I eventually break down and call up some of Doug’s old roommates, last seen in mid-November. Maria answers and gives me directions to this brand new bar out on Bethel, Banana Joe’s, a second outpost for this popular downtown club. With nothing better going on, Damon shrugs and jumps in the car with me for a ride out to this place.
Some buildings just seem to possess a doomed trajectory, despite the apparent strength of their location, and so it is with this one. Until recently it was an eatery called B Street, where my friend Clif worked alongside his employment at the Bethel Road Kroger. Through Clif I met other B Street employees such as Colin Gawel of Watershed fame, and the expected plethora of nice looking girls with baggage you encounter at every restaurant.
It’s only February of 1998 and already B Street is toast, replaced by this vague nightclub concept. This standalone building is located in the front of the Carriage Place strip mall, near Sawmill Road’s intersection. They’re advertising this as “Singles Night,” but I’m a little bit confused, for what is every night at every bar in every city if not Singles Night? As far as the crowd gathered here is concerned, though, it’s all seemingly mid-twenties – which we are fast approaching, Damon and I, if on the low end of this spectrum – up to early forties, and therefore bereft of the teenyboppers Paul so abhors. It’s hard to put your fingers on these gradations, although I think he’s correct in some respects, the way there’s a completely different vibe and less bullshit once you snip certain age brackets out of the equation.
Maria and Denise we locate right away, possibly because they are shouting “POCKETS!” at a volume louder than the music piped in overhead (long story, but this is my nickname with this crew, somehow). And even though exceedingly dim in these passages, we locate them right away, in a corner booth by some windows overlooking Bethel. A barmaid drifts by in an instant, pitching their highly popular $2 Long Islands, the nightly special. My associate and I both order one, though soon discovering why they’re so cheap when the small drinks are delivered in flimsy plastic cups.
I ask Maria what she’s up to, which sets loose an episodic rampage at a speed and trajectory which would have made John Glenn nauseous. By contrast we have Denise, who is possibly one of the friendlier chicks I’ve met since moving here, although unfortunately not much to look at, kind of short and dumpy and plain. Still, you might make a case for anything, in a loud, dark environment where personality or at least a person’s vibe is the prevailing consideration.
Nobody ever talks much about 1998 in the context of its major tech triumphs, but I’m here to tell you this was the breakthrough year. The 90s as a whole seem like the shortest decade I can remember, because from ’97 onward everyone was glancing forward, to the extent that the next millennium basically began right there. Lost in the shuffle somehow are the actual quotidian accomplishments, the details of when this stuff is implemented in the Midwest if not everywhere else. In the early weeks of ’98 we install an internet connection at our house for the first time…and then, right on the heels of that development, you have this gadget in Maria’s hands, the cellular phone device.
She’s the first person I’ve personally met who has one of these, and it happens at this unlikeliest of locations. Though as far back as ’92 you might have spotted commercials for such, phones tied to one’s automobile were far and away the most prevalent up until now. My parents and some of their friends even had a car phone for a spell, when those were trendy, in the decade’s early years. This is something altogether different, though, you can sniff it out in an instant, and you just know that we will soon be seeing these everywhere. I even make the mistake of resorting to the extant definitions, which immediately places me in some sort of out to lunch camp.
“I didn’t know you had a car phone!” I enthuse to Maria. She shoots me a borderline dirty look, answering the call which has drawn my attention in the first place.
After conversing a short while into it, though, she hands the phone to me, explaining that her sister Lisa’s on the other end – the second early adopter I’m aware of. This totally makes sense. These two are unlike most girls I’ve ever known, in a lot of respects. You could make one offhand reference about how you’d like to check out Flagstaff, Arizona someday, or something, and the next thing you know they’ve got plane tickets booked, hotel rooms reserved, an entire entourage assembled for some blowout a scant three weeks down the road.
As far as the present tense is concerned, however, Maria says Lisa wants to speak with me. Though I will admit to that one night of indiscretions with Lisa, last summer, she subsequently met and became infatuated instead with Alan, an obsession which continues as far as I’m aware, one which found her leaving notes on our front door for him up until a couple of months ago. So it’s hard to fathom what she wants from me right now…well, no, as Maria passes this baton, it’s pretty obvious what Lisa desires, calling from a nearby bar herself. In my corner however is the fact that it’s deafening loud in here, to the extent I legitimately can’t make out much of what Lisa’s saying.
What follows is me shouting, “HUH??!?” with my free hand cupped over its nearest ear, or else muttering enough, “yeah…uh huh…really!” type interjections in what feel like appropriate intervals until the point I can safely conclude, “okay, well, I’ll talk to you later!” before handing the phone back to Maria. I truly have no idea what Lisa just said, what I may or may not have just agreed to. But does it matter? Probably not.
