Doomed businesses and restaurants are scary and sad places any time of year. Throw in 12 hours of daily darkness, sub-zero temps, and a holiday that is thick with social and familial baggage and these doomed businesses start to look like something off of Quentin Tarantino's cutting room floor.
I personally enjoyed eating and shopping with the damned last night - right here in Bozeman!
Having the motivation to flee my home for the evening to avoid a planned all-female holiday gathering, I ventured out into the deep freeze to soak up a little holiday chaos. My concrete objectives were few: burger, beer, shop, return home sometime after 9 pm.
Since I was dining alone, I could go anywhere, having to please no one but myself. I also didn't want to go anywhere crowded or hip. Like I said: burger, beer, shop, home after 9. Since I was in the middle of Bozeman's chain shopping district, I decided to see what happens when the owners of a franchise (Bennigan's) decide to break away from the chain and go it alone (now the Bozeman Tavern) - in the same building, with similar food, but minus all the corporate-supplied buttons and logo'd polo shirts.
I've decided that while chain restaurants are generally not great in their own way; independent restaurants that used to be chain restaurants now trying to pretend to be similar chain restaurants results in something even weirder.
Walking into the Bozeman Tavern was just that - weird. It's got the death vibe all over it; often mentioned on Eater, it's that sense you get that this ship is going down; no matter what the stewards say and no matter how long the string quartet plays on the promenade deck. Ti-tan-ic.
The restaurant was just like some sort of shell - like the one an insect lives in and leaves behind once it transforms and flies away. The sports memorabilia is on the wall, but there is less of it. There's the huge row of draft beer taps. Even the menu options are eerily similar. Monte Cristo sandwich, anyone? Only on these menus, since the corporate ties and glossy food photos are gone, one is forced to make menu decisions based on words alone. Hey, at least the plastic sleeves were new, clean and grease-free!
Additionally, there were about 15 people in the whole place. Yikes. While the beer was cheap - $2, and the fries crispy, the over-done and grainy burger simply filled my hunger void and nothing else. This was truly a great way to start to my night of the damned.
Burger, beer....oh yes, shopping. To continue the theme night adventure, I headed over to the overtly doomed Linens and Things to see if there were any store fixtures or used janitorial supplies left for sale.
"6 Days Left!" exclaimed the huge signs in the windows. Left until what? I guess they mean that in six days you won't be able to buy any mismatched stemware, "California-king" sheets, commercial fixtures and displays, twelve-foot "solid wood" curtain rods, or your choice of shiny ersatz "silver" chafing dishes?
What an evening!
I was sort of full, and now I was wandering in the comforting confines of 30,000 square feet of brightly lit, mostly empty home wares chain store goodness. The best part, I actually overheard a couple questioning the value of the now 80% off! aforementioned chafing dish. At this point, I really was expecting Tarantino or Chritopher Walken to enter the scene.
After getting my fill of middle-class house ware leftovers, I headed next door to see what a store that is still alleging to be solvent looks and feels like. In contrast, the yet to go out of business World Market seemed somehow charmless and safe. Like a show home in a new neighborhood. This definitely didn't fit the bill tonight...or did it?
Managing to achieve my final goal of getting back after 9pm by stopping by the grocery store and topping off the gas in the car; I basked in the warm glow that only a night with the damned can provide.
Showing posts with label bozeman. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bozeman. Show all posts
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
Monday, December 15, 2008
Bozone es Frozone
As discussed recently, too much of a good thing is not only attainable, but sometimes likely; be it Pork products, or, in this case: snow and cold. A cold front with some real teeth to it roared into the Bozone this weekend.
Last Friday night it was 28 degrees when I went to bed. It was 26 degrees when I woke up at 5:00 a.m. As the cold front rolled in Saturday morning is was snowing hard and 10 degrees by 6:15 a.m.
The National Weather Service had issued a "Blizzard Warning." Which, now that I think about it, should have been my first clue to stay home on this day. Ignoring this warning, as well as my gut feeling, I headed out into the soup with Big Sky as my destination. We don't get "blizzards" here very often in the way that I think of them: in a Fargo/high plains kind of way. That said, I think what I drove in on Saturday morning actually qualifies as Blizzard. Snow was going sideways. Really. There were regular drifts of snow on the highway that looked like waves in a choppy sea. It was downright Hemingway; or maybe a winter version of the opening scene from Shakespeare's The Tempest. I especially liked the way the snow was getting kicked up by my front tires and swirling up against my drivers-side door window. Cool. Not cool was how you couldn't see the back of any car thanks to the billowing snow or even less cool, was how presumably invisible my car was from the rear.
