Leaving My Mark In The Oak Room.

It used to be that one of my most favorite places in the world to have a cocktail was at the Oak Bar in Boston. It lived inside the Copley Hotel, right in Copley Square. It was near my apartment in Boston's South End. And it was a divine and magical place to have a cocktail with Bail and Frogger (my two gal friend/co-workers at the time... Now we're even closer friends).

Anyway... I liked the bar because it was very "Old World Masters of the Universe". Leather chairs around low tables. Proper martinis and scotch. Old men having their "power cocktails" while piano music played in the background. If you stuck around past 8pm, you'd see the gentlemen come in with their much younger and overly made-up "girlfriends"**.  We would often be the only group of young woman in the place. And we tapped into the "don't fuck with me" calmness many of the older men in the joint seemed to carry with them.

At least I did.

Anyway... Eventually, the Oak Bar was turned into a trendier and updated version to attract more people to it. And I only went once. There were lights illuminating the underside of the bar. And gone were the proper leather chairs. 

Fuuuccckkkk thhhhhaaaaattttt.

I wanted my old world. Because it was so out of context to who I was. What was I ever going to learn going to the updated version of the place?

But today, I got to visit that same old glamour - kind of. 

Today finds me in San Francisco for a mixture of conference and client meetings. No time for "playing." So the little playing I got to do was at lunch, before my day really got underway in the afternoon. I went into the Oak Room to eat.

The details on the ceiling had me staring upwards for quite a few minutes when I was supposed to be looking at the menu.

The lampshades and the precision of the fixtures... A classic side of me wanted to rip one down and bring it home for my own (though low) ceiling in the dining room.

And the carvings on the ceiling...

The texture. It reminds me of things I see in my dreams. I often dream of big mansions with intricate details such as this. So it was familiar to me. 

I ordered a large bottle of Panna (water) and drank while staring at the ceiling. 

Eventually my lunch showed up. But I was wishing I had a martini glass to leave my mark in that space. Just a little bit of my energy for others to tap into there, long after I am gone.

**Code for "probably hookers."