Maria and Denise announce they are heading over to whatever bar that was Lisa just called from. We decide sticking around here sounds like a better option, however, so Damon and I order a second Long Island flavored water and patrol these grounds in the name of journalism.
This dance club consists of one large room, slightly bigger than your average house. There’s the requisite bar in the middle, a dance floor on the western, Sawmill facing flank, near where we were sitting, and a live DJ over by the restrooms. Tropical flourishes such as palm trees and whatnot adorn the ceiling and walls, but there’s nothing out of the ordinary about any of this, and certainly no extravagance. We observe the classy looking broads in their sharp evening attire, but then also these yuppie dorks in their sockless Dockers, sipping martinis. We order a third round of Long Islands, then split.
II.
Having already visited the newer Bethel Road outpost before the much more popular original, I’m moving in reverse of the typical pattern. About a month and a half later, at John H’s behest, I’m joining him and John L for this journey to the downtown location. It’s Friday night and the crowd promises to be insane, I’m happy to be finally crossing this one off my list to visit. The two Johns have been down here before, though, more than once, and they can’t stop raving about the place.
“I don’t know why but H and I have the best luck hooking up here,” John L offers, “this and the Yucatan, back when it was busy…”
I’m stoked already, and as we arrive down on Front Street, in the heart of the Brewery District, the lack of available parking anywhere near this club seems to bode well, too. Rolling the dice a little bit – although there wouldn’t appear to be many reasonable alternatives – a parking slot at nearby Victory’s is where this car will come to rest, despite the presence of TOWAWAY ZONE signs posted everywhere. There are enough bodies walking back and forth between the handful of bars down here to muddy any attempts of tracking them, meaning this should be just fine. The only thing I’m really questioning is what I can possibly bring to the table within this crew, if I can hold my own as an adequate wingman.
“I was just telling John L,” the H Train says with a chuckle, as if reading my mind, “you know, that J-Dog’s a pretty cool guy to hang out with, and he agreed.”
John L nods in concurrence. But while nice to hear, this still brings with it the pressure of living up to the hype. Well, at this point I’m not too concerned with my ability to hang out and function as a laid back guy who’s maybe good for a few witty wisecracks per night. Can I keep up with these maniacs in the drink department, though? And if they are picking up babes, will I be able to pull off the same?
After walking up a majestic flight of long, stone steps, spanning the width of this bar, we open one of the doors cut into this glass wall facing Front Street. And it’s immediately apparent that something special is happening here, a situation I haven’t quite glimpsed before. Wall to wall people, sure, but everyone’s been to some crowded clubs, ones boasting a larger head count than this. This is different, though, in that every available square inch of the club is one giant dance floor. There’s the bar, and there’s the dance floor, nothing else. As such it is literally impossible to avoid bumping into some girls.
Somehow, at one end of the lengthy bar, which runs parallel to the north wall, we find a trio of available stools to set up camp and get our bearings. This happens to sit right near an opening where people are expected to step up and order drinks, making for an ideal set up – or a very bad one, depending upon your outlook on these matters, and who you happen to be with.
No sooner have we sat down does John H order us a round of these Drano colored Kamikazis. I manage to slip in an order for a Budweiser, but then John L springs for another round of beers, as well as Lynchburg Lemonades for the three of us. We’ve only been here fifteen minutes.
Before we get completely sidetracked by annihilation, it’s time to focus upon the lady landscape. We rise from our chairs and begin to see about an entry point into this dance floor, which bleeds right into these very chairs. Chicks are all over the place, all points of the compass, bumping into us, carrying on conversations so close we might as well be included.
“Man, this place is packed!” I shout, “I’ve never so many hot women before!”
John H dips out to take a leak, and returns with some Pat guy he knows, the younger brother of so-and-so who apparently used to work at our restaurant. I’m not exactly paying attention to these details, and wouldn’t say this was the greatest development in the world if I were. But this introduction is no sooner handed out before all worries are absolved, as we hear some female voices calling out our names from some inner chamber of this dancing swarm. We squint at this slightly dim sea and eventually spot Keisha and Pam, merrily laughing as they wave and make their way toward us, as we move to meet them halfway.
In an amusing coincidence, John H says he left a message on Keisha’s machine earlier. But they swear they never heard it, had ventured here anyway on their own accord. Were sitting around getting ripped at the apartment before deciding to catch a cab down here.
