Here's a tip for everyone uncertain what bar/club to try out in a new city, if it includes the word Station do not go. This epiphany struck me as my friend Hinton and I stood inside Jacksonville's Bourbon Street Station on a recent Wednesday night. Bourbon Street Station in Jacksonville is located in the middle of nowhere and vaguely resembles an airplane hanger from the outside. The place is huge. It wouldn't have surprised me to see people with bags mistakenly trying to check in at the entrance. In fact, this place is larger than the Jacksonville airport.

Hinton and I sampled the finer wings of the establishment. There was a terminal dedicated to hip-hop, a place dedicated to college circa 1942 (inventively named the Varsity Lounge) a Blues room (although surprisingly the Blues room played no blues music, I think in Bourbon Street parlance, this was the older black people's room), a country-western terminal replete with a mechanical bull and a line-dancing floor, and a long walkway filled with milling pedestrians angry about their delayed flights. Thankfully all these rooms and all these disparate personalities were connected by the same game being shown on approximately forty-three different sized televisions: the Miami Heat-San Antonio Spurs game which brought everyone together in mutual disinterest. Incidentally I think this should be the slogan for the NBA regular season: No matter what color you are, you don't really care. If Martin Luther King Jr. were still alive today, I think this would be his poll-tested racial harmonizing slogan.

"And I have a dream that one day, black and white children, jews and gentiles, mongoloids and europeans, will not care about who wins a regular season NBA game featuring some player from Croatia."

As we stood around waiting for the mechanical bull riding contest to begin, it occurred to me that I had been in this bar before, actually several bars like this before and they all shared something in common, the name Station.

In my adult life, I've been to three bars/clubs that include the name station in different corners of the country (ok, the East Coast plus Nashville). There's Georgetowne Station in Washington, D.C., Graham Central Station in Nashville, Tennessee and the aforementioned Bourbon Street Station in Jacksonville. After each visit, I left drunkenly inquiring what time the train was scheduled to arrive, had consumed abundant amounts of alcohol for prices averaging .85 cents each, and had spent the entire time wondering what metaphysical mystery could lead all bars named Station to attract this many people. So I decided to catalogue the Station phenomenon and give people an idea what to expect while you are there. I am certain that every city has their own Station.

1. All crowds eighteen and up will be admitted. You will be marked as eligible to buy alcohol and given a colored band that later that night you will spend over ten minutes trying to remove.

2. Someone will run a haphazard wand over your body to check for weapons. The wand will beep five times on you (change, cell phone, belt, shoes, and nine-millimeter) and the wander will not care.

3. The entrance hall will be cavernous and no one will be there. You may be tempted to turn around and request your money back but you can never get your money back. The guy at the front door will say something like, "It gets really crowded..."and the bass will drown out the rest of his sentence.

4. Taste will have already left the station. Every woman you see will be emphasizing whatever asset she has to the extreme. Most of these "assets" will not be very enjoyable. If a girl is fat, she will wear a cleavage shirt and pants so tight you can literally see the stretch-marks. If a girl is not fat she will already have three children, potentially at the bar with her. Usually these kids will not have bands.

5. There will be more jerseys than at the actual Pro-Bowl. The guy who is wearing the Bret Favre jersey will get beaten up later that night.

6. If a girl is thin, she will be underage. Seriously. There are more fourteen year-olds in these places than thirty-four year olds. And most of the thirty-four year olds you see are mothers who snuck in their daughters to help them draw attention from the men.

7. Some skinny white guy in an Allan Iverson jersey will bump into you on purpose and call you "Cuz."

8. There will be a contest. Said contest will be either, wet t-shirt, bull-riding, hard body, or a debate among leading Senate candidates.

9. Fat men in jeans and boots hate all dancing unless other people join them and dance in a line. This is known as irony, a word these same men associate with women's work.

10. No one will tip the bartender even though drink specials are a dollar or less. Seriously, if you tip the bartender a dollar she will later body surf your drinks to you and then hold your empty glass so you can piss without standing in line for the bathroom.

11. Lots of white people will dance in the hip-hop room and will sing along with rap songs. Every time there are lyrics or words in a rap song that are not socially acceptable to utter, they will awkwardly wave their arms and grind their fat girl harder.

12. If you are wearing a hat and it is worn as a hat was originally attended, that is brim facing forward, you will be made as an undercover police officer.

13. The attractive women there will be any age from 18-23 and once they hit 24 they will personify the phrase: "Rode hard and put up wet."

14. A fight will break out and people will scatter in every direction. Thankfully everyone was wanded. Wait Bret Favre guy just got shot...and stabbed.

15. Nelly's "Itz getting hot in herrre" will come on and everyone will forget about the guy who got stabbed and shot. A fat girl will slip and slide into his pool of blood and her friends will laugh.

16. The bathroom line will extend past two runways. One guy will try and cut and there will be another fight. You will make awkward conversation with the guy standing in front of you about how hard community college would be if he were admitted. From prior experience you will end the conversation by extending your fist and saying, "Keep it real." Your new friend will nod appreciatively.

17. Strippers on their night off will arrive and win every contest. Some guy who works at Pep Boys will hit on said strippers mercilessly and will be rejected forty-eight times. His friend in a Terrell Owens jersey will console him, "Come on man, they just hos," he will say.

18. Your friends will convince you to dance. The only girls who want to dance with you will be the only girls you would rather die than dance with so instead you will focus on some guy with a buzz cut who has some girl with six tattoos doing the reverse cowgirl on top of him. Someone near you will say something like, "Yo check out my man, he a playa for real."

19. From somewhere a bell will be tolled. This will be the sign for something important but you will have no idea what said bell means. You will hope it is tolling for them and not for thee.

20. There will be a rumor that someone famous is there. For a time you will get interested. Later you will hear the name of the famous person and have no idea who he or she is.

21. You will have consumed thirteen beers and paid a grand total of $11.78 and will find yourself unable to look away from a fat girl who has managed to defy the laws of physics by keeping her nipples covered despite keeping her breasts uncovered. This is a clinical stage of drunkenness known as SNSF (Station Nip-Slip Fixation).

22. You will leave and there will be at least sixteen police cars parked with rotating lights and loud sirens. You may or may not throw up. No matter what happens, you will have been Stationed.

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