I had my eye on the guy with the neck tattoo from the start. The tat was crude; it looked like a cat scratch, a big cat scratch, like he'd been mauled by a rabid cougar but came out on the winning end and wanted to make sure the incident was memorialized. He had a reddish tan — the kind that comes from roofing all day or riding around shirtless on a Hog. Tattoo Guy was the dude you'd expect to meet at an Iron Maiden concert — not outside at a Channelside bar on a Saturday afternoon.
"I could sit here all day," said my buddy in between sips of Miller Lite. I don't think he was fully aware of Tattoo Guy. We had secured a table overlooking the waterfront. A breeze made the mid-afternoon temperature tolerable. The couple seated next to us matched the pasty, middle-aged tourist stereotype I'd anticipated. Margarita Mamas was the name of the bar. The interior features a faux Mexican aesthetic, but the view from the tiki area is outstanding. When we sat down, a giant cruise ship was exiting the channel, bound for the Bahamas — or wherever it is people float to these days. The condos of Harbour Island, the barges, the tugboats, the buildings of downtown Tampa — they were all within view. Tattoo Guy was as well.
He sat at the bar, drinking from a bottle of Negra Modelo, same as me, and smoked Marlboro Reds. I watched him from over my buddy's shoulder. He kept cupping his hand over his mouth conspiratorially, talking to his woman like they were planning a scam. She looked rough. Same burnt skin, same greasy hair as Tattoo Guy. Her outfit consisted of a low-cut white T-shirt (no bra) and a short, stonewashed denim culottes. She sat with her feet up on the bar stool, revealing well-worn flip-flops and chipped green paint on her tar-stained toes.
My buddy and I admired the budding skyline of the Channelside district. Actually, he admired it. I could not have cared less. All I saw was condos that would be bought by foreign investors or inhabited by transplants from the Midwest who would be too old to appreciate the nightlife located within stumbling distance.
"What do you think all this will look like in 25 years?" my buddy asked.
"You mean if it we're not at war with China or Russia or a hurricane barrels through here and washes all this away?"
I needed another beer. My cheery disposition hadn't kicked in yet. My buddy got us another much-needed round. I peered over the cement ledge. Some tool in a very expensive cigarette boat cruised through the channel. He drove slowly, a blonde in a tiny white top by his side. Perhaps he'd impress her later with the boat's speed; it seemed a waste for such a machine to putt along like a dinghy.
The breeze that made the heat bearable suddenly wreaked havoc on the umbrellas that apparently were not properly secured to the tables. One came completely loose and landed on two guys at the bar. They weren't hit hard, but they had the good sense to request some complimentary shots, which they received. Tattoo Guy looked on in approval. Like him, the pair were long-haired and black-shirted, but with the affable look of well-meaning dirt rockers, not the neighborhood-bully effect of TG.
Observing the two dirt rockers, I thought of the man I'd met the night before in downtown St. Pete at The Rare Olive. I leaned next to him to order a drink and spotted a clutch of tickets in his hand for the upcoming Great White concert at Jannus Landing.
"Just scored 'em," he said. Before my rum and coke arrived, he asked the female bartender if she wanted to accompany him.
"Who's Great White?" she inquired.
"You know, 'Once Bitten twice Shy,'" he said, conspicuously failing to mention they were also the band whose pyrotechnics were implicated in the death of 100 people in a Rhode Island nightclub. Something told me the two guys who just scored the free shots at Margarita Mamas would have been happy to score some Great White tickets. Tattoo Guy probably would've appreciated a little hair metal, as well.
Problem was, the poor sucker who was setting up his P.A. system by the tiki bar for an evening of covers probably didn't plan on being heckled by metalheads. As soon as the dude started strumming his six-string, Tattoo Guy, who must've been at least semi-drunk by now, started hollering requests. The dirt rockers encouraged him.
"'One in a Million!'" he yelled, so that everyone in the bar could hear.
For those not well-versed in '80s metal, "One in a Million" is the Guns N' Roses song that finds redneck whack job Axl singing "Police and niggers, that's right, get out of my way."
Believe it or not, the cover singer wasn't gonna wedge that one in between Dave Matthews and Jimmy Buffett tunes. But Tattoo Guy was relentless. Finally, the singer agreed upon Neil Young's "The Needle and the Damage Done," a song about heroin addiction that sounded downright silly coming from a cover singer, on a gorgeous Saturday afternoon, at a place called Margarita Mamas.
Typically, I prefer a jukebox to a cover artist. But hearing a little Buffett in the background while I relax with a drink won't annoy me. Listening to some idiot request depressing drug warnings in the middle of a beautiful day — now that's just wrong.
Margarita Mamas, 615 Channelside Dr., Tampa, 813-228-7300.
This article appears in Jun 27 – Jul 3, 2007.