A short day, but a good one nonetheless. We woke up after a relaxing 5 hour snooze, just in time to miss nearly all of the day's festivities at the race track.
I made the tactical blunder of suggesting we take the car and park at the track. Looked like a good idea on paper, not that it was actually written down anywhere. In practice, dumb, really dumb. Turned out that the place we had to park was nearly as far away from our seats as our hotel was. Anyway, walked around way too much in the 90+ degree heat. It was a Wet Heat as well, what with Cleveland being located on a lake and all.
We did get to take in a Trans-Am support race, which was pretty keen.
Anyway, the plan for the day was to get over to the track to get the key piece of information: when does the real race start? After that, the plan was to hit the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, score some dinner, and go to sleep. Didn't happen that way, naturally.
After the Trans-Am race was over, we decided it was too late to tour the pit & paddock areas, so we headed directly over to the R&R museum. You know, Cleveland's only Tourist Attraction? The only reason (other than this race) that anybody would go to Cleveland? It was closed. It's only open from 10am to 5:30pm, which makes sense, given that rockers tend to be early risers and all that... Idiots.
Early dinner - what a great idea! The information I had gathered pointed to one place, and one place only: Dick's Last Resort, "the Shame of the Flats", as they call themselves. Neat place - it's in an old warehouse (or it's cunningly designed to make you think it's an old warehouse) right on the Cuyahoga river. You sit on benches at bare wooden tables, which are then covered with long sheets of white butcher's paper.
The whole time we were there there was sort of a low-level food fight (prison riot?) going on. For whatever reason (because they could?) the predominantly college-age crowd was balling up napkins and winging them (or french fries, or shrimp tails, or god knows what) around the room. The point of the exercise seemed to be for the tosser (obvious frat-boy) to bounce something off the head of the tossee (generally some cute chick). While this had all the classic appearances of some sort of Mating Ritual, for the life of me I can't imagine the subsequent chain of events that would lead to Actual Sex.
Several of the patrons were wearing large paper Jester-style hats, with humorous slogans written on them. Tasteful, cerebral stuff like "Hung Like A Mouse", "Drunk Off My Ass", or the quaint, traditional "Free Blowjobs Here". We later found out that these hats (and the slogans thereon) were a sort of honor, bestowed by the wait staff, and given out to the more-annoying patrons. If you were extra-annoying, your hat may have helium balloons attached to it, as well. Fun! Needless to say, John and I remained Completely Hatless throughout the evening.
Adding a soundtrack to the whole spectacle was this live rock band, up on a little stage. The band was made up of a bunch of over-40 geezers, who clearly were the House Band, and had been for years. I wouldn't be too surprised if at least one of them was part-owner of the place. They played the sort of innocuous mix of 60s and 70s rock songs that you'd expect. The only real noteworthy thing about them is that they were one of the few bands I've seen perform on a stage that've made me say "Christ, we're better than these guys!"
Sadly, the food was not anywhere nearly as interesting as the atmosphere. Standard barbecued ribs & chicken, though served in these cute little silver buckets. Because they can, I guess. It did explain the food-fight going on around us, however. Throwing the food around was certainly more entertaining than eating it.
Thankfully, our waitress saved the evening for us. A charming lass, from the Judy Tenuta, "On Your Knees, Pig!" school of waitressing. She professionally reminded us that we should be buying more booze, using this time-honored approach: "Whaddya mean you don't want another drink?!? Ain'tcha got any balls?"
Well, it worked.
The high point of the evening: at some point she came around and asked John, "Ya wanna Muff Dive?" (1... 2... 3...) "It's a drink!" Somewhat confusedly (and not without a little fear, one can assume) John agreed to this 'special' drink, and to lend moral support (or something) I let her browbeat me into ordering a "Nazi Surfer Punk on Acid", or some such silliness. This concept of "Want something-bizarre... it's a drink!" provided us with some minor entertainment over the next couple of days. You know: "You want a Red-Hot Poker Shoved Up Your Butt? ... It's a drink!", that sort of thing. 1
As for the details of this Muff Dive, it involved a test-tube full of some vile liquid, and a willing (though equally confused, and probably a little drunk) young lass. The rest I leave to your imagination.
The weird part? When all was said and done, we had somehow we managed to spend $90 on 'dinner', and yet were still sober enough to drive (legally and all!) back to the hotel. Still, a damned entertaining experience, one that I'd recommend if you're ever unfortunate enough to find yourself in Cleveland.
Nothing much happened that night after the Dick's experience. We just went back to the hotel and slept some more, so as to get an Early Start of it on Sunday morning.
1. You can play the same game at home! Simply mix up a blender-full of beer and some flavored liqueur, keep pouring the same thing into shot glasses or test-tubes, and each time around come up with a new unpleasant-sounding name for the same unpleasant-tasting concoction. Examples: "A Painful Rectal Itch", "A Brick In The Face", or "Something That'll Kill You". Remember to cheerfully point out "It's a drink!" after the crucial 3-second delay!
