Lee's Liquor Lounge
- Wade
The waitress came over and asked if I wanted another Jack/diet coke. I briefly assessed my surroundings and decided that, no, beer would be more appropriate. But good beer-- Grain Belt Premium, to be exact.
I found myself at Lee's Liquor Lounge on Saturday night. A quiet night at home turned into a somewhat-louder night downtown when Matty called and invited us to join him and Jill on their quest to see Accident Clearinghouse, set to take the stage around 9:30. At first we were apprehensive-- Sara and I aren't a "downtown-on-a-Saturday-night" kind of couple in general. However, we wanted to see our friends, and I wanted to see if I could make it up past midnight on a weekend night.
My first thought when entering Lee's was... ahhh, home. Old people leaning against the bar. Beer (watered-down variety) posters. Paintings of hunters and baseball players on the wall. Mixed drinks served in six-ounce glasses. It was all quite comforting, almost something that I would encounter on the Austin Bar Crawl.... but not quite dingy enough.
I'd heard of Lee's before. I'd heard it was a place for twang, and a place for dancing. (And not the kind of "dancing" that one finds at Brother's or The District.) I wasn't disappointed on either end-- the opening band featured both a mandolin and a standup-bass. I'm not well-versed enough to accurately slide their music into an existing genre, but I can only describe it as "folky" with a constant ONE-two ONE-two rhythm. While it's not the usual music found in my CD player, it was well-done and fit the atmosphere nicely.
The stage is set up for dancers. The only seats near the stage are directly to its left and right-- so unless you're on the dance floor, a profile view is the best you can get. By the end of the night, people had started to stand on the dance floor to watch the band. But frequently 3 or 4 couples got out and cut a rug-- actual dancing. Quite fun to watch.
Another thing I noticed-- despite it being a downtown bar (just barely), it seemed to have quite the crowd of regulars. The four of us were seated next to a large table filled with people. Whenever someone new walked in, he/she looked over at the people near us and waved, nodded, etc. It's like they all knew each other, had seen each other here before. Maybe it's a place you go every Saturday. Maybe us "one-timers" are intruders.
It's a place worth intruding on, though.
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