Last Call at Christian's Bar

Well, I'm officially done with Christian's, the bar down on George Street.  I don't often go downtown, but when I do go it's usually with Ash, and when I do go we usually visit Christian's at least once, mostly because we're just amused by the irony of the name.  But it's really not worth it, all things considered.  It's a dark, small, crowded bar and everything there is way more expensive than it really ought to be.  Including forgetting your credit card, apparently.

But normal bullshit first.  For example, when I'm downtown I usually drink sourpuss in pepsi, because it tastes like candy and I am basically a child who is for some reason everyone thinks is an adult.  Every other bar on the street charges $5.25 for my usual drink.  Or at least I think they do.  Every bar I've been to and bought a drink at charges that much, at least.  Christian's, on the other hand, charges either $7.25 or $7.50, I can't remember because after the first time they told me the price I didn't buy another drink any time I went there.  I also have never used the ATM in the back of the bar, because it turns out they charge you ten fucking dollars to take money out there.  I've never seen a store's ATM charge over three dollars on the outside to use their machine, so that's just highway robbery, it's obviously just to take advantage of anyone too drunk or distracted to read the screen as they put their PIN in.  Especially since there's an ATM just a few feet from the door outside, not owned by the bar, that charges a perfectly normal small-change amount.

But still.  Even considering the complete lack of atmosphere and the naked profiteering, I'd still stop in with my friends now and then just to see if we can find a seat and hang out to talk before hitting another bar when we get thirsty again.  But after reading this news article, I'm so grossed out by the place I don't even want to do that any more.  Apparently someone left their credit card at the bar one night, and when they came back for it the next morning Christian's straight up robbed and insulted them by putting a 25% "idiot tax" on the card.  That bar officially gives zero fucks about their customers; that shit is credit card fraud at the very least, since the owner of the card obviously didn't authorize the charge, and the bar owner doesn't even act like it's a problem.  He implies that the multiple people coming forward talking about the 25% charge are lying by claiming it's a (still unauthorized, and thus thieving) 15% charge, never apologizes, and then acts like serving drinks that they pay for is some special service.  He goes on about how so many people cancel their cards so he's losing tons of money all the time over it, but like I was pointing out earlier, the bar is overcharging everything to a ridiculous degree (seriously, ten fucking bucks to use the damn atm wtf), and I haven't heard about any of the other bars (who don't act like thieving bastards and seem to get by well enough) complaining about this or charging people to get insulted for making an honest mistake.  I even asked a bartender friend whether or not this was a common thing, and he was all "Wtf no way!  That's insane, we NEVER do that, Christian's is the only place I've heard of that pulls that type of stunt."  If people cancelling their cards is such a huge problem for the bar, there's a pretty simple solution: stop accepting credit cards with open tabs!  Either it's worth it and you don't need to rip off innocent people for not pulling that shit, or it's not and why the hell would you do it.

Also dang, it has been like a whole month since my last post.  I gotta work on that.

Dear Drunk Lady Please Don't Grab My Food

Went down to Mardi Gras on George Street the other night with Ash and Yellow Dude, and had a blast (of course).  The evening was a ton of fun.  YD's Jack Skellington costume was a hit, my Vampire Queen costume was exactly what I wanted it to be, and Ash's rocker outfit looked badass.  We heard some great music, saw some great costumes, just generally had the sort of time you'd expect from Mardi Gras.  When we got bored of the street around three thirty in the morning, we hit the Celtic Hearth for some dinner, as we usually do.  Which is where some random woman walking past leaned over my shoulder and grabbed my sandwich.

Of all the weird people on the Street, this lady was the weirdest.  Like, seriously.  I don't go downtown often, but when I do there are always weirdos, and this person was the weirdo to out-weird all weirdos.  Exactly how drunk or how stupid do you have to be to walk past a complete stranger's table in a restaurant, take a liking to their sandwich, and proceed to grab it off their plate?  I was talking about something or other to Ash and YD, and all of a sudden they just got this look of utter shock on their faces.  Ash, momentarily speechless (an oddity, to say the least) managed to point towards my plate and say, "Uh, Robin!" in a horrified tone.

I look over and see some random person's hand clawed around my sandwich and from behind me I hear some woman say, "Oh, can I have this?"  Without thinking, I knock her hand away and hunch protectively over my plate, my hands belatedly forming a shield over my poor groped food and saying, "Um, NO!"  I never did see her face, but Ash and YD told me later that her expression was really offended, and I hear her go "Awww!" in a disappointed tone as she leaves the restaurant.  Maybe she thought that by getting her hands all over my meal I'd be too disgusted to keep it and she'd get away with the bounty or something.  Clearly she has no idea how possessive I get over my food.  Back off, lady.  I'll fuckin' bite.

