I was invited to celebrate a friend's birthday on Saturday night at his favourite Downtown bar in the fancy James Hotel. But before the party, me and Jenn decided to meet up for some bubbles at Pops for Champagne's new store on State Street. We certainly looked the part, having made the commitment to wear fancy cocktail frocks, high heels, and carry glamour clutch purses. Fab-a-loose!
I arrived just ahead of Jenn, and found us two seats at the bar. Shortly thereafter, a girl and her boyfriend came in and the girl put her bag down at Jenn's place and started to take her coat off to sit down. Never at any time did she look at me or ask whether the seat was taken. So I stepped in and told her it was taken. She looked to the seat on the other side of me, and said, "well, why can't your friend just sit there?". I looked at the mound of clean glasses piled up in front of that seat, all but obscuring the barman, and then I looked back at the girl and said, "because I saved this seat, and my friend won't want to sit over there." Mocking me, the girl turned to her boyfriend and huffily advised him that I was being unreasonable. I duly ignored her, and felt sorry for him for having to date her. But I wasn't about to be bullied before my first champagne cocktail, and I stood my ground.
So fast forward to a few champagnes later, and a delicious cheese plate shared. Strutting to the J Bar, we met up with friends and had some drinks. About an hour later, the loud house music had started to get to me, and Jenn and me were longing for somewhere a little quieter to end our night. I went to grab my coat and the upstart coat check girl told me that the coat check was $3. There was no signage to that effect, so for all I knew she was making it up. And yes, $3 is three times the price of a coat check everwhere else in the City. Was she taking three times better care of our coats in there? So I put some money in the tip jar and she turned to me and said "It's a $3 coat check, as I said. You only put in $1 - I was watching you". And I said something about being distracted looking for a sign advertising her outrageous coat check price, and begrudgingly threw in the extra couple of bucks. She won that one, but she copped a pretty good death glare into the bargain.
I was pretty much over dealing with people by that stage, so me and Jenn thought we'd spoil ourselves with a night cap at The Drake. The bellinis are fabulous, and my bowl of clam chowder at 1am really hit the spot. But the Hotel wasn't as fancy as I thought, because several tables of St Patrick's Day revellers came through (stained green tshirts and foam hats included) and they were getting rowdy. So it was time for us to call it a night. I wasn't in the mood for any more bar-room brawls anyway.
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