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Drinko de Mayo - Part 2
[See also: Part One]
This past weekend my friend Brandon and I spent Cinco de Mayo traveling west along back highways through Kansas visiting various local bars along the way. Our adventure began with a deluge of 16oz beers and closed bars, and ended with a deluge of another sort that made this one of our most memorable barhopping journeys yet.
Part Two - Chapman to Salina
"Bum Feast"
Chapman, KS
The second half of our jorney began in the home town of astronaut Joe Engle...
As well as the home of ripped off logos... :)
#12: Lumberyard
5:50pm
Brandon had a 12 oz. Coors Light for $1.50, I had a 12 oz. Killian's for $2.00
Needing to make a pit stop I proceeded to the logical part of the bar area but was quickly stopped by a handful of regulars and was told I was going the wrong way. It turned out the men's room was by the front door. While I was inside a young guy sat down at the bar and the owner (or manager), seated nearby, told the bartender to check his ID.
"Do I need to card those their IDs too?" she asked, referring to us.
"No need," said the manager, "I've served them before, they've been in here a few times."
Hmm, if that's true, then I guess I can't count this as a new bar. Drats. ;)
We then headed across the street to an Irish Pub, where we were promptly intercepted by a waitress. When Brandon mentioned that we were looking for a beer, she herded us out the door and pointed us back to where we just from. "But where's the Irish pub?" Brandon asked. "There isn't one," she said. "But what about that sign?" I said, pointing to the large green sign that said "Irish Pub". "Oh, we haven't been an Irish pub in years," she said, shooing us away.
As we headed down the highway to the next town I missed a photo opportunity that I'm still kicking myself for not circling back around to get: a herd of cows grazing at the base of a McDonald's billboard.
Abilene, KS
#13: Down South
5:50pm
We both had Bud. $1.50 for a 12 oz. draw.
Inside we were seated next to a guy who told us about the four bars in town, about a place that he sometimes described as a liquor store and then other times described as a bar, and which streets we needed to avoid so that we didn't get pulled over and arrested for DUI. He also wanted to talk a lot about Westport.
After a while Brandon grew tired of conversation so we chugged our beer and headed across the street.
#14: Brownie's Bar
6:45pm
Brandon had Bud Light, I had Coors Light. $1.50 for a 12 oz. draw.
This place had a pretty impressive stock of canned and bottled beers. The bartender gave us a detailed overview of how Kansas's liquour laws worked and all the different types of establishments you could be. She also reminded us that we were drinking 3.2 beer, which almost made it feel like we were cheating.
It was about an hour from the start of karaoke but we didn't have time to stick around. We were going to have to skip any remaining towns if we were ever going to make it to Salina.
Salina, KS
We finally arrived in Salina. While heading towards the main part of town I noticed a strange beeping sound that lasted about 3 seconds. I assumed it was a radio station alert sound and ignored it. We checked in at the Budget King motel near the north end of town. The manager, Sam, told us to be careful and warned us that Salina is the DUI capital of the world.
We dropped off our stuff and then headed out to find a few more places. We started out with a place near our motel...
#15: Knuckleheads Tavern
7:40pm
We both had Bud Light. $1.00 for a 10oz. draw.
This place was pretty small and pretty brightly lit on the inside. We chatted with the guy next to us about Westport. It seems that any time you tell someone in a bar you're from KC, Westport is the part of town they know.
"Be careful, fellas, Salina is the DUI capital of the world," the bartender warned us.
As we were driving away I heard that strange beep again.
#16: Bootlegger Saloon
8:01pm
We both had Bud Light. $1.25 for a 10oz. draw.
Brandon got carded, as he often does due to his youthful appearance. A nearby patron in his 50s estimated Brandon's age as young 20s. At 36 years of age he was pleased with that assessment.
We noticed jugs of corn squeezins behind the bar and asked the bartender about them. She told us that the guy who mis-estimated Brandon's age was drinking some.
"By the way, be careful tonight," she said. "Salina is the DUI capital of the world. And I don't mean per capita either, I mean literally more arrests than anywhere else, period."
"Why is that?" we asked.
"Well," she said, "some years back the police chief lost a child to a drunk driver so he made it a personal campaign. It was so successful that now it's something the city takes pride in so please do watch yourselves tonight."
