Tilted Kilt

Mitch and I ate at the Tilted Kilt the other day. We realized after entering that it was the pub version of Hooters. All the servers and hosts were female and wore boots,a short plaid skirt, a push-up bra thing, and a ... blouse? a white half-shirt that was open in the front and tied around the rib cage. (We're talking bare stomachs, which I thought was unkind. I'm thinking the outfits weren't designed by a woman.)

And what surprised me about this whole experience -- I have never been to a Hooters or a strip club or anything like that -- was how cheesy it all was. I had thought it would be scandalizing. Like all these lewd women would be the moral equivalent of pustules, or even have physical pustules. On their face.

Or, you know, there's the whole genre of stories where a woman has to sell her body for the sake of her starving children or because it's snowing. The scantily-clad establishment being the symbol for everything that is wrong and tragic in the world.

And instead I thought, "Come on, really?" First, the push-up bras. Everybody gets a bang out of breasts being lifted. It's like boobs are trucks and the whole world lives east of Union Blvd.

I thought I would be saddened or outraged or something, but instead I found it kind of silly. I mean, pubs do fairly well with short bearded men in T-shirts tending bar. I don't quite understand TK's business strategy. The place was mostly empty. There was another couple at a table behind us. The man was watching TV and the woman would frequently look at the ceiling. There was a very fat man sitting at the bar by himself yelling at the football game and heckling the bar tender. Otherwise it was quiet.

Tilted Kilt is pretty close to the adult version of Chucky Cheeses: not the classiest of establishments, pizza's lousy but you can drink beer, and not strictly something to worry about. A little sub par, but whatever.