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Volume 3, Issue 15
July 19 - August 1, 2001
BOTTOMS UP!
Alex Neth
DRUG DEALER
WISDOM
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NOB HILL INN
(You sure you want to know where it is? )
First, let us note that "Nob Hill"
is a historically snooty address,
bearing automatic cachet. There's a Nob Hill in San Francisco-- you might be able to
afford a house there if, say, you have the
world's rarest blood, or a Springer
Spaniel that leaves solid gold turds.
There's a restaurant, or used to be, in San
Diego called Nob Hill, and they didn't
exactly give food away. So imagine my
surprise when, upon entry into Denver's
very own Nob Hill Inn on Colfax, I discovered
a regular old seedy bar.
Nothing fancy here. In fact, there's practically
nothing here at all. It isn't listed in
the phone book, and if you aren't the kind
of person who habitually looks for
strange new bars, you'd probably walk
right past it without a second thought.
This, inconstant reader, is a Colfax Bar;
the drinks won't set you back too much,
but you've gotta drink 'em here, and
share the goodness with your fellows.
Allow me to introduce Rico (not the
name he told me, for the record). Rico
had me pegged as soon as I walked in.
"Hey, man," he whispered to me, wobbling
on his stool. "I've got some good
coca and weed, you know?"
I thanked him heartily. After all, it took
some lubrication for him to share that
potentially prison-inducing tidbit with
me. But little to my knowledge, Rico was
no ordinary bar drug dealer. No, he was a
font of wisdom, a spitting, slouching,
Budweiser-swilling Ann Landers. Before
I could even order a drink, he had settled
into the seat next to me and begun rearranging
my view of the world.
Most of what he said is unprintable, not
because of the swearing, but because
Rico didn't believe in using many consonants.
He was, to say the very least, difficult
to understand. But I picked out
enough about foiled drug deals and marital
strife and his buddy Dave the
painter-- whose business, believe it or
not, is called "Dave's Quality
Painting"-- to make me realize that Rico,
misguided or not, appeared to genuinely
have something to say. He seemed well-scrubbed
and not particularly homicidal
(which are nice qualities to find in the
guy on the next bar stool), a prisoner of
his prejudices but not unwilling to learn.
Who am I to say what someone is? What
about diamonds in the rough? Savage
beauty? Was Rico, parked at the counter-top
of a stinky establishment on Denver's
stinkiest street, really a brilliant critic of
society? Was he a Rimbaud? Did he have
something to give to the world, and since
the world wasn't at the next stool, he was
giving it to me? I had a feeling. I knew
that, if I listened to him for a while, I
would eventually be the recipient of a
true revelation. Rico knew something. I
had to find out what it was.
So I stayed, put in my two cents on the
occasional bar question-- the bartender, a
middle-aged man who looked as if he
belonged in a ranch home in Cherry Hills,
wanted everyone's opinion on how much
it would cost to clean an oil painting--
and listened to Rico. His steady drunken
slur was relaxing, like falling asleep to
the sound of waves. I almost nodded off.
Then a change of tone got my attention.
Rico, my self-appointed Mr. Natural,
sounded serious-- here it is, I thought, the
answer. The answer!
"Shit, you know, I'm just low on money
right now, and I need to sell this Seiko."
He pulled off his watch and held it out to
me as a jeweller might. "And this. This is
a nice lighter, huh?"
He was right. It was a nice lighter. Not as
nice as an answer to the eternal existential
question, but a much better deal at $15. I
thanked him for everything he had taught
me, told him I wasn't going to give him
any money, and bought him a bottle of--
gack-- Budweiser. By that time, his attention
was elsewhere, specifically on the
aged lady with dyed blonde hair who had
suddenly appeared on his lap.
Ah, well. I looked away from Gino in
time to realize that there was an extremely
loaded woman talking to me from
across the bar.
"You don't have to sit all the way over
there," she said, wearing what must have
been meant as a come-hither smile.
Agreed. I gulped my beer and disappeared
like virginity on prom night. The
Nob Hill Inn might not sport much in the
way of quality, but what it lacks, it makes
up for in crappiness. But I almost learned
the meaning of existence, so I guess that's
something. Not as good as a free drink,
but something. D
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