Whistle-stopped

Whistlestop is a small bar on jupiter st about a couple of meters from the corner of makati avenue, me and Imer used to go there quite a lot. The whole place looked like a mess, most of the people coming to this place looked like they’ve been drunk someplace else and they’re there to slow down with some beers. The bar's only attempt at entertainment is a cable tv showing some basketball game reruns or some late night news, which nobody watches anyway.

And the only thing I ever did eat at this place is their french fries. I always feel something starchy like fries would go well with alcohol in my stomach. Their fries though wasn’t as good as fast food fries but they were decent potato fries anyway. It reminded me of some cheap place back home that served imitated french fries, I was halfway done eating the food when I realized it was made from some other tuber crop.

Whistlestop is more like half a kilometer away from school. Though you’d never feel it to be so far because there are so many neon lights on the road going there at night. I would take a cab and I would be so busy staring at all the lights on the road, though I’ve seen them a hundred times over, and get to whistlestop without even starting up a dumb conversation with the driver. But me and Imer kept hanging out at this place because it is open 24 hours a day, and this is the place nearest to school where we could come in and drink anytime without getting to worry about closing time.

The only joints in this area that comes close to whistlestop for being open for the rest of the night are these strip clubs. There are a lot of strip clubs lining up in these streets and you’d always get to see a lot of old Yankees dressed like there is a beach on the other side of the street and old Japanese men in suits all over these strip joints. These geezers must have beaten the crap out of each other in world war 2 sixty years ago but they all seem to have a great time now thanks to these strip joints. And though they maybe open for the rest of the night too but hell their price of beer there must be fivefold, and it’s sick to be drinking around dirty old men making their moves on really ugly women squeezed on skimpy clothes.

Anyway I met up with Imer and his girl at school today, it was around 9 when he showed up. We took a bite at this fast food across school which didn’t have much to serve since they were closing up too. We then decided to go have some beers at whistlestop, his girl wanted to see our watering hole where we would waste ourselves years ago.

We got to the place and found that Whistlestop has closed down, the bar was stripped out of its signs and glass windows and the whole place was like in ruins. we were sort of surprised and I asked Imer if he knew why the place went out of business.

"Because both of us are their only customers who kept going back."