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Post by muzzleofbees on Apr 2, 2021 16:09:25 GMT -5
Just dropping by to quote "Here she's rising again, happy Easter!", which seems off topic, but at the same time not.
This is some incredible writing, and the way the night of Party Zero is stichted together is equally gratifying and terrifing.
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Post by skepticatfirst on Apr 5, 2021 9:00:54 GMT -5
BREWERY BAR: THE LAYOUTLet's take a moment to consider the physical layout of the brewery bar, first avatar of the Nice Nice. ***In the Here Goes thread ( heregoes) I included a bunch of historical photos and a link to the "Rathskeller in the Sky" video ( youtube), which between them provided views of many details of the bar, both inside and outside. Since then I've tracked down eight more photos of the now-demolished facility, six of them at an old Lomography magazine article entitled "Hamm's Brewery: Saint Paul's Best Urban Exploration Site" ( link), a seventh at the Friends of Swede Hollow website ( link), and an eighth in the middle of a youtube video entitled "Hamm's Brewery Ruins Montage St Paul MN" ( youtube). Several of these photos provide additional information, so let me reproduce them here along with the essential shots from the ActionSquad site referenced in the Here Goes thread. ***1) This map, located by the Action Squad explorers in the "blueprint room," provides the outline of the rooftop construction in which the bar is housed (marked as the extension of the hospitality building [62] on top of stockhouse #4 [27]): 2) This photo from the Friends of Swede Hollow confirms that the west wall of the bar frames six picture windows: 3) This photo from the Lomography article shows that the eastern wing of the rooftop building has a much lower ceiling than the main (western) body where the bar is located: 4) This photo from the Lomography article gives a view of the north wall from the inside, confirming that there are no windows or subdivisions of the space there: 5) This photo from the Lomography article looks along the eastern wall of the bar area facing north, and shows the other side of the dismounted window shutter that is displayed in the south-west-facing Action Squad shot (see below) to which we linked in the Here Goes thread: For comparison, the Action Squad photo of the SW corner of the bar, with the same dismounted shutter in the same location. Note the lower ceiling along the eastern wall of the bar, which photo #3 above lets us identify as an extension of the lower ceiling of the unseen eastern area: 6) From the Lomography article, a clean shot of the bar area, clearly showing the situation of the bar itself with respect to the overhanging ceiling, the exit, and the timber framing of the room. Note the alarmed handle on the door in the south wall; this is the fire exit: For comparison, a still from the "Hamm's Brewery Tour Rathskeller in the Sky St Paul MN" video ( youtube) showing that the alarmed door handle has been in place for decades: 7) A still showing the eastern area of the bar (the blue-coated addition atop stockhouse #4) from the outside, with a picture of the elevator shaft running from the hospitality building up to the historical front entrance of the bar. Comparison with stockhouse #3 across the street clearly suggests that there are five above-ground floors in stockhouse #4 (this can be further confirmed through the proportion of the building to the height of the streetlamp and the height of the bar addition, as well as to the height of the lobby/hospitality building, which is set below ground level such that the top half alone is visible in the photo: youtube). 8) As an eighth piece of evidence, I include not a photo, but a quote from a youtube commenter describing access to the complex through a window ( youtube): and another similar account ( youtube): 9) The Action Squad refuse to discuss their route of entry the complex ("THIS SECTION HAS BEEN CENSORED UNTIL WE ARE SURE THAT THE ENTRY WE USED IS NO LONGER ACCESSIBLE": link; "[we] got in a different way (and that's as specific as it's going to get, bucko)": link). But after censoring the initial point of entry, they describe their route of access to the bar in detail ( link): ***Putting all of the above together along with the photos we already had, the video, and the lyrics, we have enough to reconstruct most of the layout: Over the next several installments we'll review this map --- the individual sections, the evidence for the subdivision of the back half, the and the implications for the story --- in careful detail.
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Post by skepticatfirst on Apr 6, 2021 6:40:09 GMT -5
BREWERY BAR: THE HISTORYCertain details of the history of the brewery bar have an important bearing on the story as well. ***The Rathskeller tour video linked upthread ( youtube) gives a clear idea of the state of both the brewery and the bar in the mid-1960's. The film is a promotion, but it's promoting a going concern: Hamm's business was thriving, and the bar was a first-class establishment. The sale of the brewery to the Stroh brewing company in 1983 marked a hard turn for the worse. Stroh's had taken on a heavy load of debt to finance its acquisition of the Schlitz Brewing Company in 1982, from which it never returned to strength ( wikipedia); as it went through a swift decline in the following decade, it took the St. Paul facility with it. Finally, in 1997, Stroh's shut down operations and abandoned the complex permanently ( wikipedia). [*1]That 1997 date is particularly important: it means that the historical world out of which the events of the Lifter Puller story are constructed ( link; link) *predates* the abandonment of the brewery complex. At the same time, it's clear from the brewery's troubled post-1983 history that the bar had ceased to be an attraction long before the 1997 end date. The total absence online of bar memorabilia or promotional material from the Stroh's years, which for the Hamm's-era Rathskeller is abundant, indicates that it was closed to the public for much if not most of that time. Cheap Stroh's-brand detritus visible in the Action Squad photos ( link) reinforce the impression of a facility no longer curated by its owners. ***For the mid-90's Twin Cities party scene, then, the bar would have stood at a magic crossroads between care and abandonment. It would still have appeared as the spectacular location on display in the tour video, a facility in good repair with electricity and running water. But being unused, it wouldn't have been so actively frequented or guarded as to make carefully planned access impossible ("It's the best place we can access, yeah./ It's not exactly sanctioned man" [Epaulets] [*2]). This is the setting in which Party Zero takes place, [*3] and indeed it's clear from the fidelity of Craig's description of the place that he himself saw it in this state. He says as much, in fact, in the December 2006 Pitchfork interview ( link): ***A second consequence of the bar's shuttered status that we