The Merchant's Cafe

July 27, 2008

M and I went to the Merchant’s Café on Friday. It is the oldest restaurant and bar in Seattle, it was once a brothel, and the evidence was still there with lush regulars gracing the bar tops with raunchy dancing at every classic rock song. When getting some fresh air outside, a scrap broke out between the bouncer and a girl who’d just been kicked out. She was underage but felt she had the right be stay because she knew people at the bar, anyway, she threw a drink at the bouncer that reflected onto everyone nearby, I had lime juice in my hair and M and I were ready to start something if we didn’t have heels on. She got dragged across the street kicking and screaming. A man beside me was also the victim of the juicing. Him and his old man were in Seattle for one night and were due for a flight back to Newcastle, England the next day. Mike was a song writer and musician on tour with his father, who happened to be the first guitarist for The Animals and former band member for Eric Clapton. My stunned reaction, which included getting slightly teary eyed quickly scared him back into the bar. Mike and I talked outside for a while longer about the music industry and I invited him to visit my company the next time he was in town.

The next day I wrote my bike out to pick blackberries and fell asleep on a bench for a while, you know, like what the homeless people do. A stretch of the bike trail is full of exotic looking roosters, nobody knows who keeps leaving them there, but I hear every year there are new varieties. There must have been hens at one point but they must have run far away for fear of being trampled.

M and I went out in search of a live music venue for Saturday night. We went to the university of Washington district (also UW). We went to a small club called the Monkey, they had funky stuff all over their ceiling like a beer keg with plastic buttocks stuck to it. The band was a head banger called Ubik, their sound check was my favourite part: “check, check… check… CHEEEEECCCCKKKKKKKKK!!!!” The crowd really got into the music after a while, they even started moshing in the one cubic meter of space there was to stand, knocking over tables and chairs. The bass player was also dressed in a panda costume for those on ecstasy.

After our eardrums had enough, we headed back to downtown Seattle to an Irish pub called Fado. The band was great and the place was huge. I love it! There were many other pubs in that area and I will be spending many more weekends scouting out my new watering hole, although Thursday nights at the Duke of Wellington during my time in Waterloo is irreplaceable. The statistics were not lying. Seattle is home of the most eligible men per capita. They are everywhere and most are well dressed and handsome, a girl can get used to this.