It's never a good sign when 27 seconds into walking somewhere, you feel as if you've made a horrible mistake... That you're about to witness an example of what Ignatius J. Reilly would describe as the contemporary world's lack of "theology and geometry."
I went to the Dominion Square Tavern about a week ago to meet Joanne. I thought it was a bar. But it's not. It's a sort of restaurant. But with a bar. But fancy. There's also a sign at the front that says you have to wait to be seated. So I waited. I wanted to sit at a table, but apparently you can only sit at a table if you're eating. So I had to sit at the bar and felt self-conscious the whole time that people could see my buttcrack...
And that's the trouble with this whole thing, really. Because this is the kind of place where I go and I think that the problem, really, is me. Because as I sat there with Joanne, getting progressively drunker on blah-ish expensive drinks, eating so-so fries, developing that sinking imposter-syndrome feeling, the place kept filling up with people for whom this was all Just Fine - a good time on the town: sitting there without really experiencing any sort of discomfort at the faux-nostalgia of the whole thing, feeling ok with listening to hours upon hours of contrived acoustic string-band music.