Hello 46

Distracted
 
There was a sign saying "No Dogs Allowed Inside" on the front door and a sign "Beware of Dog" on the bar. Just being careful, I guess.
 
Last night we went to a MeetUp at the Lucky Labrador Café and Brewery. MeetUps are an opportunity for local people who share similar interests to gather. While we were living for a month in Portland, Oregon Denis and I found a writing group at Lucky’s.
 
A darts game was in process next to the front door when we arrived. Patrons’ dog photos lined the hallway to the entrance of the main room, which was the size of a basketball court with wood-paneled walls and cathedral ceiling. 
 
The bar stretched the length of the room and highlighted the dog beers on tap: Super Dog IPA, Wag Hazy IPA, Blue Dog Amber. All the food options were written on the wall. We ate before arriving, but everyone else drank and ate dinner. I had the Black Dog Stout. Excellent!
 
T-shirts for sale hung behind the bar: gray, blue, black, green/yellow, and yes, a black lab on the front with its tongue sticking out. I suspect another lab was on the back.
 
Large paintings of Labradors were scattered throughout the room, and a huge painting of black-and-white cows hung over the bar. At the far end of the bar stood a wilted palm plant next to the children's high chairs. A patron who seemed to have had numerous beers informed me that the palm was there at Lucky's opening in 1994, so the plant was 30 years old. Didn’t look a day over 29! 
 
On the back wall hung a lonely surfboard over an old dusty piano and more plants that could use water. Bookshelves full of tattered games of the past, like Monopoly, Scrabble, Clue, Risk, Taboo and many others, filled the rest of the wall.   
 
A wall of picture windows, trimmed in red beaded lights, looked into an enclosed alley with no obvious purpose. Assorted construction materials cluttered the ground, and a rusted door led the way out. In the alley, an elongated mural replicating Andrew Wyeth's Christina's World was painted on the wall. The young woman in the painting, Anna Christina Olson, had a degenerative muscular disorder and could not walk. She refused to use a wheelchair and crawled everywhere. I found the mural out of place in the dirty alley. Christina was a disabled woman and deserves more respect. 
 
In the middle of the room were more than 60 heavy wooden tables and chairs that were impossible to move. Most were occupied by a MeetUp of thirty-somethings playing Magic: The Gathering, created in 1993; the world’s first trading card game. Players battle each other by casting spells and trading cards.
 
Next to us was a Meetup of Women in Science. Twenty three women mentored recent college graduates about careers and opportunities in the science field. 
 
There were twelve of us in the writing MeetUp. I had intended to write a treatise about the political moments of our time, but instead I was completely distracted by my surroundings and wrote this descriptive essay of the Lucky Labrador Café and Brewery in Portland.  
 

Thanks for reading. The funny thing is I'm not a dog person. Leave me a comment.