David Witter

It is the last, last call for the Lakeview Lounge. A sixtysomething man clad in polyester pants, a white shirt, and a snap-brimmed hat that could have been worn by Bing Crosby, sits on one barstool drinking a Bud. Right next to him is a woman in her twenties with long black hair, tattoos, nose ring, low-cut shirt and a thong riding above a pair of painted-on white pants. They don't speak, but they sit in harmony at the bar, nodding to the music.

That is the beauty of the Lakeview Lounge. Like the year-round Christmas lights and tinsel hanging from the stage, it is a place where not-so-hipsters stay around so long they eventually become hip. That, and the music. The band, consisting of core members Larry Raul, Pat Kelly and Gary Walters, has been a regular fixture for eighteen years. Tonight Raul is playing bass and singing lead. They run through it all. Johnny Cash medleys, "Viva Las Vegas," "Rocky Top," "Black Magic Woman," "Rock Around the Clock," "Runaway," Hank Williams and Chuck Berry. But when they strike up "Honky Tonk Woman," the place seems to freeze. Like the relative with cancer, everybody knows, but nobody talks about it.

As the clock strikes midnight, the bar gets more crowded. Old-time Uptown hill folk wearing pearl-button shirts, East Indians, blacks, hippies, Latinos, punks, punk wannabes, blondes that look like they just came from a fashion shoot in the Hamptons--all crowd into the diner-sized bar.

"Tonight is the last night, and we are playing one hell of a sad note," Raul says. "The best thing about this place is that people came here from everywhere. Rich, poor, young, old. Like the commercial for the Olive Garden, `everybody who comes here is family.' Except that our family is dysfunctional."

(2005-08-16)

Also by David Witter

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Pie-eyed
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Carnies
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My parade, part 1
I was born on June 29, which means that my birthday often coincides with Pride Week.
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How does your garden grow?
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The Life Aquatic
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Last of the Slaughterhouses
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Paint by numbers
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The Death of Neon
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Take me to the river
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A moll meal
(2004-02-18)

Steel stomachs
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