The beach. A mostly hot, crowded, and dirty place where you leave with your skin burned and sticky with sand. A place where otherwise intelligent parents haul their whining children across country to complain about the heat. For the life of him, John could never see the attraction of it all. It could be because he was relatively pale and out of shape. The beach was nothing to him but a place to work. Jealous of the buff beachcombers he found it much easer to scoff at them than join them. Oddly enough there was a time when surfing had his full attention, but that was mainly to get chicks back in high school. Now he was dealing in the real world.
The Sundowner was located on the busy corner of High Tide Drive and Cactus Avenue nearly seven blocks from his office. It attracted a good mix of locals and curious tourists. The locals were the mainstay but a few tourists stumbled in from time to time for the good seafood. The shrimp was the specialty for the cook and part owner, Norman Old. He had hired John's band after hearing a garage made demo tape. The other owner was John's long time friend and keyboard player, Brad Carrey. The two men bought the place as sort of a joke from a woman who had the place, at one time, in money making condition. She enjoyed a steady flow of regulars and a killer house band. But she suffered through a bad divorce and the place had to be sold. Brad and Norman picked the place up and had been doing pretty well themselves.
At the time, John thought it was crazy idea. Brad had no business background and no idea of the headaches involved. He did, however, have money from his generous mother and that was all it took. He got with Norman because he knew how to cook and make drinks. At the beginning, he jokingly told John that the Sundowner could be a place for them to always have a gig for their band, Another Day. And as it turned out that was the place they always played. There was no real need to seek out other gigs when they could just leave their stuff set up in one place all the time. Brad would just play his set and then go back to work behind the bar or in the back office.
John pulled into the graveled parking lot and parked around back in the employee only spaces. He gathered his well-worn guitar case from under a blanket in the back of the Jeep and went inside. He noticed Brad's Plymouth parked by the back door. The Sundowner was pretty crowded for a Tuesday night, he noticed.