Last Saturday was an eventful day. In the afternoon, my roommates and I went to an Oktoberfest event in Maryland. The celebrations were only slightly dampened by the rain that fell for the entire day. You paid a flat rate of $30 and got six beer tokens upon entry and every subsequent token was $1, which sounded fine to us. Six good, rare, German beers for less than you’d pay for a bottle of Bud Light at a bar in Dupont, sign me up.
We did sign up, in fact, only to discover that the Token to Beer Conversion Rate, or TBCR as I will annoyingly abbreviate from now on, was 1 token for 4oz of beer. This means that it cost 3 tokens per normal, 12oz beer (never mind that Germans normally buy beers in pints or larger at Oktoberfest, which are about 16oz). This was much less of a good deal. It brought our DBCR (Dollar to Beer Conversion Rate, keep up) to a whopping 15:1. This was unacceptable. Luckily, however, as we entered the event, people leaving gave us a handful of tokens, enough to last the six of us about a half an hour. After that we had to be much more creative. Upon seeing the tip jars in front of each of the people serving beers, one of my roommates tried tipping $1 and he was given a full beer with no tokens. This brought our DBCR to a healthy, drunken 1:1. We continued with this until we had our fill of beer and cold rainy weather and retreated to the warmth of our designated driver’s car.
After a recovery period of a few hours we decided that we should go out to a club. The choice of club was left to one of my roommates, who wanted to meet up with some of his friends. He said that it was “Asian Night” at this club, which sounded fine to me. Maybe it’s me just stereotyping, but I thought that would mean a bit more techno than usual and cheap sake bombs. Keep in mind that two of my roommates are Asian, and the one who isn’t has an Asian girlfriend. What my roommate meant to say was that we were going to AQUA, “The Pioneer Asian Nightlife in the Washington DC Metro Area.” What that meant, in practice, was that I, until my other roommate got there, was literally the ONLY non-Asian guy there….I looked. As you might expect, as a 6’2” half black, half white guy, I was somewhat conspicuous. I knew I didn’t belong when I was repeatedly asked “Why are you here?”, or “What are you doing here?” or “Who brought you here?” It’s as if this were some speakeasy off the map that you need to know what unmarked door to knock on and say the password, in Mandarin, to gain entry. I’m sure most people there thought I had an Asian fetish, which would be a reasonable explanation for me infiltrating their club.
I had a great time until I was bounced from the club for serving someone who was underage a drink, which I simply didn’t do. I still don’t know how you can serve someone without buying any drinks. I imagine this was just an attempt to keep the ethnic purity of this club intact. I understand, I was cramping your style, it’s ok, Aqua. In any case, I wasn’t ready to leave so I talked my way back in. I continued to have a good time, and when the club closed, and after the stripper had finished (apparently Pioneer Asian Nightlife involves having everyone stand around and watch a black stripper do a very athletic pole dance), we all went to the parking lot to wait for cabs and such.
The parking lot is relatively small, at least for a club sort of in the middle of nowhere. There were many, very nice cars parked there and packed very tightly. Of note was a very tiny young woman driving a Mercedes SL550. Also a police car was parked outside I suppose to quell any fights that might break out. As we waited for our cab, there was a kid backing out of a spot, who took the most terrible angle for leaving the lot. Now I’m not stereotyping, but this inevitably led to the driver backing up into someone else’s car. Upon hearing and feeling the hit, the driver stopped. But because there was no way he was getting out of the lot in his current position, he decided that the best thing to do was to CONTINUE BACKING UP, doing considerable damage to both his and the other car. Now, I figured that the next reasonable step would be to get out and leave some information on the parked car so that insurance can be sorted out. Despite the crowd of people and the police car (which was apparently oblivious to the entire situation) the driver simply left, his bumper half hanging on to his car. Had I been a smarter (or at least less drunk) man, I would have used my camera phone to take a picture of the situation. Alas, I did not.
This leads me to my first public service announcement. If you hit someone’s car when they’re not around, leave a note. Even if you think you’ll get away with it, the Car Karma Gods will eventually kick you in the ass, at least 5 fold.
-CLDC
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