Lately, the re-opening of a downtown staple has caused us grief between 1 am and bar close. Normally, this time is reserved for desperate-for-water EDM concert goers, people asking if we have food, and tenants of the apartment building down the road staggering back into their overpriced glorified dorms.

Now, however, we have wave after wave of zombified husks from the de facto city center who will try anything to get one more Lemon Drop or Vodka Cranberry before last call.

Are they happy about it? No.

Are they of sound mind and body? At least one is.

And they are the problem.

Drunk people I can turn away. Like Play-Doh, they’re easy to manipulate (but not in a narcissistic way). Let’s just say their agreeableness is heightened, even if they’re arguing against you. Fatigue sets in, sleep is calling, the ground is moving faster than their feet are falling. Soon, they’ll be blackout enough to wake up in the morning and not remember a thing.

The drunk friend will stumble off in the background, losing control of their mind-mouth barrier, becoming quieter as each second passes. No matter, they wouldn’t be able to get a word in edge-wise, anyway.

Because their nosy, mostly-sober friend just has to give me a piece of their mind.

I abhor them.

One is too many. Two gets on my nerves. But to have three in 9 minutes. Well, that’s a story.

The ‘Influencer’

Common influencers are, of course, Instagram fitness models, celebrities, foodies, and YouTubers. Maybe throw in a DIYer and the occasional “business mogul.”

We all follow one. Some of us might even know one or two.

Little did we know we were in the presence of a TikTok star.

It’s hard to calculate what a group of women are celebrating at 1 am. It could be a birthday, a bachelorette party, a girls night, a divorce party, a work outing, a suffragette movement. Anything! It could be anything!

Regardless of what this was, one woman was clearly not going to make it. Not only was she the runt of the litter, she had a difficult time standing upright. The key moment for our dismissal was her stumbling to the front gate. Now, I have had my stumbles at front doors of establishments.

One happened in New Orleans when I missed the first step of a bar’s landing, overreached to grab the door handle, then got pushed back by a drag queen hauling DJ equipment through the door.

We were both surprised by it, though his stellar eyebrow work heightened the sense of alarm.

But that’s on me. I was, after all, half in the bag.

This woman didn’t have that kind of immediate history for me to inspect, so all I could judge was her inability to walk into the bar. Honestly, people, this is literally step one, and she failed.

I told her friends that she would not be allowed inside and we got the typical overreactions:

• “She’s fine.”

• “She’s with friends.”

• “We’ll take care of her.”

• “She’s not drinking anymore.”

• “We’ll just give her water.”

No.

Some friends.

You haven’t thus far.

Duh.

That’s fine. You can give it to her while she’s still outside the bar.

The team lead, who looked more like a soccer mom wrangling her kids at halftime for orange slices and Capri Suns, did not like this response.

“She stumbles all the time, even when she’s sober!”

“Yeah, when she’s sober. She’s clearly not now.”

“But she stumbles all the time!”

“Look, it’s 1:14 in the morning, it’s probably best to just pack it in for the night. Of all the places you can stumble, right in front of the bar is the worst.”

“You’re great at your job.,” she said, lacquering on the sarcasm with each passing word.

While this conversation was happening, the stumbling woman slunk back behind her wall of women, not raising her voice once in objection.

“I hope you know that I have 40,000 followers on TikTok and they’re ALL going to know about YOU!”

There’s that perfect moment of silence that hovers in the air before a big laugh. When everyone realizes that, yes, what they heard this person say might be the unintentionally funniest — and stupidest — thing for her to ever say for the rest of her life.

Once the tension broke, at least five people burst out laughing, at least three of which were employees, one off the clock and one more outside the gates.

Gut busting, back aching, breathtaking laughter.

TikTok? You’re going to come at us with TikTok?

We laughed. Hard. I laughed so much I forgot where they went. I just slowly spun around and she was gone.

Bait & Switch

While the Tokker was arguing with us, two f-boys walked up, one with it, one drunk.

The sober one tested the waters and approached me over the Tokker’s head (he was pretty tall, so it’s a thing that sometimes happens). I looked at his friend and made the call. Eyes glazed over, practically asleep standing up. He was not long for the land of the conscious.

