I wanted to engage the three University of Tampa cheerleaders seated at the far end of the bar. They drank their pints of beer through straws. Spoke in loud, cute voices about Sex in the City. But we never talked. I never even got to make eye contact with any of them. Nope, spent my post-work hour at The Retreat apologizing for the writing style of CL columnist Andisheh Nouraee.
My brother Joel and I ducked into The Retreat around 6 p.m. last Thursday. We didn't spot the cheerleaders and took a pair of stools on the opposite side of the bar. Bad move.
The Retreat, which has been around since 1938, used to be a total dive bar. Run down. Dirty bathrooms. A place the homeless went after panhandling enough dough to buy a cold, cheap draft. But last year, The Retreat was purchased by the guys who own Green Iguana, explained the bartender, and they completely renovated the place and expanded it.
Now The Retreat is a funky college bar (beer only) with nicely priced two-for-one specials and tasty popcorn that's free. The adjacent rec room features the essential beer pong table, pool tables, dart boards, video games and a love seat cut into the wall that I couldn't help but think would be an excellent spot to canoodle with those coeds … the ones sipping beer … through straws … and talking about Sex in the City.
The Stranger munched on popcorn in between gulps of beer. He sat to my left. He watched the History Channel, muted, on the flat screen above the bar. The plan was to chat him up about The Retreat, its proximity to the UT campus and the clientele.
The Stranger — a middle-age fellow — wasn't your average bar fly. In fact, in my decade of frequenting drinking establishments, I had never before heard anyone at a pub drop a word like "filigree," which The Stranger used in critiquing Nouraee's column.
See, I made the mistake, early in the conversation, of telling The Stranger I wrote for Creative Loafing. It's a fact I only divulge if questioned — and The Stranger questioned. I'm proud of working at the Loaf, but when I'm at a pub, it often prompts gushing and/or criticism and/or suggestions. Which means I am no longer another guy drinking. Now I am an intruder or a special guest. The whole scene then changes — sometimes for the good, more often for the bad.
Later that evening, Joel and I stopped by MacDinton's, which is walking distance from my SoHo apartment. A few of my hipster co-workers despise the place, but I'm fine with it — especially on Thursday nights when they sell Miller Lite drafts for a buck. A bunch of my friends play in a kickball league, and that's where they go for postgame libations.
"I'll never forget the time Mrs. Kreider's button was undone on her blouse," I told my two friends, attractive young women who teach at area elementary schools. "I was in third grade. And I spent the entire day staring wildly at that spot of flesh and the top of her bra — in fact, I can still recall it pretty vividly."
My friends laughed. "She must've thought you were just very attentive that day," the one said.
It was part of my routine about males being horny from the crib. Just as my friends were sharing funny stories of their own, one of their kickball teammates approached us.
"Hey," he says, pointing at me. "Aren't you the music critic guy?"
I shrugged.
"Are you going to Hot Hot Heat?" he asked. "You really should."
Goddamn it. I tried my best to shoo Music Geek away, but he was dead set on getting me to argue with him about the merits of his favorite bands, which is the last thing I feel like fucking doing when I'm having good times with good friends — people who know that I have spent most of my adult life writing about music for a living and don't care to discuss it, at least not in detail, off the clock. In fact, while I'm ranting here, if you see me at a bar, with a smile on my face, at a table with three women, please, have the common courtesy not to approach me with questions like: "So, what do you think of Interpol?"
I have done this long enough to be able to tell when someone is trying to bait me into a debate that I refuse to have when I'm having fun.
The Interpol inquiry was the third and final music question he asked. I gave him a beleaguered look and mumbled something like: "Dude, I really don't feel like talking music."
He finally got the point and walked away. I proceeded to explain to my elementary-school teacher friends that one of their students was probably at home, that very moment, thinking a very naughty thought about them.
The Retreat, 123 S. Hyde Park Ave., Tampa, 813-254-2014.
MacDinton's Irish Pub & Restaurant, 405 S. Howard Ave., Tampa, 813-251-8999.
This article appears in Sep 5-11, 2007.