see plainly reflected in the Party Zero environment is that the barroom is empty. The heavy wooden tables and chairs visible in the Rathskeller video have been removed; we recognize the open space in the "dance floor" of Emperor, SGS, LGI, 4Dix, and eventually MN (see DANCING, LP SHADOWS, SMASHED HER HAND, and THE CENTER above). Since I wrote that last paragraph, the release of Unpleasant Breakfast has provided some nice confirmation. Recall the Action Squad's statement that "The Stockhouse was nothing but 9 floors of a single hallway with hatches lining each side" (see BREWERY BAR: THE LAYOUT above), and the "not exactly sanctioned ... access" discussed above, then consider the following verse: I was honestly more bothered by the hundred miles of hallways Than the clanking of the shackles or the shadows in the doorway And we snuck into the ballroom and made echoes in its empty And I grabbed you and I spun you and we both just started laughing [UBreakfast] Comparative "more" here refers to the immediately preceding "last summer at the shore" [UBreakfast] account which we've already linked to Party Zero (see SHORT BY AN OUNCE above). This is all about the events of Party Zero in the brewery bar. We'll get to the laughing shortly too (see YOUR LAUGH below). ***Back to the history: what the decline of the brewery and the shuttering of the bar did *not* affect, but in fact set off to greater advantage, was its single greatest attraction as a party spot, namely, the view. A promotional poster for the original Rathskeller in the Sky advertised that its west-wall picture windows ("this penthouse/ With the windowpane walls" [TPProcedure]) offer a "15 mile view of the Twin Cities"; see the drawing of the couple enjoying the view below (recalling, at the same time, "bars with the bars on the windows" [CSTLN] and Mary at the window in "Some nights St. Paul seems so holy" [R&T]): As we'll see, the LP descriptions of Party Zero include a good deal of discussion of the view, the windows, the darkness of the bar, etc. For the early part of the party, the gangsters kept the heavy shutters [*4] open and the lights off; this view of The City, essential to the atmosphere of Party Zero, is the other source (along with the St. Louis Park neighborhood of Methodist Hospital where the Skins "hang" [LA]: heregoes) of the "Cityscape" in Cityscape Skins (see preview discussion of East-West symmetry in THE EAST above). [*1] The bar was finally demolished, along with stockhouse #4 on which it was situated, in 2011. A blog documenting the demolition can be found here ( link). [*2] Note the abrupt jump cut between "Her parents are in Paris" [Epaulets] and "It's the best place we can access, yeah./ It's not exactly sanctioned man" [Epaulets]; the juxtaposition is designed to create the impression that the kids are partying in her parents' house, but in fact these lines are strictly unrelated. The next line, "But she's still got a key" [Epaulets], is a reference to her giving blowjobs in the bathroom, per the "jangling the keys" motif (see BATHROOM STALL above). [*3] Technically, it's also the setting in which the THS metal bar party, occurring sometime in the summer of 1996 ( heregoes), takes place; but the fact that the THS metal bar party is an ahistorical rewrite of LP Party Zero means that this isn't directly of interest to our investigation. [*4] The shutters, meant to reproduce the dark atmosphere of a German cellar, are visible in the Rathskeller In The Sky video at 0:44 ( youtube).
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Post by muzzleofbees on Apr 6, 2021 7:03:48 GMT -5
[*1] The bar was finally demolished, along with stockhouse #4 on which it was situated, in 2011. A blog documenting the demolition can be found here ( link). I guess you'll mention it when you come to the part about the laughing, but I'm pretty sure the demolition of the stockhouse is mentioned in a Craig Finn lyric. Not only is "June" pretty close to Juanita, but in Jester & June we get: The clubs have all changed The buildings fell away We were hoping that this corner might remember Junebug and JesterThe enitre song is a pretty creepy read after all you've written about Party Zero. "Then it got worse" for sure.
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Post by star18 on Apr 6, 2021 11:36:03 GMT -5
Just want to make sure I'm interpreting this timeline correctly. You're positing that at the time when these parties are happening, the facility isn't abandoned yet (still has water/power) but isn't open to the public?
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Post by skepticatfirst on Apr 6, 2021 11:57:05 GMT -5
Just want to make sure I'm interpreting this timeline correctly. You're positing that at the time when these parties are happening, the facility isn't abandoned yet (still has water/power) but isn't open to the public? That is correct, sorry if my building-up-from-the-known-to-the-unknown approach to the writeup isn't super clear, I get that it's a wall of facts and text. We need to work our way through a few more events in the story to get enough constraints together to lay down a date for Party Zero, but we will be able to do that by the time we get to CALENDAR: FIRST PASS below. At the time Party Zero takes place, the brewery is still actively owned and operated by Stroh's, but the rooftop bar is no longer open to the public, and the furniture has been put in storage. I am also asserting that this is a place that Craig actually visited when it was in this state, and that he used it as part of the setting of his story --- not only do we have his interview testimony about the fact that the Party Pit was a place he really used to go, but the deep correspondence between his descriptions and actual reconstructable detail means that he had to have seen it with his own eyes. It is a pretty cool place, and the idea that he would put it in his story seems pretty believable to me.
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Post by skepticatfirst on Apr 6, 2021 12:07:40 GMT -5
[*1] The bar was finally demolished, along with stockhouse #4 on which it was situated, in 2011. A blog documenting the demolition can be found here ( link). I guess you'll mention it when you come to the part about the laughing, but I'm pretty sure the demolition of the stockhouse is mentioned in a Craig Finn lyric. Not only is "June" pretty close to Juanita, but in Jester & June we get: The clubs have all changed The buildings fell away We were hoping that this corner might remember Junebug and JesterThe enitre song is a pretty creepy read after all you've written about Party Zero. "Then it got worse" for sure. Yep. I did mention this lyric in connection with the demolition in Here Goes ( heregoes), but in fact there's a good bit more of interest in the Jester & June story that reflects on the real-world environment of the LP story down in East St. Paul, and we'll come to that soon (around the time when we get to the first pass at the calendar). If you like the Google-Maps-style reconstruction of the song locales, there's a lot of that on tap.
