Javier and I sat at the large arced bar drinking from our bottles of Pilsner Urquell and listening to the click of pool balls behind us. Taking attention away from the faded murals of Florida flora and fauna were several TVs, all turned to different channels. The man next to me, in beard and beret, was watching the Heat game, while I was transfixed by a screen that displayed Arabic script and, in a small boxed area, a man's mouth uttering, presumably, the words on the screen.
I got up to go to the men's room and found two doors marked "Women."
An interesting group of people filed in, mostly young but with a few old hipsters. Occasionally someone carried an instrument case. In the other, dimly-lit room, couples sat at small tables facing the stage like at a supper club from the 1950s.
Then the band, now grown to about a dozen musicians, began its set.
It felt like Seattle, or Chicago's South Side.
"I went to a bar in Chicago," Javier said. "And I got a menu of about 200 beers. Florida is like a wasteland for beer. I guess the weather is too nice here for people to sit inside drinking beer."
"That's why people here don't read," I said. "It's too sunny."
Then I looked over and saw that the man sitting next to Javier was lost in a book.
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