Something New in Old City

So last Friday started out as well as Friday's can. Afternoon drinking with co-workers at North Bowl brought Brooklyn (and hash) browns, grilled cheese, corn dogs and sore fingers. I, alas, am a terrible bowler, and rather than suffer the humiliation of a string low double digit scores, I imbibed and imbibed to my livers dismay. So after a few frames and a few more pints, I relinquished my leased footwear and hit the streets heading homeward.

Once home I cracked a SlyFox can (I love that this beer comes in cans; I don't know why) when my lover, comrade and sister-in-arms informed me of her desire for some potent social lubrication and fried, tubed tubers. Now Philadelphia, for some reason, has a bevy of Belgian bars belied with a bounty of strong beers and fries. And the best, if I may opine, is Eulogy.

So off we went.

Our walk to Eulogy takes us through Society Hill and into Old City by way of 3rd st and allows a glimpse of many genres of the human animal. We cross mulleted street musicians strumming cheap guitars while pompous men with gelled hair and striped shirts hurry into clubs behind scantily clad, yet unfortunately dull, women. Hipsters hustle toward their haunts, aloof from the non-symmetrical hair-cutted and painfully loose-fitted jeans crowd around them as tourists with no style stop and stare at every menu on display. It's like some twisted scene from Céline, but much more alive and much more anxiety provoking.

So in we went.

Eulogy is small and I like it. The beer selection is to a drunk as a candy store is to a fat kid. I pour over the list like a connoisseur choosing bocks, trippels, dubbles and ales to burn my synapses while crisp fries with tangy sauces give all that liquid inside of me something to hang onto. The only problem with Eulogy is that, along with my knowledge of beer, came a tolerance to handle it. That wouldn’t be a problem if I weren’t poor, but since my wallet will drain faster than my bladder at that bar, we had to move on.

So out we went.

Stepping back out into the street with under a new light of further intoxication made Old City a bit friendlier, but not that friendly, so we quickly hurried up 2nd St., across Market and the consumptive homeless, swung a left at Church St. and walked toward Sugar Mom’s.

So down we went.

This is where all the hipsters were heading. I heard the first two tracks from the Cold War Kids CD about a half dozen times and even though Sierra Nevada’s taste good, I just couldn’t get the taste of pretentiousness out of my mouth. I needed something different.

So up we went.

We walked out into the warm starry night with a now noticeable inebriation, but nowhere near a night-ending drunk, so we walked back up 3rd St to a different breed of Philadelphia bar. National Mechanics, the big Greek building between Market and Chestnut, was our final destination. Inside we found some friends and sat down at the bar to as many Yards as my wallet could handle, which I assume, was quite a few. After countless drinks, drunken conversations with wheel-chair wheely-ing iPhone users, travel lusting artists, too-drunk-to-stand photographers and some shot-purchasing ladies we were finally in the right place. It may have been the cheap booze, but I was really loving this bar. It was like when your favorite song comes on, the light turns green and the slow driver in front of you turns; and it all happens at the same time. From there, however, the night faded to black. I woke the next day to a nasty hangover, an empty wallet and a hungry cat. I fed the cat, looked at my account and saw that I still had enough for rent and PECO.

So back to bed I went.