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Post by star18 on Apr 6, 2021 15:19:38 GMT -5
No need to apologize! I dig your approach. Your ability to link key words / slang / signifiers into a narrative is unparalleled, and it's very easy for me to get swept up in it, so I try to take a few steps back every so often and imagine these scenes happening in real life. This recent chapter is a bit of a speed bump for that test, mostly because so many of the other descriptions of these parties seem, well, messy -- bloody fights, spilled drinks, spray-painted mattresses, other bodily fluids, etc. And we know these parties are often multi-day affairs. I can buy that a few kids can carefully break in and have sex or get drunk for a few hours, but it seems like the kind of blowouts we're envisioning would raise a lot of alarms. But you're probably getting to that! Carry on.
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Post by skepticatfirst on Apr 6, 2021 21:59:56 GMT -5
I try to take a few steps back every so often and imagine these scenes happening in real life. This recent chapter is a bit of a speed bump for that test, mostly because so many of the other descriptions of these parties seem, well, messy -- bloody fights, spilled drinks, spray-painted mattresses, other bodily fluids, etc. And we know these parties are often multi-day affairs. I can buy that a few kids can carefully break in and have sex or get drunk for a few hours, but it seems like the kind of blowouts we're envisioning would raise a lot of alarms. But you're probably getting to that! Carry on. You're right on target with everything you say here. A few things: - "I try to take a few steps back every so often and imagine these scenes happening in real life." This test is going to run into some problems with the sometimes fantastical THS remix of the story, but I think it's absolutely fair to apply it to the LP story, which, even though it's *told* in a crazy way, seems to me to be deeply realistically put together at the narrative level. YMMV, of course, but I'd like to see what you think as more details emerge. - There's a surprising amount of commentary on the net from people who spent time illicitly exploring the brewery complex back in the day. One of the key points that emerges from these comments is just how *huge* the complex was, and how sparse/infrequent patrols were. When you read about the seriously ailing finances of Stroh's in the 90's, it seems plausible to me that the bar might have been unusually vulnerable to this sort of thing, especially, say, on a holiday weekend. More on this later. - For the rest, you are 100% right about the alarms, and Craig himself testifies that the parties would get broken up by the cops. Touch My Stuff talks about the "busts," plural, and there are indeed multiple busts in the LP story, which happen very much in line with what you are envisioning. Again, if I can presume on your patience, there will be a much fuller picture of all of this a few weeks down the road, which I hope will better pass the "real life" test. - "spray-painted mattresses": there is a real mattress in the story (not surprisingly, since it shows up so insistently in SGS, Spectres, OwtB, DH, and YDGK). DH and YDGK seem to connect it to the THS reflection of Party Zero, but in fact it's not located in the brewery bar. At the same time there is a reason why it's mentioned in this connection. All I can do is ask you to hold on and let me keep building up to it; we're going to get there.
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Post by skepticatfirst on Apr 6, 2021 22:08:47 GMT -5
There's a thread on this board from a long time ago where some people said the lyrics about being pinned at the party pit sounded like rape to them. At the time, most people were skeptical and didn't think this was likely, but with all the talk about gangrape here, it seems more possible. In the Here Goes thread I myself argued against this reading! But in working through the LP material I realized I was just plain wrong about that. At this point it seems pretty clear to me that all of these terms --- "prick," "jammed," "stuck," "stabbed," "punctured," "pinned," "soft, sharp penetration," etc. --- are meant to refer ambiguously to rape and needles. Even the dicks in the story --- the "snake in the shower" [ASits, HCamera], the "pink piranhas" [TCMaMG] --- are presented as having teeth or fangs, splitting the difference between dicks and syringes.
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Post by skepticatfirst on Apr 6, 2021 22:19:39 GMT -5
A lot of raves used to (and still do) happen in abandoned buildings & warehouses and the like.
It seems the location tended to change each time to stay one step ahead of being busted. This is exactly how the Wednesday night parties work. But these are legit abandoned warehouses, precisely because the Wednesday night parties are big commercial affairs. (A good deal more evidence of this than we've touched on so far coming up, when we get to action at the actual Wednesday night parties.) Here we're likely talking about a much smaller scale of party with a lot fewer participants than most raves
100% correct. The "weekenders," of which Party Zero is the first, are intimate affairs for the gang only, with a few elite hangers-on like Dwight allowed to come along for the ride. but still would carry the possibility of raising some alarms, and I'm interested as well how these parties could have stayed under the radar. Maybe a secret knock like in the song Nice, Nice and the CF interview comment that the parties were really short in real life, like 15 minutes or whatever. (Not sure if this really short time frame carries over into the action of the songs?) The short time frame (not literally 10 minutes, but maybe an hour max) does indeed carry over into the action of the songs, just not for Party Zero. We're talking about Part 3 and Part 6 in the TABLE OF CONTENTS --- not quite around the corner, but coming up soon enough.
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Post by tableinthecorner on Apr 6, 2021 23:27:01 GMT -5
The "positive youth" are the gangsters, with an ironic allusion to straight-edge sexual abstinence I wonder if these lyrics are about someone, or a small group, being corrupted...? Like they used to be straight edgers but now they've completely abandoned their former ideas and even taking part in date rape with knockout drugs? Another of the many kinds of "sacrilege" going on here (loosely speaking), like the "easter" scenario happening at 6 6 6 on the weekend.
Thinking of Nightclub Dwight as perhaps a sort of pied piper figure, bringing the negative vibe to the positive youth?
This is interesting — I've seen Craig say, on multiple occasions, that Stay Positive is about "reaching an older age, while trying to maintain youthful ideals." (Maybe this quote is exactly what you're referring to here because the positive>negative transformation and the loss of former ideology that comes with it seems to fit right in.) Obviously SP wasn't released for another ten years or so, but that theme isn't unfamiliar to his writing. Skeptic said something to me a couple weeks ago about the THS story being more focused on positivity than the LP story. If the kids in the Hold Steady universe are staying positive and maintaining their youthful ideals, maybe, like you said, the kids in the Lifter Puller world aren't? If that's a fair reading of the youthful ideals/positivity theme I'm sure Skeptic will cover it in far more detail eventually. Based on my loose knowledge of these stories, though, I do like that interpretation.
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Post by muzzleofbees on Apr 7, 2021 1:24:01 GMT -5
I wonder if these lyrics are about someone, or a small group, being corrupted...? Like they used to be straight edgers but now they've completely abandoned their former ideas and even taking part in date rape with knockout drugs? Another of the many kinds of "sacrilege" going on here (loosely speaking), like the "easter" scenario happening at 6 6 6 on the weekend.
