From the Gayborhood to Dubai

I watched the Opening Ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics last night. I had decided that I wouldn't go out to meet my friends until I watched the delegations from the United States and Costa Rica walk into the Bird's Nest during the Parade of Nations. Throughout the procession I cooked and then ate dinner: pasta shells with roasted garlic spaghetti sauce and two, chopped roasted garlic Italian sausages.

Once the CR delegation came into the stadium, I got ready to head out. In honor of Team USA and the start of the Beijing Olympics, I wore my red-white-and-blue Nike Prefontaine sneakers and my gray t-shirt with the G.I. Joe insignia, including the red-white-and-blue striped box next to the subtitle, "A Real American Hero."

From the Double-Deuce & Spruce, I walked straight down Spruce Street to Valanni's, a restaurant just below 13th Street. I went there first because the text that I had received from Park a little bit more than an hour earlier said that the group was there. So I walked in and looked around; I didn't recognize anyone there. As I walked out, I looked at my phone, noticed a missed call, and was about to check my voicemail, when I simply looked across the street and saw the gang seated at an outdoor table in front of Mercato. So I walked over briskly, wet my right pinky finger, and with the all-important element of surprise, gave Park a wet willy.

I sat down with the bunch there while everyone finished off their food. I had a couple glasses of wine and a few nibbles of dessert. It's important to note here that the reason that everyone gathered for a night on the town was the imminent departure of our friend, Park, who is set to relocate to Dubai, United Arab Emirates, just this coming Monday. Our night out was a chance to have some fun before he takes off, and to let him know that we're gonna miss him.

Everyone else having finished off their food and the 5 bottles of wine that they BYOB'ed, we gathered up the troops to hit the town. We walked down Camac Street all the way over to Walnut Street, until doubling back half a block down Quince Street between 12th and 11th to go to a practically unmarked bar called the Bike Stop -- a bar which, unknown to me, is apparently renowned in the Gayborhood.

The Bike Stop could've been a bar out in the exurbs for all appearances -- it was very dimly-lit, it was filled with a bunch of biker-looking dudes, it had a pool table on a raised platform on the far side of the bar, and there was classic rock music from the 1980s. But once your eyes adjusted to the dim lighting, you realized that the appearances revealed the bar's Gayborhood nature -- some guys were shirtless, either with or without leather suspenders, and there was not one lone woman inside the place (until we showed up with 3).

Park had explained to me that the basement of the Bike Stop was a destination in its own right; the word was that it was filled with gay guys four rows deep in total darkness and that you would have to grope your way through sweaty bodies to get to the bar. Of course once we got to the Bike Stop, I asked Park which way to the famed basement to find out if the basement was really as intimidating as its reputation indicated. Before walking down the stairs, Park noticed the sign that said "no cologne and no sneakers allowed"; neither one of us could quite figure out why those two things were prohibited. And despite the fact that I was wearing my bold tricolor sneakers, we went down anyway. So what did we see? To be honest, it really reminded me of the basement of the house I lived in on Water Street during my senior year of college: dank, dark, and cement-exposed walls. It was not, however, totally dark, nor did we have to touch anybody to get around. Other than the very strange, inexplicable feeling that all these quiet men were lined up around the cement wall waiting for some kind of performance to take place, and that there were only men down there, it wasn't weird at all.

Needless to say, we didn't stay down there too long. Park's girlfriend had come down just a couple minutes after us, and after milling down there for a few minutes, we decided to go back upstairs to play pool. The group of us played for about an hour or so. The table that we played on was so terribly slanted toward one corner that it made for some miserable games; it was funny at first, but by the end it was annoying.

So we left there around 1:30 and went directly to Knock. It was a very nice place; I was told that this is a prime location for gay professionals to meet. We all stood around and chatted for a while. But the real story there doesn't begin until right before we left, at about 2:30.

From what I understand, Park had ordered a glass of wine during last call right at 2:00am. He paid for it and may have had a couple sips of it; the glass of wine was sittting on the bar. In the bartender's haste to clean up after closing, however, he accidentally cleared Park's glass of wine. Partly because Park had paid for the wine and had not finished, but also, I suspect, because Park wanted to make a point of having his glass of wine on his last night out in Philly before his grand trip, he demanded another glass of wine to replace the one that had been taken. The bartender poured him another glass, but at that point, the owner came around to find out why a patron could be demanding any alcohol a half-hour past last call. Park had little patience (or sobriety) to explain the whole story, and the owner was put-off, saying that it was against the law to serve alcohol past 2am. So Eric steps up and says to the owner, "We are the law." And James, sensing the tension -- and obviously not knowing to whom he was speaking -- says to the owner, "Hey buddy, why don't you beat it." Right then, I walked out of the bar to meet up with the other half of our group, who were already waiting outside on the sidewalk. Surprisingly, and fortunately, things inside simmered down and the misunderstanding was cleared up -- Park downed his whole glass of wine and the three guys came right out to meet us on the sidewalk. Crisis had been averted.

Without belaboring the details, I'll say simply that we all said our good-byes and best-wishes to Park. His flight to Dubai leaves on Monday. He intends to begin a blog once he gets there; of course I'll post the link.

From the corner of 12th and Locust, four of us -- Eric, Alex, James, and me -- walked west up Locust, since we all live in the general Rittenhouse Square area. For the first couple blocks of our late night walk we saw several trannies walking the streets in search of business. Immediately after crossing Broad Street, I saw two girls and a guy up ahead, so right before we passed them, I said, "look, here are a couple more trannies;" the look on the girls' faces was one of pure indignity, but the four of us laughed our asses off. Then, on the 1500 block of Locust, as we approached Misconduct Tavern in fact, I saw that there was a chain-link chain hanging across part of the sidewalk. So I kept talking to the guys, pretending that I wasn't looking ahead, and purposely ran into the chain, feigning surprise and pain; we all laughed our asses off some more before going our separate ways.