of our members called her out on it, and then picked it up out of her skull before she literally went insane. Sounds disgusting. Luckily I had enough beers to disassociate myself from that mess and just tried not to fall asleep.
From there we walked over to a few bars where we ran into some of our members from the bonfire. Steve, Justin, Rob and some other people I had never met. We drank until last call. There was a cute girl named Nikki there. I don’t know where she came from, but she was cute. Lower Haight is a great place to people watch, there is a lot of interesting people, as well as babes that roam through the streets. So I just sat back and watched what was going on. Still spinning from the whiskey earlier in the night. People were chatting around me and there was a whole mess of noise, but I was too tired to pay attention. I did meet the famous San Francisco Tamale lady finally, and had one of her most delicious tamales. She’s unlicensed and goes around late at night to sell tamales at bars to drunken patrons. She’s paid for 2 of her children to go to college this way. I finally ate one of her tamales and they were so good. Totally worth the $4 price tag. I hadn’t eaten all day, and that tamale really hit the spot.
Finally after last call, the rest of the gang were going to go drink in Alamo square, which is the park across from the “Full House” houses. Which wasn’t too far from where we were. So they left, and Yancey and I walked back to his car and headed back to the Sunset. I haven’t been this tired in so long, if I shut my eyes now, I feel like I’ll never open them again.
So from here, I bid you all a good night. It’s almost 3 in the morning and I finally ate some more food besides a tamale and some beer and I’m going to sleep until noon tomorrow. I finally got a job at the museum so I’m excited to get back to work. Come see some art or whatever next time you are around, bring your mother.
-Edmund
Creatures of the Loin.
