RI Bartenders: The Latest Pick-Up Lines

Friday, July 22, 2011

Maggie Lange, GoLocalProv Contributor

I thought there was a yet-to-be coined adage: people who invent pick-up lines, probably have never used them. The pick-up lines floating around are usually painfully cheesy, rude, and misguided. With this barrage of negatives, the likelihood any of these lines would ever be used seems highly improbably.

I was recently corrected by bartenders who serve drinks in what could easily be defined as Providence’s pick-up corridor: the bars lining Thayer Street. Pick-up lines have not improved, and people still spout out the worst of the worst.

Coming from the fratty sports bar Spats, to the high-heeled stomping grounds at Karta Bar, the English Alehouse (Ye Olde Liquid Lounge) to Viva’s glossy marble-topped counter, bartenders share their horror stories, the funniest, and much more than is fit to print. “You’ve come to d-bag central,” decries one pretty bartender before spouting a few that have come her way.

There do seem to be some a few themes to the lines the bartenders hear:

Clothing Cues

Are you wearing space pants? Your [rear] is out of this world! – English Alehouse
(Following checking the tag of your desired) I’m right, made in heaven. – Karta Bar

Restaurant Variety

(As an answer to ‘Do you see anything you want on the menu?’) Are you on the menu? – Spats
(To a bartender) Do you have Sex on the Beach? – Spats

Faux-Confusion

I’m lost; can I come home with you? – English Alehouse
I lost my number; can I have yours? – Karta Bar

The Animal Kingdom

How much do polar bears weigh? Enough to break the ice. – English Alehouse
Something remarkably inappropriate about nuts and squirrels. – Karta Bar

Grammatically Impossible

If I could rearrange the alphabet, I would put you and I together. – English Alehouse

Pick-up Off-Thayer? Not so much...

However, while these terrible pick-ups apparently abound on Thayer, bartenders from other parts of the city report that they haven’t heard people use pick-up lines in ages.

“I think if you gave most people a line like they would think, what planet are you from? Or they will think ‘Oh how ‘60s!’” says Craig, a bartender at Gallery. He says that his clientele is more direct. “Most people I’ve seen just start talking,” says Craig, “and from what I can hear, they’ll just swap numbers. I really don’t hear any pick-up lines.”

Another fly bar, which also caters to LGBT clientele, reports that the only line he’s heard, and he hears it frequently, is: “Yo, come over here.” He says that he hasn’t heard people at the bar use lines, and thinks they are on the way out.

“Most of the time, they’ll just grab someone and not say anything. Just being honest.”

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