Last night, Kevin and I boarded my 2001 Honda Civic and drove to lovely Sacramento, California.
It was my friend Sean's 22nd Birthday celebration. Someone was a little late to his own 10pm partay, but I can forgive that.
The night started out at the Mercantile Saloon, affectionately called "The Merc" by locals. Can I just say how much I loved this place? The indoor portion is total dive bar, but the outside patio is quite lovely, especially when the weather is good. It reminded me of a mix between a dive bar in San Diego, the vibe of Fiesta Cantina in WeHo with patrons that could be found in the midwest. The place was plentiful with drag queens, mostly of the latin flavor. One had a full on seniorita status dress and looked like she was on her way to a bull fight.
The great thing about this bar is that when you order drinks, you get the choice of two sizes. The tallest size is $8, which is quite cheap considering it's about 3/4 alcohol. It'd estimate a good 2-3 shots minimum. I didn't drink very much last night, but the drink I did have got me all warm and toasty. Oh, yay for being a cheap date.
Josef, who goes to grad school at UC Davis, joined us and well all later scurried on over to Badlands Sacramento. It's clean, polished and very open. It has tremendously high ceilings and a big 'ol disco ball. The upper level has a lounge and an outdoor patio, to boot. The music was pop/hip hop/remixes. Cover was $7, which isn't nearly as bad as I thought it was gonna be.
After Badlands closes at 2pm, people go next door to the connected bar called "The Depot." This totally reminded me of Hawaii's Angles/Fusion setup.
Josef was hungry so we all went nearby to Hot Rod's, which is the nearest late night grub around Sacramento's boyztown area. A funny little thing happened in there. The guy in line in front of us was like "You... You're Will from San Francisco." I was kinda confused. He was like "I've checked your ID before." I was even more confused. So he musta been a bouncer at a bar in the city. I asked where he worked and he said "Badlands." So yea, it was kinda weird but flattering nonetheless. The number of people that go into those bars and he remembers who I was. Anywho, I asked him whether or not Badlands in Sac was affiliated with Badlands in the City and he said no and that they have different owners. So there ya have it. Mystery solved.
We then tried to go over to Sean's friend's place but that wasn't very successful. We all parted ways and gave everyone lots of hugs. Kevin and I were then on a mission to find my car. Um... that took a while to say the least. At this point, it was probably 3am or so. We ran around Sac like little tourists. People in cars and on the streets did offer to help on occasion, which is pretty nice. We eventually found my car and made our way home. I got fairly tired around 4ish am, which was the halfway point. So I pulled over in Vallejo and slept for a few hours. Kevin was too tipsy and tired to drive.
Around 6:30am, Kevin and I continued the drive and ended up in San Francisco by 7:30am. I dropped him off in the Richmond and I went back to The Sunset. I woke up around 12:30pm. Kevin late texted me and we both LOL'ed at his incoherent text messages from last night. Twas an epic evening.
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