I'm Mad About What Is Happening In My Favorite Bar
So Charlotte has the coolest bar I’ve ever seen, a place called Lucky Dog. I discovered Lucky Dog about six years ago, I think. My parents asked me how I found it, and I have no idea. Maybe I just wandered in, lucky dog style. Or some other dog-lover mentioned it to me on the street, the old word-of-mouth.
Stranger on the street: “Have you been to Lucky Dog? It’s this dog park where you can drink beer, you can play with the dogs or flirt with the ladies.”
Me: “Wow! A dog park where you can drink beer? Where is this miraculous place?!”
Stranger on the street: “Use the google, buddy.”
So I used the google and I found Lucky Dog and a couple of hours later I was in dog heaven.
Back in the 20th century, Will Rogers once joked, “If there are no dogs in heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went.” You and me, buddy! Anyway, back in 2017, or whatever year it was, I wandered into canine nirvana.
Lucky Dog has four dog parks, just on the bar side. Outside they have a little dog park and a big dog park. Inside they have a big dog park and a little dog park. And they also have garage doors that can be opened so your dog park becomes truly massive. Oh man, that’s cool. And they have televisions where they play sports all the time.
“Oh my God, it’s a sports bar! They didn’t tell me it was a sports bar!”
And Lucky Dog often has food trucks, amazing food trucks, expensive-ass food trucks. When I was a kid, working construction as a summer job, we would eat messed up ham-and-cheese sandwiches from food trucks. At Lucky Dog, I was eating lobster. Lobster, dude! I was eating upper class food all the time, surrounded by dogs. There’s been a food truck revolution in Charlotte, and around the world (I think). You can get all kinds of great meals in a food truck. And, prior to COVID-19, Lucky Dog had food trucks all the time.
But of course the coolest part about this amazing dog park is all the beer. Lucky Dog has foreign beers, domestic beer, craft beers. It’s got all the beer you could want.
I should say “almost” because Lucky Dog has never had the greatest American beer, Pabst Blue Ribbon. Or as the kids say in the 21st century, PBR. And if you have no idea that PBR is the coolest beer in the USA, or you haven’t tried it because it’s been around since the 19th century, well, welcome to reality, bitch!
I’ve been dropping hints about PBR for years at Lucky Dog, and they still don’t have the damn thing. So it’s not actually heaven, okay, that was hyperbole. Still, even without PBR, it’s an amazing bar.
An Angel Came To Me, and It Was a Pitbull
When I was a kid, I was terrified of pitbulls. I didn’t want to mess with pitbulls. “Oh shit, it’s a pitbull.” That was me as a child.
At Lucky Dog, if you sit on the floor -- you might not want to sit on the floor -- some happy pitbull named Angel might come over and give you a lap dance. That happened to me, I think it was my second or third visit to Lucky Dog, back in 2018 or whatever year it was. You’d think I’d remember the year I got a lap dance from a pitbull named Angel.
I know some of you readers out there are going, “Look at this Christian, making up crazy stuff. You’re not going to get a lap dance from a pitbull named Angel. That’s not a thing. That never happened.”
Oh yes it did! You weren’t there, and you don’t know. I’m telling you, God has a sense of humor.
Christ Church is #1, and Lucky Dog is #2, in the Race to Be Heaven in Charlotte
So I’m a Christian, and I go to Bible study at Christ Church, and I’ve discovered real passion there. And passion is important, because that is what heaven is all about. There’s a reason Mel Gibson called his movie, The Passion of the Christ. And there’s a reason Carl Dreyer named his movie, The Passion of Joan of Arc. It’s all about the passion. You know if we’re talking about heaven, actual heaven, there will be love there. There will be intense love, passionate love, amazing love. That’s what heaven is.
Of course, love comes and goes in this world, like the Holy Spirt, and like Satan, too. Anybody who has ever fallen in love knows the truth of it. Where did the passion go? Where did the love go? We can’t see love, anymore than we can see God or Satan or the Holy Spirit. It comes and it goes, like hate or fear or any other emotion. We can’t prove the existence of these things. But sometimes we can see it in people’s faces.
Can you prove that you love somebody? No. Can you prove that somebody loves you? No. Love is a matter of faith. People say that our eyes are the windows to our souls. That’s not in the Bible though.
I avoided eye contact with people for years. Maybe I was scared of intimacy? I don’t know. I wouldn’t look people in the eyes. And then one day, I met a girl at Lucky Dog, and I wasn’t scared at all.
This woman, we made eye contact all the time. She told me intimate stuff about her life. I told her intimate stuff about mine. We had a lot of emotional intimacy. But it was also very strange.
“Yes,” she said, the first time I asked her out.
I couldn’t believe it. She’s so beautiful, and half my age. “Yes?” I said.
“Yes,” she said again.
“What kind of food do you like? Chinese? Or steak?” I asked.
We exchanged phone numbers. “I’ll call you,” she said.
She didn’t call. But I was still confident. So I made a reservation at the best steakhouse in town. And then when I tried to message her on Facebook, I discovered she had de-friended me. “Oh shit,” I said.
What I later discovered is that she is the Queen of Ambivalence. And four years later, we still haven’t gone out on a date. And we flirt all the time. And the last time I saw her, she scared the crap out of me.
As usual, I don’t know what’s going on in the mind of a woman.