• Barred

    Barred: Sam Bond’s Garage & Blairally

    When: Friday, 5:03pm

    I always love drinking in other cities, ideally third-tier, not so much because I blend in more than in NYC but the crowds are often more diverse. At Sam Bond’s Garage, I had never seen so many white ponytails (on men, duh) in a room together. We ran into my sister’s neighbor, a woman who looked like a wizened Patti Smith, I saw a balding man with a hook for a hand, and also a man who was dressed like a senior version of General Zod. In the bathroom line I was talking to a woman who looked late 30s but turned out to have a son who was 28. Maybe she meant stepson? I just don’t know. Of Montreal’s song that was made into that Outback Steakhouse jingle was playing and it didn’t quite seem to jibe with the clientele.

    Age appropriate? Hell, yes.

     


     

    When: Friday, 9:20pm

    Weirdly, Eugene has a dearth of drinking venues that stay open past 11pm. And so I settled on this arcade bar, Blairally, that I didn’t realize hosted ‘80s nights on Fridays and charged a $3 cover after 9pm. I can barely articulate the scene inside. There were very few people actually dancing, though there was an air of grown-up drama kids, trucker hats, and dreadlocks because it’s Eugene.

     

    I had to hand it to the DJ because he wasn’t just playing greatest hits even though I’m blanking on all of them now except for Translator’s “Everywhere That I’m Not.” After I shot a quick video that Facebook wouldn’t let me upload due to copyright infringement, we took off. Thirty minutes, one dollar per ten minutes of entertainment, was enough.

    Age appropriate? There were some gray-beards. Not any overtly middle-aged women. Ostensibly, ‘80s nights would capitalize on the nostalgia of people who were young in the ‘80s, but in my experience it always draws types who are at least a decade younger.