The pair left for what I thought was the rest of the night.

Nope.

The duo came back three minutes after the Tokker left, leaving a sidewalk begging for some comedy to fill the vacuum. And boy, did they deliver.

The taller friend that approached me was about 6-foot-5, white, but “I just got back from Daytona Beach” white. Kinda tan with sand somehow still in his hair. Throw on a shell necklace and some frosted tips he’d be a great YMCA basketball all-star version of Justin Timberlake.

Instead, he was wearing a beige sweatshirt and black pants.

His friend was wearing a red sweatshirt and white pants.

Three minutes pass.

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” I said, bursting with more laughter than before.

In the space between leaving and returning, they switched shirts.

They were stone faced, trying to play it off.

Others didn’t know what was happening. A few thought I was just yelling at random people.

“You look ridiculous! Did you think that would work? You really just switched shirts?“

Now everyone was mostly on board. Granted, the shirt thing was funny. But it’s been done before.

No, I was more laughing about the audacity to think switching shirts would hide the fact the Pacific Islander with visible tattoos, curly hair, and white pants, still drunk on the sidewalk, could pass for the one I thought looked like Tall Timberlake.

I give that a 2/10 for ingenuity, and a 1/10 for execution.

Minority Report

Speaking of execution, that’s what several people wanted to do to me at 1:21 in the morning.

I will say this, for most of this last group, another drink wouldn’t have knocked them down. They were older than the typical post-midnight crowd, and many of them fashioned between business casual and cocktail hour dress.

But one of them. Whew, one of them was losing all control of his body above the waist. First we saw him doubled over, walking hand in hand with his significant other. Then, as he fumbled for his wallet, he almost fell backwards, but the wind assisted him back upright.

The wallet came out, then fell to the ground. Yeah, this guy was toast.

So, as I did with the first and second nos, I loaded up a third.

The group did not like this.

Much akin to Group 1, we heard all the excuses.

• “He’s fine.”

• “He’s always like this.”

• “He’ll only have water.”

No.

Dear God Why?

Right.

And then we heard some new ones.

• “He drove us here.”

• “He’s the DD.”

My colleague at the door, let’s call him Marinara, was shocked at this reveal.

“If he’s the DD you should call an Uber. For your safety.”

As per usual, the one in question was in the background, accepting his fate. He chirped up here and there, but it was his White Wife that treated me as Public Enemy No. 1.

Just as we thought they were about to leave, she darted over and stuck her finger in my chest.

“This is about RACISM! You don’t want him inside because he’s MEXICAN! Today, you chose to be racist!”

Most of the group was indeed, Mexican. She was white and there was another couple that was neither.

Insisting that something is racist as an excuse for being caught while drunk in public is old hat now.

Out of the five employees at or near the entrance at the time this White Wife chose to have her racial tirade, I was the only (mostly) white one. We’re a pretty multicultural bar, but this woman only had eyes for me. Aww.

The chorus joined White Wife, decrying my abject hatred for Mexicans. Ah, yes. Those damn Mexicans. Always bringing me excellent food when I invite them to my house. I have half a mind to tell them to stop doing that … when the mortgage is paid in full and I don’t live there anymore.

Clad in her Karen sheath of unaccountability, White Wife went up to the gate and gave us stern warnings, telling us we’d rue the day we every disgraced her husband (who was still trying to fold his wallet and put it back in his pants).

Marinara had enough.

“Stop it,” he brushed her off. “You’re just using your white privilege to try and shame us.”

White Wife when someone of her husband’s ilk finally called out her bullshit in real time:

Marinara saw posturing from the group when they crossed the street — puffing chests, yelling, begging for a fight they somehow didn’t threaten to make up close.

Marinara took off his jacket and laid it on a chair. Not because it was too warm, but to signal he, too, was ready, willing, and able to trade blows. He just needed to loosen up first.

Like all the groups that came before, they left in shame.

I don’t know if it took you 9 minutes to even read this, but this was a lot to experience in a short time.