narts & culture | girls with glasses

doin' the iPod shuffle

BY NICOLE WHITE AND GINA DVORAK

The Mission: Get free drinks using only our wits, our iPods and sometimes questionable musical taste.
The Local: Lounge 33 in Riverside
The Rules: Your iPod must play for a full half-hour without inducing the martini-swilling customers to erupt into groans or descend into confused silence.
Necessary Equipment: iPod, willingness to have musical taste mocked, love of inventive mixed drinks and classy bar food.

Lounge 33 offers you the chance to have your musical sins aired in public on iPod night every Wednesday. The rules are simple. They play your iPod on shuffle - or, on a playlist of your choice if they’re feeling merciful - for 30 minutes. If there are no complaints, you get a $10 gift card, redeemable immediately if you so choose.

When Girls with Glasses learned of this, we started plotting a strategy and debating the possible ethical dilemmas involved. (Is it fair to delete all the musicals from one’s iPod before checking out the bar? Is it fair to load up one’s iPod with guaranteed crowd-pleasers, even if they’re outside your musical taste — and would such an effort result in a soulless playlist that would please no one?)

Before taking our digital music collections public, we decided to take a shuffle-mode test run.

Be warned: your iPod will betray you. You might not remember the night you downloaded a couple Milli Vanilli tracks in a fit of nostalgia, or the “soothing” quasi-Celtic music you bought to help you sleep at night. But your iPod remembers. Give it a spin on shuffle, and most certainly some cringe-worthy song will pop up no matter how much time you’ve spent downloading hip-hop or The Decemberists since.

We considered editing our iPods before heading to Lounge 33, but never got around to it. And a little recon revealed we could create our own playlists and that really no one had ever had his or her iPod booted.

Upon hearing this, we did ponder creating playlists sure to clear the room but reneged when our waitress delivered the tastiest martini either of us had encountered in the wild: Edison Juice. We figured it was called that because it was sheer genius.

Turns out, it was named after its inventor, bar manager Donnie Edison. To us, same dif. That drink was mixed almost as brilliantly as Nicole’s playlist (Gina debates this on our blog at http://www.insidesocal.com/girls_with_glasses/), which scored with the very first track, an L33 favorite, it turns out, that the Saturday night DJ plays religiously to the delight of the regulars.

On first glance of the almost overwhelming selection of martinis, we thought it was called Lounge 33 because it would take at least that many trips to try them all. The aforementioned Edison Juice is a stellar potion of Malibu, Frangelico, pineapple juice, cranberry juice and a splash of grenadine. Also recommended is the Strawberry Redhead, a feisty mix of strawberry vodka, sugar and cranberry juice. We ignored good advice and skipped the Cold Soup - hypnotiq (a tasty blue mixture of vodka, tropical fruit juices and Cognac), Malibu, peach schnapps, pineapple juice and a Chambord garnish. One of the most popular offerings at the lounge, Cold Soup - and the rest of the lounge menu, for that matter - will likely turn any first-timer into a regular in no time.

As for Lounge 33 itself, it has a lot more going for it than just its iPod game. The lounge is owned by brother-sister duo George and Angela Tavaglione whose family owned Tava Lanes Bowl for nearly 50 years. The Tavagliones’ newest enterprise was named Lounge 33 in honor of the old bowling alley. As it had 32 lanes, L33 represents the family’s next step in its bond with the community.

NICOLE’S STRATEGY
In short: “High Fidelity.”
1. “Young Folks” by Peter Bjorn and John
2. “When You Were Young” by The Killers
3. “Konichiwa B*****s” by Robyn
4. “On the Radio” by Regina Spektor
5. “Clocks” by Coldplay
6. “A Long December” by Counting Crows
7. “Everlong” by Foo Fighters
8. “Phantom Limb” by The Shins
9. “Train in Vain” by The Clash
10. “Suffragette City” by David Bowie

GINA’S STRATEGY
In short: “Smart Playlist.”
1. “Bohemian Like You” by The Dandy Warhols
2. “Cash Machine” by Hard-Fi
3. “Sea Legs” by The Shins
4. “Everybody’s Stalking” by Badly Drawn Boy
5. “The Last High” by The Dandy Warhols
6. “Junk Bond Trader” by Elliott Smith
7. “Breathe Me” by Sia
8. “Everybody Got Their Something” by Nikka Costa
9. “Love and Peace or Else” by U2 1100.
10. "Thing” by Amerie (featuring Eve)
11. “Steady As She Goes” (acoustic version) by The Raconteurs
12. “Flood” by Jars of Clay
13. “AFK” by Pinback