A night in Downtown

Though it's supposedly designed to look like an English pub, with its round brick fire pits and iron grails and stone columns, the Griffin actually looks like a slightly poetic medieval castle, or a Harry Potter set. Shelby and I call it the Gryffindor or Hogwarts, either one.

A man with bushy gray hair and a gold hoop in his left ear sidled up to the seat on my right. He's a special-ed teacher in North Las Vegas who'd come from Cincinnati after funding for education was cut. He and a buddy share a bachelor pad. He talked about being alone.

"I'm alone," I told him, "but I'm not lonely."

"Hey, that'd be a good first line for a song," he said. "Punk or country?