Nurse the Hate: Hate the Bar Crawl

The bar crawl is a great tradition in this part of the country. This is due to two indisputable facts. 1) There isn’t too much to do in Northeast Ohio in February. 2) Because there isn’t much to do, most of the residents drink and smoke as much as Russian coal miners. Russian proverb: When there is little hope, that is the time to turn to the vodka. Prost!

I have decided to have a bar crawl here in Northeast Ohio. However, I am not going to walk down some neighborhood street and go to Tipsy Clancy’s where I will wrestle for bar space with the great unwashed backward ballcap minions. Who needs to spend one more second in a place where the crowd sings along to “Paradise By the Dashboard Light”? Do I really need to expose myself to the horrors of a jukebox filled with Creed, Stone Temple Pilots, and Jimmy Buffet? I am not going to wear a white t-shirt that people will sign. No thank you, I don’t want to order any chicken wings or cheese sticks. I have much higher stakes.

The bar crawl I have in mind will target the most horrific strip bars in the region. I will walk in to each place, have a beer, and leave hopefully without contracting crabs or an open sore just by being in the vicinity of the low end “entertainment”. Ideally I will be joined by a few hearty adventurers like myself, and we won’t lose our wallets or sense of decency. Or teeth. This is one of the last great frontiers in America. A real chance to see the seedy underbelly of the place you call home. To meet future “Cops” cast members in their natural habitat.

The idea first came to me when Texas Pete and Krusty’s wife decided to make a long discussed journey to the Lido Lounge on W117th St in Cleveland. I knew the place had a seedy reputation after Leo stopped in on a few occasions to see an ex-girlfriend dance there when her mentally handicapped bus pass allowed her to make the journey from her government subsidized apartment. However, I had no idea how great it actually was until it was reported back to me on Texas Pete and Erin’s visit a dancer had approached them for a table dance while eating Subway. That’s what Cleveland is all about.

Texas Pete believes the Lido Lounge is great, but maybe not as amazing as The Hideaway in Medina OH. The Hideaway is located conveniently for meth addled truck drivers right off Route 18 in between I-77 and I-71. On Pete’s last visit, there was one dancer on call that afternoon. She was a leathery skinny woman missing two (2) key teeth. She asked if he would like a dance, and when he begged off, she sat down and started telling him about her “fucking old man”. She was described to me as looking like that woman that comes out of the bathtub in The Shining, but if she was dressed for a Stevie Ray Vaughn concert in 1985.

I do have rigid standards for this journey. I will not go into any place I have been to previously. For example, I had to pick up the original Cowslinger guitar player “Duane Wayne” at a place called “Attitudes” on West 25th. Attitudes was not officially a strip club, as the women wore bikinis. Why anyone would go to a seedy place like that to have unattractive women in bikinis dance next to them while they drank warm Stroh’s, I don’t know, but Duane was a weird cat. He spent more time there then at his house. That place was most noteworthy for being so dark that when you walked in, you immediately were blinded and needed 10-15 seconds for your eyes to adjust. It would have been a great place to get rolled. Maybe the worst looking group of human beings I have ever seen under one roof…

I have also been to “Magic City” in downtown Cleveland after a degenerate sales guy I worked with insisted we go there for an after work beer. Magic City featured a five by five foot stage raised about three inches off the ground where a skinny black girl danced topless in front of three paraplegic guys in wheelchairs. After the song ended, she would walk over to the jukebox in the ensuing silence, put in some coins, choose a song, and dance again. After about twenty minutes, another black girl walked in the door where the dancer screamed at her “Jezell! Where the fuck you been! I been dancing up here like a motherfucker and you late!” Jezell, not to be shown up in this matter, screamed back “I had to feed my motherfucking babies! Fuck you, you fucking bitch!”. She then put on her giant stripper shoes while balancing in the doorway, and stomped over to the stage. The guys in the wheelchairs swiveled their heads to follow the action. Everyone settled back down. I looked around and noticed we were the only ones in the room with all of our limbs or not in wheelchairs. Magic City, while lacking in amenities, certainly had an atmosphere I would rank as “memorable”.

There appears to be about 16 good potential candidates for this Descent Into Madness. Many people have “Climb Mount Kilimanjaro” on their “Bucket List”. I’ve got this. You want to go? Bring some dollar bills and maybe a shiv.