Along the river where the office buildings make a concerted effort to stink of power, there’s a little bar with a cutesy name that will be funny to lawyers.
“There are a lot of law offices in the building, so most of our regulars are lawyers,” the Sidebar’s waitress says with a smile as she whisks away the menu. “So it’s a play on that.”
She gives me a pert little nod and walks off.
The bar was full of dark wood and specials on the drinks lawyers are supposed to like — whiskey and wine. Every flat-screen in the bar is turned to either sports or the stock market.
A few older Romneys parade their Gordon Gekko costumes either three weeks too early for Halloween or 25 years too late to be fashionable. But soon they toddle back to work, looking as white and 1% as low-fat milk.
For all I know they’re the in-house attorneys for the gay atheist enviromentalist alliance for world peace.
But what do I know? I’m there to stink of power. Or at least get a whiff of it.
Once the two Romneys toddle off, everyone in the bar aside from the staff and the couple playing grab-ass at the bar reminds me of most of the lawyers I’ve known in my life — eager, sincere, nerdy as hell. On the other side of a dark wood divider from me, two co-workers listen to a third tell the history of a nearby parking lot easement. He makes it sort of interesting.
I guess I like lawyers because they’re the ones who understand the clockwork of society. A lot make more money than small Southeast Asian nations and others (OK, well often the same ones) treat life like a gigantic version of the Richard Pryor joke where two guys are peeing off a bridge. But no one would be so stupid as to think the loudest members of a profession are the only ones there are (cough cough everyone who ever uses the term “the media” cough).
And this is where the other guys drink.
This is where the lawyers who hear the tick tock of how easements work grab a brew and sandwich. Here’s where the three co-workers share stories about their kids.
Maybe the self-styled sharks and lions drink here too, but it doesn’t seem like that kind of place. It’s a bar that has to tell you lawyers should drink here by using a cutesy name, just like the company’s bar designed to attract a young, college crowd is literally called Schoolyard.
Along the river where the office buildings make a concerted effort to stink of power, there’s a little bar with a cutesy name. Lawyers might find it funny.
Read about another place to be seen
