Bike Bar

On Thursday, after recording in that huge church in Gent, we took a stroll down to where we ate dinner a year ago.  It is such a peculiar feeling to return to a city on the other side of the world, that you haven't seen in more than a year, and know almost exactly where you are going.

We turned down some side streets, winding our way to a dark unmarked door to a place the boys called "bicycle bar."  It is akin to some sort of Hobbit hole.  Upon opening the door, and pulling back a velvety curtain, you have three picnic style tables to choose from--two of them well lit by hanging lamps, the third resting unattractive in the shadows, with piles of clothes stacked about.  This old man runs it.  He just brings you a random beer when you ask (no menus) and there are a million trinkets-- everywhere.  He has 250 bicycles hanging from the ceiling, among hundreds of other things. 

I am finding that there is no accurate collection of words to explain what it feels like to sit in this place.   But here is an image for Austinites: If the Cathedral of Junk guy bought a hole in the wall space and opened a bar, it would be sort of like this.

This guy also runs a digital guestbook on a desktop computer that looks as though it rolled off the factory shelves in 2002.  He appears table side somewhat suddenly from the shadows of the crypt bar, and pressures each member of your party to sign said book.  Dylan went.  Then Michael (<--semi-scolded for not following the bar owners directions to a tee.  You must end your post with the city you are from).  Then me.  After struggling to navigate my way around the Dutch keyboard, I signed with great compliments. As dark and bizarre as that place was, I really loved how secret it seemed and how there probably isn't another place on the Earth just like it.  It takes some kind of courage, strength of vision or, I don't know, a degree of gentle delusion to open a place as cluttered, strange and unconventional as this. 

All in all, if you can find it, go there.  I liked it.

He talked to me for a good while...It's probably safe to say he liked me.  He spent entirely too much time googling the Dutch name of the bar, then clicking on the Google search results to show me how popular it was. Page 8. Page 15.  Page 34. All the way to PAGE 52 (!!?!)!  The boys glanced at me from their table to see if I needed rescuing.  "I kept looking back to see if you were in uncomfortable mode, but you were just smiling so broadly!" Rob said.  Which is true! It's all true.  I was laughing nearly non stop, completely taken by the ridiculousness of the situation.  Sitting beside some old man who first is showing me catalogues of his train car collection, then bragging about his bar's stature by the vastness of its Google presence, and all with absolutely no shame. 

 Before I got up, and before he might have over charged us for our beers, he asked me to sign my entry "kisses from Austin, Texas."

Needless to say, I did not.