A Night at a Bar
Last night, Steve and I spent our Saturday night at a
local neighborhood bar, as we often do. The bar will go unnamed for
various reasons, but places like it exist all over the city in
residential neighborhoods.
We've had many great evenings there, playing pool, chatting with neighborhood "regulars," drinking a little but not too much, and some evenings stand out. The first July 4th after September 11, 2001, stands out in memory, as people sang along with "America the Beautiful" and stood with their hands over their hearts and tears in their eyes. It's also a place where we've seen one of the city's "official" pipe and drums bands stop by, in full kilt, to march into the bar and play for a few minutes before going off to make their scheduled appearance.
Last night was nothing special, but it was. The first thing that happened was that someone brought out a pet carrier with two ferrets (technically illegal in NYC). I had never met ferrets before - they were cute.
We went in the back to play pool. After a while, we noticed that the music had been turned off, and one of the regulars, a professional musician, had his guitar out. For the rest of the evening, he played and sang at the front of the bar, with people in various states of inebriation singing along enthusiastically. Nothing like Beatles songs to get people singing along!
At one point, a semi-regular turned up, with wife/girlfriend (not sure which) and their three-month-old Rottweiler puppy. Now I don't know if you've ever seen a Rottweiler puppy, but they're huge! And, in this case anyway, totally soppy. The whole bar went "Awww!" in unison when they saw her, but the (female) bartender fell in love. And the feeling was mutual - she scooped the puppy up, the puppy went into full hug mode - big paws wrapped around her shoulder, a blissful, adoring look on its face, and for the next hour or so, the bartender served drinks one-handed, the other arm full of puppy.
At one point, as the musician played, she danced with the puppy like daddies dance with little girls, holding the dog's big paw in her right hand. Steve said in my ear, "It's nice that she's letting the dog lead!"
By now I was kicking myself for having taken the camera out of my purse because it was too heavy! Sorry, no pictures this time - you'll just have to use your imagination.
Somebody had the idea to introduce the puppy to the ferrets. It could have been disastrous, of course, but it wasn't. The puppy's owner held her, and the ferret's owner held one of the ferrets vertically (a ferret stretches to about 18" of long body with a small head on one end). Ferret and puppy investigated each other nose to nose, very carefully and politely. The puppy's head was about 10 times the size of the ferret's head of course, but the ferret clearly considered himself an equal. (Ferrets are fearless.)
The evening was winding down. I was getting a stiff neck from twisting my neck to talk. A woman at the bar, who had chatted to us while we were playing pool, spotted me stretching my neck to loosen it, and came over. She began massaging my neck and shoulders - did a really professional job of it, and my neck was magically loose.
We left around midnight, as the regulars began to thin out and the younger crowd began to drop by.
Definitely not your average Saturday night in a local bar!