Todd and I had quite an eventful weekend. On Friday night we went out to eat at a little restaurant called "Slims." Todd has heard people raving about this place for a while and is always bugging me to go there. On Friday night I gave in, and we went to Slims.
We went in and it was a very small place. They asked if we had reservations and of course we did not. This was not a problem as only about half the seats were taken. We let the waiter know this was our first time here, generally a prompt for him to tell us any weird things about the restaurant. He did not. He asked if we wanted some wine. We did not...but Todd asked what kinds of beer they had.
Waiter: "Well, uh, we don't have a liquor license."
Todd: "Then how do you serve wine?"
Waiter: "We can run across the street to the liquor store and get you a bottle."
Us: "No thanks."
Strange, huh?
We get our menus and look through them. The next strange thing is that they are hand written and difficult to read. I mean, would it kill them to use a computer? The third thing is that there are no prices on the menu. That is always a sign that you are about to spend a lot more money than you wanted to spend. We choose our entrees and the waiter comes back to take our order.
Waiter: "Oh, I forgot to tell you, on Friday and Saturday nights we only do a prix fixes meal, appetizer, salad and entree for $30."
Us: "Uhhhh....."
Waiter: "I'll come back in a few minutes."
At this point Todd really wants to leave. Quite frankly, I want to leave, too, but it seemed rude to sit there for a while, drink their water and then get up and leave. It seemed like a disorganized and quite frankly, a shady place. I can't even pronounce half the appetizers let alone want to eat them. Todd was trying to convince me to just make a run for it when the waiter came back and said that since they weren't busy they will allow us to simply order an entree. Lucky us.
After waiting over an hour for our food, it arrives. All in all, it's just simply mediocre food with a fancy presentation. My food was served in an octagon shaped black plastic bowl. It was really difficult to eat out of the bowl...but it certainly looked pretty!
After being there for 2 hours (I'm not exaggerating...) the check arrived. Eager to get out of this place, Todd puts his credit card on the table. The waiter comes back 15 minutes later to tell us, that they don't accept credit/debit cards. At this point I am honestly ready to scream FUCK YOU. I know that there are some independent places that don't take credit cards, but if you are a restaurant that charges $30 a meal you had better take credit cards. Honestly, who carries that much cash around with them? I had just gone to the ATM so we were able to pay but we had to dig around for some change to add to the tip. It was pretty sad.
But our night doesn't end there...oh no.
We walked down to our favorite video store and rented some videos for the weekend. As we were leaving the store and walking back to our car two men were storming down the sidewalk, clearly engaging in some kind of disagreement. Todd and I took a step back as we followed them. They were heading in the same direction as our car. We realized soon that they were a father/son duo. The father was pissed and on a mission. The adult son kept trying to calm him down and the Dad would literally push him away. At one point the dad reached in a garbage can and pulled out a big 2 foot stick. (??)
At this time Todd and I decided we should cross the street because something was about to explode. As soon as we crossed the street all hell broke loose. The dad started fighting with what seemed like a random man on the street wearing a do-rag. At first is was just the two men and the stick. I got out my phone and called 911. The fight was moved to the street and was obviously blocking traffic on quite a busy road. (All of this was happening right in front of Todd's car; we were hoping nobody would get their head smashed into the window.) Within a few moments the fight involved about 5-6 other people (including women with long fingernails) and a crowd of 25 or so watching and/or encouraging the fighting.
At one point as I am giving a play by play to the 911 operator she asked, "are there any other weapons besides sticks?" I think I replied "Not that I can see, but it's a big stick." Haha. That would make a funny transcript.
The fight broke up before the police got there. I was mildy disappointed because I wanted to be the observer interviewed by the local news. Unfortunately street fights are such a common occurrence in the Nati that they don't make the local news unless somebody dies.
That was our wild Friday night. We stopped on the way home for some ice cream and laughed about the events that unfolded moments before.