standard Beer Hipster ambush location

Nearly two months after that lone time hanging out together, the night of Dave’s band performance, Brady randomly asks Edgar if he wants to go grab some beers. It’s a Friday at the end of October, and while refraining from dressing up themselves, they figure a few Halloween related happenings must exist somewhere in the region tonight, that finding one sounds like a swell idea. As an added bonus, it seems that former meat department goofball Justin will be joining them.

Brady lives in an apartment at the absolute eastern edge of tiny Palmyra. Ordinarily this town is an expensive one to live in, but he somehow found a newly constructed loft atop someone’s garage, on a quiet, secluded street, for which rent is incredibly cheap. After parking on the street and making his way up the external stairs, Edgar encounters these two other two characters lounging around, in a small but modern and clean looking, single, square room. Apart from a walled-in bathroom in the corner, everything else is in sight, including the sink and kitchen cabinets. There’s no stove, however, which means Brady is right now heating up dinner on a portable hot plate. Which might seem kind of crazy and antiquated, Edgar’s thinking, except that even the deli at Palmyra’s HHM is missing a stove, and also does most of its cooking on similar hot plates.

Considering that Edgar drove last time, Brady insists upon doing so now, even though this means the three of them are climbing into his battered but spacious old pickup truck. They aren’t traveling far, however, merely to some bar in between here and Chesboro, for a costume party spotted in the local weekly events calendar. And while possibly inspired by Justin’s cheesy jokes, as if forcing himself to right the ship with better ones, Edgar finds that he is in rare comedic form tonight. Like when Justin, who continues to follow store happenings online for some bizarre reason, says he saw a picture of this new cashier on social media, and he’d like to get with her.

“She looked really skinny and hot,” Justin adds.

“What, was the picture taken in a funhouse?” Edgar cracks.

Along the way, Brady keeps them entertained with the latest gossip concerning that Ashley chick from the deli department, the one who’d screamed her way right on out the door. Apparently her dad is a lawyer and somehow she’s twisted this around to where she is now suing the Palmyra store, citing wrongful something or other, even though she’s the one who walked off and never came back. It’s the sort of thing that sounds like horseshit, but it wouldn’t necessarily surprise anyone if true. According to Brady, she’s asking for $10,000.

A few miles south of Palmyra, in one of the many ambiguous commerce clumps near the interstate, they locate the bar in question, along some state route running roughly parallel. The name of this place is Salvador’s, affixed to the backside of a connected gas station. It takes Edgar a moment to realize why this sounds so familiar, and then it hits him: this is the establishment Corey’s constantly mentioning with his “should be” pricing comments, as though Edgar and everyone else should have every beer price point here committed to memory. As though that were relevant to what Healthy Hippie Market is charging. Corey probably stops here all the time, which is why he has assigned it such biblical importance.

The gravel lot behind it is surprisingly beat down, however, and the exterior isn’t much to write home about either. Like this knee height wall lining the back patio consists simply of unpainted concrete blocks, three high, with a gap in the middle and a green indoor-outdoor rug unrolled toward the entrance. As for the interior, it’s dimly lit, with a tile floor in most places and vaguely Mexican looking décor throughout — but at least this makes sense, considering the name, and is much better shape than the outside.

As for the clientele, these folks aren’t the least bit Latino, rather a wall to wall, middle to upper class, 100% white demographic. Skewing mostly older, too, for they are now almost certainly the youngest three in here. Among the few who aren’t dressed in costume for the occasion, as well. But there’s a tall, gray haired, cheesy dad type, who obviously doesn’t get out much, who keeps howling every so often — they heard him from the parking lot, not yet aware that he (slightly) justified this behavior by dressing like a wolf — and in general this joint does possess a convivial atmosphere.

Without much else to do, upon securing beers, they grab a pool table and take turns playing the winner. Justin is surprisingly good at this, but then again, Edgar’s thinking that anything he did well would be a surprise. As for him, he’s somewhat distracted, and somewhat bored with this, after about fifteen minutes. Both phenomena are caused in part by his ex-girlfriend up north, who has coincidentally kicked off a texting exchange almost as soon as they got here.

