Booth number one is where my friends and I always congregate. We’ve been coming here ever since they opened four, five years ago. There’s no TV, dartboard, jukebox, or pool table. There’s just the music that the bartender plays, so you have to sit and talk to people–which we like. A couple of summers ago I was a lighting technician during a tour of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. We played in Wichita, which is not exactly the cultural center of the world–I think that’s where all the people who buy Creed albums live. Anyway, we were at the hotel after a show, about 12:30 at night. Apparently the town’s partially dry or some such nonsense, and when we asked the desk clerk whether there were any bars open, we were directed “across the river and a little bit down the road a piece.” A group of us walked in the door, and it was like one of those movies where the record scratches and everybody stops and stares. We had walked into a biker karaoke bar! Luckily, at that time I was in my bourbon phase, and by the end of the night we were drinking with these gigantic bikers who were seriously singing karaoke versions of “Born to Be Wild” and lots of metalhead stuff. By the time we left we’d made friends, but I was never so happy to get back to my regular hangout here at booth one.
–Scott Entenmann, furniture designer