Mikey Guru typing at you today and I’m in the mood to reminisce. I was looking at some old photos today and I decided that I should write an article about a bar that was one of my favorites when I lived in Memphis. It was a little place called Dish. Six days out of the week it was pretty much like most other clubs, maybe a little smaller than average, overly loud music, and full of overdressed hipsters. But every Wednesday night, it turned into something special.

They called it White Trash Wednesday and it was a thing of beauty that was a joy to behold. It originally started by offering $1 cans of Busch beer, then eventually evolved into a $5 all you could drink keg party. That’s not all. They had long, couches that you and your wife-beater could kick back on, and to top it all off, a DJ spinning all 80’s music, all night. Perfect.

On one Wednesday in particular, Dude Guru had flown into town for a couple of days and was staying at my place. We hadn’t partied in over 6 months , so it called for something special. Before going out we decided to preload by having a few car bombs at the apartment and filling a couple of flasks with Southern Comfort. We arrived about 9:45, the beer bust started at 10. We killed the time by draining most of our backup SoCo and getting to know the bouncer just in case he had to throw us out later (take it from me, this is always a good idea).

By 10:30 we were already the loudest people in the bar. Sometime around 12:30 we forgot about the free beer and began taking shots with everyone we could get to drink with us. By 2:00 we had run up a $350+ bar tab and all of our new drinking buddies had either gotten sick or taken a cab home except for two girls who we had been regaling with our wondrous tales of prior exploits. Basically, double wingmanning. “Dude, how was africa? He just got back from a 2 year peace corps mission to help famine victims.” “He might not look like it, but Mikey’s independently wealthy. His grandfather invented the VCR.” This is not a maneuver that should be attempted by amateurs. Things are going pretty well when the DJ played the song “Jim Dandy”. I immediately yelled that’s not from the 80’s. Piper, one of the girls we were drinking with said, “They always play that when I come here.” I tell her that I actually grew up in a town about ten miles from Black Oak, Arkansas where the band Black Oak Arkansas came from and that I knew the bass player. This is true. Then she tells us that she is Jim Dandy’s daughter. I thought that she was just topping the story, but it turns out this is also true. She drank with us at the bar until it closed, then came back to the apartment with us where more car bombs and SoCo were consumed. She turned out to be a DJ and a pretty awesome person. It was completely random, but somehow things like this seem to happen most of the time when Dude and I get together.

Dish. A keg party with a white trash 80’s theme? That gets a solid 9 out of 10 from me, at least one day a week.