places:player:red_bar [Improbable Island Wiki of Often Not Lies]

The Red Bar

A drinking establishment.

Location: Just a hop, skip, and a stagger northeast of NewHome on mapsquare M6.

What's it like? It's patterned after a scuzzy Tennessee roadhouse, but thousands of miles away from Tennessee and without the roads.

What's with the name? The origin of its name is wordplay on the red status bar next to a player's name in chat that formerly indicated that a player is offline.¹⁾ Busted or no, the Red Bar is a place conveniently close to NewHome to kill time waiting for one's friends to show.

Why? There is stuff to do there. Like watch the bug zapper out front. Or get a memento. Or play the jukebox.²⁾ Or sing the 99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall song. Or try to get the bartender to tell a joke.³⁾

Bartender? The running joke about the bartender is that his name would change every week, suggesting that either there is a high rate of turnover among shifty bartenders, or the owner just can't remember the guy's name. For a long time now his name has settled on Callahan.⁴⁾ He spends most of his time asleep behind the bar.

Mementos: Yes, multiple

Beds: Yes

¹⁾

It used to be a solid red bar; as of this writing the solid red bar has been replaced by a broken bar. There has been some discussion about changing the place's name to The Busted Bar or something similar.

²⁾

If you have an original song title, distract it to Gamina and she'll try to get it added to the jukebox.

³⁾

He fucking cannot tell a joke.

⁴⁾

It's an homage to the Callahan's Crosstime Salloon stories by Spider Robinson.