BAR HAVOC: ONE NIGHT AT MCFADDEN’S

I honestly don’t remember the last time I had a Friday night off. If you’re a bartender, you don’t have weekends like everyone else; our weekends start Sunday morning with some breakfast and bad decisions, and usually don’t end till sometime on Tuesday afternoon. It’s science. Well, this past Friday I somehow found myself with an evening off, and what don’t people in their late 20’s do on a Friday night? They don’t go to McFadden’s. No, they don’t, so I strapped on my cougar boots and skinny jeans and headed off with some friends to see what all the cool kids get into on real live weekends.

Located on State Street downtown, McFadden’s is pretty much what I remember from my college years: a really tiny bar area with more people than I knew what to do with and not enough standing room for half of them… and certainly no dancing room, making out room, carbomb room, falling over laughing room, etc. I wanted to do all these things.

But how did everyone else get so drunk before I did?

Red headed sluts shots and miller light bottles filled the air for the next few hours…. I have no idea where all my money went, but I think it might have gone to coat check, endless booze, the bathroom attendant, the cab rides there and back, and the sausage that I happily stuffed in my face as all this was ending… (I know I had a sausage, the wrapper was tucked nicely into my bag, I found it the next morning with a few stray onions and peppers. Stay classy, Havoc).

I remember being uncomfortable when I first arrived. Too crowded. Not my scene. I’m tall, and the ceiling downstairs was low, it reminded me of a frat party basement. I look silly dancing, I don’t dance, everyone else is dancing. Fast forward to the end of the night where I’m getting loose on the dance floor and screaming to the DJ to turn that Ke$ha song the fuck up. I guess I dance after some Jager, good to know.

The bartenders were fantastic. Nothing gets a crowd going like bartenders that are having fun, and when I walked upstairs and saw a guy dancing on the bar passing out champagne.

He was rocking a shirt that said “I am not a whore, but I like to do it”,

I knew I had found a Boston not- so- hidden gem. As soon as I ditched my cranky pants and got lit, this place was FUN. The company I kept wasn’t too shabby either, I was able to fine tune my cougar and domestic beer consumption skills all while pinching some cute cheeks. Hopefully the guy didn’t mind. I’m sure it was absolutely annoying.

The end of the evening brought just what I hate as a bartender, a jelly legged foggy eyed female being one of the last people scampering out of the bar and into the night, yelling about sausages and slipping on the ice. The police officers in front of my apartment building when I got home found my friend Stephanie and myself quite amusing, and the night may or may not have ended with us riding shotgun with police hats and flipping sirens and lights as we cruised around Allston.

McFadden’s. Drink, dance, be merry, eat sausage, pinch cheeks, drive around with police. So this is what normal people do on Friday nights.

McFadden’s is a madhouse open Monday-Saturdays, with 2 floors with 2 DJ’s Thursday, Friday, Saturday playing  Top 40, Hip-Hop, Dance, 70′s Disco, 80′s, 90′s, Reggae, and Rock, and with live acoustic nights on Monday and Wednesday.