The Stills Day 27, Sioux City, IA

Thank you Sioux City for what was quite possibly the weirdest day on record. That’s what happens when you start your day looking forward to a trip to Wal-Mart…

 

After the shopping spree, we eventually got to town and went into the hotel to take some showers. After that, we decided to go to the Riverboat Casino, which is supposed to be the main attraction in town, and it did sound pretty cool. So we head out there, have a mediocre dinner at the restaurant and then head into the casino. This casino just happened to be home to the most depressed looking bunch we’ve ever seen. People living and dying with every pull on a penny slot machine, wearing sweat suits and chain smoking / drinking. After a whole 3 minutes, a couple of us decide to bail and go back to the hotel, maybe hang out on the bus and watch some hockey on the satellite. But alas, the generator on the bus died (we have to get it fixed today) so there was no power at all. So we rally the troops, ask the hotel to call us a van cab because there’s 6 of us, they call a regular cab we end up stuffing into, and head to Historic Fourth Street, where all the nightlife is.

 

By nightlife, they mean 6 bars. And they were lame. By Historic, they mean est. 1995. Again, lame… We settled on Sweet Fanny’s, cause at least they had a pool table to distract us from the guy playing guitar in the corner, singing his favourite 90s hits (and misses). After a few games of pool (including a last game to beat a crazy local) and trying to figure out how an electronic dart board works, we had enough and tried to call a cab to get us back to the hotel, but they said that would take at least 30 mins, cause it’s Saturday night in Sioux City and all 3 cabs in town are hustling like mad. So we tricked the hotel into sending a shuttle to pick us up, and the man driving seemed to have no love for us whatsoever… didn’t even acknowledge our “thank you’s”. Sigh…

 

Now back at the hotel, looking for something to do, and the birthday party in the room beside ours did not seem like a valid option, we walked into the bar which was thankfully still open, if only for another 20 minutes. Within seconds there were rumours of The Stills playing New Year’s Eve in Sioux City in the corner of the hotel bar. The good side of this is that it got us a couple rounds of drinks from a couple nice local chaps. Couple more games of pool, a picture taken to send to a jealous sister / fan, and a few rounds of Mystery Phraze, and we head back to the bus, which again has no power, but remains our best option for entertainment. So we sit in the dark for about 2 hours waiting to leave, listening to Metallica on laptop speakers and getting hockey updates. Can’t wait to come back.