Blind Pig layout: I don't think anyone's managed to put together
a good description of the place -- it may be a mystery on the
order of exactly where The City is. That said, I can tell you what I visualize...
The place is dominated by what I call the "common room". This
room is big, maybe 30 feet by 60 feet, maybe bigger, with a few support posts
scattered thruout the space. The lighting is good old incandescent
bulbs -- flourescent lights have those damn 'ballast' devices
which emit a 60-cycle hum that would drive most SCABS up the freaking
wall, I think -- but they're not bare bulbs, they're safely concealed
behind some kind of lampshades which diffuse the illumination.
There are a number of different sub-chambers which border on the
common room; some of these sub-chambers have doors for privacy,
others are just open walkways, there might even be a beaded curtain
or something. I don't know how this room is oriented, but for
purposes of this description, let's assume that the common room's
long axis points North and South.
The bar itself, Donnie's 'throne', is in the Northeast corner
of the place, probably along the East wall. The wall behind the
bar is lined with bottle-crammed shelves, and the wall surface
itself is mirrored. There are two doors behind the bar; one leads
to Donnie's office, and the other, to the supply room. I think
of those doors as being locked, but that can't be right because
Donnie needs to be able to get into either or both at any time. Ah, well.
There's a telephone behind the bar, but I don't have a clear picture
of it -- maybe it's a wall-hung job, I dunno.
The common room has a number of tables scattered about; some
are round, some are rectangular, even square; the tables are clearly
collected from a variety of mismatched sources. There's a lot
of chairs, enough to provide at least four per table. Most of
the chairs are recognizeably the same design/style, but there's
a few mismatched chairs as well. The furniture starts out orderly
when Donnie opens for business, but the layout gets increasingly
random as the night progresses, since people will insist on pulling
tables around. I don't have a clear image of the floor; maybe
it's wood, maybe it's linoleum, maybe it's shag carpet, I dunno.
Unlike a Norm bar, there is no smoke in the air whatsoever -- too many SCABs with oversensitive
noses.
There's a piano (upright, not grand). I'm not sure where it
is exactly, but I visualize it as somewhere in the middle of the
common room, not up against a wall or anything.
There's also a jukebox. I don't have a clear picture of it;
it might be in the Southwest quadrant of the common room, maybe
against a wall.
In the middle of the (short) South side, there's a sort of alcove
-- it contains a couple of bulletin boards that are dripping with
notices, some of them yellowed with age, and a few cheap vending
machines that dispense candy & such. There is no door or curtain
or anything separating this alcove from the common room. The Pig's
front door opens into this alcove, and both sides of the door
have a variety of handles to accomodate a variety of SCABbed 'hands'.
The rest of the South side is taken up by booths (a table plus
two fixed benches), and each booth can accomodate 4 Norms comfortably.
The door to the bathrooms is in the North wall, closer to the
West side than to the East side (not sure how much closer, sigh). And yes, it is a door, not an open walkway. When you open that door, you see
a short corridor going North, with two doors (with worn brass
plaques reading MEN'S and WOMEN'S) in the West side of this corridor.
I don't have a good picture of this corridor -- don't even know
whether MEN'S or WOMEN'S is closest to the common room.
Also on the North wall is a door to the back room, a private
chamber where people can talk without anyone interrupting them.
There may be two of these back rooms, I'm not sure.
There is a corner booth in the Northwest corner of the common
room. There may also be 1-2 more booths with it up there, but
I'm not sure about that.
I know there's a dart board; maybe that's hanging off the North
wall, but I don't have a clear picture of where.
The public telephones (i.e. pay phones) are off in a little alcove on the East wall, close
to the Southeast corner. This alcove has a half-door; it dampens
the noise from the common room a little, but does not actually conceal the presence of phone-users from
anyone in the common room who wants to look in that direction.
There's maybe four phones, maybe fewer than that. I see them as
wall-hung, with little wooden panels projecting out from the wall
to provide a semblance of privacy for the callers. I see an end
table with a badly worn copy of the Yellow Pages on it.
There's at least one pool table. I see it in a side room, to
the West of the common room, with a nice wide opening -- pretty
much anyone who cares to, can look in on the pool table(s) at
any time.
There's a secondary room, not small but also nowhere near as
big as the common room, along the East wall. Nice wide opening,
no door. The Southern end of the bar sort of loops around so that
Donnie (or whoever) can take orders from whoever's in there and
still stay behind the bar. I think the Strikebreakers rehearse
in that chamber ("the Strikebreakers" being an all-SCAB band entirely
made up of Pig regulars).