(Topeka, KS)
Scooter’s 253rd bar, first visited in 2007.
We had been searching for a bar recommended by a bartender at an earlier stop, following a set of scrawled instructions on a series of post-it notes. Instead of reaching our destination, we found ourselves completely lost in a seedy looking neighborhood.
Luckily for us, this neighborhood included a strip dotted with several little watering holes-in-the-wall. Having time for only one, we picked the first place we spotted. It turned out to be the diviest dive of the day.
We parked in front of the Twilighter Country Club and were actually a little skittish about walking in. We worked up the nerve and heading on inside.
We took our seats at the double-L shaped bar. To our right, an older gentleman on oxygen was chain smoking while nursing his whiskey. Catty-corner to us, two leathered older women gossiped over bottled beer. (Except that the ladies were not older after all, we later learned from context that they were in fact in their mid 20s.)
Our bartender was a heavily pierced young woman who was watching daytime television and munching on onion rings. She glared at us for a moment when we sat down before sighing, setting down her onion ring, and coming over to see what we wanted.
After pouring us each a 12 oz draw of Bud Light ($1.25 each) she huffed, grabbed her onion rings, and sat back down to watch TV.
Now when you’ve had a few beers it’s inevitable that nature will come calling, and in our profession that means you grow accustomed to relieving yourself under a wide variety of conditions. Which is fortunate, because the men’s room here was swarming with flying insects and even featured urinal millipedes — a first for us!
As we reached about the mid-way point in our beers, the front door opened. The bartender, previously focused only on her television and onion rings, jumped to her feet.
“NO! You cannot come in here!” she barked.
“Why not?!?,” growled a gravely voice from behind us. “I have money, I want a drink!”
Slowly we turned around in our barstools to see a dirty, haggard man wearing absolutely nothing except a pair of tattered jeans. No shirt, no shoes, no socks.
“No, you have to have a shirt to be in here!” the bartender yelled. “It’s the law!”
“I come in here shirtless all the time! The owner lets me!” he insisted.
“Well number 1 I don’t believe you, and number 2 he’s not here so I’m the law. Now get out!”
“Well I’ll just go to any of these other bars down the street since you don’t want my money,” he threatened.
“Fine! Go right ahead! They’ll all tell you the same thing!” Our bartender was now shouting at the top of her lungs.
“Well I don’t give a fat f*ck!” he screamed.
“Fine! Now get the f*ck out of here!” she yelled back.
“I will! F*ck this place, you f*cking bitch!”. And with that, he surrendered and stormed out.
The bartender took a deep breath, looked at us, and said “I’m so sorry about that, guys.”
“Oh no, don’t worry about it,” we said, “that was the highlight of our day!”
We all laughed and from that point on she warmed up to us.
* * * * * *
When we left the bar we discovered that shirtlessness is apparently common attire in this particular part of town. Next to our car a beer-bellied shirtless dude was sitting in the bed of a pickup truck oggling women walking past.
816 N Kansas Ave
Topeka, KS 66608
US
[launch map]
(785) 357-7598
