{"id":4253,"date":"2018-02-19T10:13:12","date_gmt":"2018-02-19T09:13:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/?p=4253"},"modified":"2021-04-02T10:36:15","modified_gmt":"2021-04-02T08:36:15","slug":"one-more","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/?p=4253","title":{"rendered":"One More"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>If you are traveling home after midnight on trams, there’s a 97% chance you’ll be at Lazarsk\u00e1<\/span> at some point. On the night tram schedule, Lazarsk\u00e1<\/span> seems to be the center of the tram universe. It is also home to a pub that is hidden in plain sight. It\u2019s right on the main road, it even has a sign. And though I have been there a few hundred times, my eyes still scroll past it a couple of times before locking in on it. It\u2019s like trying to see the hidden image in one of those hologram paintings. We call it the Lazarsk\u00e1<\/span> Joint.<\/p>\n

I find myself at the Lazarsk\u00e1<\/span> Joint in the same situation. It\u2019s always late (often after midnight), so all of the other pubs in the city of Prague have been shut down under the time-obsessive tyranny of dictatorial waiters. I am usually with my buddy L. And despite the fact that the pub I\u2019d been at has closed, we have decided that instead of going home, we just need one more. The Lazarsk\u00e1<\/span> Joint is the \u201cone more\u201d place.<\/p>\n

It’s Tuesday. Heading to the Lazarsk\u00e1<\/span> Joint ensures that the next day will be awful. I know it. L knows it. But we are too engaged in conversation or having too much fun, or we are simply not willing to give up the ghost of the night to turn it in quite yet. This is around the time L comes out with proverbs like \u201cin for a penny in for a pound\u201d or \u201cmight as well be hanged as a sheep for a lamb.\u201d And this is all it takes to talk me into one more, thus rendering my next day an achy period of vast confusion.<\/p>\n

But at about 12ish a.m. when we find a table at the Lazarsk\u00e1<\/span> Joint none of that matters yet.<\/p>\n

It looks like a place that should be at the intersections of a night tram connection hub. It\u2019s dirty, dark, and drab, the clientele match the d\u00e9cor. They hunch over beers, mourn the day cigarettes were banned in the country\u2019s pubs. They talk in slur, the universal language of those who\u2019ve had one too many but want one more. The key for the toilet hangs on a rope from a hook behind the bar. One of the urinal\u2019s pipes does not connect so urine splashes onto the feet of a newcomer. The barman is as tipsy as all of us, his pupils attempt to focus in on us, you can almost hear the whirr of a working camera eye, as if he was artificial intelligence in a 1990s EPCOT exhibit. Drunk barmen always give me pause, as if they are cheating on an unspoken universal agreement.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, we heroically hold onto the night for an hour or so until the all too awful moment of reckoning that it’s time to head home. It’s Tuesday after all, the next day is busy. In one last moment of mercy, L decides to hail a cab. It will get us home faster, thus cutting out the unpleasant ride on a night tram. A ride home on a night tram during the week is cruel, it gives you time to consider what you’ve done and forces you to face reality in a metal cabin with other drunks. It’s like doing the walk of shame but at night.<\/p>\n

There are two cabs parked on the road out front. We peer into the windows, but nobody’s there. Night trams wait in a queue, others barrel down Sp\u00e1len\u00e1<\/span>, nobody in them looks happy. The driver comes out of the Lazarsk\u00e1<\/span> Joint, points us into the cab. We are halfway through the seven minute ride home when I say to L:<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s drunk.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cDrunker than we are,\u201d L corrects.<\/p>\n

Having a drunk cab driver is far more off-putting than having a drunk barman. It’s not only odd, it\u2019s somehow otherworldly, meta, backwards, like a National Lampoon skit in real life. Comparable occupational vortexes are when one\u2019s lawyer gets sent to prison or a world-famous pilot dies in a plane crash while a passenger.<\/p>\n

I do event math. Our cab driver came out of the Lazarsk\u00e1<\/span> Joint, he\u2019s a one more guy too. After the initial laugh of comprehension, I become genuinely worried. I stare at him as he maneuvers backroads. He\u2019s hammered. No GPS. One eye open. Chops sloppily chomping open and closed as if tasting the beer we interrupted by pulling him into service. It becomes less otherworldly and more a stab in the back. We never met each other before this moment, but we trusted him to get us home safely. It\u2019s the unspoken agreement between cab driver and a drunken passenger. My faith in late night humanity is shaken.<\/p>\n

When we get to my house the cab driver pays us 200 Koruna. L (for some reason) informs him that we should be paying him, not vice versa. He nods in surprise, his eyes blink in happiness. What a delightful condition, he must think. L gives him 200 Koruna and that motherfucker probably went back to the Lazarsk\u00e1<\/span> Joint and used it for one more.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you are traveling home after midnight on trams, there’s a 97% chance you’ll be at Lazarsk\u00e1 at some point. On the night tram schedule, Lazarsk\u00e1 seems to be the center of the tram universe. It is also home to a pub that is hidden in plain sight. It\u2019s right on the main road, it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4254,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4253","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/damiengaleone.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/open-late.jpg?fit=4608%2C3072&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1EvEu-16B","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4253","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4253"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4253\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5229,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4253\/revisions\/5229"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4254"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4253"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4253"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4253"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}