This week I made an important discovery.  A discovery of a wonderful something which should not have remained hidden from me for as long as it did.   But nevertheless, I have discovered it.  And it’s a life-changer for your old friend, Bones.

Going forward, should you need to find me, you need not look much further than right outside my neighborhood.  At Cafe Instanbul, where I’ll be.  My new hangout.

Every month or so, my old pal Dirty D. and I will meet up at Java Monkey, a wonderful coffee shop in Decatur, to discuss our respective software careers, our takes on the current state of politics, and mystic physics.  This week we decided to shake things up a bit and try something different.  We decided to meet at Cafe Istanbul, a Mediterranean restaurant located in a small, unassuming strip mall a couple miles up from downtown Decatur, and a short walk from my neighborhood.  Cafe Instanbul has become quite the popular destination for folks looking to enjoy a night of dining on fine turkish cuisine, watching belly dancers do their sexy thang, and smoking flavored tobacco from hookahs.   Dirty D. wanted to check the place out because he’s an aficionado of international menus and because he’d never smoked a hookah.  Me, I had my own reasons for wanting to give the place a visit – specifically,  that big yellow sign that the owners had recently hung from the roof that proudly proclaimed, “NOW SERVING FULL BAR.”

See, I’ve lived in my house for a number of years now, and have made an insane number of trips to downtown Decatur to enjoy its wonderful bevy of pubs and restaurants.  Decatur square is only a couple miles from my house, and is an easy journey that I can make by car, bus, or foot.  Two miles isn’t a very far distance, but it’s just far enough to destroy the illusion that I can walk out my front door and immediately plop down on a bar stool.  In between door and bar, there’s still a bit of traveling required, and as short as the trip may be, it’s more traveling than I like to do.  When Neil Peart wrote, “The point of the journey is not to arrive,” I’m pretty sure he wasn’t talking about going to bar.  Cause the point of a journey to a bar is to get to the bar, right, Neil?

For the past few years I’ve struggled with this.  I could really embrace that city lifestyle of having your taverns, your coffee shops, your book stores, right outside your front door.  I like it so much that I strongly contemplated selling my house to move into a condo in Decatur for that reason alone.  I even put my house on the market for a while, only to discover that,  “Shit, apparently we’re in a terrible housing bust, and perhaps selling my house at a major loss so I can move into a substantially smaller and more expensive condo just to be two miles closer to the Brick Store pub is maybe not the most responsible decision that a grown man could make.”  I also like my house, and my weird extra rooms, and the ability to play music real loud late at night without having to walk through a public hallway the next morning with my head down, praying that my neighbors won’t step out their doors to scowl at the inconsiderate asshole who kept them awake all night.

But I also want a bar that I can walk to without having to a make a damn trek out of it!

The streets outside my neighborhood are lined with two things, and two things only – a large number of dying car dealerships and a large number of burgeoning Indians restaurants.  I never gave much thought to either.  Not the car dealerships, because I hate cars, and not the Indians restaurants, because I’m terribly uncultured and because I don’t like food.  But one day, not too long ago, I had a bit of an epiphany…   If one of these Indian restaurants within walking distance… just one… had a bar… well, then the one particular problem with my current living arrangement would be solved!  Solved, my friends!  Hot damn, I immediately began my research.  I hopped on google and entered my zip code and the two most important search terms – “Indian food” and “bar.”   I pressured my more cultured friends at work for details on these local establishments.  I wandered by the restaurants and threw seemingly nonchalant glances into the front windows for clues.   But it was all for naught.

The only place that gave any indication of having a bar was a popular Indian restaurant in a rather shoddy-looking shopping center near my house.  I convinced a buddy to go explore this place with me, he agreed, and so one friday night we gave it a try.  Stepped into the restaurant, took a look around, and saw a room jam-packed with dining tables populated by multi-generational families, from grandparents to babies, doing the one thing I feared the most.  Eating.  My buddy and I spent an awkward evening dining together at a table, me sipping on a bottle of damn Budweiser and complaining.  The place did, in fact, have a bar, but it was empty, save the two Indian dudes eating at it.  It became abundantly clear that my epiphany was nothing but a ridiculous pipe dream.  This mythical bar culture that I was seeking couldn’t be more far removed from the culture of the restaurants where I was searching for it.

