Hookah
I met some friends last night at a relatively new place in Addison called The Velvet Hookah. I joked with Kelley that this sounded like some kind of sexual innuendo, but she assured me that the place was nothing like that. Unfortunately, in this case, she was correct.
What's supposed to be sort of a dark and mysterious hookah bar with an exotic atmosphere in this case was a circus.
We'd been advised to book a reservation beforehand, so Mike did, for 5 people, at 9:00. A reasonable person would think that, this being the case, a party wouldn't still be waiting around at 10:30 for a table, with two of the three other parties who supposedly still had precedence at 9pm also still waiting. (We surmised that the third one wasn't actually seated, but instead fled or perished). "But you have to understand — it's our one year anniversary party," the maitre d' kept assuring us, though I'm not sure what anniversaries have to do with not honoring someone's reservations.
They did have bellydancers wandering about, which were pretty good, not to mention some other specialty acts. One girl juggling fire was impressive to watch, but the other girl, who did this trapeze-like dance up on a giant plume of silk anchored to the ceiling, wouldn't drop this ear-to-ear grin which seemed to say, "You can also see me do this naked at the Cabaret Royale! With a banana up my ass! You'd like that wouldn't you?" We all agreed that a serious and mysterious pouty look would have served her much, much better. But alas, the Kathy-Lee-Gifford-in-a-G-string grin was all there was. It just seemed . . . creepy. Dirty.
A pretty disappointing experience all around.
About the only entertaining moment of the night was when we acquired another item for my strange Chinese tattoo collection. Our waitress (if you can call someone who refuses to actually bring you anything, but does stop by to glare at you and empty the table's ashtray every half hour or so) had something tattooed on her back, which after much squinting, I finally came to sort of recognize as:
林母玉
The job was a little bit sloppy, but the last character was definitely Yu, the character for jade. "Hey Ben," I said, thinking I couldn't keep a straight face asking her myself, "I have a quest for you. Ask our waitress what her tattoo means."
"Sure, okay," he said. "Why? What's it mean?"
"Yeah, what does it mean?" the rest of the group asked.
"I can't see that middle character very well, plus it's kind of squished, but I think it means 'Forest Surrounding Jade?' Maybe 'Forest Mother Jade?' Regardless, I'm willing to bet that's not at all what she thinks it means."
Ben got up a few minutes later and talked to the girl a little, including a point where she kind of turned her back to let him look. He hopped back up on her barstool. "I thought she wasn't American. She had this German kind of accent. Anyway, she said it's for her last name. It means 'Mai'? I don't get it."
We were all a little perplexed. Then suddenly it hit me. That's why the characters looked messy. Someone had made the branches of the Lin trees sort of touch in the middle, and made the hangy down parts of Mu hang down a little further, so the whole thing vaguely resembled M A I. Mai. As if the characters were actually letters or something.
When I explained my epiphany to the others, much laughter ensued. The poor girl picked up on what we were laughing at, and had a guy next to her reach over and cover the small of her back with his hand, and I felt a little guilty, but not terribly.
"You know," said Kelley, "I think that's yet another argument why starting your Chinese tattoo consulting business would be a very, very good idea." Those are my thoughts as well. That's the whole reason it's such a fascinating topic to me — that roughly 60% of people with Chinese character tattoos, in my experience, wind up with something utterly wrong, and even though they're willing to get this thing permanently emblazoned on their skin for people to laugh at for years and years, they're not willing to do 10 minutes of research to find out what it's about.
I still can't wait until I see a really outrageous one.
I'm holding out for one of those strategically placed tattoos (you know where I mean — that small-of-the-back divet where they all seem to land) which reads, "Put your money here," or even "Insert coin for service." I think that would be my favorite.
What's supposed to be sort of a dark and mysterious hookah bar with an exotic atmosphere in this case was a circus.
We'd been advised to book a reservation beforehand, so Mike did, for 5 people, at 9:00. A reasonable person would think that, this being the case, a party wouldn't still be waiting around at 10:30 for a table, with two of the three other parties who supposedly still had precedence at 9pm also still waiting. (We surmised that the third one wasn't actually seated, but instead fled or perished). "But you have to understand — it's our one year anniversary party," the maitre d' kept assuring us, though I'm not sure what anniversaries have to do with not honoring someone's reservations.
They did have bellydancers wandering about, which were pretty good, not to mention some other specialty acts. One girl juggling fire was impressive to watch, but the other girl, who did this trapeze-like dance up on a giant plume of silk anchored to the ceiling, wouldn't drop this ear-to-ear grin which seemed to say, "You can also see me do this naked at the Cabaret Royale! With a banana up my ass! You'd like that wouldn't you?" We all agreed that a serious and mysterious pouty look would have served her much, much better. But alas, the Kathy-Lee-Gifford-in-a-G-string grin was all there was. It just seemed . . . creepy. Dirty.
A pretty disappointing experience all around.
About the only entertaining moment of the night was when we acquired another item for my strange Chinese tattoo collection. Our waitress (if you can call someone who refuses to actually bring you anything, but does stop by to glare at you and empty the table's ashtray every half hour or so) had something tattooed on her back, which after much squinting, I finally came to sort of recognize as:
林母玉
The job was a little bit sloppy, but the last character was definitely Yu, the character for jade. "Hey Ben," I said, thinking I couldn't keep a straight face asking her myself, "I have a quest for you. Ask our waitress what her tattoo means."
"Sure, okay," he said. "Why? What's it mean?"
"Yeah, what does it mean?" the rest of the group asked.
"I can't see that middle character very well, plus it's kind of squished, but I think it means 'Forest Surrounding Jade?' Maybe 'Forest Mother Jade?' Regardless, I'm willing to bet that's not at all what she thinks it means."
Ben got up a few minutes later and talked to the girl a little, including a point where she kind of turned her back to let him look. He hopped back up on her barstool. "I thought she wasn't American. She had this German kind of accent. Anyway, she said it's for her last name. It means 'Mai'? I don't get it."
We were all a little perplexed. Then suddenly it hit me. That's why the characters looked messy. Someone had made the branches of the Lin trees sort of touch in the middle, and made the hangy down parts of Mu hang down a little further, so the whole thing vaguely resembled M A I. Mai. As if the characters were actually letters or something.
When I explained my epiphany to the others, much laughter ensued. The poor girl picked up on what we were laughing at, and had a guy next to her reach over and cover the small of her back with his hand, and I felt a little guilty, but not terribly.
"You know," said Kelley, "I think that's yet another argument why starting your Chinese tattoo consulting business would be a very, very good idea." Those are my thoughts as well. That's the whole reason it's such a fascinating topic to me — that roughly 60% of people with Chinese character tattoos, in my experience, wind up with something utterly wrong, and even though they're willing to get this thing permanently emblazoned on their skin for people to laugh at for years and years, they're not willing to do 10 minutes of research to find out what it's about.
I still can't wait until I see a really outrageous one.
I'm holding out for one of those strategically placed tattoos (you know where I mean — that small-of-the-back divet where they all seem to land) which reads, "Put your money here," or even "Insert coin for service." I think that would be my favorite.