Opinion

Trouble at the Zoo

Friday, February 27, 2004

After sitting around for 3 1/2 years waiting on the phone to ring, I decided it was time to get out of the house and go somewhere. I've had several e-mails from folks who say they miss my "travel" columns so there will be more to report in the months to come as the weather continues to improve.

Last weekend, I and some friends of mine (names are being withheld to protect the guilty) went to Lincoln for the weekend. The major purpose of the trip was to see Coco Montoya at the Zoo Bar on Saturday night but there were other things to do first. The first event was attending the "bar stool miniature golf" tournament in downtown Lincoln. It started at high noon and consisted of 18 holes of miniature golf. The "twist" was that there was one golf hole set up in 18 different bars on O Street and my son, Will, was one of the participants.

We decided to roost at The Watering Hole and it was quite an experience. The place was already packed when we got there and teams were coming in to play the hole as others were leaving. We were sipping on the best Bloody Mary's I've had in a while and just enjoying the goings-on of the crowd and the participants. Everyone was in a jovial mood and having a great time. We stayed until my sons' team played through, which coincided almost perfectly with check-in time at Embassy Suites.

We freshened up in our rooms and made it downstairs just in time for the Manager's Complimentary Social Hour, which lasted from 5:30 until 7:30. The end of the social hour coincided with the time we had agreed on to leave for the Zoo Bar since it was a sold-out event and tables were taken on a first-come, first-served basis. As luck would have it, the group of people that went in just ahead of us took the last open table. After some scrounging around, we found some people who allowed us to share their table with them. I'm not sure how many people the bar will seat but there weren't nearly enough tables or chairs to accommodate everyone. They seriously oversold the event and people were piled up everywhere. We were literally trapped up against the wall. To use the restroom or go to the bar to get a cocktail (there were no waitresses) was a major endeavor because several people had to get up so you could get through. And they weren't very happy about getting up. One big ole boy said he would let me out but he wasn't letting me back in.

This was not a good thing and I would advise anyone thinking about making the trip down for a performance to make sure to get there early and get a table close to a door. If anything bad had happened, we would have been absolutely trapped where we were. It would have been impossible to have moved towards an exit at all. It's my understanding that the Zoo Bar has been overselling events like this for years and that it had been scrutinized by local officials in the past. More scrutiny needs to take place. It's an unsafe place to be and, sooner or later, a major tragedy is going to occur.

The tightness of the quarters we were prisoners of did not, however, diminish the enjoyment of seeing and hearing Coco Montoya and his band.

It was, to put it simply, an unbelievable performance. These guys were musicians extraordinaire and the buildup my friends had given me was not only matched but exceeded in every way. Anyone who thinks they can play the blues needs to hear these cats first. Lead guitar, vocals, keyboard, drums, and bass guitar. All awesome. They even all LOOKED like blues musicians except the bass guitar player who looked like an automobile mechanic who had taken a wrong turn. At least until he played his solo. Then all doubts were dispelled. The accommodations were dreadful but the music was in a league of its' own.

On the way home on Sunday, we stopped at Fonner Park in Grand Island to watch the horse races and encountered what really turned out to be the highlight of the trip. We reserved a table in the Clubhouse with a clear view of the track and our waitress was a young girl working her very first day. As she brought us our first couple of red beers she was asking us who we were going to bet on. After listening to everyone's ideas, she bought an exacta ticket that won and paid $52. She was so excited she never brought us another beer the rest of the day. Never even asked us if we wanted anything to eat or drink the rest of the day. All she wanted was our horseracing tips. It became so comical we decided to not say anything to her just to see how long it would take her to realize that she wasn't taking our orders, which was, coincidentally, her job.

Well, she never realized it. I had already decided to spend the night in Grand Island since I had consumed a few brews so, at the end of the day, I told my friends that our waitress had saved me a $50 bar tab and a $75 hotel room because she didn't ask us if we wanted a thing the last three hours we were there.

We stopped at Applebee's in Grand Island for dinner where happily we did get waited on and then proceeded on home. It seems that weird things happen every time I take a pleasure trip and I'm anxious to go again.

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