What a great night at Hostel Fish!
Andrew told me that on the weekends, the bar has been fairly easy-going until 10:30pm, or so, then it explodes until the end of the night. I was prepared for that, and was able to get everything restocked for you fine and thirsty folks, beforehand. Sure enough, people arrived in droves around 10pm, and it stayed that way for the rest of the night. It was a high-volume/quick-turnover type of night, and everyone seemed to be in good spirits. Speaking of spirits, Absinthe was a fiery selection, and our new Suerte tequila proved to be a crowd favorite.
A couple of cool moments:
--I’ve been trying to get Paxton to show off her rad piano skills, being a music-business major, and all. She’s been coy about it, though, so at one point when it was just us two and another person in the room I said “alright, alright, how about this: if I get the ring on the hook in the first 3 attempts, you give us 5 minutes.” As I lined up, she said “If you get it on the first try, I’m out of here.” Sure enough, I landed the ring on the hook the first try and she bolted out of the room without saying anything. It was all humorous.
--Bijon, a warm and friendly guest of ours, showed me a picture he’d taken from the balcony. It was of me crouching down in the parking lot below, at the time I was taking a group-picture for a few ladies who were going into Ophelia’s. Without any other context, me just crouching down in the middle of a parking lot looked rather silly…
--It was a very pleasant surprise to see Nic and Mary, who are both awesome past Hostel employees. They both have some exciting opportunities ahead of them, and we love when Fishes past-and-present come to chill at our Lodo-oasis.
--At that denouement-time of a busy night, when the bar has been mostly cleaned and the music is winding down and people are reminded to start making moves, there was one special moment between myself, a friend, and a couple of guests. I’d shut the music off already and brought my guitar down for my friend to pick around on while I continued to clean. At one point, I walked over to the piano just to see what happened. I don’t play piano (at all) but I asked David the chords, and was able to find the right notes and a few riffs to go back and forth from that fit perfectly. Our hostel guest kept the beat nicely on one of our wooden side tables, and another guest joined in with a little impromptu scat. It was one of those cool, serendipitous, special moments that seem to happen around here often.
Overall, it was a damn good weekend. Cheers, all!
