Willow Glen
Last night I stayed in the south Bay. This isn't some sort of caveat emptor from my move to San Francisco, it was simply an attempt to show up to my early teleconfrence on Tuesday. I ended up spending the night with Ickles who lives in Campbell near the border with a subdivision of San Jose called Willow Glen. It's unassuming in the same way as every subdivision in America is, though there was something somewhat comforting about it - I can see why Hatchet Face likes it, despite its "bad school district".
Ickles and myself chatted for a bit before heading out to dinner. Since he was so keen on getting some Mexican food, we settled on a place called the Plaza Inn. It was in many ways quite a find, as it apparently doubled as a dive bar. Now I'm not an alcoholic - despite what you may have heard in the liberal media - but I am an afficonado of the dive bar. Like many middle class folks before me I am secretly drawn to the seedy underbelly of life, and dive bars provide a fix for that. This particular place had dining tables next to the bar which allowed me examine the wildlife.
It was an interesting mix, looking to be all locals (judging by the house shoes that they chose to come in), having a drink while waiting for their take out to arrive (conversely they could have been using the take out as a pretext for coming to the bar). There was the Lonely Drunk, sitting at one end, with his nose in his beer and his shoulders near his ears. There was the Boisterous Fat Guy, joking with the bartender and his buddy, The Guy With The Broken Nose. Together they hooted and hollered, joking with the bartender and punching each other in the shoulder - well mostly it was The Guy With the Broken Nose trying to teach the Boisterous Fat Guy how to "take a guy out" and "win a fight". Presiding over this chaos was the bartender himself who was just as loud and boisterous, dancing to the Mexican pop beat coming over the speakers and backed up by what seemed to be a long suffering waitress. The food wasn't that good but the entertainment? Yeah, the best that money could buy.