ALL THE BARS IN LOS ANGELES, 11/5/15: Button Mash White Wine...
ALL THE BARS IN LOS ANGELES, 11/5/15: Button Mash
Total: $8
When I arrived, Sara was standing with her friend Michelle and Michelle’s friend Kelsey at the pinball machines. Sara wanted to play Tron pinball, I wanted a drink. Button Mash is beer and wine only, so I got white wine in a glass that looked like a candle holder to me, but the water came in a glass with such a nice shape that I slipped it into my purse so I could have it in my home. Michelle really liked that.
Button Mash is new and I’m suspicious of barcades. I’m suspicious of new bars in general, wondering what they’ll be for me. Sara and I took a turn around the main game room, assessing both the crowd (Echo Park people or out of towners? [Echo Park is the town, everything else in LA is outside it]) and the games. The games are better at EightyTwo, the barcade near the good mall in Little Tokyo, but Sara and I both did really well at Galaga. In the X-Men game you can play as Dazzler and you have two attack modes: regular and mutant power.
This turned into a bar review, didn’t it, even though I meant to talk about myself. Before Button Mash, I went to Target and Home Depot, to return things my father had bought that I didn’t want and buy things I wanted but I didn’t need: two silver picture frames, a wooden (”wooden”) trash can for my bathroom, small candles in glass holders, a bigger candle scented Sea Salt & Ginger, a new Camelbak Eddy water bottle to replace my one that leaks, two laundry bags to wash my bras in, a foam roller which I’ll probably return because I can’t figure out how to use it to massage my back, a new and better pot for the big plant my father got me, a cactus, a pot for it, a box cutter.
The shopping and subsequent experience of having new objects soothed me, so by the time I got to Button Mash I was calm, chill. But also, high enough on the endorphin rush of acquiring new things that it was almost inevitable that I’d slip something into my purse, it was just the water glass’s luck I spotted it first. Later that night, Sara discovered that the old game machines were faulty enough that a lot of them had extra tokens in the change slot, so we made another loop of the game room, collecting free tokens free games free fun, and that felt as good as taking the water glass.
When I got home, alarmingly sober and awake despite the glass of wine, I spent some time getting the box cutter situated. To make it work, you have to open its body with a screwdriver, situate one of the blades hidden inside into the little lever mechanism, and screw the body back together. I spent about 20 minutes trying to figure out how to put the pieces together correctly, though the arrangement of shapes was so obvious that it really shouldn’t have taken me that long. Once I figured it out, I had a mild feeling in the back of my mind that I should be ashamed I couldn’t figure it out fast, but that feeling went away quick. I thought, good job champ, and went to bed.
