The Purple Lotus

The crowd at the Purple Lotus is just, my gosh, friendly. They might not look that way at first — as I write these words, there is a dude at the bar with serpentine tribal tats wriggling their way down his massive, hamhock forearms, sporting a Marine 'do and a neck roughly the size and shape of a dormant Hawaiian volcano — but they are. This is a peaceable place. Jimbo Scianno's watering hole serves kava, water, and oxygen and absolutely nothing else. But, oh, what kava! It tastes exactly like dirt but goes down like Nirvana. It flares the senses, expands the consciousness, and leads to a damned-near miraculous night's sleep. The water makes a fine chaser, and the oxygen sells for a dollar a minute. You can suck the stuff in its purest form out of a classy little pump dealio they keep near the bar, and it gets the neurons firing faster than they've ever done fired before. The dcor is neo-hipster-white-cum-Tiki-god-chic, and constant surfing videos — not documentaries, just clips of folks surfing — flash across the projection screen above the barkeep's head. Although there is no official entertainment schedule at The Purple Lotus, the crowd is mellow enough that everybody should and does feel free to wander in with a guitar at any given time.