I had been to McGillin's twice before and hadn't been impressed on either visit. But we returned because Alison was visiting, and Joe H., the finest karaoke DJ that we know of in Philadelphia, is at McGillin's on Fridays.
The place was packed as always, but we found a table. Unfortunately, to our dismay, Elvis Presley sat down two seats away from Alison, next to the seat we had reserved for
We moved to the new table, which I was unhappy about. It was half the size of the old one, and right by both the door and the bar, meaning that we were exposed both the chilly insensate drafts and the increasingly insensate clamoring for draughts. I was irritable and snippy, but the beer kept coming and I soon felt better.
Of course, people kept bumping my head with their elbows. I tried to move my chair back a little to give myself a buffer of an inch or two, but it hardly helped. I kept myself entertained by making fun of people talking on cell phones. It was loud enough that I could hardly hear the people sitting at the table with me, but someone was trying to talk on the phone? I pulled my phone out and pretended that I was talking to my mom, or my wife who'd just delivered our baby: "That's great honey! I'll be over as soon as I'm done with this pint."
There was a group of guys behind
One of them set his drink on our table again, right by
His friends immediately realized there was a problem and stepped in. What's the problem, they said. Your friend is a drunk asshole, I said, and needs to stay the fuck away from us. Fine, fine, they said, we'll keep an eye on him. We'll stand between him and you. And they did, for a few minutes.
Before long, he was back again, but this time feeling sheepish, apparently. He was apologetic to
I personally don't care if I ever return to McGillan's. There are enough bars in this town that I can afford to write that one off. But what sort of disturbs me about this is that I knew perfectly well what I was getting into: I had been there before and I had seen the patrons packed in like sardines and stewed to the gills. Yet we came in expecting personal space and a modicum of respect?
I feel sheepish. I feel sheepish for getting drunk to the point where I become confrontational, and I feel sheepish for entering the lion's den expecting to find anything other than lions.