On a recent Friday night, I traveled to Hoboken with three of my closest friends to go from bar to bar in search of a good time. We prowled Hoboken, although in two weeks we’re slated for a Jersey City jaunt.
The rendezvous was 7 p.m. at my house in Central Jersey. From there, we drove 45 minutes to Hoboken. We were lucky to find a parking spot by Pier A Park. In the past, we’ve gone more than 20 minutes trying to find a spot.
Once we parked around 8 p.m., we walked up a few blocks to the Sushi Lounge on the corner of Second and Hudson streets. The trendy Japanese cuisine restaurant/bar had a good crowd with funky club music. Dave, Brian and Rich sat by the end of the bar near the front window. I went to the bathroom. When I came back I noticed Dave and Brian talking to some women next to them. Rich and I conversed about our jobs, basketball and girls.
"Do you think she’s cute?" Rich asked me nonchalantly, avoiding eye contact with the person he was inquiring about.
"Dude, is she cute," he proceeded.
"Yeah, but I think that’s her man over there," I replied.
It looked like Dave and Brian were progressing in picking up the two girls next to them, but I knew it was early in the night. Girls normally start dishing out digits only after their fifth drink at 1 a.m. at a bar or club.
Nevertheless, we ordered the chicken katsu appetizer and we did shots of sweet flavored saki. As we ate, the crowd started to grow and we started to buzz a little.
"Damn, that saki is strong," Dave said really loud, hoping people would hear him. We tried to ignore him, since we knew he was just going to go on and talk about the saki.
Sushi Lounge is a perfect spot for a pre-hang. The shots, drinks and appetizers were reasonably priced. And the people there seemed cool and laid back. It is also fun to watch the chefs by the sushi bar wearing traditional kimonos.
Heading for the bars
A little after 9:30 p.m., we took the party to the Green Rock Tap and Grill, all the way by the train terminal. Located on Hudson Street, Green Rock is one of those bars that are always packed. As soon as we walked in we saw several groups of ladies by themselves. After surveying the place for the usual "boyfriend sightings," my boy Brian went up to the bar to buy drinks (it was his round), and Dave and I approached the group with the cutest girls.
We told Rich to stay between Brian and us, just in case he spotted a better group or saw a bunch of guys moving in.
Dave and a girl named Lisa seemed to hit it off. I heard them talk about financial stuff and the stock market. They both worked for business firms down the Jersey Shore.
"Talk to her friend while I get them drinks," Dave said to me.
At this point, Brian finally showed up with the beer. We each drank a light beer, and Dave came back with several mixed drinks for the girls. Lisa’s friend was kind of cute, and we began to talk. She said she goes to college in Philadelphia, and she baby-sits full-time during the summer. That’s about all I remember from our conversation. I already had four beers. She did not seem interested. She turned her head a couple of times, and we mutually did not pay much attention to the dialogue. I did not ask her for her number, because I was certain she was going to say no.
Meanwhile, Rich was moving up on a few ladies down the bar by the big flat TVs. After almost an hour talking to Lisa and her friends, they got up and said they wanted to go to one of the clubs downtown. Dave told her he’d stop back later, and asked her for her phone number.
As they left in their tight black pants and belly shirts, Dave turned to me, almost knocking me down with the scent of his early ’90s Polo Sport scent.
"What! I gots me the digits, yo."
"Good," I said. "Call her Wednesday."
"No doubt," he said assertively.
After getting "digits," it is recommended that the guy call during the middle of the week in order to seem interested but not too desperate. And if the guy waits until Thursday, the woman might feel he thinks she does not have any plans on the weekend and lacks a social life.
A couple of minutes after Lisa and her friends left the bar, Rich joined our group. He got shut down by the girls at the end of the bar. We told him it was OK. And since he was our designated driver, we really didn’t want to laugh at him and make him feel bad.
Green Rock is a big enough bar that people can maneuver their way around and talk to each other. A lot of cute ladies go there.
It was almost 11 p.m. and we decided to take our game up a couple of blocks to the popular Whiskey Bar on busy Washington Street.
Next stop: Whiskey Bar
We waited about 10 minutes to get in, which in all actuality was not that bad. We had picked up little yellow passes for free admission from a girl at a nearby street corner, so we avoided the cover charge. A cover band performed in the back, and several people pretended to play pool. The bartenders were attentive. I recognized one of them. We had graduated from the same college together. She still didn’t hook me up with drinks.
We bought the bucket of beer. It’s a good deal. Everybody at the bar appeared to be wearing the same "going out" apparel. The guys, like Dave and Brian, had showered in cologne, and some wore tight black shirts or fancy buttoned shirts with black shoes. The ladies, most of them, were dressed to impress. Some of them put glitter on their chest, wore tight shirts, and fixed their hair nicely.
"There’s a lot of hot pieces here," Brian said to us.
"I know, I know," Rich said.
We worked our way to the back of the bar near the DJ booth. Dave again started talking to a group of girls. It became apparent to us that Dave was going to be our "go-to" guy for the night. He was hitting on any girl he wanted to.
