Fitting In In Dope City

Nights out at the Bad Allah Cabaret were us Sliverville bad apples way of being sociable. Instead of hanging out in somebody's apartment, parent's basement or deep in a park where we would have to be ready to flee the attacks of the police we would pile into a car or two and head into the faded glory of Dope City for some fun. In Sliverville we had to create our own fun out of nothing, Dope City was and is a 24 hour funhouse. Ya'll should visit here and behave badly during the 2010 winter Olympics.

We had to go to Dope City because none of the bars in Sliverville booked bands that appealed to us except for suburban legends Sparklin' Apple who made a good living for many, many years entertaining the people of Sliverville with their redneck rock 'n' roll. The bar owners were either stuck in a previous decade or had latched onto the honey truck of disco. The best act to play a Sliverville bar for years was the mighty Thor. We were the punk rockers of Sliverville, the only way we could listen to our music in town was to pass a mix tape to a pub bartender when everybody in the joint was completely incoherent. Believe it or not, when the good people of Sliverville are pissed enough they will dance to "Glad To Be Gay". I have seen it. The drunk motherfuckers would hug you and say shit like, "I'm glad to be gay too you asshole," and not remember a thing the next day.

A night at the Bad Allah would sometimes begin with a knock on my thin apartment door. Answering it I would say something like, "What have you got Jimi?" as I closed the door on the criminals lurking in the hallway that Sliverville is infamous for. Jimi's leather jacket would then empty itself of the joys sold from the many rundown rental houses of Sliverville. The warnings about the dangers of what could get us the most fucked up the longest possible time were lost on us. We would dig in and mix up our chemical(s) of choice with beer (for me) and vodka and Orange Crush for Jimi.

More people would show up and pretty soon we would be wasted enough to fit in with the citizens of the east end of Dope City. On our way into the city on the freeway we would usually hotbox or throw empty beer bottles at traffic signs. If we had grown up deeper in the mountains of Canada we would have shot our guns at the traffic signs instead. We were some of the best behaved young people in Sliverville. Many of the rest of us would have gone out looking for immigrants or fags to harass on our way into the city.

We always parked in an out of the way parking lot where we could continue the party without fear of uniformed hassles. When we were good and ready we would walk in a pack to the Allah and get stamped soon after they opened their doors so we could be sure to get into the place when it was packed well beyond the fire code limitations. Then we would go get more and more wasted.

The bars in the east end were not exactly friendly places for a pack of leather clad shitheads to drink so we would often jump a fence and drink by the port and enjoy the night air and view of the mountains. Adept as we were at avoiding the authorities, the port police never did hustle us off their property. Black leather jackets on skinny motherfuckers like us were good cover when laid still on the ground as the port police shone their spotlights in our direction. We would whisper, "Those fat ass motherfuckers must be blind," as we slugged back the booze in the dirty grass.

Beer was $2 in the Bad Allah in those days. The punk rockers drank it so fast we often had to help the owner restock his bar from the alley around midnight. Inside the club we were as well behaved as we could be considering our bodies were decomposing with pills and booze. If we got out of hand Igor the 800 lb. bouncer would throw you into the street. We never fucked with Igor - nobody did.

Sometimes we would get to talking to a sweet little punkette or two. They had wild hair, tight pants and great attitudes. Sometimes they even had knockers like the girls back home. They would be real keen to fuck our brains out until they asked us, "So, where you from?"

The best nights at the Bad Allah would have a few hours of partying at a Dope City punk house tagged on for good measure. Then we would drive home marvelling at the beauty of the sun rising over the snow covered steaming volcano, itself rising above the smuggler's mountains of America.

At home I would flick on the stereo and place the needle on my treasured copy of "Funhouse" and fall happily to sleep. The best advice I ever got or could ever give was to get it in before you get old.