As we were leaving, that same customer that had earlier questioned Brandon's age grabbed Brandon by the arm and yanked him over, demanding to see his ID. He studied it carefully by the glow of his lighter before letting him go. "I was getting close to decking that guy," Brandon told me later.
We stepped outside and noticed another place a block away, so walked on over.
#17: Sharkey's
8:16pm
I forgot to write this place down so I don't remember what we had here.
We drank our beers quickly while watching the blurry guy seen in the photo below do some pretty impressive shooting.
The bartender here told us about some of the places we wanted to check out in town. We mentioned that one place in particular we wnated to see was The Blind Pig, solely because of its name. We got directions and walked back to my car. Except we started to enter a nearly-identical car parkd 3 spaces down. Only the discovery of a cooler in the back seat kept us from getting all the way in.
We found the correct car and started heading to the south end of town. Within moments we heard that strange beeping sound again. "Maybe its a signal that if you call in to this radio station now you can win something," Brandon speculated.
#18: Blind Pig
8:35pm
We both had Bud Light. 10 oz draws were $1.25.
We asked the bartender here about non-chain eating options and after running through a few ideas she hit upon a place called Scheme that makes a good local pizza. We got directions from her before we headed out the door.
By now we had managed to get enough beers close enough together that I was starting to get a buzz for the first time today, so it was time to ditch the car. We called Sam, the manager at Budget King, and asked him to get us a cab while we returned to the motel to park the car. About halfway back we heard that strange beeping sound again.
We got back to the motel in short order and still needed to wait several minutes for the cab, so we chatted with Sam for a bit. Turned out he had previously managed motels in Kansas City and Atlanta. He seemed like a pretty good guy who cared a lot about his family.
Our cab finally arrived and we climbed into a van driven by Lee of Sunflower Taxi who took us out to get something to eat.
#19: The Scheme
9:29pm
Brandon had a Bud Light, I had a Miller Lite. Bottles, I believe they were $2 each. Brandon's was an insulated aluminum bottle.
(Exterior picture stolen from their web site since I forgot to take one.)
We arrived just as they were about to close but they were kind enough to let us put an order in. Rushed, we blurted out "large peppperoni" then nursed our beers while waiting for our pizza.
Before long, the deliciousness arrived. Flavorful, hot, and very cheesey....
We were only able to eat half of it so decided to take the rest of it with us since we usually end up getting the munchies after a full day of drinking. We got a box and thanked the cook (who turned out to be the owner) for making such a good pizza. I got my camera back out to take a few more pictures and that's when the mystery of the beeping sound was solved. It was my camera warning me that my batteries were about to die.
The owner of Scheme was nice enough to give a new pair of batteries. Thank you!!! So I took a picture of him and our bartender...
They then gave us the grand tour of the place, showing us all of the art and memorabilia hanging on the walls and telling us the story behind them. Much of the art contained hidden images or was an optical illusion, such as this piece that when viewed in person seems to be pointing at you regardless of your vantage point...
Some of the other pieeces told the story of Salina's history and of the history of the owner's family. Such as the little girl who wrote to Abe Lincoln and told him more people might vote for him if he grew a beard. Or of an old family friend named Wild Bill Hickok. Other pieces were simply art for art's sake.
We thanked them for their hospitality, grabbed our precious cargo of pizza, and headed back outside.
We were in downtown Salina, but we did not have our bearings and did not know where to go. We spotted a couple approaching from a parking lot and decided to follow them. They went in the back door of a building across the alley and up some stairs to the third floor. Which led us to...
#20: Big Nose Kate's
10:58pm
We both had Bud Light. 16 oz. draws were $2.00.
This was a large area with 2 main rooms and an outdoor concrete deck overlooking the street. However, sorry, but this is one Big Nose that blows. It just wasn't the type of bar we like to go to. Pretentious and filled with an assortment of hipsters, fratties, and trendy people.
We drank 3/4 of our 16 oz beers, decided that 12 ounces was good enough to count, and got the hell out.
When we got back downstairs we found it raining and stood under the awning trying to figure out where to go next. We asked a guy with several piercings where all the bars were. "There's only three," he insisted. We knew he was wrong but pretty much everyone around here insisted that Big Nose Kate's, Martini's (the bar downstairs from Kate's), and Groove (a bar across the street) were the only bars around. He gave us tickets to Groove (it had a cover charge otherwise) and showed us how to cut through Martini's to get out the front door (since we had entered via the alley).