Thinking of Nightclub Dwight as perhaps a sort of pied piper figure, bringing the negative vibe to the positive youth?
This is interesting — I've seen Craig say, on multiple occasions, that Stay Positive is about "reaching an older age, while trying to maintain youthful ideals." (Maybe this quote is exactly what you're referring to here because the positive>negative transformation and the loss of former ideology that comes with it seems to fit right in.) Obviously SP wasn't released for another ten years or so, but that theme isn't unfamiliar to his writing. Skeptic said something to me a couple weeks ago about the THS story being more focused on positivity than the LP story. If the kids in the Hold Steady universe are staying positive and maintaining their youthful ideals, maybe, like you said, the kids in the Lifter Puller world aren't? If that's a fair reading of the youthful ideals/positivity theme I'm sure Skeptic will cover it in far more detail eventually. Based on my loose knowledge of these stories, though, I do like that interpretation. I guess it was intentional by star18, but for the sake of clarity, I'm pointing it out anyway: In Nice Nice and Manpark, Nightclub Dwight is described almost exactly like this. I'm like a Pied Piper, lead the kids into rats, lead the rats to the water I'm turning teens into fiends, lead them straight to the slaughter I got the stuff that gets them slipping in the shower
and Night club dwight can take a negative vibe and then infuse it with the positive youthTo me, he sounds like the bridge between innocence and mayhem, the guy who brings wood to the fireplace, maybe even with a box of matches in his pocket. And I'm quite into the meta difference between a) the kids being passive victims to events outside of their control, draped in negativity, and b) the kids having their own agency, ending up in bad situations, but taking control of them, going from extras to actors to directors. After all, Hold Steady starts off their first record with "a positive jam", but that's not the only song on Almost Killed Me who either on a meta level, or in specific lyrics, can said to be about the characters taking control of their own fate. I might put too much into it, but when Craig sings "If you want to get a little bit light in the heady/ it's gonna have to be a little bit heavy", I get the sense that there's a choice there. You can chose to go down this path, and if you do, it's your own decision - you can control the situation. Skeptic have talked about the DJ as an image too. In Lifter Puller it's the radio or the guys that keeps putting record on that are blessed, but come Almost Killed Me, the characters not only put on the records themselves, they choose which records getting played. And the entire concept of the kids who "wandered out of mass one day" ends in "faithless fear", but it's their own choice to walk away.
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Post by skepticatfirst on Apr 7, 2021 7:09:06 GMT -5
To me, he sounds like the bridge between innocence and mayhem, the guy who brings wood to the fireplace, maybe even with a box of matches in his pocket. Dwight's a meth dealer. He is the guy who gets the kids so desperate that they're sucking dick in the shrubs and in the bathrooms to support their addiction. And in the case of the Narrator and Juanita specifically, I don't know which we would say is the wood and which the matches (that's well said!), but he roofied them and then physically shot them up to make them addicts. "Pied piper" and "magician" are thin images draped over a brutal literality. And I'm quite into the meta difference between a) the kids being passive victims to events outside of their control, draped in negativity, and b) the kids having their own agency, ending up in bad situations, but taking control of them, going from extras to actors to directors. After all, Hold Steady starts off their first record with "a positive jam", but that's not the only song on Almost Killed Me who either on a meta level, or in specific lyrics, can said to be about the characters taking control of their own fate. I might put too much into it, but when Craig sings "If you want to get a little bit light in the heady/ it's gonna have to be a little bit heavy", I get the sense that there's a choice there. You can chose to go down this path, and if you do, it's your own decision - you can control the situation. Skeptic have talked about the DJ as an image too. In Lifter Puller it's the radio or the guys that keeps putting record on that are blessed, but come Almost Killed Me, the characters not only put on the records themselves, they choose which records getting played. This is all right on. It's funny, reading these comments I was put in mind for the first time of something that Craig said a lot about Stay Positive. I just googled it, here's the first article that came up, he's said different versions of it a dozen times ( link): What I want to get at is that this really isn't about maintaining youthful ideals; it's about dealing with major not-good darkness, like being smashed and broken, becoming enslaved, watching your friends dying or already dead. Everything you say above is right on point.
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Post by skepticatfirst on Apr 7, 2021 7:14:07 GMT -5
BREWERY BAR: THE BACK HALFThanks to the unfortunate placement of that dismounted window shutter (see BREWERY BAR: THE LAYOUT photo #5 above), we're left without any interior view of the eastern area of the rooftop building at all. Still, we have a pretty good idea of what's there. Consider the following: - Functionality of eastern wing. The fact that every surviving shot of the bar is taken with the camera pointed *away* from the eastern wing must mean that that wing, and the partition between the wing and the bar if there is one, isn't impressive to look at. We know (see BREWERY BAR: THE LAYOUT photo #7 above) that the elevator entrance lay at the end of that wing; it's reasonable to conclude that there's nothing to be seen in that direction but the utilitarian bits. - Orientation w/r/t fire door entrance. The Action Squad writeup (item #9 above) demonstrates that the illicit-access route went up the stairs, over the roof, and in through the fire door in the south wall of the bar. For the kids in the story (unlike the visitors in the Rathskeller video), the *barroom* was the front of the building, and the eastern wing with the elevator (the historical entrance) the back; it's in this respect that I've marked the eastern wing "BACK HALF" in the map. - Bathrooms around corner from bar. A beer bar has to have a bathroom that is accessible without recourse to the elevator. Because nothing is visible in the main bar area, we know that the bathroom must be located in the eastern wing. It is in fact very likely that there are two bathrooms: the promotional video of the bar shows a well-to-do mixed crowd in attendance, one that can be presumed, in that era (mid-1960s), to have expected separate facilities. Plumbing considerations would locate the bathrooms on the southern wall of the eastern wing, where both they and the bar could be served from a single set of pipes. - Coat check across from bathrooms (1). In the "Hamm's Brewery Tour Rathskeller in the Sky St Paul MN" video ( youtube), the tour group is shown entering the hospitality building outfitted in overcoats and hats, which have disappeared by the time they're seated in the bar. We have again to imagine, in view of the era, that there is a coat check in that eastern wing near the elevator entrance, located by process of elimination along the north wall, across from the bathrooms. - Coat check across from bathrooms (2). The lyrical evidence of the Weekenders has Gideon "camped out by the coat check" [Weekenders] at Holly's party, a party which (see DAWN above) we now recognize as being situated in a place modeled on the brewery bar. This too suggests that there really is a coat check on the premises. - Coat check across from bathrooms (3). The coat check's proximity to the back/bathrooms in our reconstructed layout squares with the account of Mary bringing Holly to meet Gideon in Stevie Nix, a rendezvous which she orchestrates by telling him "meet me right back here about dawn" [SN] (this is consistent with other lines like "Meet me in the booth in the back by the bathroom" [SPUD], "the booths by the back" [Indications], "back by the bathrooms" [STHF]). For these reasons, too, we put the coat check in the back by the bathrooms. - Phone booth near coat check. The use of the plural "booths" in Indications is especially interesting. "Booths" is apparently not a synonym for "stalls"; for one, the booths are *by* the bathroom, not *in* the bathroom; for another, one of the booths can safely be identified with the coat check (see esp. SPUD quote in the points above). So where's the second booth? The answer lies in the fact that a remote and upscale bar in the mid-'60s cannot have been unequipped with a public pay phone; the second booth is a phone booth. (The presence of this coin-operated pay phone across from the bathroom door is the source of "stuck stickin slugs in the telephone" [TGatSD] in reference to the Narrator's attempt to get a message through to Juanita in the bathroom; the idea of the image is that the message doesn't get through because the slugs, i.e. fake coins, don't work. See A MESSAGE above.)
