a dirty, poorly-lighted place

the cock and bull is a pub built into an old barn, the last building before a gas station past the last streetlight at the end of cattleman road in Sarasota. the door isn’t marked as an entrance, and walking in, one gets the feeling of having entered a set on a david lynch film. the bar is immediately to the front, and the line crawls slowly with people waiting for their beers. a lean black Doberman, missing one ear, stands behind the bar, watching. stairs leading to an upstairs balcony are roped off, a foosball table placed nearby. round, low tables are crowded as close to the walls as possible, filled with young people talking and drinking. disjointed music selections play from an unseen jukebox, but the place has the feeling of being hit with a “mute” button. there is an emptiness to the sounds of music, talking, laughter. and it’s dark. a light swings over a pool table where a woman dressed in ugly 80’s throwbacks mashes the balls around with her custom cue. walking outside is no better. a green light floods the rain-soaked porch, and the group of men stop talking and look up, staring, when we step out. beyond the porch is a yard filled with tables and a large fire pit, presumably for the winter months. the light bathes everything in the feeling of dirty anonymity. a couple of nihilists sit under an awning, cordoned off from the rest by mosquito netting.
the walls up to the vaulted ceiling are covered in old memorabilia. a French horn rests in a beam, a pair of ice skates looped over the pool lamp, a washboard, two guitars, faded and torn world maps; two large trees guard the front entrance and the break into the pool room.
the whole place had the vibe of the last party on the stop, the one where everyone there is too high to move toward the door so they sit at a corner table playing dominoes, and you’re too stoned to make sense of what is going on, all you can do is stumble through the party, the interloper, before settling down into a corner table of your own.
waits, cohen, hemingway would all have found solice in this dirty, poorly lighted place.