Martini's looked much the same as Big Nose Kate's so we didn't bother to stop. We ran across the streeet in the rain to Groove, peered in the windows, and reached the same conclusion. We decided to ditch this block.
We knew we were on the main drag but didn't know where on it we were. We started walking south as lightning began to strike with increasing closeness. After a few blocks and no sign of a bar, Brandon approached a car sitting at a Sonic and asked for directions.
It turned out we were at the sound end of the strip and neeeded to go back and walk the other way. As i lightly rained we headedd back north, our beloved pizza still in tow.
Well, what do you know? Only 1 block past the area we had just come from, we found a cluster of good dive bars! (Damn trendy people and their not-knowin' of things that exist outside their trendy little world.)
#21: Paramount Bar
11:40pm?
We both had Bud 10 oz. draws were $2.00.
Now, this place was crowded and did have a band, but there was no cover charge and the music was not too loud. We were able to get a table with ease.
Remember how I mentioned earlier about forgeting to write down our visit to #17 for the day, Sharkey's? Well, because of that, my count for whhere we were in the day was one lower than reality. Anyway, beer fatigue was really starting to set in, so I encourage Brandon by pointing out that we only needed twwo more bars in order to break our previous record of 21 bars in a single day (set on June 17, 2006 and then tied on August 9, 2006). We wondered aloud why that number seemed to me such an impenetrable barrier to us, unaware that we had in reality already just tied it again.
We decided to push on to at least "tie" the record, so we stepped out under the awning to scope out our situation. It was raining heavily and the next bar was up the street. As we made our plan, Brandon felt something shift and heard a heartbreaking "sploosh" sound.
Weakened by several exposures to the rain, the side of the pizza box had popped open and our entire 1/2 large pepperoni pizza had just dropped face-down onto the wet sidewalk.
In what must have looked like a well-choreographed scene, we looked in horror at the mess on the sidewalk, then at each other, then at the pizza, then at each other, and at the pizza again, and bck at each other.
Brandon was at a loss for words. He knelt down and somberly started putting the slices of wet pizza back in the box. "Well maybe it might still be salvageable," I offered.
He looked at it, frowned, and set it behind a bench. "There's no point," he said, before cursing himself repeatedly.
Devastated by our loss, we ran up-and-across the street to the next place we saw...
#22: The Spot
12:00am?
Kamikaze shots... $1 each.
A wedding party was in its death throes as we entered this place. Soaking wet, we decided not to cross the dance floor where some bridesmaids were dancing and instead cut through a narrow area where the groomsmen were hanging out. One of them was yapping on his cell phone and wouldn't step out of the way, and Brandon accidently knocked him down. He helped him right himself and apoligized and he walked back to the bar.
Still thinking this was the bar that would only tie our record, we hit a new kind of barrier. Sheer stomach volume. There simply wasn't room in there to squeeze in any more beer. Luckily they had $1 shot specials. Problem solved!
When we left Brandon cut across the dance floor to avoid tipping over any more groomsmen.
We continued another block up the street.
#23: Rendezvous
12:15am?
We both had Old Style. 12 oz. draws for $1.25 each.
As we drank our beer we congratulated each other on breaking our record... unaware we had already done so at the previous bar. :)
Before long we once again began lamenting the loss of of our pizza. "At least it will be a good meal for a bum," I said. Brandon's face lit up and he started chuckling.
"I have a phrase that just popped into my head," he said. "Check this..... 'Bum Feast'. That's exactly what that pizza is."
I started cracking up.
"I'd make a good name for a band," he added.
"I can see the debut album now," I said. "Bum Feast: Pizza On The Sidewalk."
And the cover art could have been the photo I should have taken of us moping over spilled sidewalk pizza.
Believe it or not, we began to get a second wind here and decided to keep going. So we stepped outside to head down to the next bar. We were stunned to find that what had been rain when we arrived at Rendezvous had since turned into a sky-wide waterfall. A river was running down the street with the water level already up to the chassis of the cars parked in front. We decided to call a cab instead. We dialed the number for Sunflower Taxi and got Lee again.
"It's going to be at least half an hour because the streets are all flooded," he said.
We went back inside and played Golden Tee until he arrived. Brandon heckled me for using my thumbs instead of my palm when putting.
