Well it's good to know that raincoaster wasn't the only one going a little wild on Tuesday.

The Shebeen Club benefit was a great time; Al Mader is a hoot and a great and generous performer, the food was excellent and plentiful, the help shushed the drunken Celts downstairs and kept the beverages flowing. Still, $17.50 is not much to show for a fundraiser, it must be said.

And it was said, repeatedly, by me as I went out afterwards to tire out my guilty conscience by taking it for a walk. I got a call from some friends who hadn't been able to make it, to meet them at Whineo's, a new bar on the Granville strip and, not being one to turn down free drinks, I did not, so over I went.

One Negroni and one Dirty L Martini were quickly added to my Shebeen-based glass of Merlot and pint of Strongbow. The bartender congratulated me on ordering the very first Negroni of the establishment, which wasn't really that much of an accomplishment as the place had only been open two days. Still.

Gotta luv a bar with good drinks and a Scooby Doo room.

Somewhere between the second and third olive of the Dirty L, Nina gets a brilliant idea to cheer me up and get me to stop diluting good gin with salty tears: she hands me twenty bucks for the TPaul benefit. Then, with pure evil genius, she turns to Raj and stares at him pointedly in a if you ever want to have sex with me again sort of way and Raj hands over a twenty as well.

Then we head back to the car. We do not get to the car, though. Not yet. We get out of the bar and take two steps down the sidewalk before Raj decides that Sanafir looks alarmingly dark. It looks, in fact, closed, it's so dark. Now, I think we all understand the help that dim lighting can give to certain chickens of the non-Spring-ular variety. Pam Anderson, ferinstance, should never go out in daylight at all, although she cannot appear in candlelight either, for fear parts of her will melt.

But this really was a bit beyond. On the upper floor there was some floodlighting of the ten-watt bulb with a three-dollar scarf thrown over it variety. On the ground floor there were no actual lights of any kind that I noticed. Sydney Smith, who said everything witty that Oscar and Dorothy didn't, was at a dinner party illuminated only by high wall sconces, and this was much like that. He found it was very much like being in Hell, actually, and said so to his diary, who told everyone. "Above there is a blaze of light, and below nothing but darkness and the gnashing of teeth."

Raj decided it was our duty as Vancouverites to check this out. I can now report that Sanafir, while dim, is not closed. If it appears to be closed when you walk by, rest assured it's just the management being discreet. Pound on the door till they let you in; they like that.

Sanafir count: three glasses of Dom Perignon, which we settled for after Nina put the kibosh on Raj's attempts to order the eight hundred dollar bottle of rose. Or the Krug I mentioned. We did get to look at it though. 

Then we went to the car. That we could even find the car at this point is something of a miracle, but Raj was determined to get some work done and that meant ditching the chicks back on the East Side, so to the car we went. Nothing memorable about the drive except that the yellow line showed a surprising tendency to wander from one side of the car to the other and there was a skunk spotted. Hey, it's the Canadian version of "there goes Paris Hilton!"

Nina and I decided that what we really needed at that point was a drink, so we staggered over to Limerick, which is the only bar on the Downtown EastSide I will go into after midnight. After attempting to work and realizing he was better off drinking (who among us has not had that moment of pure insight, eh?) Raj joined us. Limerick count: two pints of Strongbow and a pepperoni stick and everything would have been fine if, with a half-pint left in my glass, the bartender hadn't told us we had five minutes to drink up and leave.

Now, I'm a writer. So it goes against every fibre of my being to leave behind a drink that someone else has paid for. So I looked at the half-pint of Strongbow and vowed inwardly that I would do it justice in the remaining three hundred seconds of bar time.

That's really all I remember.