Baby's First Sports Bar

Nevermind Xmas and New Year's. Every baby has a 'first' one of those in her or his first year of life. Yesterday I took Django to his first NFL Playoff game at a sports bar. As you can tell from the photo, he was riveted, absolutely on the edge of his seat the entire time...Or maybe he was just exhausted from the ordeal of getting there, since we left home before kickoff but didn't arrive until a few minutes into the 3^rd quarter...See, it's like I was saying about this 'whole other country' of parenthood, you do NOT know where the hell you're going even if you'd swear you've been down that one particular street a thousand times before.

We started our search for a nice place watch the football game here in Atascadero. Hoover's 101 Cafe had the right NFL Happy Hour signs out front but seemed too brightly lit inside (plus the Hoover people own a place called Hoover's Beef Palace, too, and something about that just didn't sit right with me.) We went on to try A.J. Spurs Dining Hall in 'historic' Templeton. The horse print on the curtains was invitingly ridiculous, but A.J. Spurs looked too much like a ghost town inside. So we drove back to Hoover's. I started to feed the little man in the back seat of the car, giving us both a chance to get fortified for the rest of the experience. But midway through I decided I just couldn't step into Hoover's. The two words, 'Beef Palace,' echoed hauntingly through my brain.

Then, I remembered a place I'd walked by in downtown San Luis Obispo called Mother's Tavern. Has a nice ring, right? When I called, they said they had the game playing on 3 different tvs and a full menu. Great, I thought, just the place for us. No problem that Dj was screaming at the top of his lungs for having his lunch so rudely interrupted. Not gonna let the torrential rain and gale force winds set us back, either. Also, no big deal that Dj had also just peed all over his outfit; I brought a backup. Ditto with regard to the new spit-up all over his tiny fleece jacket. And so what if in my haste I wedged the stroller in the back seat in such a way that one or another of us was whacking into it at every turn as I finished nursing. Dammit, I was determined to get us to Mother's Tavern! As it happened, though, what the people at Mother's Tavern neglected to mention when I called was that they also had a live swing band playing at a volume that qualified as deafening no matter where you were in the place.

By the time we found out Mother's was a bust we were 20 miles from Nana's house, successfully outside of the parked car, bundled in clean clothes and a comfy frontpack, quietly holding hands and walking down the misty street. There simply had to be a good end to the story. So we walked on, and on. Finally, I spotted a stroller outside of the Black Sheep Bar & Grill. And as we approached the entrance there was a very nice man leaving, who encouragingly ushered us inside to the bar stool closest to the warm-but-fake fireplace. We sat – and breathed a deep sigh of relief.

The Black Sheep Bar & Grill turned out to be perfect – good food, Guinness on tap, dimly lit with twilight streaming through the windows. The game was on. The fans were enthusiastic but not dangerous. I wrote thank you notes during commercial breaks, and Dj squeezed me every time there was an exciting play and somebody whooped, clapped or hollered at the tv. There was also a buxom, blonde barmaid serving us. I desperately wanted to ask her for a photo op with the boy. But at the last minute I realized that was probably one 'first' Dj'd be happier to have at a later date without his mom around.