So these two are completely torched, which can’t but assist our cause. Without much in the way of other words said, in varying combinations we are taking turns gyrating against these girls. Voluptuous, highly flirtatious Keisha and her massive tits, conservative but no less attractive Pam, with her tropically suggestive tan, her long, straight black hair and lean contour. Keisha does look especially incredible right now in a shiny silver blouse and tight black pants, yet this is just one man’s preference, for Pam is no slouch.
We are surrounded by women, which is fortunate considering that Keisha and Pam inevitably run into even more guys they know and spin off into corners unknown. All four of us guys, however, wind up bumping and grinding with random girls, will lose track of one another for lengthy stretches, only to cross paths long enough to compare notes.
This Pat guy seems okay, if a bit too boastful for my tastes. He’s tall and dresses well, which is probably just about all you need to succeed in this environment. To that point, we wind up within shouting distance of each other during one stretch where he happens to be dancing with some short, hot blonde. Yet while men of more modest height might need to work a little harder to get noticed here, it would seem I’m doing okay, too. There’s this brown haired chick grinding with another guy in my vicinity, but she and I keep exchanging glances, and she eventually glides over, jams her ass into my crotch and begins shaking it against me.
Pat decides this is the perfect time to start telling me some story. I truly have no idea what he’s talking about, with one arm wrapped around this girl as he shouts to me, though I bark out variations of, “yeah…uh huh…oh really?…you don’t say!” into any pauses. Then I happen to glance up and spot pudgy old John L on this platform, laugh my head off to see him there, with not one but two gorgeous females, an arm around each of them. Grinning, yes, like the proverbial kid on Xmas morn.
As for John H, he mysteriously manages to develop a Paul-like fixation on one girl in particular, who has short, light brown hair, parted down the middle. She resembles Jen S a great deal, both facially and with her tight, compact frame, so the source of his obsession is obvious. But he cannot stop talking about her, whenever I bump into him, until he finally works up the nerve to approach her cold.
“Do you have a boyfriend?” are his first, and just about only, words to her.
“Yes I do,” she says, kindly enough, though this conversation extends no further.
Our task force reassembles as John H materializes with yet another round of brew. John L is looking a little winded from the platform excursion. Now Pat’s trying to tell me some other story about this night up at Yokahama’s, a bar on Kenny Road, where, he claims, local DJ Ronni Hunter was trying to come home with him. She has a sexy, husky voice I’ve heard many times on the Blitz, our finest hard rock station, though I’ve never seen the woman.
“She was totally wasted, man…,” he says.
“Was she hot?” I ask.
“Eh, not really,” he says, “I mean, she was okay looking, but not that great.”
I spy this sharp little number nearby and move toward her, as much an evasive maneuver to get away from Pat as anything else. She’s okay with the dancing, but when I attempt to slide an arm around her, the girl pulls away, disappears into the crowd. So much for that.
Oh, but Keisha and Pam eventually return, and in such grand fashion. I find myself dancing between them, as both mash their sublime bodies against mine, holding one and then the other, back again, not wanting to tip my hand necessarily as to which I would prefer. Thinking all the while that then again, it would be great to have both, as this Keisha and Pam sandwich is pretty freaking hot.
They drift away once more, and are gone completely when the house lights come up. How can it possibly be this late already? Seeing those two and especially Keisha had been great and all, but once again, the night has melted away with little to show for it. And the taste she’s given me might create some lasting harm – just about the last thing in the world I need is to dive back down that rabbit hole, start thinking about her again.
But hey, at least this Pat character has vacated the premises. Unfortunately, this disperse battalion of females is stampeding toward the exits as well. John and John are convinced we can squeak in last call at Woody’s if we haul ass up there, however. I think they’re crazy but am in no position to object.
III.
I’m not sure exactly when the entire Banana Joe’s enterprise went belly-up. Going through my journals recently, I discover that there was a third location that I’d entirely forgotten about. This was the spring of 2000 and they had by this point set up shop out on Dublin-Granville Road, though I think the Bethel Road one was gone by then. At any rate, as we’re driving by it, I tell Damon, “I think this is the wrong part of town for that. If it didn’t work on Bethel Road, it’s not gonna work here.” And he agrees. It’s a warm, Thursday night in May, but the drive-by reveals a nearly empty parking lot, which probably foretold their fate.
I can understand why owners don’t exactly tell the world every detail about their defunct enterprises. It’s unforunate, and they probably don’t want to relive bad memories. But at the same time, it would be fascinating as an outsider to learn every twist and turn of what went down with a concept such as this. All you know is that they’re suddenly gone one day, despite periods of great success, and this feels a little sad. Then you might attempt learning more about them online, and discover there’s not much record that places like this even existed, and that’s even sadder.
