As sort of a spur-of-the-moment, "Let's celebrate three birthdays and we really don't want to be working on that 15-page paper due on Tuesday," thing, a bunch of us from the grad program headed down to the Short Stop in Echo Park after class with a few assorted friends. It was a fleeting-but-fun diversion from the drudgery of academia filled with drinks, dancing and cigarettes. However, when we left at around midnight, I was struck by a sense of utter disappointment. Outside of the Short Stop, there was a line!
I wonder why on earth people would stand in a block-length line to go into a bar, particularly when there was another bar that seemed equally sketchy-Echo Park-hipster less than twenty feet away with no line in front. Despite the fact that we had a good time at the Short Stop, I never would have stood in line for entrance. Are people so enraptured by the full-bodied taste of Stella that they will wait for an hour to get into a bar that has it on tap? Is former Afghan Whig's frontman/Twilight Singers head/Short Stop owner Greg Dulli such a bona fide LA hipster that people are wont to hear him play the same party standards that one could hear at any other bar/frat party/wedding? Was the Cobrasnake taking off-kilter photos of the fashionably wasted for next week's LA Weekly? I don't know. However, the only justifications for standing in line are a) a kick-ass band; b) music that you know you won't hear anywhere else or c) um, actually, I'm really not sure if there is a c, but if there is, it probably involves an open bar.