It's nine o'clock on a Saturday/The regular crowd shuffles in/There's an old man sitting next to me/Makin' love to his tonic and gin...

These photos are from a couple months ago--okay, it could've been May--so my memory might be a bit hazy. But any time spent at The Alley in the hippish Grand Lake 'hood of Oakland is sure to leave an impression.

Elan broke me in for my first experience there; we got to the bar early so as to score a seat at the piano before the regulars--known locally as the "Alleycats"--shuffled in for the keys master himself, THE piano man: Rod.

Rod has been a fixture at The Alley since 1965 and is said to know something like 10,000 songs. We were told this by one of the oldest Alleycats there that night, who'd been frequenting the legendary bar for 37 years.

It wasn't long before "Jeffrey"--a 30-year regular--sat down next to me. Jeffrey was a large, bespectacled man who walked with a cane and was preparing for a serious operation the next day. I think it was some sort of testicular surgery or something equally as major--I remember Elan and I grimacing and making cooing noises when he told us. But of course now (and several hundred vodka-sodas later), it's difficult to recollect the specifics. Anywho, Jeffrey and I became fast friends when he discovered that I actually knew who H.G. Wells was. Oh, and he did a charming spoken word performance of "The Smoke-Off"--Shel Silverstein's tale about a marijuana rolling (and smoking) contest in San Rafael of all places--a poem that first appeared in Playboy magazine in 1978.

The place--and especially the area surrounding the piano--filled up quickly and the drinks were flowing and the mic made its way around the bar, accompanied gracefully by Rod, and soon there was a rollicking (as if there wouldn't be) crowd-participatory rendition of "Life is a Cabaret." It was awesome. I can't wait to go back.

I love a cabaret.

Every picture tells a story, don't it...

Here's this week's batch of random:

TOP: Yeah, so I went with my friend/co-worker/great-writer-whose-brain-I'm-trying-to-pick-for-pointers who was doing a dining review on this East Bay restaurant. It was a seafood joint, with the requisite marine life decor as screamingly luminous as a mermaid's tail throughout the dining room--you know, blue everything, shell-frame mirrors, a central three-tiered fountain with a stream flowing out of a very phallic fish mouth. But for some inconceivable reason, there was this display case in the back, filled to the rim with various Barbie-esque dolls and all sorts of trolls. You know, cuz they're basically the same.

MIDDLE: When I was wee, I had a Hispanic godmother--Luz Rangel. I can't remember if she was Cuban or Puerto Rican--that's cuz I'm a horrible, horrible Latina ("Mexican by convenience"--shameful!)--but anyway, I loved her. We spent a lot of time in the cucina together, and I'd watch as she ground the mesa for tortillas in one of those little stone grounder thingeys. But yeah... mostly I just ate and didn't pay attention. Obviously. One of the best things she made that my mother and I have been searching high and low for are these papas rellenos--I found the frozen version in that cool Latin market on San Pablo Ave. in Berkeley--which are like yummy balls of meat stuffed into a bigger baked ball of mashed potato. Wow, clearly I really need to go on more dining reviews with my writer friend.

BOTTOM: Elan, Lucas and Jake. Does anything really need to be said here?...