“What, you got mad honeys blowing up your phone?” Brady questions at one point.

“Well, they’re not mad yet,” Edgar jokes.

“Hey…whatever happened with you and that chick from Liberty Avenue?” Brady thinks to ask next.

After taking a moment to consider how much he wishes to reveal, Edgar shakes his head, and only says, “she kept calling me to make plans, but then would turn around and cancel at the last minute. I could never figure out what the fuck she wanted.”

“That’s the same thing Christie was doing to me!” Brady marvels, laughing, “God, chicks are weird…”

It’s only been a few weeks, maybe, but Edgar has already begun to think of Tonya as a dead cause. After that lone encounter at her apartment, which was already a few weeks ago, they passed out in her bed for maybe three hours, and he left somewhere around 10 that night. But they haven’t done anything since, even though the highly abridged version he just gave Brady is true.

When Edgar shifts the subject by mentioning that Christie’s appearance changes more from day to day than anyone he’s ever seen, Brady starts laughing so hard that he almost chokes on his beer.

“One day she’ll come in and I’m thinking, eh, she looks pretty good, but then the next day she shows up and she looks totally busted!”

“I know what you mean, I know what you mean,” Brady chuckles, nodding his head.

This conversation will essesntially mark the evening’s highlight. Although during a trip to the bar for refills, this pair of older women do arrive right beside them, and strike up a conversation, as they too are seeking another glass, albeit wine. One is wearing a zebra striped jacket, has short black hair and is reasonably attractive, seems predisposed to yakking Edgar’s ear off, while her mild-mannered brunette friend, also okay in appearance, focuses mostly upon Brady. Justin stands grinning and looks around the room.

But while unable to discern much about the other one, Edgar recognizes almost immediately that zebra stripes here is more than a little crazy, and therefore their illustrious trio politely vanishes the instant these women turn their backs. After so doing, will stand off to the side, surveying and commenting upon the action as they down their last beers. Having already agreed that they will inspect the attached gas station’s selection, before calling it a night. Really, they should have gone down to Chesboro instead of wasting time with this nonsense, but you don’t know that until checking it out firsthand.

If the draft selection at the bar had been solid if unremarkable, then their offerings in the retail shop, which eat up about three-quarters of the wall-lining refrigerated cases, more than make up for it. Of course, they’re not here for more than two minutes before some beer hipster accosts them, a guy who doesn’t even work at this place, is merely shopping himself and can’t stop rattling off his top picks. As they all politely nod, and make conversation with the guy, it suddenly dawns on Edgar: this is Corey’s vision for his store. And Destiny’s, and Jake’s, and Pierre’s if you shift the focus to wine.

Well, Corey’s had a few years to enact his master plan, Destiny — what — about a decade, and it hasn’t quite panned out for them yet. But maybe next year will be their time to shine. They can continue to hope, that legions of random folks will begin showing up, totally in awe over such an impossibly trendy beer emporium, as they are then besieged by an equally strong swarm of impassioned fanatics, already known to shop there, who then educate the newly converted on this enchanted and fascinating world of hops related miscellany. As these fresh devotees then drop a month’s salary scooping up nothing but the finest selections, returning weekly if not daily henceforth.

And here Edgar thought they were merely working in a local merchant friendly, natural and organic, health food store! Such lack of vision. Well, after stocking up on exactly two bottles apiece — mostly the standard Rogue, Great Divide, and Stone Brewery 22 ounce varieties readily available at such places, including, yes, the HHM — the night does have one last key development, when zebra stripes and her mild mannered friend are suddenly in the shop now, themselves, and it becomes obvious that the three of them must have been correct in picking up something off about this duo from the start.

“Ooh, someone’s getting drunk to-night!” Zebra calls out to them, eyeing their purchases.

Brady scoffs, waving a hand at their paltry purchases, and says, “this wouldn’t get anybody drunk.”

“Yeah, this is just the primer coat,” Edgar agrees. As they then hightail it the hell out of here, immediately after paying.