The Bad Waitress
Gather your small bills and get to know the mechanized DJ at Eat Street's preeminent postmodern diner.
More Jukeboxing
Where they haven’t been replaced by charmless, trend-crunching tune-bots, jukeboxes say a lot about a place—nay, enhance the place. In Jukeboxing, Decider spends some quarters and punches some buttons at Twin Cites bars and venues. This edition surveys the musical menu at The Bad Waitress.
The box: A grizzled, grey-black Rowe AMi squats next to a miniature palm tree and wall-mounted plastic shark for that Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas feel. Three shiny CDs mounted in the brow of the machine dance a perfectly timed ballet, reflecting rays of Nicollet Avenue sunlight in rainbow patterns on the floor. (Legend says that if you take the 1998 Michelin road atlas of Minnesota and spread it on the floor at the right time of day, a light pattern will align to reveal the location of Garrison Keillor’s hidden gold.)
Price: Three plays for a dollar, seven for two bucks, 18 for a five-spot. Which means you’ll need to shell out that extra dollar to play all 19 tracks from The Cult’s Pure Cult.
Drinkin’ songs: Though the ages, Motley Crüe has always inspired a desire to be 1) drinking, or 2) drunk. Old boozing reliables the Rolling Stones are represented not by the easy pick of an Exile On Main Street or Let It Bleed, but rather 1981’s Tattoo You. For folks who get thirsty watching Uma Thurman and John Travolta twist away in Pulp Fiction, note that The Bad Waitress might be the only place in Minneapolis where you can have a three-dollar happy hour brew and listen to The Supreme Genius Of King Khan And The Shrines whilst debating whether that glamour shot is Marcello Mastroianni or Jack Lord.
Nerd jams: Yeah, there’s The Smiths (to go with the mopey kitten portrait nearby). And yeah, Loverboy is represented. But supreme tribute must be paid to the 16 cuts of Edith Piaf’s Master Serie. Playing this record means either you're totally into chart-topping 78s from the 1930s, or you’re French—both pretty nerdy.
Mixes: This box features not only Pure '80s and More Pure '80s but also three discs' worth of Soft Rock Classics—individually titled California Dreamin’, Summer Breeze, and Into The Night—packing such blockbusters as Doobie Brothers, 10cc, America, Hall & Oates, The Steve Miller Band, and Toto, all with clip art to match.
Locals: None, as Bon Iver is technically from Wisconsin. But there’s only so much space, and how could you hold it against a juke that includes The Shadows’ The Shadows Are Go?
For closing time: Nothing like Iggy Pop’s “The Passenger” to remind everyone it’s time to “get into the car” and “see the stars come out tonight” in the “bright and hollow sky?” Poetry, truly.
Witnesses: Unnamed sources indicate that The Bad Waitress management operates a mysterious invisible hand in jukebox control. (“They just changed the stuff,” one anonymous cashier tells Decider. “They pick what’s in the auto-play queue.”) One can only hope the Bad boss is a musically benevolent soul.
Heavy thought: Part of The Bad Waitress’ inherent novelty is that you fill out your own order on a card using the entrée number (#48 is the Croque-Monsieur, featuring real boar’s head!), then carry it up to the register yourself. Sounds a lot like a music-lover punching song numbers into a jukebox, right? So, isn’t Bad Waitress itself kind of like a jukebox, but for food? Whoa.
