Less than halfway through her piña colada, Mari starts punching me.
She'd ordered a piña colada because she'd asked the bartender at Tiki Haven what she does especially well (a trick she learned from me), and the bubbly young woman replied, "Piña coladas! I know they're basic, but I make 'em how I like 'em!"
"How do you like 'em?" Mari asked.
"Well I ..." the bartender began. "What I ..." she stopped to find the words. "I just make them the way I like them."
Mari took her up on it. I ordered a Kokomo (coconut rum, Southern Comfort, lime, mango, grenadine), which was tasty if unspectacular. Mari's drink came next, and when she sipped it through the enormous bendy straw she made a face.
"Not good?" I asked.
"No, it's good," she said. "It's just really strong."
"Well, sure," I said. "When a bartender says they make them the way they like them, but then can't describe how, that almost always means 'really strong.'"
"Oh," Mari said. "You could have told me that sooner."
The punching began shortly after.
The Bay Area has some truly spectacular tiki bars, rum bars, and tiki-like bars. While Tiki Haven has all the frills — long bar with bamboo siding, cups shaped like Easter Island heads, bar stools sticking their tongues out at you, Caribbean-esque decorations on the wall, and a stab at festive lighting good enough for a college dorm — it isn't in their league.
But it doesn't have to be: Its crowd is also solid and no frills, and the beer menu is almost as extensive as the cocktail menu because it has to be. Tiki Haven is a neighborhood bar first and last, out in the Outer Sunset where tourists and techies don't go. It doesn't have to impress Glassholes or make a splash with New Yorkers in for a business conference; it has to be a place where local people who are looking for a home away from home will spend their money, over and over again. That's a completely different dynamic.
I didn't notice this at first. "Who orders beer at a tiki bar?" I asked Mari.
She punched me in the shoulder. "Um, everybody?"
I looked around. (Punch). She was right. (Punch). We were the only people drinking cocktails.
I honestly do not understand why anybody would go to a tiki bar for the beer — this is lunacy — but I'd condemn any bar that listened to me over what its regulars wanted. So (punch) God bless.
Despite their strength we finished our drinks quickly, and started considering seconds. I was going to order a Bora Bora (tequila, midori, peach, and passion fruit), but the waitress, noticing there were two of us, asked if we wanted a fire bowl (punch, rum, vodka, gin, your choice of fruit).
"I don't know," Mari said. "I was thinking about a ..."
"Fire bowl!" the bartender jumped in. "It's what we're famous for!"
That line, even more than "I make 'em how I like 'em," is a warning sign. The girl at the strip club does not think you're special, the cook at Mom's Diner is not really your mother, and a neighborhood dive is not famous for anything.
We still fell for it. She was so damn enthusiastic, and Mari was in such a good mood, how could we let her down?
"I'm not an angry drunk," Mari explained to me as the bartender started mixing our giant bowl of booze. "I like to make people happy."
"Well ..." I said.
"I'm a happy drunk!" she confirmed.
"Well ..."
"What? How can you possibly argue with this?"
"It's just that you've been hitting me ever since you started drinking."
Mari nodded like I'd just said something stupidly obvious. "I didn't say I'm a pacifist."
Unfortunately it turns out that the fire bowl's only recommendation is that it's large and on fire. It tastes like what you get when somebody spikes the punch at prom.
I can't blame the bartender, though: It's got to be more fun than slinging beers. She has to keep herself entertained. We all do.
Mari always arranges to be in a good mood when she drinks by being in a good mood before she drinks. Alcohol amplifies whatever mood she's already in. She's learned, over time, never to drink at places where she's going to feel sad or angry.
"We should come back," she says. Then she punches me again, smiling.
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