Stamford Summer Bar Tour - [9] G/r/a/n/d.

Last Thursday a group of coworkers and I were taken out by some reps to Duo. Our guests were rather enamored with the whole Alive @ Five scene, but by the time we got out there was only the remaining shreds of teenage shrapnel that fill the void after all the young professionals abandon the streets for the surrounding bars at music's end. We eventually made our way to G/r/a/n/d on Bank St. What is with the s/l/a/s/h/e/s by the way? I'll make one allowance for them, but from her on out in this post I can't be bothered.

Grand is Stamford's swanky downtown lounge. It often features DJs or at the very least is playing some clubby music. There really isn't much room to bust a move though. I for one love the fact Stamford has no "clubs". If you already have a girlfriend there is especially no need to endure this courting ritual. I'm more of a head bob at a rock show guy. I'd totally be down for living in the Footloose town pre-Kevin Bacon. Whenever my girlfriend wants to dance I can safely say, "Oh, there's no dancing in Stamford, how do you feel about darts?"

This night expense account plastic scored us a bucket full of bottles and table service from our very own shot swilling waitress. While she was friendly and eager to push some new neon nectar every 15 minutes my favorite waitress interaction came a few years ago when I first started working in Stamford. I was living up another corporate sponsored excursion at Grand when a noticed a familiar looking Cappricio waitress standing all by herself looking quiet sullen. The Cappricio scene seems to usually resolve into Grand at some point in the night but this scout had perhaps arrived too early. Mistaking her cool indifference to folly of existence as loneliness, I decided to break the ice.


"Hi, you're a waitress at Capriccio right?" Without so much as averting her gaze from straight ahead she said in a thick, interchangable Eastern European accent, "Yes, I served you a pizza".

At that point she turned her neck and faced complete opposite direction. That pretty much sums up the attitude I've taken away from everyone I'm every interacted with at Grand. They would rather face no one in the opposite direction than say anything more than a sentence to me.

In honor of that waitress, here's a song by Atmosphere that I imagine summed up her job at the time.