And the cab shoots off into the Illy abyss. Glasses clink like a set of spurs on a stranger who enters a saloon. The camera will pan on a set of dusty boots, drift up the denim-clad leg, and capture the momentum and creak of a swinging wooden door. Tip your hats, and thank the pussy fairy that there’s someone in a bar somewhere whom you don’t yet know…

This Shit Is Gaucho

Which makes the Urban Saloon at 21st & Fairmount a drinking hole for those with vital needs. Like I Found Myself In Fairmount And Felt Like Square-Dancing needs. Or I Want A Root Beer Float Without Running Into My Ex At Silk City demands. Both of which are met here. Square-dancing is on Mondays, westerns are shown Tuesdays, but it doesn’t get more wild country unless you’re willing to fantasize. Who amongst you is not prepared to do that? On with the Wranglers, then.

Considering how everyone has stepped it up a notch for fall by displaying their best flannel, the outlaws and lumberjacks of you might require a less flashy scene.

If and when you’re good and ready to move on and there’s not a cab or a horse or a thoroughbred SEPTA ready to claim you, no bones. If you slide a little further west, there might be a shoot-out, the quick of the draw, but what I’d advocate over violence here is to head south a few blocks to the Belgian Cafe. The plus of doing this is that your friends aren’t going to care about where you are when you tell them. You can sit alone at the bar and hear the stories fly out of your mouth knowing that noone will chime in to tell their version of last night to challenge yours. It’s your gun show, desperado.

Look, you just need to keep people guessing is all. If ever, in your nightlife, someone knows exactly what bar/club you’re in at any given moment, you’re boring. Settled. Married. To a dive. Quick, steal that cab from the girl who has been waiting longer than you.

Admittedly, I spend 25% of my time thinking, “I wish I was at home doing pliés and practicing phonics.”

But it gets worse. Maybe you bike and have nothing that fun to do some nights.

In Philadelphia, we often use pretzels to attract potential partners. The pretzel ride, once a midnight excursion with plenty of salty goodness in mind, has become about more than spice trade over the Washington Ave. Sea. It’s all just a booty call. Every other Missed Connection, if you’ve been keeping up and giving a shit, goes this way: “Oh, you, on the bike, with the pretzel. Sex.” Why is that all it takes? Because biking is sexually empowering, people who ride frequently tend to look better than your average subway or car commuter, AND it’s like last call at the bar.

But really, when my unicorn is in the shop, my preferred method of transportation is the cracked leather of the multicultural nightbus, the little taxicab that can and will. So when I do smell the cabby later, I make sure he’s not the taxi bandit that robs PYTs and then settle back into the seat. Sometimes there are drunk people that I’m pretty sure I know along for the ride, and we have the best times of our lives in the ten minutes that it takes to deposit us at our homes.

How To Get Kicked Out Of…A Cab

Give birth in the back seat and suddenly there’s too many passengers? The no-more-than-four rule is complete bullshit if one of you is wearing a skirt.

Be a non-bipster, non-gay black man under the age of 55. There’s no way they’ll even let you in. You up to no good, fool!

Start drinking or recreating in drugs without offering your driver some.

Refuse to have sex with the cabby if you can’t afford to pay.

DO WANT/DO NOT WANT

Silent H’s/The Letter Q
Menergy/Metrosexuality
Glitter Pinecones/Acorn Rain Concussions

Scene Points

There you were, across from the Reading Terminal Market, a place where fashion rarely ventures, a blonde boy with a blue and white striped shirt, green sweater vest, and denim that fit! with brown oxfords. Dress like this every day and you can run the city. No, seriously. I know who runs the city and they said you could.

TrendFucking

Being Well-Read

…Or Black & Noble. Bringing books to the ‘hood is not easy. It’s not like when you build a sneaker store under the el and everyone comes. It’s not like naming a bar Kellis Bar and hoping that Kelly White will drink and table-dance there. But get yourself a big-ass van, fill it with fiction titles with guns and money on the cover, and hit the streets. Black & Noble bookstore, 1411 W. Erie Ave, is the place to go if you’re sick of reading about white boys who can’t hold their liquor and their first world problematics.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 18th, 2007 at 2:09 pm.