I like the Nest. Always have, since I walked in years ago and found a diverse crowd of people, weird art, semi-hipster groups crossed with neighborhood drunks and a bartender that went barefoot. I just liked being in a place where lots of different people came together and had a drink, maybe because I came from a city where different people didn’t really come together very often.
It’s harder to get here these days; I’m not in NE as often as I’d like but the great thing about my current theme is that I get to explore new places and revisit old ones that I’d otherwise neglect.
The woman next to me is having Christan Bros with a beer back so I order it. She also has a glass of water and it’s quickly apparent I should’ve gotten that, too. Such is life. She’s preoccupied with something on her smartphone, texting away the most current crisis, sighing into her troubled evening. She’s got a knit cap on, gray sweatpants and a navy blue hoodie, with eyes that tell me to go away when I disrupt her so I don’t go any further.
The secret to drinking Christian Bros is to exhale through the nose as I drink. The beer back helps-likely PBR-but I can’t really taste anything after the overpowering sip of the shot so I’m considering just pounding it and getting it over with.
Down the rail, a couple is drinking Old German from the can. The one and only time I ever had Old German, I had it through a straw and that still wasn’t enough to hide the sheer awfulness of the brew.
Hip-hop zombies adorn the wall, painted in what I’d call a graffiti style. They’re clearly hungry and despite holding boom boxes, reaching for brains. Pretty cool, in addition to being a vision I wouldn’t have thought of. What happens to the heavy gold chains during the Zompocalypse? That shit’s gotta slow you down, right? You’ll be eating last, if at all. I mean, sure, you don’t get tired but muscles still work like muscles and weight still needs force to move. Zombies need brains, not entrails, though I suppose anything will do when you’re hungry and undead.
I am a touch distracted and distractable by the Oregon vs Auburn game. It’s the thing to do in the state right now. So few events that speak to a common reality these days; fractured musical genres, fractured films, fractures in the gaming community. We can find just what we like and now we create bubbles of just that and nothing else.
If nothing else, this is why I want to keep coming to different places in the city. My world should not be a uniform gloss of ‘me likely’.
I exhale into my final touch of the booze. It ain’t pretty but it gets the job done. The night bartender comes on, wearing a light jacket and it’s then that I realize that everyone in here has their coat on, even me. IT’s colder than I thought, I suppose. Or perhaps they, like me, are here to go. Feels unlikely though and it’s far more likely that there’s a door out back that’s open. Why, in this weather, that would be true I don’t know but fortunately I’m about draughts not drafts.
A pint for Dionysus 