Memorial Day Weekend

So the long weekend was ok, more relaxing for me than a crazy booze and rib fest sort of thing.  I spent some time with family because my pop is arguably one of the best cooks in Cleveland.  We had brats and ribs and pasta salad.  Saturday night I just headed out to Paninis in Westlake again for a couple cocktails and the UFC fight.  I am not some huge UFC fan but a friend of mine is and I felt like hanging out on a patio and my friends already got a table early on in the night.  The service was excellent, friendly, tall and attractive.  Buckets of domestics, or 5 beers for $12 basically.  To me however there is something truly wrong about the bucket.  It's like a feed troff for livestock, with us being the little piggys sucking down our very own swill.  To cap off the night I had an egg and cheese Panini which was as usual pretty damn good.  A friend of mine had the bacon cheese fries, or "heart attack platter".  It was ok, not much flavor but what do you expect.  Don't ask me who won the fight, I was never really paying much attention.

Sunday night we heading over to Tremont.  I wanted to check out that Revolution Brass Band at Edison's then head over to the Treehouse to see GS Harper and Michael Bay.  Ok first off, Edison's, turn on the air or turn it up.  When you have a band of like 8 people and a pretty packed front bar it is going to get kind of fucking hot in there.  The Brass Band was good, however they started off with the same couple songs I heard last time.  You might want to mix up the set list.  Don't get me wrong, you guys are great at what you do, but all the talent on that floor and we get the same song to kick this off as last time?  Switch it up.  They seriously sound great but I wasn't about to stay in that bar with it being so damn hot.  So we headed over to the Treehouse a lot sooner than we expected to. 

GS Harper is a great guitar player.  I never saw Michael Bay before but the guy had some sills himself.  GS if a funny dude too.  He is a great storyteller.  His between song banter only adds to the overall package deal.  He went through a good hour set of originals and covers and for the crowd he had there everyone was receptive to his choice of cuts.  I highly recommend seeing GS if you get the chance he has a certain Texas twang to him that likens him to a modern day cowboy, minus the hat.  There is a grittiness to his voice that brings the blues and country out in perfect harmony.  He can do Hank Williams, Johnny Cash and the Stones all justice on guitar and on that mic.  

The Treehouse though...oh boy you have changed a bit.  Maybe when I was younger I was more tolerable of drunks, assholes and trashy people or something.  I used to love coming here for excellent service, friendly bartenders, and a decent respectable crowd.  There was one bartender that night who was worth a shit and covered all the above.  I wasn't drinking Sunday and he was quick on my soda refills which was cool.  Bars are pretty much the biggest peer pressure to drink.  I feel bad for the bartenders and feel like a dick not spending money but I sometimes would rather not drink.  Try it sometime kids, it's hard to say no.  Something was missing that I remember back in the day when it was "the place to go".  It lost that feeling of being a cool hang out.  

Shortly after the first set or during the first set at the end the crowd started popping in.  A very talkative crowd so much to the point you really couldn't hear GS all too good.  Some 40 something year old woman and her husband-boyfriend sat next to me and freaked me out a majority of the night and that was early on.  She was crawling in her own skin, you could tell she was coked out or on meth or something other than the beer she was drinking.  She was always touching at herself and had the biggest case of the cocaine jitters I had seen in a bit.  She was freaking me the fuck out.  So I sat in my uncomfortable stool and watched the freak show so she didn't spill her beer on or knock over my camera. 

An hour or so later my wife went outside while a friend smoked and I was stuck holding the two stools.  In their absence in walked 6 or so of the most derelict hillbilly drunks that ever left the trailer.  They looked like Cleveland circa 1990 with sleeveless tees on the guys and acid-washed short shorts on the overly tanned permed hair girls.  Now they were in their late 40's so they long passed being girls.  They looked like the kind of white trash you would get tailgating at a Jimmy Buffett show.  They smelled like the beach and not in a good way.  It was more like a combo of sweat, dead fish and dog shit.  So the drinks of the wife were sitting on the bar and said hillbilly folks decided to come stand behind where we were sitting.  Mind you there really wasn't any room for them.  They kept edging towards the bar until they were next to the stools but not sitting in them, pushing our drinks away like no one was there.  After I told them someone was sitting there they kind of backed off, but stayed within nostril range of all of us.  After bumping into my wife accidentally for the 20th time I knew it was pretty much time to get going.  Yet they added the last nail in the freak show coffin when one of the couples started making out a foot away from me.  His hand in her jean shorts pocket, locking lips, smooching and for a lack of better description fucking with their clothes on.  Just when I thought I saw everything one of the other guys in the group starts watching and rubbing up on them, touching her hair, touching on the guy a little.  It was just fucking weird.  It wasn't just weird, it was disgusting.  

So that is my new memory of The Treehouse, and it is pretty doubtful I'll go back.  I think they have some great bands and solo artists that play there but honestly there is something missing from the bar that used to make it a fun place to hang out.  The cool crowd is long gone from this place and now it seems to attract the dregs of society or something.  The guy bartender was awesome and gave really great service.  The bar hasn't changed much in 10+ years.  It still seems like it could have something to offer but from the coked out chick next to me and the fucking carny sideshow behind me I would rather hang out somewhere else.  Was it a fluke?  No clue, but a lot of folks told me of the demise of The Treehouse and I never believed it until now.  I still see it having this great potential again but if that is the regular crowd now, fuck that.  I'll go elsewhere.  That is hard for me to say knowing how much I push for people to love this city.  I almost didn't want to write this I feel that bad saying it, but I have to call a spade a spade here.  It just wasn't a very good experience for me or anyone involved and that was mostly due to the clientele.