Thursday arrived and we all woke and the first thing after showers and getting dressed was trying to figure out some place for breakfast . Miners had found a little place a mile or so down the road and we went there . It was Steve and Sue , me and Big Bird . The food was good . The atmosphere was good but like a lot of things in that area . It was expensive , and I don ’ t really eat a whole lot for breakfast or any meal for that matter . But we enjoyed it and we brought some bacon back for the other girls to have while they were getting dressed . The girls were going to go shopping so they caught the shuttle to a big mall that was nearby . Me , Big Bird and Stevan went out and rambled around doing room to room trading . The hotels , in my three experiences at NABA , have always been suburban and kind of sprawling . And this one was a similar deal . There were four quadrants to the hotel , and you went around in circles , but they were squares . You always ended up back at a central part of the building where the elevator was and if you kept just kind of going around and went to the north , east and then the Northwest and then the southwest and then the southeast you ’ d end up covering the whole floor , but it still was a little confusing . Nonetheless , there was all kinds of fantastic Breweriana to see and enjoy and for people to buy . There were some Grain Belt items there and I ’ ll tell you what I bought later I didn ’ t really bring home very much but I sure had a good time . Big Bird and Stevan both scored well . You probably saw their Facebook posts at the time , so you know , so it was a very successful show . As Thursday progressed , we bumped into the Big Un ( Dave Unwin ) and he wanted to go out and hit a dive bar for a beer . Well Schaumburg is a rather upscale suburb , so we weren ’ t sure we ’ d find one but of course , Dr . Hamm ’ s had already found one , so he told us where it was and off we went . It was a little place called The Hideout in what you would call a small strip center and it was the only occupied business in this strip center . And it certainly qualified as a dive bar . The folks in there were definitely professional drinkers , and very nice . It was in the afternoon and there was only a couple of people in the bar . We visited with them and had fun talking and the bartender was super friendly and so was the cook . They invited us back for karaoke that night . So I bought around for the house and we drank that up and decided it was time to get back to the hotel . It was Missy ’ s birthday , and everybody wanted to go do karaoke .
Paul ’ s Tavern
So back to The Hideout we went . As I ’ m walking in the door , there was six of us and I was first in line a little short , heavyset , Mexican fellow comes out with his cheeks full and his lips pressed together as if he was about to blow chunks all over the parking lot . He leaned down on the hood of a car and I thought “ I ’ m gonna get past him before he explodes ”. Everybody walked past , but by the time Big Bird was coming in the guy fell , hit his head on a car and Big Bird had to pick him up by his belt . Wow ! He was offered a cab fare and refused it . And said he only lives seven miles away . Apparently , he must have got home because nobody heard anything about any bad accidents or problems , but we hope that he did . The karaoke was fun . We got going with that around 830 . It ’ s one of those places where they have karaoke four nights in a row Wednesday through Saturday . And the regulars in there , like most places , were putting their names up and the karaoke DJ knew who they were and he was letting them sing . Well , we started putting our names up and I ’ m not saying that we ’ re great singers or anything . Some of us are , some of us are just average . But the crooners at The Hideaway left a lot to be desired . So we started singing and pretty soon like DJ says “ where the hell did you people come from ?” He was kind of taken aback . So he was mixing
us in with some of the regulars and like I said they ’ re professional drinkers . I think those four nights are just a repeat of the night we ’ ve witnessed . We also brought in our ringer Barry Travis for his special rendition of Purple Rain , which brought the house down . You might want to check out the video I ’ ve included here in the magazine so you can see the full version . It ’ s impressive if you ’ ve never seen it before . Well , the 1030 shuttle came and Miners headed back to the hotel .
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