Taco Tuesday

Man, if I had one of those things, it'd be so much easier to make tacos...

One of my great passions in life is free food. It just doesn’t get much better than a meal that you know you don’t have to pay for – and while in the long run there is supposedly no such thing as a free lunch, in the short term I am more than willing to attend your Campus Young Republicans for Christ meeting if there’s free pizza (preferably Papa John’s).

Almost as good as free food is ludicrously cheap food. Sure, you’re still spending money, but if you can feed yourself using only pocket change I’d say that you’re still doing pretty well (please note that this does not count if you eat the pocket change). IKEA is a pioneer in this field, thanks in part to their 50-cent hot dog, among other menu items. Sure, you may have just spent $20,000 on disassembled furniture with cute names* and the hot dog is probably made of hair and pig anus anyway, but still! Think of the savings!

*My desk chair is named Rutger. This is as close as I will ever get to realizing my dream of sitting on Rutger Hauer’s lap.

Free or cheap alcohol, as I have recently discovered, is also something to cherish. Booze costs a lot more than soda – most likely because the principal ingredients are more than high fructose corn syrup and seltzer water – but the experiences it provides last a lifetime. The problem is that far fewer campus organizations offer free alcohol as an incentive to attend their meetings (save for certain fraternities, but then you’re expected to put out).

At the intersection of cheap booze and cheap liquor lies Taylor’s Bar and Grill, the campus watering hole right across the street from the University. Just as Optimus Prime can change from an ordinary truck into an awesome heroic robot, every Tuesday Taylor’s changes from an ordinary bar into an awesome heroic source of 50-cent tacos and $1 well drinks. Both, also, are from space.

It’s been painful these past few months, watching my over-21 friends go to Taylor’s on Tuesday nights sober and hungry and come home drunk and on the verge of vomiting up record numbers of tacos.* So many of my friends go to Taco Tuesday that Facebook is more or less a ghost town on Tuesdays from 9:00 until 11:00, after which it comes alive again with drunken status updates and embarrassing pictures.

*The current record in the Oregon Marching Band is 13 tacos in one night, set yesterday by our tiniest Asian. I challenge you, readers, to outdo him next week.

Last night was my first night at Taco Tuesday, and it definitely did a lot to wash out the bad taste left in my mouth by my negative bar experience in Salem last week. Sure, the drinks were mixed with the cheapest of alcohol and the taco meat was probably made of hair and cow anus, but seldom have I found both savings and Good Times in the same place at once.

My thoughts:

Amaretto and Coke is a really good drink. Yes, I know that it’s also traditionally what bridesmaids drink before getting knocked up by somebody’s cousin at a wedding reception, but did you ever consider that maybe they drink it because it’s delicious?

The salt/tequila/lime shot, on the other hand, did not live up to my expectations. I’d heard my parents talk about it and watched drunk girls try to figure out the steps at parties* - hell, it was in Caddyshack, for God’s sake, and if that doesn’t give something legitimacy, I don’t know what does. But all I got out of it – and hey, who knows, maybe I did it wrong – was three distinctly unpleasant tastes, followed by the gripping fear that I, like 80% of all people who consume tequila, would become violently ill.

*”So, wait… It’s lime, salt, tequila?”
“No, no, it’s tequila, lime, tequ- no, salt!”
“Maybe it’s salt, tequila, lime?”
“Yeah, let’s try that!”
“Okay, so it’s tequila, salt, lime?”
“No, wait, what are we doing?”

Karaoke could not exist without alcohol. I watched people get up on that stage who clearly knew that they had no business singing in front of people, but had been led to believe that maybe alcohol enhances your vocal cords (after all, it worked for Johnny Cash, Eric Clapton, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Elvis…).

Dead Week is the best time to go to Taco Tuesday, because all the bros who would ordinarily be there are instead at home, desperately cramming in hopes of passing a couple of classes, whereas the rest of us have the time to go out and grab a drink or two before going home to desperately cram in hopes of passing a couple of classes.

Lines do not exist in bars. I learned this the hard way when I stood behind a guy waiting to order at the bar and then watched several other people walk up to the open spaces on my right and left and order ahead of me. There is no reason that a line wouldn’t exist at the bar – it would still serve the purpose of “first come, first served” – but it simply doesn’t. When it comes to alcohol, it’s every man for himself.

Lines DO exist in the bathroom, something that I also learned the hard way.

Truman Capps is going to find every bar in Eugene that offers cheap tacos on a certain night, and then he will reap the savings all week long.