Bar Life

A pair of inebriated, fat white men danced, nude, on a strip-club stage that was designed for svelte 20-year-old women. Inebriated bumping, grinding, gyrating, flailing: a ghastly parody of a pair of bloated, sloppy-drunk strippers from a deranged nightmare that not even Hunter S. Thompson could have fathomed. It was like watching a reality show about sumo wrestlers gone horribly, horribly wrong.

The impromptu, unwelcome display mortified the bar's patrons. After all, they had come expecting to see beautiful, sleek, exotic entertainers, clad in floss G-strings, teetering on eight-inch platform heels. Not this.

So where was the bouncer? Why didn't he toss the blubbery duo? If it had only been that simple. You see, I was the bouncer, and the grotesque pair were the bar's owner and general manager: This was our first experience with Goldschlager, that evil concoction of cinnamon liqueur and flakes of pure gold that, in retrospect, should have been banned as a toxic hallucinogen or a WMD.

Finally, an overtaxed brass pole gave way, and the lewd duo came tumbling to the barroom floor in a sweaty, blubbery, giggling heap. That put an end to the grotesque display, but the repugnant image may never be completely purged from my mind.

Even if I had been a drinker at the time, that single event would have cured me. Twelve-step program? That's 11 unnecessary steps for one who has seen what I have seen.

I don't remember how I first heard that the Hofbräuhaus was coming here. Probably a press release. But what I do remember is my reaction:

This place is gonna be friggin' sweet!

During construction, I'd often drive by the beautiful 66,000-square-foot Bavarian building, wondering what it would look like inside—but more so what it would taste like inside. Hey, architecture aficionados dream of eyeing Wright's Guggenheim in person. Starving artists fantasize about standing under the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. And beer connoisseurs yearn to walk into an authentic replica of Munich's 400-year-old beer hall and order up a stein of the amber nectar that is brewed in Munich according to a nearly 500-year-old Bavarian purity law. (They have a purity law for their beer?!? Note to self: Send an e-mail to Budweiser!)

Finally, the invite to the media party came.

Unconscionably—inexcusably—I passed.

I passed again when the first Oktoberfest rolled around last year.

Friends would come to town. Beer-drinking friends—or, more accurately, beer-guzzling friends. I'd tell them, "Guys we've GOT to check this place out this time."

We'd never make it.

Countless times, I'd drive down Paradise Road for one reason or another, and I'd gaze at the structure, lick my lips, shake my head and keep right on going.

Then, in early August, one of those aforementioned beer-guzzling friends flew into town. I picked him up curbside at McCarran. It was an early Friday afternoon.

"Where we headed?" he asked.

"Hofbräuhaus, dammit!"

I walked in. Stunning. I ordered a 32-ounce stein of Hofbräu Original. More stunning.

"This year," I said to my friend, "I'm definitely coming here for Oktoberfest."

October came and went. I never made it.

Excuse me while I go cry in my watered-down domestic swill.

A resounding open-handed slap sent the drunk to the floor in a pile of barstools. An instant later, the man was up, sprinting for the front door of the bar, like a rabbit startled from his bush by a pack of hungry dogs.

The bartender and I just looked at each other, then went back to watching the SportsCenter loop on the television. "F--king drunks," the bartender might have murmured.

Anyone can tell you, alcohol can be hazardous to your health. It can impair judgment. I'm just not sure this is exactly what they mean.

"Two-beer Rambos" is what we in the bar business call them: white-collar 9-to-5 desk jockeys who, after a couple of cocktails, turn into cocky drunks. They imagine they can walk through walls. They imagine they are much funnier than they are. That's what got him slapped.

You know it's time to quit drinking when it seems funny to you to walk up to a bartender and inquire, "Yo, what's up my nigga?" Especially if you're a 40-year-old white man and the bartender is a 6-foot-6, 300-pound black man and a former professional wrestler nicknamed "Bear."

Yeah, I'd say alcohol can impair your judgment.