It. (rasatabula) wrote in repose, @ 2018-08-10 18:27:00 |
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Axel / Evans & Peel: opening (open) thread
Who: Open to anyone
What: The grand opening of the roller-rink and the speakeasy beneath it
Warnings: Doubtful
It came together in a rush toward the end, with a phalanx of staff recruited from the crop of freshly-graduated university students back in the Neighborhood. Jack hadn't precisely expected it would but the flyers had gone up all over town, enthusiasm (and twenty bucks an hour) plastering the trunks of street-lamps and trees alike. The coffee store had been handing them out in abundance and the roller-rink was polished floors, the smell of popcorn from the concession-stand toward the back, thick and buttery and the obscene rainbow blaze of lights overhead in the dim. The doors were open, the entry charge was slashed to two dollars, and the skates were new.
Beneath was another game altogether. Down and to the back and the doorway had 'Evans & Peel: Detective Agency' in discreet, tasteful signage overhead. Within, past the intake desk and the shelf that swung back from the wall as a door, the speak-easy was its own type of dim, heavy woods and vintage bulbs dangling over the bar-top, with quiet corners with red-velvet chairs. The music was faint but Billie Holiday crooned over the clink of glassware. There was a spot midway between bar and the back-booths that had a number of the bulbs hung overhead, and a stool square beneath it, and there was a piano tucked into the back-wall. Billie would do for now, but the place was set up for late night music over a glass.
Jack went between the two to begin with, the roller-rink in the last of the summer's daylight dimming into dusk and below, into Evans & Peel when the dusk settled into night. It was noise and chaos and loud above, and jazz below and the town came out of curiosity and frankly, Jack imagined, a lack of anything else to do on a Friday evening.