Slouching Towards Euphoria: Radio Bar

After bidding adieu to my corporate job that has sustained me through writing my thesis and acquiring teaching experience, I walked into a local bar to toast my former career and my future one. I had walked by Radio many times to get a morning espresso and wondered what the bar was like. No time like the final time.

Radio is a hipster dive bar. It’s not truly a dive, although it’s made up to look like one. Like hipsters themselves, hipster bars have an ironic self-knowledge. The font of the Radio sign is pseudo-Chinese character. The bar has red hanging lanterns and trays with floral designs hanging of the wall. Radio is close to Oakland’s Chinatown, so the motif works well. It’s also painted black and it’s so dark in there that Dick Cheney could get laid.

The bar is a shotgun shack layout with a loft at the end of the bar. The loft has a chain-link fence, which is a nod to Goths or to piggy sex clubs. A mannequin lies on her side on a walkway above the bar. She wears a long slip and looks to the ceiling, perhaps trying to see how the stars are aligned tonight. The seats at the bar are attached to the ground and swivel around. The seats remind me of the bars from the sixties and seventies, the kind of bar you see in Goodfellas, the kind of bar where Joe Pesci kills a made man. In the middle of the bar is a huge column. Either it’s a load-bearing column or it’s a vent. The bottom part of it is covered in square bits of mirror, like a disco ball.

The have a generous supply of Jack Daniels, Makers Mark, and more vodka than you can shake a piroshki at. The bartender made me an excellent Manhattan. A lone, turned-off TV sat on the walkway. I imagine that when they turn it on, it plays cult movies. The bathroom was truly hideous. The smell curled the paint off in strips. The graffiti must have been there for years, including references to the corporation, whose doors I traveled through for the last time a half hour before.

They have DJs here, but there is nowhere to dance. But at hipster places, dancing is not on the menu. DJs come in many forms. The club DJ is pumping a crowded room full of e-bombed dancers. He or she has a headphone in one ear, while staring intently at the turntables. The wannabe club DJ plays bars, where they blast beats and no one is dancing. They just annoy the drinkers, while the bar tries desperately to be hip. The hipster bar DJ spins indie and old rock songs. No one dances. They just say ahh, this guy knows his old rock and indie stuff. I’m guessing Radio Bar DJs are this way.

I like Radio. It’s an unpretentious place with decent drink prices. Oakland, for some bizarre reason, has expensive drinks, but Radio seems like an exception to the rule. The bartender was cool, and the jukebox was well-stacked with great music. The swivel chairs are comfortable. Just be prepared to be blinded when you walk out in the sunshine. The blinding orb will remind you, that you’ve left the cocoon for the cold, bright world.