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Post by star18 on Apr 7, 2021 9:08:55 GMT -5
Sounds good! And I mean, when I say "real life," heh, I've got no problem with the metaphysical/magical/miraculous element. I think at least in the THS world there's plenty of evidence of that. But as you're grounding these stories in a very specific time and place, then the world surrounding said miracles should still function as we know and expect.
I can buy that!
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Post by skepticatfirst on Apr 8, 2021 10:38:34 GMT -5
If the verses continued into the present day, I can imagine them going something like "in the 2020's, we hid out in our homes and waited to be vaccinated..." (I guess we've all been clustered up and holding steady for a while).
Would be an interesting challenge to come up with a full "fake Hold Steady song" along these lines!
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Post by skepticatfirst on Apr 8, 2021 10:48:17 GMT -5
BREWERY BAR: THE VESTIBULELate in the Here Goes thread ( heregoes) we noticed a pattern of references to entrance halls that included "foyer," "vestibule," "entrance," "entry," and "portal." Since then, "lobby" (already present in the solo stuff, now also in THS) has been added to the list, and in view of the common base meaning of "foyer," "lobby," and "vestibule" ( link, link, link) we should include "hall" as well. The fact that these terms are near-synonyms, and some of them very unusual terms, suggests that they're the product of deliberate lyrical enlargement on a single theme, maybe even with reference to a particular environment. If there *were* a particular location to which all of these refer, what might that be? ***Let's start with the "vestibule." A casual glance at the three lines in which the "vestibule" appears makes clear that it's a physical feature of the metal bar party landscape, i.e. the brewery bar (which as we know is also the Party Zero landscape). The vestibule is where the crash (see THE CRASH above) starts: Running out on residue and crashing through the vestibule [CC] The drug-fueled violence that "started recreational and ended kinda medical" also started there: It started in the vestibule It ended in the hospital [HSL] And Charlemagne was left to die there after the party: And left to bleed to death in the vestibule [RH] ***Let's compare this to what we know about the real-world brewery bar. The "blueprint room" map located by the Action Squad shows that the bar does have a lobby, officially labeled as such, in the little building at the bottom of the elevator (see photos #1 and #7 in BREWERY BAR: THE LAYOUT above). Is this the "lobby"? Apart from the fact that there's no evidence of the kids in either the LP or THS stories accessing or leaving the bar by the elevator (consistent with the fact that they don't have authorized access to the building), the bigger problem is that this lobby is neither a foyer nor a vestibule, which are defined to be continuous with the buildings to which they give access ( wikipedia). So, this lobby can't be the "lobby" of the lyrics. But the official lobby isn't the only entrance hall on the way to the bar, either. It's clear from the photo evidence (see especially photo #7 in BREWERY BAR: THE LAYOUT above) that the staging area at the top of the elevator shaft gives out into the center of the east wall of the eastern wing of the bar structure, routing the visitor down the length of this smaller, lower wing into the barroom to the west. For all the other reasons adduced in our discussion of the eastern wing (see BREWERY BAR: THE BACK HALF above), we can conclude with some confidence that this route runs through an entrance hall flanked by the bathrooms to the south and the coat check booth and phone booth to the north (see the map in BREWERY BAR: THE LAYOUT above). ***This entrance hall *is* accurately described as a vestibule, an identification further supported by the TMIT lines about the "foyer": Stumbled into the foyer and pulled the bookshelf over. And we were drowning in the literature. Bram Stoker bit your neck. Ginsberg hit your dick. A big black Bible hit your head. And that's how we got born again [TMIT] We recognize "stumbled" as a reference to Juanita emerging resurrected from the bathrooms into the hallway (foyer) en route to the barroom (see STUMBLING & RESURRECTION above); note that these TMIT lines end with being "born again." Her stumbling is parallel to "crashing through the vestibule" in Crucifixion Cruise: the crash (see THE CRASH above) will end out in the main barroom, but the arc of her trajectory runs through the hallway. [*1]***The references to the "lobby" also fit the description: I'm unsteady in the lobby [SPUD] meet me in the lobby [MMitL] There were those same bloodsuckers in the lobby again [NR] There was bloodsucker blues in the lobby at dusk [3D] We recognize "stumbling" in "unsteady," but it's the other three lines that are especially interesting here. Per these three lines, the lobby is the place where the bloodsuckers (the "vampire" dealers [*2]) hang out with their drugs ("blues"=meth; see LISTED above). Back in the Here Goes thread ( heregoes), we'd guessed this to be a reference to a typical practice of Twin Cities drug-dealing, but what we learn here is that that's not correct: the point of the reference is rather a specific event originating with the Party Zero story. Juanita doesn't wander back into the hallway (by the bathrooms) on her own: it's Dwight (see WALKED IN above) who, "ask[ing] to get [her] high" [HSL], invites her to "Meet me in the lobby" [MMitL]. ***What the "Meet me" phrasing and the reference to "dusk" in these lines also make plain, is that the THS episode with Gideon at Holly's party is a reflection of the LP episode with Dwight at Party Zero. Dwight waits by the coat check for Juanita to come to him for drugs; similarly, Gideon waits by the coat check for Holly to come to him for drugs ( heregoes). The difference is that in this THS episode, it's Mary who sets up the rendevous ( heregoes): Meet me here about dusk [SN] ***For the rest, we've seen proof that the LP rendezvous too takes place by the coat check, namely in Solid Gold Sole where we're told that Juanita goes to check her bag and bring it back into her southside hardwood floor apartment [SGS] Her "bag" is a cellophane bag (see A LITTLE BIT above), but it's the coat check meeting point that