Sugar Shack

I.

None of the brand new finds we discover across this stretch of weeks can compare with the crown jewel hoisted from these excavations, a place called Sugar Shack. Tucked away in a corner of the exceedingly decrepit Indianola Shopping Center, essentially just a block removed from us, this weirdness warehouse first came to our attention one night after Damon and I grew bored shooting stick in desperation at nearby Suzi-Cue. We immediately became smitten with this funky hangout, bringing Alan and Shannon on board at our earliest opportunity. And while we all know better to even so much as mention much less suggest such an unhinged destination to Paul, the rest of us can’t get enough.

This, the night of the latest excursion for Damon and me, there are some real live flesh and blood girls in here, amazing though it seems, four of them and good looking ones at that. Ordinarily, however, not so much. Two of them are playing fifty cent pool at the table on the far side, while the other pair are seated in the random furniture near us, facing the plate glass front wall, conversing with this moustache sporting sixty-something arteest looking guy in a black leather cab driver’s hat, a white haired cat named Mark. With mismatched lamps and tables further accentuating the scene, a game of Scrabble and magazines among the various amusements scattered throughout, this section of the ostensible diner resembles your average cozy campus living room. One which features a bunch of underage Mexican kids, though, whom this Mark character is lecturing about God. That and a section behind him designated as a “stage” of sorts, where two keyboards rest, untouched at the moment, on metal stands, tempting anyone who passes to attack them.

This otherworldly café only opened this past summer. Open around the clock, seven days a week, the Sugar Shack is in theory a coffee shop, yes, though clearly offering much, much more. Local artists have adorned the walls with various pieces of their work, but the styles range from Deco to Cubist to Impressionist and beyond, encompassing the entire timeline of art history, and no two works are even remotely alike. Price tags hang from most of these but gathering from the static arsenal of paintings which greet us upon every visit, it would appear that very few if any of these masterpieces ever sell.

The tables and chairs are thrown together relics from some thrift store, mismatched to even more appalling effect than the paintings, tacky and tasteless. The lighting is lifted straight from one of the haunted houses that pop up each October, a spooky shade of green coating the front half of the café till giving way to a more conventional white near the back. To the right of the door, upon entering, a small section of the tile floor is cleared off for this theoretical performance space, though we’ve never seen anyone plying their wares here in earnest. Should a band or a poet choose to perform here they best leave most of their equipment at home, however, as space is limited, and the tension of a tight performance is enhanced by playing in front of that huge window, feeling the eyes from those in the parking lot upon your back.

Along the right wall, a refrigerated glass case boasts a wide selection of wedding cakes for those severely strapped for options, the kind of bizarre touch that seems right at home here. In the diner’s left half, a room kept slightly darker than the rest of the joint, two pool tables sit, open for play. With every other establishment in town charging either seventy five cents or else a whole dollar, we can’t go wrong with the pair of quarters they charge here, and have designated this our regular billiards spot above even the beloved Ruby Tuesday. Dividing these two rooms is a chest high wall upon which sits a number of board games, pamphlets, and knickknacks, basically anything the owners or anyone else felt like flinging there, and finally, in the back hallway by the restrooms, an overweight woman snoozes on a couch with a Chihuahua sitting upon her stomach.

Behind the counter hangs a cardboard sheet delineating the various prices for their delicacies. Written in black magic marker the sign proudly proclaims BREAKFAST SERVED 24 HOURS A DAY! and it is indeed. Not bad fare at all, either, though a bit too salty and cooked, served, sold no matter what the day or hour by a bunch of poor Mexican kids who appear at most twelve years old. Meanwhile the owners, the parents, are seldom seen and spend their time for the most part in this camper trailer parked behind the store.

The blonde girl strikes up a conversation with us, agreeing in hushed tones that this joint is more than a little strange, and what is the deal with all these Mexican kids, running around everywhere at three in the morning? Damon and I are having a blast as always merely observing the spectacle, although this pleasant, unexpected encounter certainly elevates our appreciation a notch.

Except now the blonde’s friend, an equally attractive brunette, gets into a shouting match with our guest arteest here, over what else but religion. Mark, who is clearly the resident know-it-all in this precinct, continues to offer his smug, inflexible interpretation of various scenes from the Bible, accentuated by a former beatnik’s knowing smirk. The brunette eventually storms over to where we are, interrupting our conversation with her sidekick.

“You ready to go?” she demands of the blonde.

“Uh…yeah,” she says, then turning to us smiling adds, “see you guys later. It’s been nice meeting you.”

“Yeah, nice meeting you,” Damon and I reply in unison, and they are out the door.

At least these kids provide plenty of comedy relief in their wake. Mark does stroll over to the keyboards a couple of times at random and rips off some surprisingly virtuosic classical music runs, apparently for his own enjoyment, before sitting back down again. As a few adults now drift out from somewhere in back, those who run this place and are by appearances the adults in charge of these youths, the little ones tickle the ivories themselves to substantially lesser effect. Meanwhile Mark preaches to the owners, now, and mentions more than once having been spoken to by Jesus.

“Hey Mark,” one of the children, a boy who looks to be about ten, pipes up and asks, “has Jesus ever said these two words to you: shut up?”

 

II.

