Old Hat.

After too many $50 cab rides home from the bars in San Francisco, I decided to check out the local Oakland bar scene. We all need a local watering hole. And I desperately need something to do that doesn't involve going under the bay.

Angie and I checked out the scene on Yelp and came across a list of bars we wanted to hit, ate some burritos to buffer the liquor, and hopped on the bus to downtown Oakland. (Mmm, burritos!) Our first stop was the 19th Street Station - described as a nice British pub good for after-work drinks and smoking inside. What the reviews should have mentioned was that the place is closed on the weekends. Right. 0 for 1.


Second stop was Cafe Van Kleef, which we were relieved to find open, serving drinks, and playing music. Angie and I both reacted to the decor with something like, "This place is intense..." It's hard to see from the photo here, but the bar and surrounding area are just stacked tall with weird stuff. Kitchy, but with some old jazz and blues tunes in the background, it makes for a nice enough spot. We got hijacked by a drunk couple on their 2-year anniversary who wanted to chat with us about their diverse lifestyles and their four kids. I told Angie to drink her vodka tonic and we hightailed it to the next location.

Which brings us to....Radio.

Described as dark, red, hip and easy on the smoking ban, which made this my top choice. Dark, red and easy on the smoking ban it was. Hip? Hm. Perhaps I'm mistaken, but one generally needs a crowd (of hipsters or not) to be considered such. Otherwise, you're just another place with lots of unrealised potential. Whatever. The music started to suck after we had managed to get through 1.5 stiff drinks, so we chugged and moved on.

Once we got outside and away from the red lighting, we felt less drunk - which was a real downer. So we headed to the last location on our list, the Stork Club. I'd been to this place before and liked it so I was looking forward to going somwhere where I knew people my age would be - and where there would be decent music on the jukebox. The only thing we found alive outside the barred door to this place was a guy asking for Greyhound money in exchange for poetry. I offered him a cigarette and wished him good luck. It's always a story I don't need to listen to. And, after discovering that 50% of the bars on our list were closed, I wasn't feeling very giving.

So. We walked the long 2 miles back to my street and stopped by local dive Smitty's for a last drink. Smoking inside, cheaper drinks than we paid for all night, decent jukebox, and shuffleboard and pool made us wonder why we had ventured farther than the end of the block. A little rough around the edges, but it gets the job done.

The important part of the evening was some much needed Angie-Briana time; and we got enough drunken philosophizing, pining over lost boys and gossiping out of our system to last us until the next adventure.

Overall, we decided that the scene in downtown Oakland pales in comparison to SF or even SC. Angie had an interesting theory - that Halloween weekend may be to blame for the small crowds and closed bars. Perhaps everyone went to the city for the festivities that night instead? We don't know, but we don't know if we want to spend another night trying to find out. Maybe after the disapointment has faded. (Or after we have to split a cab home again...)

Reference

Excellent art from the musical inspiration for my blog name. Okkervil River - Black Sheep Boy.

Check them out here.



For those of you who didn't get the reference.

The artwork itself is by this amazing guy. I'm looking at that stuff closely - almost positive that my next tattoo will be something he's done.

This is not an exit.

Having just finished reading American Psycho, I have some pseudo-intellectual garbage to spew. What better place than an illustrious and free blogspot page, I say? Props to Mat for giving me the link to his own blog three times and inspiring me to do the like.

So, the book is one of those that I've read enough about - and, of course, saw the movie on which it was based (and also read enough about) - that I came into it with a pre-formed opinion on how it was supposed to present itself. But nothing can really prepare you for that book. I knew how disgustingly graphic it was, but it was obscenely visceral, which I wasn't prepared for. Nothing can describe how bizarre it was to read that book on the Bart train into work with the SF Bay morning rush hour crowd pushed up against me.

I want to say it was a most excellent book - because it was. But it does not go gently into that good night. It's laborous to get through and it took me a while to finish. I had to keep putting it down for a few days to give myself a breather - it's just too intense and coked up. The last third of it was the worst, definetely not a world that I wanted to dwell in. When Patrick Bateman says somewhere in the middle that he's 26 I totally freaked out. And I couldn't ride in a cab without thinking about the numerous scenes in taxis from the book.

That book hangs with you like a surrealist painting does - just kind of drapes itself over you and takes some shaking off.

In retrospect, the movie does it justice - the book itself is fairly cinematic. But you can't duplicate the effect of a written work on the screen. Came pretty close, though. Directed by a woman as well, which I always forget.

A few things about the weird chapters about the pop musicians from the 80's. I didn't know what to make of these. They just sort of existed in between sections of plot and are, I think, more telling in their form and repetition than in their subject. Kind of odd breaks in the diagesis that seem to serve as gathering pools of thinly-veiled commentary on the commercialism of Bateman's world. Interesting, and some of them are more potent than others. And I get that they were supposed to be a device - and they were perfectly timed. But they left me with a vague sense of overdone-ness. Still not sure if this is a good or a bad thing.

And there is point very near the end where the narrative slips from first person narration to third, only for a few pages. That is a totally perfect example of how this book works - Bateman descending even more so into psychotic madness and, for a page or two, all of a sudden his voice falters and then bounces right back at you. It's brilliant. And completely successful. I'm in awe.

I totally have to see the movie again.

Any book that makes me think this much about it after I've finished it is well worth the read.