Sep 5, 2018 3 min read

It’s football season, and we kicked it off by traveling to Charlotte, N.C., where my WVU Mountaineers played Tennessee. That area has huge alumni populations for both schools and provided close proximity for both fan bases. The folks at the stadium were prepared for the enormous crowd, but I don’t think Charlotte’s bars and restaurants saw the huge party coming.

The night before the game, we headed downtown to the Epicenter multiplex of bars, restaurants and shops, and it was packed to the rafters. We shuffled our way through the crowd up to one bar and were happy when the bartender said we could order food there. We all craved chicken wings and sighed when the bartender said they were out of them. This was around 7 p.m. on Friday night at the start of Labor Day weekend. We ordered something else and happily chatted, people watched and sipped on some frosty beverages. We were pretty hungry when our food finally came an hour later, and it was tasty. Later, we landed down the street where my boyfriend’s nephew (a grad student) was hanging with every 20-something in the greater Charlotte area. We bravely inched our way through the hordes of coeds and millennials to get almost up to the bar and were chatting with the kids around us only to learn they were almost out of beer. Out of beer. Apparently their strategy of selling a bucket of six beers to every one of the hundreds of 20-somethings had depleted their reserves.

The game Saturday was terrific, and we celebrated a Mountaineer win at a different Epicenter restaurant (they were all still jammed). This spot took the cake. Our server forgot drinks, told us they were out of wine and said our pizza hadn’t come because she never heard us order it. Another fellow came out to say they were out of cheese and tomatoes for our salads, so there would be just lettuce and dressing. The manager came to apologize and said the same thing had happened to the table next to us. At this point, we were hysterical with laughter.

The icing on the cake came Sunday when we stopped for lunch at a spot along the light-rail line. We sat down and a server told us the kitchen was closed while they switched from breakfast to dinner. We thought we’d have a cocktail while waiting for it to reopen, but she told us she couldn’t get us drinks – we’d have to get them at the bar. In another burst of laughter, we went next door only to find that place didn’t serve food at all, and you still had to get your own drinks at the bar. We tried some craft beers there, then went back next door when the kitchen had re-opened and finally had a delicious lunch. It’s hard to eat when you’re laughing so hard.

Kristin Emery can be reached at kristinemery1@yahoo.com.