Planet Elite: United states of Superior Americans

Yesterday was the 21st birthday of a friend, so obviously she wanted to go out and get completely wasted. We ended up going to three different places to drink (except I didn't drink; I was one of the designated drivers) in Syracuse, NY last night, all with their own interesting stories. If you don't care about my personal stories and just want to read the police brutality part, skip to the sixth paragraph (4th from the end)

The first place was called Daisy Dukes, a country/rock themed club that is known for a mechanical bull in it. I was the only one in our group that rode it; apparently hundreds of pounds of mass knocking you all over the place is frightening to some people. I was determined to show off though, so I was on it for a while and the guy at the controls kept turning it up until it was at max power. Finally, he started making it spin fast back and forth while it was bucking until I finally got dizzy and couldn't keep my balance anymore. The thing threw me across the bullpen and I landed upside down against the wall. When I got up, everyone in the place started cheering and whistling for me, and when I climbed out of the pen people were slapping me on the back and congratulating me. More fuel for my already bloated ego. The hand I was holding on with was beat up when I walked away, but it was worth it. My thumb is still swolen and I have chafing-burn marks on the back of my hand.

I don't remember the names of the second and third places we went to, but at the second place everything was all painted black or covered in black leather. Here Brittany (my girlfriend) asked the bartender for a cotton-candy, and him and the people around him thought she meant she wanted a condom and they all broke out laughing at her. After she explained, he said he's been bartending for 8 years and has never heard of such a drink. She hadn't had one in a while and couldn't remember what was in it, so she just got something else.

One of her brothers is gay, and there's a gay/lesbian bar up the road from there that she goes to sometimes with him. She told me that's where she usually gets that cotton-candy drink, so I don't know if it's something they made up, which would explain why they didn't know about it there.

By the time we got to the third place, Brittany had a bit much in her, but she had another drink or two there as well. About the only interesting thing that happened there was her tipsyness. Someone told her that this bar sold food too, so she led me away from our group and we went to find where. Well, the first place she checked was in the hallway where there's an exit and the doors to the restrooms. I let her look around the hallway for a few seconds before I told her this might not be the place to look for food, then went and asked at the bar and they said they don't sell it after 10. Also, I had to escort her to the restrooms and back twice while we were there, and both times on the way there and the way back, she got lost (mind you, this is a small place. To get to the restrooms you go around a corner is all) and tried going through a door that led to the kitchen. There were some other funny antics, but I won't go into them all.

After a while we left, and most of us were standing out on the sidewalk in front of the building because one of the girls was looking for her boyfriend in the place. While we were standing there waiting, some cops tried to arrest a guy that was just across the street. He resisted and tried to wrestle one of the cops to the ground. After one helped the other to get free from him, those two cops got him down and proceeded to punch and kick him for a while after he was already down. There were a bunch of people around shouting at the cops "You have him down! Just put the handcuffs on him, stop beating on him!" When the cops finally stopped and pulled the guy up, his face was messed up and all bloody, and he was bleeding from the back all over the back of his shirt too. The bouncers at the place we were at started shouting at the police across the street too, telling them to pick a fair fight instead of ganging up on someone and beating the stuffing out of him (Not the words they used, but I've been trying to keep profanity out of the post so it doesn't get filtered).

I even have an interesting, if unwanted, event on the drive home. When I was on 690 in the slow lane, a van came up right next to me, put on its blinker, and tried to change lanes right into the side of our car! It scared the heck out of me, and I swerved to the right, straddling the white line on the side and driving dangerously close to the concrete barrier and having this dumbbutt halfway into my lane, so I hit the brakes hard and got back in behind him. That was the first accident I've almost gotten into while I was driving. And Brittany was even more scared, as she was in the passenger seat and would have been the first into the barrier.

Later, things got good again. When we finally got home, it was very late, so I wasn't about to wake up Brit's mom to drive me home (It was Brit's Grandmother's car I was driving, so they needed it back), so I used that as an excuse to spend the night with Brittany (we're both 21 and still live at home). It was the first time I've slept with her; it felt great to fall asleep with her in my arms. And no, we didn't do anything there - besides, we were both very tired and she had had too much to drink.

Altogether, it was a very interesting night.