First night in St. John's - popping the George St. cherry

“‘Don't Give Me No Lip’ - That's what I said to the fish before I kissed it.” - The incomparable Stoney G.

I wasn't able to get to an internet connection while in Newfoundland so here's my St. John's brain dump.

We arrived at St. John's airport at around 11:00, and head straight for the hotel room. The plan was to check in, throw our bags into the room and then head straight for George St. The only hold up was trying in vain to get the wired ethernet to work in the room. For some reason it wouldn't let us go to the default page thing, even Will's tech support mojo didn't crack that nut. A couple of girls said 'hi' to me as they were getting of the elevator and we talked about Pearl Jam for a bit. Unfortunately they were back out even quicker than we were.

We pretty much found George St. by guessing and the vague directions our cabby gave us fro mthe airport. We had no problem finding it though, and wow what a sight. It's like hell only fun. It was like a giant party going on right in the street. Everyone was incredibly friendly, too. And by that I mean that my normal PEI-type social rules didn't really apply. Instead of just apologizing and slipping through a crowd if you need to get somewhere, you're expected to strike up a conversation. Person after person would just want to talk and talk and talk. Many people wanted to shake my hand as soon as they found out I was from PEI.

The first place we went into was pretty non-descript and forgettable, just a place for people to dance to pop music and get drunk. They were charging cover which kept us inside longer than we'd have stayed there normally. Apparently charging cover isn't the norm for most places, thank god.

After that we followed a a bouncer's recommendation and checked out The Attic. As we get up the stairs we hear a PJ DVD playing. Very good sign. The bartender there was the chattiest dude on Earth. It was getting close to closing time (03:00), but he kept us there telling us the story of how he screeched in Pearl Jam that day. The whole band and their entourage were all there, and he was told not to treat anyone any differently from anyone else, be they in the band or whoever. Really nice to hear. Apparetnly the dude, who's name is Jason LeCour, was the owner of the Attic up until very recently and is pretty famous for excellent screech-ins. Taylor says he even saw him on TV once.

His opinions of the band members were that Stone was the funniest, and really smart; and he knew a lot about Newfoundland and was asking questions about Labrador where Jason is from. Mike was the friendliest and most intense, he kept coming back to talking about how great he thought Mike was, which rules because he's my secret-metalhead double agent in the band. (Iron Maiden lunchbox holla') Matt was sitting at a table with a bunch of dudes in jeans and metal t-shirts, so he goes up to them and says “I'm guessing this is the weed table”. Apparently he guessed right. Eddie and Jeff were pretty quiet and unassuming, just acted like regular dudes and made friendly conversation. Eddie was intrigued enough by the idea of cod tongues that he said he wanted to try them.

Jason then put on an Alice in Chains DVD and we talked about tunes for another hour after the place closed, pretty much just us and a girl who was also bartending that night and a couple of others. Jason turned out to be a total rock expert. We talked about the best rock concerts we ever saw and I told him all about the Stones in Moncton and when I told him about seeing Maiden in '99 he nearly lost it and told me a friend of his was at the show where they got pelted with eggs and shit by Sharon Osbourne's lackeys. So good.

We were still not ready for bed when we finally said goodbye so he directed us to another place that usually stayed open all night. I can't remember the name but it was just your typical loud boring electronic music with sexual lyrics and flashing / blinding lights, but the girls in St. John's seem to be more aggressive than anywhere else I've ever been. It seems like they're the ones who seek you out and try and pick you up rather than vice versa. As we were walking there one girl just walked up along side me and we started talking and she came in with us. We were good boys, though, don't worry. All made it home, even Will who it turns out just got a little lost.