The club scene

I'm sure the club scene in Philadelphia is a rip-roaring good time that could potentially knock the socks off of any bass-beat addict or cocktail junkie.  I wouldn't know.

I was walled in yesterday, trying to put a dent in a project that has long been hanging over my head, and in a fit of very serious cabin fever, I whined to my husband (who is by now very accustomed to my intolerance for long periods spent in our apartment), who immediately told me that, before any discussions about where to eat dinner or what we would do after, before my head collapsed in on itself, before he had to listen to me cry about being in my pajamas all day, and in a fit of healthy spontaneity, we just needed to leave the house.  We put on some decent clothes and went to a pub on South Street for some greasy food, and then decided that we should expand our horizons a bit and try out the music scene.  A couple of weeks ago, we went to a half-empty jazz club with friends and shared cocktails and a few laughs over a band named something super cheeky (whose name, I'm now realizing, just didn't stick with me).  It was a fun night, and we decided to give live music another shot.  

On the corner of Arch and 21st, hanging outside of the real city scene, and in a space with only a few meandering pedestrians at night, there is a piano bar that both of us had noticed a couple of times.  We shrugged and headed over.  Just after ten o'clock, we were greeted by four very big black men at the door, who gave us a quick up-and-down and said hastily You're looking for the piano bar.  It's moved. They explained politely where it was and shooed us away only after we innocently inquired what the old piano bar had become.  The Lotus Lounge, they told us.  One of them added a vague We open at ten.  You can come in if you want, but...  We walked away.

I went merrily down the street, oblivious to our send-off.  My husband explained.  They didn't want people like us in their club.  We had, apparently, been turned away, that last 'but' hanging in the air like a dividing line between the us (me, fuzzy-haired, turtle-necked and in practical black boots, my husband in a plaid button-up shirt and suit pants), and the them of the new, posh Lotus Lounge (men with jelled hair, in jeans a bit too tight for them and snake-skinned boots, no doubt, and women with sparkly tops, high heels, and bight-colored lipstick).   I smiled and laughed.  Well, so what if we looked like we wanted to go to the piano bar?  We were looking for the piano bar!   I can count the number of times I've been in a real 'club' on one hand (I can actually think of only three times, twice when I was underage).  I'll leave the thumping, the bright lights, the expensive drinks, and the serious grinding to other people.  Even in their haste, the bouncers had made the correct assessment.  We just weren't club-ready.

The piano bar, we found, had a line out the door, so we ended up in a dive bar below ground with a decent d.j., a television muted with the Wizard of Oz playing, graffiti-ed carpet on the door and signed dollar bills pasted to the ceiling.  I had a cosmopolitan, and my husband looked smashing in his suit, sipping a martini.  Our kinda place.