Lee arrived, and the two of us plus a third guy who had also called ran out in the pouring rain with him. We were surprised to find an already-full cab waiting for us. Somehow the three of us + Lee managed to squeeze in. We asked him to take us to any bar that was still open, but the places he named we had already been to. Not wanting to delay anyone else, we asked to just go back to the Budget King so that we could figure out a new strategy from there.
By now all of the streets were under 1 to 1-1/2 feet of water (I later learned that Salina got 5.3 inches of rain in 90 minutes that night!) and Lee looked nervous as all hell trying to get us to our destinations. He did a great job though so our hats definitely go off to him.
It was a little after 1:00am when we returned to our room. With nature behaving the way it was and less than an hour before Kansas law mandated that the bars closed, we decided thet prudent thing to do would be to call it a night.
Epilogue
On Sunday morning we awoke with only mild hangovers and began the drive back to Kansas City. Along the way we saw several lakes and ponds that has not existed the previous day. At one spot near Junction City I-70 was almost completely under water and traffic was diverted onto the shoulder while crews tried to pump out the water. In the median the roof and side windows of a submerged vehicle could be seen.
Our next adventure will be coming soon. We haven't decided where to go just yet but we definitely like the small towns. Finding daytime beer in Kansas proved far harder than it did when we were in Iowa last August so we may try out another part of Iowa next time.
Here's the overview of this trip...
This past weekend my friend Brandon and I spent Cinco de Mayo traveling west along back highways through Kansas visiting various local bars along the way. Our adventure began with a deluge of 16oz beers and closed bars, and ended with a deluge of another sort that made this one of our most memorable barhopping journeys yet.
Part Two - Chapman to Salina
"Bum Feast"
Chapman, KS
The second half of our jorney began in the home town of astronaut Joe Engle...
As well as the home of ripped off logos... :)
#12: Lumberyard
5:50pm
Brandon had a 12 oz. Coors Light for $1.50, I had a 12 oz. Killian's for $2.00
Needing to make a pit stop I proceeded to the logical part of the bar area but was quickly stopped by a handful of regulars and was told I was going the wrong way. It turned out the men's room was by the front door. While I was inside a young guy sat down at the bar and the owner (or manager), seated nearby, told the bartender to check his ID.
"Do I need to card those their IDs too?" she asked, referring to us.
"No need," said the manager, "I've served them before, they've been in here a few times."
Hmm, if that's true, then I guess I can't count this as a new bar. Drats. ;)
We then headed across the street to an Irish Pub, where we were promptly intercepted by a waitress. When Brandon mentioned that we were looking for a beer, she herded us out the door and pointed us back to where we just from. "But where's the Irish pub?" Brandon asked. "There isn't one," she said. "But what about that sign?" I said, pointing to the large green sign that said "Irish Pub". "Oh, we haven't been an Irish pub in years," she said, shooing us away.
As we headed down the highway to the next town I missed a photo opportunity that I'm still kicking myself for not circling back around to get: a herd of cows grazing at the base of a McDonald's billboard.
Abilene, KS
#13: Down South
5:50pm
We both had Bud. $1.50 for a 12 oz. draw.
Inside we were seated next to a guy who told us about the four bars in town, about a place that he sometimes described as a liquor store and then other times described as a bar, and which streets we needed to avoid so that we didn't get pulled over and arrested for DUI. He also wanted to talk a lot about Westport.
After a while Brandon grew tired of conversation so we chugged our beer and headed across the street.
#14: Brownie's Bar
6:45pm
Brandon had Bud Light, I had Coors Light. $1.50 for a 12 oz. draw.
This place had a pretty impressive stock of canned and bottled beers. The bartender gave us a detailed overview of how Kansas's liquour laws worked and all the different types of establishments you could be. She also reminded us that we were drinking 3.2 beer, which almost made it feel like we were cheating.
It was about an hour from the start of karaoke but we didn't have time to stick around. We were going to have to skip any remaining towns if we were ever going to make it to Salina.
Salina, KS
We finally arrived in Salina. While heading towards the main part of town I noticed a strange beeping sound that lasted about 3 seconds. I assumed it was a radio station alert sound and ignored it. We checked in at the Budget King motel near the north end of town. The manager, Sam, told us to be careful and warned us that Salina is the DUI capital of the world.
We dropped off our stuff and then headed out to find a few more places. We started out with a place near our motel...
#15: Knuckleheads Tavern
7:40pm
We both had Bud Light. $1.00 for a 10oz. draw.