My dream had died.

My plans for becoming the Indian barroom barfly, the Bukowski of Bihar, were smashed. No longer did I believe that I’d be walking into my local watering hole to hear a rousting symphony of Indian accents shouting,  “Bones!  Whatcha’ drinking today, old friend?” with one of the older guys turning to his buddy and saying, “Don’t worry about that guy.  It’s Bones.  He’s cool.”   No longer  did it seem a likelihood that I’d become the “India dude”, wearing a patch of an Indian flag on my tight jeans like the scenesters do with the Union Jack, speaking to my friends in a faux, slight Indian accent like Madonna does with her embarrassing British “accent.”   Nope, I was doomed to my current culture-less lifestyle with its two-mile treks to Decatur to drink beer with all the damn natives.  No Indian bars for me.  No eastern-themed bars of any kind, actually.

And then I saw that sign.

“NOW SERVING FULL BAR.”

Cafe Instanbul.  A Turkish restaurant.

A full bar?  Could it be true?

Nah… it probably meant what it said – SERVING a full bar.  As in, grab a seat at the table, and we’ll make you a drink.  What?  You mean you thought we had a bar?  With bar stools?  Seriously? Where do you think you are, man?

And then last night I walked out of my neighborhood to meet Dirty D. at Cafe Instanbul.  And what did I see immediately upon entering the place?

Oh yes, my friends.  Oh yes, indeed.

A bar.

Barstools.

Rows of beautiful bottles lined up in front of a bar mirror.

A bartender.

Cue the music, folks.  It’s time to celebrate!   And when I say music, I’m talking sitars, brother!  Cause ole’ Bones is about to get some culture!  And he’s going to get it in the only way he knows how – with his ass on a barstool!

I ordered an Efes, a turkish lager.  I ordered some falafel.  We walked past the tables into the massive back room, a wide open space with rows upon rows of brightly-colored pillows laying on the floor, lining the walls, with patrons lounging on their backs, occasionally leaning up to lazily grab their drink off the short shallow tables.  Beautiful paintings covered the walls.  Smoking hookahs filled the room with a mild scent of sweet tobacco.  We grabbed a seat on some pillows and ordered a hookah with sour apple tobacco.  As we passed the hose back and forth, I grew more and more inspired, until I finally announced,  “This is it, man!  This is my place!”

I had found my home.  And it didn’t take long before Dirty D. and I were talking as if I was already a local.  Speaking as if swinging by Cafe Istanbul for a mellow hookah and a drink was a standard part of my schedule.   “Yeah dudes, I’ll meet ya up for a pint.  But I’ll probably be a bit late, as I’m currently at the old standby and I just lit up a smoke.”   I decided that I’d become that guy who sits alone against a pile of pillows in the corner with a book in hand and a smoking hookah on the table before him.  That guy who people would start referring to as “that guy.”   The regular.

I’m thinking about getting fat.  It seems like the right look for a guy lounging on the floor in the corner alone against a bunch of pillows.

I’ve also decided to turn the guest room of my house into a Mediterranean Hookah bar, designed in the same style as my newfound watering/smoking hole.  You know, so I have a place to go in the hours before Cafe Instanbul opens.

At one point in the evening I glanced up at the fabrics that hung from the ceiling, forming  brilliantly colored bulbous clouds, and I thought, “I’ll never have to move into another house again.”

I can be a bit obsessive at times.

I’ve found my bar, my friends.  In all my fruitless searching of those Indian restaurants for that elusive Elorado of intoxication, I’ve finally discovered that the answer was right in front of me all along.  Literally.  In a Turkish restaurant across the street with the big sign that screams “NOW SERVING FULL BAR.”

As the night was weaning to a close, a fortune teller walked up to our table and introduced herself.  I realized that I’d not be in need of her services tonight.

For I already knew what my future held.