Buena Vista, I'm Gonna Let the Bad Times Roll

Paul Westerberg wrote that line, and I keep it in my thoughts when I sit at the Buena Vista Lounge these days knowing that in less than a year my neighborhood bar will sit in a pile of parking lot landfill rubble. Lately, it's hard to keep a drinker's game face on and not just start flailing around belligerently demanding "one more shot of whiskey for the B to the mother f-ing V." That little Westerberg song keeps me grounded in these bad times when what I really want to do is handcuff my ankles to the dollar taps and give a middle finger to the bulldozers. Just let the bad times roll, eh, Paul? Just let the bad times roll, baby.

The Buena going away might affect me more than some of the other regulars that haunt the place. I do a lot of my writing there. I feel amused to no end thinking that a published piece started out as a smart-assed idea barely readable on a bar napkin. Someone once told me that half of everything good starts out illegal. I'm adding that the other half starts out on a bar napkin. When you wake up at five in the morning on your couch with your headphones cranked to a CD skipping and find your pockets filled with little pieces of paper reading stuff like "there's no better place to hide when your a wanted man on the Central Hillside than the Buena Vista," you feel sort of stupid and proud at the same time. Even more so when you can't remember writing it and, somehow, it finds its way into a column. A great hideout bar, indeed. And one I'm worried I can't replace.

My parents raised me not to steal, but the other night after a half dozen screwdrivers I decided to poach a small totem from the Buena as a reminder of the inspiration the place gave me. A sign hangs by the door that reads "Maybe life isn't supposed to make sense-Andy Kaufman." It's framed in cheap glass stained by about a decade's worth of cigarette smoke, and I'm taking it. I've stared at that creepy sign for years, so I feel justified to purloin it quietly some last call, throw it in the back seat of a taxi with me, and give it a new home right above my own toilet. That's the other place I do a lot of writing. When my beloved lounge finally closes I'm gonna need all the help I can get. But for now, I'm just gonna let the bad times roll.

© Mark Lindquist