Oft times my husband and I read at our round marble kitchen table in companionable silence. Every now and then, we come across something to share. Once in a while that shared something changes our lives..
Several years ago, while reading a glossy slick extreme sports magazine targeted toward extreme mega males, my husband lights up like a thousand watt light bulb and says, "Cat! Listen to THIS! There's a bar in the United States, that's not really in the United States because it's on some island. The island has no name. The bar has no name. The streets to the bar have no name. No one knows where the bar is. If they do know, they won't tell you. Because if you ever find the bar, it's tradition to hang up a dollar bill with your name or a message on it to prove that you've been there. The bar is literally covered in dollar bills!" I said, "What?!" He said, "It's the hardest bar to find in the entire country. Now how cool is that? And, of course, it doesn't advertise." We made a pact to FIND THE BAR.
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And we did. We have the t-shirts to prove it.
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We figured out that the 'dollar bill bar', as we called it, was on one of the islands in the Conch Republic. "Conchs", the natives of the Republic, are notoriously tight-lipped about their islands' delights; the 'dollar bill bar' being one of them. When we asked about the bar, natives literally laughed in our faces. They said, "You'll never find that bar. People have lived here for years and not found that bar. No one finds that bar." We laughed back and said, "Oh, but we're not 'no one'. Or maybe we are. Because you said, "No One finds it." We will find that bar. We will. We're on a mission. We're on a quest. We drove two thousand miles with that bar as our objective. We absolutely will find that bar."
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After getting our t-shirts, we were wearing them proudly, when someone asked us, "Are you from here?" We said, "No. We're from our own island. Up north." We said, "Why?" They replied, "Because of your t-shirts. No one can find that bar. Absolutely no one. Locals can't find that bar. It's a legend." Established in 1936, it's been around a long time. We said, "Have you been there?" They said, "Nope. Can't find it." We said, "Keep looking. It's worth the trip and the food is even good. They throw pizza on an old board and feed it to you. The whole place is a gas. We loved it."
