Welcome to the Extra P_int where the beer is always cold, the patrons less informed, and the conversation compelling.
The Habitués are the heart of the Extra P_int. They are the regulars who know all the rules and oddities of the P_int. They spend enough money through the course of the month to get owner Dennis McDonnell over the expense hump and keep him in business.
They aren’t, however, enough to cover capital expenses and extravagances and that’s where the incredibly annoying drop-ins come in. Like on Monday nights. All through the NFL season Monday night football kept drop-in customers coming through the door to watch the game. Dennis was good with that. He sold food as well as drink and the cash register sang his favorite tune. Nadine was good with it even though her feet were tired by night’s end because the tips “weighed down my apron.” I wasn’t as pleased because a few times I had to ask people to move out of my favorite seat to the right of Nadine’s drink station at the bar. Some objected but Dennis pointed to the sign on the back of the stool that reads RESERVED FOR SCRIBBLER. I’d paid for the sign but Dennis had installed it himself. It required a screwdriver and Dennis is not a handy kind of guy.
But this Monday was special. It was BCS Rebellion Monday and the Extra P_int’s Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives marathon had started. In case you missed the build-up, Dennis was outraged at a do-over game masquerading as the National College Football Championship game between teams not only in the same conference but from the same division. If that weren’t bad enough the first time they’d played was, in his opinion and that of most of the Habitués, the most boring game of the year. To express his pique he’d hit on the idea that he would show the Food Channel instead of the ball game and all its related programming. That quickly became the 3 D marathon. He’d invited Chris Peterson, the coach at Boise State, to join the rebellion because no one should be more pissed at the BCS than Peterson. Inexplicably, Peterson declined.
“Hey, Scribbler,” Dennis yelled, as I assumed my normal position at the bar and took the first sip from the freshly drawn Mirror Pond, “you read that load of crap in the paper this morning about how it’s the big boy game tonight and no one’s apologizing for it being a defensive struggle?”
“I did and it will be.”
“Yeah, but the idea that defensive football is more exciting than a game like the Rose Bowl is like saying soccer is more exciting than the NFL, or that a pitcher’s duel is more exciting than home run derby. We all know how Americans feel about that.”
“Barkeep!” shouted the Perfessor, the smartest guy in the place who sits on the other side of Nadine’s station, “I thought there was to be no talk of that abomination?”
“Right, Perfessor,” said Dennis, “I lost my mind. You guys hit the buffet table yet? When you do don’t forget to vote.”
I stood and walked through the room toward the buffet set up in the pit at the center of what Dennis called his drinking room. As I walked over the oh-so-familiar ground, I noticed something I’d never seen before. All the goodly number of flat screens showed the same thing. From every wall at that moment Guy Fieri sipped from a ladle as he leaned over a large pot. I watched as he rolled his eyes and gave his food-motivated leer for the camera.
“Wow!” Guy said, “you get the hit of the jalapenos but it doesn’t overwhelm the delicate herbs that bring out the fish!”
Not a phrase oft heard in a sports bar. I watched as the Habitués hung on his every word. I looked closer. A couple of guys drooled. A few drank from pints of beer while balancing a buffalo wing or a Swedish meatball. Multi-colored, unrecognizable fare decorated plates in front of others. When I reached the buffet, I took a plate and started to work. My strategy, guys always have strategies at buffets, was to go with the stuff I didn’t recognize. It just felt like the time to stretch my culinary horizons. As I reached toward a hot plate with a simmering pan of mystery, Nadine brushed against my back and murmured, “Uh-uh, not that one.” I took her advice and went back to work until I was done. A successfully filled buffet plate is one that covers the pattern on the plate but doesn’t overflow the edges and stain your slacks. I carried mine away with pride.
As I wove through the growing crowd, I heard a man say, “Hey! When’s the game start?” Another man said to his date, (how did I know it was a date and not his wife? She looked too politely interested to have seen it a hundred times before as a wife would have) “What kind of a sports bar shows the Food Channel instead of football?” Indeed, I thought to myself, my chest swelling with pride.
I walked slower and chose a circuitous route leading vaguely toward my bar stool. I wanted to eavesdrop.
“Come on!” a wife yelled, tugging her husband’s arm (don’t ask) “if you’re not going to watch football let’s go home and eat healthy!” His look said she’d stabbed him in the heart as he answered, pointing to a screen, “I love this guy!”
Another guy held a plate of potato chip nachos dripping with yellow, and pepperoncini stacked artfully on top. His buddy looked dubiously at the plate and filled a spoon from his own plate with sweet and sour pork over pasta that might have been Spaghetti O’s. As you might have guessed, the competition was guys bringing their own recipes to compete for a permanent place on the menu.
When I made it to the bar I passed Dennis as he filled two pitchers at once. “What do you think?” he asked.
“Sport is like food. It takes all kinds of people.”
“As long as they got cash, I’ll serve all kinds,” Dennis said.
As I sat, a Habitué whose name I don’t remember asked, “Did I miss the deadline for All or Nothing?”
“Technically, yes,” Dennis said, “but I’ve been so busy with getting ready for tonight I’m giving you an extra week. Gotta be in by noon on Saturday.”
“Good thing I’m still alive after the first round,” I said, referring to the NFL playoffs. “I would have asked for a do-over if my guys had lost.”
Dennis glanced at me and laughed.
Later, as I walked out of the Extra P_int, a hurrying drop-in asked, “Who’s ahead in the game?”
I puffed my chest and said, “I don’t know.”
Join us next time at the Extra P_int where the beer is always cold, the patrons less informed, and the conversation compelling.
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