Saturday recap: A comfortable, relaxing day at three of my favorite places

Yesterday I went to the Red Rooster to watch the flip cup tournament, and more importantly, to drink beer.  First time I’d been there during daytime in about a month, and I quickly remembered how nice the Rooster staff is – they have football on all their TVs (I counted 11 of them), and if you come in to watch, they’ll tell you, “If there’s a particular game you want to watch, just tell us what TV you’d like it on.”  They have big $5 pitchers and half off Maxalicious pizzas during games as well.  If you have a big group that wants to go somewhere and drink beer and watch football, the Rooster would be a good place to do it.

They told me they’re also going to be open for all the Tiger games (including away games on TV), and they will run beer specials.  They’re especially looking forward to February’s Memphis Tigers vs. UT Vols game, which is an away game this year.  They want to have a big watch party for that game.  They also told me that their 12-foot tall rooster that guards the front door will be dressed up as Santa by the end of this week, and that they’re planning a week-long celebration to celebrate their 1-year anniversary in early 2009.

As for the flip cup tournament… eh, it was what it was, an excuse for people to get together and play drinking games.  I didn’t play on a team, just watched.  Sam made me a press pass consisting of a napkin with my name and “PRESS PASS” scribbled on it, which he then proceeded to staple to my shirt.  I have pics in my camera, which I’ll post later.

By 5:30 I was DONE and decided to call it a day and started the walk home… but what’s on the way home from the Red Rooster?  The Saucer.  Of course I had to stop in, especially since one of my favorite beers (Blue Moon) was the Fire Sale.  Ended up hanging out at the bar with my friends Lee and Bicycle Bobby.  Wow there really weren’t a lot of people out.  Guess yesterday was travel day for a lot of people.  We had a good time though.  The manager came over and thanked us for our loyalty.

Around 8 Lee made a great suggestion:  “Hey, you want to go to Bardog?”  Well, let’s see… PBR on tap?  Of course I want to go to Bardog!  So we made the three-block walk up to Monroe.  Found out that the owner’s mom reads my blog.

A female friend at the bar suggested to me, “You know, Paul, there are sweater tube tops.  You ought to do a December version of Tube Top Month to promote those.”  That makes three times this week I’ve had someone suggest that I bring back Tube Top Month six months early in honor of winter/Christmas tube tops.  I’m not up for an entire month of them right now, but if anyone wants to model winter tube tops and send me photos, I’ll be happy to post ’em.

I made the mistake of getting a seat near the kitchen, which meant I had to sit there and watch them cook sliders for three hours.  Finally I couldn’t take it any more and put in a to-go order for sliders.  The place got super duper packed right as I was leaving – the Thanksgiving holiday may be hurting business at most places Downtown, but it sure didn’t seem to affect Bardog.

Went home, ate my sliders, went to bed.  After the hustle and bustle of the Downtown parade on Friday, Saturday turned out to be a peaceful, relaxing day with good people in good places.  And because I went to bed relatively early last night, I actually am up in time to go to Sunday brunch, for the first time in weeks.  I’ve gotten so out of the loop that I don’t even know if it’s a Majestic week or Blue Monkey week… if anyone knows, shoot me an e-mail.  Otherwise I’ll start texting people about 10:30.