Talking With Steves About Bar Pick-Ups

Lucky Bar, 4:45 p.m. Two men—decently attractive, wedding band-free—sit at the end of the entrance bar.

After overhearing me pestering a young waitress for bar pick-up stories, they take interest in my subject matter. Of course, they both have picked up women from bars.  Is the White House white? Is Lucky Bar a bar? I wasted my breath even asking.

Notepad out, I ask their names.

They look at each other. "Steve," says one.

"Yeah, Steve Smith," says the other.

"Yeah, Steve Smith—that's my name too," his friend returns.

Okay, so no names.

The Steves establish two things right off the bat. First: They get hit on too—they're not just the pursuers. Steve 1–a brown-haired dude in a short-sleeve white shirt–says about 50 percent of his bar flirtation is instigated by females. In Steve 2's experience, it's about 25 percent of the time.

Second:  "Lines are just awful," S1 says. So no plays-on-words. No Are you wearing spacey underwear because you're out of this world!!! utterances.

We start to talk about the typical "What do you do (professionally-speaking)?" as the classic D.C. line that people ask when they're trying to get to know someone.

S1: "It's annoying. Really, you try to avoid it. It's bullshit chit chat"

S2:  "It's like a filler question." If someone jump-started the convo that way, he wouldn't write off that person as totally boring or probing for salary info. "It's not necessarily a loaded question to get at net worth. If you start with that question and then veer away from it, then come back to it—that's a red flag. They're a cougar maybe!"

His friend isn't up for meandering discussions, regardless. "Rather than have a long, drawn-out conversation there, I'd like to see them again later at a restaurant," he says.

Now, the listening waitress—a recent college grad, who just finished a three-month romance with a Lucky Bar customer—interjects: "Well how do you know they're not crazy?" she says.

S2: "I met my wife at a bar."

He's got his hands folded down below the bar, but moves them up when he goes to sip his drink.

"You're not wearing a wedding ring," I say.

S2: "The whole wedding ring thing, as well as the changing of the last names, goes back to ownership," he says—and then we're talking about European history all of a sudden.  He and his wife aren't into ownership, gold rings, etc. He says he met the woman when he was 22, and they got married seven years later. He's now 38.

I tell him he doesn't look 38, he looks younger.

S2: "That's what the drunk guy said too!" (He just left, but was sitting next to them at the bar.) So here's the secret to love and a youthful appearance: "Stay out of the sun. Come to the bar."