This place was pretty small and pretty brightly lit on the inside. We chatted with the guy next to us about Westport. It seems that any time you tell someone in a bar you're from KC, Westport is the part of town they know.
"Be careful, fellas, Salina is the DUI capital of the world," the bartender warned us.
As we were driving away I heard that strange beep again.
#16: Bootlegger Saloon
8:01pm
We both had Bud Light. $1.25 for a 10oz. draw.
Brandon got carded, as he often does due to his youthful appearance. A nearby patron in his 50s estimated Brandon's age as young 20s. At 36 years of age he was pleased with that assessment.
We noticed jugs of corn squeezins behind the bar and asked the bartender about them. She told us that the guy who mis-estimated Brandon's age was drinking some.
"By the way, be careful tonight," she said. "Salina is the DUI capital of the world. And I don't mean per capita either, I mean literally more arrests than anywhere else, period."
"Why is that?" we asked.
"Well," she said, "some years back the police chief lost a child to a drunk driver so he made it a personal campaign. It was so successful that now it's something the city takes pride in so please do watch yourselves tonight."
As we were leaving, that same customer that had earlier questioned Brandon's age grabbed Brandon by the arm and yanked him over, demanding to see his ID. He studied it carefully by the glow of his lighter before letting him go. "I was getting close to decking that guy," Brandon told me later.
We stepped outside and noticed another place a block away, so walked on over.
#17: Sharkey's
8:16pm
I forgot to write this place down so I don't remember what we had here.
We drank our beers quickly while watching the blurry guy seen in the photo below do some pretty impressive shooting.
The bartender here told us about some of the places we wanted to check out in town. We mentioned that one place in particular we wnated to see was The Blind Pig, solely because of its name. We got directions and walked back to my car. Except we started to enter a nearly-identical car parkd 3 spaces down. Only the discovery of a cooler in the back seat kept us from getting all the way in.
We found the correct car and started heading to the south end of town. Within moments we heard that strange beeping sound again. "Maybe its a signal that if you call in to this radio station now you can win something," Brandon speculated.
#18: Blind Pig
8:35pm
We both had Bud Light. 10 oz draws were $1.25.
We asked the bartender here about non-chain eating options and after running through a few ideas she hit upon a place called Scheme that makes a good local pizza. We got directions from her before we headed out the door.
By now we had managed to get enough beers close enough together that I was starting to get a buzz for the first time today, so it was time to ditch the car. We called Sam, the manager at Budget King, and asked him to get us a cab while we returned to the motel to park the car. About halfway back we heard that strange beeping sound again.
We got back to the motel in short order and still needed to wait several minutes for the cab, so we chatted with Sam for a bit. Turned out he had previously managed motels in Kansas City and Atlanta. He seemed like a pretty good guy who cared a lot about his family.
Our cab finally arrived and we climbed into a van driven by Lee of Sunflower Taxi who took us out to get something to eat.
#19: The Scheme
9:29pm
Brandon had a Bud Light, I had a Miller Lite. Bottles, I believe they were $2 each. Brandon's was an insulated aluminum bottle.
(Exterior picture stolen from their web site since I forgot to take one.)
We arrived just as they were about to close but they were kind enough to let us put an order in. Rushed, we blurted out "large peppperoni" then nursed our beers while waiting for our pizza.
Before long, the deliciousness arrived. Flavorful, hot, and very cheesey....
We were only able to eat half of it so decided to take the rest of it with us since we usually end up getting the munchies after a full day of drinking. We got a box and thanked the cook (who turned out to be the owner) for making such a good pizza. I got my camera back out to take a few more pictures and that's when the mystery of the beeping sound was solved. It was my camera warning me that my batteries were about to die.
The owner of Scheme was nice enough to give a new pair of batteries. Thank you!!! So I took a picture of him and our bartender...
They then gave us the grand tour of the place, showing us all of the art and memorabilia hanging on the walls and telling us the story behind them. Much of the art contained hidden images or was an optical illusion, such as this piece that when viewed in person seems to be pointing at you regardless of your vantage point...
Some of the other pieeces told the story of Salina's history and of the history of the owner's family. Such as the little girl who wrote to Abe Lincoln and told him more people might vote for him if he grew a beard. Or of an old family friend named Wild Bill Hickok. Other pieces were simply art for art's sake.
We thanked them for their hospitality, grabbed our precious cargo of pizza, and headed back outside.
