So the birthday celebration in Boston happened, and was–setting excluded–a good bit of fun. There was an impromptu game of Zoomy-Zoomy in at a Waltham Ninety-Nine, the purchase of Trolli Hamburgers and Hotdogs, Red Bull and Vodka, Champagne and last (definitely not least) an hour long wait for a bus inside of a Convenience Store on the corner of Massachusetts and Beacon. The only mistake–and what a mistake it was–of the night happened to be patroning a bar that I’d previously enjoyed as an eater and a drinker: The Pour House Bar & Grill.
Now, I’m not a stingy person, but when I pay six dollars for an ice-intensive rum and coke I’d like to have every last drop. It just so happened that after stepping outside for a cigarette with some friends and returning to our table (watched the entire time by two other friends) my half finished rum and coke had been picked up by the bar. We alerted the waitress of the error, who then alerted the ‘bar manager’ who subsequently refused to do anything but be entirely unhelpful. We attempted to rationalize. We reasoned that he must as a human being understand our annoyance having likely had at one time a half finished plate of delicious food scooped up from underneath his mouth by an extremely eager server. The ‘bar manager’ didn’t see things our way and as most reputable businesses do; that a business should in general give the benefit of the doubt to the customer and work to resolve such trivial situations quickly by merely replacing the item in question rather than jeopardizing future business. We had, to this point, already spent forty dollars as a group and were looking to spend more. Instead, the ‘bar manager’ told us that it was our responsibility to keep their overzealous bus boys and girls from poaching our drinks and that we were shit out of luck. What followed was admittedly drunken on my part and somewhat hazy in memory, but it involved leaving in a hurry and being overcharged as a group and prevented from leaving by the masshole bouncers guarding the door onto Boylston St. As under the influence as I may have been, I still think I hit the nail on the head when I queried the bar manager, “If you’re not responsible for what your employees are doing, then what exactly is it that you’re managing?”
Needless to say, I’ll never be returning to The Pour House again–despite the fact that I find their fare edible and affordable. Conclusion:
The Pour House Bar and Grill: Passé
It’s about time I made things a bit more personal here on The Digital Idiocy. Tonight I’m going to be taking a sojourn to the city of dreams, a bastion of booze, that sleepy eyed self professed hub-of-the-world Boston. The trip is being made to celebrate a friend’s birthday, and that–I’m afraid–is the only reason I would consent to traveling there. Now, I used to like Boston. It has a unique character, it’s home to my favorite sports team, I’ve many friends there. Yet, I’m sick of the scene. Too many Boston University students wearing trendy outfits, clinging to subway poles and riding the Green Line up and down Comm. Ave. Too many bars that close early and host endless seas of Red Sox baseball caps and the idiots underneath them. Too Many pretentious Harvard Twits dotting the sidewalks in Harvard Square across the Charles River, discoursing and not conversing over long hyphenated subjects like “pseudo-gender-confusion-stereotypes-in-post-modern-eastern European-societies”. Too many Dunkin’ Donuts, Dunkins, Double D’s, Dunks, DD’s. Too many serpentine avenues, one way streets, construction crews and back roads to outlying suburbs (here’s looking at you South Shore). Too much Boston. To make things worse, word on the street is that yours truly will have to abide some men-hating folk who think using big words like hegemony and patriarchy punch their ticket to intellectual station. It’s possible that I’m looking at this all a bit negatively. In fact, I certainly am. But seriously: Boston, What’s Up? Now: I’d like to share a video appropriate for the occasion.