Raising the Bar

Considering my last post, I guess it makes perfect sense that the first (and often only) people I get to know in a new place are the bartenders. So far, in Lander, Jonmikel has hit up the new brewmaster for a nice cask ale, we've already gotten one of the bartenders at the Lander Bar to give us discounted beer, and we've made friends with the bartender and owner at the Atlantic City Mercantile (lazily and/or cleverly called "The Merc"), David. The latter is a fabulous bar that is reserved to the T for dinner (they apparently have excellent steak and are in the "1000 Places to See Before You Die" book) and turns into a local bar (complete with dice games, men with long gold-mining beards, and thick cigarette smoke) after the kitchen closes down. We stopped in for a couple of beers and a "Welcome to Lander" shot of peppermint schnapps (Thanks David!). The bar is old and wooden, the animals on the wall are old and dead, the wood-burning stove is old and covered with soot, and there are old photographs of the bar through the ages lining the walls, looking largely the same. A place that will be cozy and wonderfully redneck in the winter! We'll have to snowmobile to it...



Also, I wanted to post something I said to some friends about Jimmy Buffett and why I like him:

"For me, Jimmy is all about a way of life. I mean, a lot of his songs are arguably bad (unless you really enjoy 80s country ballads that sound like theme songs for old TV shows; and trust me Cheeseburger in Paradise is by far NOT one of his best songs!). But look how creative he is. He talks about living and loving and having fun and acting stupid and feeling silly and never getting old and enjoying life in all of its crazy, quirky and often downright ridiculous aspects. He writes the themes for so many of us who never confuse growing older with growing old.

I think that's why he's so influential and so cross-generational."