Dave does well for himself when it comes to women. This night his confidence was at an all-time high. He approached women, and if they ignored him, he moved on to the next. Persistence is guaranteed to get you a couple of phone numbers.
I stayed near the bartender and talked to her about our days in school. Rich was with me. Dave and Brian went from girl to girl working their mac. I noticed they finally found two girls that looked kind of lonely by the front entrance. They approached them smoothly, and after buying them a couple of drinks, Brian was dancing with one.
Rich and I chilled at the bar. The place was packed. A bunch of people showed up to see the band, and the rest were regulars. I talked to a few guys from Bayonne who come to the Whiskey Bar regularly and stay until 1 a.m., before hitting the bars in lower Manhattan.
"We just pre-game here, then we go to New York," one of the Bayonne guys said to me.
The Whiskey Bar is one of the most happening places in the downtown bar district in the mile-square city because they always feature a party band and have drink specials. Their prices are reasonable, and they always get a good group of girls. Attractive women is a big factor of a good bar or club. If guys know that beautiful girls are going to be at a certain place, they’ll be there, and ready to spend money. And if the girls are sitting by themselves, it makes them more approachable.
Brian and Dave both got numbers. This was Dave’s second pick-up of the night. He mentioned that this time, the girl was from Brick. She said she’d driven up from the shore to Hoboken to get away from the hectic nightlife scenes near her hometown.
"I might call this one on Tuesday," Dave said.
"Why not Monday, if you like her?" Rich asked.
"Are you crazy? I don’t want to look desperate," said Dave, smiling.
But wait, there’s more!
It was about midnight, and none of us were quite drunk yet, so we decided to walk a few blocks up the road. We stopped by Sullivan’s on the corner of Sixth and Washington streets.
Like the Whiskey Bar, there was a line to get in. After the door guy checked our IDs, we walked in. There was a bunch of girls, nicely dressed, around the bar area. It was my turn to order, so I got each of the boys a shot of Puerto Rican rum. At Sullivan’s we met four girls from the Heights section of Jersey City. It was almost too perfect. I was attracted to one of them, so we talked for a while. Brian and Rich talked to her friends. And Dave was kind of just sitting there. It looked like he had run out of gas.
The girl’s name was Melinda, and she told me about her job in New York City as a supervisor at a bank. She must have been in her mid-20s, but I’m not sure. And I was not in the mood to ask how old she was.
I was listening to half the stuff she was saying. She thought it was cool that I wrote for a local newspaper. I told her that I would mention her in my story, but she didn’t believe me.
"You’re not really a writer, are you?" she kept asking me.
"Trust me, I’m a journalist," I would reply, with a smile.
After buying the girls a couple of drinks, Melinda and I got up and went to the back by the jukebox. She told me about her brothers and how she wants to move out and live on her own.
"I just want to get my own place," she said.
It was almost 1 a.m., and one of Melinda’s friends wanted to leave. I offered Melinda a ride home, but instead, she gave me her number and we agreed to talk during the week. Her friends seemed to have liked my friends, so something might work out in the near future. Maybe we will all get together in a week.
After the girls left, we stayed at Sullivan’s for a couple of more minutes. Finally, we walked outside and decided to call it a night. As we approached Newark and Washington streets, we saw the limousine for Willie McBride’s at a red light. The limo cruises throughout town on the weekends, and picks people up free of charge and takes them to the venue on 616 Grand St.
Can’t turn away a free ride
We decided to hop into the limo, and in a couple of minutes we were in front of the traditional Irish pub. We were all partied out, and Rich was getting tired. Dave ordered a round of Guinness to keep the Irish feeling alive. A couple of the bartenders were cute, and within minutes of our arrival, a girl who knew Brian walked up to him. She had come from Linden with a friend. They said they came to meet up with some guys, but they never showed up. That was good news for Brian.
Brian went with the girl to the upstairs balcony and had a couple drinks. The friend stayed with Dave and we entertained her. Rich and I found ourselves where we started, talking about our jobs, girls and basketball.
"You know, Shaq is huge," I said, half-drunk.
"Yeah I know, but I still say Kidd is the best player in the league," he said.
"What about T-Mac?"
After what seemed to be a Twilight Zone time-warp dialogue about professional basketball that ended with a discussion about Larry Bird’s jump shot, Brian came back down with his friend. Someone told me her name was Jessica. It was getting late and the bar was about to close anyway, so the girls offered to give us a ride to the car back at Pier A. They were parked just a block away. Rich sat shotgun, while the four of us chilled in the backseat.
Jessica dropped us off by the car, and Brian gave her a kiss goodnight.
I gave Rich the keys to the car, and I sat shotgun. Dave complained that he was hungry, but it was almost 2:45 a.m. and we wanted to go home.
During the ride back, Dave and Brian talked about what turned out to be a great night for both.
"Are you going to call her back?" Dave asked Brian.
"Hell yeah," he said. "I’ll call her Wednesday."
"Do you like her?" Dave asked.
"Yeah," Brian said.
"Call her Tuesday." q
Fort Lee resident and freelance photographer Gerald Cadena took the photos for this story. He can be reached at cadenage@hotmail.com. His web site is home.att.net/~capedkingprod