We were in downtown Salina, but we did not have our bearings and did not know where to go. We spotted a couple approaching from a parking lot and decided to follow them. They went in the back door of a building across the alley and up some stairs to the third floor. Which led us to...
#20: Big Nose Kate's
10:58pm
We both had Bud Light. 16 oz. draws were $2.00.
This was a large area with 2 main rooms and an outdoor concrete deck overlooking the street. However, sorry, but this is one Big Nose that blows. It just wasn't the type of bar we like to go to. Pretentious and filled with an assortment of hipsters, fratties, and trendy people.
We drank 3/4 of our 16 oz beers, decided that 12 ounces was good enough to count, and got the hell out.
When we got back downstairs we found it raining and stood under the awning trying to figure out where to go next. We asked a guy with several piercings where all the bars were. "There's only three," he insisted. We knew he was wrong but pretty much everyone around here insisted that Big Nose Kate's, Martini's (the bar downstairs from Kate's), and Groove (a bar across the street) were the only bars around. He gave us tickets to Groove (it had a cover charge otherwise) and showed us how to cut through Martini's to get out the front door (since we had entered via the alley).
Martini's looked much the same as Big Nose Kate's so we didn't bother to stop. We ran across the streeet in the rain to Groove, peered in the windows, and reached the same conclusion. We decided to ditch this block.
We knew we were on the main drag but didn't know where on it we were. We started walking south as lightning began to strike with increasing closeness. After a few blocks and no sign of a bar, Brandon approached a car sitting at a Sonic and asked for directions.
It turned out we were at the sound end of the strip and neeeded to go back and walk the other way. As i lightly rained we headedd back north, our beloved pizza still in tow.
Well, what do you know? Only 1 block past the area we had just come from, we found a cluster of good dive bars! (Damn trendy people and their not-knowin' of things that exist outside their trendy little world.)
#21: Paramount Bar
11:40pm?
We both had Bud 10 oz. draws were $2.00.
Now, this place was crowded and did have a band, but there was no cover charge and the music was not too loud. We were able to get a table with ease.
Remember how I mentioned earlier about forgeting to write down our visit to #17 for the day, Sharkey's? Well, because of that, my count for whhere we were in the day was one lower than reality. Anyway, beer fatigue was really starting to set in, so I encourage Brandon by pointing out that we only needed twwo more bars in order to break our previous record of 21 bars in a single day (set on June 17, 2006 and then tied on August 9, 2006). We wondered aloud why that number seemed to me such an impenetrable barrier to us, unaware that we had in reality already just tied it again.
We decided to push on to at least "tie" the record, so we stepped out under the awning to scope out our situation. It was raining heavily and the next bar was up the street. As we made our plan, Brandon felt something shift and heard a heartbreaking "sploosh" sound.
Weakened by several exposures to the rain, the side of the pizza box had popped open and our entire 1/2 large pepperoni pizza had just dropped face-down onto the wet sidewalk.
In what must have looked like a well-choreographed scene, we looked in horror at the mess on the sidewalk, then at each other, then at the pizza, then at each other, and at the pizza again, and bck at each other.
Brandon was at a loss for words. He knelt down and somberly started putting the slices of wet pizza back in the box. "Well maybe it might still be salvageable," I offered.
He looked at it, frowned, and set it behind a bench. "There's no point," he said, before cursing himself repeatedly.
Devastated by our loss, we ran up-and-across the street to the next place we saw...
#22: The Spot
12:00am?
Kamikaze shots... $1 each.
A wedding party was in its death throes as we entered this place. Soaking wet, we decided not to cross the dance floor where some bridesmaids were dancing and instead cut through a narrow area where the groomsmen were hanging out. One of them was yapping on his cell phone and wouldn't step out of the way, and Brandon accidently knocked him down. He helped him right himself and apoligized and he walked back to the bar.
Still thinking this was the bar that would only tie our record, we hit a new kind of barrier. Sheer stomach volume. There simply wasn't room in there to squeeze in any more beer. Luckily they had $1 shot specials. Problem solved!
When we left Brandon cut across the dance floor to avoid tipping over any more groomsmen.
We continued another block up the street.
#23: Rendezvous
12:15am?
We both had Old Style. 12 oz. draws for $1.25 each.