This will not be the last we see of this character, either. Partially due to an eagerness to break out of our routines, and partially due to, well, spotting this dude’s mug on a flyer, Damon and I have days ago plotted a surreal double bill of brand new adventures for an otherwise random Tuesday night in December. The first of these involves watching that arteest we glimpsed at Sugar Shack playing a live gig there.

He and I shove off on foot, walking a block east through the chilly night air down 19th, to the Indianola Shopping Center wherein lies our beloved fucked up diner. Upon entry, we donate the suggested dollar apiece into this bucket beside the cleared off quote unquote stage area, just to the right of the door. The two of us then proceed to a table, to order some grub and wait for the music, unsure what to expect.

The Mark Wehrling Trio, this outfit calls itself, and it seems that they are a jazz enterprise of sorts. And who should be mucking around on the keyboard, of course, before the gig even officially starts, but the resident Jesus expert himself, the aging beatnik in the leather cabbie hat.

Then a full cast of cohorts join him, and they launch into a set proper. Fleshing out the core group, there’s a young kid who seems kind of new and lost on an upright bass, but then a well-versed, preppy looking youth on drums hanging in there just fine. As an added bonus, too, we are treated to a pair of stand-ins joining them for the occasion, cats who are a little more seasoned on trumpet and sax. Meanwhile holding it all together as ringleader there’s the marquee name himself, ripping off some amazing, classically trained runs on the electronic portable ivories.

“I don’t get this music at all,” Damon says, confounded, studying this quintet intently blow through their own distinct take on avant-garde, free-form jazz, “it’s either really hard to play, or really easy, I can’t tell.”

“I’ve always thought that, too,” I agree, although actually a fan of this stuff myself, “it’s hard to tell which.”

Patterns do begin to emerge, however, helping us decipher the mystery. Mark will take a solo as everyone else holds the groove, as the torch is then passed to the bass player, followed by the drummer and finally each horn player in turn, the other four locked into a rhythm as one guy improvises in key.

But the drummer in particular keeps us continually baffled. He’s conjuring up this shimmery quality of sustain with his cymbals, like a hissing, slithering snake, yet we inspect his set, even, when the band is on break, and can’t determine the source of this sound – he doesn’t have any rivets hanging from them or anything we’re aware of to explain this phenomenon. Additionally, though I’ve listened to enough jazz maybe to expect a little of this, the beat making mechanisms are not what one would expect in a rock band. He only keeps time on the ride cymbal, cracking the snare drum or booting the kick merely for emphasis now and then, whenever the mood strikes him.

Damon is mildly freaking over this latter trend. “I don’t get it! What the fuck!” he grovels, “he feels like kicking the bass drum here so – BOOMP – there it is and then it’s back to TSS T-T-TSS T-T-TSS on the ride cymbal?!”

Still, we were in search of some fresh diversion, and have definitely found it tonight. And whatever the oddity presented by the combo as a whole, uneven yet dazzling in spots, there’s no denying this Mark dude knows his way around a piano – an impressive, unexpected revelation, proof again that you can’t just assume you have anyone pegged after a single, passing glance. The whole outfit, really, is very solid, and you’d think they could do better in the booking department than this kooky dump of a café.

Though Mark Wehrling and company are apparently holding down a regular Tuesday night slot, and this diner features open mic nights on Thursday and Sundays, folk music on Wednesdays, this schedule tends to make things sound a lot less chaotic than they actually were around here. You just never quite knew what to expect from this place. On more than one occasion this meant an overnight, audience participation open drum circle. At the conclusion of an already very weird St. Patrick’s Day, Damon and I wandered up here for middle-of-the-night breakfast, and are somewhat amazed when this very articulate black kid drops into our midst, bouncing in frenetic fashion from one subject to the next, spouting a number of intelligent and thought provoking opinions…before inviting us to this hip-hop expo he said he was putting together down at the convention center, mentioning casually that he carries a gun, then telling us peace out because he was going to stroll across the room to pick up not one or two but all three of these nice looking girls across the room. You walk home from these encounters wondering what you just ran into. And into that category you could add another theoretically scripted piece of entertainment: MENTAL, their Monday techno nights, which we happen to glimpse just once.

What this means in practice, as we grab a table up front to avoid missing a single shred of this action, is some fucked up freak with a green, long sleeved shirt and brown dress slacks, horned rim glasses and retro chic afro billowing a good foot away from his head, spinning a bunch of warped sounding drum, bass, and synthesizer music on his twin turntable. He displays considerable skill at this, though, fluidly segueing often two completely different styles of music together at once, cutting the next selection in with aplomb.

While this transpires, off to the side there’s this equally wacked out looking chick in either a pink or red shirt, and gobs of ill-matching makeup, tinkling the keys of some tinny little keyboard. Still, as Damon and I repeatedly exchange amused glances, the trippiest, easily most unexpected element present here tonight would be the crowd. Somewhere along the line we realize that nobody else in attendance is paying any attention whatsoever to this music. It’s as if this were a jukebox in the corner spinning Jim Croce tunes or something. And this bizarre spectacle will run a continuous, unwavering thread though the duration of our stay here. You have some kids at tables, clearly studying and/or working on school assignments…others reading for the sheer hell of it…additional packs engrossed in conversation…but not a soul so much as glancing at these musicians. Was such etiquette some convention of this scene, which we are violating? We will never know. But hey, there’s a running $2.99 special on sausage gravy and biscuits, from midnight to 6am, and so we keep returning.