FUCK YEAH KITES

I went on a kite-flying picnic thhe other day!  It was awesome.  I skipped work and went downtown on the bus with a bottle of pepsi and a box of cookies and two dollar-store kites, and met Tom near some park-like thing.  He brought his fantastic sandwiches and some mangoes and a hot chocolate from Coffee Matters, perfect picnic things.  His sandwiches are really amazing lunchfoods.  He gets a fresh baguette or ciabatta bread or something, and some nice cheese to slice onto it, and some nice thick slices of pepperseed salami and sandwiches it up.  It's really simple, but amazingly yum.  I should have taken a photo to post, but they are so good I couldn't stop eating to grab a camera.  Or rather my iPod, since I've lost my charger and made my camera into an expensive paperweight.  I gotta find that thing.  Or get a new one.  Where the hell do you go for a new camera battery charger?

Anyway.  Nummy picnic on a park bench!  I forget which park, but there were lots of pretty trees around and nice flowers everywhere and a bajillion ants and everybody who walked by had an adorable dog and I just wanted to feed each and every one, but I didn't want to share the sandwiches so I didn't.  We fed the ants some mango, though, because it's really hard to keep a grip on a mango when you're cutting it on your lap without a board or a table or anything.  Mangoes are yum.  I didn't know I liked them until Tom showed them to me.   I should eat mangoes more often.

After the picnic we had to find a new park, because Tom had not realized there were quite this many trees until we came here with kites.  So we started walking!  We wandered the mean streets of St John's until we could find a suitably kite-friendly patch of land.  We would have walked for hours if necessary, though I would have complained ever step of the way.  But we didn't need to walk for hours, we just had to walk for ten minutes or so until we got to The Rooms.  The Rooms, along with all its fantastic displays inside which I will talk about another day because we went there and I took pictures of the giant squid and it's fantastic but it's not the point of this post, also has a very large grassy front lawn with no powerlines overhead and hardly any trees at all.  Perfect for kite flying!

Like I said, we got our kites from the dollar store.  I picked a lovely large parrot-shaped kite and Tom got a traditionally diamond-shaped kite with fighter plane jet things all over it.  Before we went out we agreed that Tom's kite would probably fly better, because after all kites are traditionally diamonds, right?  It must be the best kite-shape if that's what they're all like.  And while we were putting our new kites together on the lawn of The Rooms, it certainly seemed that way.  Tom's kite was much easier to put together than mine, the clip thingy on mine was bent so I had to pretty much break my kite and put it back together to make it work.  But once our kites had been assembled, it turns out that my parrot (whom I decided to name Percival) was a natural flyer, and his wings caught the breeze easily and took him delightfully high up.  Alas, Tom's kite must have been afraid of heights.  It wouldn't go more than five or ten feet off the ground and only flew in dizzying loops before crashing to the ground again.  But it was still lots of fun!  I flew my kite for ages while little children running around turned green in envy, and Tom flew his kite in loop after loop after loop until his string clip broke and his line became hopelessly tangled.  Then, because I was very nice, I let him fly Percy!

He proved to be a much more skilled kite-pilot with a working kite.  While he showed off his skills, I went to his goofy kite and tried to untangle it to see if I could fly it, because to tell you the truth those loopy-loops looked kinda fun.  So I only had half an eye on Tom and Percy, and when I looked away, tragedy struck!

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO PERCY COME BACK

It was inevitable, really.  Percy crashed into the ground, as kites are wont to do now and then, and his poor cheap dollar-store string-holder broke, so he got free.  Being the excellent flyer that he is, the wind caught him easily and he flew away, loose into downtown St. John's.  I hope he did not land on anyone's car windshields.  That's why I don't have any close-up pictures of Percy, by the way.  I was gonna take some after getting tired of flying him so I could show the world how pretty he was, but you can't take pictures of a kite that isn't there.  Sorry, my fellow kite-fanatics.  You will just have to take my word for it, and also maybe the far-away pictures where Tom is flying him.

But the loss of Percy wasn't the end of the world!  Birds are meant to fly free, after all, and with no more working kites Tom and I went to get some Chinese noodles, because we were right next to one of my favourite Chinese restaurants (Mea Mei Wok Eatery!) and noodles are delicious, and then we went to....THE GEO CENTRE.  Fuck yeah!  I love that place.  I haven't been since I was a little kid!  And it's just as rad as I remember.  There was the Titanic room and the rock wall with the spray bottles and there was a room about oil and stuff and all kinds of geology!  Awesome geology!  The Canada guide from Lonely Planet described the Geo Centre as an interesting way to learn about stuffy boring geology, but fuck that book because geology is always amazing.  

And then the next day we went back to The Rooms!  But I'll save that for another blog post because hey, if I tell everything all at once what am I gonna blog about then, huh?

Giant Squid

So I went to the Rooms last week, and WHY DIDN'T ANYBODY TELL ME THEY HAD A DEAD GIANT SQUID IN A TANK.  Seriously, that is amazing.  I've always wanted to see one of those!  I gotta go back there with my camera soon and take photos.