After taking waaaayy to long to go about 15 miles, I decided that I had enjoyed enough foolishness and it was time to abandon the Big Sky concept and return to base...or maybe just go to Bridger for a bit. The drive to Bridger is only 16 miles...and I could return much easier. Plus, my ski pass removes the cost factor of the Big Sky experience.
Pulling into Bridger's parking lot at 8:30, the thermometer on my dash was reading 6 degrees now; the cold front was really pushing in. By my fourth lap in the new powder or "cold smoke" snow, it was -5 or five below. That's minus five on the "F" side on the thermometer; as opposed to the "C" side of the thermometer. Which, by the way, I think stands for "Canada"?
After a few laps on the hill, the bottom of my goggles, edges of my helmet, and collar of my ski jacket looked like it had been flocked with a thick coating of the fake snow they spray on x-mas trees in the South. Only it wasn't fake, it was moisture that came out of my lungs only seconds before hitting the chilled atmosphere and freezing solid.
The snow was spectacular. But my legs, hands, feet and toes all hurt. Not to mention, I am wearing the fleece equivalent to a burqa around my face. I think whoever invents a face mask that isn't a pain in the ass to wear could make some real money selling it to Canadians and other fools that ski in sub-zero temps.
Sunday brought even colder temps; a daytime high of -10. We hit -24 this morning. It's a good thing that I am off to work today to sit in my warm little office; this way I won't have to feel like a total pansy for staying indoors and avoiding the chill.
Last Friday night it was 28 degrees when I went to bed. It was 26 degrees when I woke up at 5:00 a.m. As the cold front rolled in Saturday morning is was snowing hard and 10 degrees by 6:15 a.m.
The National Weather Service had issued a "Blizzard Warning." Which, now that I think about it, should have been my first clue to stay home on this day. Ignoring this warning, as well as my gut feeling, I headed out into the soup with Big Sky as my destination. We don't get "blizzards" here very often in the way that I think of them: in a Fargo/high plains kind of way. That said, I think what I drove in on Saturday morning actually qualifies as Blizzard. Snow was going sideways. Really. There were regular drifts of snow on the highway that looked like waves in a choppy sea. It was downright Hemingway; or maybe a winter version of the opening scene from Shakespeare's The Tempest. I especially liked the way the snow was getting kicked up by my front tires and swirling up against my drivers-side door window. Cool. Not cool was how you couldn't see the back of any car thanks to the billowing snow or even less cool, was how presumably invisible my car was from the rear.
After taking waaaayy to long to go about 15 miles, I decided that I had enjoyed enough foolishness and it was time to abandon the Big Sky concept and return to base...or maybe just go to Bridger for a bit. The drive to Bridger is only 16 miles...and I could return much easier. Plus, my ski pass removes the cost factor of the Big Sky experience.
Pulling into Bridger's parking lot at 8:30, the thermometer on my dash was reading 6 degrees now; the cold front was really pushing in. By my fourth lap in the new powder or "cold smoke" snow, it was -5 or five below. That's minus five on the "F" side on the thermometer; as opposed to the "C" side of the thermometer. Which, by the way, I think stands for "Canada"?
After a few laps on the hill, the bottom of my goggles, edges of my helmet, and collar of my ski jacket looked like it had been flocked with a thick coating of the fake snow they spray on x-mas trees in the South. Only it wasn't fake, it was moisture that came out of my lungs only seconds before hitting the chilled atmosphere and freezing solid.
The snow was spectacular. But my legs, hands, feet and toes all hurt. Not to mention, I am wearing the fleece equivalent to a burqa around my face. I think whoever invents a face mask that isn't a pain in the ass to wear could make some real money selling it to Canadians and other fools that ski in sub-zero temps.
Sunday brought even colder temps; a daytime high of -10. We hit -24 this morning. It's a good thing that I am off to work today to sit in my warm little office; this way I won't have to feel like a total pansy for staying indoors and avoiding the chill.
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