BAR HAVOC: OFF THE RADAR

One would think that living in a city as big as Boston would make it easy to stay off the radar, to meet new people and keep your nose out of former trouble spots when you know you have a night of cocktails ahead of you. Turns out, the opposite is true, especially if you’re a bartender.

The old saying is “don’t shit where you eat”

and for the most part in the nine-to-five world, those rules are obeyed because the repercussions are severe.

Not in the service industry. Not even close. On any given day in Boston no matter where I am I am not far from a bar where someone is employed that I currently have or used to have had my eye on. There are bars where I will only go if someone isn’t working. There are bars I will only go to if someone is working.

There are bars that I would normally never go to, but maybe I would “accidentally” wander into wearing a little black dress.

There are places I would normally avoid like the plague, but after a few cocktails I feel like “just going in to say hi; he like, probably totally wants to see me after I never called him back after that date.”

Bartenders. Everyone has been on one.

There are bars I have caused scenes in: I used to continue to go to one bar after one of their bartenders/my ex and I had broken up. I had always gone there, why should I change anything just because of a little nasty breakup? Besides, I was fine. I curled my hair and wore a low cut shirt because I was single and feeling craaaaaaaaaazy.

I was fucking FINE. (I wasn’t fine, I was drunk.)

Lines blurred and people stared, and when I fell backwards off my barstool he came running to help me up. I screamed that I didn’t need his help anymore and I think my boobs fell out, nipples for everyone. I still go to that bar all the time, even though there are a million bars in Boston where there are boys who haven’t seen my boobs. Well, maybe a few hundred. Whatever.

One would think that, living in Boston, there are enough places to stay off the radar; and there are!

I’ve made it my goal for 2013 to go somewhere new each week in addition to time spent cozying up at my regular watering holes. So far it’s been nice to branch out, but I’ve already found that I won’t stop going to my regular old haunts, because let’s be honest, sometimes you just want to go where everybody knows your name. Or, where at least one person has seen your boobs.