provides the pretext for describing it as if it were a handbag. ***We can see that "portal" is back-fit to this scheme for the sake of the "powered up" image [YGD, HSL, MN, compare "power down" BCig], but it does in fact fit, since this is Gideon ( heregoes, heregoes) describing his exploits back by the coat check: You should have seen all these portals that I've powered up in [HSL] ***There's one more term that's in the LP lyrics, and that's "hall": we were talkin on the hall phone [Mono] As noted earlier (see BREWERY BAR: THE BACK HALF above), this is further evidence that there's a phone in the hallway of the bar. But both the events of Mono, and later uses of "hallway," are fraught with spoilers, so we'll come back to them a little later. [*1] The pulled-over bookshelf of TMIT is a reference to the crash; the library is upended in the sense that the "denver slums [that] look[ed] so good in text" [SBackwards] turn out to be pretty deadly in real life. Note also that "stumbled into the foyer" [TMIT] and "crashing through the vestibule" [CC] give us a better view of the "exit" in Epaulets (see CONTRITION above); rather than the exit of the bathroom, it must be the opening into the vestibule, marked on the barroom side with the legally required EXIT sign, that's being referred to. [*2] The characterization of the drug-dealing gangsters as vampires, with needles for fangs, is all over THS [SN, BCamp, NS, etc.]; this was explored early in Here Goes ( heregoes). See also the use of the term "sharps" for both gangsters and needles in Entitlement Crew ( heregoes).
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Post by skepticatfirst on Apr 9, 2021 7:00:54 GMT -5
BREWERY BAR: THE STAIRSBesides the obvious fact of its location atop a tall building, we have the testimony of a couple of songs to the effect that the Nice Nice in the brewery bar is located at the top of a staircase: we went from upstairs at the nice nice up to franklin up by 15th [NN] from upstairs at the nice nice to the atm [4Dix] Leaving aside the "stairs" references in TGatSD for now, there are three other songs whose account of this staircase we want to look at. ***1) ViceburghFrom Viceburgh (already established as an account of the events of Party Zero; see LANDSDOWNE STREET, THE GREATER TRIP DOWNTOWN, WALK AROUND, and A MESSAGE above) we know that the stairs are secret, and accessible via a back way in: headbanger let down your hair pull me up into your blacklight lair take me back around your secret stairs sell me shares in your vacant stare [Viceburgh] The reference to "blacklight" confirms that this "lair" is the Nice Nice (compare "when you stand in the black lights down at the nice nice" [CRoom], "blacklights" [NN]). The fact that the stairs are accessible via a route "around the back" of the complex (see also "if you came around the back" [Ambassador] and "taxmen coming around the back" [Knuckles]) is confirmed by the youtube comments describing access to the complex from the walking trail in Swede Hollow park above (see BREWERY BAR: THE LAYOUT item #8). Evidence that the stairs are "secret" is confirmed in the Action Squad's deliberate concealment of the route of access (see BREWERY BAR: THE LAYOUT item #9). ***2) Plymouth RockFrom Plymouth Rock, we appear to learn that there are five, or at least five, flights of stairs: and it ain't no fun fallin five flights of stairs to a real fierce fisting [PRock] It's very tempting to take that "five" literally, and not just alliteratively, since the photograph above (see BREWERY BAR: THE LAYOUT item #7) gives an outside view of the stockhouse showing what appear to be five above-ground floors beneath the blue rooftop addition. But the Action Squad log clearly describes climbing 10 flights of stairs to reach the roof, not 5 ( link): It's possible that this difference is accounted for by a zigzag pattern that makes a "flight" refer ambiguously to the distance between one or two floors, or by the fact that the Action Squad count begins from down in the "basements," literally multiple "basement levels" below the surface ( link); but it is more likely that "five" is just alliterative. ***3) Mezzanine GypoffWe get a final implicit reference to the stairs in the "mezzanine" of The Mezzanine Gypoff. When the Narrator says "I ride it out in the mezzanine" [TMG], we know he's referring to "riding it out" in the gangrape "rodeo" [Bears] at the brewery bar/Nice Nice (see CORNERED, PARTY ZERO, THE KISS, SHOT IN THE SHOULDER, and MAGAZINES & VIDEOS above). The "mezzanine" designation, then, would appear to refer to the extra floor of the rooftop bar, added on top of the normally spaced floors of the stockhouse (see BREWERY BAR: THE LAYOUT photos #2 and #7), and accessible via a final flight of stairs at the summit of the regular staircase ( link). The other meaning of "mezzanine" here is a finance allusion (recall that Craig worked as a financial broker for American Express while in Lifter Puller) to "mezzanine capital," a form of debt issuance whose repayment obligations are subordinated to secured/senior debt, making it a risky investment vehicle for those who don't know what they're getting into ( wikipedia). That this metaphor is the point of the allusion is demonstrated by the Narrator's description of himself as a "Main Street" dupe in the hands of "[Wall Street] trader insider" Juanita, and by "Gypoff" in the title (compare the Narrator's reflections on his naivete' in Double Straps; see FEELIN SMALL above). Curiously, "Gypoff" is the word used in the title on the self-titled first album; on the original 1996 7-inch, it's "Gyp." "Gyp" is a common word for "an act of deception, a fraud or hoax" ( gdict), but "gypoff" looks like a coinage original to Craig. Its meaning, as a combination of "gyp"+"ripoff," is obvious enough; it may be that the point of the change was to hide a reference to the rape in a concealed "jackoff" (compare "the jester kept on jacking off" [MM], "handjob at the hardware store" [Hardware], "hands and mouths" [C&N]), in the same way that "bloodsucking" and "blockbuster" hide a rhyming reference to "cocksucking" in The Swish, and "Beep" of Jeep Beep Suite is a concealed, literally censored, reference to blowjobs ("driving down the street in my jeep givin >beeps< to all the people on the sidewalk" [JBS]). At any rate, the financial metaphor accounts for the "mezzanine" framing, which confirms the upstairs situation of the "club."
