Cheap Beer Ballet

One weekend just before Christmas I took the bus from my apartment in Fort Royal down to the Bad Allah for a night of getting ripped like my old couch. Usually I got down there with someone who drove but cash for the bar can get short around Christmas so I was on my own. The bus from Dope City ran right by my place until 4 AM.

That night the K-Tels played. Art Bergman could blow any punk rocker off the stage with his guitar playing in those days. And the bass player, name of Jim if I remember right, and drummer, whose name I forget, were the top punk rock rhythm section in town. There was hardly anybody in the Allah that night but one of the guys I worked with on the river showed up with a jar of honey soaked mushrooms that smoothed things over real nice. The Allah was a good place to hang out if you were a doper. And I was all about the fucking dope back then.

Beer in those days was $2 in the Allah. I had a dozen or two. Christmas was not my favourite time of year. All it does in Dope City every Christmas is rain. Before global warming got into high gear we used to get lots of snow and play hockey in the streets in our toques.

After the show I made my way through the East End of town to the bus stop a few blocks away. I remember this really tough looking motherfucker sizing me up as he stubbed a cigarette into the brick wall he was leaning on. One good thing about being a punk rocker is lots of people figure it is in their best interest to leave you the fuck alone.

At the bus stop I was treated to one of the coolest shows I have ever seen in my life. Like I said, it was just before Christmas and at 2:30 in the morning it appeared as though those of us up and about had been drinking. Everybody I looked at fell down. They fell backwards, sideways, this way and that. They fell quietly, noisily; some of them spit and some of them shat. Then they would get up and fall down again. It was the cheap beer ballet.

And I thought I was hammered.