Double Hamster on The Rocks

When I was in Baltimore, I used to walk down to a particular high end convenience store near the docks in Fells point. I’d get coffee, which I did not normally drink, and a cookie and then sit out near the water taxi, watching people in suits, chinos and plaid shirts replace the drunks and the kids in leather jackets. Fells point still supported Chesapeake culture long after the upper crust in Washington abandoned any pretence of working at both a software company and a dockyard. The drunks tended to walk north, up five or six blocks into the tougher sections of Fells Point while the dock-working software folks ambled out of their Volvos, leaving copies of the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times on the front seat. This was my favorite time of day.

Now that I think about it, my favorite part of going out to bars and clubs has little to do with the bars and/or clubs, per se, and more to do with the secondary locations—Kramerbooks or the Diner in DC, Veselka (usually) in New York—and the hazy feeling of association that I get having made it through something, some difficult period with other people. A bar can be a great place to meet up with someone but a club is a place that is normally survived. It presents that controlled sort of damage that allows us to connect with other people. The best part of going out is stumbling out into the morning light and getting pancakes as the sun comes up over some blasted industrial landscape in the middle of a city. All the best moments in my life are like this. All of the best moments combine peace, quiet, dislocation, and a sense of recovery.