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| - i came home last weekend to visit. while i was in i sent my buddy a text to find out what was up to; to see if he wanted to hang out. he tells me that him and a mutual friend are going to "some bar" to watch the friend's ex pudding wrestle and asked me if i wanted to go. my immediate reaction was a sort of pseudo-disgust. but as i thought about it i decided that watching women wrestling around in pudding is something i didnt want to go my entirely life not having done and now was as good a time as any.
having no real knowledge of what this place was like, only that it was in lawrenceville, my imagination started concocting terrible assumptions. i imagined some shitty dirty little place in the middle of some shitty dirty little part of lawrenceville that merely parking my car in would put it at risk of being broken into or stolen. i imagined that the place would probably be full of grimy, dirty old men, yelling at women degrading themselves. needless to say i was not expecting a very comfortable evening.
i was pleasantly surprised to discover that when we actually got there, belvederes was nothing like what i expected. there was a very hipster crowd/atmosphere and mostly unlike my expectation, i didnt feel the least bit at risk while i was there. they have some cool art on the walls and some good beers on the taps, notably were rouge and founders. the beer selection was much better than what i assumed based what you can usually find on tap at shitty bars over on southside.
the back of the bar opens up into a dance hall/concert venue. back there is a second bar along with a stage, a pool table (maybe two, i didnt really notice), and some big comfy chairs and tvs. the chairs and the tvs had all been pushed up against the wall and the pool table was towards the back, im assuming that this was to make room for the crowd that would be gathering around the kiddy pool in the center of the room. my mutual friend commented that the place looked like it could be the first gig in a guitar hero game, i agreed.
while we were waiting around for the event to start up we somehow or other got to talking to one of the more creepy fellas in the room. he informed us that this is actually an annual event and then proceeded to display his xxl tshirt from last year's event to us. later on in the evening he bought another shirt. apparently they do a lot of events here because i also heard a few things about roller derby and 80's night.
theres not much to say about the pudding wrestling itself. it was pretty much what you would expect. by the end of the night my clothing had taken a fair amount of collateral pudding damage, it was being flung all over the place. generally though it was a good time.
we ended up leaving before the final round because the girl we were there to see was eliminated in the semi-finals and wanted to get out asap. i felt kinda bad because when i asked her what sort of compensation she got she said nothing, not even free beer. she just did it for fun.
enough about my experience. regarding the actual bar, it seemed like a decent enough place. beer selection was wide and cheap. it seems like they regularly have events going on so thats a plus. the crowd was mostly hipsters, mid 20s to early 30s. you can take that however you want, i found it welcoming.
the area is a little bit shady and i would still be slightly nervous parking my car around there, but maybe im just paranoid. i mean the bar is right on butler st. so its kinda right out in the open. my only major complaint with the place itself would be the amount of smoke. when we walked in it was fine but by the end of the night the entire place had a gray haze, stepping outside was like drinking a cold glass of water after being stranded in the desert for days.
final thoughts, check it out but be wary of the smoke and the neighborhood.
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