The Tale Of The Most Depressing Bar In Georgia

It's called The Bayou Cafe.  Located on the riverfront in Savannah, Georgia, it's located smack dab in the middle of a strip of shops that can only be described as a tourist's wet dream.  Sitting on the stoop that leads up the black metal staircase into the Bayou is a townie, his white tshirt sticking to his skin from sweat.  He's crouched over and looks like he should be playing a harmonica but his hands are empty.

We had just driven in from Charleston a few hours before where we had laid on a beach that displayed a shocking resemblance to New Jersey.  Now two hours south in Savannah, we walked through the city, our bodies covered in sand from the knees down.  Into the Bayou we go, bar music ahead of us, an old man singing to a crowd of five behind us.

Here's the thing about The Bayou Cafe.  From the outside, it doesn't have any excitingly attractive features, but you figure since it's in Savannah it has to have some kind of coolness factor to it.  And it sounded like there was a fairly good blues band in there too.  It was muggy enough outside to already feel like a bayou, so I was feeling pretty good about this place.  Besides, I have a inexplicable crush on dive bars.  Call me low-maintenance.  

So we walk into the bar.  And we stop.  There's not a band, there's a pre-bypass John Popper sitting on a stool with an electric guitar and laptop in front of him.  He's playing sound effects off the computer, mostly trying to wake up the patron (who, as it turned out, worked there) who was passed out cold on the bar, an empty pitcher of beer next to his head.  Chickens clucked, men snored, dogs barked, slutty girls moaned- this guy had a veritable circus of sounds on his laptop.  Meanwhile, the seven of eight people in the bar, bartender included, were hysterical with laughter.  Them and their twelve teeth had apparently never before in their life experienced such an unbelievable act of talent and hilarity.  On the other hand, John Popper seemed to hate his life a little more with each cow moo.

We order our drinks and get a table in the back corner, away from everyone.  The chairs wobbled and the table top was covered in rice.  A la post-wedding.

Guitar man asks the audience for song requests.  They all seem to be in agreement about the song "Cocaine".  "Cocaine" quickly turns into "Rogain", and once again, the crowd goes wild.  The guy has a pretty good voice, I'll give him that.  But he barely touched his guitar.  The majority of music was pre-programmed into his laptop and he was visibly reading the words off the screen.  One of the people I was with leans over to me and whispers, "This guy loathes himself."  I frowned sadly and nodded.  After each song, we were treated to a story of all the high class celebrities that have passed through this very bar while this guy was playing.  Had we been there a few years earlier, we would have been in the presence of the incomprable Tom and Roseanne Arnold, not to mention the epic Rosie O'Donnell who proceeded to get food poisening at a Wendy's down the street.  And again, whoops of elation from the crowd.

At one point the guy asked where everyone was from.  There was a couple from Virginia, a guy from Tennessee, and then us, from Philly.  I almost felt embarrassed admitting that had driven through eight states to sit in the corner, rice up to our ankles, listening to a guy press play on his iTunes.

We made it through one drink.  The whole scene was almost too much to take.

As we walked out of the Bayou Cafe, the guy in the white shirt was gone from the bottom of the steps, but the old man across the street was still singing, although this time no one was watching.