Spanish Caravan

I pride myself on my knowledge of the bars in Boulder, CO. In my days of being a borderline alcoholic, many bartenders knew me and even my birthday. But I digress.

"You can't start a night without car bombs at Connor's", "Aww shit, The Walrus smells like piss", "The Rio margaritas will fuck you up son!", "Goddamn hippies in Mountain Sun crowding up happy hour", "Avoid the hill at all costs, unless a night among smelly jocks, drunk overweight teens with fake IDs is your idea of fun". This advice and more, is available to anyone who wants to scar his/her liver in my presence. I know it all.

Or so I thought until last weekend. My friend's from Mexico and bought a great new casa last month. His family was here to visit (insert stereotypes here). I met his 2 brothers, only one of whom could somewhat communicate in Anglonese. Amidst drunken, accented muttering I heard the word "Oscar" being tossed around a lot, and I figured it was a new friend from way south of the border. Turns out it was bar they wanted to visit, and I went along, mainly in the disbelief that there was a watering hole I had no knowledge of. "Oscar's" as the blinking neon lights called it, is on the outskirts of the city, in the kind of area where even kindly white dreadlocked cabbies won't pick you up from. Surprisingly, the place was packed and even charged a mean $5 cover (most places in Boulder don't have a cover - $1 is an exception in Connor's on Saturdays).

Entering the bar was like walking into the set of a Three Amigos caper. I saw sweaty Mexicans in sombreros, overweight women in colorful skirts and smug lothario bartenders. By the time I had ordered the house margarita (which had more sugar than a boxful of candy), I had seen nearly every demographic you see in Boulder. The dancefloor was filled with outrageously pretty latinas doing the salsa in a hurry(how do they manage to swing their hips to reggae and still look so cool?) patrolled by hair gelled slicks. There were "college kids" in loose clothing consuming shot after shot. Muscular old men and skinny older men waited to flirt with the drunken rejects. I even saw a black couple, some Saudis and an Indian couple. Represent!

The fuckin hippies turned up, the unshaven women doing the annoying belly-dance imitation move. Anyone else seen that? Modern hippies like to believe that they imbibe something from all cultures and so they know everything. Only they confuse the middle east for South Asia, hip-swirling for belly dance, and slow irregular hand movements for response to Indian music. Goddamn hippies.

Amidst all this chaos, the brothers were supremely disappointed and insisted they wanted to go to the bars I knew about. Off we went, me wondering what they'd do in place where the DJ played MJ and JayZ. Time for shock #2. Turns out, to "pick up" girls you don't have to sober or capable of a coherent conversation. The brothers would stumble over to a group of girls mutter something and would have a woman on each arm before I could say Jignesh Ravindrabhushan. Their intentions were clear - to take the girls home (i.e. the new 2BR casa where their parents and sisters were presumably asleep). I guess that didn't make for a good pick up line and they left every bar empty handed. They even managed to pick up a girl from the streets before her boyfriend chased them away. I still have some faith in humanity left in me.

It was close to last call and I wasn't drinking that evening so I had had enough. Wished the boys good luck, rued the fact that I never had or will possess such skills, and drove home. Last I saw them, they looked like they had found a flock of cooing girls to buy drinks. Wonder how that turned out.