Going to a bar? These tips really work.

🍻🍸🍾🥃🥂🍷

TopNotes™️: We released Lucky Just To Be Here, the third song off of Lobes, last week // We also announced support acts for the UK & EU segments of the SHOW LOBES tour // We launched a Discord server // And our very first guitar effects pedal, The Big Huff, dropped yesterday 🎸🙉

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It’s true that we’re experts at going to the bar. Here are hard-won bits of wisdom we found lodged in our hides like shrapnel.

Start by don’t drive your bike. Feels great to hop onto the iron, flying forth on rubber feet, pushing the wind through your hair on your way to the bar. But think forward, in a picture-pool depicting time: there you are lurching out of the bar night’s end, limbs loose coordinating, and onto a balance-bike for the vulnerable ride home? Be careful instead: summon Uber.

Dress to relax. Initial impressions aside, what day-glo rigid armature ever got thanked by one squished into banquettes? Leave prickling adornments on hooks till red carpet calls — this is the bar, dark, guttural. Comfort and movement.

Breeze by backpush with cash. Pack a valued wad; evade remuneration rub. Sixties and fifties too large? Think tens and eights.

Start small on orders. Swell the vessel with the clock’s advance. Shots, croupier, highball, pint, pitcher, barrel, bathtub. As handling the drinks grows harder, grosser grow the glass and basin, letting vaguer grip grasp true.

Music is king — best a benevolent one. A jukebox is winning when servile to the hive-mind, not plied for private rapture. Carry the room, curry its favor, by merit of hits, or care-picked arcana.

Skip the mechanical steer. Self-awareness and humor emerge in comelier relief on the dance floor, compared to teeth-gritting battery aback the bull. Say sympathy for its plight — that’s always nice — and shows a weird awareness for robot woe.

Skirt the felt. No player ever chose her congruent willingly in pool. Escape, evade. Loss is certain. Entering the game is to wander, draining purpose, cycling narrower, narrowing, buried interest, petering, asleep, forgotten, a death, regret.

Bartender’s a pet, to be tamed. Show confidence, strength, be willing to die. Give crackers, and eyebrows. Flatter, demur. Become solitude, iron — radiate slow heat. Then, when he comes to you, decide.

Go drab, get hairy. Show up slumped. Get hunched. Walk in grumpy. Set a low bar. Cringe. Huff. Then slowly loosen up. Face spreading like water color. First crimped. Then grinning. Time lapse of a flower blooming.

Nine’s in six hours. Time to go home.

Oi! Mate… Oi, eggfiend@yahoo.com, mate… thank you so very much for this beer. Chris loved each of the many drops (what a mug!). He was so thirsty, he decided to plunk down all the money you’ve sent us over two months of paid subscription. Afterward, he had zero regrets, and said he’d do it again. Thanks, Eggfiend! Hope you’re getting all the eggs you need, plus a few extra. 🍻🍳