CB’s House of Porn and Pancakes

You read that correctly……. Saturday night, Valentine’s Night I went to The Loft at The Stable for London Calling with a couple of friends. It was a great party, 2 Rooms, 2 DJ’s, one playing punk/ska, the other playing British Pop, to a mix mash crowd that reminded me of the days of Lo. If you never experienced Lo, you definitely missed out. You could find every walk of life there, there wasn’t a distinct group that was there. You had goths, preps, yuppies, college age, older, it was all over the place. London Calling parties seem to be that same way. The DJ’s had great mixes and they had a band there called Codebreaker from Milwaukee, WI. Codebreaker I think is best described as Daft Punk meets Bootsy Collins. They are electronic with FUNK!
Check out a single of theirs:

Not only did London Calling have great music and a good crowd, they also had $2 Schlitz and $2 Stag and $2 Pabst Blue Ribbon, so it was a very retro night indeed!

All in all an awesome time! I highly recommend checking it out!

So this past Saturday was the inaugural outing of D.I.F., otherwise known as Drinking Is Fundamental. (Sadly there will be no official Inaugural Outing Coins, Blankets, Plates, etc) D.I.F. grew out of me, Stiffy and Ramsey’s love of drinking and bars. We devised an idea over email to do a random bars night once a month. It was initially intended to be a completely off the cuff, loosely organized organization that would promote the ideals of drinking at local establishments, mostly in the city. Well those ideals were compromised as word spread, a Facebook group was set up, grew to over 100 members over night and an official event invite went out. We went to The Wedge, Ugly Fish and Friendly’s. I missed out on The Wedge, I was at my cousin’s graduation party, but caught up with the group at Ugly Fish. Here’s how the rest of the night went.

So heading to Ugly Fish from the VP (otherwise known as Valley Park) I rely on my Garmin to get me there in one piece, or at least with a slight limp……. Garmin directs me to Kingshighway South, no problem. Cruising down down Kingshighway, the Garmin tells me to make a left on Tholozan, I get in the left turn lane and it says “Recalculating” Son of a bitch! Tholozan only goes to the right, some random dead end street is to the left. So I jump back out in traffic and make a left where it tells me. I finally get to Ugly Fish and meet up with everyone. Initial impression of Ugly Fish is a great little South Side bar. It’s essentially two rooms, one room has the bar in, the other room has a stage for a band or in this case, drunken karaoke. I say drunken karaoke because I’m giving some of the singers the benefit of the doubt, some of them sounded like they were strangling a cat. Granted I only heard the karaoke when I went to the bathroom. They had a good selection of beers, I settled on the Silver Bullet. When I walked in, I see the group. Near us is another group. Some in our group asked if I knew any of them, I did not, though the one girl looked familiar….. I didn’t want to be “that creepy” guy and go over and say “Hey, do I know you from the internet?” Eventually one of our group members did get bold enough after a few drinks, went over and it turns out they were on the D.I.F. crawl also. Sweet, the group just doubled in size! Some more folks show up and we have a good sized crowd! Knock back the last round and head over to Friendly’s. I was the caboose in the caravan of cars and got stuck at the red light. I was told it was at the intersection of Winnebago and Roger. Well at that intersection is 4 houses and none of them have a Budweiser sign. I punch in the address in the Garmin, it pretty much gives me the finger. Fuck You technology, I’m becoming Amish, we’ll see who has the last laugh when I throw you out on eBay! Eventually I get directions and find it. It was about a mile from that intersection. Walk in and I’m taken back by the Drunken Carnival atmosphere of this place! It’s a cash only bar that boasts PBR, beer pong, popcorn machine, arcade games everywhere, flat screens with all the games on and a not so friendly bartender that was down right surly most of the time. Some that ordered a drink got an eye roll from her, nice. The night picked up when Frankie Frau busted out the breathalyzer and everyone was having a competition to see who can score the highest. The winner blew I believe a .27, he wasn’t driving. Frankie Frau’s wife beat out Eric in a major upset! Closing time and I head home. A successful outing! The next one will be at the end of February, details to come!

“I go to parties sometimes until four
It’s hard to leave when you can’t find the door ”
- Joe Walsh

Here are the bars we hit if you want to check them out for yourself:

The Wedge
442 Bates Street 63111
http://stlouis.metromix.com/bars-and-clubs/music_bar/the-wedge-south-city/603018/content

Ugly Fish
4050 Bamberger 63116
http://uglyfishbar.com/

Friendly’s
3503 Roger Pl 63116
http://www.friendlyssportsbar.com/

So I’ve gotten some new cd’s that I thought were worthy to give a review about:

The Killers new album is awesome! Reminds me a lot of the first one. It’s a CD I can push play and let it run all the way through. Good to see there are some good rock bands still out there

Kayne’s “Epic” CD. It’s an epic load of crap! Not a good CD at all! Very disappointed with it, mostly because he uses a voice harmonizer the whole time. If I wanted to listen to that, I would have you gone with a Peter Framton CD……….

I know, I know, it’s Cold Play! To quote Chuck Kolsterman from Sex, Drugs and Coca Puffs, “”Coldplay is absolutely the shittiest fucking band I’ve ever heard in my entire life” We all know the song we loath, Clocks, which was about as overplayed as Whitney Houston’s ballad from the bodyguard. But I have to admit, this CD blew me away! Probably because they sound a lot like U2 on this CD, thanks to the producer of this CD also was the producer of The Joshua Tree, though I like this CD better than Joshua Tree…..