As we drank our beer we congratulated each other on breaking our record... unaware we had already done so at the previous bar. :)
Before long we once again began lamenting the loss of of our pizza. "At least it will be a good meal for a bum," I said. Brandon's face lit up and he started chuckling.
"I have a phrase that just popped into my head," he said. "Check this..... 'Bum Feast'. That's exactly what that pizza is."
I started cracking up.
"I'd make a good name for a band," he added.
"I can see the debut album now," I said. "Bum Feast: Pizza On The Sidewalk."
And the cover art could have been the photo I should have taken of us moping over spilled sidewalk pizza.
Believe it or not, we began to get a second wind here and decided to keep going. So we stepped outside to head down to the next bar. We were stunned to find that what had been rain when we arrived at Rendezvous had since turned into a sky-wide waterfall. A river was running down the street with the water level already up to the chassis of the cars parked in front. We decided to call a cab instead. We dialed the number for Sunflower Taxi and got Lee again.
"It's going to be at least half an hour because the streets are all flooded," he said.
We went back inside and played Golden Tee until he arrived. Brandon heckled me for using my thumbs instead of my palm when putting.
Lee arrived, and the two of us plus a third guy who had also called ran out in the pouring rain with him. We were surprised to find an already-full cab waiting for us. Somehow the three of us + Lee managed to squeeze in. We asked him to take us to any bar that was still open, but the places he named we had already been to. Not wanting to delay anyone else, we asked to just go back to the Budget King so that we could figure out a new strategy from there.
By now all of the streets were under 1 to 1-1/2 feet of water (I later learned that Salina got 5.3 inches of rain in 90 minutes that night!) and Lee looked nervous as all hell trying to get us to our destinations. He did a great job though so our hats definitely go off to him.
It was a little after 1:00am when we returned to our room. With nature behaving the way it was and less than an hour before Kansas law mandated that the bars closed, we decided thet prudent thing to do would be to call it a night.
Epilogue
On Sunday morning we awoke with only mild hangovers and began the drive back to Kansas City. Along the way we saw several lakes and ponds that has not existed the previous day. At one spot near Junction City I-70 was almost completely under water and traffic was diverted onto the shoulder while crews tried to pump out the water. In the median the roof and side windows of a submerged vehicle could be seen.
Our next adventure will be coming soon. We haven't decided where to go just yet but we definitely like the small towns. Finding daytime beer in Kansas proved far harder than it did when we were in Iowa last August so we may try out another part of Iowa next time.
Here's the overview of this trip...
- Dodie's Roadhouse (Basehor, KS)
- Helen's Hilltop (Tonganoxie, KS)
- Slow Ride Roadhouse (Lawrence, KS)
- Perry Bar & Grill (Perry, KS)
- Stinger's Lounge (North Topeka, KS)
- Twilighter Country Club (North Topeka, KS)
- Rambler's (Wamego, KS)
- Cock-n-Bull Tavern (Manhattan, KS)
- Corner Club (Junction City, KS)
- JC Bar (Junction City, KS)
- Uptown Lounge (Junction City, KS)
- Lumberyard (Chapman, KS)
- Down South (Abilene, KS)
- Brownie's Bar (Abilene, KS)
- Knuckleheads Tavern (Salina, KS)
- Bootlegger Saloon (Salina, KS)
- Sharkey's (Salina, KS)
- Blind Pig (Salina, KS)
- Scheme (Salina, KS)
- Big Nose Kate's (Salina, KS)
- Paramount Bar (Salina, KS)
- The Spot (Salina, KS)
- Rendezvous (Salina, KS)
Comments
Great little adventure. I discovered this page while searching for the phrase "DUI capital of the world". I am from Salina and am familiar with all the bars you attended. While reading your story about The Spot, your description of the wedding party sounded very familiar. Turns out after looking at the picture a little more closely I realized that it is actually me in the doorway! I was at a friends' wedding reception at their newly opened bar; "The Blue Goat" They just hadn't installed a new sign yet. What are the odds, I mean really.
Posted by: Jason Self | September 19, 2007 01:38 AM
Hey I did a search on my hometown and your page came up. Great photos of my hometown bar. I am #12 The Lumberyard and the Shamrock Cafe, which is owned by my cousin. Anyway, thanks for the smiles as i am stuck in the Moscow airport bored out of my mind. I will keep checking for more trips. Next time you are there ask for Murf. That's my pops. He will show you a good time.
Posted by: Neal Murphy | December 15, 2007 05:03 PM