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Post by star18 on Apr 9, 2021 9:03:03 GMT -5
Felt like you read my mind on this one, bud. Right as you were saying the 5/10 thing, I was thinking "but wait, in most buildings there's two actual sets of steps between floors!"
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Post by muzzleofbees on Apr 10, 2021 15:41:26 GMT -5
Funny (?) coincidence: The same day this was posted, one of my favourite Norwegian artists, John Olav Nilsen, dropped a brand new song called Musikk for trappeoppganger (Music for staircases): www.youtube.com/watch?v=h54af9z5AGo
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Post by skepticatfirst on Apr 12, 2021 13:37:57 GMT -5
Felt like you read my mind on this one, bud. Right as you were saying the 5/10 thing, I was thinking "but wait, in most buildings there's two actual sets of steps between floors!" I was really hoping for a silver bullet here, but I'm not confident that I can square the unambiguous Action Squad statement that there were 9 floors of hallways plus the roof with the idea of 5 double-flights of stairs ... I'd think the entrances to the hallways would have to be staggered if that were the case, which seems unlikely. So it's still entirely possible that this is the answer, but I'd have to know more about architecture of this kind of building to make a strong claim for it. (Trying to preserve my credibility for the claims I *am* confident of, ha.)
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Post by skepticatfirst on Apr 12, 2021 13:42:39 GMT -5
Funny (?) coincidence: The same day this was posted, one of my favourite Norwegian artists, John Olav Nilsen, dropped a brand new song called Musikk for trappeoppganger (Music for staircases): www.youtube.com/watch?v=h54af9z5AGoI gave it an International Like :-)
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Post by skepticatfirst on Apr 12, 2021 13:57:24 GMT -5
BREWERY BAR: THE ROOFThe Action Squad log shows that the route from the top of the stairs to the fire door in the south wall of the bar ran over the open rooftop of stockhouse #4; the lyrics too make several references to activity out on the roof. ***Like the kids, the cops from the first of the "busts" [TMS] in the story (see FIRST BUST below) can be inferred to have come in via the stairs and the roof, lending a particular sense to "rooftop cops" in Sherman City: rooftop cops and the deadbolt locks keep these rocks inside these socks [SCity] ***The description of the brewery as a "fortified fortress" in The Stove And The Toaster includes a note about entry to the complex via a window (compare the quotes in BREWERY BAR: THE LAYOUT #8 above), and exit from the bar over the rooftop: Going in through the window Leave through the terrace [TS&tT] ***The Candy Machine And My Girlfriend mentions an open-air rooftop party scene above The City: we drank on the roof and we pissed on the city [TCMamG] ***The Prior Procedure describes another rooftop party scene (indoor rather than outdoor; the whole bar is on the roof deck, and for the "sweet view" of the westward-facing windows, see BREWERY BAR: THE HISTORY above). Here some of the gangsters at the party mention their leader and "local legend" [BSam, Riptown] Shepard, who's not there "in person" [Feelers], for the first time: There were some dudes on the roof deck that were sitting with sweet view of the sunset They said you got to meet the guy that gets the tab for this Anything you want he can cover it [TPProcedure] ***There's a final scene of particular interest that takes place on the open rooftop. We've already shown that the THS prom night songs are a collective reworking of the events of Party Zero, and that "hit it again on the south side of the gym" [YGD] is a THS reflection of Juanita going down on the LP Narrator (see SUCKING OFF EACH OTHER above). The reference to the empty barroom as "the gym" is clearly made for the sake of the prom metaphor; but then that bit about "the south side" is pretty specific. Why the precision? Given that the gym is the bar, "on the south side of the gym" must mean "along the south wall of the bar"; this, plus the description of her leading him outside, supposedly for a cigarette, in order to blow him ("the majorettes ... lead the band onto the field with their cigarettes" [OWL]) suggest in turn that she went down on him out on the roof, against the south wall of the bar outside the fire door. The photos in BREWERY BAR: THE LAYOUT #1 and #2 above confirm that the south wall of the bar is in fact the *only* wall with open rooftop adjacent to it. ***We've already observed that Holly's birthday party in the THS story is situated in a locale modeled on the brewery bar, and that certain of the events of that party are reflections of the events of Party Zero (see DAWN and BREWERY BAR: THE BACK HALF above). The Milkcrate Mosh account of Mary using cigarettes to lead Gideon and Holly outside so that Holly can give him a blowjob is another of these, reflecting Juanita's use of a cigarette to draw the LP Narrator outside for the same purpose during Party Zero. In Milkcrate Mosh, the cigarettes belong to Holly and Gideon, but it's Mary (the point-of-view character of the song) who, in her role as the Phil-Spector-like producer of the scene, frames them as instruments of seduction: Waving Marlboros like magic wands. Listen up closely to the lit tips of your cigarettes. Can't you hear the serpent hiss? Saying, sweet baby, suck on this. ... He smoked the Camel Filter Kings. We went back behind the building. [MM] More specifically, it's Mary who tells Holly and Gideon to "listen up closely to the lit tips of your cigarettes," on the one hand encouraging Holly to succumb to the exchange for the sake of the drugs, and on the other drawing Gideon outside for the blowjob. The difference between this and the Party Zero account is that, rather than exiting on the south side of the building, they go "back behind the building," following Mary's instruction to Gideon to "meet me right back here around dawn" [SN] (compare "dawn" [MM]), where "here"="camped out by the coat check" [Weekenders]. In other words, the LP Juanita-leads-the-Narrator-outside-to-blow-him scene appears to have *two* different reflections in THS: - one in the prom encounter related in YGD, MN, OWL, where the scene is transplanted more or less in its entirety, without changes;
- the other in the Holly-blows-Gideon scene, where "back behind the building" *combines* the outside situation of Juanita and the Narrator on the roof with the back-halfsituation of Juanita and the gangsters in the bathroom.
