I've been back to the bars in Iowa City — the town where I got my undergraduate degree — a number of times since I left three years ago. And every time, my college friends and I have stood around feeling just plain old. Not old like the non-traditional graduate-student guy with the backpack on wheels who used to leer at us and take notes for his novel, or old like the moms and dads visiting for parents' weekend who bought rounds of shots and got shamelessly drunk in an attempt to fit in and relate to their kid. Just not young anymore. Not recklessly hormonal. Simply vapid.
This is essentially how I feel at Ogden Street South (103 South Ogden Street), a standard-issue neighborhood bar packed with college students shrieking and squealing their way through song after shrilling karaoke song. It's dudes with sprawling, curly sideburns and stretched-out T-shirts missing every note and lyrical cue of "Sweet Child O' Mine," yet still receiving wild applause and whooping from all corners of the bar. It's a twenty-man, ugly-Christmas-sweater stag party stumbling around acting creative and clever in greasy wigs, tweed pants and nubby turtlenecks. It's being in the way of a server or busboy no matter where I stand, and getting kicked, bumped, shouldered and stepped on by wobbling, tottering drunks and hand-holding trains of girls so glazed that only the metaphorical locomotive has any control of their bodies.
It's also pretty damn difficult to get a drink. Though our friends already have a table and a server by the time we show up, Maggie and I go straight to the source for our first few rounds purely out of habit (and because servers in busy bars can be wicked unreliable). This, however, turns out to be a tricky process — one requiring us to split up despite three bartenders and a few empty stools that provide ample exposure for eye contact and arm-wagging. In the ideal divide-and-conquer situation, each person stakes out an end of the bar, and when one gets served, the other will notice and either retreat to home base or double back for support. But Maggie and I can't see each other from where we're positioned, so we end up getting served simultaneously. No matter: Even when we score an attentive waitress an hour later who works her ass off to keep our drinks full, double-fisting turns out to be the only way either of us can balance supply with demand.
All night, I make a point to drink Bud bottles, not because they're on special or because the draught-beer selection is subpar, but because everything except Guinness pints (which two friends are drinking) and shots (which we consume shortly after arriving) is served in plastic. I recognize this as a calculated managerial move, one based on experience and an astute assessment of Friday-night karaoke clientele: In a crowd this dense and drunk, glasses get toppled, dropped, broken. Plastic supports the bottom line; it protects the investment. But plastic is what you drink out of at keg parties, during BBQs, while camping. It shouldn't be what beer sold at a 600 percent markup is served in. The head settles differently, and the contents always taste warm and flat. Plus, it's just cheap. I'm not saying I'll refuse to drink somewhere or get up and leave if plastic turns out to be the china of choice, but I don't have to be happy about it, and I'm not ashamed to say that I avoid it at all costs.
God, I sound old.
