Surreal Evening

In the last few weeks I've had alot of opportunities to show visitors my town. I live in Austin, TX and there is a truckload of stuff to do at any given moment. My first northern visitor was my mom. I took her to some wineries, Mandola's= bad, Driftwood= good and the Blanton Museum. I also took her to Quality Seafood, as she used to live in Mississippi, and craves treats like raw gulf oysters.
My second northern visitor, was a friend from Boston. We used to go to the Garment District in Cambridge and AMVETS in Allston, when I was supposed to be in some silly journalism class on the Emerson College campus. For her first night in town, I thought I'd stick to neighborhood bars. I live in the vicinity of 51st and Airport, so we went to The Parlour, LaLa's and the Carousel.
I think the best way to describe the patio at the Parlour, is that it's like your own patio with pizza. If I had a patio. Continuing on that vibe, LaLa's is like your finished off basement, if you had a basement (I do not, that's why I go to LaLa's). Dark wood faux paneling, perpetual Christmas decorations and foosball. LaLa's has it all. And cheeseburgers, which although I've never sampled them, I've been told are very good. After lots of photography fun at LaLa's (please check out the art above the toilet in the ladies loo) we headed to the Carousel.
The Carousel's location has a distinct "wrong side of the tracks" vibe. In addition, it's got the whole "creepy clown mural" vibe and the just generally weird "set ups" vibe, en weirdened by the fact I got a shot glass full of flat diet coke out of a 2 liter bottle and 1 cup of ice for $2.50. Even the Horseshoe would give you a full can, yeesh! Anyway, the whole set up concept, is facinating to people from out of town. In addition to all the aforementioned semi-weirdness and flat soda, the band that evening was Russian. Not only was the band Russian 100% of the patrons were Russian too. It felt like being on acid or like being in a bar in Brighton Beach, in Brooklyn. All of the fashion and vibes were straight out of Moscow. There were a few special beauties wearing outfits described by my guest as "figure skating snow bunny chic" sitting atop the bar. Think Juicy sweatsuit meets rabbit fur coat. There was also a girl wearing some sort of Chuck Taylor influenced stripper shoes, ridiculously high platform shoes, with correspondingly ridiculously high heels and open toes. With socks and leggings, and some sort of Eastern European, porn shoot quasi athletic ensemble to match. The band performed some "Paris by Night" type pop-music cover band songs, then introduced, in self depricating English a tribute to one of Russia's fallen punk rock pioneers. It was at this point that we left. It could not possibly have gotten any weirder, for a Wednesday night.