The Saloon Bar

a location for Cyberpunk 2020 by Kristian de Valle (kris@cxa.com.au)

Prop. J.C. Ferreras
Staff: Jenny, Carly & Michelle. Ed on bar sometimes

We serve Wendy beer (straight from Minnesota), heavy, light, all spirits (no fancy orbital shit or designer crap), and the only cocktail we make is the Apache Warpath. Milk is served without a second glance. Sometimes there’s pretzels on the bench if Ferreras is paid well after a job.

The jukebox in the corner has been there as long as anyone can remember. It plays the Highwaymen, Waylon Jennings, Hank Williams, Willie Nelson. The most recent disk is Bon Jovi’s Young Guns sound-track. ‘I’m a cowboy, on the steel horse I ride’ Nobody knows who Bon Jovi is. It still eats American dimes and quarters.

There’s a dinky stage that fits a tiny set of drums, and a slide guitar. The rest of the band just stands around it. There’s about ten booths and four or five tables. Most of the furniture is cheap chipboard that breaks easy and replaces easier. There’s a faded confederate flag on the wall and some peeling ‘Marlboro Man’ posters of the cowboy in his saddle. The chandelier is a very dusty wagon wheel and there are crossed Winchesters and busted antlers on the wall above the bar.

There’s no cellar, only the back room with a roller door onto the street and a walk-in fridge with the kegs and their refrigeration unit beside it. Also a stack of replacement chairs. There is a tiny office that fits one person, a chair and half a desk, which is filled with paper, old calendars, replacement ashtrays and a twenty-year old laptop which runs a spreadsheet program. The computer is older than the bar.

We’re proud to say that all of our glassware is actually glass, not plastic. It’s where most of the profit goes (not that there is much after salary and paying the frickin’ band).

The band’s called Sixgun & Slide. They’re more bluesy than anything else but if Ferreras points a gun at them they’ll play the Dead Kennedy’s version of ‘I fought the law’. They come in on Mondays and Fridays. Sundays the bar is closed.

The Saloon is open the rest of the week from about one o’clock (or when someone gets there) until one in the morning. Sometimes we stay open for regulars or a good crowd. There’s no bouncer but a shotgun loaded with beanbag rounds is under the bar.

From outside it don’t look like much. The windows are painted over on the street side and the entrance has a wood sign advertising the bar and some fake wood swing doors. The Saloon doesn’t even make it into the D-Term flashmap showing drinking holes. How humiliatin’.

Come to the Saloon bar and have the bartender trivialize your woes and laugh at your troubles. Drink the nectar they call Wendy Beer and pump some dimes into the funny-looking box that makes noise. Be im-mersed in the cheesy ambiance, bust some furniture accidentally and cop a subsonic gel round to the rear.

The Saloon Bar. Where the West isn’t dead, it’s rotten.