Take a Dive: Drunk on the Spirit(s)

Danny Bob’s Hideout brings together an unlikely group of regulars

Danny Bob’s Hideout, like Buckaneer at 11th and Harvard, is, by virtue of location and aesthetic, both a townie and college bar. Attached to a modest Days Inn a stone’s throw from Oral Roberts University, Victory Christian Center, and the Cityplex Towers, it welcomes the Inn’s out-of-towners. 

Still, it’s not by any stretch a traditional “hotel” bar. Some patrons claim this is where the more rebellious ORU students go to break the Christian university’s honor code, which stipulates that no student will consume alcohol or tobacco, among other things, while enrolled. They told me how to spot the students. Just look for random clusters of fresh-faced kids reveling louder than the rest, crooning a Taylor Swift song on karaoke night. “Hideout” is humorously apropos. 

The old truism about churches and bars in Tulsa is alive and drunk on the Spirit here. The collision of the carnal and the pious generates a subversive, upbeat energy that’s intoxicating.   

On a particular Wednesday, I arrived at Danny Bob’s by myself and squeezed into the last open stool at the corner end of the bar. 

I ordered a bucket of beer (it was on special, and I planned on being there a while) and lit a cigarette. I scanned the room and soaked in the energy and the smoke. In a moment of shame I realized my smoke was assaulting the couple sitting across from me. I watched the carcinogenic tentacles travel from my cigarette and wrap around their faces and prepared for a dirty look, but they were intensely focused on the Thunder/Clippers game playing out on the flatscreen above us. 

As the smoke poked and prodded at their devout, unblinking gaze, I fruitlessly waved my hand at the cloud, maybe a little too close to their faces. I apologized a little too quietly. They didn’t respond. I bent my arm at various angles in an effort to divert the trail of toxins. I held the cigarette first above my head, which kind of worked but I looked like an idiot. I tried hiding the cigarette below the bar, but the smoke monster knew how to turn corners. Regardless of my positioning, the airflow from the ceiling vent seemed hellbent on carrying the smoke straight into their eyes.

I finally stubbed the cigarette in the ashtray and thought once more about quitting. 

I turned away and joined the couple in focusing on the third quarter of the Thunder game. DeAndre Jordan flew through the air and completely butchered an easy dunk. The bar cheered. The couple laughed derisively. I looked at them and chuckled, too, eager to join the moment of solidarity. The game went into a timeout and commercial break. The couple finally acknowledged me. 

“Hey, buddy, you mind if I bum one of those cigarettes from you?” the man asked me. “I promise I won’t ask you for another one.”

“Of course!” I said, a little too enthusiastically. 

“Hey,” he said to me with mock seriousness, “we’ve been here several hours and this is my first cigarette. I’m doing good.” 

His girlfriend rolled her eyes and smirked. “He prob’ly hasn’t heard a word I’ve said all night. He’s just thinking, ‘cigarette, cigarette,
cigarette.’” 

We made conversation as the game wore on, but only during commercial breaks, when the couple’s intense reverence for their team gave way to an affable curiosity about the stranger next to them. We discussed sports and movies and the ORU drinkers (“Such nice people,” they both agreed), and then the game would return and we’d all go silent. 

The game ended (107-101, Thunder win) and the woman’s face, so serious and committed, relaxed into a bright, tipsy glow. 

“You play pool?” she asked me. Not very well, I told her. “That’s okay. You wanna play a game?”

We played doubles, myself and another friendly stranger versus the couple. I was predictably terrible, but my far-more-talented partner was gracious and forgiving. We played several games, switching partners along the way. My team always lost.  

They asked me to play a fourth game, but I opted out. We were all a little drunk, and our goodbye was awkwardly emotional. A lot of so-nice-to-meet-you and hope-to-see-you-again and we’re-here-all-the-time and I’ll-definitely-be-back. 

“I’ll definitely be back,” I repeated to them. They nodded, but there was disbelief behind their eyes. It was like when I visited a youth group as a teenager. The young counselor sent to grill me, a visitor, about the state of my soul (“Do you know Jesus?”) gave me the same look when I cut our time short to go play video games in the arcade next door. “I’ll definitely be back,” I told him. And he gave me the same look, that “you-really-should-come-back-because-it-would-be-beneficial-to-your-life-but-I-know-you-probably-won’t” look of barely hidden sorrow and compassion. 

The counselor was right; I never went back to that youth group. But I’ll probably go back to Danny Bob’s.