Honto Bar

Last Saturday night we met some friends at our regular hang out (we are now Norm and Cliffy to this Cheers - maybe not so much of a permanent fixture, but we get welcome hello's from all of the staff when we arrive, even the cook comes out to say hello). We had dinner and some laughs then a few of us decided we wanted to listen to some live music down the street.


I may have mentioned this place in previous posts, as we have been there before. It is a tiny little postage stamp of a place, smaller than most small coffee shops at home. Despite that, they manage to cram a full 10 piece band into one side while customer line the opposite wall. The owner dresses the waitresses (cute young women of course) in all kinds of ridiculous theme outfits. The last time that we were there was around Christmas and there were three waitresses dressed in naughty Mrs. Clause outfits. On top of having to wear these silly get-ups, they were expected to take orders, bartend, serve drinks and food, hand calculate bills, and on top of that, pay close attention to the song that the band was playing and drop everything that they were doing and get to the back up microphone when it was their song to sing back up on! This time the santa outfits were in storage and it was red hot bunny time. This poor girl looked terrified most of the time.


The horrific conditions of the wait staff aside, this place really rocks when the band it playing. You can't beat having to ask the sax player to back up so that you can squeeze by to get to the bathroom. They take requests and play all kinds of rockin' tunes from the 50's and 60's. And even with the cramped conditions, they will shuffle around and make just enough room for us to dance in the aisle if the mood hits. The only downfall is that the owner (same guy who chooses the staff uniforms...) insists on singing lead vocals and seems oblivious to the fact that he doesn't speak enough english to sing Elvis Presley and that most of his hired musical talent all have a better singing voice than him. Nevertheless, it is a fun place so we headed there last weekend after dinner.

This place is only open on Saturdays in the winter and is generally pretty busy. When we arrived, people shuffled around and made room for us in the few empty chairs that were left. Strangely, there was a Japanese man dancing (normally if anyone dances it is the Brazilians, never the Japanese). We ordered a round of g&t and sat back to enjoy the chaos.

We weren't two sips into our drinks when the Japanese dancing man came over to our table. Seems that he had taken a shine to one of our crowd and wanted a dance (no wait... I should say demanded a dance). So he took Shawn by the hand and pulled him up on the dance floor. As you can imagine, the rest of us were falling off our chairs in hysterics. The guy (who was probably no bigger than me) insisted on leading and spun and twirled Shawn around. When Shawn wasn't paying close enough attention, the guy would spin him then tap his own cheeck as if to say "when I spin you, make eye contact with me". Shawn of course, isn't used to someone else leading (let alone dancing hand in hand with a tiny little dude!), and when he missed a couple of cues he got a little slap on the cheek - this is not a joke! The guy actually slapped him on the cheek! Here is some of the evidence I could gather between fits of laughter.



Taking those photos was no easy task. For one thing I could hardly see because I was crying big fat crocodile tears of laughter, but also because the Japanese man beside me kept putting his hand in front of my camera and telling me "dame, dame" (=stop!). When it was all over I asked the guy beside me why he didn't want me to take photos. He told me that the man, who had an obvious crush on Shawn, was very famous and that it is bad for anyone to take photos of him doing such things. Right on! Scandal!

The rest of the evening progressed without quite so much excitement, although the man continually kept coming over to our table and putting his hand on the back of Shawn's chair or pulling a chair up beside him and gazing intently. We finally left the bar and were saying goodnight to our friends on the street when we saw that Shawn's buddy was on the move and following us out. We ran into the street and dove into the back of the nearest cab and giggled the rest of the way home.