This is an eye-opening look at the methods behind the composition of the THS story; we'll see more remixing along these lines as we progress.
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Post by skepticatfirst on Apr 13, 2021 6:50:47 GMT -5
BREWERY BAR: THE CORNERBetween the map and a few other recently-worked-out bits, we now have enough information to positively identify the kitchen corner. We've said (see STEREO SOUND above) that when the Narrator hears Juanita fucking in the bathroom and yelling that she's coming, he flees to the far corner of the bar so he doesn't have to listen. This is already a probable reaction on the face of it; if we had to guess where he goes, the information provided by the map would help us narrow down the probabilities quickly. It can't be the northwest corner, which still has a direct line of sight and sound to the bathrooms. It can't be the northeast corner, which is right next to the bathrooms. It can't be the southeast corner, which would put him in the middle of the fire exit. But the southwest corner? ***As it happens, we have additional evidence that bears on this. The Brokerdealer song If Not For Hipster Pictures, which describes the "vision"/"fever dream" of the Lifter Puller story in recognizable detail (see VARIETIES OF PHYSICAL ASSAULT above), says of the gangrape scene: it was bar sharks it was street rats it was alley cats and they were feasting on the city pigeons it was the southwest corner where Milwaukee hits Division [INFHP] These lines first locate "it" in the brewery bar ("bar," "city"; see THE CITY above), where the gangsters ("sharks" and "cats"; see SHARKS & JETS and RATS & CATS above) are "feasting" on the kids ("street rats"; see RATS & CATS above, with the suggestion of prostitution familiar from The Langelos; for "pigeons" see EAST VS MIDWEST below). Then, we're given the precise location in the bar: it's not just the generic "corner" we've come to recognize, but the "southwest corner," where "Milwaukee hits Division." On the one hand, "where Milwaukee hits Division" is a reference to the Chicago setting of Nelson Algren's "The Man with the Golden Arm" (compare "Nelson Algren" [CSTLN]; wikipedia): On the other, it's a metaphor on which to hang the "southwest corner," which is *not* from Algren's novel (see searchable text, in which "southwest" does not appear: link): rather, it's where the 3.2 bar ("Milwaukee" as beer metaphor; see the roof reference to "stuck in Milwaukee" [TCMamG] here, and also STRANDED and BREWERY BAR: THE ROOF above) plays host to the kids' breakup on the original Separation Sunday ("Division"; see "broke up" [SdS] and DAWN above). In short, that 'X' in the southwest angle of the map is the original kitchen corner, where the Narrator, like Algren's hero, becomes a needle junkie, and where he and Juanita's brief bond is snapped in two. ***Juanita's "came around the corner" [YDGK] refers (compare MoC and SPositive) to the corner where the Narrator is waiting, not the corner at the end of the hall between the bathrooms and the barroom. Nevertheless, she does turn that corner, and stumbles across an open space in bringing the stolen drugs to him (see A LITTLE BIT and STUMBLING & RESURRECTION above), which only really works if he's located in the southwest of the bar. ***The reflected evidence of The Swish further suggests that her gift takes place by the window in the corner: I got some hazardous chemicals So drive around to the window [Swish] ***Denver Haircut, in a bizarrely-worded line, also identifies the window as the place where the cornered Narrator takes the shot of meth (see SHOT IN THE SHOULDER above) and surrenders himself to "sucking" off Dwight: A shot in the dark in a bar that's too bright. A window sucking up all the available light, right? [DH] Again, "light" is the meth she brought in the "crystal container" (see LISTED above; for other expressions eliding the dealer and the cash links in the blowjob-to-drugs chain, see CASH MACHINE above). ***We've noted (see BREWERY BAR: THE HISTORY above) that the window shutters have been kept open to this point for the sake of the spectacular view. The Gin And The Sour Defeat specifically links this view to the moment in which the Narrator can't produce the money to save himself from having to blow Dwight: but you've never seen destitute until you've seen that view from my baby's roof [TGatSD] ***Viceburgh also references the windows in telling us how things snowball from there: he signals two guys the windows of highrises went down in dogtown, drive-thru turned into a drive-by [Viceburgh] Here we have the bj ("went down"), the double-teaming ("two guys"), and the killer part of the party ("drive-by"). The reference to "guys in the windows of high-rises," in particular, while obviously framed in a way to suggest a couple of snipers overlooking the streets, actually refers to guys inside the bar, closing the window shutters so that the gangrape can be filmed, with fill light and flashes (see MAGAZINES & VIDEOS above). ***Finally, Sangre de Stephanie includes the closure of the shutters in its description of the transition to the gangrape: and after the aspirin binge, before she got sent to the shrink she had me up for a couple of drinks put on the porcupines, closed the venetian blinds woke up in rags and wrapped in a plastic bag [SdS] - "and after the aspirin binge, before she got sent to the shrink": out of order with respect to the next line, but referring to Juanita getting high in the bathroom ("aspirin"=cocaine, see LISTED above, with a suggestion of suicide before her resurrection), while she was still high, and before the crash and gangrape; - "she had me up": upstairs at the brewery bar;
- "for a couple of drinks": the roofied drinks;
- "put on the porcupines": both 'cranked up the tunes', and 'broke out the needles';
- "closed the venetian blinds": shuttered the windows;
- "woke up in rags and wrapped in a plastic bag": got "killed," clothes shredded, with an allusion to the "little bit" plastic bag.
***The closure of the shutters, then, appears to be the second sense aimed at by the Denver Haircut line, in which the *window* is described as sucking up the available light: the shutters were closed on the rising sun, and the afterbar cave became "just like [the kids'] graves" [NN].
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