It's Wednesday, and I'm on Sanibel Island, surely the jewel in the crown of Fort Myers. It is a bit chilly by local standards (currently about 65 degrees) but one of those sunny days with just the wispiest of clouds and clear air, so beautiful it damn near brings a tear to your eye. I have a nice bright yellow beach cruiser from Billy's Rentals, and I'm at the Sanibel Cafe using their free Internet.
Backing up to Tuesday (yesterday), I awoke and made a pot of coffee using that Starbucks "Estima" blend I got from Dixie Liquidators, and it is delicious, and had that with a strawberry/banana smoothie.
I was in need of a haircut, and so consulted the Internet to find out if there were any old-fashioned barber shops left around here (they are an endangered species everywhere). I am so tired of those franchised barber chains, ala Supercuts, Great Clips, etc. It's not that I have anything against the concept of a barber (excuse me, styling salon) franchise. It's just I'm kind of fed up with the quality of help they attract. They must pay shit wages, because they seem to go through stylists like McDonald's goes through fry cooks. The quality of the cuts varies greatly, and the minute you do manage to form a "relationship" with one of the barbers/stylists, he or she is gone the next time you go there, presumably to greener pastures or back to tech school to learn a new, hopefully more lucrative, craft. So I found an old-fashioned barber shop, called "Doug's Barber Shop," located in a rather anemic strip mall along Cleveland Avenue. But to my delight, the barber there that day ("Dawn") was an expert with the clippers/scissors, and did an excellent job with what little hair I have left. The charge was $11, plus a $2 tip, and she didn't try to sell me any hair-care product, or ask for my phone number and/or email for their "records." She rang me up on a vintage 1960s mechanical cash register, which was about the same vintage as the three oversized Kocher barber chairs in the place. Job accomplished, and I hope "Dawn" is still employed there when I return for a touchup in about a month.
Next, I was hungry for lunch, and Doug's Barber Shop is close to Mel's Diner, so I went to Mel's for an encore on the baby back ribs. Once again, excellent. I also found out they will be closed Christmas day, so (sister) Dawn I am working to find a place that you and I can have a meal out that day. It will likely be a buffet situation; there's two places I'm looking at on Fort Myers Beach, as I thought it might be fun to spend Xmas on the beach for something different!
I was in need of a second "good outfit" to wear on social occasions, so I found a really neat and colorful "Florida Shirt" at the Salvation Army thrift store for a dollar, and a nice pair of light tan dress slacks at the Community Thrift Store for two dollars. Both were in near-new condition. The Community Thrift Store is just a couple doors down from the Love Boat Ice Cream company on San Carlos Blvd., so I stopped in for a cone and got more than I bargained for. I wanted to try one of their "drumstick" cones, which is a waffle cone dipped half way down in dark chocolate and covered in crushed peanuts. Thus, the "drumstick" part of the concoction is on the cone and not on the ice cream, as found in the freezer department of your local supermarket. Anyway, their standard serving on a drumstick cone is FOUR scoops of ice cream. You can get two scoops, but they charge you the same price ($5) anyway, so of course I made the sacrifice and got the four scoops -- two of banana and two of cookies-n-cream. Sounds weird, I know, but it was really good. The irony of the ice cream cone costing me more than the outfit I just bought was not lost on me!
Back at the apartment, I took a short chair nap, and then dressed in my new outfit for the meetup gathering at Cadillac Jacks, music provided by the duo of "Pearl and Sasy." I arrived at CJ's around 5:30, and was the first meetup person there. I ordered a Pinot Grigo, and waited for others to start arriving. OK, there was good and bad in the evening, and let me do the bad first so that I can finish this blog entry on a positive note.
Every meetup group surely must have at least one asshole, under the general rule that in any group of 12 or more people, there must be at least one asshole. And tonight I met him, and not surprisingly it was the same person who made an ass of himself on the meetup website with his commentary on "snowbirds." For purposes of this blog, I'll just call him "Z" on the one-in-a-million chance he would stumble onto this blog (although he would no doubt recognize himself by the story I'm about to tell). Anyway, the guy was loud and obnoxious, very sexist, and racist/bigoted in that way that while he never says the "n" word, you just know the guy would park his own car at a restaurant if he drove by and saw that the valet was black. To give you an idea of this guy's level of douche-baggery, he referred to a table-mate's Jaguar automobile as a "pussy-mobile" in full voice, which would be offensive enough under most any situation, but exponentially so with a woman seated at our table.
OK, now the good. The music was delightful, and yours truly danced with four different females! Neither member of the duo of Pearl and Sasy played an instrument, and were completely dependent on musical backtracks, basically a glorified Karaoke machine aided in their particular case with two laptop computers and a large sound system. Backtracks are the bane of most professional musicians (and I'm sure the musician's union would like them banned) but your average bar patron is clueless as to what's going on, and thinks that all this musical background is coming from the singers themselves rather than digital 0s and 1s synthesized into muscial notes. But the bottom line was that Pearl and Sasy both had EXCELLENT voices and did some nice two-part harmonies, and their choice of songs was very danceable. I was impressed by how current their playlist was, including Pharrell Williams' Happy and John Legend's All of Me (not to be confused with the 1930s jazz standard by the same name). Maybe the upside of "Z's" obnoxiousness that I was up and dancing with multiple dance partners if nothing else just to get away from the guy. I had very much fun in my new outfit and haircut. One of our group leaders again took pictures, and if mine get's posted, I'll send it along.
Also, our group leader, Ed, scored 150 free tickets to a prescreening of the movie, Unbroken, and our group is invited to view it Wednesday, Dec. 17, at 6:15 p.m. I believe this is several days before it opens to the general public, so I kind of feel like a VIP! And for free no less. So I will be there with the group at the Bell Tower Cinemas, which is only a couple miles from the apartment.
Well, that's it for now. Time to bike around the island, and I plan to have lunch at the Casa Ybel resort, and am hoping they still have the seared Ani tuna tacos!
Bruce
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