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Michael considered fate at 09:20   |   Permalink   |   Post a Comment

Hung out a lot at the mexican watering hole this weekend, chatchi's.. we call it chatchi's(sp?) cause it's the place we go all the time, sort of like those poor bastards in the movie office space go to that franchise joint (which they refer to as Chatchi's) just to get the hell out of the office.. Except we go at night. For beer. It's really called Amigo's and it's got a seedy side to it, but in a good way, and pretty much the best patio you'll find in town so summer's are spent sipping pitchers of PBR for $5 till 8pm and $8 there after and I can't really complain too much. The darts are free and the pool is 75 cents and the tables have recently been replaced. The upstairs has been renovated and the mexican food up there is cheap and generously portioned and all in all, minus a hefty dose of tattoos and cigarette smoke it's a quality joint to hang in.

Jan 1st, 2004, I won't much have to worry about the smoke part anymore.

This weekend I was there both Friday and Saturday evening - unoriginal, perhaps, but this was my relax-don't-think weekend. I saw the Jerks of Grass play on Friday, an absolutely fabulous bluegrass quintet of banjo/guitar/mandolin/upright.. sometimes with a fiddle switched up for the banjo. About the best in local music you can get, as I've seen so far. As luck would have it, I saw more bluegrassy stuff on Saturday. The normal bartender had taken the night off and his fairly new band took the small stage and I ended up more impressed than I figured I would be. There's something just cool about raw, unproffessional music that gets me going.

The cool part about the whole thing was that inbetween sets they had their friend get up and do a routine. Stand-up. Comedy. First ever stand up act at Amigo's, he announced, and he wasn't on fire but he wasn't a bore either, and I sort of enjoyed the juxtaposition of a busy downtown bar patio and a stand up comic rockin' the mic. It wasn't your normal cup of tea.